February 25, 2007:
It’s official.
I’m sick of the vampire’s life. When 3am rolls around tonight, I’m forcing myself to bed, no excuses. I was going to say 2am, which is even more reasonable, but you know. Baby steps. But something must be done. This staying-up-until-dawn-and-sleeping-through-the-whole-morning nonsense is on my last nerve.
A few nights ago, Ron and I stayed up until 7 working on our budget for the year. While it certainly calmed the Not Knowing Angst, it reignited the Money Angst. Just a little, though. Our money requirements are well within our capabilities; we just have to make improvements at a slower rate than we wanted. Which is fine, honestly, because Ron will be tied up with bringing home the bacon until October, and I’m only useful for modest improvements and office-y/computer-y stuff–so the actual time doesn’t really exist for everything we’d like to do in the magical world of make-believe, where we can be at two places at once. Aside from scaling down our ambitions, we’ll mostly just need to suppress our impulse fulfillment.
I’m really the dangerous one with the impulse buys. Ron’s are always way more expensive, but he’s a cash guy, so he only buys when he has money. His only risk is spending money he should be diverting to something more pressing. As a credit card baby, I have to be ever-vigilant. I have a tendency to blow $20 here and there until suddenly I’m scratching my head a the mammoth bill. I did get some good practice last month, thanks to my Überlist (#50. Make it all the way through January with no personal purchases). But my big computer meltdown kind of screwed up my tidy recordkeeping. I’m still trying to recover and re-institute my old pc files on my new mac. I think I’ll put that on my list for today! (Anyone have advice to free/cheap Mac money software? Ideally, something that can convert Microsoft Money files?)
It also wouldn’t hurt for us to be a little more self-promotional. I should be pimping my book like mad, but I’m a terrible pimp.
We’re starting to gird our loins for this year’s Prom. We were buried under it last year, but this year, all the big stuff’s already done, and we’ve made a skeletal countdown list. I wonder what I’ll wear? My prom dress last year was completely wrong for me, but I didn’t figure out what I was going to wear ahead of time, and when the getting-dressed frenzy commenced, I was stuck with the first curtain-printed vintage party dress into which I could shoehorn my fat ass. Who’d've thunk I’d have to deal with prom dress anxiety at 36? Hooray!
Speaking of dress anxiety, I also have to get my dress for Rebecca’s wedding, but I’m going to wait until the end of March. That gives me one last month to try to trim down the sacks of loose meat I call my figure. Honestly, if I can firm up my bread dough arms, I can conceal the rest with sneaky undergarments and a clever dress. But the month-long limit fits perfectly into my fabulous new science experiment, which I’ll go into later, once it’s actually underway.
I’ve had a whole week of procrasti-knitting: accomplishing almost nothing but knitting–and not the knitting I should be doing; personal knitting. Shame, shame. On the upside: free clothes! This week, I only get to knit as a reward for feats of productivity. So there!
