Comments (45)

By kilax, March 11, 2010 5:45 am

I am so sick and tired and of saying the same things over and over.

It is mostly reminding people of things they can’t do, should do, or I told them to do, and they didn’t do (and now the shit’s hit the fan, go figure).

Why is this information not sinking in?

Really, on Monday, I had a discussion with someone reminding them about a certain protocol (that we had already discussed in January and December).

They broke protocol on Tuesday.

So I remind them again.

And again.

And again…

I just get so infuriated!

Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me? Do you ever feel like you are stuck on repeat?

I am wondering if I am not clear enough, or if people just… don’t listen. Or, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt – maybe they are just really forgetful.

Either way, it’s such a waste of time for me to be constantly repeating things.

Sorry to be so vague!

Comments (60)

By kilax, February 10, 2010 5:50 am

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you feel like it is never enough.

It’s not enough to…

• eat quaker oats for breakfast, it should be steel cut oats
• use pre-milled flaxseed, you should mill it yourself
• drink enough water to stay hydrated, you should be drinking filtered water
• make your own homemade wheat thins, if they still have sugar in them
• try to limit your sugar intake, if you are still eating regular sugar
• try to eat a healthy diet, you should also be fasting
• sprout your own beans, if you aren’t sprouting the right ones
• eat produce, if it’s not organic

(No, this isn’t about other bloggers.)

I do what I can. I am not perfect or trying to pretend I am. I eat processed foods. I struggle with overeating. I think I ate 20 oreos when I got to Iowa on Monday. I am pretty sure I will be eating my way through this sadness over my grandpa’s death.

But with all of that being said… I don’t feel bad about who I am. I am trying. I am trying to live a healthy lifestyle. It’s a bumpy journey. It’s even bumpier when you try to share it with people* who only want to tell you what you should be doing differently.

It’s funny. I am around people who don’t think about this stuff at all (they don’t exercise or watch what they eat) but I am the one getting all of these “suggestions.” Why talk to me? Why not talk to someone who is not doing ANYTHING?

And the thing is, if someone lectures me for a long time, basically telling me how to live my life, I’m not really going to buy into anything they are saying if they can’t back it up. I’m not. So, a tip – know what the hell you are talking about.

So what if I like cock soup?! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
(Just kidding… it has chicken fat in it)

*Not everyone reacts the way I am describing, obviously.

Comments (30)

By kilax, January 23, 2010 9:14 am

I didn’t want to talk about this, but it has become ridiculous.

I have gotten viruses from visiting websites hosted by blogger/blogspot on December 20th, January 20th, and again this morning, January 23rd.

I am reading the blogger/blogspot site in google reader, then click on the post title to leave a comment, and when then post opens in a separate tab, a “virus scan” pops up that is actually the virus.

My sweet and patient husband has had to reformat both my large laptop and baby laptop already and now will have to do it again.

NO MORE.

This is extremely infuriating.

If you have a blog hosted by blogger/blogspot*, I will not be leaving comments on your site anymore (unfortunately, half the blogs I read are hosted by blogger/blogspot). I will be reading, and maybe send you an email with my comments.

Until I figure out what the hell is going on.

I should not be getting a virus just from clicking over to leave a comment on someone’s post.

Comments (15)

By kilax, November 9, 2009 5:22 am

… to ask the neighbor kids to stop hanging on the tree in our yard and breaking the young branches off?

… to ask the neighbor kids to quit playing IN THE STREET and yelling at cars?*

… to ask the neighbor kids to stop scratching on the back of the large residential mailbox with sticks?

I am not a parent. So, parents, ANYONE in fact, please call me out if there is any reason why I should just let these kids do their own thing.

I just wonder… why do their parents not worry about them playing in the street? Or defacing public property? Or ruining our already pathetic looking neighborhood trees?

Why do I have to be the neighborhood bitch?**

*One time, Steven bribed them to get out of the street by giving them fresh cookies.
**We’ve had to ask these particular neighbors, and others, unfortunately, to please turn down the loud music they blast out of their open garages in the middle of the night.

Comments (19)

By kilax, September 2, 2009 6:38 pm

Do you ever wish you could just stop someone in the middle of a sentence and say to them, “I DON’T CARE!”?

You know, to those people who are always yammering on about the same old crap to you? Or yammering on about some new crap, who knows. The point is, you are sick of hearing them go on… and on… and on…

Especially when they never listen to you to begin with.

Of course, I have people like this in my life that I am not really at liberty to talk about here. So I’ll ask all of you to tell me your best stories instead! Please rant away, if you’re in the mood…

Comments (22)

By kilax, August 25, 2009 8:13 pm

Does it make anyone else CRAZY when you walk up to your car* in a parking lot and find some random flier under the windshield wiper?

This drives me absolutely mad, but I’ve talked to a few people who it doesn’t seem to bother at all. Take my crazy mother for example. She actually said, “I like it when people put fliers on my car. It makes me feel special.” But then after I argued with her for a bit about it she said it would upset her if she had a new car like me (My mom is still driving some car she won in the 80s).

And someone else told me it doesn’t bother them – they just take it off and put it on the car next to theirs, hoping they will recycle it. (Who said this to me?! Please reveal yourself! I cannot remember!)

I think it bothers me so much because it is a HUGE waste of paper, and results in a lot of littering. AND, I am very VERY unlikely to use the services of someone if their method of advertisement is a flier on my CAR.

And, I don’t like the idea of anyone touching my car. The lot I park my car in to ride the train is in a pretty shady area. My old car got keyed there, and last year I arrived to find someone’s glass busted out of their car. I made sure to have special vandalism insurance on my new car. I am just waiting for the day I walk out to it and find something wrong with it.

Anyway, if there is someone out there who is not annoyed by finding fliers under their car windshield wiper, please feel free to argue with me! Or agree if it makes you crazy too!

*Or your theoretical car, if you don’t have one.

Comments (17)

By kilax, August 3, 2009 12:46 pm

I’ve had a myriad of customer service issues over the last year (and currently) that I haven’t mentioned here. Any extra time thinking about it makes me feel even more infuriated, so I try to avoid it.

But this weekend, Steven and I were sharing customer service horror stories with my mom, and it got us all thinking – what is the deal with people NOT returning business-related phone calls? Ever?

I don’t get it. I leave a message with my info, you call me back in about a day. It’s that simple. It’s a business relationship, and that is what I expect. Unless your message said you are out, and left another person to contact, I expect to be called back.

So why am I not? How do people get away with NEVER returning business phone calls? Why do I have to call back, again and again and again?

It makes me even more upset, when I am just trying to be an easy-going customer to begin with. It makes me more likely to turn into a difficult customer, and I don’t want to be THAT customer.

What has happened to good customer service? Maybe someone has a good customer service story to cheer me up? Or maybe you’ll just join in my rant!

Comments (19)

By kilax, July 22, 2009 9:57 pm

The site:

My website went down on Sunday because my domain did not get renewed. I am  not sure what the mix-up was, because I normally get a bill for it, and I don’t think I did this year. I contacted my web host right away, who fixed and it said it would take “24-72″ hours to come back up. 72 hours later, when it STILL didn’t work, they said they just had to point the domain name to the root folder to fix the issue. Why didn’t they do that in the first place?!?!

Thank you to everyone who asked me about it. I really appreciated your concern and inquiries! It was nice to know my friends wondered where I was… but frustrating that I could not do anything about it!

Update: Thanks to Lindsay and Etta for pointing out the comments were not working. Ugh. This is giving me a headache and making me really frustrated. I had to go back in and turn on comments and pings on EVERY post.

The Missed Blogiversary:

Yesterday was my four year blogging anniversary, and I missed it. Poo poo. Oh well.

The movie:

I am hoping to write a review of Food Inc. soon. I can happily tell you that I did not find it horribly graphic, but that I was disturbed.

The wrist:

I saw the orthopedic specialist on Friday. He pressed his fingers into my wrist, asking “Does this hurt?” until he finally got a “YES!!!!” or two out of me.

He told me that because the pain is more general, it is likely torn ligaments that are trying to heal, and have scar tissue on them that need to be stretched back out. He gave me a new brace to wear (with velcro straps THANK HEAVENS) for another month. He told me to wear it during the day, taking it off a few times to move my wrist back and forth. If I don’t gain full mobility in my wrist in a month, I need to go back to the doctor so he can try to pinpoint the exact ligaments (muscles?) that are still giving me problems.

As you can see from the photo, I cannot move my right wrist back very far. The doctor measured it, and I could only get it to go back 38 degrees. My wrist doesn’t hurt as much anymore, but I am a bit creeped out by how limited the motion in it is. I keep saying to Steven, “Maybe I could never bend my right wrist back that far…”

That’s as far back as I can get the right wrist to go, even when I push on it with my other hand.

Oh, and since I am talking about it, I just want to add a little detail to the story of how this all happened. Some people mentioned that this incident reminded them of the motherly warning, “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.” Well, I want to let you know that the FIRST thing my mom said to me when I got to the beach (because she went on the first boat trip over) was, “Kim! I am surprised you didn’t go straight to that slide to try it out! Are you going to?!?!”

Comments (14)

By kilax, July 1, 2009 11:45 am

You know what’s exhausting? Trying to give someone what they want, when what they want is constantly changing*.

I am sick of trying to figure people (and their mood swings) out. I know it’s their issue, not mine, but still, it’s exhausting and wearing me down.

My therapist pointed out that when someone is really detail oriented and likes to pick things apart, that by letting it ruin my day, I am doing the same thing – focusing in on the irrelevant details. What a good point. So I am working on not letting the small things build up, but in the meantime… ugh. I feel like I am constanlty being attacked.

*Because they are crazy, and want one thing one day and something different the next.

Comments (12)

By kilax, May 31, 2009 8:29 am

I love the convenience of shopping for groceries at Target, I really, really do.

But I am really, really frustrated with shopping there right now. They keep dropping the products we buy – Cocina Nueva Mexican rice, 8th Continent Soy Milk, whole wheat flour (why the hell would they drop that?), Odwalla bars, Barabara’s Bakery products… the list could go on. And the selection is just crap. I cannot find any vegan margarine or vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips. They have hardly any organic produce. They’re always out of the cereal we want. Ugh.

I really don’t want to be one of those people that shops at four different stores on the weekends. I liked getting everything I needed at Target, and not wasting too much time. But it sounds like I am going to have to make a supplemental trip somewhere else. Perhaps I will finally step inside a Whole Foods since I still haven’t visited once since I moved out here over two years ago. I am grateful that I live in such a big area and have these other stores to shop in. I know I will find what I want, it just may not be as convenient as I like it to be.

I actually wanted to share a few products I have tried lately and liked. Ironically, I found one of these (the Odwalla bars) at Target one week and they were gone the next. Oh well.

Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza: I really like pizza (who doesn’t, right?) so I’ve been wondering… what kind of pizza does a vegan eat? We found this vegan Roasted Vegetable pizza to try. It has marinated organic shiitake mushrooms, roasted red peppers, sweet onions, marinated artichoke hearts and no cheese. Yum yum yum! It smelled super strong when it was cooking, so I was kind of worried that it would taste too “fancy pants” for me, but we both ended up really liking it. It’s very sweet – I think the onions used are vidalia. It’s not like eating a cheese pizza, but it’s very tasty. I would also like to try Amy’s other vegan pizzas – Rice Crust Spinach and Non-Dairy Rice Crust Cheeze Pizza. Of course, we don’t have these at Target, and I am surprised they still had the Roasted Vegetable when I visited Target yesterday.

Odwalla Chocolate Chip Peanut Bar: Two weeks ago, Target had entire boxes of these flavor of Odwalla bar. I bought one to try since I like Berries GoMega so much. HOLY CRAP! These are so good, and they’re vegan! I actually wrote a sticky note on the box that said, “Steven, you HAVE to try one of these. They are like a little slice of heaven.” Like the other Odwalla bars, it is very chewy and dense, which are characteristics I like in a granola bar. And it’s sweet, but not too sweet.  The perfect treat! They were gone on yesterday’s Target trip though. The Berries GoMega bars where there. I noticed they had two different kinds of packaging – a 6 pack with 2.2 oz bars, and a 6-pack with 2 oz bars. Hmm, which should I buy? Way to phase those out, Target. On a side note, I found out that another store in our area has almost all of the Odwalla Bar flavors, but in single serving only. I got Strawberry Pomegranate (not that impressed) and SuperFood and Super Protein (haven’t tried those yet).

Stonewall’s Jerquee: A coworker told me about a health food store downtown so I decided to check it out. They had a few different brands of vegetarian beef jerky, so I picked up two packages of Stonewall’s to try – Original Mild, and BBQ “Beef” (BBQ “Beef” is the only one they carry that is not vegan, because it has honey in it). I called Steven to tell him about it, and it seemed pretty weirded out. BUT, we ate the the BBQ “Beef” packet on Friday night and were shocked – it is so realistically close to tasting like beef jerky, that Steven actually said, “It feels wrong to eat this.” They got the chewy texture just right. What a fun snack. I ordered some big bags off of their website.

What a piece of the vegetarian jerky looks like.

And while I am at it, I must admit that I tried THREE new kinds of Luna Bars this week, while at the same store I found the jerky in. I just got really excited to have such a large selection to choose from. I tried Luna Bars – Dulce de Leche, Cookies ‘n Cream Delight, and and Iced Oatmeal Raisin. These were all really good, but tasted very sweet. So sweet, I think they are more a of a treat, and not something I should eat that often (they have WAY TOO MANY ingredients in them). I try not to eat bars that often. I’ll have one homemade one a day, and sometimes one after I workout, if I don’t have dinner right away.

Extra points if you made it this far!