Insecurity Time!

I knew I was getting bigger. I've never made a habit of weighing myself, but the few times I did it seemed I was only going up.

This was a welcome change, though. I was used to getting on the scale and being ten to fifteen pounds underweight. Now I was just fine, thank you. Until, of course, I was ten pounds overweight.

It never really hit home for me until today, when put on a shirt my mom gave me, looked in the mirror, and felt my heart sink. I don't know what it is about this shirt - the neckline, perhaps, or the slight bagginess to it - but I actually look big.

Let me point out now that I do realize ten pounds is not that much, numbers-wise. However, it's a lot to me. I am used to thinking of myself as rather slender, and though I always had a bit if a tummy and my chest has been a decent size since puberty, I've never been even a little overweight and have even occasionally been in shape. And, with several skinny siblings and a mom who exercises hard and watches what she eats, I'm not in sympathetic company.

Back to the story. I would blame my weight gain on my boyfriend, but that would be mean and not entirely truthful. It's not his fault that him feeding me one or two good meals a day and working to convince me that food is good would make me gain 25 pounds. The problem lies in the fact that exercise and I are not good friends. If I have no PE class or marching band, I have no reason to get up and move my body.

So now I guess I'd better force myself to get up and move, no matter how much I hate it. I do like all of the benefits - sleeping better, an actual appetite, muscle, and not having jiggly arms, thighs, and tummy - so I should just focus on those to get me through a half hour of sweating.

You know, I came here intending to just complain, and ended up coming up with solutions. When did I become even a bit of a responsible adult?

Kittens!

So in my last post I mentioned that my apparently very fertile cat had gotten herself pregnant, with the end result of seven kittens. I even showed you a small picture where you could barely see all seven of them piled on top of my sister Melissa.

That, of course, is not the only kitten picture I have, though I have fewer than I'd like. So here are a few more! If you'd like to see all of them, find and follow my DeviantART and Flickr accounts.

This is probably my favorite from the photo shoot we did. I think my sister is beautiful, Rupert (temporary name) is adorable, and I love that their eyes match.



Lissi and Sam (temporary name) being adorable together.



Lissi insisted I put up this picture. She may have been joking. Oh well.



I love the traumatized look on Sam's face as he stares at Lissi's butt.


Rupert is ashamed.


This kitten's temporary name is in Japanese. It's Tenshi, which means angel. Unfortunately, this kitten is of the devil.


Lissi has been renamed Gym. Jungle Gym.

This was not the easiest photo shoot I have ever done. Apparently the outside is a scary place.

Well Hello There

Hi guys.

I'm back again.

And I have some really good excuses for why I haven't posted in two months.

Reason One

You may remember from my last post that my computer exploded. (Well actually it died in its sleep, but explosions are much more exciting to talk about.) So some of my time in the past two months was spent creating a new coupon code, promoting my shop with the new coupon code, making and shipping the extra orders, and checking and rechecking my finances. After a couple of weeks, some online shopping, and a really long wait for shipping, here we are!



I also spent some times playing computer games. Don't judge me! This is the first time I've owned a PC, and HOLY CRAP THERE ARE COOL GAMES.

Reason Two

Do you remember my cat Bamboo, most recently talked about as having been out all night and coming back with a hangover? Well, that's not all she came back with.



That's seven kittens, you guys. Seven. Did she find a cat orgy or something? Maybe a cat mandatory sex party? Whatever happened, she partied hard, and is now paying the price. She spent two weeks doing almost nothing but feed kittens and eat so she could feed kittens. Her spare moments were spent collapsed in a corner of the room.

Why did this take up my time? With a litter this big, we were afraid that one or more of kittens wouldn't get enough to eat, so we weighed them one or two times a day and carefully kept track, and we had formula on hand if one of them lost weight.

At four weeks old (last Saturday) they were all at a week five weight, so somebody did something right.

Reason Three

It was my birthday at the beginning of June. In lieu of throwing a party, I gave myself a present.



I love this game. Older readers (or those who read the archives of this blog) will remember that I once blogged about my love of the game Encore, and will therefore know how serious it is when I say that my love for this game rivals my love of Encore. My brother and sister and I play every Monday and Friday, and I try to sneak other games in on other days of the week. I had to force myself to write this blog post instead of playing a game with my sister.

I feel like I'm forgetting something. What else could have been taking up my time?



Oh yeah. That.

That picture, though dark and a little small (and kindly provided by my cousin Danica) is of most of the alpha bracelets I shipped last Friday. There were a total of 258 that we shipped, all of them had been made in three weeks, and I made at least a third of them. I knotted for hours every day. They take me an hour and ten minutes to an hour and a half each, and my average a day was around 3-4. Some days I made six or more. This was seriously almost all I did with my time.

But now I am back and ready to take on the world! Here's what you can expect from this blog in the next couple of weeks:

*Duct tape prom dress photos
*Adventure(s) of the Doctors Who
*More adorable kittens
*A State of the Shop address
*The launch of a much-anticipated item in my Etsy shop

You should be excited for at least one of these, if not all of them. I also have several long-term projects in the planning, so if you like kittens, bracelets, duct tape, or hearing from me, you should bookmark this blog. This is where it will all be happening!