Back in the Saddle, Plus More!

So, by now you all know that I'm hit or miss with blogging. I always hope to fall into a regular routine, but it ends up being very difficult for me. Part of that struggle is that when life is interesting, there's no time to write... but when I have time to write, it usually means I'm not up to much of anything.

With that in mind, I'm considering running a series of stories from our adventures on Flogging Molly's Salty Dog Cruise 2016. We had so much fun, and it was so awesome, but the level of detail to do our adventures justice would require multiple posts. We've already put down the deposit for our cabin next year, and I HIGHLY recommend YOU come with us!! We're already planning hijinks.


After we returned from the Cruise [and our accidental pit stop in Denver, thanks to a combination of food poisoning and bad weather], my quarter started at school. When you factor in the wedding, this is my first quarter with ZERO distractions--I am able to focus entirely on school and learning. It helps that Matchu is so supportive. He takes care of a lot of the little things so that I don't have to stop what I'm doing, and I can stay at campus longer and make sure my assignments get done on time. So far, it's been paying off! Surprisingly, my entry-level engineering course is actually the most work, and I'm not struggling much with Trig. Java... well, bless his heart he's trying to teach. It's not great. But, I'm having a lot of fun fooling around with code.

This is the very first mixed media project I did.
I keep it hanging over my desk.

Part of the reason that I think I'm doing better this quarter is that I am embracing my true nature. "To thine own self be true," said Mel Gibson. Just kidding, it was totally Polonius. But yeah, embracing yourself is much easier than fighting against yourself. What do I mean by this? Let me give you a couple examples. I've taken a lot of pressure off of myself to focus or complete one task entirely. Instead, I will do bits and pieces of things until I get settled. It may seem disorganized, but I've actually managed to accomplish more by doing this than by dreading every task ever. Another thing that I am accepting is a biphasic sleep schedule. I've written about this before, and I've done this before, and now that I can control my whole life, I keep coming back to it. Again, it helps to have a supportive partner who holds such vomitously cute beliefs as, "as long as you're sleeping next to me, and we get to cuddle, it's like spending time together."

For some reason, the days that I have every class, I come home exhausted. I'm not sure why--it's not like I have to hike up a mountain or walk to school or anything. My guess is that either a) using that much brain power to concentrate, think, focus, study, process information is tiring; OR b) being around that many people in one day is exhausting. I wish I could explain this idea in more depth, but think of it in a metaphysical, personal space kind of way. Either way, the days I only have one class, I am much less tired. But on the days I have all my classes, I have to take a long nap. Instead of fighting  to stay awake and making myself miserable, I can make the best of it and adjust. I usually sleep for 2-3 hours, and then either go to yoga or do homework. Then I'm free to stay up til at least midnight, which is a much more natural time for me to go to "bed." But since I've already gotten one sleep cycle out of the way, waking up around 8 am is no longer a miserable ordeal. I'm actually settling into a nice routine of taking out the pup, making coffee, etc.

The Back-Slide Cha-Cha

Two steps forward, Three steps back. Cha-cha-cha.

I realized yesterday how easy it is to slip back into bad habits--and how difficult it is to maintain good ones. We wanted to eat at home and cook more, rather than eat out [for the benefit of both health and our bank accounts]. That lasted about two weeks. I wanted to get back into yoga. One week on, one week off. I'm not on here to bitch and moan though, more to muse. Within a week or so, we stopped cooking, I stopped keeping my food log, started buying coffee rather than making it at home... it was all just so easy to start again. But now that I've really caught the backsliding, I can actually do something about it. So.

Today when I woke up it was actually perfect weather to do yard work. So I did! I spent a good couple hours planting more crocus bulbs, aerating part of the side yard and sowing lavender, and sweeping up the sidewalk. I will probably regret this tomorrow, if not later tonight. I was going to weed the side flower bed, but Mr. Obnoxious was being, well, obnoxious. Decided it was probably time to give the neighbors' ears a break.

I haven't been writing [obviously today changes that]. I did manage to finish one of the baby blankets, but the other is still barely started. Although I dropped my math class, I have been keeping up pretty well on Kahn Academy. However... I'm a little nervous about taking pre-Calc 2 and Java at the same time, so I started doing some of their JS tutorials. I'm not trying to brag, but this entry level type coding seems to be coming to me very naturally. It's kind of like line-editing, or learning a foreign language. It's all just a matter of knowing the right commands and using 'correct' punctuation [for the program]. I'm hoping that this might be the start of me settling into a career finally.

Unfortunately, I can't focus on coding as strongly with company over... the boys are about to start playing something online, which will distract the hell out of me. And we'll probably throw on a movie as well. I could work on the other blanket, but my hands are kind of sore from gardening. I'm definitely too tired and sore to be cleaning up or doing more laundry [why is it that laundry never ends?]... soooo I will likely try Civ Beyond Earth again. It was on sale so we snagged it. I'm still not sure how I feel about it--I can't seem to do as well on BE as I have on V--but then again, I have played V for years. Plus, I'm limited to things I can do with a puppy in my lap.

Side note, Pup-date: He's had his stitches out for a couple weeks now and everything's doing well. He finally got a bath again! He still has one teeny scab from the stitches, but everything else is healed up. Except... he hasn't quite grown back his foot fur yet, so his toes look really creepy. Especially next to his other foot. We're hoping that was his last histiocytoma, but only time will tell. He'll be 2 this July, which is around the time they 'normally' stop showing up.