Freedom - At Last!!

I was finally able to break free from this personal prison I've been stuck in for the last 10 days! I had a great day doing some window shopping but the crowds were ridiculous. You would've thought it was Christmas eve. I guess everyone has been cooped up for a week or more so they were probably feeling much like I was & just had to get out of the house!!

I came home right as a florist was delivering a bouquet that looks much like this one:



Aren't they gorgeous? Will had flowers sent to me since he's gone & felt bad about not being here for Valentine's Day. I love them! All pink - does he know me well or what?!

And the mail man brought me the newest issue of my favorite ever magazine:



Oh, and I totally splurged and bought my favorite ever snack today while I was out - Petticoat Tails.



I freakin love shortbread but I never buy it so it's a real treat when I break down & splurge. I even bought two boxes of shortbread today. I was feeling very deprived after being stuck at home for 10 days & felt like I deserved it.

I am so exhausted. I didn't sleep well at all last night. Stupid sciatic nerve had my whole leg tingling and numb. I woke up at 4:00 and tossed and turned while trying to get comfortable but nothing was working. As a last resort, I ended up folding my electric blanket in half and cranking that sucker up as high as it would go and used it as a makeshift heating pad. That plus the 2 Aleve I popped finally eased the pain a bit & I went back to sleep sometime around 6:30. I was up again at 8:00. Ugh.

It's definitely going to be an early night for me. I'm heading to bed now to curl up with the doggies, my new magazine & maybe a petticoat tail or two and I'm going to try to get comfortable & relax. Will is working tonight so I'm sure I'll have to make some late night phone calls to chat with him for a bit, too.

I am so excited that the snow has receded enough that I can get out of the house. Tomorrow, I'm hitting up one of my favorite thrift stores & then doing some clothes shopping. Yay! Of course, it's supposed to snow again on Monday and Tuesday so my excitement is going to be very short-lived!! Ha!

An update...

I am finally home again here in Maryland. Techincally, I've been home since last Wednesday but I have been busy/tired/relaxing since I got back. Will flew back on Wednesday too and we had an extremely laid back weekend. If any of you watched the news over the last week and a half, you probably heard that Dick Cheney was visiting Georgia, Italy and a couple of other spots. Well, that's where Will was too. He flies with the Vice President. Exciting, huh?

Anyhow, since we've been back, we've unpacked all of our luggage, done tons of laundry, went grocery shopping, stopped into Home Depot, started putting away summer stuff and pulling out our fall accessories, spent countless hours on the sofa watching tv, taken a couple of naps and caught up on about 30lbs worth of mail!

I managed to sneak away for a few hours today since Will was at work and I went to the Goodwill a couple of miles from my house. I found one box of vintage ornaments for a dollar so that was nice. I also stopped into Jo-Ann's and Target and I have to confess -- it's nice being back home and having so many shopping options. Jackson was nice, it was beautiful but there was no Target, no craft stores, none of the places I love to shop at. So, while I enjoyed my time in Wyoming, I'm very happy to be back here where I know I have tons of shopping options!

I spent a good hour or so earlier trying to clean and organize my craft room again. It became the dumping ground this weekend and I could barely even walk in here. I have a ton of things on my to-do list that I want to start on this week so I had to try to clean it up a bit before I could do anything else. It's definitely a constant work-in-progress though as I'm still trying to get things organized and into some sort of usable system. Right now it's just not working that well but I hope that I can figure something out soon.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to make it over to the ghetto thrift. It's been about 7 weeks since I've gone and that's much too long. I'm hoping I can find lots of goodies because I certainly haven't had much luck at the other thrift stores I've been to recently!

Shopping is torture!

I've known this for a long while but shopping for clothing is pure HELL! I just spent almost 2 hours in a mall with hundreds of stores and I came out with nothing. Nothing at all. I went in search of shorts, which I always have a hard time finding ones that fit me and I thought for SURE that shopping at one of those big ol "Mills" malls would certainly have at least one store with clothing that would fit. Nope. Left completely empty-handed. I just looked at the mall's website. There are 34 stores under "Women's Apparel" and I walked in almost all of them. NOTHING FITS ME! I hate shopping for clothes. HATE.IT.

I was on the phone with my mother while driving to the mall and I was complaining about how hard it is to find things that fit. She and my sister both are built kind of like men - meaning they have no hips. Which works well for them because the can walk into any store and pick up things that fit. I have huge hips. I like my hips because I have that great hourglass figure but it is impossible to find clothing that fits my bottom half. So annoying. I should just make my own clothing and this could all be avoided! When the husband gets home today we're driving over to Kohl's because they are having a sale this weekend and I managed to find a couple of pairs of shorts there earlier this summer that actually fit okay. Please keep your fingers crossed that I find something that fits! Shopping is so depressing. Ugh!!

Moving along! I went to my favorite store yesterday - the Ghetto Thrift and it was kind of empty. I found a couple of pieces of Pyrex that were priced reasonably and I put them in my basket. After I finished looking through the rest of the store and didn't find anything else I wanted, I decided to put the Pyrex back on the shelf. Frankly, I don't need anymore Pyrex. I mean I *DO* but it's not anything I can't live without for now. I kept saying to myself 'this is money you could be spending while you're on vacation' which really helped me to not feel so bad about not buying the Pyrex!!

I went to my old favorite thrift store on Wednesday since the husband had to run into work for a few hours and then we were going to the commissary. This is the place I used to find fabulous deals. I was quite disappointed this time around though because there weren't any deals to be had. There was plenty of clothing but I don't really buy clothing at thrift stores. Not because I don't *want* to buy it, but usually I can't find anything that fits! See my rant above. And even if I do find something in the clothing section that I might like, this thrift store has no dressing rooms. I am not buying something I cannot try on. So, yeah, that trip to the thrift store was disappointing too!

I guess I might take a little break from thrifting for the next couple of weeks. I have entirely too much to do before I leave for Wyoming and there are going to be plenty of thrift stores and flea markets on my drive out, I am sure! Might as well save my money for those places, huh? I'll still be hitting up yard sales and estate sales though. I mean I can't go completely cold turkey on all my junking habits!!

Well, I should get going. I might have company coming to spend the night and my house looks like a disaster. I was hoping the husband and I would be able to finish all of our projects around this place over the weekend but my friend sent me a text saying she might come over tonight and then the Mother in Law's birthday is tomorrow and the husband forgot all about it until I said something to him today. SO, looks like we might be driving over to West Virginia tomorrow to see her. So much for getting this place put together!