Yesterday I called the cable company and cancelled my cable and my home land-line.

We did it.

We took that plunge.

We’ve been talking about it for awhile.

I’ve been an advocate of getting rid of the land-line for a long time.  David wasn’t.  We’d had that telephone number for a very long time.  More than 20 years anyway.  But we weren’t using it.  Pretty much ever.  We cancelled caller id because no one ever called us on it who we needed to talk to.  I put the answering machine on it, and told people to call our cell phones or leave a message.  The only messages we’ve got in months are people wanting us to vote for them in the form of robo calls or people wanting to lower our interest rates.  Again in the form of robo calls.

The cable was a little more complicated.  When I suggested that we cancel it David and the BoyChild both let out screams that could be heard in the next county.  David began investigating the different options.  We bought a Roku.  Then we bought another.  We signed up for Amazon Prime and changed our Netflix to streaming video only.  David asked for and received at Christmas a USB TV tuner.  You can record over-the-air TV and burn it to a DVD.

So I called them yesterday and cancelled everything except our high speed internet.  It will save us $105 a month (actually probably more because this last bill says on it “Upcoming Price Changes” and the guy told me it would be going up another $15 or $20 a month with their price changes.  Because we all know they weren’t going to lower the prices.

The BoyChild will miss Cartoon Network.  But we’ve stopped watching television during the week, so he won’t miss it a whole lot.  And I hate the shows on CN so I don’t see it as a great loss.

So what do you think?  Anyone else take the plunge?  Got an suggestions or words of advice?

I’ve kind of fallen off the WW Wagon.

The holidays are hard.  They start with Halloween and then there’s that long slog through Thanksgiving, Christmas and then shooting out of the tube a fat mess over New Years.  Not great imagery but you get my drift.

My first week back (I didn’t go for a couple of weeks when I was going to P.T. for my knee) I’d maintained my weight.  Not bad for me, not exercising and eating my weight in Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips.

This week not so good.  I’d put on a pound.  Which is a little weird to me because I’ve begun running and cut down on my potato chip habit.  Go figure.

Recently we’ve begun cooking with brown rice.  We eat a lot of recipes off SkinnyTaste and they just go great with rice.  Brown rice is suppose to be so much better for you.

My problem is cooking it.  I have a great recipe for white rice.  Tablespoon olive oil, chopped onions, saute, throw in the rice and saute it for a minute, put in twice as much fat free chicken broth as rice (1 cup rice to 2 cups broth) depending on how much you need put in the oven and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.  25 minutes if you are my husband who likes to “improve” upon my recipes.

Brown rice doesn’t work that way.  I started with this recipe from Saveur.  And then I tried this variation from Pinch My Salt.  They are o.k. but my results are just o.k.

Anyone have a really great, basic, easy brown rice recipe?

It’s been a long rough week.

It’s only Thursday but I’ve woken up every day this week thinking, “is it Saturday yet?”

Two teenagers have committed sucide recently.  One was 14 and the other was 16.  I only have tenuous connections to them if you could even call it a connection at all, I didn’t personally know either child, but it’s hitting me hard.

They were babies.  Children.   I can’t imagine the grief their parents must feel.

I’ve not been running, so I don’t have that as a stress relieving outlet.

I am starving and I am craving junk food.  Cupcakes from Pinkitzel.  Chicken Nachos from LaLuna.  Comfort food.

It needs to be the weekend soon.

I just realized I never did show you my new boots. This is them:

That’s me on the right. On the left is my daughter’s high heels.

I know the picture doesn’t do them justice.  Here is a link to the Naturalizer web page where I bought them.

I *LOVE* them and wear them every chance I get.  They are the most comfortable, right out of the box, boots I’ve ever worn.

Man this has been one of those weeks.

I’ve been going to PT two to three times a week and getting injections in my knee once a week.  It is time consuming but the swelling has gone down which was the goal.  I’ve also not been running as much which might account for the swelling going down.

One day this week (I’ve forgotten which one it’s been that kind of week) I knocked my glasses off the sink and stepped on them.  Not a delicate, bend them out of shape sort of step either.  A break the frames and make them absolutely un-usable sort of step.

I did have a current prescription (yeah for that) but I’d planned to get my glasses on-line using that place that will send you six sets of glasses to try.  That takes time and I’d not gotten around to it yet.

So, off we went to the mall.  I have insurance to get my eye exam but not any “coverage” for the glasses or the lens themselves but I printed off the “discounts” I was suppose to get based on the “deal” the health insuance company had made with eye glass companies.  I ended up spending $269 and getting two pairs of glasses.  The eye glass company (who shall remain nameless because of a screw up I’ve not yet mentioned) had a better price than the discounts provided under my health insurance.

But.  And I didn’t ever understand how this happened.  When they actually made my glasses, they put the bi-focal prescription in the lens but not the “regular” prescription.   They were very nice, and very apologetic, and even made me a pair of lens with the regular prescription so I could see to drive until the regular ones were ready but it took three trips to the mall and two days of running around like a blind person.

Yesterday my sister had her gall bladder out.  I had forgotten how hard sitting around waiting is.  It is completely exhausting!  The patient made it through surgery safely and is recuperating at our house for the weekend.

I guess all this sums up that I’m ready for the weekend to begin because it’s been one of those weeks.

I’m not going to do a year in review.  I really have enjoyed reading everyone elses but I simply don’t have the energy for it.

Instead I’m going to tell you about my plans for this brand spanking new year.

I have decided I need to write more here.    Going along with that, I’m going to comment more.  When I first started blogging (something like 7 or 8 years ago) I loved the comments and the conversation and the community of it all.  It seems since I’ve begun reading through my google reader I hardly ever click through and leave any comments.  Sort of making me a blog stalker.  I’m going to fix that.

I’m not going to be able to run a half-marathon at Ft. Worth at the end of February.  I was terribly disappointed for awhile about this.  I had the big, ugly cry that lasted most of a Saturday.  But I’m moving on and going to find another race to set my sights on.

I’m going to try to start stitching more.  I haven’t done much stitching in awhile.  I’ve missed it and need to get back to it.

I need to get a better handle on our spending and our saving.   We have a $1,232 monthly health insurance premium, $5,950 insurance deductible we’ve got to meet, $1000 a month for the BoyChild’s tuition.  My income comes in fits and spurts but our expenses don’t.   So we need to become leaner and figure out exactly where our dollars go and when they need to go there.

And while I hate to sound like such a cliche, I’m going to continue to diet to lose weight.  I had a pretty good year last year, but I still have a long way to go.

What are your plans for the year?

I’m looking for Rules To Live By for an article I’m thinking about doing for the State Bar Publication.  Sort of the “never ask a woman when her baby is due unless she herself has told you she is pregnant becuase you have about a 50/50 chance she’ll respond, “I’m not pregnant, I’m just fat.” or something like that.

Since this is my game, I’ll start.

One rule, specific to anyone who actually goes to a Courthouse is:  When you meet someone you know in a Courthouse, you NEVER, EVER ask them “what are you doing here?”  They will tell you, in great detail, much more than you ever wanted to know.  This applies to other lawyers as well, especially those you don’t see at the Courthouse on a regular basis.  Unless it’s the guy you suspect lives in a closet in the basement, just.don’t.ask.    A lesson I learned the hard way.

You can e-mail me at mandco (at) myowncircleofconfusion (dot) com.   If you have any funny stories about how you learned your Rule to Live By,  I’d love to hear those too.

I didn’t give up after my cake pop failure.

I soldiered on trying to make something pretty and tasty.   I made exactly one of these after several  botched efforts.

They were hard to make, the bark stuff wasn’t that tasty, the oreos broke and/or fell off the sticks, the oreos fell  into the bark stuff while I was trying to coat them and then broke and the smile was harder to make than I would have anticipated.   So I said, “oh to hell with it!” and bought the ingredients to make my old standby, Magic Bars.

I threw them together, I cut them into squares, put them into pretty boxes and sent them to the BoyChild’s school.  They marked them $4 a box and all told I think I raised $32 for his school’s fund raiser.  Probably less money than I actually spent trying to make something pretty.  I would have written them a check, but they never give me that option.  Since I’m not in charge, and god knows I don’t want to be in charge, I do what they tell me no matter how ludacris it sounds.

Afterwards, I was kinda glad because all my boxes of Magic Bars sold, very early in the fund raiser, while some of the pretty, fancy, stuff didn’t sell at all.

Some day I will learn to stick with what works.  Until then, will someone please remind me of this exercise in craziness next year.

I am so excited!

I have my own personal fashion adviser, the AbFab Susan from The Working Closet!

I’ve been wanting riding boots for a long time, and I’ve finally reached a point where I can find some that fit over my fat calves.  So I asked Susan what to wear with them.

I’m off to Lands’ End to find those Ultra Fit Slim Leg jeans and I may even see if I can find the longer sort of top she refers to.

Wahoo!  I’m getting a new outfit for Christmas.

I am a cakepop failure.

For the uninitiated, cake pops are suppose to be a little bite of heaven that I first learned about from the lovely and talented bakerella.  They are cake, mixed with icing, dipped in chocolate and stuck on a stick.  I mean what’s not to like about that?

Miss Zoot said they were easy, and popular and that if she could make them anyone could.  She also said they didn’t need a stick and people would love them just made up as cake balls.

Despite what Miss Zoot said.  I am an Epic failure at cake balls.

They actually didn’t look bad.

They simply didn’t taste very good.  The texture was sort of weird.  Kind of reminded me of what sweet Play Dough tastes like but not so grainy.  And it was much more time consuming than I anticipated.  And the chocolate coating I bought at Hobby Lobby was temperamental and got thick and wouldn’t melt.  And the white sugar I thought would look like snow just looked kind of icky.

So.  Back to the drawing board.  I am a cake pop failure.