On Saturday, we decided to drop by Shawn and Ani’s neighborhood garage sale to say hi and see if we needed any of their junk. Ash spent the entire time we there plucking away on a pink acoustic guitar that was way to small for him, but I was way happy to see that’s he’s digging his bass lessons that much! After a while, we headed home.

We pulled in our driveway, which goes up to our back fence. I noticed a large white dog with black spots on it milling about inside the backyard. He was essentially peeing on every last blade of grass, as a large male dog is wont to do. Amelia approached him from outside the fence to let him sniff her hand, but he was more interested in taking that hand off. Not cool, Rover!

I tried sweet talking him through the fence, but he was done with sweet talking long ago. I kept talking to me and he kept swearing at me in dog language while Amelia called Animal Control to come get the guy. We’d normally walk him around the neighborhood or something to find his home, but neither one of us felt like losing a limb. Ash was going to run around to the front of the house and close the front gate, so he couldn’t get out. Stranger Danger Dog was also not down with that and threw is 100+ pound body at the fence.

I ran down the alley to run around the block and shut the gate while Amelia distracted the dog. I ran into a 12 year old looking girl that looked completely panicked. Turns out it was her dog, so she came to our backyard in full on sprint mode. I gave her an extra leash (Riley’s skull and crossbones leash!) and she told us we should probably get back in the car. WHAT IN THE HELL. We did and sure enough this tiny child grabbed this beast of a dog and walked him down the alley.

Animal Control came by later and I told them the dangly-balled dog found his home. And then a couple hours later, Animal Control called back and asked about the owners of the dog, because apparently there had been a dog bite issue elsewhere in the neighborhood. I ratted out the owners, but felt okay about it because – PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR DAMN ANIMALS.

And then SUNDAY, we were coming home from a late, late dinner. It was 9:30ish or so and as soon as I got out of the car, I noticed this tall lanky dude running between our house and the neighbor’s. I was all, “HEY!” because I was suddenly invincible and about to make a citizen’s arrest, I guess? About that time, he jumped the fence into our neighbor’s yard. And he’s like, “Sorry, someone’s chasing me”. And I seriously said, “Oh, okay”. Because I was totally cool with him hopping our fence if someone was chasing him. The chaser never came hurdling over the fence, so I kinda thought he might have been, you know, robbing our house.

I walked around to the front of the house and Marshall (the cat) was sitting in the window. I knew nobody was in our house at that point, because Marshall needs to follow people and yell at them if they’re in our house. Our guard cat had done his job for the day.

I miss a month of blogging and I come back to write about things happening in our backyard. That’s not a let down, is it?

Last Friday: Amelia and I ventured to Steady Tattoo (after Live Fast Die Young in Northeast Minneapolis couldn’t find an open 15 minutes for the next TWO WEEKS for a very simple black work tattoo, even though the sign out front encouraged walk ins) to get Amelia’s Mother’s Day tattoo.

Last Saturday: We set off on a mission to get more wedding clothes. Every single store was a zoo. The employees were mad because they had to, I don’t know, work. We went to at least a half a dozen stores, before we finally got to Kohl’s, where I finally found wedding pants, another pair of work pants, and a couple of things Amelia found. We wound up saving close to $5 million and have sworn to always try Kohl’s first.

A week ago Sunday: we celebrated Mother’s Day some more by buying Amelia a weed whacker and I played a softball doubleheader, which resulted in road rash on both shins and busted up knees. We won the first game by one and lost the second game 25-1. Oopsie.

Monday: The Senate voted on and passed a law that would allow gays to have civil marriages. Legally. Like real people. Whoa. (Pictures from MPR here!) Julie came to visit! She got to our place in time to go with us to my softball game, which we won. I was annoyed the entire time, but it was fun as always and I didn’t bleed anywhere.

Tuesday, Amelia and I celebrated exactly five years together and then Governor Mark Dayton signed a bill allowing same-sex marriage in Minnesota. Clearly the five year anniversary is the “Governor gives you the right to be treated as an equal citizen” anniversary. Julie, Amelia and I went to St. Paul after I finished work and we celebrated downtown with a little mini-Pride. Then we came home, picked up Ash, and went out for pizza. Carb-watching be damned, because we celebrate gay marriage with pizza.

On Wednesday, we joined Matt, Jenni and Missy at Kieren’s for the first week of trivia league. We ended the night in 2nd place, which yielded us EACH a $15 Starbucks gift card! We totally got paid for being smart. I’m still mad that I only thought there were 26 amendments in the Constitution. The 27th one is stupid anyway.

I can’t even remember what we did on Thursday.

We babysat Sophia and Stella on Friday night, which is always fun.

Yesterday, we helped Shawn and Ani get into their new house. We loaded the entire UHaul in 2.5 hours and, man, are we good at some Tetris. We got the truck unloaded and then after a fast lunch, headed to the store and to home to fix dinner. Justin, Megan and Emmett came over for steak and three different kinds of green vegetables. We chatted for a while and then called it a night.

Today, we did the six mile Minnesota AIDS Walk with Jenni, came home to take a four hour nap, found out softball was cancelled and had pot roast for dinner.

I feel caught up. And now I’m hoping for a little bit calmer week before we leave for camping on Friday!

• Change the layout of this website. Done. There’s still text to be updated, but that wasn’t part of the deal, so I’m calling it done.
• Open an account with a credit union. It helps when I work at one. Now, I just have to figure out the easiest way to budget my moolah with both my “big bank” and my credit union.
• Get a new title at work. (Again.) You know what made that easy? Just getting a new job all together.

And here’s what in progress right about now:

• Put $10 in savings each time I complete a task on the list. BAM. $30 in the hole.
• Do the MN Aids Walk again. That’s happening this weekend.
• Visit 12 new restaurants/bars. (3/10) Been to Burger Jones, Buster’s on 28th, Gastrotruck so far.
• Officially start school. I start on June 3rd for the summer semester and I already have my schedule set for the fall semester, too. Associate’s Degree could happen by the end of 2014 if I decide I can handle it. Otherwise, I’ll be starting my Bachelor’s at some point in 2015. Finally.

]]> http://www.twodolla.org/2013/05/16/101-v2-progress-for-may/feed/ 0 http://www.twodolla.org/2013/05/04/the-biggest-thing-ive-noticed-this-past-week/ http://www.twodolla.org/2013/05/04/the-biggest-thing-ive-noticed-this-past-week/#comments Sun, 05 May 2013 04:02:45 +0000 Wendy http://www.twodolla.org/?p=3481 I promise I won’t post about my new job forever. I can, however, post about it according to our company policy of employee weblogs as long as I don’t include any type of personal or confidential information. At least I think that’s what’s the policy said – I’ve done so much reading at work over the past week and I have no way to upload the details into Goodreads. I’m pretty upset about it.

Every single day of this past week, when I was home well before 6pm, I didn’t know what to do with my evening. There was no checking my work email or recruiting from home or having to call someone at home and fire them. It was just coming home and… that’s it. I didn’t know what to do with myself and, as lame as it sounds, it took some hardcore adjusting!

That’s when I noticed the last month at my previous job must have really sucked. I’d bought tickets to a soccer game tonight and never even got to the point of putting the game on my calendar, completely forgetting about it until 6:45pm. I’ve managed to flake out of a parents’ group at The Kid’s school because I keep forgetting about it when it’s scheduled. I haven’t followed up with his teachers in over a month. I hadn’t even attempted to find some type of pants to wear to our wedding until today. I’ve let absolutely everything go to the wayside.

So, man – no more working 55 hours a week in the office and an additional three or four in the evenings and who knows what on weekends. There can’t be a time where I throw more of myself into my work than I do with my home. That just ain’t right.

Right now, I’m at home with my fiance, watching Honey on TV, where we have a house guest wearing elephant and polar bear jammies, and I haven’t done anything work related since 5:15pm on Friday. I think this is what’s really called work/life balance; not that bullshit they tried to preach at my last job.

1. I log in to my computer using my FINGERPRINT. Whoa, technology.
2. I’ve gotten my own branded portfolio and what appears to be branded lapel pin.
3. They have three refrigerators that they actually clean out weekly, so I don’t have to look at bottles of water that have been there over a year (SWEAR it happened at my old job).
4. Window view. Bam.
5. I took an actual lunch today not at my desk and not checking my work email on my phone.
6. Every single person I’ve met has been so friendly and accommodating.
7. Even if you include the 30+ minute commute each way, I’m still spending less time at work than I was before.
8. The people there work there butts off for 40 hours and then they go home.
9. Here’s their training method so far: go learn everything else in the company and then we’ll teach you how to do your job. I love it.
10. For two Mondays in May, the Gastrotruck is going to be in the parking lot.

I know it’s only been two days and I know that my self-diagnosis of a workaholic will catch up with everything eventually, but the fact that the culture is the way it is, I’m pretty darn comfortable it’s not going to turn into a regular 50-60 hour work week. And that’s good because I have softball games on Sundays and Mondays and I’m going back to school in June. More on all that later, of course.

I was turned around with my butt to my co-workers this morning hanging something up and someone said, “Wendy, what’s going on with your pants?” because they’re now low-riders in the sense that they fall down past my butt, not in the sense of me buying them this way on purpose so I could show off my tramp stamp and/or sexy new thong.

The last time I opened up a box to find something to eat… Never mind, I don’t remember what it was. I have seriously been sitting here for 15 minutes trying to think of what it was.  Maybe it was flax seed meal? Don’t worry – I didn’t know what that was until about six weeks ago anyway!

I actually started a 12 week weight loss challenge on January 28th; we started the low carb thing on March 4th. The comparison on how it’s been working for me can be seen by this handy-dandy graph.

if my body were a business, this would be bad

That nice solid line is all before we started cooking at home and eating whole foods and not buying pre-packaged things. Since we dove head first into it, that line actually has some progress. I know that losing weight slowly is the healthy thing to do and I am. I feel comfortable averaging a loss of 2.5 pounds per week. I don’t expect that to last forever and when it slows down, it slows down.

Do have a goal weight in mind? I think so, but I don’t have anything nailed down in details. We’re getting married in August, so we have an idea of where we each want to be there, but that’s not a stopping point.

In the past eight weeks, I’ve bought things like almond flour and grapeseed oil. I didn’t even know grapeseed oil was a thing until this. (P.S. Robert Irvine of Restaurant Impossible used it to make pork chops last night, so you know it’s good, okay?) I had cauliflower twice last week. On purpose. I haven’t had a real soda in over eight weeks. The diet sodas I’ve had have been few and far between. For work lunches, I average a Jimmy John’s unwich maybe once a week. The rest of the week, it’s either leftovers or some combo of meat, cheese and veggies that I’ve thrown into one Tupperware container.

Things are going well for me and very well for our family with this way of life. We’ve seen a lot of health improvements in ways that at least I wasn’t expecting. And despite our initial fears of not having enough energy to do things without carbohydrates or sugar or whatever, we’re kicking ass at the gym. I blew through the first two weeks of C25K without any problem at all at speeds that were faster than any attempt I’d done in the past.

In short, it’s going really well and we’re keeping it up!

I will definitely miss that view.

Earlier this month, I put in a four week notice to my current company. It was in the top three list of scariest things I’ve done in the past five years, which also includes jumping off of a perfectly good building and proposing. April 24th will be my last day here (yes, I’m blogging from work) and then on April 29th, I start my new career as a recruiter of some sort (job title: TBD) at a new company over in St. Paul with slightly better pay, infinitely better health insurance options and tuition reimbursement. It’s a farther commute, but the pros definitely outweighed the cons in my handy Excel spreadsheet I made.

April 30th would have marked five years here and it’s truly been the best job of my life (next to Taco Bell, duh). I’ve learned so much being in this position and in the HR field. Who I’d wind up seriously excelling in a career where you have to be all official and appropriate 90% of the time?

My CEO has been a champion for me since day one, pushing me to where it’s uncomfortable and then pushing a little more because has had more confidence in my leadership skills than I have. It’s not everywhere that you can sit down across the desk from the CEO of your company and talk about everything from building confidence in teenage kids to social media branding. I can’t imagine having a better mentor like that anywhere else I’ll ever work.

I’ve met some ridiculously awesome people here, both working alongside them in the office, people I’ve found jobs for, and even clients I’ve worked with. I am a huge fan of some of the situations I’ve found myself in while here. Finding someone a job and hearing how excited they get when you offer a position to them has been the most rewarding piece of my job ever. I’ve had to fire people from jobs before, which isn’t the greatest, but being able to still maintain a positive approach with them and encourage them to get out there and keep trying has helped me learn more about myself, too.

There are five million things I’ll take away from this job and I feel extremely fortunate knowing that 99% of those are positive. If you ever have the need for a staffing agency in any way, shape or form, I have an awesome one for you.

The Mission: Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria: Tasks must be specific (i.e. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (i.e. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days? Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple goals such as new year’s resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organizing and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

Begin Date: April 4, 2013
End Date: December 31, 2015

Items Completed: 0/101 (0%)
Items Not Completed: 0

Back before I even dribbled a basketball, Ann Meyers was at the top of the women’s basketball game. She couldn’t dunk. And she didn’t get suspended her freshman year of college for punching someone in the face (video!), but she could still play some ball. She actually signed a contract to play in the NBA. It wasn’t a flashy one and Mark Cuban wasn’t having diarrhea of the mouth when it happened, but it still happened. And it was really big deal. It still is!

But in 1980, nobody questioned whether or not Ann Meyers was a man. If you type Ann Meyers’ name into Google, the first thing it suggests isn’t “Ann Meyers man”.

Griner is 6’8” and has a wingspan of 88 inches – that’s 7 feet and 3 inches. She can dunk the ball and she can block anything, since she has a reach of 9’2”. And by God, social media and everyone that knows everything, she must be a dude. There’s no way a female could be naturally gifted in any realm of sports. It’s hogwash. And if she’s really a female, then she’s TOTALLY a lesbian, because there’s definitely no way a straight female would have a deep voice and be taller than most men.

C’mon.

Nobody says Mike Tyson is a lady because he has a higher-pitched voice. You wouldn’t dream of calling him a sissy to his face, because he’d break your nose. The Williams’ sisters are mannish when they’re playing tennis, probably because they dominate so hard. But when they’re not on the court and complete with professional hair and makeup, they suddenly become completely different people in the eyes of some people – like the subject of a wet dream. Megan Rapinoe of the US Soccer Team and an Olympic Gold Medalist came out as a lesbian in 2012, but it was all good because she’s blonde and curvy and only 5’7”, which is probably the societal norm for the height of a woman, right?

An Associate Professor at Washington State University – Pullman put together a hell of a piece on this obsession with female athletes embodying visceral fantasies of sex objects that just happen to be athletically inclined. Mechelle Voepel interviewed Griner about all this nonsense and the last line of her article, which happens to be a quote from one of Griner’s teammates, just lays it all out there:

“She loves being who she is. She’s just a big kid. She loves candy. She loves bacon. She loves sweets and soda. This is who she is. I honestly think she loves being in her own skin, and we need more people like that.”

So, a-holes, what do you think? Can you just go with that? This kid’s a champion, no matter what you think.

Amelia and I have hit our first combined weight loss goal! As of this morning, we’ve lost 25.4 pounds since starting our low carb ways of life on March 4th. Along with really limiting our carbs, I also realized about a week ago that we’re gluten-free and grain-free.

I had a doctor’s appointment earlier this week and she’s on board with it. She asked a million questions – are you eating vegetables? Are you taking vitamins? Are you drinking lots of water? Yes, yes and yes were my honest answers, so she gave us the green light.

We’ve been tracking our food religiously with MyFitnessPal. Amelia’s much better at this than me. We’ve also been cooking at home. We’ve gone out to eat maybe four times since we started in on this plan. That part has been tricky, but we’ve worked it out and our friends don’t think we’re too weird! Saturday night, we’re having dinner with Justin and Megan, who are also doing the low carb thing. I’m excited to see what they whip up and Amelia’s going to give a go at making a low carb cheesecake.

For the last few weeks, I’ve eaten more avocados than I have in my entire life. I’ve eaten cauliflower in ways that were prepared without involving cheese sauce or a tub of Ranch dressing. I’ve learned how to cook a mean steak and fry some chicken (in almond flour and pork rinds!). I dominated my birthday dinner at a Mongolian grill restaurant, which involved two gigantic bowls of meat and vegetables. We found out that Smashburger is a pretty good alternative when you’re in somewhat of a hurry. They brought our burgers (minus the bun!) out to us on platters and they were plated nicely!

I’ve cheated, mainly with beer. And I definitely saw the effect of it and trying to get myself re-adjusted, but I knew that was going to happen when I decided to have one or two or three. There have been other temptations for sure.

Non-scale related victories: I’m sleeping better. I can tuck my shirt into my pants without feeling like I’m going to suffocate. I’m wearing some of Amelia’s hand-me-downs. I’ve realized that I was probably a much more emotional eater than I thought I was, which I’m super proud that I figured out. We’re eating whole foods – meat, cheese, vegetables – and we can fly through the grocery store like crazy because we don’t have to go up and down every aisle.

We decided we were going to come up with a reward once we’d lost a combined 25 pounds. Here we are and we have no idea what how to reward ourselves. I think we’d questioned if we were going to actually do it and here it is!