A $5-6,000 repair bill, no idea what I'm going to do

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Read at your own risk, I am having a panic attack right now and this is my verbal vomiting to get it out of my system. I feel so sick at the moment I have to do something other than just break down & cry. I refuse to cry.

I have no idea what I'm going to do now. My car motor blew on the way home tonight. I had it towed to a repair shop, which was closed, so I don't have an official estimate yet. But I know enough to realize that the motor is not repairable and has to be replaced, which is an easy $5000 - $6000 bill. I still have 2.5 years left to pay on my car.

I've spent the last few years digging myself out from near bankruptcy due to my toxic abusive marriage and acrimonious divorce. I have no savings yet as a result; no credit card; way too many loans; my ex-husband provides virtually no support for our kids. Just in the last six months I've gotten a little ahead, not quite so hand to mouth, and started having a little extra so we can do more than just survive. And now this. I have no idea where I'm going to get the money. I can't ask my family, I am actually better off than them. I feel so emotionally sick right now.

If you've made it this far thank you for putting up with my whining. I now feel guilty for whining, I know I am still more fortunate than many. I am going to take a sleeping pill now and hope my subconscious comes up with some brilliant idea for how to come up with the money.

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Actual Conversation

Friday, September 09, 2011

Pseudo Friend: wow, you look amazing!
FANGFACEKITTY: thank you!

PF: What's your secret?
FFK: I just started paying attention to my portion sizes and how much I eat, stay within my calorie range, and I exercise every day. I run a lot now, and strength train.

PF: No, really, what's your secret? You've lost a lot and look great, how did you do it?
FFK: Really, I just stopped eating too much and started exercising. I belong to Spark People, an awesome site that keeps me on track and supported....

PF: (interrupting) I thought we were friends?!
FFK: We're not?

PF: If we were friends you'd let me in on your secret!
FFK: I told you my "secret". Twice.

PF: Fine, be that way. (flounces off)
FFK:

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Just some random updates

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Now that I've reached my original weight banishment goal I have decided to see if I can banish a few more pounds (while staying at a healthy BMI, I have no intention of developing an eating disorder or becoming underweight). I weighed about 120 lbs. when I was 20; I will be 40 next month so I thought it would be cool if I could get back to where I was 20 years ago. It seems balanced that way. So I've reset my ticker to show the new goal.

For my goal achieved award I finally bought a new food processor. The one I had was small, maybe 2-3 cups...and when you are trying to process a garden's worth of veggies it takes forever because the bowl is so small. Now I have a 14-cup food processor...size DOES matter!


One of my other goals was to run 2 miles in 18 minutes or less. Way down deep inside I never actually believed I could do this, but last week I did. Credit has to be given to my alter ego, Crazy Becky. She is still nuts but I couldn't have done it without her. So she gets a reward too...a running skort. Just to make sure we both understand who is still in charge I insisted upon final approval - I have to make sure it meets my (complete lack of) fashion sense:


I will be stylin' in my half marathon next weekend!

Gandalf has adapted very well to being inside the house instead of the garage. He is a much happier cat now.

Work is crazy. We are into the middle of budget season, raw material markets have significantly increased again so all of my suppliers want higher prices while our customers, believing that they are exempt from the reality in which the rest of us live, want reduced prices, and our new department VP has ideas that are very different to what we have been accustomed. This is causing my immediate manager quite a lot of stress, which will be heading my way more & more as the year continues. Plus, since one parent company bought out the other’s interest in us last year, and their HQ will be moving into our building in a few months, I fully expect the pace of integration / change will speed up…and there will be departmental consolidations. Nothing I haven’t been through before, and I am good at what I do…but that is not always the driving factor when they decide who stays and who leaves. Several people have already left the company recently for other jobs and the pace of that will surely increase as well…so more work for those still here. *Sigh* More stress.

Tuesday I had to battle the petty tyrannical high school bureaucrats over my daughter’s schedule. She very clearly indicated last year on her schedule request that she would take any elective EXCEPT gym. So what class do they give her? Yes, gym. I believe it was done deliberately. During schedule pick up last week they tried to bully her into the party line that gym is required (yes, but she does NOT have to take it as a freshman); that the class she is in is only offered to freshman (yes, but this is NOT the only gym class she can take); that there is NO other open class that hour (yeah right, you know that without even asking what hour she has gym on her schedule; if you’re that psychic you should be on the talk show circuit); that sports don’t count towards gym credit (and yet my son’s 4 years of marching band does count? Right, and I have a bridge for sale); that only the high school gym class counts & she cannot take something at the community college instead (yet they have a program where students DO take community college classes for high school credit; I know, I did it myself FOR GYM! - and I know the program is still in place). So for now I got gym off her schedule and we have 4 years to get the issue resolved. The 1st day of school was not the ideal time to fight this battle. Petty bureaucrats annoy me to no end.

Our weather has also been crazy. We went from 90F on Saturday to a high of 60F on Monday. Plus rain. I really don’t like cold, or rain, and certainly not in combination. *Sigh* I live in the wrong state. I’m really not looking forward to winter, I like snow even less. At least next week we are supposed to be in the 70s again so maybe I won’t freeze during the race.

I did get my knee looked at by the ortho doc. I have patellar tendonitis, also known as Jumper’s Knee, which is basically an inflamed tendon. So I have an Rx for an anti-inflammatory and some cream to use. He suggested taking off several weeks and going to physical therapy. I went to PT for my ACL replacement and it was a waste of time. I have a list of exercises to do to help, I have actually been doing several of these during ST since March, so I have no intention of spending 2-3 hours a week going to a PT who can’t do anything for me I can’t do myself. Nor is taking several weeks off karate / running an option. My knee has actually been feeling better the last few weeks, not worse, so I’m just continuing with my schedule for now. Same with the gall stones; they have not been an issue lately so I’m not going to take more time off work right now to go to a specialist for more tests just to verify what we already know.

And that's it for now!

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Trifecta - Doing the Happy Dance

Friday, September 02, 2011

Well August was an interesting month. For the first 3/4 of the month I was basically maintaining. I ate much more than my "norm" while keeping up with my exercise. I did not really have any scale progress, or improvement on my pushups. My 2 mile running time improved by a minute, but I still had almost 1:40 to go just to hit the max allowed time for my run.

And I was OK with all of this. I was maintaining my weight in a 3 lb range so even though I had my goal weight as 134 I had always intended to allow myself a +/- 5 lb range. And that's exactly where I was. So mentally I considered myself already at goal and was proving that I had made a true lifestyle change and could maintain it.

As part of The Proving Ground's DIY challenge my exercise focus shifted to distance running and building that up, with speed training once a week. I missed most karate classes in August and neglected my ST for the most part. As part of my final results I said my goal commitment was to reach the 50 pushups and 18 minute run time by the end of September. Silently I also intended to lose the last 2 pounds to make my goal weight loss official.

I must remind myself that words have power.

The next week I did 50 pushups in karate for the first time ever. A week later I ran 2 miles in 17:53. The next day I weighed in at 134.5.

3 major goals in 1 week!

The only thing left now is earning my black belt. And that is just a matter of time. I am recommitting to my training now that I have the run and pushups (while maintaining those). I am really starting to believe I will do this by the end of the year. For the longest time I did not really believe in myself, that I could do the run that fast. I talked the talk and I really worked at it, but deep inside I never truly thought it would happen. The weight loss and pushups were never an issue, I had done it before and knew I could do it again. The run...was scary.

Now I know better. If I really want something I can get it...if I want it bad enough.

Enough self-reflection. I am doing the Happy Dance of all Happy Dances.


My only real goal focus now is to earn my black belt. That will be mine, it's just a matter of time now.

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Garage Kitty's new name is.........

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Gandalf!

Thanks to MAMADWARF who first suggested it. Voting was very emotionally charged but the doors were locked until we had a name. Some of the contenders were Frank, Sir Snuggleface, Beemer, Jake and Otis. And a last minute entry from my son, Petrov the Merciless.

He also has a nickname...Sir Poops-A-Lot, which probably does not need further explanation.

Gandalf did OK with his neuturing yesterday and is back home in the garage. Unfortunately they made a mistake and assumed he was a feral cat because he was in a trap (which THEY insisted I put him in when I got there)...and cut off the tip of his left ear too.

Apparently that is done to ferals for later easy identification that they have already been streilized & don't need to be recaught. And because they do so many sterilizations each day the tech saw the trap & just assumed he was a feral without looking at his paperwork. I'm not too happy about that.

So now Gandalf has one pointy ear and one flat ear. It could have been worse - one of my coworkers once worked at a vet and the tech completely declawed a cat that was there for something else...and did not even get fired after the owner raised all manner of stink about it (which I would have done too!). At least I can understand how they made the mistake with his ear, and they did apologize and offer to refund the fee without my even saying anything. It doesn't fix his ear or make it right...but he can survive without his ear tip.

So his full name is now Gandalf Crop-Ear Poops-A-Lot.

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