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Saving Myself from Squalor 2004-03-08, 3:09 p.m. The cats desperately need their nails trimmed and I cannot locate any of the claw trimming devices that I own. This seems to happen about once a month � I notice that the cats need to have their claws trimmed and I spend about a week searching for cat nail scissors around my apartment. Inevitably, I go buy a new pair and as soon as the package is opened, I find two or three of the previously missing pairs. I think the cats are hiding them from me somehow. I�m also sure that whoever is in charge of market research for my particular demographic at my local PETCO is thinking that I am a little crazy for purchasing nothing but cat nail scissors at their store. And, on my new kick to stop excess discretionary spending, I really don�t need to spend $12 on nail scissors for the cats every month. Where do the stupid things hide? Why does this happen with everything from cat nail scissors to hairbrushes to wool socks? I am feeling very guilty right now, so I�ll just confess this to you: I just gave in to a serious vending machine craving and scarfed some chewy double chocolate cookies. I am a person who has to eat several small meals throughout the day � three squares just does not cut it for me because I�m starving by mealtime and then I overindulge. And as much as I�m trying, I am not a morning person, so I don�t get up and eat a healthy breakfast at home. It�s consumed in the car or at my desk. Usually, I combat this by bringing a supply of food to work with me that is supposed to be my breakfast and my afternoon snacks. Lately, I�ve been so ravenous in the mornings that I eat all of my snacks throughout the morning, which means I�m not very hungry when the cafeteria is open and thus do not eat a proper lunch, and then I am starving around mid-afternoon. I�m going to work on this. Usually, I keep a tub of Brummel and Brown fruit spread in the refrigerator in my office (with my name on it in GIANT LETTERS because I work with a bunch of Lean Cuisine-stealing mongrels) and bring two slices of whole-grain bread to toast. I usually eat a string cheese and a cup of dry cereal along with that, and since I don�t show up until 9 a.m., that gets me through to lunch. Then, I go to the cafeteria with some co-workers if I didn�t bring my lunch, or I read a book or magazine and eat at my desk if I brought something. I eat a yogurt and a piece of fruit in the afternoon, and am generally pretty hungry for an early dinner, followed by a snack of fat-free popcorn after I work out. No exercise, no evening popcorn and Diet Coke snack. I really think that the Weight Watchers POINTS system has been helpful for teaching me how to allocate my daily calorie allotment throughout the entire day, but at times like this afternoon, I am sooo weak. I need to stock up on good non-perishable snacks to keep in my desk in lieu of eating vending machine cookies. Besides single-serving bags of popcorn, I�ve got nothing. Any ideas? (I do not live near Whole Foods or Trader Joe�s, so anything interesting from those two stores is out of the question.) Now that a redheaded angel hooked me up with Office XP, I can go back to spreadsheeting on my desktop instead of hunching over my old, groaning laptop each evening. I made brand-new XP spreadsheets for menu planning, grocery shopping, and housecleaning tasks last night, and I am going to work on a tracker for my budget/expenses tonight. I�m trying to stay busy so that I can keep my mind off of things with T, and so I�m hoping this will mean I have a clean apartment with folded laundry and limited piles of books and miscellaneous crap after the weekend. I�m planning to go through my CD and book collections and determine what to sell, what to give away, and what to keep. And I�m going to rip all of the good CDs to my hard drive when I stop being lazy about it. I have a goal of reducing my possessions by 25% this year, and the key areas where I can do this are my closets, my kitchen, and my books/CDs/VHS tapes. I no longer have a working VCR, so in theory, I don�t need any VHS tapes. I sent about 75 of them to Punk (my sister), and I have a few left that I am hanging onto for sentimental reasons or that she already owned, so I can (hopefully) sell them. I don�t know if I�m going to try Amazon or eBay or half.com for the stuff I need to get rid of, so I guess I need to look into that as well. I just hate to throw stuff like that away when I know somebody else can use it. I�m planning a major closet cleanout this weekend to move my spring stuff in and the winter stuff out, and I am going to get rid of my too-big clothes (yay!) and give away all of the stuff that I�ve never worn and probably never will since our office changed the dress code last year. For example, I have about two dozen sleeveless sweaters that need a good home. And, if I can afford it, I want to buy a few new things for my wardrobe since it�s spring. I am hesitating since I�m having about a thousand dollars of dental work done in the next three months and, well, that�s a lot of money to spend on teeth. Oh, and I�m supposed to be saving money so that I can afford to move later this summer/sometime this fall, but I am not doing very well at that either. My focus now is cleaning and organizing! I mean, my parents are showing up for a visit in June, so I need to get down to business and stock up on Magic Erasers now.
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