oh, you're soooooooo cool

i'm not going to reveal what my halloween costume is because all will be known in due time, but i will say this: an effort to complete it this evening took me to a store at the mall to which i'd never ventured: hot topic.

i thought i was cool. i thought i was hip. what i really learned is i'm now that old bitch who only thinks she can shop in "i'm SO punk, therefore am better than you" tweenland. for some reason my presence elicited glares from the entire U-16 shopping crowd. bitches, i can drive myself to and from the mall. you have to wait on your parents.

i do love the fact that the cashier (who looked as old as i am, but was dressed much differently than my for-work khaki pants, grey turtleneck sweater and denim jacket getup) gave me a "frequent shopper" card, knowing full and well that i likely will never return to hot topic.

i just needed a t-shirt with a skull on the front. instead i got a shirt with a skull on the front AND a healthy dose of reality. sheesh.

target therapy

it's been an ass-long week. i've worked something like seven hours of overtime, so when i got off work at 6:30 tonight, i decided i needed to cleanse my brain and visit the promise land for a while.

the front of my house is now decked out with orange lights, plastic jack-o-lanterns and bones mcghee:

and i have cute sweaters to wear now that it's getting nippy:
(green, of course)

(that sweater actually looks a whole lot better on me. i should be a target model! )

and a list of stuff to find when i visit the other target tomorrow.

woe is my target credit card.

goals, goals, goals

i've decided i need rewards for when i hit benchmarks in my weight loss. my health magazine says you should have rewards for every five pounds that you lose ... otherwise, if you set your goals to be like 10 or 20 lbs, you'll get frustrated before you ever reach a goal.

i've done pretty well this week in sticking to my plan. i've eaten almost all healthy food, have exercised several times and have reached beyond my goal number of steps each day on the pedometer. the benefits have been great: i've had a lot more energy, i've lost about two pounds (which is within my margin of daily fluctation, but i'm still happy) and feel like i look a little slimmer when i look in the mirror.

so, my goody bag of rewards that i can choose from when i lose a solid three more pounds is as follows:
- something from jcrew because i love their stuff but am usually too cheap to buy it. you have to have a good excuse to spend the money on jcrew, and this seems as good as any
- a new pair of shoes. i'm about to need some new new balances, but i'm also interested in some sporty outdoorsy shoes, boat shoes and a pair of nice brown flats that i could wear to work but still walk in on my break
- a facial. i've never had one of these (again, too cheap), but i know i could seriously use one. the skin on my face could rival a 15 year old's.
- a few sessions with a personal trainer. this sounds more like a step to losing weight than a reward, but the thing is, i want someone who knows what they're doing to set up a plan that will help me tone my body. i can exercise to lose weight, but i still struggle with getting my muscles to look hot.
- pilates class or two. see previous explanation.

most of these items, ok all of these items are basically stuff i've avoided buying or paying for because i'm otherwise too cheap. i don't want to replace one problem with another by starting to spend a lot of money, but i know i won't be hitting my goals weekly, so i think it will be ok. plus, i can't reward myself with a big fancy dinner out, cause that would just defeat the purpose.

don't it make my blue bags green

i called in sick to work today, so i'm blogging in hopes of distracting myself from the ills of being cooped up in a house filled with the sounds of the jackhammering going on across the street. you'd think i live in the middle of new york city rather than in the nashville 'burbs.

anyway, i want to brag about a particular purchase of mine yesterday: reusable kroger bags.

yes, i know i look so nerdy carrying them, but i feel so responsible. they were super cheap -- 99 cents for the regular ones and like $2.99 for the special insulated ones.

i've always, always, always hated the plastic bags. environmental unfriendliness aside, it takes like five times as many plastic bags than paper bags to carry your groceries. after two trips to the grocery store, you find your kitchen is drowning in a sea of plastic bags. (although i have to give some of the stores credit for placing recycling bins for the bags at their doors, though i think i'm one of five people who uses the bins for recycling rather than trash.) and they break. they always break. they break because 12-year-old bagger boy has not figured out the laws of physics yet.

i do like the paper bags because you can fit so much stuff into them. and the ones from the organic stores that come with handles rock my face off. i always reuse the paper bags to stuff my used newspapers into for transport to the recycling station. but, i still somehow end up with more paper bags than i need for my newspapers. plus it annoys me that i have to ask the bagger to use them. i always forget to do this until he/she has bagged half of my purchase in the plastic bags.* what happened to the days of "paper or plastic?"

*it doesn't take them long because they don't put a whole lot of thought into it. i always find my flank steak cut in the same bag as my toilet bowl cleaner. yummy.

anyway, so i've got the reusable bags now, which i plan to also use to transport my newspapers for recycling. i'll spare you the preaching about how i'm being so good to the environment by saving it the energy/pollution it takes to produce and recycle grocery bags and just leave you with one thought that so pleases my thrifty-minded self: they (are supposed to) give you 4 cents back on your grocery bill for each reusable bag you bring use with your grocery order. So, by my calculations, I just have to use them on 50 shopping trips to get my money's worth ... hmmm.

Oh, and the reusable bags don't make the baggers any smarter. The bagger yesterday asked me if the insulated bag was for the refridgerated and frozen items. No, there for me to smack you over the head with. And this time I found my flank steak smushed between two boxes of cereal. Thanks, guys.