Fun times

So, I have actually been doing things from time to time that resemble fun. I am trying to infuse a little fun into my life. However, sometimes my fun things tend to make me feel older than I am. One such example is what I am doing tomorrow. I am having a brunch at my apartment. I personally do not celebrate easter but my friends do and I will grab at any opportunity to have a brunch at my place. I love having people over, especially in instances that involve food. So, Rachel and Lynda are coming over tomorrow and we are going to have:

Apple streusel (and/or pumpkin, haven't decided yet) pancakes
Cinnamon french toast
Scrambled eggsBaconA Lynda hard-boiled egg dish
Fresh fruit
Mimosas (best reason for a brunch is to start drinking at 11 in the morning)
Iced coffee
I am actually really excited (which shows how easily excitable I am). I get to set my table nicely and have good friends over while having good food.

Now, for a little helpful information. I recently found a good recommendation for making iced coffee. Silly me has always thought that you just make the coffee, add creamer and sugar, and pour it over ice. Apparently, that is not the way to go. The ice dilutes the coffee so the recommendation is to brew the coffee the night before and brew it twice as strong as normal (because of the dilution). You need to add the sugar while it is hot, which should be obvious though that might be obvious to me because I have had to many times in the past get sugar to dissolve in a solution (lab stuff). The interesting recommendation was to add either a little vanilla extract or almond extract. It is supposed to add a little flavor and cut down on the sugar you should need. I am looking forward to trying it out and will let you know how it turns out.
So that will be the fun part of my day. I am going to actually get prettied up and wear a dress. I don't get to do that often. It is not practical for lab work. I spend most days feeling pretty frumpy wearing clothes I don't mind getting all kinds of nasty things on so when there is a chance to actually spend some time to make myself look nice, I jump at the chance! I am also hoping to walk around my complex because the tulips have FINALLY bloomed. I love tulips and think they are gorgeous. My complex plants them all over the complex but it has been so cold and rainy lately that they have not been blooming. They are now though :)
After my morning and early afternoon of relaxation though I do need to do something about my room. I am convinced that my entire closest is off the hangers and is all over every inch of my room. I have a sort of divider between clean and dirty clothes but this method of storing clothes makes it difficult to dress in the morning. It usually is find first clean shirt, first clean pants, and underthings and that is what I am wearing. I have been pretty lazy about dressing for the last 3 weeks. This is kind of what my whole room looks like (minus the baby and probably an exaggeration but still):



Lastly, tomorrow I need to work on my grant. I have a grant that is due on Thursday morning and has been the source of much of my stress for the last 2 months or so. Now, I know one would never be able to tell from my blog that I tend towards long-windedness but I do. NIH (which is the granting agency) decided to take a grant that was supposed to be no more than 10 pages (which I filled all of the first time I submitted) and cut it down to 6. Yikes!! I re-worked my grant and am at . . . . 7.5 pages. I have gone over the grant again and again over the last 2 weeks and had only been able to cut half of page (I started at 8 pages). So I need a small miracle by Thursday. Somehow, it will be completed. The question that remains though is how much of my sanity will be intact by Thursday, 5 pm.
On the upside, 2 fun things this week. One, is that it is Elissa's birthday which means I am baking a cake and get to decorate it. This is kind of what I mean by the things I enjoy make me feel older than I am. I will post a picture of the cake when I done with it. I find baking and cake decorating very calming. I am not that good at decorating yet but I am improving. The other fun thing that I am doing this week is a wine and wildflower weekend in the "wine country" of Texas. I am really looking forward to it because I need a nice, relaxing weekend. I also have yet to see the hill country in full wildflower bloom. I always come too early.
They are going to be soooo pretty. Lynda and I are staying in Fredericksburg, TX which is a super cute town that was originally settled by German immigrants so there is still a strong German influence there. We are going to have some good German food and at the restaurant we are going to go to (of course I have everything pre-planned), they have live bands at night. I think it is going to be a ton of fun. Also, I am happy about where we are staying. It is SUPER girly but seems like a nice place to relax. It is a guesthouse close to Main St.
It is a really nice room (despite the frill factor). So, a nice girls weekend. I am also trying to plan a trip to New Orleans this summer as well as tubing down a river (maybe the Colorado, maybe the Guadalupe? don't know which it should be). So, I am trying to experience more of the things that Texas and the surrounding areas has to offer. Maybe this year, Linz and I can finally do the O. Henry pun-off in Austin in May.

So, that's it for now. I am happy I even have anything to write about. I have been living a very boring life lately so I am trying to change that. More to come.

And we're back!

Hi everyone (2 people who occasionally read this blog)!

I initially started this blog as a way to chronicle my attempt at losing weight and changing my life but as those of you who know me already know, I have not been very successful (at blogging or weight loss). I have always understood that I would never be successful at losing weight if I did not change my lifestyle but changing my life has always been incredibly hard for me. So, instead of using this blog to chronicle my weight loss attempts, I am just going to write about my life. I am not sure who might find it all that interesting but writing this blog is a purely selfish endeavor. I am writing because it helps me when I write about the things going on in my life. I also thinks it helps me gain some perspective. So, my goal is to actually write more often (I know at least my mom will appreciate that). So, here it goes (warning, this is going to be long).

I will admit right now that I have been really moody and melancholy lately (those that know me in Dallas can attest to that). I have been unhappy for quite awhile now and I have been floundering. I do not like the person that I become when I get like this. It is almost as if I am attempting to truly become the worst version of myself. It is pathetic and I don't like it. I saw somewhere this flow diagram:

It was another blog, and he said that it is that easy. I agree. I also think it is that hard. It sounds like the simplest thing to change the things that make you unhappy. Now, the problem is more or less me. Anyone who knows me knows I abhor change. I really get snippity and drag my feet when it comes to making changes. Then after I make those changes I worry and worry about whether I have made the right decision. My other problem is that I am a starter and not a finisher. It has been that way all my life. I wish that by now I knew some easy way to change that or that I had the strength of character to resist the urge to give up but it is what it is. I struggle with that character flaw in both my personal and work life. I think that most of the problems right now for me boil down to that oh so simple problem. I need to just finish something. True, I finished my undergrad, but it took me an extra year to do it. I will finish grad school, but it will take an extra year to do that too. I can't tell you how many times I have tried to start losing weight.

The biggest thing for me, I think, is to stop making excuses and face the fact that my inability to finish anything is entirely my fault alone. I keep making poor choices and having to live with those commitments and choices. Now, I am a fairly smart woman, or I would at least say that I am not dumb, but I do not learn quickly from all of my mistakes. I think that everyone learns from the big mistakes that they make in life, but there are those small mistakes that just keep adding up until one day you take stock and think "How exactly did I get here?" The problem is that my inability to learn from those smaller mistakes that pile up is not exactly a rational thing. Rationally, I know what I need to change but there is a part of me that just resists it every step of the way. I really am engaged in a fight against myself.

Now I really place no stock in astrology but I am a Gemini and I think the description of that is apt for me, twin personalities. There is a lot of my personality that could be described that way. For example, I love to be around people. I love hanging out with a good group of people but at the same time I am a very solitary person. I require quite a bit of me time. In fact, I have become kind of anti-social. At the end of the day I am so tired that I don't feel like having to make small talk with a bunch of strangers so I often turn down invitations for plans. I have been withdrawing into myself an awful lot lately. I am not so sure I like being left alone with myself.

Now, this is already becoming a very lengthy entry but I am going to keep going. I haven't written in a long time so why not? Now, due to my melancholy state I have been getting really sloppy with work and forgetful with EVERYTHING! (I do wish to say here though, that if for some reason I do not contact you on your birthday, I am sorry, that is actually more or less a problem of never knowing what date it is, and that is a consequence of grad school. I will try to be better though I wish I had a personal assistant) The problem is that I am in a vicious circle with work right now. I am experience a little bit of the "burn-out" that everyone experiences from time to time which results in slower and lower quality work, which stresses me out more, which results in more of the "burn-out" and keep repeating. I need to break the cycle but it is tough when there are deadlines after deadlines. I am also a workaholic. I work and work and work but I need to stop. This leads me to my other big problem. I care too much about what other people think and I unfortunately need other people to like me. That leads me to become a really big people pleaser. It is really easy to guilt me into things and I often find myself volunteering to do things which I have NO time for. In lab, whenever my advisor asks if I can do something, I always say yes. Always. Immediately. I do not stop and think about whether or not I have time and when I do I usually rationalize the time by thinking well I can work 14 to 16 hour days for 2 weeks. I tend to forget that I usually already schedule myself about 10 to 12 hours worth of work a day.

So, with all of that out there, my goal is to start saying no. I am also going to try and do things that I enjoy. The weather in Texas right now is great. It will stay this way for about a month before it gets hellishly hot. I want to spend as much time outdoors instead of locked up in lab or in my apartment hiding from the world.

So, that will be the end to this somewhat depressing post. I do not plan to do many of these. I want to use this forum to help me focus on the things that make me happy. Positive reinforcement is always better for the psyche than self-flagellation. In fact, I am going to post another entry today with a more positive twist and a little more along the lines of what I am going to focus on from now on.