A wedding and a baby...and a conference

This year is going to be busy. I learned in November that I'm going to be a Gramma for the first time! So many things to do, so little time to do it - so much money to earn! We don't know the sex of my soon-to-be-grandbaby yet, but there's still time before the end-of-June arrival.

In the meantime, I have wedding reception to plan! Trey and Nicole will be getting married on May 5 at a super-secret location. The reception site, however, won't be a secret - they want it here, at the cabin and they want the theme to be Cinco de Mayo. I've been surfing the Web, looking for ideas for food and decor. We're talking a truly small gathering - maybe 40-50 people. I can do that - foodwise - with my eyes closed. I've found a few workable ideas and have them pinned on my board over at Pinterest. Do you need an invitation? Leave a comment but I warn you - it can be addicting!

Almost as soon as I knew the baby was on the way, my fingers started itching to crochet again. It makes me feel pretty good because I haven't had the crafting urge in a long time. My friend Marie Anne over at The Crooked Yarn has created some beautiful patterns and I'm using one of hers for my first baby afghan. I might run into a little trouble at first. She designed the baby blanket using worsted weight and I, of course, bought baby yarn. I'm confident I'll be able to work it out. I'm going to play along with her Work in Progress Wednesday on this blog to keep myself moving on the baby blanket.

I love the color combination - yellow, peach and a veriegated aqua/lemon and the main color will be white.

I'm looking to fall just a bit short of my goal toward saving for my trip to Blogher Food in June. I still have time and should get very close. But, I'll be able to buy my place ticket by mid-February, which is my main concern. I'll fill in all the details once I get my confirmation - it's going to be an interesting round-trip!

Guaranteed Weight Loss - Get Sick!

I was so full of determination on New Year's Day. I measured. I weighed. I kept track of every single thing I ate - which was no small task.

We went to Mom & Dad's for New Year's dinner. In our family, that means pork & sauerkraut. This year the pork was BBQ Baby-back ribs! On diet day. Might as well face the challenge head on. I checked the calorie counts before I went to Mom's to get an idea of how much meat I could eat, to know what I was going to put into my body before I put it there. I actually did really well and even had room in my chart for a glass of wine before I went to bed.

Sometime during the night, the evil germs from my daughter's cold snuck through the house and attacked me! I woke up on Sunday feeling like absolute hell. And I'm starting to show minor improvements each day. I probably shouldn't blame it on Allison. I have writer friends all over the country with many of the same symptoms. I think we should all check our computer filters.

Being sick is a positive for losing weight. I didn't feel like eating because I couldn't taste anything. I'm drinking tons of water because I'm so dehydrated. That's the other problem - I'm drinking so much water that by the time I'm thinking about going to bed, I have to pee every 10 minutes!


A special shout-out to Marie Anne St. Jean! She's keeping us together with Fess Up Friday! over at her blog Marie Anne's Missives. Go visit her, subscribe, be inspired. I'm working on my blog roll over at the side this weekend. A lot of my friends who have taken on the challenge this year have blogs dedicated to their journey.

Over at Weight Shedding Freelancers, I saw mention of some song lyrics that brought inspiration to someone. I agree with them. But, I'm going to use this space for a video of what I consider to be my most ass-kicking inspirational song of all time.

And I shall write...

I entered the world of freelance writing for PAY! in July 2008. While I didn't think about it at the time, it was actually July 8 - my ex-husband's birthday. So now that date is stuck in my head every time I look at my AC profile.

Wait - it's not AC anymore. It's the Yahoo! Contributor Network. What a journey it's been. My discipline sucks, always has. I'm the worst boss I've ever had unless you take porch breaks with cocktails into account. But I learned something this morning - I have a total of 401 pieces of content across the Yahoo! family of websites. Only one is a poem - a haiku I wrote for a contest over the summer. Out of that 401, I wrote 208 of them in 2010. That's an average of just over 17 articles a month. Considering that I wrote 40 articles at Y!CN in November I realize that I've got the skills if I just apply myself.

November was an interesting month writing-wise. I had a lot of great assignments, try-outs for some regular Yahoo! TV positions - I scored the 4 shows I watch regularly! I also started writing for Bright Hub at the end of October and was still on probation through November and did 5 articles for them. I didn't do as well at BH in December but I've got a lot of external factors weighing on me right now. I was also accepted into the Gather Socialwrite program and I was really excited about it. Now - they've changed the platform and I'm just not sure I'm as excited as I was originally.

So here it is - my writing goals for 2011 based on what I really accomplished in 2010.

1) 540 articles. This is realistic because I did write 45 articles in November without hurting myself too much. I plan to spread this over each of the sites I write for.

2) Achieve Hot 500 status each month at Y!CN - I hit it for the first time in November and my December was a bit better with really no hot news. My 2-year old Christmas articles carried the weight and are testimony to the power of residuals. I'd love to be Hot 100 but I tend to set realistic goals.

3) Improve my news writing so that I can score some Yahoo! News assignments. Sadly, I have a local murder trial to cover but it will be a first person perspective.

4) Work on my local work to hopefully score a Yahoo! Local beat.

Simple, achievable goals. I can do this.

A New Year with a lot of changes to be made

I've got to clear a lot of things out of my life!

This isn't just about losing this fat ass. My office has once again made me insane. After four summers of a licensed home bakery, we're ready to pack it in - 80 man-hours a week for a $250 net is just not working. That means I've got more pans of every sort possible to banish to other bakers along with a lot of other sundry items like a tall-boy rack and packaging materials. I have craft supplies I've collected over the years just taking up space with the "oh, I'll get to that this winter!".

I will confess: I'm a book hoarder! I love to see books all around me and the pile next to my side of the bed is obscenely high. I've run out of room on all my shelves. This is after I left 5 boxes of books in the basement that I didn't have room to display upstairs when we moved in over 2 years ago. The other problem is the cookbooks. I think a safe estimate is over 500. A lot of them are magazine-type, the smaller Pillsbury series that you pick up at the checkout and I received Gramma's collection when she died.

A lot of these books have got to go. So, my first call Monday will be to the Centerburg Senior Center to see if they have room in their library. I guess another option would be Centerburg's Interchurch Social Services to see if they could sell them to buy food. Trey said that Half-Price Books pays well for hardbacks - sometimes he would get around $15 for a box. But, that involves driving to Columbus for a "maybe" shot at a few bucks plus interfering with my writer's morals about no royalties for 2nd-hand books. The cookbooks? I love to look at the pretty pictures! But, I plan to especially sort through the smaller books and magazines and open up a word program and type up anything I might be especially interested in.

I've got to start moving more often. I don't mean physically moving residences, I mean getting off my ass. I was cleaning out one of the basement refrigerators the other day so we could sell it. I hurt so bad the next day from the bending and reaching and that has got to end. Winter-time is a pretty bad time in Ohio to start to think about walking. But, there's a young lady that lives somewhere near us who runs every day she's home from college. We watch her all through the summer and I've seen her every day over the last two weeks, even when the temps were in the teens. I figure I've got a lot more insulation than she does - I should be able to do this.

There's more changes to come but wow. It seems like we can all give great common-sense advice but when it comes to following it? I've got a long way to go!