At 5:00 am.

Really.

So, I got myself ready and headed out to Target.  I got to the parking lot around 4:50.  There wasn’t a spot to be had in Target’s lot, so I parked in the lot next door.  I got in line to enter the store.

The end of the line was around the building at the loading docks.

Really.

I got inside and there weren’t any carts left.

Really.

I dragged my but back to a very large air hockey table that was on sale for fifty bucks.  (This was the gift I told my folks that the kids would like – and they will).  I grabbed the table, and, without a cart, dragged it through the store.  I offered one guy ten bucks for his cart.

Really.

I still didn’t get it…he had something large to get.

So, I propped up my air hockey table and headed to the front of the store to stalk people for a cart.  I finally got one.  I tried to do some more shopping.  I had the best of intentions.  I was going to get all the shopping done.

HA!

I waited in line at the electronics counter (because I needed an iPod Touch) for over an hour to pay for all of my crap.  I did save ten percent because I opened a Target charge, and got 25 bucks in gift cards back.

I left the house at 4:30 and got back at 7:45.  And I just went to one store.

Really.

Have a great day!

I’ve also been very good about going to the gym and exercising.  And even though I couldn’t go to the gym yesterday, I still exercised.  I did some disco abs thingie on Comcast OnDemand.  Chloe did it with me.  It was quite comical.

I don’t want to gain any weight because of the whole no smoking thing.  I know that if I stepped on a scale and saw that I GAINED five pounds, I would get my fat ass in the car and drive down to the convenience store for cigarettes.  Plain and simple.  So, I’ve also joined Weight Watchers online (just for three months…then I’m going to cancel.  In fact, ‘cancel Weight Watchers’ is already in my to-do list for February).  I didn’t realize how much CRAP (well, not crap in the literal sense.  But crappy food.) I shove in my mouth.  Especially after getting those two bags of Halloween candy for half off.  The Heath bars?  Long gone.  But I still have the Mounds.  I’m thinking I should just finish off the bag and delay Weight Watchers for a few days. 

Because my timing is always so perfect, it just so happens that Thanksgiving falls this week.  So, I’ll be eating a ton of food that day.  Oh well.  At least I don’t really have to cook anything.  I still have my sister in laws convinced that I can’t cook.  Which is just fine with me.  My assignment for Thanksgiving dinner?  Celery stuffed with cream cheese and peanut butter.  I almost got found out a couple of months ago, and my sister in law Anita found out that I make a mean ham.  I have since sworn her to secrecy.  Since she’s not actual Downey blood, I think I’ll be OK.  I’ll probably get found out right now…but hopefully they think that I’m lying right now and that I really can’t cook.

Kristina – you just roll with me here.  Don’t tell your aunts.  But that’s why you got stuck making pies. Because they know you can.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I mean, they’re coming for me.  I’m assuming that they’re coming for every other person (or at least every other mother) in the world, too.

It’s that month between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It’s one month of slightly controlled chaos, enormous amounts of pressure and lots of extra calories.

I don’t mean to sound like a Scrooge, but I’ve NEVER been big on Christmas.  I take that back.  I was never really big on Christmas once I had to be the grown up (even before I had kids).  I don’t like deadlines, I stress about whether or not I bought something for all the people on ‘the list,’ should I have joined that cookie exchange and did I send cards out to everybody that I got a card from?

Ugh.

So, because Thanksgiving is not until next week, I’m sticking with the whole “Let’s make a better Heather” theme.  Smoking habit?  Kicked. (Don’t get me wrong…I still want to smoke.  A lot.  But I won’t).  Exercise?  Check – five times a week at the gym.  Weight?  Working on it with the exercise and some bland tasting, low calorie foods.  Except for the bag of Heath bars I bought that were on sale after Halloween.  But they’re very small  I’m doing all the crap my doctor wants me to do.  I just need a check up at the dentist, AND I need to get my hair done.

So, tomorrow I’m going to get my hair cut and colored.  Let’s see…I’m going to look back at some old posts…The last time I got my hair cut and colored would be August 13th.  More than three months.  Which explains the roots that are over an inch long.  And the greys.

Oh, the greys.

So, tomorrow will be it for a while.  The last thing I do for me until after Christmas.  Then I’ll be officially diving in.  Present buying, cookie making, wrapping, cards, decorating, attending concerts, making treat bags for school…the list will go on forever.  I’m gonna slap a smile on my face and enjoy it, damn it!  Really, I am.

I just hope I don’t come out on the other side of Christmas as a smoking, lazy, 50 pound overweight mom with a crushed sense of self and a crushed sense of humor.

But hey, then at least I won’t have a hard time picking out some resolutions for 2010.

1. I really want a cigarette.  I haven’t had one, I’ve been good.  But I’m dealing with a craving that has lasted pretty much for the past 4 hours.
2. I’ve decided that if I ever find out I have some type of terminal illness, I’m going right back to smoking.

Just sayin’

Other than that, I’m just trying to think some happy thoughts…and I’m chewing lots of gum

ANYWAY, that was the last time I smoked.  The next day I went to work…at the restaurant…you know, where there’s ALL THAT FOOD?!?!?!  I couldn’t stop eating.  I just didn’t know what to do with myself.  At 10:30 I had roast beef and mashed potatoes.  A couple of hours later I had some funnel cake fries (they really are super yummy).  An hour later…nachos with cheese and jalapenos.  It was crazy.

Thankfully, the gym that Tony and I decided to join opened the next morning.  So, I headed off to the gym, determined not to gain the weight that normally comes along with quitting smoking.  I’ve done pretty well with at least GOING to the gym.  And here’s the best story about that:

Thursday morning I decided to take a Zumba class.  I’ve always liked the dance-y stuff, and figured it would be fun.  Because it was the first day they were actually having classes at the gym, there were only two other women in the class with me.  I announced to everybody that I had just quit smoking, and that I hadn’t exercised since, maybe, high school. I asked that if I decided to just quit and lay down on the floor, would they politely just ignore me.

I hung in for the class pretty well.  It’s a 45 minute class, and around minute 35 I decided that I needed to be done.  I thanked the instructor (I really did enjoy the class) and told her I’d see her the following week.  Chloe and I headed out to Kohl’s for some shopping.

And then it hit me.

I thought I was going to have a stroke in the middle of Kohl’s.  Chloe and I sat in the shoe section for a while, and I told her that if mommy fell down onto the floor to just go and get somebody who worked here.  I figured that no, I probably wasn’t having a stroke.  But the fact that I had a Fiber One bar for breakfast and then proceeded to dance around like a horny club going 21 year old for a half an hour might have been the problem.  After I felt a little better (and ate a sucker to get through our shopping trip), Chloe and I headed to McDonalds for a Happy Meal and some grilled chicken wraps.

So, I haven’t died of exhaustion, stroke, over eating or nicotine withdrawal.  And I haven’t killed or injured anybody.  I don’t think I’ve even made anybody cry.  I’d dare to say that’s a pretty good first week of not smoking and diving into exercise, don’t ya think?

But now it’s starting to get weird.

I’ve been reading up again on some LOA stuff.  I find that if I brush up every six months or so, I stay on track with knowing what my goals are and staying focused on those goals.  A few years back (three, maybe?), when I first read The Secret, I put something out there, and I never told anybody about it.  Being the logical, naturally skeptical person that I am, I decided to give the law of attraction a few tests.  When I would think about it, I would use it for a great parking space, a short line at the store or green lights while driving.  One big thing that I threw out there was a feather.  More specifically, I pictured a very large bright pink feather laying on the ground.  I thought, OK, if this stuff really works, this bright pink feather will come into my life.  Just one feather.

Fast forward to October 31, 2009.  After a night at a neighbor’s party, I woke up and came down into my kitchen to a) take three ibuprofen and b) drink some coffee.  And I saw it.  One very large and very bright pink feather laying on my counter.  I was so, well, hungover that I didn’t make the connection right away.  Later that afternoon, when Tony was awake, it hit me.

“Where the hell did this huge pink feather come from?” I asked.  He said that Mary, his sister (who had dressed as an American Indian) gave it to him for the girls.  It had fallen out of her costume.  Then I told Tony about the whole Law of Attraction/pink feather story.

Weird.

Two days later, we were sitting in the basement.  The girls were playing and Tony and I were watching television.  I knew that my neighbor would be stopping by to pick up her son’s special cup that he had left at our house that afternoon.  It was about fifteen minutes before she said she would be there, and I looked at Tony and asked if he thought we would hear the doorbell down in the basement.  Right exactly after I said that?

Ding-Dong.

Creepy.

The next day, I was on the telephone with Tony (he was at work).  I had been forgetting to tell him about a band that wanted to play at the bar.  While I was talking to him (about something completely different), the thought of this band hit me like a ton of bricks.  I told him to stop whatever he was telling me, I HAD to tell him about this band–I’d been forgetting for a week!.  I sat at the computer to sift through my emails and get this man’s phone number.  As I started my email program and it checked for new mail, I got an email from this guy!  The time stamp was just a minute earlier…when that overwhelming feeling hit me like a ton of bricks.

I’ve decided that i don’t believe in coincidence anymore.  EVERYTHING happens for a reason….even if I don’t really know what that reason might be.

On a side note, the non-smoking me is doing very well.  Although I may become addicted to dum-dum suckers and double bubble gum.  Oh well

There was literally cheers and jumping up and down.

So, after we finished all of our work at home, we packed up.  We had to stop at the bank and the restaurant first, but then we could have our little adventure.  As we were getting ready to go, Becca asked me where my backpack was.  I told her it was in the closet….why?  She told me that I needed to take it to the zoo.  OK, I understood.  I told her I didn’t need to take it to the zoo…I didn’t need diapers, wipes, bottles, extra formula, etc.  The last time I took Chloe to the zoo, she was just about to turn three.  Well…she was out of diapers by then.  But I still needed that emergency extra outfit, just in case.  (I never actually had to use the extra outfit, but I felt better just having it).

I told the girls that they were much easier to just take along to places now.  And they are.  I fed them McDonalds in the car.  Beautiful.  I didn’t have to rent a wagon – they walked the whole time.  Chloe was a bit nervous on whether or not the animals could get out.  We had a great time – the two favorites were the monkeys and the polar bears.  One of the polar bears was in the water, playing with his toys.  We ended the day in the Kids Kingdom, running across wobbly bridges, crawling through tunnels and climbing gigantic rope spider webs.

There wasn’t any fighting.  Although there were a few attempts to plead for a stuffed animal to take home, they both settled for a huge sucker and a mood ring (yes, I got a mood ring for myself, too – but not a sucker).  It was a fantastic afternoon.  It was one of those days that I fantasized about when I was awake at 3:00 am feeding a bottle to a cranky infant.

My chicks rock.  My family rocks.  Although Tony couldn’t be with us yesterday, we get to have an awesome family day today.  I’m holding on to yesterday.  And next week, when I’m screaming for everybody to stop touching each other, telling Chloe to stop choking the dog and cleaning up everybody’s mess, I’m going to stop, sit down, and think about yesterday.

Maybe it will stop me from having the “Mom Freakout.”

It took me some time to find the things I ACTUALLY needed, but it would have taken me time in any grocery store that I was in for the first time.  I found what I needed, held back my desire to plop myself down with coffee and a book, and headed out.  For 9:00 in the morning, that place was pretty darn busy.

You may have read yesterday that I finished the daily to-do list.  I think I will finish today’s, also.  Just one problem, though…three of our waitresses called off for the night.  Out of five.  Jinkies.  I’m scrambling to get shifts covered.

I haven’t waited on a table in seven years.

Please, God, don’t make me have to go in there and play waitress.  I don’t think I have the energy.

Trick-or-treat was changed up a bit this year.  Tony took the girls around while I stayed at the home front and passed out the goods.  The girls were happy with their stash of junk food, and have been playing candy store ever since.

I am in the process of going through some pretty wicked nicotine withdrawal.  But I’m still smoking.  How, you ask?  Well, I’ve been using these Quest low nicotine cigarettes.  Although they are incredibly hard to find, I managed to get enough to get by (I think).  These smokes are set up in three steps.  Regular cigarettes have about 1.9 mg of nicotine in them.  The step 1 Quest cigs have .6 mg of nicotine.  I am on my last pack of the step 2 cigarettes, and they have .3 mg of nicotine in each.  Step three is nicotine free.  I’ve been smoking the same amount of cigarettes I usually smoke (about a half to 3/4 of a pack a day).  But, believe me, I’ve felt the difference in my body not getting nicotine!  Up until today, I have had the severe sleepies.  At first I didn’t make the connection.  Then a couple of days into it, I realized that my body was functioning without the high levels of stimulants it was used to.

I have about two and a half packs of cigarettes left (one of step 2 and 2 of step 3…like I said, they were hard to come by).  I figured that once my body was done needing nicotine it would be easier to work on the psychological addiction I have.

OK…enough about that.  Can I tell you that I actually STARTED CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TODAY?  Well, it was all online, but I still bought a few toys for the kids.  I’m going to convince myself that I love the Christmas season, I love to shop, and the whole thing is stress-free…even enjoyable.  Right now I don’t believe any of those things that I just typed.  But, I’ll bring that good old law of attraction with me and just believe it.

Well, happy weekend

BTW – I finished my whole to-do list for today.  ”blog post” was the last thing!!!!

They crack me up.

Rex had his first appointment at the groomer yesterday.  Thank God it’s just over the hill, because he was able to get through the car ride without any puke.  The ladies there all loved him, and he smells nice and pretty, his nails are trimmed and he’s soft.  Here’s the wild thing right here: