Luna Tail

This weekend I stayed home! I didn’t go out and do any dog sports or competitions. Well of course I did some training in the back yard, and I also went to flyball practice tonight, but I didn’t enter a trial or a tournament or spend a whole day doing dog things! I did house things! I even pulled up the weeks from the patio. I don’t like to use poison on the weeds because the dogs are back there, and they eat the grass a lot. So I pull them up.

We have a stone patio and it’s pretty old. The stones are all crooked, not flat, and the space in between is no longer weed proof. So we get a lot of weeds that grow up between them. As you can see. So I spent much of the morning on Saturday, until it got too hot, pulling up the weeds. And it did get hot and I didn’t use sun screen on my back so now I have a bit of a burn, dangit. =P Oh well, it’s not too bad.

It’s hard to get all the little weed bits out from between the stones. I tried my best until I was too hot and too tired. The dogs even stayed inside because it’s too hot for them outside. It was probably in the high 90s on Saturday, though now I forget. Tonight at flyball practice it was hot, too, and we could have used more shade. I do understand why people live in southern California… the weather is so nice there!

I also swept as good as I could. Which isn’t all that great because I get tired. But I was happy with the job. My husband and I also cleaned the front room on Saturday. He vacuumed and I dusted and mopped. And the house is so much more pleasant now! I even cleaned the kitchen some this morning. Next weekend I hope to spend some more time in the spare bedroom getting my junk organized a bit. Yeah… it’s my junk room. Everyone has to have a junk room, don’t they?

So check this out… I just entered a Makeover contest for women over the age of 35. yeah.. I am over the age of 35, don’t tell anyone! The contest is for women who have transformed their lives… and the prize is a $10,000 makeover! I can’t even imagine what that all includes, that’s a ton of money, and I would love to win!

You have to write an essay about how your life has changed, and why you should win. I wrote about my years and years of living for another… for whichever man I was with at the time. How to have any value at all I felt like I had to rescue a man. An unstable, emotionally unavailable man. The grumpier, the better! Well, fortunately I never found an abusive man. I don’t think I would have let it get that far but many, many women would not understand and it would get out of hand.

I ended up transforming my life after years of therapy and going to CoDA meetings. I love my life now, my husband, my dogs.. I wish I had more money, to have more security, but other than that I’m quite happy with how life is! I have passions now, hobbies, I live for myself as much as others, and I have a good balance (well, I hope so anyway, sometimes I think I’m too selfish lol).

Anyway, the contest was really easy to enter and the essay didn’t have to be too terribly long, so if you are over 35 go and check it out! Doesn’t every woman want a makeover? Heck, I just want clothes… lol.

I really am unable, it seems, to stop eating food that is in front of me. In example, I ate a frozen dinner today for lunch… easy to prepare and it’s a limited amount. Ate it all. Then I got the munchies, which I often do. And usually I get the munchies for something sweet or salty. Usually sweet like chocolate. But I’m trying to be good, and I figure every little choice where I’m good helps, even if it’s just a little, so I pulled out the 1lb bag of baby carrots I brought.

Sitting at my desk working… focusing on the computer, and before I know it the whole bag is gone! Well, the plastic remains, I don’t eat that. LOL. But I eat every bit in the bag. It’s not like I can eat a few then put it away. I eat ‘em all, even if, when I’m done, I feel a bit sick.

I think my eating has a huge tie with my anxiety. Especially now… this time of the month, it’s Day 22. I feel more anxiety and so I eat because I want to make the anxiety go away.

It amazes me at how powerful the feeling… the taste, of food is in the mouth. It is so intense… sweet or salt or sour. It’s like the mouth, I swear, should be our major sexual organ since it’s so sensitive and we are sticking food in it all day long. At least three times a day. I can so understand why people have such a hard time with food and eating. Why it can become such an addiction, or avoidance. It’s intense and extreme. I’m dang lucky for the metabolism I have, or I’d probably be 500 pounds easy.

Anyway, so it’s been hard for me lately, and going out to eat with tons of food on my plate is very hard for me to avoid. Maybe I just need to section a bit off and only eat that. But I’m not sure I’d be able to do that, either. Hrmph.

Gads… anxiety city. Yuck. I went to the Chiropractor today and spent three hours there. Well, I guess two and a half, but still. While I was there it wasn’t a big deal. He is a N.U.C.C.A. Chiropractor. He was recommended by a friend.

Unfortunately, my insurance probably won’t cover it. So it could end up being expensive. And the two and a half hours just frazzled me. They took a lot of x-rays to see where I’m off, and then he adjusted me accordingly. My neck isn’t too bad but it’s bad enough to be causing me a whole bunch of nasty neck and back pain. And I do have to admit to myself how badly it has been hurting. Popping and cracking and I can hardly bend over at my back.

But still, if I didn’t have my sertraline as a crutch, I think I’d be a mess. I feel like I want to crawl in a hole. Why all the anxiety about this? Well, it’s a different place, for one. And for another I hate admitting that I feel bad physically. And third, the money is freaking me out, too. We don’t have that much how with my Husband not working, so we have to be tight. Plus Lucy might have a blockage and might need surgery. I need to redo my budgeting and planning in order to make sure we can pay all the bills.

Gads, it all happens at once. I’m just glad that right now and for the next couple weeks I don’t have any dog trials going on. So I can try to relax and take it easy.

And as for the anxiety, sometimes it’s just there, and doesn’t have a logical reason. Even though it’s probably driven by my own thoughts in my head that I don’t even recognize are there, sometimes I think it’s emotion pure and simple and I just need to be okay with myself.

Laptops are the bees knees, though mine still doesn’t have sound. Need to reinstall Vista!

Wordless Wednesday

Finally, I sucked up my anxiety and called a chiropractor. I think some of it was I was waiting for the right one to come along. Or, it’s just my anxiety that has caused me to put it off. LOL. But I like the waiting idea better!

My neck has been crackling and popping since probably last August. Yeah, I am good at living through discomfort. And downright pain. I would say, now, my neck, shoulders and back are painful. And I need to have something done. The regular orthopedic doctor has no clue, been to him twice. I went to a regular chiropractor who popped and cracked me, but that didn’t seem to help either. This guy is a neck specialist and a friend recommended him so I have hopes that my neck will be better tomorrow afternoon!

I can only hope. As the day goes by my neck hurts more and more. And I can’t bend at my waist, either, because my lower back hurts. I hate pain. I hate doctors, too. But I guess I hate pain more. lol.

He’s not on my insurance, though, which sucks. But I want a good one from a recommendation, so hopefully this will be worth it. I’ll probably have to fill out a bunch of papers and do some paper signage and some digital signage while I’m there, I better get there early tomorrow. Ugh!

Had some anxiety going on today… performance anxiety maybe I can call it? LOL. Agility trial, and it was teams, and we didn’t do very well. I think teaming up with someone I didn’t know made me really feel the pressure. I don’t know if I’m going to do the teams thing in August when it’s offered again.

I don’t like it when someone else depends on me… oh yeah, well, it wasn’t too big a deal because if my partner was serious about qualifying, he would have been more picky about his partner. But still, I feel like I failed, and the anxiety is high, and I feel pretty humiliated and idiotic.

So time to look up a travel guide and head out of town… at least that is what I want to do, or buy my head in the sand, or hide in a closet, or just not go tomorrow! But I’ll feel better tomorrow. Or at least I hope so.

I don’t know about other bloggers… but sometimes when I am tired, or lazy, or I’ve written a really long blog post and someone either sends me an email, a text, or even asks me in person ‘What’s up?’ the thing I want to do most of all is say ‘read my blog!’

LOL. I guess I’m just lazy. Most of my life is on my blogs. I have… errr… too many of them. Just like I have too many dogs. Sometimes the blogs get neglected, but my dogs never do.

Anyway.. maybe I blog too much. I just thought it was funny that I think this sometimes!

Well I am saddened to say that my domain name scorecard is rotten! LOL for this domain it is a 1 out of 10. But it’s a nice tool for businesses if you are interested in seeing how your domain name rates.

The questions are, mainly, if you have other spellings or versions of your domain registered. And for this personal site of mine I do not. But for business sites it’s a good idea to do so, in case someone else takes a misspelled domain name similar to yours, and maybe can take some of your customer business. And we wouldn’t want that for sure you know?

If you have a business and are interested in your score, check out Network Solutions. I had my domains hosted with them years ago and was always happy with their service. And the services they provide are very helpful to domain owners and business owners.

Their quiz is easy to take and will only take a few moments of your time, and could be invaluable for your website and your business! If I had a business, which I may eventually have (photography?) then I’ll use it too!

Okay I bought Roxio a while ago now and I feel like I have used it enough to write up a short review about what I think of it.

Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 Suite, if you don’t know, is basically a media management package that allows you to make movies from movie files, import video and pictures, arrange them on disc and in the Roxio software itself, and do a number of other things.

The reason I bought it in the first place was because I wanted to make DVDs playable on my DVD player at home that had a menu. I like menus, I need menus, I want menus. I video a lot of my dog sports, agility and flyball and obedience too, and I wanted to be able to build a menu to make it easy to view these videos.

The menu feature that I use is in MyDVD. It is an okay DVD creation program… figuring it’s the only one I’ve ever used, I have nothing to compare against. But it is slow.. beastly slow, when adding multiple movies. And when agility runs are a minute or less, and I have a bunch of them, the software just drags down and is terribly slow, unfortunately.

It arranges the various clips in the right area and you can add them under a menu item, which would be nice if it weren’t so beastly slow. And perhaps there’s a better way to do this. I would like to think so.

I also use the Roxio data writing portion that writes data to various discs. Not too bad, I can see how much is going onto the disc and then burn the disc. For photo backups and such.

Video Wave isn’t all that great. It’s okay… but Windows Movie Maker is, actually, nicer and easier to use, even though I really don’t like Microsoft products and I try to stay away from them when I can. But heck it’s free with the laptop so I use it.

Roxio Media Manager is another application that is terribly slow. It is rather nice to use to arrange videos and pictures on the hard drive. But I haven’t been using it much. I just open up a Windows Explorer window and do my arranging that way.

Anyway… Roxio, is it worth it? Well, I wouldn’t buy it again, I’ll tell you that.