I'm sitting on the couch musing over a few things from the past week. I'm not a "muser." I often don't find myself absorbed in thought--it's just not in my strengths set. I'd rather be doing something, and rarely find myself without things to do. At the moment I am ignoring a rather large number of cookie trays and muffin pans to clean from this week's cooking exploits...something that will have it's own blog post when I am reunited with my camera. Yes, reunited. I left it at a Thanksgiving celebration and I've been without it for two days. When I called to inquire about it's location I believe I used the phrase, "I think I left my child, I mean camera, under the dessert table."
Back to some musings.
Roommate and I got the second wave of bills in for the past month and they were gloriously low. I mean, I may have giggled when I saw them. Accordingly, I am now committed to seeing just how low they can get. A snare in this is some biting cold weather that has blown in. One beautiful part of the condo is that there is an entire wall of windows--I. LOVE. THEM. It is one of my favorite features. However, said windows are a little (LOT) drafty. This morning when I was working on another blog I realized at one point I couldn't feel my fingers. Turning the heat on would be the practical solution to this, but would go against my new project. We'll see how roommate feels about it. Her room is upstairs and heat rises, so that's good. And when I bake the entire downstairs gets rather toasty, so I feel an easy solution to the cold living room is baking more. More tasty food, warmer sitting area...boom.
Trader Joes has opened up in Athens. A number of blog posts and facebook status updates were dedicated to this event, and I've been a number of times with consistent positive experiences. Today as I checked out the cashier kept complimenting me on how healthy my basket was--spinach, bananas, bag of apples, a tomato, and a honeycrisp apple. What he doesn't know is that I had to talk myself out of dark-chocolate covered candy jo-jos, a number of dark chocolate bars, and ice cream.
Honeycrisp apples. They are sitting strong in my current consistent food cravings (along with chocolate cheerios [thanks Nutan!], peppermint mochas in red starbucks cups [with no foam/fat/whip], and roasted sweet potatoes [only with a little olive oil, salt & pepper]). Per mentioned, I bought one at Trader Joes today and had it inhaled before I got back home. I'm already wishing that I had bought two.
Black Friday. I have a part time job at the Gap (hello, incredible discount), which means I got to work the infamous black Friday. I had a 6:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. shift, which means I got up to go to work at around 4:00...I was slightly delirious when I got home from work. Being overly ambitious I went to the gym after work to run. I made it ten minutes at a brisk walk before I was convinced I was going to die if I continued. But back to Black Friday. When I got to work there was a crowd outside the door, albeit a friendly crowd. Our promo was the entire store was 50% off EVERYTHING, so that garnered some attention.
I was placed in baby & kid land for the beginning of my shift (no regrets on not cashiering because I couldn't take off sensors with my sprained fingers...read below for THAT story). I really regret not tallying the number of times I was asked "how much is this?" as a tag was shoved in my face. "Half-off," I'd reply. "Yes, but HOW MUCH?," the overly eager shopper would ask. "Half-off the lowest ticketed pri..."HOW MUCH?" Oh gosh. Divide by two, that's all.
One dear as she walked in barked (harsh term, but I'm being real here folks) "ya'll just don't have nothing on sale do ya?" To which I calmly replied with a smile "well, everything is on sale to half off it's price" then bee-lined to the back of the store to make sure none of our friends with sticky fingers were making off with already cheap onesies. Fortunately the shift went by fairly fast.
As I close out this post, it is necessary to share the story of why I currently have a rather painful sprained finger (and have all on my right side a ginormous [understatement] bruise on my thigh, bruised forearm and shoulder blade, achey hip, and slight amount of treadmill burn on my calf). Know that it is completely okay to laugh at this story. It is ridiculous.
I did give away the culprit...the treadmill. Last week (or maybe it was two weeks ago) a local gym was offering free boot camp classes. The only time that worked with my schedule was the 5:30 a.m. option. I went on a Wednesday morning and LOVED it, and committed to myself to check out the remaining free mornings. Thursday morning rolls around and I don't wake-up till 5:22, and don't get to the gym until 5:31. I HATE being late. Hate-hate-hate it. When I'm running late I get tunnel vision and can ignore circumstances and things around me...it's bad. And yes, that was some foreshadowing...So I get to the gym at 5:31, toss my stuff down, and look for a machine that's empty to hop on to start my cardio. I see an empty treadmill and make for-it. Remember how I just said I get tunnel vision? Well, I didn't see anyone on the treadmill so I leapt onto it with both feet to get on to make it go. (I am cringing as I'm writing this because I'm reliving it. Yick.)
Funny thing though, it was already going. Full-freaking-speed. When I leapt on (again, with both feet) I got FLUNG off. Not cute little, "oh I stepped off" and had a graceful landing. I mean, FLUNG-off, landed sideways (hence all my injuries being on my right side), and insult for injury my hooded jacket tie (because I hadn't gotten to the point of getting it off yet) got stuck in the treadmill and was pulling me into it until I ripped it out.
Remember now, I'm at a 5:30 a.m. boot camp class. The people in this (full) class are INTENSE. It takes a special person to willing get up at 5:00 in the morning to exercise. And I was running late. All the cardio machines face a wall of mirrors. So my fall was to an audience, and even if they hadn't seen, they definitely would have heard the strangled-eeeek type noise that came from me. And the slap as I hit the floor.
I'm pretty confused as to why I'm on the floor (it's maybe 5:32 at this point) and a woman comes over, who tells me she had gotten off the treadmill (without stopping it) to grab something. Funny timing, eh? Anyways, I pull myself up and realize, "wow I hurt." I can feel the bruising beginning on my thigh, a little blood oozing on my calf (treadmill burn), and my hand feels like it's on fire. The woman asks "are you okay?" and I don't know how I responded. The instructor comes over and asks, "did you not see the machine on?" I took it as a mark of the Holy Spirit in me that I did not respond with the smart-a** response that came to mind an hour or so later, instead meekly replying, "no, I did not."
I'm still standing a little dazed and confused, the woman who's treadmill I just wiped out on is talking to me (I think...again, I was dazed) and another woman comes over and asks us (we're standing in front of the infamous treadmill), "are you going to use that?" Um...no, I'm pretty sure I can't move right now. The instructor tells me to hop on a different machine. At this point the searing pain in my right hand and on my right side has sufficiently woken me up so I say, "I think I'll just be leaving, I don't feel up to moving right now." I grab my stuff and hobble out to my car. When I get to my car I immediately begin praying "Jesuspleasedon'tletmyfingersbebroken, Jesuspleasedon'tletmyfingersbebroken." I start pulling on them, moving the bone around, etc. and get pretty convinced nothing is broken.
It's around 5:40 at this point, and I didn't want to waste the waking-up time and knew I'd probably be getting sore, so I drove over to my gym and "exercised" there. I say "exercise" because I basically just hopped on the elliptical at a snails pace for 30 minutes and may have done something else before going home. I get to work, grab some tape from the first aid kid, and have had taped fingers since.
Enough musings. I have chores calling my name. I have some posts with pictures (including my birthday!) to go up soon.
