Spring Has Sprung

Today has been great so far and rather productive.  I cleaned my apartment like a mad women because I had the in laws over for a luncheon which consisted of turkey and ham finger sandwiches, bite size brownies, and bite sized apple pastries.  They had their tea and I had my vino.  I'm totally addicted to this tropical fruits Arbor Mist which is strange for me because I don't typically drink chardonnay.  

I've opened the windows to let in some fresh air and I have my Scentsy warmer burning vanilla bean butter cream.  It smells so wonderful.  The thing I love about these Scentsy warmers is that you can burn them any time of the year and your place will always smell great.  It literally smells like I have a cupcake factory running in my house.  I love it!

Please excuse the futon.  That is temporary.  My in laws lent us their futon until we could get a couch.  We now have a couch, but I told them that they could keep the futon here until they finish steam cleaning the carpets and painting up stairs in their house.  In the mean time, I have ample space for people to sit.  Woohoo!  The book shelf looks like a wreck.  Even though it's been a year, I'm still trying to find an appropriate home for everything.  We also have one more truck load to do and we will officially have all of our stuff over here.  THANK GOODNESS.  I know, I know.  We've been here a whole year and we still don't have all our stuff here.  Well, Jason works third shift.  Then, I had to go and get hurt.  And to be honest, I really, really, REALLY hate moving stuff.  It's such a pain in the ass!

Got my counter tops cleared off a lot better.  Jason and I have to make a trip to the transfer station because we have A LOT of cardboard.  I have a thing for buying furniture that has to be put together which results in a lot of cardboard.  I start putting it together and then forget how to read instructions and make Jason do it.  Jason is never thrilled when I make him put furniture together because then he has to figure out where I left off and if I screwed up.

More of our kitchen just because I'm that surprised on how well my cleaning and picking up skills have kicked in today.  I'm pretty lucky to have a place like this at my age.  Most people my age don't start off with a place like this.  Granted, we rent, but I'd like to think that we do pretty well for ourselves.  But anyway, Jason thinks it's too cold to have the windows open, but I wanted some fresh air in here.  So, he is upstairs pitching a manly fit like a 5 year old.

I go Monday night for my sleep study and I'm super anxious.  I don't know about having all these wires attached to me.  Oh!  I passed both of my classed with A's this semester!  That's why I'm drinking some wine today...to celebrate...yeah, we'll just go with that.  I officially have the next week off then I have one more semester left and I will officially be a college graduate!!  I'm going for my bachelors in business after that.  So, my agenda is looking pretty full.

5 Things That Relax Me

After seeing the physical therapist yesterday, we have drawn some better conclusions as to why I'm experiencing swelling in my body and more particularly, we caused my injury.  See, my whole life I've dealt with severe anxiety and depression.  I've always been a very tense person and have never been able to truly relax.  I over analyze everything.  When I say everything, I mean everything.  I get constant migraines and my body is usually always sore.  When I get nervous, upset, or anxious, my skin has a tendency to get very rashy and itchy.  I get stressed out over things that shouldn't even phase me.  With all of this being said, she explained to me that stress, especially a great amount of it, creates an excess of toxins in the body which produces the body to build up with acid and in result, causes swelling which puts pressure on muscles and nerves.  Having all this happen causes weak muscles and pain in the muscles which can cause you to easily get hurt.  So basically, I have to find ways to reduce stress.  My homework for today was to find 5 things that relax me.

Blogging is a great stress reliever for me.  It helps me unload my thoughts and feelings.  When I do that, it makes me feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  Music helps me to relax, especially when I can relate the lyrics to my life and the sound to my current emotions.  Sometimes through songs, I feel like I'm not alone.  Having my body massaged really makes me feel relaxed.  Most of the time, it even puts me to sleep.  I also like being on the beach.  It's just something about the water, breeze, and smell of the beach that puts my mind to ease and puts me in a tranquil state of mind.  Last, but certainly not least, Simba brings down my stress level.  He is very therapeutic for me emotionally.

What kind of things make you relax?

We Had A Wonderful Christmas This Year

I have to say that Christmas this year wasn't that bad.  Our Christmas's are never really that bad, but sometimes the past year was better than the last.  It actually turned out a lot better than I had anticipated.  Jason and I started our Christmas day off by putting the presents under the tree because good Lord only knows that if we put them under the tree any sooner than when we had intentions of opening them, the cats would have had themselves a field day.  As soon as I finished putting all the presents under the tree, they were already trying to get into them.  So, it wasn't that much later that we found ourselves opening presents.

Of course we started with our fur babies because as any pet owner should know, pets don't tend to have a very long attention span.  They can't speak of course, but I'd like to think that they had a pretty rad Christmas -- they got SPOILED to the hill!  Don't tell my mother-in-law, but I actually let them leave the house a mess for one whole day.  I didn't get many pictures of Christmas mostly because all the people we know hate having their picture taken.

Please excuse the hanger strap from my sweater.  I kind of just threw on my sweater so that we could hurry up and open presents.  I wasn't really worried about pleasing anyone at the time.

Simba is not allowed on our coffee table and Christmas is no exception to that rule.  So, Jason thought it would scare him if he fake shot him with his candy filled plastic looking candy canes.  Obviously he failed.

Seeing what is in my stocking if my favorite part of Christmas!

I thought the reindeer was cute, so I had to take a selfie with it.  On that note, I haven't really had much hot cocoa this winter.  Shame on me!

I wore these earrings all day on Christmas and got so many compliments on them.  I must admit, they really did look nice on me.

Isabelle is one of the most photogenic cats.

She didn't want to wait!

My house was quite a mess with all their cat toys all over the damn place, but they needed to enjoy their holiday as well.  I also bought them the as seen on t.v "The Perfect Arch".

They both love to rub up against things, so I knew that this would be the perfect gift for them!  It also helps them brush their fur where they can't reach.  It came with catnip as well to attract them to it even more.

Fast forward to about noon time.

We finally made it over Jason's parents house.  We originally intended to be over there about a whole hour earlier, but we were dragging ass.  I never really cared for planning out Christmas that much anyway, especially when people try to force an hourly itinerary on you.  You worked really hard to get Christmas ready, so why rush it and it all be over in a matter of minutes?

We all exchanged our presents and enjoyed a light lunch because we were going for dinner at their friends house around 4 p.m.

Fast forward to 4 p.m.

We arrived at Jason's parents friends house.  They had one of their son's over with his wife and kid.  I was a bit shy at first, at least the whole time we were stuffing our faces.  No one probably noticed that I was shy in the first place because we were all too worried about stuffing our faces and respectfully, I'm not one to chew with my mouth open.  So, I refrain from talking while I'm eating.

I later found out that I had a lot in common with their son's wife, Lori.  She is significantly older than me, has children, married, and probably has a house over an apartment which are things that we don't have in common.  However, we both have a love for purses and a significant other that complains on how we have too many, we both went to college, and while she has experienced a divorce (though she is remarried obviously), I'm a child of divorced parents.  So, she totally understood what I went through when we briefly talked about that topic.

Since my injury, I haven't really got out of the house much, so I don't currently have that many contacts to help me get extended resources on advice on how to better my life as far as being a college student goes and trying to find opportunities.  She is an accountant for a water company and she told me that she is only two levels down from the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and that she works really close with the CFO of her company.  Being a CFO was my first aspiration when I could just barely call myself a college student.

I really enjoyed talking to her because she really did ease some of my fears of being a graduate and of course the fear of the unknown when it comes to trying to learn a new job and not knowing whether or not you're going to be good at it or if it's really even going to be for you as far as enjoying it goes.

We enjoyed a little bit of strawberry shortcake Arbor Mist which was absolutely delicious!

All in all, it was a great holiday.  

Now, I mostly get to enjoy having Jason home for another eight days with the exception of his forklift certification class on the 31st which is usually a full day (eight hours).  It's nice to spend quality time with him.  When I tell people that, they are always so quick to say, "You live with him for crying out loud!  You always spend time with him".  NO!  There is a BIG difference from spending time and then spending quality time with someone.

Usually Jason sleeps during the day and I sleep at night because I'm out of work still for my injury and he continues to work third shift which isn't going to change much when I find a first shift job anyway.  So, the only time we really speak during the week and on most weekends is when he wakes up to eat dinner before he goes to work.  Right now, I actually get to spend time with him where he sleeps at night the same time I do and we get to spend time together during the day where he isn't tired and we can go do things together.

There is a difference.

The only thing that I really have left to comment on is the fact that after looking at myself in the pictures above from Christmas, all I can say is that I gained a lot of weight in the past couple of years.  I really do have to work on losing weight in the upcoming year.  I'm tired of being tired and not feeling good all the time.  I shouldn't feel this way at 23 years old, especially if I ever have plans of becoming pregnant someday which is a soft subject right now in our house.