But also, it might be a little sad.

I will warn those of you who, like me, pretend to be bad-ass but are marshmallows on the inside when it comes to helpless baby h’aminals that these pictures might make you start blubbering. I warned you.

I slept in this morning, as I often do on Mondays (and other days ending in “day”), and when I took Heath out around 8AM he started acting weird. He really wanted to go over to a certain part of the lawn. Really, really bad. Like the way he does when there’s a rabbit or a squirrel. So I walked over there with him, and he immediately ran over to…

…a baby chupacabra!

No? Well, it did take me a minute to figure out that this was a baby squirrel, largely because there was a dog standing over it. I thought it was dead, but as Heath and I looked on out of morbid curiosity, I realized it was breathing every few seconds with big, gasping breaths.

So I ran back inside, got dressed for work, ran back out, and picked up the baby squirrel with my bare hands. Rabies-schmabies. He was cold (it was in the 70s this morning), so I took him inside and wrapped him in a dish towels and cuddled him and tried to warm him up. After a little while he started breathing better and moving his paws a little, so I took him back outside and put him on the ground, still in the dishtowel so that he’d be a little warm and my neighbors wouldn’t step on him. I made sure his mom could get him out if she came back for him, then left for work.

I’m still not sure whether he fell out of the tree or something took him out of it–he had some cuts on him, but that could easily be from falling through the branches or from his littermates’ wicked squirrel claws.

While at work, I used my mad resources (aka Jamie) to track down a list of local wildlife rehabilitators, and  a couple of hours later, I used my lunch break to come back from work to check on the little guy. He was still there, so I scooped him up, took him inside, and put him in a box with an old t-shirt and a bottle of hot water. Then I took Heath out and he immediately ran back over to the area where we’d found the squirrel. I figured he just wanted to investigate since he never realized that I’d picked the squirrel up and brought him inside, but no–he found a second baby squirrel that unfortunately was already dead.

That sealed it–baby squirrel number 1 was coming with me.

I took him to work and left him in my nice warm car (with the windows down a little so it didn’t get too hot), then grabbed my list of rehabbers and started calling. The first call went to an answering machine that said they weren’t accepting wildlife, but I managed to get a hold of someone on the second call and within a half hour I’d taken an extra-long lunch and driven to her house in Cary to drop him off.

He was a lot warmer than he had been on the ride over to Cary, but by the time we got there I couldn’t tell if he was breathing still. I told the rehabber I wasn’t sure if he was still alive and she said, “Well, we’ll see about that, let’s warm him up” and grabbed him and stuck him under her shirt. She told me to call her if I found any others. God bless wildlife rehabbers–that’s a ton of work for a unequal share of sorrow, but I bet when the little guys pull through it makes it all worthwhile.

I suppose I could call to see if he made it, but I’d rather leave it like this. If I don’t know, I can speculate that he’s still alive and warm and fed at the rehabber’s house, and I can console myself with the knowledge that if he died at least he died somewhere warm and soft instead of cold and alone in the leaves.

After I got home from work, I took Heath out and he led me back to the second baby squirrel. I buried it under the tree it fell out of and put a big rock on top so nothing digs it up. We’ll keep checking the area for a couple of days to see if any more baby squirrels turn up.

My Heathcliff is such a good boy! I wish he’d always find cute things instead of snakes…

…well, I don’t know about you, but I feel the need to put stuff in the empty boxes. The urge to pack is strong with this one…

I believe that much of my urge to pack stems from a strong desire to get out of this apartment complex. I’m pretty annoyed with them right now, since I found out that someone had been in my apartment fixing a pipe without my prior notice, consent, or any notice afterward, and when I went to ask the leasing office about it they first lied to me and said no one had been in there and then they BSed about how it was related to the water heater emergency (five days after the actual water heater emergency). Fortunately my dog was not in the apartment at the time, but I was still livid and couldn’t get it through the property manager’s head that coming into my apartment without my permission for a drip was not cool, and that no, the fact that she thinks that the maintenance guys know I have a dog is not any consolation.

Anyway, let’s talk about kayaking now. A week and a half ago, on Wednesday, I left work at 6PM and stopped for a BLT at Cook-Out.

…and then I drove to the REI in Cary, because Alison (who I went kayaking with at Lake Crabtree back in June) found out about a free kayaking and canoe class that was being held.

It was my first time at REI, so I wandered around and looked longingly at many things, like the Nalgene bottles, the running gear, and the kayaks. As I stood at the windows watching a huge storm blow in and waiting for Alison to arrive, I spied another co-worker enter the store. Turns out she was also going to the class. Who knew we were so adventuresome?

The class was held in the kayaking section, and we were squished together like sardines. The guy who sat in front of me kept leaning back in his chair and either bumping into me or getting all up in my comfort zone. Three-foot radius, man…

But Matt, the guy who taught the class, was very knowledgeable. I learned all sorts of things about kayaking and where to kayaking locally.

After the class was over, we discovered that Alison had not eaten dinner and I was hungry, so she took me over to a little shop called Coffee & Crepes and bought me some food.

They were getting ready to close (the class was over at around 8:30PM and the shop closed at 9PM), which may have accounted for the very long wait before we got our food. But when it turned up, it was good. This was my first crepe!

It was a nutty apple pie crepe with vanilla ice cream on the side…mmm…

I ended up not getting home  until 9:30PM.  I am so wild and crazy. I don’t know how I manage all these late nights.

But wait, there is more to discuss on the topic of kayaking! Yesterday was supposed to be a beautiful day, so Alison suggested we go kayaking again. We went to the Eno River and kayaked for an hour on the millpond part of it, which is very slow-moving. It was way different than kayaking on Lake Crabtree–it was gorgeous and there were little inlets to go explore. I kind of wish now that I hadn’t decided to leave my camera at home!

Afterward, we went to Moe’s, where we celebrated our mutual dislike of being greeted at the door by “Welcome to Moe’s!” by ordering tacos. I got a hard taco with ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream. No, I will not call it an Overachiever. It is a taco. I also got chips with queso and a lemonade (my vow of abstinence from caffeine has resulted in some unconventional drink orders lately…).

And then, since we were right next door to REI, we stopped in and looked at kayaking things. I think it would be great fun to own a kayak, but I have major concerns about 1) having to get the kayak on the roof rack of my car by myself (they’re only around 40 lbs, but they’re bulky!) and 2) how goofy my little Suzuki would look with a kayak strapped to the top.

I am going to finish my dinner and get back to my de-nesting now. When I was at my parents’ house last weekend, my mom gave me her old 4-in-1 printer because I’d been thinking about buying a scanner so I could get rid of paper clutter. I’ve been a scanning machine for the past few days and now have  a large box of papers to shred and a tiny pile of papers to keep (mostly promissory notes from loans, test scores, and immunization records). Operation: Clean Sweep has successfully taken hold in my bathroom and I’m now working on the bedroom and master closet, where there is honestly not as much junk as I thought there was. And that is a very good thing.

I filled out the paperwork to vacate my apartment and made a note to drop it off in the morning. Oh irony, how it taunts me. Not real irony, of course; I mean the Alanis Morissette kind. I mean, my apartment flooding the day that I signed the paperwork to vacate it–that is so like rain on your wedding day.

When my alarm clock went off at 5:30AM, I woke up and stepped into this:

You may ask why I stopped to take pictures when my apartment was flooding and dumping water into the apartment below mine. But this was me in crisis mode: since the guy who lives below me had already called maintenance, I searched for the shut-off valve for the water and, failing to find it, couldn’t really do much else. There used to be books stacked between the two bookcases on the right side of the picture; I moved those to safety, then grabbed my camera and snapped a few pictures of the damage in case I should need them later. Then I took all the books off the bookcases and moved them elsewhere; then I moved the bookcases into my bedroom; then, since the water seemed to be creeping toward my bedroom, I moved my TV stand, since it’s right next to me in the picture.

Later, I moved my other hallway bookcase, my dining room table, my exercise bike, my end table, and my sofa. The floor was wet everywhere thanks to our friend humidity.

Maintenance came and shut the water off, then replaced the water heater, and in the process mucked up my kitchen floor and tore holes in the linoleum.

You can see that at this point I’ve moved out of crisis mode and into “Um, my kitchen is a little messy, I should clean it” mode.

I also practiced making frazzled faces.

Shortly after the property manager came to talk to me, the carpet guys came to do bloody murder on my carpet. They vacuumed up the water, then set up a fan to blow under the carpet…

And a dehumidifier in the water heater closet.

At this point, I was staaarving–I’d managed to sneak in my normal breakfast in between bits of mayhem, but I’d been terribly clever on Wednesday and left my lunch leftovers at work so I wouldn’t have to repack them for Thursday (I’d just thrown the bag of carrots and cheese and the containers of hummus and tomatoes directly into my bag Wednesday morning). This meant my lunch was at work. And I had nothing to eat. So I dinked around for an hour or so trying to decide what I wanted and then ordered side items from Papa Johns. Chickenstrips and cheesesticks, which served me well for lunch and dinner.

After lunch, I intended to do some freelance writing so that the day wasn’t a total waste, but exhaustion hit me like a ton of really heavy objects, so I cleared off space on my couch (which was shoved up against all my piles of books) and slept. Later I took a walk around the lake. Or maybe that was Wednesday. I know I took a walk, though.

Friday morning I went to work and had my breakfast, and then finally had my leftover lunch.

I also had some awesome chocolate covered hazelnuts from Oregon. I love it when visiting scientists bring food!

I left work early to see what was going on at my apartment, since despite the property manager’s claim that she would be in touch, no one called to let me know what was going on. Apparently my leasing office is also good in a crisis, but not so much with the aftermath. I got home to find that nothing had happened in my absence–the fan and dehumidifier where still there–so I left to go to Whole Foods and Target for some grocery shopping.

I came back to discover that people had been in my apartment while I was gone, with no notice before or after (other than this missing equipment). I expected that they’d come pick up their stuff, but it still bugs me that I wasn’t told when this would be happening. It reminds me of that time they let the steam-cleaning people into my apartment on the wrong day and majorly freaked me out.

But my carpet was fixed…

And my water heater closet…was still gross.

I made swiss steak for dinner.

…there’s a steak under there, promise.

Then I took pictures of the shambles that were my apartment. Remember how I had the laundry room, the dining room, and the living room all cleaned and organized?

…okay, it’s not that bad. But you also can’t see the other side of the couch. I got a lot of my furniture put back in the correct spot Friday evening, and subsequently had one of the best nights of sleep I’ve ever had, curled up on my sofa.

Saturday morning I woke up and had some yogurt, then got back to work on moving things back into their antediluvian state. Naturally, I got hungry, so I threw together a big lunch.

Spinach artichoke dip (from the prepped section at Whole Foods), a few bits of broccoli, some salad tomatoes, two carrots, a banana, almond butter, and a piece of cotswold cheese. I made two cheese selections this week and picked this one because it had chives and onions in it and therefore had to be awesome. And it was. But very strong–as I move away from plain cheddar, I’m seeing how one ounce of a good, strong cheese can be plenty.

My eyes were bigger than my stomach here, though–I only ate half the banana and left one of the carrots for dinner.

I did have some of my new chocolate bar (Whole Foods brand of dark chocolate peppermint crisp). Not as good as the Lake Champlain kind, but it’ll do.

My bookcases made it back into the hallway, empty–no point in putting the books back on them when I already took them off and can pack them (when I have enough boxes).

Dinner was a repeat of last night, with less potatoes and onions and the addition of the leftover carrot from lunch.

Note the massive prep bowl of Brummel & Brown in the background. Yes, I ate it all. If there are potatoes on my plate, there is almost always a massive dish of butter or B&B just out of the picture. Don’t judge me, y’all.

Post-dinner snackage…a piece of the dark chocolate peppermint bar, and a piece of the dark chocolate hazelnut toffee bar (one of those ones with the endangered species on it). I wasn’t too impressed by the latter–apparently I like my dark chocolate at 54%-55%, not 70%+.

I totally still ate it, though.

Today I slept in again,  thought not so well as I had the night before, and woke up to more yogurt (I’ve stopped taking pictures of my yogurt most days–same old Liberte Mediteranee yogurt every day!). I then hit the lake trail in an attempt to get some running in, but my fitness has (obviously) decreased since I haven’t been able to run the past couple of months, and because it’s hot outside, so I didn’t get much running in before I had to walk. I’m supposed to start training for my half marathon this week and I’ve already accepted that I’m going to be a little bit behind, but that’s okay. I came home and immediately threw my ice pack on my foot, which has been hurting a little more than it had been recently since I started walking again, but not enough that I’m willing to go back and have it checked out again (yet).

Lunch was some broccoli, salad tomatoes, and carrot sticks with spinach artichoke dip, a dish of trail mix, and a piece of my other cheese selection, mahon.

Mahon is a hard Spanish cheese that taste delicious when eaten with tomatoes. I’m a huge fan of cheese + tomatoes.

I spent the afternoon going all Operation: Clean Sweep on my kitchen and have now checked it off my list–hurrah! That leaves the balcony (entirely gardening stuff), the bathroom (which I’ve worked on twice throughout the week–shouldn’t take long at all), the bedroom (half okay, half not so much), and the closet (um…yeah). I’m happy that I was able to make progress despite having what other, more dramatic people would call the week from hell. (Remember me griping about Wachovia shutting down my bank account on Monday? Oh, the fun week that lay ahead…!).

Well, now that I’ve snacked on a cranberry orange Pure bar and blogged for an hour, my dinner seems to be done. It’s time to eat again…!

The guy downstairs, who I believe had to leave his apartment, might not feel the same way, but I’ve spent a lot of time today thinking about how things could’ve been worse, and even paused for a bit while moving things out of the flood zone to thank God for small favors. These include, but are not limited to:

1. Nothing in my apartment is damaged, with the exception of some water damage to a couple of books (college lab notebooks which were already covered in lab gunk) and the back of one of my bookshelves. My apartment is now in shambles, but I was able to move everything that was in danger of getting wet. I broke one of my other bookshelves while trying to move it but fixed it with five minutes, a hammer, and some nails, and now it’s better than it was before. (I did hammer my thumb and now it hurts. Whoops.)

2. If anything in my apartment had been damaged, I have renter’s insurance that covers the replacement of personal property damaged due to water heater failures.

3. My apartment is still habitable and was taken care of within a few hours. While I think emergency maintenance was a little slow in responding (30+ minutes), once they arrived, they took care of the situation promptly–by 7:30AM, I had a new water heater and my water was back on. The property manager came to check on me at 8:30AM, half an hour before the office is supposed to open, and by 9:05AM the carpet guys were in my apartment extracting the water, removing the carpet pad, spraying mildicide, and setting up fans and dehumidifiers that are still running. I gripe about little things at my apartment, but the office and maintenance staffs are generally on the ball and they took great care of me (and the guy downstairs) today.

4. I have a wonderful mother who, when I called at 6:15AM to ask if she would come pick up Heath and take him away from the lake that was my apartment, agreed without hesitation.

5. I’m a fortunate yuppie in that I can afford to take the day off work. I have an understanding boss (who told me to enjoy my new hot tub) and the luxury of not losing any money because I stayed home today. And I had the foresight to bank some hours as insurance against occasions like this.

I’ll admit that this morning, after the adrenaline had worn off and I’d done everything I could to help the situation and was waiting helpless for the carpet guys to show up, I seriously considered bursting into tears, but I managed not to. It’s really not worth it. I do feel awful about what happened to the apartment downstairs–all the water ran into it and I don’t know exactly how bad it was, but it was bad. But for me at least, it wasn’t nearly as bad as  it could’ve been, so I’m just going to be very grateful for that and float on…

Regular foodie updates will resume tomorrow (with pictures of Lake Ohmihall)….

I was up super early this morning, so I did a rare thing and ate breakfast at my apartment.

It was dark and everything.

Then I went to work, where I was very hungry and decided to indulge in something that’s been absent from the blog for weeks…

Then I had Ye Olde Standard Lunche.

Then I was naughty and had a snack from the recently refilled candy bowl of a co-worker.

Then, I had another Kit-Kat, a Reese’s Cup, and some Cheetos. Fail!

When I came home, I reheated the leftover curry and rice.

And then I went for a 2.25 mile walk around the lake, to give my foot a test run. It kind of hurt but a lot less than it was hurting. Better than I expected.

And now…time to watch some Hoarders.

See, I decided to spend my lunch break running errands. So I went to Kerr Drug and dropped off a prescription to pick up later, and then headed to Wachovia to cash a check that I got from my car insurance company because of a settlement wherein they overcharged a bunch of people.

Except the cute teller told me my account was closed on June 24. The account that I’ve had since 2003. The account which, a co-worker later pointed out, I’ve had all of my financial life.

Now, I don’t use this account for much of anything anymore. I got it in when I started college, and the whole reason I picked Wachovia was because I went to college in Winston-Salem, which is lazy with Wachovias. And Krispy Kremes. I used to exclusively for four years, and after I graduated and started working I got an account with ING Direct, an online bank. But since I still needed a brick-and-mortar bank to cash  and write the occasional check, I also kept my Wachovia account.

So I got to stand in the bank gawking while the cute teller tried to figure out why my account was closed–the account to which, by the way, I attempted to transfer $600 last week. Then he called over another teller who checked it out and for some reason could tell me the amount of money I’d tried to transfer, but didn’t know why my account was closed. Eventually, she told me that after an account has been dormant for three months, it is closed.

I asked if they could cash my check, but they said they couldn’t since they didn’t have an account to draw it against. They said if I waited they could call someone (I don’t know who) and perhaps get it cashed, but I asked for it back, thanked them, and left.

I was hot. But a couple of years ago I would’ve made a big scene, so I consider the fact that I left quietly to indicate personal growth on my part. Because really, while I’m angry that they didn’t bother to tell me via e-mail or snailmail that my account was being closed even though I’ve been a long-term customer, I’ve been wanting to leave Wachovia for a while. I called my mom and vented a little, then went back to work, logged into my ING Direct account, and found my $600 had been put back into my account. So all I lost was some time waiting in the bank. I can get someone else to cash my check for me, and I can work around the no-checks issue when I have to pay deposits for my apartment. If this were on Twitter, it would be tagged #firstworldproblems. I’m letting it go…

(But Wachovia, your customer service sucks. If the devil banked, he’d have an account with you.)

I ate lunch–sungold cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, hummus, and gouda.

I wrote love notes to Wachovia on my white board.

I nibbled on some trail mix, and then ate half of this large banana with some almond butter.

I ate a piece of Godiva chocolate.

I don’t find Godiva that impressive, honestly.

Late in the afternoon, I got paged on a 911 call made from the fourth floor of my office building, so I grabbed my first aid kit, dashed upstairs, and discovered that someone had accidentally dialed 911 again. Let’s be careful with our phones, people. Good to know that so many first responders show up when the call goes out, though (our office first responders, not paramedics!). But this was the second time today that my BP and pulse got all jacked up with no place to go. Sigh.

I left work, went back to the pharmacy to pick up my drugs, and then drove to Target to pick up a few things I needed, plus a russet potato for dinner. I was too hungry to finish waiting for it to cook to eat, though, so I ate a piece of smoked salmon.

That’s appetizing, no?

For dinner, I had baked potatoes two ways.

On the left, half of the baked potato mashed with salt and Brummel & Brown. On the right, half of the baked potato mashed with leftover chicken and broccoli curry from last night. I wasn’t sure this combo would work (the potato+curry combo, that is), but it was great.

After dinner, a square of dark chocolate peppermint crunch…

…and now I am going to bed. I don’t feel too hot at the moment and maybe it’ll go away if I’m asleep…

Oh, that would be why. I’d checked out the calories beforehand but neglected to look at the salt. I’ll try to finish this off this week, but won’t be buying it again. Sad times; I was excited about pesto. But was it coincidence that after my salt-related misadventures this week that everything I ate today was sweet?

As you may know, I’ve been abstaining from caffeinated soda since around the end of May. Because I’m wired backwards, caffeine generally makes me tired, and I’ve felt a lot more awake since I stopped drinking it. However, I have found it necessary to take a certain OTC drug containing caffeine a couple of times since then, and did so twice yesterday.

I got up at 8AM Saturday morning and was up until 7AM Sunday morning. It was like, whoa. And I was tired, too, I just didn’t feel like I could sleep. So I spent the night thinking about apartment decor, reading Young House Love, and pondering religious mysteries.

It was fun times. But since I slept until 1PM, Operation: Clean Sweep didn’t gain any more territory.

I did straighten up things on the shelf in my bathroom, cull books and magazines from the food-and-fitness shelf in my hallway, and did some dishes. So not a total loss.

When I woke up I had a peach and passionfruit Liberte yogurt, and then I didn’t eat anything else until I was cooking dinner. I decided to make something I’ve been craving for a while–chicken curry! I pulled out my Abs Diet for Women book for the recipe.

I credit this book with getting me started on the path to healthy eating. And the “Hurry Curry” recipe is delish. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any rice made, so it was more like “Hour-Long Adventure in Curry-Making.”

I did discover that the rice makes a fine book-propper-opener.

And since I had to wait for the rice anyway, I took my time making the curry sauce. In fact, all previous times that I’ve made this recipe, I just cut the onion into big chunks,but this time I made an effort to put a finer dice on it, and it really improved the texture.

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly–I used Trader Joe’s Greek-style yogurt instead of fat-free yogurt and full-fat mayo instead of a fat free version; I used all the onion I had in the fridge instead of a mere three tablespoons (ha!); I left out the paprika since I didn’t have any and instead added a bit more curry powder. I used Penzey’s sweet curry powder, which lacks the heat of regular curry powder.

And back into the fridge the sauce went, lest I get food poisoning from it sitting on the counter for 45 minutes. I’m Food Safety Girl today.

Another recipe change: I added broccoli, which doesn’t appear in the original recipe. I cut it as small as possible (I practically shaved the florets) so that the texture would be similar to the diced onion.

While the chicken and broccoli cooked, I dug around in my pantry and found the last lonely cherry cashew Pure bar.

And I ate it.

Soon it was time to mix things up.

And I started to notice that my camera, which often mistranslates bright colors, was not capturing the vivid yellow-and-green that was my curry.

Even in the sunlight, on a  heap of rice, in a black bowl, the curry didn’t really pop like it did in real life.

I tried switching on the sunlight filter, which helped a little…

…but after that I stopped messing around, because I was hungry and I wanted to eat my curry while it was still hot.

I added some salt (it needed it). It was sublime. Now I’m thirsty. Curses.

After dinner, I had a single square of dark chocolate peppermint crunch goodness.

And I promise that I really only have eaten five of the eight squares in the package, as documented here on this blog. For real. Expensive food=a loss of taste for gluttony. Seems backwards, doesn’t it?

Oh, in vaguely salt-related news: my average blood pressure is now 124/82 and my pulse crossed the 100-bpm average mark this week and is now sitting at 101. Yeehaw. I meant to take a walk tonight to see how my foot would do (it was slightly twingy yesterday after all my housecleaning), but then I took a shower while my pictures were uploading and then I blogged and now it’s time to make lunch for tomorrow and read and go to bed.

Or maybe I’ll do the bathroom after the hallway. Don’t want to strain myself.

I had no idea what to make for dinner. Then I spied a box of rice spaghetti in my pantry and the wheels started turning. I threw some in a pot to cook while I sauteed part of a vidalia onion, some baby bellas, and a few shrimp. Then I mixed it all together with some pesto sauce.

It was swell. Loved the sweetness of the onions with the pesto.

To cleanse my palate afterward, I had some more of that delicious dark chocolate peppermint crunch bar.

Later, I caught Heath sleeping on my throw pillows on the couch.

Well, I was going to take a break from cleaning the kitchen (which I did already start doing, so I guess I should finish…), but now some downstairs neighbors have decided to play Spanish music and it’s shaking my bedroom floor (and my keyboard), so I guess I’ll wander as far away from it as I can, even though I’m fairly certain I can feel the floor shaking in the kitchen, too. Sigh…

After my last blog, I decided I needed some chocolate, so I finished off my Lumpy Bumpy Bar.

On Tuesday, I went to work for two whole hours, then ended up leaving because my blechy feelings from the day before were turning into a migraine. I had a yogurt at work and a cookie after I got home, then curled up on the living room floor to sleep it off. When I woke up I felt much better even though I still had a little headache. So I headed out to Cook-Out to feed myself some much-needed calories.

Milkshake!

Chicken strips, onion rings, and fries.

It was so good while I was eating it, but man…I don’t eat much salty food anymore and this about did me in. I thirsted the thirst of the unquenchably thirsty. I drank I-don’t-know-how-many glasses of Crystal Light before bed, then got up three times during the night to down another glass (and also to pee). It was the middle of the next day before the thirsty feeling finally went away. Oy…

Breakfast and midmorning snack on Wednesday were the usual…

…wait, what’s that? That’s the new Pure bar packaging! Of the four boxes of Pure bars I had delivered when Amazon’s subscribe and save went haywire on me, three were in the new style (the fourth came from a different location and was in the previous packaging). I was a little surprised because Pure just changed their packaging not too long ago, but I really like the new style–it feels more commercial and I think it’ll help them sell their product better. The only think I don’t like is that they dropped their cute slogan–”It kinda does grow on trees.” I loved that! But they’re still the same tasty raw, vegan, gluten-free bars as always. And now I have a stash of them to eat through!

Around lunchtime, I munched on some trail mix…

And then I had lunch a bit later than usual. I was pretty full from the trail mix, so I ate the cheese, all of the tomatoes, and a couple of the carrots with some “Greek-style” yogurt dip I made.

I also had two plums.

This held me over all afternoon, until it was dinnertime and I made some teeny tiny potatoes and onions tossed with olive oil and Bavarian seasoning.

Thursday morning’s breakfast was the usual yogurt, chased by two Dunkin’ Donuts I got at a meeting. We know how I feel about donuts, but I considered the first donut to be a trade–I didn’t eat my scheduled Pure bar–and the second donut to just be some extra calories for the day (I knew I was going to be low anyway). I enjoyed that maple-frosted donut and the glazed chocolate cake one!

Lunch consisted of Wednesday’s leftover carrots, plus cherry tomatoes and hummus. I had one last piece of cheese that I took out of the fridge but forgot to put in my bag, so it stayed on the counter all day and had to be thrown away. This was particularly sad because it left me without my chunk-o-cheese for lunch, and I rely on that for protein to keep me full. Fortunately, I had a container of raw almond butter in the fridge and an excellently ripe banana on my desk.

Some people would trash that banana. I think it was perfection. I ate most of it, covered in almond butter…mmm.

After work, I wasn’t  hungry for dinner, so I set to work on cleaning…and packing my first box for my upcoming move.

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Tangent time!

Yep, that’s right. I’m moving when my lease is up at the end of October. I’ve lived in my current apartment for three years and I’ve thought about moving every time my lease is up, and I think it’s finally time. This is the only place I’ve lived since I graduated college (excluding the summer I graduated, which I spent at my parents’ house), and for whatever reason, I’ve never really felt at home here. I just have this vague and persistent sense that I don’t belong here, like this is a transient situation, and as a result I’ve never really settled in. That feeling is so much in opposition to what I’ve experienced in college (where, despite roommate issues, crazy stress, and being a conservative on a liberal campus, I always felt that I fit in) and at work (sure, I have my gripes, but I love my co-workers and I find my job very fulfilling)–it feels so wrong–that I can’t ignore it anymore.

My apartment has served its purpose well and for the first two years I lived here I was satisfied with the community, but things have been building up for the last year or so. My apartment is less than 650 square feet and poorly laid out; there is little storage space or counter space. It’s extremely outdated and showing its wear–I’ve called maintenance more times this past year than I did the first two years I lived here. And while I could possibly move into a bigger, updated apartment in the same community, I’ve also had more issues with my neighbors in the past year than I had previously. All my neighbors slam their doors, apparently not realizing that it shakes the entire building. I’ve listened to the yapping of the chihuahua that lives in the apartment that I share a living room/bathroom/closet wall with; my floor has vibrated thanks to the music from the apartment below mine; and I’ve put up with what is becoming constant sounds of either sex, music, or fighting (both of the latter, for instance, while writing this post) from the apartment I share a bedroom wall with. People pull up in the parking lot at night and leave loud music playing in their cars. The woman who lives in the apartment building facing mine has two dogs that have pinned me and my dog against the railing on the stairs to my apartment while barking and snarling to the point that I felt that my dog and I were in danger, and prior to that I had been lunged at by her dogs or warned by her not to come down my steps while she had her dogs out on our shared lawn.

I’ve attempted to handle some of these situations on my own and in other cases put it on the management to take care of it. I asked the guy below me to please turn his music down; he did and now I rarely hear it, perhaps because he’s barely home. I left a note for my next-door neighbor with the chihuahua explaining that I’d done what I could to minimize the noise from my size and would appreciate it if she could do something about her dog’s constant barking; she did take care of it, but I can still hear the dog barking whenever she’s home and when I’m outside my apartment. I called to complain about my bedroom neighbors and nothing happened, so I wrote a very annoyed letter to the leasing office and they talked to the neighbors about pulling the headboard away from the wall and quieting down with the moaning and “Oh, Danny!” noises, but the neighbors denied having anything more than a “small stereo” and I felt like I was arguing with the leasing office on the phone, trying to convince them that I lived in the apartment so I was pretty sure that I knew where the noise was coming from (and since the noise continues, and since I’m a very thorough person when it comes to this sort of thing, I am positive about this). I told the lady with the attack dogs not to bring them near me anymore and went into the office personally to make a complaint, and my complaint was taken down in case of future incidents, but I felt like my concern was brushed off because “the dogs are always nice when she brings them into the office.” I’ve lived here for longer than any of my neighbors and I’ve been a good tenant; I feel like the office owes it to me to take my concerns seriously.

So…

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After cleaning and packing up my Christmas stuff, it was pretty late and I still wasn’t hungry. But I made myself a piece of salmon anyway. I needed to eat.

And yesterday, my mom came up and she and I toured an apartment complex that I really liked when I first moved to Raleigh, but was out of my price range at the time. It happened that we’d come at a great time–I want a one-bedroom with a den (slightly less than 1050 square feet–spaaaaace!) and they had one that someone was moving into today, so we got to go in and look at it. I loved so many things about it–closets, shelves, a kitchen I can actually get some cooking done in!–and it happens that there might be a woman giving notice on her ground-floor, one-bedroom with den soon, in which case it would be ready a couple of days after my lease is up. I very much hope everything works out, but if not, I’m still on the waiting list for the next available first-floor apartment in my chosen floorplan, so it’s a matter of time. The apartment complex is much nicer-looking than my current place and still local to the areas I frequent, and it’s a tiny bit closer to work.

I was very nervous about going over to see the apartment (thanks for being my wingman, mom!), but when I got home I was crazy excited. I told the dog we were mooooving and he just stared at me like I was nuts.

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Before the apartment visit, I hadn’t had anything to eat, so I went to Burger King and snagged a Whopper Jr. with cheese and a small fry. And spent the afternoon thirsting again. I also swung by Whole Foods for some food for the coming week.

Then I came home and used the rest of my teeny tiny potatoes, part of a vidalia onion, and some carrots to make a delicious rosemary-covered dinner.

I also decided that instead of buying cookies or ice cream or anything that triggers me to shove carbs in my face, I was going to splurge on one nice chocolate bar that I could break into when I needed something sweet. I picked this $2.79  dark chocolate peppermint crunch bar even though it was smaller than similarly priced bars.

I had two squares after dinner and am very pleased with my choice–it’s awesome. My frugal nature tells me that if I spent a lot of money on something, I better make it last and enjoy it, which is why I love smoked salmon but make three meals out of a tiny container of trimmings, and why I can make a tiny carton of Haagan-Daaz Five last for a week.

I also checked out the LaraBar selection to see if the Carrot Cake was in stock yet, and indeed it was, so I grabbed one. Since I was a meal short for the day (having skipped breakfast), I had it for an evening snack.

I see what everyone’s raving about–pretty complex taste for a vegan, raw, gluten-free bar! The only thing I didn’t like about it was the coconut–I couldn’t taste it when I was chewing the bar, but afterward the little coconut shreds lingered in my mouth and grossed me out with their icky texture. Bleh.

This morning I got up at 8AM (on a Saturday!), ate some yogurt, and spent the morning lounging around with the dog and watching TV. Then I got to work on my Operation Clean Sweep project (which is basically to go through everything I own and play keep it/trash it/donate it). And then I had lunch.

I feel like I’m doing pretty well with my mostly-raw/vegetarian-before-dinner deal. No, I haven’t been successful every day, but it’s easy to plan my meals and now that I’ve added in the trail mix and the almond butter it’s keeping me full a lot longer. So I decided that, since I enjoy good cheese and since cheese has been a lunchtime staple for me recently, I would splurge a little.

So  I bought some smoked gouda from the expensive cheese section at Whole Foods.

I bought the smallest piece of the kind of smoked gouda that I chose, but it  still felt pricey.

Except then I realized, it’s really not that expensive…this is over 6.5 oz of cheese, which means it’ll be part of at least six lunches, and I’ll enjoy it a lot more than I will a brick of Kraft cheese that would be $3 or $4 for 7 or 8 lunches (provided I don’t leave it sitting on the counter…). The frugal yuppie knows what’s important enough to them to splurge on, and for me, this is splurge-worthy. (And so is an apartment that costs $150+ more than what I’m paying now.)

And so I threw together a wonderful lunch of somewhat squishy grapes…

…carrots, tomatoes, roasted red pepper hummus (decided to give the WF kind another try–it’s much better this time), an ounce of gouda, and–since it’s Saturday–a strip of smoked salmon.

It was delightful.

And now that I’ve spent eons writing this post, I’ve got to turn on some music to cover up the neighbor’s bassline and get back to my big cleaning project…I’ll be back later with dinner!

I was feeling peckish after I blogged last night, so I broke out my Lumpy Bumpy Bar!

I’ve always wanted to grab one of these at the register at Trader Joe’s, so I finally did on Saturday. This very small bar had a whopping 290 calories and I didn’t feel like eating all that…

…so I cut it more or less in half.

It was good, but I could’ve done with less nougat. Still, I might buy it again, if only because of its awesome name.

I felt kind of blarfy yesterday, and continued to feel kind of blarfy today. And the women’s restroom on our floor at work was broken all day, so we had to use a different floor’s facilities. This seems like a good reason not to work more than six hours. (I mean, who wants to spend the day feeling vaguely like they’re going to throw up and knowing that if they do they’ll have to make a break for a bathroom on a different floor?)

I had a yogurt for breakfast, and then had some trail mix that I picked up at Trader Joe’s for a snack.

This is insanely good trail mix! Last time I bought a mix from TJ’s it was the Omega Trek Mix, which has cranberries in it, and while I like cranberries they threw the entire thing off for me. This just has nuts, raisins, and strangely delicious chunks of chocolate.

Say “hi” to my special friend.

My brother and his wife got this on their cruise in May and didn’t give it to me until Saturday. I amused several co-workers with it (it has a pull string). One of them threatened to steal it.

Lunch was sooo much food.

Tomatoes, carrots, hummus (too spicy! ) grapes, and a plum. I felt like I ate for an hour.

Later in the afternoon I decided to sample the Triple Peanut Cookies I got for my cookie jar at work.

Not impressed.

So I had a cherry cashew Pure bar.

I decided to go home and make comfort food, since I felt blechy.

A chicken breast (it’s under there, I promise), carrots, onion, and a small amount of potatoes, baked with olive oil and Bavarian seasoning. Mmmmm.

But then I had two cookies.

You know what? They’re not even that good. I think I might put the rest of them in my cookie jar. I’m forever ruined when it comes to cookies now.

I watched the last episode of Six Feet Under tonight, “Everybody’s Waiting.” I cried through the last 15 minutes of it. Excellent TV series–I’ll miss watching it, but I’m glad I didn’t have five years to grow attached to it during its first run. I have Juno on DVD right now and I think after that I’ll get Frontier House, which seems to be the only show in the ____ House series that I haven’t seen.

But right now I’m going to do some laundry so I have clothes to wear tomorrow. And I’m going to make lunch. And then I might curl up in bed and go to sleep.

Also, addition to list of reasons to move: Heath found another snake in the yard today. Actually, I’m not sure he properly saw it, because he almost peed on it, and wouldn’t that have been a riot…?