I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Friday afternoon. OK, is it a bad thing that I'm already totally tired and I haven't even made it to Saturday morning at 3:30am when I need to be out the door for my trip to San Luis Obispo? Yeah, I think so, too.
Things I need to do before I can go to bed tonight:
1. Pick up my rental car for the big trip north 2. Forty minutes of jogging/walking (1 min/4 min, repeat 8 times) 3. Eat dinner (this part is not hard) 4. Shower and get cleaned up 5. Get completely packed and haul bag upstairs, next to door 6. Lay clothes for tomorrow out, including undergarments, somewhere they cannot be missed by a zombie-like creature (that would be me) 7. Water thoroughly 8. Put food and water for two days out for cats 9. Fetch mail in (this is not something I do with any regularity because it's always just junk) 10. Put slide locks on all windows
Things to be done in the 30 minutes I will have between waking and hitting the road tomorrow:
1. Get into clothes (see #6 above) 2. Put meals for weekend in cooler with ice (along with appropriate utensils, now that I think of it) 3. Put both the ice chest and duffel bag (containing two workout outfits and my brand, spanking new pink iPod mini!!!) into car 4. Grab directions, my purse, and a couple of bottles of water, fire up the rented Ford Escape, point it north, and fall asleep
The itinerary for tomorrow includes a six hour (or so) drive to Morro Bay, where I pick up Tracy, then off to an afternoon of wine tasting in Paso Robles. I don't know how many wineries we will end up visiting because they all close at 5pm and that's a maximum of seven hours with long drives between the wineries. We shall see. Sunday morning is our 5K followed by lunch in Avila Beach and more wine tasting, then my lovely drive home. Driving down Highway 101 on a Sunday night is pretty much the surest sign of masochistic tendencies available today, so I'm looking forward to it. Then, Sunday night about 6pm (if all goes well), I'll be meeting Shannin, just in time for her to abandon us for the great midwest. WooHoo! Two awesome bloggers in eight days - I'm on a roll.
Someone remind me to tell you about all of the sad but really important stuff I learned in my "Child Abuse Basics" class in my CASA training last night. So sad.
Wednesday morning. I've taken the first step on my journey to becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA/ and I'm so completely excited about what I'll be doing. Last night's classes were an introduction to the organization, it's mission, and it's history and a primer on reading court documents. Both classes were fascinating and the 200 minutes just flew past. Some of the statistics we learned:
* Each social worker in San Diego County works with approximately 50 children * Each public defender working with children in SD County (not the delinquent children, just the dependent children) is assigned to 100 or more children * The judges working in family court in SD County have about 500 children each assigned to them
The CASAs are the only person in this system who have only one child (or one family) to work with, and are usually the only consistent adult figure in that child's life during their assignment (a minimum of 18 months). Once I've completed my 34 hours of training, five written assignments, FBI/CA DoJ background check, procuring three letters of recommendation, and mock court report, I will graduate and be sworn in by a Superior Court judge in front of my friends and family. I am so excited.
For the first time in my life, I'll be making a positive contribution and giving something back to the world instead of just cruising along in my self-absorbed little world. What a way to kick off my thirty-eighth year!
Tuesday morning. It's odd, really, how your birthday changes as you get older. When I was a kid, it was all about the party and my friends and, of course, the presents. In my teens, it was whether or not the cute guy I had a crush on would acknowledge my birthday. My 21st birthday is, strangely, rather a blur, but I do recall something about someone (surely not me?) dancing on the bar at El Torito's. My 29th birthday was spent in hospital with an acute attack of gallstones, so my 30th sort of paled in comparison.
At this point, I'm looking around and wondering what the point of my birthday is anymore. There will be no cake, no candles, no pile of gifts with pretty wrapping paper, only the inexorable march of time forward, and, I guess, that's the way things are when you're single and childless in your late 30s. Today I will go to work, go to meetings, hold a (hopefully) wonderful and insightful discussion about the findings of a process improvment committee which I was the driver of, participate in training to become a guardian ad litem (sp?) for a child in need, and then come home and go to bed. My birthday resolution (didn't know such a thing existed, did you?) is to live my life in such a way that, come October 12, 2005, I have both more to celebrate and more people to celebrate it with.
Monday night. Well, I've faced the demon and it's not pretty - I'm up four pounds. Blech! That said, I'm remarkably serene about the whole thing. I know that I'll take it right off again and that I had a bloody good time, so I'm just not going to worry about it. What I am going to do is continue my walk to jog program (I'm moving up to one minute of jogging for every four walking tonight), stay away from added salt (a weakness of mine), and drink a ton of water. It will come off and bring some friends with it, and that's what it's all about, folks.
On to more important topics, though. I found the most amazing dress and I want it! One problem: it's not available in plus sizes. Solution? Lose about 20 pounds between now and the VLSCI Holiday Party (December 18) and then squeeze into a regular size 20! Yes, I know that sounds a little ambitious/crazy/masochistic but I really want this dress. I'm thinking about printing the dress off on my color printer at home and putting it up at work, at home, and in my car, so that I can remember why it's so darned important to keep at this thing. I mean, sure, being healthy and not dying from diabetic complications is great, but will it make you look beyond fabulous at a company function? I think not.
