back to school

well, i took a big plunge today. i signed up for an online course to get my medical billing certificate. there's a big need for licensed medical coders with insurance backgrounds. i have the insurance background and i've decided to take the course. i can work at my own pace. if i study hard enough, i hope to get through it sooner than later so i can begin a new career. it should be a salary raise as well as help me get good medical benefits. what do you guys think?

erin & nikki--i'm having a 4th of july barbeque sat, july 2nd at my house at 2 pm. erin--you'd better come, and nikki, we'd love to meet you!! you & chris could stay at my house if you want. email me if you're interested!

erin--i'm not sure what the answer is to dealing with your job. i'm in the same boat--it's a battle to get myself to go everyday. can you do the real estate on the side at first to get your feet wet? that way you'd have your first job & be able to try out the new one. also, is there anyway your boss would let you cut back hours? that might help.

Random Ignorance of the World

So. Its a Monday morning, close to 9:30 AM. I realize that as of this week, I have been working for my current employer for 5 years. Wow. 5 years. I am only 25. That is prettymuch my entire adult life. I am not overly happy here; my boss is a micromanager who never leaves well enough alone. Even if he gives specific directions on how to do something, and you follow it to the letter, he will inevitably change one number by a nickel just to feel like he has some input. Its really tough on the nerves to never feel like you are good enough at something, since he goes behind you to make all these changes. I am at wit's end with it, but not sure what the next step is. I just finished up the required classes to sit for the state real estate exam, but going from a salaried to a commission job scares the hell out of me. I am a one income family, so if I don't do well, I have nothing to fall back on. And, in 5 years, I have made it to over $40K here, and I just don't know that someone else will start me with that. So, its the rock and the hard place for me, and no one but me can tell me what the right answer is. I can't get past the dull feelings here; I don't look forward to work, and I do whatever I can to avoid it, procrastinating on getting things done as long as I can. Any advice on how to make a bad place seem better? How to feel good about my job, so that I don't dread getting out of bed in the morning?

And boys. I am intelligent, successful, and not the most hideous woman in the world. What is wrong with dating someone who has their head on straight? Owning a home and a dog does not mean that I "need" a husband tomorrow; I just want to date someone. Its been 2 and a half, close to 3 years since that happened. I just don't get it. I won't settle, but are all the boys at there that bad??

books squared

i changed my name for the purposes of my new blog. oz2kansas.blogspot.com i didn't really want my name on there. it's about the eating issues i'm having right now.

i've also been a libraryoholic lately! here's a list of books i've read this past month:
1) Meeting Lily by Sarah Woodhouse
2) My Summer with Julia by Sarah Woodhouse
3) Dead Girls Don't Write Letters by Gail Giles
4) How I Paid for College by Marc Acito (reading now)
5) Slim to None by Jennifer Hendricks
6) Life Size by Jenefer Shute
7) The Joy of Funerals by Alix Strauss (reading now)

I think I'm missing a couple of titles too. getting lost in a book has been my only refuge lately.

Back to books

I've been reading like crazy lately-now that I actually have time to go to the library, I've been spending my Saturday afternoons there, and it's been great. I take the train to work every day, which gives me about a half hour each way, and I was reading and re-reading all the books in my house. That got old really fast, but now I have new stuff, and I don't even have words for how great it is. :)
Jamie and I have been talking about moving lately; the original plan was to move to England after we get married, because he's a British citizen, but now it looks like we'll be going either to northern CA or to OR to live near my mom and older sister. We'd talked before about moving to Chico (near Sacramento); it's a college town, so I could finish up my education there, and land is really cheap. I'm going to visit my mom next week (in OR), and the other day he started saying, "Well, maybe if you really fall in love with it we could move up there...". Now he's all excited about the prospect of having a little farm, and he's drawing blueprints of the house we'll build. This from the epitome of the SoCal white boy. :)
Nikki the redhead-Dorothy-why'd you change?-I saw the other day that Jars of Clay has a new album out. I don't know if you've seen it or not. It's called "Redemption Songs".

echo echo echo!

someone write something on here!

info needed

erin--what's the addy of the free-site you run?

sarah--i think i'll plan my trip to nyc when you're gonna be there. then you, me, aly, alex, & erin can hang. sound good?

Summer!

I'm VERY excited to be finished with school. Finally, a few months off to enjoy myself. (I get really bad spring fever.) Of course, I'm still working full-time, but at least I have the weekends.
I'm taking the first two weeks of July off, partly to visit my mom in OR. I haven't seen her since she moved there in February, so I'm really looking forward to it. Then when I come back, I have a week and a half to hang out and do absolutely nothing. All the girls I work with are getting sick of my daily countdown to my vacation. Wait until I get to the hourly countdown. :)

a little bit of everything

i started a blog to chronicle my eating progress. you can find it here if you want to. also, i have purses for sale if anyone's interested. i just need to get rid of them. they're taking up space & not being used.

head shots needed

i asked this awhile ago. i think i only got nicolle and nikki's pics. could everyone else post a pic so i can add them to the sidebar? oh, and i got bored with the template, so i changed it. thanks!

chocolate dreams

mmm . . . i'm eating an apple and pretending it tastes like chocolate. it's not working. i broke down & called a nutritionist today. they haven't called me back yet, so we'll see if they do. anna--did you ever see a nutritionist for your disorder? just curious. i don't know how to eat food like a normal person and i need someone to teach me how. i'm close to slipping back into old eating habits etc. i don't want to do it again, but i'm starting to fear i'll have no choice.

Target

I would like to say something about the wonderful invention that is Target.com. I love Target anyway-I'm always thinking, okay, I need shampoo and conditioner, so I'll run into Target and spend $10, and then when I leave I ALWAYS have at least $50 worth of stuff. But Target online is even greater. In an effort to eat more healthily, I decided to buy a blender so I can make smoothies for breakfast to bring to work. I found the cutest little one-it's not a pitcher on top, it's just a cup, and you put all your stuff in and blend it, then snap on the travel lid and go. I love it.
I also wanted to respond to nikki the redhead's last 2 posts. As far as the ED thing, and childhood experiences, I have thought for a long time that I was sexually abused as a child, but I don't really remember anything specific, or who did it. About two years ago, my ex-boyfriend came up with a name that kind of made me stop and think, while every other person I'd thought of just didn't make any sense. The person he brought up was my aunt's ex-husband (on my dad's side). I said something to my dad about it, and he brushed it off, but I still have a feeling that my ex was right. The ex-uncle, or whatever you want to call him, died like a year ago, so I guess I'll never find out for sure.
In regards to moving in with the bf, I hope it turns out as wonderfully for you as it has for me. Things have changed a lot, and it took some getting used to, but we're so much closer now than we were before. It's really nice to come home to him every night, and wake up to him every morning. He drives me crazy occasionally, like when he leaves his clothes all over the living room floor, but then he'll do something like surprise me by cleaning the whole house while I'm at work.
I'm going to a wedding on Saturday, and I get to wear the perfect little black dress that I bought 3 years ago and haven't worn yet. I'm really excited. :)

real or imagined?

i'm reading a book called "slim to none: a journey through the wasteland of anorexia treatment." it's basically a collection of journal entries from a girl who struggled with the disease from 14 to 25 until she finally passed away at 45 lbs. her father released the book. it's a very astute look at the inner workings of the mind as it struggles to find a reason for the starvation. (as i've said 8 million times, i've been anorexic and an exercise bulimic. now, i would simply be classified as ednos.) one of the points that is brought up in the book is how the narrator spent her whole life in fear of everything. one therapist in particular figured that there must have been some form of abuse, whether physical or sexual in nature, that brought on some of these fears. i spent my entire life in fear, long before my ed showed up and before i was raped. i assumed i was a natural-born worrier. my mother said as much. much like the girl in the book, i remember being spanked everyday, with a wooden spoon or a hairbrush. i'm not crying physical abuse here, people. i'm just stating a recollection. my mom gets very hurt when i say that what i remember about my childhood is being spanked everyday. she says it wasn't true. i agree now that it probably wasn't, but that still doesn't change the fact that when someone asks what i remember about my childhood, getting spanked everyday always comes to mind. i know why i was spanked so much. back then, i pushed and pushed and pushed my mom until she had to take a stand. she thinks i pushed just to see how much she really loved me, whether she would eventually give up on me. that was something she never did. i spent most of my childhood in a game of sorts in which my mom and i were the only players. it was called, "you're good, i'm bad, you win." it was always a competition between us in my mind. maybe it was because we were so alike--i still don't have an answer to that one. what i do know is that our relationship improved dramatically after i began an anti-depressant regimen. heck, i even hated the existence of my younger brother until i was about 20 and had been taking my medicine regularly. it was a strange feeling not to hate him anymore, but to enjoy hanging out with him. knowing how i acted as a child is a big reason why i'm afraid to have any children of my own. i don't want to bring another little monster-child into the world. my mother spent a lot of time protecting me from myself. i'm not sure if i'm strong enough to do that for someone else. another thing brought up in the book, is a situation in which the girl remembers her mother doing something to her, but her mother adamantly denies that it occured. i think it had something to do with the mother making her stay in the dog house as punishment. i have a similar situation that i have remembered, but my parents swear never happened. i must have been 7 or 8 when it happened. i snuck a chocolate pudding pop (remember those) and took it outside to eat it. i thought i would get in trouble for taking it if my mom found me with it. i heard her opening the front door, so i threw it in our garage underneath a car that was parked in there. needless to say, the garage floor was dirty and dusty and gross. since i'm a bad liar, i looked completely guilty when my mom found me. she asked me what i'd done. i told her. she made me show her where i threw the popsicle. i did. she got angry that i wasted it by throwing it on the ground. so she picked it up and started shoving it down my throat, dirt and all, saying i wasn't going to waste it. i remember crying and being disgusted by the fuzz on it (by the way, i have a fuzz phobia--maybe this is where it stemmed from). anyway, i mentioned it to my mom one day when i got older. she couldn't believe i would suggest such a thing. my dad wouldn't believe that my mom would do anything like that. did i just make that detailed of a story up in my own mind? is it a real occurrence like i think it is or an imagined circumstance? anyone have any idea or anything similar in their own background? any advice would be helpful.

movin' on up

so, i got myself all moved into the new house w/ the bf on sunday and monday. it was a lot of work, but i'm finally out of apt life, hopefully for good. it's sooo nice to have a huge backyard and my own garage. it's like heaven. i couldn't sleep very well the first night, but i felt more at ease last night. from now on, i'll be sharing my life with my boyfriend on a more personal level. it's kind of exciting, yet kind of scary at the same time. my old roommate is living with us until june 8th since she has to finish school for the quarter. things will be a little tight with her around until then, since there's only one small bathroom. also, we can't really arrange our stuff like we want to until she's out of the other large bedroom. only 8 more days . . .