Love - It's Good!

Me and my honey posing at the Cheesecake Factory on my birthday (June 28, 2006)!

Colonix - Day 36

A month and 6 days has passed since I started Colonix, and I am doing so well. I LOVE Colonix! As instructed, after the first 30 days, I'm taking a break from taking the Paranil and tea, and simply taking the Colonix fiber, and I'm still quite "regular." I'll restart the Paranil and tea tomorrow. I'm also still faithfully doing Tae-Bo, and I've lost 7 POUNDS between February 24th and today! That 7 pounds is NOT coming back! I am not even "dieting." I'm through with "dieting" anyway, but I am working, instead, on changing how I think about myself, food and my body and what I eat. I've cut out sweets, yeah, but not dairy or snacks or chili mac, and I'm still losing weight! God bless Geneen Roth, too, because she has been an intregal part of helping me get my mind wrapped around this "losing weight" thing. I am definitely going to try my best and attend one of her Breaking Free seminars either this year or next year. SHE ROCKS. :)

Work is finally going well. I approached my supervisor last month about her weird outburst of watching me over my shoulder while working. We cleared the air about some things, and we're a little more cordial with one another. Don't get me wrong, if my former supervisor from Hennepin County called me up and said, "V, one of our transcriptionists has retired/left, and I want to hire you immediately," I'd turn in my two-week notice so fast, my current supervisor wouldn't know what hit her, but right now, I'm okay with where I'm at. I'm making good money, and it's an overall okay place to work.

Well, my husband and I are going on a mini-vaycay starting next Friday. He has all of next Friday off of work, and I am taking a half-day off work, and we are going to get massages. I'll also be going to get a spa pedicure, and he'll be getting a hydrobath, then we're going to go CRASH in our plush hotel room all weekend. :) I am hoping that my weight loss and hopefully this damn Liberator wedge that I'm trying to get as well as focusing on relaxation will help get our sex life jump-started again. It's been waaaaaay too damn long!!!

Well, that's about it with me. I will be back.

Colonix - Day 13, et. al.

Colonix ROX. I must say that this particular cleansing program is the best I've done. I did the Master Cleanse Fast twice by basically starving myself for 10 days, drinking a saltwater flush, a lemonade concoction throughout the day, and Smooth Move tea at night. Lost some weight, gained it back. Not sure if it completely cleaned me out, though. Tried Oxy-Powder. I had many runs to the bathroom in the morning, PUN INTENDED, lost some weight, gained it back. It hink it did something, but not everything. Colonix, however, is the shit. LITERALLY. I am having BMs 3-4 times a day, and afterwards, I feel GREAT. Plus, I'm doing Tae-Bo, and my stomach has SHRUNK. Literally!! I know my workouts have become more effective while taking Colonix because I'm dripping with sweat by the end of them. I have also continued to cut out sweets, soda and fruit drinks. I am also cutting out red meat and pork. I'm doing so well!! I feel sooo good!!! :) I have lost some weight, but I don't know how much yet. Right now, I weigh more than maximum capacity than the current scale I have can go, so I bought another scale with a higher weight capacity so I can at least keep myself honest and know how much I really weigh. I am just happy to be doing something HEALTHY for myself! Fuck what other folks think! Anyway, I had a very small BM this morning, and the bowels were very, very dark and had an arc-like shape to them. That Paranil must be getting to deep, down and dirty shit, now. To my knowledge, I haven't passed anything weird, not that I'm really doing much looking after I take a dump, anyway, but if something weird happens to come out, I'll document it here.

At any rate, love is definitely in the air...not tonight becuase AUNT FLO has arrived, but even Aunt Flo has not been as bothersome as she usually is. I contribute it to excluding the above-named items. On Valentine's Day, hubby and I did nothing special. He did give me a heart-shaped cookie though. Awww.... :) After work, we got home, he fried some chicken, steamed some green beans and brown rice, we sat in our bedroom and watched Gilmore Girls. Okay, I admit, we were broke, but happy. Wednesday, though, he bought me a bouquet of flowers, and Thursday, he received some roses I ordered from a website. He was floored. I always love to surprise hubby like that. Keep the marriage fresh and alive, you know? Yesterday evening, on one of the COLDEST FUCKING NIGHTS, we had a date. Hubby took me out to a nice restaurant (Chianti Grill), and we had a lovely time.

Speaking of cold, YEAH, IT'S BEEN THAT. Our high here in Minnesota today may reach 8 or 9 degrees, but it will continue to warm up next week, so I'm not worried about it. If it were December or January, though, I might be afraid that the cold snap would last a while and folks would get to snapping literally!

We are renting a Nissan Sentra to get us around lately, at least until next Saturday, then we'll have to deal with our dying rustbucket again. It's barely operational, but until we have enough bread to buy another used car outright or at least for a downpayment, this is how it's going to be - driving the rustbucket as little as possible and renting a decent car for reliable transpo when we can afford it. I had hoped hubby and I could sock away $500 this payday cycle, but it looks like that won't happen. I can at least put away $150, maybe a little more, maybe not, and hubby can't contribute, so we'll do the best we can, and hopefully, we'll have a "new" used car next month.

I've been reading "Brother Ray" at work to pass the time inbetween having work to do and not, and dall I can write is HOT DAM - Ray Charles was a sexy MF! Okay, is that a bad thing to say about the deceased? LOL Just the way he thought and handled his business. Woo! He was DA MAN. I'll tell you what, if I were born during his time and one of the many females in his circle, I would have been getting down with Ray - seriously. Even though whatever type of dealings we might have had would have never really led anywhere, still....... Anyway, it's too bad he's gone because I would have liked to have seen him sing in person, but wherever he is, I hope he's feeling fine. God rest his soul.

Well, that's about it. Not much else going on but trying to stay warm! It's so cold, I think hell has frozen ova!

BBL

Colonix - Day 6 and Other Stuff

Well, the first 5 days of being on Colonix have been rather uneventful, to write the least. I've been urinating more often and have been experiencing a couple of looser bowel movements per day, but that's it. HOWEVER, this is when I was taking only ONE Paranil pill and mixing 1/2 a tablespoon of the Colonix intestinal cleansing powder with fruit juice or rice milk. Now, I will be taking FOUR Paranil pills, and I will be mixing a whole tablespooon of the powder with my beverage of choice. Now, the SHIT will be hitting the fan...LITERALLY. I think my cleansing process after this point should prove to be more INTERESTING in the coming weeks. :) Unfortunately, the whole tablespoon of powder is a bit THICK. I am trying to drink it down, but it's like drinking SLUDGE or something. So, I went onto the Dr. Natura website, and they suggest that you drink the fiber immediately after blending because if you let it sit, it will thicken up, and that's exactly what happened. I had to dump the glass and start all over again, and as soon as I finished blending the fiber with orange juice, I drank it down immediately, and it worked! Now, I know how to work it. LOL

In other news, we have another broken car. Who the knows what's really wrong with it this time? It could be a bad alternator. It could be a short in the battery. It could have something to do with when our tire slammed into that median marker, forcing the car out of alignment on the left side and bending the rim of the front left tire. WHO THE FUCK KNOWS??? Last Friday, we had a CD player installed into the car at Best Buy. After the player was installed, the car seemed fine. I had a rental car at that time, and we were going to fill up the tank of the rental, caravan over to the rental place and drop the car off. However, when we got to the gas station, our hoopty started acting up. It wouldn't start, but it made a clicking sound when the ignition was turned. It was awful. So, hubby got a jump off of the rental car, and the Toyota started up again, but then it shut down again, and hubby called Triple-A. Triple-A towed the car home, while hubby and I drove back home in the rental. It was rather embarrassing, to write the least. Hubby brough the battery in, charged it up, and it acted normally.

However, one night while driving home, the inside lights of the car start dimming, and the headlights conked out. We were right around the corner from our house, so we made it there. Hubby took the battery out, charged it up again, put it back into the car the next morning, and it "acted normally" from that point on...until Thursday past night. We were driving home from work, and the inside lights from the car started dimming, and the battery and brake lights came on, so we pulled into the nearest gas station, called Triple-A again and got a towed home. We had to pay $6 fucking dollars because it was over 5 miles, I guess. Whatever.

So, we have come to the conclusion that we need to upgrade and buy a better used car, at least between 1992 and 2000 or so. We will probably rent a car for a a little bit while we save up for a decent down payment on a used car.

The job with the temp agency and the county didn't work out because the county wanted me to start Wednesday, and I wasn't walking off the current job I have like that. I may not like the supervisor all that much, and the location sucks, but it is also a PERMANENT job. One that, as long as I show up and do my work, I'll have it. The job at the county was not a sure thing, but I was willing to go for it. Well, I figure that they lost out on getting a quality transcriptionist FOR NOW, and if I'm supposed to be back at the county, then it will happen at the right time.

I went to an all-ladies gathering last night, had fun, really laid back. Hubby is out of town until tomorrow afternoon, so I am going to enjoy the time I have alone and rack up some "I miss you" feelings.

That's it for now.

Colonix - Day 0

Well, I finally bought a box of the Colonix internal cleansing system and decided to start today. I took one capsule of Paranil and drank a glass of the fiber with water. This stuff tastes as bad as Metamucil, so I will be buying some 100% organic orange juice with which to take it from now on! I'll be drinking the KleriTea before I go to bed tonight.

After taking the Paranil and fiber, I decided to work out, but I couldn't because my back and left shoulder started hurting, and I began to get tired. I mean, reaaaaaally tired. I was sluggish (and still am) the rest of the afternoon. I took a 3-hour nap I was so tired. There were a lot of sounds coming from my tummy and I had a bit of stomachache, but nothing too bad. I truly believe that the reason for this is the beginning of the cleansing process. I read that headaches and exhaustion were a couple of the side effects, so I was prepared for it.

I did have a small bowel movement, but no different from any other time...yet. Give me a week or two, and we'll see what's happening after then.

Well, I've been working at a new company now for 2 months, and the supervisor is a bit off. Her moods are so up and down that I personally believe she's bipolar and needs to be on meds...SERIOUSLY. I was told by another employee that when she has a bad day, everybody has a bad day. Bullshit! She asked me after my first week of being there why I didn't type a certain amount of minutes on one day as compared to another. She asked if there was a problem, and I told her there wasn't. She said that I would be expected to type more after being there for a while, but because it was my first week, it really didn't matter. Well, bitch, if it didn't matter, WHY ARE YOU BRINGING THE SHIT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE?? Then, she proceeded to compare the amount of minutes one employee typed, which was 79 minutes, versus my measly 23 minutes. She also told me that she can "watch what I type." WTF? I did find out that there is a monitoring system where someone can observe what's going on with your computer if you allow them to, but I turn that off everyday I come in to make sure she has NO access to my computer at all.

Then one day, I was e-mailing a friend of mine while typing up something, and she came into the office and began looking at my screen, so I said, "I'm returning an e-mail." She asked, "To who?" I told her to my friend, and she replied, "TYPING comes FIRST!" really quick and short and left the room. The bitch is crazy, so I decided I must go. She has ABSOLUTELY NO management skills or training and was promoted on the fly. She does NOT know how to supervise. Also, she has informed us that we cannot go on the internet unless we are on our lunch breaks. In other words, we can't look up words and terms if we need to, and we can't surf the internet if we have no work. She said we could "get fired for that." Myself along with the other employee sthink it's all a bunch of hooey, and that she simply wants to lord authority over our heads. She's a sort of okay person, but she's an awful supervisor. While I like my other co-workers, I don't care for the supervisor, her attitude and the restrictions she places on us. She acts and treats us as if we're a bunch of incompetent little girls, when WE'RE CLEARLY NOT.

At any rate, someone from a temp agency for which I worked last year called and left a couple of messages on my voice mail to inform me that the county has a vacant typing position and wants me to come back and work for them. I called the guy at the temp agency back and informed him that, though I want to go back and work for the county, I am now working in a permanent position and making a lot more many that I used to, and I would only take the position if: a) I will be paid what I am making now, which is $2.50 more an hour; and 2) if the position was GUARANTEED TO GO PERMANENT. It would make no sense for me to go from a permanent job to another temp job. The guy said he would talk to whoever is in charge of hiring for the position and if I don't hear back from him on Monday to call him. I would love to go back and work for the county, and even though it wouldn't be under my former supervisor's unit, it would be closer to home, I'd have the freedom there that I don't have at this job, and I'd be getting paid there what I am now, if they agree to my terms. We'll see.

That's all for now. I'll be back to write about my Colonix experiences as they happen!

Bad Singers and Temp Jobs

Happy Thanksgiving to all! :)

I belong to this site called kSolo.com. It's a site where you sing songs via karaoke. It's still in the beta stages, but it's pretty damn cool. I love to sing, and I also know the types of songs I can and can't sing. If there is a song I like on the site to which I don't know the words or melody or just find it very difficult for me to sing, I DON'T DO IT. I know the site is for fun. That's why I'm on it; however, there are some people on there who should not be singing, especially on a karaoke site with a ratings and feedback system. If you sing like a donkey in heat, you are bound to get bad feedback and low ratings. I love Mariah Carey's "Can't Let Go." I know the song better than the back of my vocal cords...okay, I don't know what my vocal cords look like, but work with me, here! It can prove to be a very diffiuclt song to sing, especially if you don't know the song or are not a good singer in the first place. I know every high, low, chord and chorus of this song. I have never sang this song in public. I always sing it at home, and usually, I sing it in a lower register. When I do that, I can WORK IT! However, I chose NOT to record it on kSolo. I have made several attempts, but never saved it. Why? Because I felt my versions weren't good enough FOR ME, and I knew that if I saved the versions I attempted, I would get a bad rating, and I wasn't about to go there. However, one person in particular tried to sing Mariah Carey’s “Can’t Let Go,” and this girl completely DECIMATED the song. I mean, she was fucking AWFUL. Off key, too loud, wrong range, BLECH! I mean, if you listened to it while you were too full, and you had a serious gag reflex, you probably would have thrown up.

This is what I wrote:

IN ALL HONESTY, this is NOT a good song for you. You were out of tune and completely off key, and there was too much overkill on other parts of the song. I don't know why others gave you a high rating. They were not being honest with you. You are only lying to yourself if you think you did a really good job on this song. I have a feeling you will delete my rating, as you have probably deleted other low ratings, but you need to BE REAL AND HONEST WITH YOURSELF. You did not do a good job on this song. BE REAL.

This is tame compared to other things that have been said about bad singers on kSolo! Most of the ratings for the song were 10s; however, the majority of the ratings were given to her by men, and in my opinion, these guys were giving her 10s, not for her bad singing, but because of her looks. The girl has her picture on her profile, and is a thin, blonde-haired chick. The ones who responded to what I wrote were MEN. Two men, to be exact, who claimed that this girl was the angel that had descended from heaven and that she didn't deserve my slap on the hand. What the fuck ever, losers. Why be pissed at me for telling the truth? Oh, wait, because she's "cute as a button," she can't be touched, right? Had her picture not been up there or she were not as “attractive,” I seriously doubt she would have gotten the ratings she did, thus proving that there are far too many shallow people out there who will do and/or say anything for a pretty face or a nice body.

She eventually deleted her "rousing rendition" of "Can't Let Go," which is fine by me, because it was awful. I listened to another song she tried to sing, which was Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You,” you know, to give her the BOTD, but she didn’t fare well with that song, either, thus leading me to believe that this girl couldn’t sing a note out of a bucket.

Okay, enough about Miss kSolo 2005. LOL I'm finally finished with that stupid-ass temp job and I will be starting a permanent job in December. Thank goodness. I was tired of jumping around from hot spot to hot spot with what felt like no end in sight. Stuffing envelopes, copying documents and trying to talk to people on the phone while sitting around three ditzy appointment schedulers is not my bag. There was one chick there who kept calling people "sweetie" and kept using the word "fabulous" every time she talked to patients. I find it a little unprofessional to address a patient while making an appointment as "sweetie," but that's just me. I won't even get into the lady who I replaced for 3 weeks. Okay, maybe I will. She was nice enough; however, when she called herself a born-again Christian, but cussed about as much, if not more, than I did, it made me raise an eyebrow. LOL Anyway, I digress.

She was out of the office because she was getting that ever-so popular new diet - the weight loss surgery diet! You, too, can lose up to 100 pounds in 3 weeks! Someone actually said, "You'll be so cute, thin and healthy when you come back!" WHAT-THE-FUCK? Now, this lady was about 5'3" or 5'4" and all of 200-230 pounds, yet, she needed surgery? She claimed it wasn't for vanity, but for her type II diabetes. My husband has type II diabetes, and his doctors haven't suggested gastric bypass surgery for him to get well. I assume she REALLY did it because of the little bugs in her ear telling her she needs to be thin, but that's just me, of course. I despise weight loss surgery, and even if in the remote possibility I gained 600 pounds, I wouldn't get it. Might as well die happy with a bucket of KFC rather than not be able to enjoy what I eat for the rest of my life with a severely reduced pouch formerly known as my stomach and be a size 10 dying to be thin!

At any rate, all relatives are out of town, and hubby and I are making a semi- non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner for two: deep fried chicken, homemade macaroni and cheese with FOUR kinds of cheese in it, greens, string beans and potatoes, cornbread, sweet potatoes and candied yams and homemade, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies!! I love that man!!! We are having such a great time! I am and have always been thankful for all that God has blessed me with, and this day is no different. Thank you, God, for all your blessings! Amen!

ETA: Miss kSolo 2005 decided to sing "Can't Let Go" again, and it's no better than the first time she sang it. She still decimated the song, and she's still a horrible singer. However, I listened to another person who decided to sing "Can't Let Go," and this chick is WORSE than Miss kSolo. I didn't think it could get any worse, but it did. OH MY LORD. WILL YOU DUMB-ASS BITCHES WHO CAN'T SING STOP TRYING TO SING MARIAH CAREY SONGS? If you don't know how to work the pipes, then you can't be the plumber! That's all for now.

Thoughts for 10-19-2005

WARNING: When you make the statement "You know, I really don't want to buy a house. I'm happy renting," this phrase may cause some folks to spit out their beverage or look at you at you like you just said you want to have sex with George Bush (Pick either one...they're both rankly disugsting!). It's about as bad as people asking why I don't have a kid, and when I tell them I don't want to, they go into a litany of more questions, trying to pick apart my reasons and convince me that, in fact, I DO or SHOULD want to have a kid. Er, no thanks. Having a kid would be about as welcome as pushing a porcupine through my cervix, and I ain't about to go there. Thank you, Dr. Presthus for giving me Essure!! It's all about CHOICE. In this lifetime, we are afforded the gracious opportunity to CHOOSE how we life our lives. We get to choose the type of college we want to attend, in which occupation we want to work, whether or not we have kids, marry, buy a house, car, cat, dog, fish, etc. Yet, some people act like certain decisions are more requirements than choices, i.e., buying a house or having kids.

I have rented all of my adult life, and I have no problem with it. Yes, there were times when I thought I would buy a house in the future because I thought that that was what I was supposed to do; however, after my husband and I moved out of our apartment (THANK YOU, LORD!) and found the one-bedroom bungalow where we now live, we decided, "Hell, let's just stay here for the duration!" We will never have to worry about needing more space than we already have. We're the caretakers of our little bungalow, and because of this, our rent is fixed at a decent price and will never go up. There's also the possibility that, should the owners wish to sell the bungalow, we would get first dibs at trying to purchase it. That would be the only way we buy property at all. Even if it never happens, it wouldn't bother us. Why this bothers other people, just like our choice to be childfree, I WILL NEVER KNOW.

The prompting for this entry today is that I went onto a message board and posted that I am not interested in buying a house ever, and I'm cool with renting our bungalow, and I got all kinds of crazy remarks such as "You're not serious about being a lifetime renter, are you?" or "What about when you get old?" (Um, when I get old, I'll probably retire and move to Florida!) or that I wasn't financially savvy or "on top of my game." I was like, "WTF?" One person posted that she rents an apartment now and loves it, but I was the main target of most people's anger and non-understanding of my decision. I made one last quick reply, then stepped out. I posted this same message on EZCF; however, and received encouraging remarks, as well as finding other people who felt the same way I did. It seems that most people who follow the Life Script ™ seem to judge those who don't quicker than a tornado blowing through a small town in Kansas, and those who live their lives outside the box seem to undertstand exactly what's up.

At any rate, NO, I ain't birthin' babies, and NO, I ain' t buying a house (with the exception of what i stated above about buying the bungalow from the current owners). I just gotta say I LOVE YOU FOLKS AT EZCF! :)