Little Life Update

Hellooooo! It's been a while Since I've let y'all in on what I've been up to. I've been... busy... Sure. We'll go with that.

This post is going to be very bullet-point, music, and picture heavy!

Firstly, a playlist of my latest jams, for your listening enjoyment while you read all about my life. It's quite an eclectic mix. My taste is evolving. I have no problem with this.

• General Life Update: I've been reading a lot and spending a lot (and I mean a LOT) of time at Ryan's house. It's been peaceful and pleasant and relaxing and happy. Knightro's been with me since Christmas and the weather's been absolutely BEAUTIFUL for the most part, so Ryan and I have been enjoying a lot of time outside!
• Knightro: Knightro is the greatest dog. He's seriously the absolute best dog in the whole entire universe. Everyone loves him! He's become best friends with Ryan's neighbor, Marti, and he now goes looking for her anytime we go outside. It's pretty precious. Marti is a really sweet woman and reminds me a lot of my mother, and I usually try and go talk to her at least a few minutes every day with Knightro!
• School: Going well. I'm glad I decided to be realistic and take my classes online this semester. I'm getting good grades so far, actually learning the material, AND I'm not overwhelming myself with other grown up things like work.
• Work: I absolutely LOVE my job. Sure, it exhausts me, and sometimes in the morning I'll be doing something and thing "man I don't wanna go to work!" but in the end I really love my job and I can't verbalize how thankful I am to be able to say that. Finally. The five months that I've been there have flown by and I'm looking forward to much more time with this great company and our great mall.
• Family: My family currently lives in three different places now. I'm not a fan of this situation, but whatever; all I really care about is that I'm in Orlando! Ha. My father was transferred to Maryland at the beginning of this year and luckily he learned from his past with me that moving my brother (a junior in high school) to a different school was not a good idea. So I'm in Orlando, my mom and brother are in Jacksonville, and my dad's in Maryland. For now.
• Speaking of my mother, she's coming to town today. I love love love my mother but I do not have the energy for people today, considering it's my first day off after a few days of work. Not to mention the lack of planning involved - "do you work tomorrow?" "no" "okay I'll see you at 11:30"
• Parents are weird. People are weird. Just give me my quiet time and I'll be okay.
• Planner: My planner life rules right now. I think I've achieved planner peace. These DIY Fish inserts are so awesome and I just enjoy doing things and I'm so productive and it just RULES. Not too long ago I bought a Kiwi Desk-Size Day-Timer Malibu from a friend on Facebook and it is so BEAUTIFUL and my Malden is also being wonderful and I'm just having a great time. I love planners and journaling and pens and writing and being productive!
• Health: My body's been sending me some messages lately along the lines of "stop eating all of that crap and give me REAL SUSTENANCE" lately and I've been slacking with tracking my Weight Watchers Points so I'm going to try to get back on that.
• I haven't stepped on a scale in a while but all of my clothing still fits fine and I just bought some new jeans (FINALLY) and I went down a size so while I'm terrified of weighing myself later this week I'm just trying to psych myself up with positives so I can take the inevitable blow of a gain.
• Money: I think I've been managing my money kind of okay lately. The beginning of the month I got a bigger-than-usual paycheck, my normal allowance, AND two old paychecks from when I worked at Waffle House so I took responsible advantage of that and just paid all of my bills at the beginning of the month to get them out of the way. It felt good. I even still have a little bit of money left for the last week of the month! That never happens! Ha. I'm getting a good idea of my needs/wants/expenses/ideal income/etc. so it's definitely helping me organize my budget a little better. I want to do a post on how I planned out all of my money for the month, so hopefully I can do that soon!

I'm just doing my thing and living my life and trying to be a good person and for the most part having a good time. It feels good. The next couple of months are pretty light in terms of plans; spring break is in the first week of March, finals are in the second week of April, and sometime this summer Ryan is most likely going to Field Training for the Air Force. Life is really picking up and it seems as though 2014 is the year we all become adults.

Thank goodness I'm turning 21 in August, then, right?!

Bottoms up, and Happy Thursday!

And now, a smattering of pictures from my life. Enjoy!

Pro-Tip from The Goddess of Laundry

This morning, I was folding my laundry and came across three socks without a mate. THREE! That's just too many. Especially considering the last time I did my laundry, I noticed an unusual surplus of single socks as well.

What do you do when you find a sock without a mate? Throw it back in the hamper and hope the mate shows up in the next load? Just toss it into the sock drawer to be forgotten forever?

How long until you have to go buy another pack of socks because all you have are random lone socks? Not long, I'm guessing. And socks these days have gotten freakin' expensive. (Trust me, I know - I was going to celebrate getting hired at my current job with a pack of nice black socks, until I saw that any socks that fit the standards of my picky toes were upwards of eight dollars. Like, come ON, I know I just got a job, but I don't get a paycheck for like three weeks!)

When you find yourself in a situation such as this, just ask yourself one question: what would The Goddess of Laundry do?

She'd put it in her box of Lonely Socks.

Thanks to this box, I was able to reunite seven pairs of lost, sad, and confused socks this morning. SEVEN! And they were all my favorite kinds of socks, too. Four of them were black, so I could wear them to work.

Seven happy little bundles of lonely-no-more socks. It cost me zero dollars and about two minutes.

In other words, it saved me both the time and the money of the tyranny that was coming to my way - driving all the way to Target or Walmart, inevitably looking at everything in the store, getting depressed at the rising cost of socks, and leaving the store with new socks and a $10 debit of disappointment on my checking account.

Official Laundry Goddess Pro-Tip: Don't you dare throw a lonely sock back into your hamper, under your bed, or worse - into the sock drawer to be lonely forever. Make a designated box, bag, bin (I used an adorable purple $1 Sterilite Target box with an Avery shipping label that I customized on my computer to match the rest of the Sterilite boxes in my closet), or any other kind of container that suits your fancy - specifically for socks without mates. Every once in a while, go through that container and reunite the long lost lovers.

Your feet will thank you.

Have a lovely day!

Surviving Sickness

Good morning everyone! Long time, no blog, right? I have to leave for work in about fifteen minutes, so I'll save the life update for later. Today, I want to show you all how I've been surviving the current cold that's going around... it finally got me! So, want to know my secret?

It's this little sparkly bag. I've been lovingly referring to it as my "am sick" bag.

Call it what you wish, but this thing is genius! As you can see below, I am strict and religious about taking my medication - I hate being sick and I want it to get out as soon as possible. Somehow, I always forgot about the times when I took cold medicine and when I should take it next, so I started writing it down.

Once I conquered the timing of my medication, I encountered another problem: I didn't have the medicine I needed at the right time. So I started carrying around this little pouch full of all of my sick necessities.

Contained in the $2 Walmart pencil pouch is the following:

• Small pack of tissues
• Thermometer & thermometer covers
• Zicam (I swear by this stuff. It works so well!)
• Alka Seltzer Plus - Cold (my cold medicine of choice)
• Crystal Light packets to encourage hydration
• Airborne - for the brave souls who spend time with me!

I was so excited when I came up with this idea. If I'm going out somewhere, such as work or the grocery store, I just toss this bag in my purse and I'm able to keep myself prepared to fight the cold. I keep this pouch at my desk or on my nightstand, and it's been super convenient for when I come over to Ryan's house as well!

This little pouch has seriously saved my life during this little bout of the common cold. 'Tis the season of sniffles, so set up your little sick bag to make taking care of yourself nice and easy!

Hope you all are having a lovely week. More blog posts will absolutely be coming :)