christmas is over. the dreaded journey is over. i am very happy now. today i will take down the tree and put it all behind me. the trip to mikes parents was very uneventful. the weather was great, not a single flake of snow. for which i am very grateful. we rented a car because my car is unreliable..it runs well, but lately there has been a funny burning smell under the hood...is that a good thing? i think not, unless one is roasting weinies or marshmallows over the carburator. but the car we got was a pt cruiser!!! it was a very nice ride, plenty of room for booboo in the back seat. speaking of booboo, she was the hit of the party at the big family wing-ding. she got more pets and pats than a playboy bunny at a monestary. but, let me tell you about the BIG BUFFET!! it was incredibly disappointing. i did not lose any wieght and i just knew people were looking at me thinking "my god, what happened to her?" but i sure didn't gain any weight while i was there. we took down two 7 pound spiral hams and his mom said that was too much, so she only used one, then there was this little platter of roast beef and a little platter of turkey (when i say little i don't mean the platters were little..they were actually platters...there was just a little meat on them). she had a little chocolate cake and a cheesecake. then someone brought some cookies, and a tray of horsdeurves (sp?) ..they were nasty..cream cheese with a pecan on top sitting on a corn husky thing. all this massive(?) amount of food for 25 people!!! my mom puts out more than that for 6 people. mike ranted all the way home about how disappointing the buffet was and how he was glad tim didn't go with us after he had told him about the masses and masses of food there always was. and to top it all off, i wanted to bring the ham bone home for badger and berit, so when mike asked his mom about it she said she had it in the freezer to make split pea soup. personally, i think that she put it in the freezer so no one at the party would fight over it or break a tooth gnawing on it for just one more morsel. and then there was the big family photo, they do that every year. and me being one of the shorter ones, i had to stand in the front. but thankfully after that we got to leave, everyone else hangs around til 11 p.m. but i had the great excuse of having to be home christmas morning. so we went about 2 hours and found a nice motel 6, then got up the next morning and headed for home. we got here around noon, and the kids had the house looking really great (they really wanted those presents). then we ripped into those and in 10 minutes it was all over. i think everyone is happy with their gifts (i got them all the things on their list, so i guess they should be). and i know i am. mike got me a kindle, just like i mentioned before. and a case for it. i looked and looked trying to decide what my first book to download would be. then i went ahead and ordered the dome, by stephen king. i already have it in hardback ( a big 60 pound hardback), but it was the book i am reading. one of the really cool things on the kindle is the progress meter. it gives the percentage of the book you have finished. i have read 22% of the dome. this has to be about the coolest gift i have ever received. (it's right up there with the etch-a-sketch i got for what must have been my 6th birthday)and it really does only take about 45 seconds for a book to download. so, tim got the basketball book he wanted, a battery pack charger for his xbox and a new monitor for his computer (a very nice one..wonder if he would notice if i swapped with him). emily got 3 video games she wanted, a gift card for i-tunes and a wireless headset for her xbox (still being repaired by microsoft), and mike got a new flight jacket, a gun bag with hearing protectors, safety glasses and a years membership to the rifle and pistol club. i gave ben cash and grocery gift cards because he said thats all he wanted and he gave me 2 elvis collector plates, an elvis cup and an elvis guitar to put on my elvis shelf. they are all aloha 70's elvis which is my favorite. younger elvis is ok, but not the sexiest..and he tells me they don't make memorabilia of fat elvis....good thing he died, he would have looked as bad as me in the gardener family photo.

ok, susan powell from utah is missing. a very pretty mother of 2 small children. gone..poof...keys at home, cell phone at home purse at home. husband joshua went camping at midnight with 2 boys and when he gets back next day she is gone. i saw the guy on fox news..he isn't even a good liar. in the words of every famous detective ever "he dun it". i think child abusers are the lowest form of beings on earth..as i have mentioned, but i am just sick and tired of these stories of wives that have just "gone missing". remember lisa stebic? remember staci peterson? remember laci peterson? remember nicole simpson?? why don't these men just get a divorce or give a divorce? but, using my own very unique sense of justice, i have the perfect solution to this growing epidemic. whenever a man and woman even begin a relationship (and i am not being homophobic here...it's just that this seems to be mostly a man/woman phenomenon), the man has to sign a paper that says "if this woman "goes missing", you go to jail until she is found..because we know you dun it. and if we find her dead..you go to jail for a very long time". don't you think that would make most men take every extra precaution to make sure their significant other never "goes missing"? mike really hates it when these stories come up, because he knows i will just start ranting again. i say the same things every time, but i just am sick and tired of these assholes getting away with murder...because we all know they are guilty. and then there are the kids, whom i really feel sorry for, but i think most kids would never believe daddy killed mommy unless they saw it happen, so i think the kids adjust, as much as they can when mommy disappears. but the people i really feel sorry for are the family of the wife. they must know the guy killed there daughter, sister, niece. and know the murderer is raising their grandchildren. how do you deal with that for years? i mean..crap. the whole thing just really upsets me for days..months even. i have made mike promise that if he ever gets tired of me..just go away. don't shove me in a blue barrel, or rent a wood chipper to mulch me up and don't bury me in my rose garden with all my deceased pets. maybe i should write my senator with my "jailed upon the disappearance of spouse" idea. but they are both men here in oregon...and they are both politicians...so how far would that idea get? and then of course we have the grand poobah of all asshole husbands. the guy who gets away with murder and then goes to jail for assault and kidnapping...and robbery. i watched the oj trial years ago, and the day he was declared innocent i almost put my foot through my tv, yet both my parents thought he was innocent. i don't mean to sound racist here, but if the jury hadn't been predominantly black and if the wife had not been a blond white woman, i think he would have been found guilty. but we will never know. and am i comforted by the fact that he is in jail now? No, not really. two people are dead , he had years of freedom and he is still alive. where is the justice there? it's just a crying shame he went to jail before he finally tracked down the "real" killer.

not a lot going on (seems like i always say that). i have been off from bear creek since tuesday, and i go back next tuesday. it's sort of an "on-call" thing. even winco is pretty slow in the demo area. just 6 hours this wekend and none next week. time off is a good thing. i get to do my useless workout every morning because my foot isn't killing me. i also keep the house cleaner. and get this..I ALREADY HAVE MY CHRISTMAS TREE UP!!!! mike asked me to put it up early because he loves my tree topper. it isn't an angel or a star. i got it from avon a few years ago. it's a santa in a sleigh being pulled by one reindeer (i assume rudolph, because he has a red-nose), or it could just be a tanked up blitzen??anyway, he goes around and around the tree. so the other day mike says "how far do you suppose he goes?"...well, the challenge was on. i got a tape measure and measured how long the bar is that holds it away from the tree, then i figured out the circumference (had to go on line to find out how to do that),then i had to time each revolution, and from there it was all calculator. so just in case you are wondering, santa goes 25" every 10 seconds, which is 150" minute, 9000 inches an hour 216,000 inches a day or 18,000 feet a day or (drum roll please) 3.4 miles in 24 hours. which all goes to prove one thing...sometimes too much time off is not a good thing. when i gave emily all this vital information (someday she may be married, with children and have this collectible on her tree and one of her darlings will ask just that very question), do you know what she said? she said "and you want to know this because...?" all i could say was "it seemed important when i started". oh, i also have just about all my christmas shopping done...God, i love Amazon. i found just about everything i wanted, for a lower price than downtown and almost all was free shipping. the only thing i am getting downtown is a new monitor for tim (pc kind, not lizard kind), and mikes jacket. so almost everyday i get these brown boxes by ups or mail and i just keep putting them under the tree. emily asked me the other day if i was going to wrap them or just leave them that way. SAY WHAT??? apparently she didn't learn much from the "box, instant, canned, frozen, package" thanksgiving dinner i prepared. but, in getting with the spirit of the thing, i bought wrapping paper and bows today. i hardly ever buy bows, it just seems so wasteful. but they looked kind of pretty. i already know what mike is getting me. and as much as i hinted and came right out and said it..it isn't the PET HAIR ERASER vacuum. he refuses to get me an appliance. so the other day i was sitting here (right here in this very chair) on amazon and i said "here's what i would like..a kindle". i was truly jesting..not about liking to have one, just about him getting me one. so after explaining what it is, he said ok. HELLO!!! $259!!! I said no way..too much money, but he said it was either that or the shitty gift he was going to get me. I am glad we went with the kindle, i wanted one last year but they were over $350 then and impossible to get. he told me he was going to get me another heat conductor. it was a black hills gold ring. we call them heat conductors because when i do cinnamon swirls at work, if i forget to take of my wedding ring i end up with a red burn mark all around my finger for days. so my kindle is here now..in another brown amazon box under the tree. i am pretty excited about this. i researched it a lot, and it appears to be the best e-book reader out there. and bestsellers are almost all $9.99, not $20-$25 like at barnes and noble. one of the down sides is that if a book goes out of print or something, amazon will remove it from your kindle..even though you paid for it. kind of "big brother" but how often does that happen? most authors want to keep selling books. he is going to want me to open it early, but i won't. it's the only present i will have under the tree..so i am waiting until christmas.
and then there is the big christmas trip....no weight loss that i can see, and only 3 weeks to go. i knew this would happen. but as doris day said "que sera sera". (my sister always pronounced it kay sarah sarah, so that's how i always think of it). if i look fat in the family photo it's because the camera always adds 50 pounds gee, i hope they only have one camera.
so, am i going to put up christmas lights outside? I do not know. i leave them up on the eaves all year, so those are all faded now, but i still have to get up on the ladder and clean the leaves out of the gutters. and i usually put lights along my front fence and on my windmill. but it has been so friggin cold here. since last week it has been in the 20's and foggy..foggy...foggy. then, since we live so close to the airport, they are always "seeding" the fog, so every morning it is a white icy frosty mess. tomorrow the fog is supposed to be gone and it is going to warm all the way up to 33. i am just not a winter person, never have been, never will be. don't like fog, snow, ice or cold. i won't even eat ice cream in the winter as a form of protest against mother nature. so, depends on the weather on if i decorate outside. some people really get into that outside stuff. there is a house in town that must have about 10 of those big balloon decorations from walmart (the kind that run a motor)
hey, i will be the first to admit that they look really cool at night, but these people turn theirs off in the day time, so when you drive by, it looks like some kind of balloon wounded knee. big heaping piles of dead balloon carcasses all over the lawn. actually, even at night it has more of a sleazy carnival look, than a christmas look. santa as the bearded lady, elves for the perverted dwarf that every sleazy carnival has, snowmen for clowns and i don't know where the penguins fit in.
and lastly, there is MONK, or should i say there is no MONK. i watched the finale last night. no trudy in the witness protection program. the ending was actually ok. he got trudy's killer, he met trudy's illigitimate daughter and he keeps working..and in the end he isn't even wearing a tie. the new laid back monk. i haven't been this upset about a series ending since magnum p.i. went away. i think i will just sit here and contemplate a magnumless, monkless world and watch santa do his 3.4 miles.

just an update on my reading list: i actually spent $15 on myself. if you are wondering if it was on undies..it wasn't. no, i still don't have new undies, and mike says he won't buy me those either. what is the point of writing a christmas list if he won't get me anything on it? i ordered myself the new stephen king book "under the dome". i am pretty excited about this (i could almost wet my panties, if i had any left to wet). I hope we have at least 3 or 4 weeks lay off, because this is a read at home book. it's 1088 pages! not exactly one i want to haul to work everyday. although it might burn off a few pounds carting it up the stairs everyday. and pardon my faux pax (whatever the spelling), but the vacuum i wanted is actually called a "pet hair eraser"...not a "pet eliminator". OOPS!!!

i survived thanksgiving..at least i look better than the turkey does. now i am sitting here in mourning. i am watching the MONK marathon and i can hardly believe that this friday is the series finale. i have been a faithful watcher from the very beginning, in fact MONK is the only show i have on dvd..and i have all 7 seasons. i guess i will have to spend all my friday evenings watching dvds and hoping for a monk reunion show in 10 years. all these years i had hoped he would find out his wife trudy was not really dead, but in the witness protection program or something like that, but i don't think that will happen. i suppose i will just have to settle for him finding out who killed her.
the diet isn't going so well. i keep exercising but nothing seems to be happening (except my sore foot just gets sorer). what do i have left now, 24 days? not even enough days to count it in weeks anymore. i don't suppose there will be a snowstorm either. time to shop for bigger clothes.
i am off work til next tuesday, then we go in probably for one day and then will be laid off. normally i look forward to this time of year. i get to collect unemployment for a while ...sort of a poor mans vacation. but this year, with the economy being what it is, we aren't sure how long we will be laid off for. when we do go back it will just be key people that have a job, of which i am one. but several of my friends will be out of work for a long time. truthfully, i am not sure how long any of us will be working. only time will tell.
but, on an up note, with it being so slow they finally got rid of some of the dead weight (namely kathleen..the nasty old bat). i am not sure i have ever been happier to see anyone go. did i mention she was a nasty old bat?
oh, i have been saving monies up every payday for christmas ever since october, yeah!!! for once i am not waiting til the last moment and wondering how i can afford anything. i ordered several things off amazon yesterday, and tomorrow i will put some more in the bank and order a few more things. about the only thing i need to buy at a store is a new jacket for mike. he told me today to take some of his money and buy what i want for christmas, when i told him i wanted a new vacuum cleaner he said no vacuum for christmas. what kind of a deal is that? i have my eye on the pet eliminator, i think it just does pet hair and not the whole pet, but its a chance i am willing to take. Just kidding, for any PETA people out there. mike is sort of a jewelry kind of guy. he thinks it makes a good gift. as a matter of fact, he tells me for any old girlfriends or even his ex wife, all he had to do was walk into a jewelry store and buy something and they would be happy. maybe if i could find a vacuum with rhinestones and rubies on the handle he would buy it for me.
last week i brought in the avacado mike(?) planted. i was afraid it would freeze. it's now about 4 feet tall. i was thinking about just decorating it for christmas then i wouldn't even have to bring in my tree. a few lights and some tinsel and it will rival charlie browns tree.

ahh.. Thanksgiving morning..8 a.m. and already tired. We had to work last night..all night. you would think for a holiday we might get an early out, wouldn't you? but it was the usual bear creek fiasco. it all began 2 weeks ago when we made some new cookies for an experimental project. it seems the merchandising folks had the idea for a "create your own cookie book". so we made like 6 or 7 or 8 different kinds of cookies ...ALL HAND FROSTED!!! there is pumpkin, chocolate with frosting and sprinkles, peppermint (also with sprinkles) peanut butter (with..you guessed it, sprinkles)..the list is endless, or so it seems when you are frosting them. but a funny thing happened between the planning and the carrying out of the plan. it clearly said in the procedure "DO NOT FLIP COOKIES"...well, someone on our crew said "flip the cookies", so we frosted 1000's of cookies on the bottom. we therefore had 1000's of cookies that sort of rocked around like weebles. merchandising didn't find this to amusing so it was a total do over, at what i hear was a cost of $13,000. (and that isn't counting the labor). i tell you this, in order to explain the rest of this story. mike wanted a really big turkey so he had the butcher at winco find us a 29.8 pounder. i have never cooked one this big, so when i calculated 20 minutes per pound it was 600 minutes!!! isn't that like 10 hours?? so, i figured i would put it in at 2 a.m. when i got home from work. well, all went according to plan..except for trying to put the turkey in my roasting pan was like trying to stuff a pterydactyl into a crockpot. no matter which way i put the thing, it just wasn't going to fit. tim was up and watching me (kind of with the same look he had once when i got the lawnmower stuck inside my windmill). so, i finally just left the legs sticking out the end of the pan and shoved the thing in the oven (i swear the things was hanging on to the oven sides with its big old pterydactyl wings..it was quite the struggle). then i went to bed, but didn't sleep much, worried about the turkey, you know. got up at 6 with a headache, walked into the kitchen all smokey from drippings falling in the oven..opened door and windows (friggin cold outside), then got dressed (with no shower ..eeww), and went to the store to buy a disposable roasting pan, plus a cheese ball and crackers that i forgot when i went grocery shopping. i got back home at 6:30, cleaned the oven bottom and changed pans and now the turkey is all happy and warm again.
other than all this, life is boring. tim has been raking a few leaves a day, which i greatly appreciate. today is cold and foggy so probably none will get raked. emily is still upset over her old boyfriend, even though she appears to be interested in a new one (who lives in florida). she doesn't seem to think anyone around here is nice enough. why she would believe someone in florida that she never met is nice is beyond me. i have a vision of some nasty old (50) guy sitting around playing on xbox live and luring young girls into his lair. maybe it's just that with age ( a lot of age) comes an incredible amount of cynicism. and michael..well, he ran out of vicadins and seemed to be doing fine, much to my amazement. but, just yesterday he hurt his back moving one of the ez shoppers. you know, the shopping wheelchairs that seem to be almost exclusively used by fat people at winco. whenever the batteries die people just leave them in the aisle, and they are really hard to push. anyway, they sent him to the urgent care and he got 20 more vics. will that be all? one can only hope he won't start building it back up again.
now, i suppose i had better get back to the kitchen, still have some rolls to cook, (store bought this year since my bread maker went kablooey), and stuffing (from a box) mashed potatoes (instant) and gravy (canned), corn (frozen)...damn, maybe next year i will just buy a can of spam and shape it like a turkey for all the work i put into this anymore. i also have a small ham to cook and i did the pies yesterday (all sara lee or marie callender).

not much going on around here lately. i did have a 3 day weekend. pretty slow at winco so no demos for me. i spent all day yesterday cleaning the mobil home. now there is a ton of leaves to rake...but it's cold out there. i really need to invest in a leaf blower, i think it would be so much easier than raking, but they are so loud. everytime the neighbors use theirs it almost drives me crazy. i thought i could listen to my ipod, but in order to hear it over the leaf blower i would have to turn it up very loud..thereby defeating the whole purpose. of course, the easiest thing to do would be to make the kids go out and rake them. maybe they could just pretend the rake is an xbox controller and the leaves are little army men or whatever. tim is almost beside himself, the new call of duty modern warfare comes out tuesday. he has had it reserved for at least a month now. i have never played a game on the xbox. i used to play all the time on the playstation 2, but now i just pogo and play jewel quest (stuck on level 5-8 for a very long time now). the other day one of the guys at work was talking about the old atari game and said you can buy them for $20 or something, and play all the old games, like the ones i know...i used to love playing frogger, just the hop on the logs and miss the cars version..not the whole 3D game.
i do have news of the nasty old lady at work..she is still there. she did another thing that pissed me off. it seems her car broke down and she needed a ride home, she lives in ashland. she asked my friend sharyl for a ride (who lives in yreka CALIFORNIA!!) it takes sharyl almost an hour to get home already, so sharyl said no. her husband waits up for her to make sure she gets over the mountains and home ok and he didn't want her to do it. so another friend, sharon, gives kathleen (the old lady) sharyls home phone number and kathleen calls sharyl at home 2 times the next morning to ask for a ride home. then when sharyl gets to work kathleen is waiting for her outside, and starts boohooing about how she really needs the job and has to walk 1 mile to the bus stop. wait..did i mention the best part..up until this time kathleen, the snootty old bitch, has never even talked to sharyl, and she has brought treats at lunch and offered them to other people at the table..but never to sharyl. so i told sharyl to stick to her guns, and i told her my hilda story. the same thing happened to me a few years ago, and i ended up giving this gal a ride for months and she even called me on weekends for rides to walmart and the bank...it rarely ever pays to be nice. anyway, here is the part that irritated me..kathleen totally hounded sharyl at work and laid this massive guilt trip on her until sharyl caved in and gave her a ride, supposedly for just 2 weeks. well, then of course, it turned into picking her up too, after all, it was a long walk to the bus stop. so by the time poor sharyl leaves early to pick her up, then drops her off and gets back to the freeway she has added another 30 minutes or so to her drive everyday. i was just furious with the old bat. sharyl is a very nice person, and to stand there and see this old lady play her like a fiddle was more than i could stand. i told sharyl she was making a mistake. but finally this week sharyl told her she wasn't giving her a ride anymore. it has been over 3 weeks and now kathleen says she needs $1200 to fix her car, not $200. i suspect it was always $1200 and she was just going to lead sharyl on and on and on. so now sharon gives her a ride home every night and gets gas money and treats and the old bat never speaks to sharyl anymore. talk about using people. thursday night we were all getting off work at the same time and i was just standing by the wall waiting to go when kathleen walks up to me all smiles and says "do they make you saty til the ovens are done?"..and i just stood there looking at her. so she says "do they make you stay?"..i just stand there..she says "aren't you going to answer me?" ..and i say "no". so she finally walks away. i told mike i only have to answer work related questions..i don't have to stand and shoot the shit with her. in a way this is fairly unusual behavior for me. i try to get along with most people i work with, and if i don't like them, i just avoid them....but this old lady has really gotten on my nerves.
enough of that. you may be wondering about the vicadin situation. well, mike got another refill last friday. i figure it should be all gone by his days off this week..yeah!!! 2 days of having him here with no pills....let the good times roll. i did tell him the other day that the next time he runs out he will not be taking it out on me. i really don't need this shit. so, guess we will find out if he believes me or not. mr. "i just don't have an addictive personality". gees, i still can't get over that one. actually, i am truly serious about this. i have even been calculating finances to make sure i can pay all my bills on my own again..which i can..just like i did before. it isn't that i don't love him, you understand. it's just that i won't have him dragging me down this path with him. the drinking is one thing, he keeps it controlled and you can buy alcohol. you can't just walk in a store and buy narcotics, once the dr. says no more he will be reduced to getting them from people at work or anyplace else he can. i worked with people like that. if you go to a dentist for a root canal and they find out they will say "how are you? got any pain pills left over"? not to mention, our sex life is nonexistant now. when he has pills he isn't in the mood, and when he doesn't have them he isn't in the mood (plus he is an ass..so i'm not in the mood either). i can hardly wait to see how this plays out.
as for my exercise regime. i am still doing it almost every day..but i still don't see any difference. my jeans are still tight, my butt is still big and i still can't bend over to tie my shoes. i think i have about 7 weeks left. it's not looking good. maybe i will just go buy some super big clothes and make it look like i have lost a lot of weight. that's not me in the picture...can you believe this is advertised as a "slinky dress"? what women weighing 400 pounds would even think about buying a slinky dress? might as well just glue 2 real slinkys to your ass and bounce down the street if you want people to stare and laugh.
guess that's all my earth shaking thoughts for today. still waiting to hear from sheri on the big move to georgia, so if you are out there sheri, someone is thinking of you and wondering how things are going.

geee, i guess it's been awhile. i could say that (thanks to sheri) i found my jewel quest game again, and got hooked on it. now i remember why i stopped playing it. i have been on the same level for these two weeks that i was on months ago when i gave up. now i am way behind on my pogo badges and life is falling apart.
had a fight with mike last night. we rarely fight so every time we do i have to remind myself that it's all cool. if he leaves my life goes on just like it has before. to make it sort of short, i fixed chicken for dinner and we were just getting ready to have one of our few meals a week together when emily brought the phone out and she was crying. it seems her boyfriend in mass. broke up with her. which i thought happened a couple of weeks ago and she was fine. but they had still been talking until last night. so i went in her room with her for quite a while, there really wasn't much i could say, just hold her and let her cry. i honestly didn't know she was so serious about him. they had discussed getting married!!! she is only 17..how can you make her see that this will pass and unfortunately she will probably go through it a few more times before she finds someone for her. so i didn't even try to talk much, just sat there with her. but then when i came back out, mike was all bent out of shape because i didn't eat with him. he went to bed pissed off..oh wait..did i mention he ran out of his last vicadin 2 days ago? anyone see a connection there? so then when booboo and i went to bed he kept petting her but to do that he had to sit up, and in so doing he pulled all my covers off. so after about 10 minutes of that shit i said "can i have some blanket please?" and he just sat there petting booboo so i said "i guess not"..so he jumps up says "you talk to f#@$%n much" and i said "excuse me" and he says "did i f%^$#ing stutter?" any way, it progressed to him sleeping on the couch til about 4 am and me calling him an asshole (which he is)..wait..let me digress. i left out the funny part. while i was fixing dinner he told me he was out of vicadin but he was ok, he didn't go around zombie like asking anyone at work if they had some. because (here is the good part, and i quote him "i just don't have an addictive personality" i have mentioned that he is an alcoholic and smokes a pack a day, haven't i? so what do the psychologist call this? oh i know DENIAL!!! shit, i have a weight problem and a food compulsion, but at least i admit it. i don't try to pass it off as a thyroid problem (hello oprah) or some metabolic malfunction. so, needless to say, it was very quiet here this morning. i got his clothes ready and his thermos of coffe then i took the dogs for a walk, came home and worked in the kitchen til he left. so know i have a text on my cell telling me he" is sorry will he ever quit being so stupid" what can i say to that. first thing i think is sure, maybe some day if he finds someone he respects he will quit being a jerk.
so, what else has been occupying my time? well, i have a mouse problem. i could hear them scampering around under the stove, so i put poison traps under there. i used to worry about the cats getting the mice filled with poison, but then i figured if i have four cats and a mouse problem, then my cats aren't eating the mice anyway. so this morning i looked and found a dehyrated mouse (not as in thirsty..as in all dried out). and tim dumped the corn in the trash for me, so that might also help. my brother works on a farm and got some corn on the cob. when my mom asked if i wanted some i said just a few..so she gives me 2 big bags full. of course we couldn't eat it all and i don't have time to fix it up to freeze so it just sat on the porch getting micified. i bet those mice thought they had it made for the winter, a nice warm spot by the pilot light , 2 bags of corn on the cob,and 3 dogs to keep the cats away (like there was any real threat there).
as far as the tae-bo..well, i have been working out almost every day since i started. just maybe 5 days when i had other things to get done early so i skipped it. i don't see any change yet, except for the fact that my bad foot hurts more. and i really am trying to watch what i eat (wouldn't want anyone to sneak some nasty healthy thing in on me while my eyes are closed). what do i have left now?maybe 8 weeks? i can almost feel that last minute panic already, praying for a massive snow storm so i don't have to go. or maybe i won't even be married by then..after last night, who knows?

day 4 of my quest to go to the other side. i have tae-boed 3 days in a row, but i took today off. emily had a girlfriend spend the night, and i didn't want to wake them by jumping all around the living room. (does that sound like a good excuse?) i am not hardly sore at all, which i guess means i am not working hard enough. tomorrow i will try for 35 minutes. i also have another incentive to lose weight now. i read on the internet (what did we do before the www.com world arrived?) , that obese people are going to cause the demise of the mitten industry!!! it seems fat peoples extremeties stay warm longer so they don't need to cover them up, now the mitten industry is going to die because of obesity. however, there was no mention of the glove industry....i couldn't figure that out, but i think now i have it. fat people have fat fingers..so they don't wear gloves (to constricting.)so the glove industry can continue to cater to paris hilton and all her anorexic friends.
on another note,mike got a part time job at bear creek. he worked there before but quit to go to winco, now he asked his old boss if he could just work 4 hours a night til the season is over, to earn the money for our trip and to buy me something nice for christmas. so now he is full time winco/part time bear creek and i am full time bear creek/part time winco. i told him it's ok, as long as he doesn't start getting all crabby. every time in the past he has worked two jobs, he gets impossible to be around. he is just nothing without his 10 hours of beauty sleep every night. he has mentioned getting me a piece of jewelry, but he doesn't know what. i guess thats nice, but i am not a jewelry person. he already gave me an engraved ankle bracelet that i can wear all the time (once every six months i take it off to shave under it, otherwise i have to start braiding the hair around my ankles).and we have matching wedding bands. the thing about jewelry is that i can't wear it to work. the only thing allowed in the bakery is a plain wedding ring, nothing with stones, and no necklaces, earrings, nose rings, tongue rings, belly button rings or rings in places i don't want to think about...no watches or bracelets. so besides the anklet that no one knows i wear, what else is there? i wonder if i could convince him to buy me a 32" lcd tv, that i will wear around my neck.