X is for Xing

Xing or X-ing means "crossroads".  This upcoming year is becoming a major crossroads for me.

Everything is a choice.  It took me forever to get that through my thick head. 

My crossroads involves several aspects of my life: 

Keep being lazy and keep gaining weight or get off my ass.

Keep fucking around or really buckle down and get my speeds.

Keep buying yarn or make a concerted effort to knit the S.A.B.L.E. I already own.

Write lists or do things.

Weight:
My knees are killing me.  That ain't good.  I know it's the extra weight.  In 2009/2010, I was still a stay-at-home mom with a lot of time on my hands.  It took me 8 months of going to the gym four or five days a week to lose 25 pounds. 

Then I got a job and went to a school across town.  I had an 80-hour week.  80 hours of mandatory sitting.  I'd lost 25 pounds, but they found me again and this time they brought friends.  Bastards.

As of now, I'm strictly online.  I have no job to speak of (although I may have a part-time one starting next month) and a lot of time on my hands again.  I plan to wake, have breakfast, practice for an hour, and then take my ass to the gym.  After gym and shower, more practice.

School:
I made the decision to switch schools.  That decision came in week four of eleven this quarter.  Since I made that decision, I pretty much wrote off this whole quarter.  I knew that much of what I've done at my current school wouldn't count for anything when I transferred.  I barely did the minimum of homework and started playing hooky.  That's so not me!

I was so frustrated with the school I'm going to that I kind of said, "fuck it". 

That stops now.

I'm actually doing a bit of a "double major" type thing at the new school.   They have a voice writer program that only takes 6 months.  I don't even know what a voice writer does really, but I know they make $20-$25 an hour.  I figure I'll do the VW program while taking my speed courses for the next six months.  After that I'll take whatever speeds I have left and all the academics I can handle. 

My thinking is that I can be a VW for the remainder of my schooling.  The registrar says no one's ever attempted it before, and I'll be the guinea pig for it.  I'm OK with that!  We already got the go-ahead from the school owner.

Yarn:
Jeezly Crow.  When will it ever be enough?  (Said no knitter ever...)  I say it every year, but seriously.  I have a fucking WALL of yarn.  And now I'm sewing, too?  So fabric's next?  I already have a pretty large bin of fabric that I've been hauling around for years.  Time to use it.

I recently made a pretty ambitious list.  I've done two things off that list.  One was a much bigger undertaking than I'd suspected.  My side of our bedroom and my HUGE closet have been little more than a dumping ground over the past year. 

It took me four hours to clean it out, clean it up, and rearrange it the way I wanted it.  Four hours.  That's just stupid.  Part of that job included the second thing I crossed off that list:  Making a space in our bedroom for my student activities.  This means that for all intents and purposes, our shared office is going to just be Dave's office now.

To accomplish the space I wanted in our bedroom, I moved our bed and nightstands nearly a foot closer to Dave's side of the room.  If he's noticed at all, he hasn't said anything!  hah!

The bad news is that I may have lost $100(ish)! 

Dave went to a coin machine thing that said if you feed in $40, you can get a $50 gift certificate to Toys 'R Us.  He did it twice.  Instead of hard gift cards, it printed him what looked like receipts.  He gave them to me, and we'd planned to put them in the kids' stockings for xmas.  I put them in my nightstand.  I swear that's what I did with them.

I forgot to put them in the stockings, but no big deal, we just told them about it.  Yesterday, after the four-hour cleaning/rearranging spree, Dave said we should take the kids to TRU to let them use that money. 

Those receipt things are NOT in my nightstand. 

Worse upon worse, I had T take the two bags of trash to the curb for me since it was trash day.

Fuck.

I know I didn't throw them away.  I check every scrap of paper before it goes in the trash.  I do this even on a normal basis, much less a mass cleaning! 

That being said, I also know I put those little fuckers in my nightstand. 

I tore my recently cleaned room apart looking for them.  I can't find them.  It made me nauseous.

Dave says it was just coins.  "Like found money", he says.  Screw that.  It's $100!!

The receipts are good for 80 years (weird, right?), so hopefully they turn up eventually...

Anyway, other than losing that money(ish), I was super happy with my progress on the cleaning front.  I've started on the office, too.  I already have three boxes of stuff to take to Savers!

Crossing over into the New Year, Ruth!