Day 7: Away Laughing on a Fast Camel (Or a Kind-Of Fast Alero!)

I'm dying this morning! I'm laughing so hard I can barely breathe! Finding that picture of the old lady with the shotgun was priceless! I've posted on my Facebook page, and emailed it to my friends! It's just too funny! It totally looks like that dinosaur is eating Rocky! :)

So, earlier this morning, I got my first rewarding "stay at home mom" moment; our snake Patches O'Houlihan shed his skin! I was there to cheer on all his hard work! :)

Ok, so what does today hold for me:

-send last Secret Sister letter (Done)

-pick up mail (Done)

-blog (Doing it as we speak!)

-find a Notre Dame ATM to deposit money and go to WaMu to withdraw money (Found them online, and know where they are, now I just need to go!) (Done, they're literally within walking distance of each other!)

-clean litterbox (Not done! Bad Danica!)

-fill dog water bowl (Done)

-do dishes (Again, did just enough for dinner. We had delicious chicken burritos! Yummy!)

-check on what I can and can't bring aboard the airline (Not Done)

-start packing (Not Done)

So, that's that. I've finally calmed down from the hilarity of the picture, so I think it's safe for me to drive. :) I'll update at the end of the day.

Update:

So, after I went to the post office and got my mail, I drove to Lancaster to switch money from my WaMu account to my Notre Dame account so I'd have money there to pay my car payment. I was glad to see the WaMu and the credit union that is partnered with NDFCU were basically next door to each other! :)

After I did the money switch, I went into a Waldenbooks that was next to the credit union. I haven't wandered through a bookstore in a year, not since I've been out in California. So, I just spent an hour or so wandering around the store, looking at books. Not as welcoming as Barnes and Nobles, but after all this time, it was great to be in a bookstore again!

After that I made a wrong turn out of the parking lot and was heading in the direction of the dollar store, even though I told myself I wasn't going to go there.

When I got to the dollar store, I told myself I wasn't going to get anything except Rice Krispies, if they had them. Well, then they had a multi-week pill holder, which I wanted, and a purse-size hairbrush (which I needed now that my hair is getting longer and Hans has no windows in his 55 Chevy!) and they had some muffin mixes and some cool wall stickers to decorate the walls and some adorable art prints of dogs and cats that were perfect for the living room, and a new sprayer for the hose because the other one broke, and metal fencing for the garden border so the dogs wouldn't chew it and before I knew it I was leaving there with $40 worth of very useful stuff, but stuff that I wasn't planning on buying! :)

I don't regret it at all, but I can't help feeling like Rimmer in the BodySwap episode of Red Dwarf when he trades his hologrammatic body for Lister's real flesh-and-blood body and goes crazy eating food and otherwise indulging. I fell like I'm going a bit wild with the shopping, but it is all useful stuff, and it's all from the dollar store, so it's not like I'm breaking the bank getting it. Still, $40 here and $40 there adds up, so I think I'm not with my dollar store extravaganzas! :)

After I got back home, I did some gardening, pulling all the weeds out of the border around the front of the house, digging up some of the daffodils from the backyard (who had been buried for years and one bulb had multiplied into giant clumps of 11 bulbs) and planted them all spaced out in the front of the house. I also sprinkled some wildflower seeds in the area, so hopefully by the time the daffodils bloom and die the wildflowers will be growing there.

After gardening I came in and hung up the new pictures I got for the living room, and tried out a few places for the wall stickers. Nothing really felt right, so I set those aside for later, and started cooking dinner and washing some dishes. Hans was home soon after that, we had a nice dinner, and went to bed.

That's about it for Friday. One week since I'd been laid-off. It's been a good week, a relaxing vacation of a week. I feel more alive and vital than I have in months.

Day 4: Tuesday March 17th, 2008

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As it is, since I don't have a workplace, I don't need to worry about people pinching me if I'm not wearing green!

I've started this blog on here to document my days as one of the thousands of unemployed Americans. This is the first time in my life I've ever been laid-off. It was very disconcerting to have no control over leaving a job. I felt very odd leaving so many loose ends, and not getting to say goodbye to all my contacts.

What's on the docket for today?

-washing all the dirty laundry (Done, save for one load)

-cleaning the bathroom (Not done yet)

-cleaning the litterboxes (Done, and 4 cats poop a lot!)

-doing some dishes (Did just the basics, enough for dinner)

-depositing severance check (Done)

-going to therapy (Done)

-cooking dinner (Done, and beef filets from the dollar store are like shoe leather!)

That may not sound like much, but you haven't seen the pile of dirty dishes and how nasty the bathroom is! It will take all day! :)

I do also hope to take the dogs for a short walk and apply for some jobs as well. (Didn't do that either)

We shall see how the day progresses.

It's another beautiful day here in Southern California. Sunny and warm, birds chirping, a nice breeze. The weather here never ceases to amaze me.

On the depression front, I've managed to wean off the Cymbalta with no "brain zaps" at all! This 5-HTP continues to amaze me! Now to start weaning off the Citalopram (generic Celexa) as well. I'd like to be able to maintain my mood with as little chemical involvement as possible, given that Hans and I are still hoping to become pregnant.

I shall update again at the end of the day!

Update:

Focused on laundry most of the day. Left a bit early for my therapy appointment so I could stop at the dollar store and pick up some odds and ends. Went to therapy, and afterwards went back to the dollar store to buy some food. I got some amazing great deals (3 romaine hearts for a dollar!) and a couple duds (tough beef filets and overly sweet marinated mushrooms). Pretty good overall though!

Cooked dinner for Hans, we watched the movie "Caffeine" and I bought my airline tickets to visit my family for two weeks. I'm leaving from Burbank on Tuesday March 24 and getting back on April 7th. My brother is going to give me some money to help him on some projects that he's working on for work, and let me stay with him while I'm there.

It will be great to see my nieces and nephews, since they are the ones that change the most in a year. It will be nice to see the rest of my family and friends that I haven't seen in a year too. I wish Hans could go too, but it's a good thing that he's still got a job!