The goal is to be completely debt free as of 12/31/2009.  Two years after I graduated college; I want to be completely free of student loans.  It'll be like finishing a new year's resolution that was not EVER one! I have $5,300 left to go.

This last year's new years resolution was probably to get those damn pants hemmed. I bought like 6 pairs of pants from Express in February of 2008 and have never worn them once because they are all longer then my legs-plus-four-to-five-inches.

This last week, I had them hemmed (Three of them anyway). FINALLY!!!  And I'm saying Finally, urgently through clenched teeth, while squatting and balling my hands. Kind of like I will be doing come December 31st.  Because getting those pants hemmed is something that I've been trying to do for a 18 months and have been incapable of getting done. I could have given birth and had a walking and talking child in that amount of time.

I made a point to leave work for a lunch break on one day last week and wandered my way into an OC dry cleaners.  I pick them up tomorrow. Hopefully. Hopefully, I will pick them up tomorrow. I could always find myself wandering into a Starbucks instead.

This next week, the goal is to ... OMG There is a GIGANTIC cricket on my floor...it's dead.

This next week, the goal is to maybe get the other 3 hemmed and send a package of books to my sister. This people! are the small things that NEVER get done in my life. These insurmountable tasks.  These books have been on my floor in the box for 3 months now.  There is a very real possibility that I will have run two marathons before I will have gotten all 6 of my pants hemmed.

I went to the Castle Green last year sometime. I think last December. And while looking through other people's stuff, I stumbled across this apartment with the most brilliant concept of alternative wall paper. This lady had found a map of Paris, cut it up, framed the pieces, bought some pink chairs, and it was stunning.  Meaning to do this on a smaller scale for my smaller apartment, 4 months later I went on-line and bought a 4x6 ft map drawn of Enfield, CT in back when carpet mills and gunpowder where all the rage. And I've been meaning to cut it up, and frame the pieces. And I go to a frame store about once a month and look at frames, and do NOTHING.  Today, I went to the frame store, circled the frame store looking dead in the eyes, did NOTHING, and left. I am frozen from action. It's like the simple task of framing poster pieces is a mental block that I can't think my way through. I can't figure out the steps it would take to get me from map-in-cardboard-tube to map-in-pieces-in-frames-on-wall. 

Still training for that marathon. The one in Santa Barbara on December 6.  I ran 10 miles yesterday with a new running buddy. If I had not been with my buddy, I would not have finished the 10 miles. period.  I was feeling a new brand of tired and worn-out.

It was really, really hot by the beach. And I was feeling more exhausted than normal.  I attributed the exhaustion to the fact that I haven't been hungry for a whole week. I don't live to eat. I only eat to live. And since I wasn't hungry like ever this week. I didn't do a whole lotta eating. So I figure my body was running low on things to burn while it ran. Also, I am a big sweater. I was covered in a shiny greasy sweat/suntan lotion mess throughout the whole run, adding greatly to my misery. I drank four 16 oz bottles of water during the run and two packs of GU.

I finished the run, and immediately felt nauseous. The kind of nausea where you tell the driver to corner slowly or else. But not the impending doom type of nausea.  After breakfast at IHOP, I also had a thin layer of white dust sheathing my skin.

What baffled me was the fact that after 6 hours, the nausea was STILL there. This has never happened to me before, and I've pushed myself pretty hard in the past.  I had movie plans that night and hurriedly tried to take a half hour nap to force myself to feel better. It didn't pan out cause I was feeling like SUCH crap. I was flirting with exhaustion, but I wasn't tired. And I gave up after a couple minutes of lying in my non-airconditioned apartment and sweating some more.

Giving up on the nap, I took a Tylenol for a headache and left like a zombie to get to the subway station.

I exited the highway and saw some golden arches out of the corner of my right eye. And SOMETHING TOOK OVER.  I felt like I had psychic magnetism cumpulsing me to follow the pulling sensation.  I burned rubber driving over the curb into the drive-through lane.

I was so desperate. An image of starving Oliver Twist popped into my mind. "Please, Sir. I want some more." And I laughed, my control well past politeness, my mind screaming. FRIES, FRIES, FRIES, FRIES. I'm going to strangle a nun if I don't get some fries.

Two dollars, a cocked eyebrow, and eighteen cents later.  I was in paradisio.  I was eating the fries and sucking the salt off of my fingers BETWEEN fries.  I am emitting sounds like a hungry baby does when gumming down on a nipple. "YUM, yum, yum, yum, mmmmmmmm, gmgmgm, yom, yum, mm, mm, mm." Another Fry. "YUM, yum, yum, yum, mmmmmmmm, gmgmgm, yom, yum, mm, mm, mm."

I drove to the subway station. And having been informed that my party would be 5 minutes late, sat down beneath a tree in some shade and continued making progress on my fries.  A scroungy looking homeless lady wandered over and stared down at me, held out her hand, and said "Fries". I normally have no interest in giving away stuff to homeless people and now was BEYOND not an exception.  I shook my head while hunching protectively over the fries till she wandered away.

By the time I pulled my head out of the carton where I had been licking the sides, I was ready, alert, non-nauseous, and ready to board a train to travel to Hollywood to watch an under-whelming movie.

I remembered my new running buddy telling me about something called Hyponatremia. This is a sodium-water imbalance in the blood. Too much water, too little salt. Symptomized, among other things, by nausea, head-aches, and comas. And caused, among other things, by sweating too much, drinking too much water, and behaving stupidly at a Rave.  Maybe I am imagining things. His telling-me-to-beware made me convince myself I had the symptoms. Maybe I really was sick.  I sweated a lot and drank a gob of water. I had nausea and a headache for 6 hours.

Either way I bought these swell looking Margarita Shot Bloks from REI that have 3x the sodium of normal Shot Bloks. Their only flavor this far with this feature.  I'm going to be packing these on any future, hot long runs. I have a half-marathon to run next week; I'll let you know how it goes. And I promise to pace myself on the water next time.

Did I tell ever tell you that when I was in Bryce Canyon, I saw a see-through scorpion.

I was sitting by the campfire drinking and overlooking some vistas containing rocks and dirt.  I hit my buddy and say, "OMG, that's a scorpion!."   He doesn't believe me so he pokes it with a stick at which point it flashes it's tail and starts charging our feet. My friend starts shrieking and hopping up and down and I fall backwards off of my chair onto my back.

My friend decided to sleep INSIDE the tent that night, and I chalked up albino scorpion to my list of crazy aminals seen in while hiking. Giant slugs,  tree hobbits, and See-through scorpions.

I slept for only 2 hours because the night turned into a sunrise unexpectedly (which by that point we HAD to stay up and watch it), and I didn't get to bed till 6ish, I'll estimate. By 8:00  AM I was simmering slowly in a tepid pool of my own sweat pooled in the bottom of my vinyl tent.

Two nights later my friend and I ended up backpacking out and sleeping in a valley surrounded by hills.  I was much more creeped out then I was the previous two nights, and I couldn't figure out why, till my friend pointed out that the last two nights I had camped on top of a hill whereas this night we were in a valley.  Then it all made sense.  But so interesting that my human nature honed as perfectly as it is for survival and reproduction wanted me to get the FREAK out of there.  And my brain, which is me, had no idea why I was so scared.

Before I retired to bed that night, I accidentally spilled a tablespoon of kool-aid spiked vodka on my backpack. I was awake for HOURS shivering with tenseness convinced that mountain-lions were licking my backpack and were going to, not content with the small tease of tart, come busting through my tent to eat me cause I was sweating cherry-flavored vodka and to punish me for sleeping inebriated at the bottom of a hill and for accidentally stepping on the who-people who were only trying to help the trees grow.