MzSerena’s Garden

Tomorrow is the end of 2009. What am I going to be doing? Celebrating with a glass of white grape juice mixed with mountain dew. Strange? Yes, but it’s really good. It’s like sparkling grape with a kick.

This has been a good year in a lot of ways. I’m happy with where I am. It’s also been a year where I’ve done random things, like read about rv insurance for the hell of it. Why? Because a friend of mine and her partner are now an RVers (Check out their adventures!)

My way of ending ’09 was attending the retirement reception for a woman whom I absolutely adore. I was hesitant because I was there as a writer and photographer, and had just last week had a front page article printed about the same woman. I was very very surprised at all the compliments that I received. I am so proud of my accomplishments and can’t wait for the next year to continue on accomplishing more.

Anyway, I think that’s it for tonight. Got some stuff to finish for my book blog (Book Hoarding) before the year truly ends tomorrow night. See you all next year!

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday. Mine was good. We opened gifts this morning and everyone was quite pleased. We didn’t do a lot, a couple gifts each. Half we didn’t bother wrapping, but we managed to have at least one each under the tree this morning the other didn’t know about. I got a beautiful watch and two beautiful pendants.

I got Twilight Scene-It along with the 2 Twilight movie board games for Rob, so we spent much of the day playing games. I’d love to have another couple or two to play games with. It’d be so much more fun to have game nights with other people. Oh well, we have fun playing games, so it’s all good.

I’ve been reading/listening Under The Dome by Stephen King. I don’t care for Stephen King’s typical brand of horror, but this book is absolutely insane. It’s not a horror novel, it’s a work of dystopic fiction, though. I have grown quite fond of Dystopic Fiction and am REALLY enjoying this novel. It’s over 1000 pages, and I’m about halfway through it. It’s a hefty read, but well worth it.

From Goodreads:
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

I’ve been sleeping normal hours lately. Sadly, tonight is destroying that. I have been going to bed anywhere around 11 to midnight and getting up around 8. It’s been nice. Tonight, though, I needed to stay up to block the door and stuff. I should be able to sleep soon. Yay. I can’t wait.

I’m going to meet up with my new pillows and rescue my old ones from the land of sleep and see if I can keep them safe for a few hours. Hope everyone had a great day, no matter what you celebrate.

We put our tree up today. It’s a 7 foot, artificial, pine. Beautiful tree. But it’s too big for our living room. Not only is it too tall. 7′ 6″ with the base and giant diameter. So, this year, we only put up the top two sections to make it smaller. It worked out absolutely beautifully. It’s just a bit taller than me. Nearly 5′ 6″ in the base. It’s pre-lit with white lights, but we added a string of flashers to it and it gave it just a bit of a pop of color. The lights are nearly 15 years old now, but they work fabulously. Sadly, it’s the ONLY freaking lights I still have. Guess what I’ll be getting in the after Christmas sales! We put up red and gold ornaments this year, with silver garland a small amount of green ornaments to break it up a bit.

After a day like today, I don’t need adipex diet pills. I forgot to eat until late this afternoon. Oops. I get too into doing everything else that I tend to forget until my stomach reminds me that it requires food. Too bad that’s not how you lose weight. I also forgot my pills this morning. Oh well.

I’m tired as all get out, so now I’m going to sleep.

I’m so freaking broke right now it’s not even funny. We had to shell out every penny of our paycheck today to fix brakes on the car. Bonus? We need more work! *sob* I can’t even afford a simple thing like one of the plasma mounts that I was looking at for the bedroom.

I’m so sick of junk cars and being broke. I used to love the holidays, now I wish for them to be over. *sigh* Maybe next year we can have a good one.

I wrote a while ago about being independently wealthy and what I’d like to do. I’ve been thinking about it on and off for some reason. I don’t know why, but I keep coming back to the same Plano dentist and contemplating doing something with my teeth. I’m still too broke, but I suppose I can dream, right?

I’m not sure why I keep coming back to it, other than feeling weird when I talk to people. But then again, there are other reasons I feel that way too. I hate pictures, I hate seeing myself through other people’s eyes. I hate who I am, and it’s not even because of my weight, it’s just because I see things that I really don’t like that I can’t ever change.

Do you know how impossible it is to find feather pillows? Seriously? I want new pillows, but I’m not shelling out $15+ dollars just for feather pillows, even though I’m picky and don’t like the polyfil pillows. Hubby found me a couple on amazon that are good price. Unfortunately, I overspent on Christmas today and have to wait.

I’m not sure what’s going on with me lately, but I’m tired all the time. Though, I keep waking up far earlier than I normally do, so I guess it balances out. It’s been bloody cold lately. I’m not happy about it being so cold, especially since our furnace seems to run non-stop when it’s like this, even though we keep it set fairly low. I’m afraid if it stays this way, I’m going to have to get emergency assistance to get more heating oil. It’s kind of sad, really, since it seems like this happens every single year. It seems like the price just keeps going up, and the amount of money we have to pay for it doesn’t go up.

Blah. I feel like all I do is whine lately. Sorry.

Today was a lovely day. Went to a pot luck dinner, enjoyed some really good food and good music, tried new things, got to know some new people. I typically don’t like parties, or people, and I definitely hate being the ‘young’ one in a group. I was, yet again, the youngest in the room and it was really awkward. I did enjoy myself overall, when the crowd started thinning out some.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I could easily become a vegetarian and not be lacking for anything. Sure, I’d miss my dead animals, but I could do it. It’d definitely be easier than trying to find the right acne treatments or something else random like that.

Tomorrow we’re going to go finish the Christmas shopping. Got to pick out a few small things, mostly. But for now, it’s time to sleep.

I love Christmas. I just hate the whole process of shopping for gifts. Especially when I have to shop for my own gift. I’m not kidding, folks, I shop for my own gifts. Who needs an appetite suppressant when you’re stressing yourself sick over shopping for the rest of the holiday? I just wish that it would be here and over with already.

I have 2 more gifts to purchase. I just have no idea what they’re going to be yet. Would it be weird if I told my husband I wanted the accessories to go with my gift from my Mom that I ordered tonight? Nah. I don’t think I’d need that yet. Everything else I can think of that I want, though, is too expensive. I’m frustrated. I don’t really want anything. Meh.

Guess I’ll go back to searching for a gift.

Tis the season for a LOT of drama, it seems. It seems like no matter where you go or what you do, there’s a ton of drama everywhere. Heck, people bicker over the simplest of things. For instance, can you imagine getting into a fight with someone over where to store your patio cushions for the winter? I’m NOT joking, I witnessed it.

Tonight, I witnessed bickering over something that the people actually agreed on. So why were they bickering? I have no idea, other than simple semantics, I’d guess. Or they just like to bicker. It was pretty silly, in all respects. Bickering in general is pretty silly. We all do it, though. I know I do. It just seems like this time of year, people bicker more than they should.

Oh well, guess life will go on.

Okay, we live in the middle of nowhere, so we don’t get cable. I’m kind of sad about that, but it’s been long enough that I’m okay with it, especially since we have great satellite service. We started out with Dish Network and they were okay, until they started changing everything and screwing their customers.

Back in 2003, we changed to DirectTV and haven’t had a single complaint. Last year, we switched our television in the living room out, due to the digital transition garbage. When we did, we decided to upgrade our satellite, DirecTV service to HD service. The installer came and took care of everything and it didn’t cost us a thing.

We’ve had no problems with anything, until last week. The other day, we switched channels and all of the sudden, the satellite quit receiving signal. What?? I try all the tips and tricks that are recommended, no go. So, I call Direct TV and they put me through a receiver test, just to make sure that’s not the problem. It’s not. So, they set me up for an installer to come fix it.

Now, we don’t have their protection plan, but since we’ve been loyal since ’03, they work it so that we can add the plan and have it cover the visit. Seriously, DirecTV is freaking awesome and made of win. The installer came Friday and fixed the problem. He had to rewire our coaxial cable from the outside in. It wasn’t grounded, it was buried in the ground, it was NOT right. It hasn’t been right since it was put in 15 years ago, when we first had service up here from Primestar.

DirecTV is made of complete WIN.

Sick ‘n tired of being sick ‘n tired.. that’s the mantra of the day.
Tired of stupid, ignorant people. Tired of people who assume.
Tired of my back hurting and not having any idea why.
Sick of being broke and feeling stressed because of his job.
Wishing that I could just skip the month of December, completely.
On the plus side, I don’t need a fat burner. I’m losing weight by being sick and stressed. Maybe I need to stay stressed all the time.

I’m in a rotten headspace lately. Hopefully after I get out for a while tomorrow, I’ll feel better.