honey.

Today I caught up on DVR'd shows, on-demand movies, and napping. I also watched perhaps the most depressing love story ever, "The Way We Were." If you haven't seen it, and you're sad about lost love, DO NOT watch it. Especially with wine. Trust me on this. My therapist told me a long time ago I should see it, after a hard breakup with a great guy with whom I was not meant to be with. Her point, I see now, was that sometimes you can love each other greatly, but it still isn't enough and you're still not a match. Um thanks, therapist. I'll be calling you again real soon.

Anyway.

After sobbing myself into a nice long nap, I woke up and went about my day (read: watched more movies, laundry, more sobbing). I ended up in the bathtub, as I am wont to do when feeling emotionally fragile. Which brings me to the next portion of this post: beauty reviews!! It's been a really long time, but I thought tonight was as good a time as any to review some of my fave products -- because while I haven't been blogging beauty products, I've been using beauty products. The theme of tonight's bath was Honey. Honey and its lovely, restorative, softening, swoon-inducing properties. I lurve eet. Here's what I used tonight:

• MMU's JoJo Honey Face Buff. If you have a chance to use this decadent mask, DO. It will leave your face silky soft like a baby's. Seriously. It is technically a "scrub" and has tiny little jojoba beads in it. But how I use it is I get in a hot bath, let my skin steam for a few minutes, and then apply it to my face like a mask. I then leave it on 5-15 minutes (depending on the length of my bath), then gently rub in the beads. I then rinse it off, and oila -- amazingly soft, amazing-smelling skin. It's a little sticky during the process, but sooo worth it. A little goes a long way.
• LUSH's Mange Too massage bar. OMG. This is decadent. You will smell simply edible after smoothing this along your warm, bath-soaked skin. Lush's massage bars can of course be used for massage, but hard-core Lushies know they also double as lotion. Solid lotion, if you will. Smooth one over your legs, arms, whatever, wet or dry, and it will melt upon contact just enough to leave a film of sweet-smelling moisturizer. It soaks in quickly, leaving you supple but not greasy. I like using Mange Too because it smells of -- you guessed it - honey. It is yummy beyond belief. Note: if you don't have access to a LUSH store and have to order these online, don't do so in the summer months; they will melt. If you do get a melted one, just pop it in the fridge for a few hours and it will solidify again -- it won't be as pretty, but will work just fine.

That's it for now. I am going to cuddle into my bed with a nice serial killer suspense novel and drift into a sweetly scented slumber. Tomorrow is Monday and I have to be ready for anything.

ciao for now.

technicalities

So technically, I haven't gone to bed yet, so it totally doesn't count as Saturday's post. This is Friday's post. Just so we're clear.

I just got out of a hot, milky bath in which I shaved my legs and armpits and soaked for 45 minutes in HOT WATER. Which I haven't had in TWO DAYS. That's right, this morning I still had no hot water, but my hair could not go another day. So yeah, I managed to wash my hair in an ice cold shower without getting my body wet. Determined chicks can accomplish miracles when they're cold. Anyway, I'm clean and shiny now, and my legs no longer make cricket sounds when they rub together.

So today was another sucky day at work, but there is at least a light at the end of the tunnel now. Hopefully it will work out and my soul will not continue to be slowly and agonizingly crushed. Because, damn. We sure do spend most of our lives in an office. I personally think that's messed up, but I've gotta pay the bills. One more reason to consider my running-away-to-Europe plan again in a few years... those people know how to vacation.

The point of this pointless post is that I really have no point. I do want to rub in, however, that I currently have my windows open and a cool breeze is wafting in. LOVE.

That is all.

missed a day...

what are you gonna do -- fire me?

heh.

Seriously though. Yesterday was wretched and i feared what venom would pour forth from my fingers if I attempted to blog. So I didn't.

Today, however. Today sucked even WORSE, but is still a bit more blogworthy. My first clue that the day was going terribly awry was when I stepped into the shower and it was ICE COLD. That was not a nice way to start off, especially with the first crisp morning in months -- it was in the high 50s this morning, and the cold water was not appreciated. After calling the office to bitch about it, I was told that "oh yeah, they're doing some repairs to [my building] and it **should** be fixed today." Honestly? I'm greasy and weary but too afraid to try the water again just yet. I mean, what if it's still cold? Do I really want to end my day in the same unpleasant way in which it began? Really?

Then I went to work (with dirty hair) and had all the same drama to deal with. It was exhausting. I realized around 1 that I had a horrible headache, but I had a meeting at 1:30 to prepare for and I just couldn't bring myself to take 5 minutes and heat up my lunch. So guess what? This is so amazingly thoughtful, I almost cried. I felt my friend G walk up and set something down by my elbow -- and it was my lunch. That she had taken from the freezer (we have to label everything) and heated up for me. Just because. It tasted much better than it would have had I heated it up myself, that's for sure.

By the time the day ended, my head still hurt and I was cranky and exhausted -- but knew if I came straight home I would nap on the couch until like 11 and then be up all night. So instead I grabbed some pizza and headed over to my friend K's house, where we ate dinner and watched extra episodes of the now-defunct "Six Degrees" on the internet. And she kindly listened to my entire work rant from start to finish, not even chiming in once about how much she adores her job. Well, until I asked her. I needed to hear something positive, what can I say.

Finally I got home about 30 minutes ago. It's nice and cool outside again, so I was going around the house opening windows, when I saw them: the iPod earbuds. Strewn out in the middle of the floor. The same iPod earbuds my friend CrazyMomcat and I had searched for for at least half an hour before her flight Sunday. She knew she had put them somewhere obvious, but they were gone gone gone. The same earbuds she had to replace at Best Buy before her flight out. And it's been four days, and now they suddenly appear in the middle of the living room -- hmmm, I WONDER WHICH CAT THIEF MIGHT HAVE BEEN HOARDING THE EAR BUDS?
HMMMM?

Day two and counting

Well I committed to posting every day this week, but wow. It's hard. I should have known this, because it's why I haven't been posting regularly in the first place, but still.

um.


I have nothing to share. I'm so sorry. I'm sitting on my couch with my boyfriend Jess purring just inches from my face. Oh wait - now he's draped one arm casually over the laptop. I think he's trying to communicate that he's sleepy -- well so am I. But for some reason my mind is like "but it's only midnight. you still have time to take a bath! or do a load of laundry! so many things!" while my body is all "sleep. must. have. sleep. beautiful, restorative sleeeeeeeep." Yes, the inner conflict rages on.

However, tonight, I will succumb to the sleepy. And i'll work on having more interesting thoughts tomorrow, mmm-kay?

feeling profound

I am in a heightened state of awareness for some reason, on this typical Monday night, at the end of a nothing-special Mon-day. I suppose some would argue that every day is special. And yes, I suppose that is true. But if I thought about that too much i'd get all depressed about how my life is trickling away, moment by moment, wasted in a cubicle in a building overlooking the mountains, which is where my soul really should be. I mean, really. But you know, my soul is much closer than it was a year ago; baby steps.

It was very hard to go to work today without feeling a certain amount of bitterness. I had a carefree weekend with a dear friend from Texas, a weekend of deep thoughts, catching up, and silly shopping. It was a whirlwind, but a happy whirlwind, but I was not happy to return to "real life" today. And when I got to work, there was another issue there that promised to, and did in fact, make my day unpleasant. Actually, a person. Someone with whom I must collaborate, but who seems to make mistakes like they were going out of style--and each mistake has the potential to make my job just a little bit harder than it already is. This breeds bitterness, and oh, how bitter I have been. Yet I have felt shitty about feeling bitter about this person. Because nobody is perfect, we all mess up, who knows what's going on in this person's personal life that's making this person totally screw up at work, blahblahblah -- and I feel selfish for my attitude over the past couple of weeks and my mounting frustration. Even while I am suffering guilt for this, I am still simmering, annoyed. So as you might imagine, work is not my happy place right now. Not even close.

But hey - at least I have a mountain view from my small, gray cubicle.

[not bitter not bitter not bitter not bitter]

In other news, I rediscovered a blog by an author I greatly admire and she has been up to all kinds of deep thoughts lately. She has been writing about issues that are touching me in ways I haven't been touched in a while. I got caught up for about an hour just digging through her archives of the past few months, and rediscovering why I love her writing in the first place. She's a bit more "out there" than I am, but her approach fascinates me. She is definitely on a journey and it's damn interesting to read about. Anyway. It may not be your cup of tea, but I was in the right kind of introspective mood to absorb it tonight.

By mountain time, I am still under the Monday deadline for D's week-long blogging challenge, so yay for me! And yay for D for encouraging us to get to thinking and to get blogging again.

Score.

I can't help it -- I'm still riding the incredible high of finding a diamond in the pile of coal that is the Ross shoe department. Oh, it happens now and then; my sistah has had more luck finding treasures there than I have. But tonight I became a believer. I found these boots (in black). For $19.99. OMG. They're so beautiful, so leathery, so funky. And so 80% off their normal price!!! A deal like this is found maybe once a season. Maybe. Last year I found The Deal unknowingly, on, haha, another pair of black boots. But they were totally different. They were. {shut up.}

Anyway, I can't get over the rush I have had for a few hours now. This led me to consider how incredibly sad it is that shopping gave me the biggest high I've had all week, since I went white water rafting last Friday. That's right. I said WHITE WATER RAFTING. Me, Lisa, the lifelong water-phobe. And it was fun, really fun!! I will post pics soon. You have to see 'em to believe 'em. The best I can do right now is to show you the post-rafting feast, where me and my pals ate what were possibly the best cheeseburgers in the world. Evah. You can see that we are still a little damp from the river. Behold:

Me, eating a cheeseburger.*

G., eating a cheeseburger.

and finally,

A., G.'s sister, eating a cheeseburger.

I leave you with that. I'm going to go cuddle with my new boots now.


*this might be the only existing photo of me without lipstick since I was 11.

Rekindling my Colorado spirit

I have been in a weird emotional place lately. I think it's because it is summertime, which for the past 20 years has been my least favorite season, and now that I'm here and there's not mind-numbing heat, I'm able to focus on and remember the years in which it was actually my favorite time of the year. I've talked about Spring Canyon before, but I hadn't really thought about it in a long time. Like, since I've moved here, really. Which is insane. That place and those people had such a profound effect on me, changing who I was and how I thought about myself. I honestly don't know if I would have survived high school if not for my yearly escape to the mountains.

So imagine my surprise when I was driving toward the mountains last week, on my way home from visiting the nephews in south Denver, feeling kind of moody and a little bit lonely; wondering when this place would feel like home; and then SHAZAAM, the realization that um, I have felt at home here before, and I'll bet if I looked around a little bit, I could even reconnect with some of the dear people I knew so well 20 (gulp) years ago. In other words, HELLO, Spring Canyon is only a couple of hours away!!! And a handful of the people I befriended there were from Denver, so I'll bet I could get on google and dig up at least some of them. It's so bizarre to me how that epiphany, a) took so long to happen, and b) made me instantly think of Denver differently; not as a giant, foreign city to conquer, but as somewhere where I had very happy memories when I was much, much younger.

So, note to self: begin excavation Spring Canyon. Before the summer is gone. I'd love to drive up there for a weekend and see if anyone I know still works there. I would love it even more if my dear friend Kelly, the only person I am still close to who understands and remembers that time, could explore it with me. KJ, that is a not-so-subtle nudge to get up here :)

I'm thinking a roadtrip is in order... I don't know about you, but I definitely need to reconnect with that other Lisa, the one who could laugh with her whole body, love with her whole soul, and truly escape the troubles of everyday life, if only for a few weeks a year. I live here now - I'm thinking I should work on making that carefree, optimistic attitude more of an everyday thing.