Lady of the Flies
Oh, God. I walked into the bunny room tonight to find that a first generation set of houseflies had taken up residence in the corner by the window, over Roxy and Rosy (the girlie pigs) cage. I had noticed more flies than usual in the house today but chalked that up to open doors and windows and ill-fitting screens – it was only 83 degrees here today and was a nice, breezy day to have the windows open to air things out. Evidently, the flies are coming from somewhere else and I’m terrified that that somewhere is the bunny room. Wouldn’t you think the highest concentration would be where they hatched?
See, this perturbs me for several reasons. One: while I may not keep my rabbit room sparkling, bleachy clean, I do try and change litter boxes and clean cages frequently enough to avoid something like this happening – for me, that’s one litter box every night, or a litter box change every 5th day. If I notice that someone’s litter box seems heavy or needs to be changed I’ll even go ahead and do it. Two: I HAD a fly infestation like this four years ago which prompted me to rip the carpet/pad out of the rabbit room and paint the concrete floor. The flies had laid their eggs under a plastic storage bin where one of my rabbits had made a puddle without me knowing about it and it hadn’t dried out, so made a nice, warm environment for baby flies to grow. Third: I plain old don’t have time to eradicate flies. There’s no safe way to do it around rabbits except for fly-strips and fly-swatters, and that’s just more time than I can spare.
For now I think I’ve taken care of most of them… there may be one or two hanging out lazily by the ceiling where it’s warm, but I’ll get ‘em eventually. I just hope none of them laid any eggs anywhere. I spent about 90 minutes in the bunny room cleaning the most suspicious-looking litter boxes and a guinea pig cage, and killing as many of the buggers as I could find. These are like mutant flies… it takes more than just a swat to kill them. It seems like they get stunned, fall down, and then I have to step on them, pick them up in a tissue, and flush them to make sure they’re really gone. I’m thinking they may have come from a pile of Moses poo that I picked up and bagged yesterday before mowing the lawn; it was, shall we say, infested when I picked it up, and I foolishly put it in the garage. There were not a lot of flies in the garage, though, and not a lot of traffic in and out today, so I don’t know how they migrated in the house… but that’s my hope. Because otherwise? I have to demolish the bunny room and start all over. And I don’t know if I have the energy for that.
I HATE BUGS.
Health
So, there’s financial health. I mentioned before that I was signing up for SmartyPig, and I have since registered, opened an account, and set up my first savings goal. I decided to save for a down payment on a new car – it’s getting to be time to replace the ol’ Spectra. She’s been a good car for a cheap, Korean piece o’ crap, but I’d like something a little nicer.
I have also finally, finally linked all my accounts to Mint, which is this nifty online financial management thing. You can set a budget, it sends you alerts, and it downloads all your account information so it’s visible in one place. There are some drawbacks to using it rather than, say, MS Money… you can’t enter transactions you’ve made and scheduled transactions don’t show up – it’s more of an “actual” than a “forecast”. I don’t like keeping all of this information in more than one place, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before they upgrade the tool and charge a fee for that kind of functionality. Oh, did I mention it’s free?
I’ve also increased my automatic savings plan at ING Direct to help bulk up my emergency fund. I haven’t had ANY emergency fund until this month, but I had my tax refund direct deposited there, and it gave me a bit of a boost. Now I just have to keep my hands off of it. I’m terrible about leaving money alone…
… and here’s an example. I paid off a high-interest credit card with part of my annual bonus. I’m not going to close it, because that can actually hurt your credit rating by lowering your overall available credit. Anyway, wouldn’t you know that card is just burning a hole in the desk drawer where I stashed it? I mean, there’s tons of things I could buy… I need (want) new shoes, I need (want) a new purse/bag, I need (want) some new clothes. But this is the year I become more financially responsible, right?
And then there’s physical health. You know, the Feather family is just not having a great year, so far. Mom has been diagnosed with uterine cancer – her appointment with the oncologist is this Thursday, so we’ll find out more about what type of cancer it is and where we go from here, but it’s kind of rough. She is, after all, over 800 miles away from me and RC, so it’s just her and Dad down there, goin’ it alone. As for me, I’ve been battling this ridiculous stye now for the past week, and it just doesn’t want to go away. I hate styes. There’s no reason for them, no reason at all. And there’s no cure for them… just put a hot compress on it, they say. BAH!!
On the physical fitness front, though, I’ve been going to the gym regularly since they opened in February – at least three times a week for cardio work. I am SO out of shape… I made the mistake of glancing at the treadmill next to me the other day to see what the little chippy was doing, and she was walking at a brisk 4.0 miles an hour. Hmm. I’m really hoofing it at 2.8 miles an hour, on an incline, even, to get my heart rate up. But it’s more active than I’ve been in a long time and it feels fantastic. I actually *like* going to the gym. And as soon as I hit 3.0 miles an hour, I’m going to start adding some weight-training into my routine.
Now if I can just keep my mental health on an even keel… I think I’ll be alright.
Filed under budget, indignities, me | Comments (3)Funbags? Hardly.
Boobs. Breasts. Tits. There are lots of words for these appendages, but the one that seems most incongruous to me at the moment is “funbags”. There’s nothing fun about these things… they’re too big to be anything but a nuisance. I have been shopping for the right bra for the last 4 months now. I had the perfect bra, but when the first underwire snapped as I bent over to get out of my car one day, I knew I would have to find something else. Wacoal bras aren’t cheap, and while I think you should support “the girls” to the best of your ability, I just can’t spend that kind of money on undergarments. I’d rather spend it on shoes… but I don’t.
Anyway, because I am 1) overweight, and 2) of good, German, farmhand stock, I am well-endowed. Doesn’t well, when used as a prefix, usually indicate something positive? Yeah, I’m not feeling so positive… just very frustrated. I’ve measured, and measured, and measured again… according to all the calculations I’ve done, I should be wearing one band size and one or two cup sizes larger than my lovely Wacoal bras were. So that’s what I’ve been trying on, but that is a large enough size that it’s very difficult to find locally. I’ve ordered about ten different bras online, and have had to return them ALL. All of them!! Every last one. None of them fit. Some were pricey, some were not… but they all looked terrible. In the meantime, the last underwire on my last perfect bra gave out as I was cleaning the bunny room one night. I had to do something, so I went to Kohl’s and bought a couple of stopgap measures. They don’t fit very well, but I figured they’d do for now. I can tell they are the wrong band AND cup size – I can use the tightest hook closure and still pull the band over 2″ away from my body, and the center wires don’t lay flat like they’re supposed to.
So, lastnight I go to Kohl’s, not really intending to look at bras, but figuring I might as well try to find the next cup size bigger. It’s a triple-letter size, so I don’t have a lot of hope, but they actually do have a few different styles. I pick a smaller band size and the larger cup size, and they are ENORMOUS. There is enough extra fabric to fit at least one more breast in each cup! I’m so confused… what the heck? So, I try just reducing the band size, leaving the cup size the same as what I’ve been wearing. Still too big. Then, I figure I’ll try the size I was wearing before I started my search for the new perfect bra. Lo and behold, I tried on 3 different styles, and they fit. Hallelujah! It’s puzzling, for sure, because it’s not like I’ve lost any weight over the last 4 months… so I don’t understand why the size and styles that didn’t fit back then suddenly do, but I’ll take it. They cost together what one of the Wacoal bras do, so I’ll take it.
I have happy boobs now, that’s for sure.
