Chipped Polish & Wornout Jeans

Last week, around Wednesday night, I finally broke my glasses. I couldn't even tape them to get through the week Harry Potter style. They snapped right in half at the nose piece. That meant that, while I had intended to stay at the Shoebox and work, I had to go home to the Boro for an eye exam to get new glasses and new contacts. I really love eye exams (haha, yeah right), especially the glaucoma test where they puff air at your eyeball. It always, I mean always, takes three or four times per eye to get it right. I spent Friday working on my brief (foul creature though it is) and watching curling. Saturday morning I went for my eye exam and then had a heart attack when I saw just how much it cost me to handle my eye issues. $75 for the exam, $50 for my contacts, $52 for my frames, and $110 for my lenses. That is outrageous, not going to lie. Our insurance doesn't cover contacts and glasses, just the exam, and I forgot to mention the insurance when I did the appointment, but it's really just a big hassle anyway. That afternoon though I got to see my cousin Erica's baby, and she is such a little doll. I didn't think I was ever going to see her (family issues suck), so I was very excited to see her. She looks like her mama, right down to the big blue eyes and chubby cheeks. I failed to take pictures, mainly because she was still dealing with a slight cough and runny nose after her bought with pnuemonia and the lighting was really bad. I promise that the next time I see her I will take lots and lots of pictures.

When I got home last night I didn't intend to go grocery shopping because I was really tired, but after seeing the ridiculous parking situation going on and realizing how much I would have to do tonight, I decided to go ahead and do my shopping. Of course that means going across the river to Indiana, but its not so bad when there is no traffic. I am one of "those people" when it comes to shopping. I don't just grab the first item I see. I am that woman you see studying a cut of meat to determine whether I like the amount of fat or looking through the apples to select shiny ones that are firm and nicely colored. I am a food snob, and I think you should be conscious of what you are putting in your body. Good ingredients make good dishes, and so when I'm picking out veggies to make a tomato sauce (which I can't do in the Shoebox because I have no blender and no room) I pick out the freshest tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions, for example.  On that note, I am making a diluted version of my father's "Savage's Dear God Lasagna", which is a version of my Aunt Bessie Petrillo's delicious recipe, and so I was picking out decent pasta, cheese, ground beef, and pasta sauce (I hate sauce from the jar, but can't make my own at the moment). I hate that I cannot afford several of the needed ingredients and thus cannot make a truly good lasagna, but I will survive. It will provide me with plenty of leftovers for lunches and dinners, which is always a plus.

I am not pleased with the current weather. It was very pretty this weekend, but not its gloomy and wet and unpleasant. Boo weather, you fail. This is not really worthy of a paragraph all to it's self, but its not related to anything else either.

I am well aware of how pathetic my last posts have been. Losing someone you love makes you feel pathetic though. I think that part of my problem is that I've let the pressure of law school, the unpleasantness of being fairly isolated, and the distance (and now the loss) cause me to become something I'm not. I know that I am strong; I've always been a strong person both mentally and emotionally. I'm stubborn, willful, determined, and I never give up. I hold my own even when I'm carrying the weight of the world. I take on everything, and I don't let things knock me down. I am independant. I can get by on my own. I have always said that I can live alone and get by without having someone, but I choose not to do it. I don't want to go through life alone, but if I have to, I can. But lately I've been crumbling. I let it make me soft, pathetic, and weak, and it started long before the recent insanity. Those are not attractive qualities, and this pathetic woman I seem to be right now is not the woman that Jake fell in love with. Perhaps that was part of what caused this to happen. I am working on it though. Yes, I hope that some miracle will happen, and things will go back to the way they were, when everything was good and happy and wonderful. But I'm not going to obsess over it, not going let it destroy me. Will I just forget it? No. Will I give up completely on saving something that means so much to me? No. But I am going to "woman up". I am going dig into my well of strength and independence and manage to get through things. I am a strong independant woman, and its time for me to be that woman again. I know I can do it, and I will.

Well, I have a lot to do and need to get started before I cook dinner. I will now leave you with a fun veiw of my to-do list for the week: