Chapter 192: Say What You Want

Sundays, typically, are my “day of rest.” This is not for religious purposes or anything of that nature but simply out of convenience. It just always seems like the most convenient day of the week to lie around and not do anything. This week was different, though, because I actually had a lot to do and, as much as it wasn’t the plan initially, I used Saturday to just lie around and do nothing. Today wasn’t actually a whole lot of work or anything but it was considerably more productive than yesterday. It just goes to show that the way you start the day really does make a difference. Yesterday I woke up at 2:30pm and did absolutely nothing for the entire day. Since I woke up so late yesterday I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night. So much trouble, in fact, that I didn’t fall asleep until around 7am. I had initially had my alarm set for 10am but around 6:30am I figured I should probably change it. So, I moved it back to 11:30am, which still didn’t seem like enough sleep but it was as much as I was going to allow myself. I was determined to actually be awake somewhat early, at least in the AM hours, this morning to prepare myself for my new weekday alarm time, 6:15am. Yes, tomorrow is the first day of my new schedule. This means that my workday will be an hour longer than usual tomorrow. It also means that after tomorrow I have Tuesday off. Tomorrow should be a breeze, I am assuming. We’ll see how well that winds up working out, though. In any sense, after falling asleep at 7am this morning, I woke up around 8:30am needing to go to the bathroom. I didn’t think much of it at that point. It wasn’t until I woke up again just before 10am that I started to think this may be an issue. I also needed to go to the bathroom at 10am. It was just “number one” both times, which is pretty unusual because it is very rare that I wake up once I have fallen asleep. When I got up just before 10am, I became concerned about how I would feel when my alarm went off at 11:30am or if I would even wind up hearing it. Fortunately, I did hear it and I woke up feeling fine. Sure, I felt like I could have stood a few more hours of sleep but I didn’t feel bad.

When I got up at 11:30am, I decided that it would be the best idea for me to start being productive immediately. So, I got out of bed, did my usual morning routine and immediately gathered up a load of laundry to put in the washer. Then, while I was in the bathroom gathering clothes, I figured there was no better time than then to get to work on cleaning the bathroom. I decided it would be best to get the worst part over with first, so I pulled out the bleach and went to scrubbing the toilet. Bleach was the only thing I could think of that is used for cleaning toilets because it was what the women at my old job always used to clean the toilets. There were a couple of other employees there that would complain about them always using so much bleach to clean and I never really understood why. I know the smell isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world but they’d always bitch about it giving them a headache and hurting their eyes. I never understood that and never had any problems with that. I understand what they meant after today, though, because apparently I used a little too much bleach and my eyes were burning the whole time. It was pretty disgusting. The worst part of it is the fact that our apartment complex has hard water, so it leaves that strange ring around the inside of the toilet. This meant that I had to stay there scrubbing extra hard for a while. It really sucked. Still, the toilet looks about a million times better than it did before. I also scrubbed the outside of the toilet and reattached the lid for it.

After that, I decided to take a little time away from cleaning to eat breakfast and catch up on some TV shows that I have fallen behind on. I figured since season finale time is upon us, I should catch up on the recent episodes of the shows that are ending soon. I decided to focus today on “Gossip Girl” and “Desperate Housewives,” because their finales were scheduled for tomorrow and tonight. I went with “Gossip Girl” first because I happened upon a really huge spoiler for the season finale on Oh No They Didn’t and just had to see what exactly led up to it. I’m not going to go into details, in case anybody reading watches the show, but I will say that I am very upset about this plot development. Basically, one of the main cast members is not returning full-time next season and I am very unhappy with it. Still, the storyline leading up to this semi-departure has been really interesting. This season of “Gossip Girl,” hasn’t been as good as the first two but they are really stepping it up for the end of the season and I am very happy to see this return to form. I had four episodes of “Desperate Housewives” to catch up on. I watched all of them today, between cleaning my bathroom, and that show also got much better at the end of the season. I watched the season finale tonight, too, and it was really good but kind of anticlimactic, in a lot of ways. They did leave one really MAJOR cliffhanger for next season. Actually, they left two really major cliffhangers but I was considerably less interested in one of them. Still, next season should be interesting. That is one thing I have always hated about the end of a TV season – they always leave you with all these crazy questions that you have to wait 2-3 months to get answers to. I know this is the point of season finales but I still always find it irritating.

This afternoon I also happened to discover this music blog while randomly Googling that led me to all sorts of fun stuff for the evening. It all began with my getting this George Michael song stuck in my head earlier today. It was a song from his most recent studio album, “Patience,” called “Flawless (Go To The City.)” I decided to download his most recent greatest hits album, “Twenty Five,” which included this song and some of my other favorite songs from him, including “Amazing,” from the same album, “Outside,” “Fastlove,” and all those great old songs from the 80s, including his singles with Wham! So, I was Googling to find a download of this album and stumbled upon this blog, called Paolorama-LovePop. This blog was basically filled with greatest hits records, as well as other records, from pop artists from the 80s. Not only did I download the George Michael “Twenty Five” album but I got a whole slew of other greatest hits collections, as well. I actually downloaded a few things that I hadn’t noticed were severely lacking from my iPod since I converted from my old iPod. One very important one was Bananarama’s “The Greatest Hits & More More More.” A few years ago when I was a member of the Madonna Fan Club, ICON, a friend of mine on there, Howie, introduced me to the band Bananarama. Obviously, I knew a handful of their singles but Howie really got me listening to a lot of their other stuff and I really fell in love with their music. I also found out that they had a lot of singles that I hadn’t been aware of before that are just brilliant, like “Robert De Niro’s Waiting,” “Love In The First Degree,” and “Really Saying Something.” Bananarama are a really awesome group even still, with their 2005 album, “Drama,” which I already had on the iPod. I also downloaded “Twelve Deadly Cyns… And Then Some” by Cyndi Lauper, who has long been amongst my favorite artists. I loved a lot of her music growing up but really became a big fan back in 2003 when she released the album “At Last,” which was gorgeous. I am really a much bigger fan of her more recent work, though, like the “Body Acoustic” album and “Bring Ya To The Brink.” I really, in particular, fell in love with the “Body Acoustic” album and loved the really stripped down versions of these songs on that record. I actually saw her in concert when she toured with that album and it was one of the best concerts I ever went to. I bought tickets at the very last minute and wound up getting second row seats, which were amazing and Cyndi actually came and did a full song on the seat in the front row right in front of me. It was amazing. I also downloaded greatest hits records from Sting & The Police and the band Texas, who I really only know one song from. Texas released a single in the late 90s called “Say What You Want” that I was obsessed with but I never heard anything else from them after that. I still love “Say What You Want,” though, and decided that it could be cool to see what the rest of their music was like. So, that should be fun to check out.

Anyway, after getting my bathroom almost completely cleaned and ready for company and getting a load of laundry done, as well as watching a lot of TV, it feels an awful lot like time for bed now. It is almost midnight and my alarm is set for 6:15am. Tomorrow morning I have to take a cab to work, which means I have to allow for a little extra time in the morning. I also intend to do my very first solo workout tomorrow morning, so we’ll see how that goes. I am kind of excited to be making these changes in my day-to-day life. What is also cool about tomorrow is the fact that, according to tracking information, I should have a couple of packages arriving tomorrow. One is the new Hello Kitty case that I ordered for my Palm Pixi, which says it left Tampa today. This means it should most definitely be here by tomorrow. The other thing is a Pop Beauty “Lid Silver” eyeshadow palette that I ordered from Haute Look when they were having their Pop Beauty sale, which arrived in and left Jacksonville today. The only other package I am waiting for is my selection of, apparently fake, MAC Hello Kitty palettes. I am still upset about this, although I will still probably use them. I know that, considering these are fake MAC products, there is no telling what the actual ingredients in them are but if they are decent I will probably still use them. I am already doing a lot of research for my new upcoming project of building my very own MAC Pro Palette. I have already selected a couple different colors that I really want to be included, particularly Brule, which is a perfect creamy nude color, perfect for natural looks. Like I said, it is going to be a gradual process building up a MAC Palette but I am pretty excited to do it. If I can get the empty palette for a decent price, it really won’t be all THAT expensive, considering the eyeshadow pans to fill the palette are only $11 each. I am excited to get started on that very soon, probably when I get my next paycheck. For now, though, I need to get to bed. I have an early start tomorrow and my first extended work day, so tomorrow will be a day all about adjustments. I am not worried about these adjustments, though. I am actually more excited about them than anything else. I’d better get to sleep now, though, to prepare myself. Goodnight.