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.
Facebook = Timesuck
I caved. I’ve been resisting Facebook for a while. My friend, Karen, has been after me to join for at least a couple of months, and I just couldn’t see the point to it. I remember Twelve getting on MySpace, and thinking how ridiculous it was… why would he want to sit there and chat all evening with kids he just saw at school? I thought the same thing about Facebook, figuring that if I had something important enough to say there, I could just as easily say it here. Then my friend, Jenny, joined.
Let me just say now, for the record, that I am a terrible friend. I don’t do a good job of keeping in touch at all, and it doesn’t seem to matter if a friend lives in town or across the country. So as you can imagine, I’ve lost touch with a lot of people over the years, simply by not doing anything. When Jenny mentioned all the people she’d found on Facebook, it occurred to me that this might be a way I could reconnect with some of those friends, so I had her do a quick search to see if any of them had pages, and lo and behold, all of them do. That was it. That was all it took for me to completely and totally cave and create a profile.
I was really afraid that Facebook would be something I’d sign up for and never use… much like Twitter. It could still turn out that way, of course, but it’s different enough from what I do and share here that I may actually keep up with it. Of course, I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to figure it out, changing my status, filling out my profile, and checking out my friends’ profiles – that’s 4 hours I’ll never get back. But, I’m hoping I can use Facebook as a tool to stay in touch with all the people I don’t see frequently, and who knows? Maybe I’ll make some new friends in the process. For someone as introverted as I am, this is ideal.
