February Is My January

Several years ago, I had a February so horrible and shitty that for the next few years, February was a month where I dropped out of the world and wanted to curl up and die.

I don’t know exactly when I changed that mindset or what, if anything, happened to cause the change, but somewhere along the way, February stopped being a month to waste away and started being a month where I got shit done. And so it will be again this year. Actually, I’d say I’ve already been more productive in the first 6 days of February than I was in the entire month of January.

Let’s talk about RTA furniture for a second. I love RTA (ready-to-assemble) furniture because it’s cheap and if you know what you’re doing it looks very nice once you’ve put it together. I also like it because it makes me feel like a badass handygirl to put it together. Even if I’m just following the instructions in a booklet, I feel like I’m making something. This weekend I finally picked up two maple nightstands I’ve been wanting for my bedroom.

Earlier in the week I’d gotten these kickass Thomas O’Brien lamps at Target for $12 each – on sale from fifty (!!) dollars – and they didn’t look right in the living room so I put them on the nightstands upstairs. And then I found a cool painting that goes beautifully with my bedding at an insanely cheap price while I was out yesterday. It was a little damaged and didn’t have any mounting hardware, which is part of the reason I got such a good price on it, but I am Badass Handygirl and I happen to own both a picture-hanging kit and a cordless drill, so I put picture wire on that thing myself and hung it above my bed. And now my bedroom looks hellaciously awesome. Once I have it painted it’s going to look even better – I’ll have to post pictures as soon as I can. I’m really proud of that room. It’s the first part of the house that has any sort of coherent plan.

I’m still losing insane amounts of weight on the stupid South Beach diet, even though I’ve cheated a time or two and totally had a cupcake yesterday (and it was quite possibly the very best cupcake I’ve ever had). I’ve been working out a bit too and would have started a new strength training program today if I hadn’t injured my back on a massage chair at the mall this weekend. I was going to write a post just about that, but really, there’s no story. I sat on this massage chair and put a dollar in it and it suckerpunched me in the sciatic nerve and now I’m hobbling. I filed my taxes and made a plan for the refund. I increased my 403(b) contribution. I took the kittens to the vet. I booked my flight to Las Vegas next month. I made a hair appointment for tomorrow.

Speaking of that, I can’t decide what to do with my hair. I think I’ve written this forty times in the past two weeks, but seriously. It’s long now, longer than it’s been in years, and for the most part I really like it. I think I’m going to have Jonathan put a few more layers in it and shape up the ones I already have, but I’m waffling. Sometimes I think going back to the flippy above-the-shoulders cut I used to have would be a better plan. Sometimes I think about those sideswept bang things, but I have a pretty round face so I’m worried about that. Jonathan tends to have pretty good advice, so I suppose I’ll ask him about it before he starts cutting. We’ll see what happens.

So there you go. I’m basically kicking a lot of ass right now and it’s a good feeling.