March-ing On

You'll have to excuse the pun. It's been a long weekend and I'm tired. (and well-rested...go figure)

Friday evening into Saturday afternoon, I went to the church's ladies retreat. I'm not fond of things that take me away from home overnight. But I did have a very enjoyable time. It was very relaxing, fun, and it was nice to get a chance to really talk with some of the ladies from church, instead of exchanging generic pleasantries with them. It certainly caused me to do a lot of thinking about life and possessions and stuff. (Although not the theme of the retreat by any means, being away from "technology" and having very little with me was actually refreshing in of itself)
So Saturday afternoon was a bit frantic, as I quickly made my way home, and about 90 minutes later, had to leave for a Pampered Chef party. Didn't plan it to go like this - but my husband came with me and we all ended up sitting around chatting after the party and stayed until about 11:30, meaning we didn't get home until nearly 1 am. As physically tired as I was, I figured church wasn't really going to be an option for me today. I made a small effort this morning to pry myself out of bed, but meh.

I am glad that we stayed home today though. It was relaxing and productive. We got two garbage bags of stuff thrown out and around three shelves of space cleared. We put almost all of the console video games into a binder, and while it's not the prettiest arrangement, it sure clears off a lot of space. If we weren't planning to move at the end of next month (those words make me sick to my stomach), I probably wouldn't care, but I need this to go as smoothly as I can. That means, I really need us to get rid of and minimize all we can. But for a casual Sunday, we made good progress. But here's the kicker - I figured with what we were turning in, we might walk away with $15-$20 in store credit. Maybe $30 since we were taking in a lot of games that weren't ancient. Our grand total in store credit was - get this - $110! I was stunned. In the end, we came home with Lego Star Wars (the complete saga) for the PS3 and My Sims for the Wii. Not a bad trade, really - get rid of movies and games that are unused, and replace them with two things that will get enjoyment out of them. Hurray! Now, if only this sort of thing applied to stuff like books and clothes. I don't mind donating things at all, but I admit there is more incentive when you take one or two things home as a direct result of your clearing.

I did something funky to my wrist Saturday night, and it's been aching all day today. (In brief, I'm very klutzy and at the end of October made a fantastic little swan dive in a parking lot and landed smack on my left wrist) I decided not to argue with my wrist, got the brace and put it on. I really hope it helps. I really don't have time to be injured!

Also, I picked myself up some melatonin this afternoon. To say I'm excited really doesn't cover it. Is it sad that I'm excited over a sleeping suppliment? Probably. But I've had a hard time falling asleep lately, and I've had a worse time with waking up at random hours and then being really anxious over random noises. So I'm hoping that this will help - fall asleep faster, hopefully stay asleep, and then maybe I'll be more able to get out of bed. This whole "getting 10 hours of "sleep" and still feeling like I've been run over by a truck" episode of late is getting old. I'm not asking to run the world, just to feel alert and somewhat productive at some point before 1 pm. I'm considering weaning myself into some sort of routine such as shutting down the electronics an hour or two before I intend to sleep, maybe doing some reading, drinking some tea, and seeing if 'relaxing' will help. I'm also aiming to cut out caffeine, or at least MOST caffeine in the near future. I am not a big pop drinker, but I think I could cut MVP episodes down and overall feel better if I cut out most caffeine, especially since I'm not one who has much of a reliance on it. Love the taste of pop, but know that it's got nothing of value in it. I'll get there...

Anyway, SVEN. Sorry to say that I didn't get any real tangible work done, but maybe you can see why ^. I did, however, create a subfolder for it in my "stories and ideas" folder on my desktop, rounded up my related word file, and I wrote down a good hearty page of notes for myself...so if nothing else, I'm proud of that, because my husband is forever pulling his hair because I have ideas but refuse to write them down.

So this story. I need to talk about this a little, just...because it's my blog and I can. (Thbbbbt!) (Actually, I'm hoping that 're-living' the beginnings of it will further pump along the creative juices) I had a dream one night over a year ago, I don't remember much about it, other than this girl was in a school type setting and was drawn to this boy, and was really shocked when he was showing an interest in her. Shortly after that, my husband was working to try and get his friends to participate in a writers group, and so he was on my case to write something. So I sat down with this very vague feeling of "being drawn to someone" and let my mind wander. I came up with this really interesting paragraph that got my husband nipping at my heels, asking what it was about, where it was going, etc. Bit by bit over the past year, something would come to me. Sometimes I would actively be thinking about that paragraph, other times, it would be like a hit and run idea. I'm far from having it all fleshed out, but I've got enough that I think it's worth exploring. (Though Matt's been telling me that it's been worth exploring since I wrote the one paragraph just for kicks)

But as this night draws to a close, I must wrap this up. I don't want to be up too late, because tomorrow is one of those "new beginnings" days. It's a new week, and it's a week that I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to putting fingers to keys and putting those creative juices to an outlet once again.

The kitten has come out from the bedroom all sleepy eyed. I don't think it's what she actually wants, but in my mind, she's come to tell me to put her in her crate so she can go seepies. I should too.

Good night Aeris, and everyone else.