Angel's blog

The Girl got her ears pierced yesterday! She was so brave, no crying, no pulling away, no giving up after the first one. I was very proud, and she is too. She loves them and talks about them constantly. She keeps asking if they are pretty. They are just plain ol' silver balls, but that doesn't matter to her!

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I'm not sure what happened, but I have been feeling pretty well lately. The depression hasn't been really bad, and I am having very few anxiety attacks. I talked with my psychaitrist about this yesterday. Perhaps the increased sunlight, my meds' levels have been untouched and finally working the way they should, or maybe it is a fluke. I haven't been seeing my therapist, I forgot about making new appointments. I think I missed the last one accidentally, so I wasn't in the office to make more. Perhaps not dwelling on my life and needing to talk about everything that has been bad and good is helping with my moods too. All I know is that I am happy with the way things are going. It has been a very, very long time since I was able to say that.

I've seen PETA try to do some pretty outlandish things, all in the name of helping animals. Some things are unreasonable, backward thinking, and even terroristic at times. It surprises me it has two million members and continues to grow.

With all the “Swine Flu” scares going around now, PETA is using it to try to convince states such as IL and UT to stop creating new factory farms. I quote from their website “going vegetarian is the best action that any individual can take to prevent animalborne diseases”. They want the US government to stop factory farming completely.

Other things they have done include asking sports teams to drop live animal mascots, and companies with ads featuring animals, to scrap them and vow to PETA never to use animals again.

This is the article that triggered my post, it has to do with the band, The Pet Shop Boys. PETA Europe sent a  letter requesting the name change because of the cruelty it alleges takes place in the pet trade. They would like the new band name to be “Rescue Shelter Boys”. This change will "encourage your millions of fans to consider giving a home to an abandoned or unwanted animal from an animal shelter".

So, if I have this straight, PETA is against using animals for meat, clothing, experimenting on, entertainment or abusing in any way, but they are OK with owning them as pets? They have even argued with landlords for equal-opportunity when it comes to allowing them to live there. Can someone help me out with this? This is containing animals, for a person's own enjoyment. They could be running wild and free like an animal should be.

UGH! Their views and logic are so skewed at times, it frustrates me just to read things like this.

Well, it may not seem like a lot to you, but I have had about 1300 visitors to my website since it all started, 15 months ago. I never expected to get daily visitors, and don't really know why since I am not blogging every day any more. For some reason today I opened up my stats and saw that number and felt proud of myself. When I was blogging every day, some times it helped and others it made my day worse, dwelling on what was wrong. I need to get back to doing this, I think.

I have been spending my days on the computer, mostly just goofing off with Plurk!, Twitter and FaceBook. Since I put the little monster into daycare, my horrible days where I needed my husband to come home early from work have decreased dramatically. I am starting back to school in less than three weeks now! It grows closer and closer, and I hope that I am ready. I don't know what I can do to prepare except get the financial stuff taken care of, buy some notebooks and put them into a backpack.

The big news coming from my corner is that a puppy has joined our household. She is MY dog, I am the one to care for her, clean up her poop and train her. We got her almost two weeks ago, and she is now almost 9 weeks old. The housebreaking is going well, if I were to pay more attention; she wouldn't have any accidents at all. We are going to puppy school, which is fun, she gets to run and play with other puppies, and all the proud parents get to laugh and enjoy the antics. She seems to be a pretty good  student, I have been using a clicker, which I think is more effective than using a marker word like “yes”. I think it would be difficult for a little one to hear that word over other distractions and can change with emotion and inflection. A clicker is louder and you would have a hard time finding something with similar noise in a normal situations.

Oh yeah, her name is Molly, and she is a pretty girl. She is ½ hound, which most likely is Coon Hound, the other half, her mom, was Lab/Chow. She is such a crazy addition to the house. The mouthing and  nipping will stop soon, I hope, it gets bad and I have to keep her away from Monster. The girl gets upset and tries to run away, but that only makes Molly want to chase; it turns into a game. I put her in timeout some days when she gets too rough. I have crate trained her, and it really didn't take too long. She uses it as a napping place, going in there all on her own, and eats her meals in there, then sleeps there at night. Overnights, she can go up to 7 hours in the crate without an accident. The first few nights she either cried and cried or had an accident. I'm glad that stage is over, Husband is too, he was the one to get up with her, or sleep with her downstairs on the couch so she wouldn't cry. With my medications I sleep so heavily it hard to wake me, but I did set my alarm one night at 3am so that I could let her out. Turns out it was a bad thing to wake her up; she wouldn't settle back down and cried off and on until 7am when I usually get up. The next night we waited for her to wake us up, and she didn't. She hasn't since then either. Pretty good for a 7 week old puppy to wait 6 hours to go outside!!

Having a dog at home will be good for me. I (eventually) will feel more secure in the house during the day and those nights Husband is away. She will keep me busy trying to train her and care for her, and Molly will be like a therapy dog for me. I hope to cuddle and do breathing exercises with her during panicky times. With the training I am going to do, I hope to have her get the “Canine Good Citizen” award from the AKC and become an “Animal Ambassador” with the humane society I currently volunteer with. She will go to schools and nursing homes for education and lots of lots of love. I have been doing a lot of research on-line, with books and watching videos; I am excited to get to the point where we can start the really fun stuff!

It's been a month since my last post, and I truly want to do more but I am lazy or gone to the gym (which makes my schedule back to back things until Husband gets home, and then I am sometimes back to the gym). I have a few updates which I will try to cover, the biggest two are my returning to school in less than two months and my scary almost accident/almost died incident.

I have lost 15 pounds since the end of February, and I am feeling good about it. I am feeling better but not when Husband walks over and says he has lost 35 pounds in the same amount of time. Grrrr. I am at the gym every day, and sometimes twice. Since my almost accident and being sick, I have not done much, but also haven't put the weight back on.

I put Monster into daycare, I drop him off by 10 and pick him up at 5 every day. This is giving me time to get things down in preparation for school, go to doctor and therapist appointments on my own and get to the gym when I want, for as long as I want. When I bring Monster, I am limited to two hours. This just isn't enough time for me to do cardio and a full weights circuit, and then soak in the hot tub and shower. Taking care of him was getting very difficult and giving my panic attacks every day and causing Husband to come home early at least once a week. 

I am heading back to Dakota County Technical College (where I had to drop out while pregnant with Monster). I am going to get my A.A.S. in "Multimedia/Web Page Design", and very excited about it. I think I have all my important paperwork done, and I am just waiting for the confirmation for the the classes I registered for.

My near accident scared me a lot. I was in shock (I think) for a while, but when it hit me, it was hard. I ran a stop sign, crossing a county highway. A semi almost broadsided me, and most definitely would have killed me and Monster. For about four days I couldn't leave the house without feelings of panic. When I did venture out to the gym, I had a panic attack there and couldn't exercise. I just waited around for Husband to finish his workout, pacing and watching the clock.

Two and a half weeks later I am still scared driving in certain areas and similar intersections. Along with this, I got strong urges to crash my car or drive off the road in an effort to seriously hurt of kill myself. These feelings aren't new, but they are as intense and more as when I was in my first two years of bipolar life (I was in a very, very bad state).

After this started to clear, I got sick. I am still sick, but not too much where I can't workout (as of today, Sunday). I am taking the kids to my mom's to dye Easter eggs with my sister and niece and have lunch. Hopefully I will have time to work out this evening, but I doubt it. I will get back to my workout regime starting Monday for sure!

It has been eight days since I have been tracking exactly what exercises I do and how many calories they burn along with what I eat and the nutritional facts. In the last eight days, I have lost about eight pounds! I am becoming fixated on burning more calories than I eat. Considering how many calories it takes for me to just exist and what I eat, then subtracting the amount I burn comes to a number I struggle to keep low. Last night Husband tried to convince me that I need to eat more, and even commented that he didn't want me to become anorexic. 

Husband started this new regimine with me and has lost even more weight than I have. He is even working on buiding muscles, so in fact he is loosing quite a bit more since he is adding weight from his new muscles. 

Mostly, I am walking on the treadmill, but have used the bike a few times. I also have a weight circuit set up with the system at the YMCA that will track my exercises. This system remembers which machines, which settings I need to use (like seat height) and the amount of weight I have been using. Through the system (Fitlinxx) I earn points for each exercise, including my cardio and classes I take. When I get to certain numbers, I earn prizes from the YMCA. I am less than 1,000 points from a t-shirt. I should get there by the end of next week with the amount I have been going lately. 

I also have a "workout" using my exercise ball, which I can do at the YMCA or at home, which is great. This way I can just tack on the extra exertion whenever I feel like it. I do crunches and back lifts then pushups and "diamond" pushups with my feet on the ball. This lessens the amount of weight for the pushups and allows me to do more. I will slowly build up to being able to just do them on my own, but I think it will be quite a while. 

The "Gyminee" site I am using is way cool. I track everything listed above very easily, and can even do it through my iPhone while at the gym. That way I don't forget the numbers by the time I get home. 

I am currently in first place in Husband's and my little challenge, and he is barely within that 80% mark. If I can keep up this rate, I will win for sure, and possibly take the entire $300. For those of you that don't know what I am talking about, look at the previous post. 

I am having fun exercising!

Husband and I are on a health kick right now. We are trying to exercise every day and eat as healthy as possible. We have come up with our own contest, and the winner gets $200! We calculate how many minutes we spend doing a cardio-vascular exercise, mainly walking and biking. Whoever logs the most gets the prize and the runner up gets $100, but only if they are within 80% of the winner's total. If they don't make it, the full $300 goes to the winner. 

I have already lost about 7 pounds!

I firmly belive that I will be the winner since I have free time during the day to go to the gym, every day. Husband only gets a chance to exercise in the evenings after work, and it is easy for something to interfere. I plan to buy a desk especially for my art and craft supplies. It is a modular system, and looks like it would help clear out some of the "junk" as Husband calls it, and keep my work space confined to one area, while fitting my exact needs. If I don't need the upright file folder slots, I wll get another drawer or something.

I will keep everyone posted on our numbers!

My SIL asked me to design a wall decal for my nephew. She wanted to use the Irish phrase "Tada Gan Iarracht" which roughly means "nothing without effort". She wanted a surfer tattoo style like something you would find on a t-shirt by Quick Silver, Hurley or Ed Hardy. This is what I came up with:

I am adding this to my portfolio!

I love to make my chili because it is so yummy, but it makes my feel sore standing so long chopping veggies. *hehe*  I have served this chili to men who grumble "it's not chili unless there's meat in it," and they loved it anyway.

I get everything chopped, cans opened, the other things measured out, and of course the spices handy. It moves pretty quickly through the first few steps.

Here is a list of ingredients:

1 T olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 finely chopped chilipeppers, (any type, I use jalapeños, and add more to your liking)
3 chopped bell peppers, one red, yellow, orange (no green)
1 pn cumin
1 pn basil
28 oz crushed tomatoes
1⁄2 c vegetable broth (or chicken if you aren't so concerned with being truly vegetarian)
1 clv garlic minced, to your liking
1 T as much chili powder you want
1 c salsa of your choice (chunkier the better)
3 cn kidney beans (light, white and dark for color!)
1 1⁄2 c corn

Directions:
use a very large pot and heat olive oil.
add onion, garlic, chili peppers -- sauté 2min.
add bell peppers -- sauté 2min.
add cumin, basil, chili powder -- sauté 2min.
add tomatoes, veg broth, salsa -- simmer 10-15min until slightly thickened
add corn, fold in kidney beans gently -- simmer 10min.

For garnish, add shredded cheese, chopped tomato, green onion and/or sour cream

This is one of those stupid, stupid things being passed around. I am being pressured into doing one, so here it is:

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you. Even if I didn't tag you, I want to know more about you.

1. I have been tagged at least 16 times to do this, and now am finally getting around to doing it.
2. I hate these things and have never done one before. I refuse to tag anyone, because I hate getting them, I don't want to spread the annoyance.
3. I have had my body pierced 11 times (but don't have all of them open anymore)
4. I met my husband on the internet (it was across the room, but we first talked there)
5. I have seen Breakfast Club many, many times, but never the uncut version (not edited for tv)
6. My mom is my best friend
7. My husband and I have been on a "real" vacation only twice in the 12 years we have known each other
8. I love foot rubs and pedicures but don't ask me to touch your feet
9. I can't stand silverware scraping on plates or teeth
10. I am not afraid of heights, but get vertigo very easily
11. I was on time (or early) 99% of the time before I had kids
12. I have moved at least 23 times (I'm sure I am forgetting some)
13. I have only gotten two speeding tickets, and both within 6 months of each other
14. I have only been stung by a bee twice, within a week of each other
15. The only bugs I can not stand are centipedes and millipedes
16. I have only read the same book twice, once
17. I drink way too much soda
18. My best subject in Trivia Pursuit is "Science and Nature"
19. I have done a polar bear plunge
20. The last real concert I have been to was in 1996
21. I secretly love the tween show "iCarly"
22. I have lived in Florida, California, Texas and Minnesota
23. I have had 11 surgeries or serious procedures.
24. I do not have an appendix or gall bladder
25. My favorite animals are both black and white (a cow and tapir)