The Five People You Meet in Heaven

This book was ok. The story was definitely moving and I certainly cried. I wouldn't say it was one of my favourite books, but, at less than 200 pages, I will probably read it again.

I think what I disliked about this book was that it seemed to preach and give lessons about how you should live your life. I don't like novels that have a "message", I prefer that they just have a story. I think that is the my problem with a lot of modern novels, they want to tell me how to be a better person, or how to live my life. If I wanted a book to tell me how to live my life, I would read a self-help book. Another problem that I had with this book is that I don't really believe in heaven. I think that this is the life you have and you should be a good person because it is the only life you get and you want to make the most of it, not because you want to be rewarded in some eternal paradise. Also, eternal paradise sounds hella boring.

The book did a good job of keeping my attention, and since it was so short, I read it all in one go. I wasn't wild about the structure, the "Today is Eddie's birthday" thing was confusing at the beginning and got old SO fast. There were also some parts with unclear pronouns and I hate that, you should always be able to tell who is doing or saying what.

Anyway, if you are a believer in heaven, or have a short attention span, or would like to cry while reading a book, I would recommend this one, but I wasn't a huge fan. I remember liking Tuesdays With Morrie more when I read it, but that was four years ago.

201.4

Well, it's not MORE than last week.

It was this morning though. 202.2. I suck pretty hard. I didn't want to post this morning because I was so upset about it. And today I had a migraine like you wouldn't believe, so I stayed home from work and slept most of the day. I guess sleeping all day helps you lose weight, because here I am, 7 hours of sleep and 1 shit later: 201.4.

I am not doing well at my sleep little changes, I finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven yesterday and then found My Sister's Keeper in the laundry room so I read that yesterday too and didn't get to sleep until 3. Not on the list though, so let's just say I cried, but I didn't think it was a fantastic book. I cry at Tim Horton's commercials for children's hockey though, so take that with a grain of salt. I probably won't read it again. I forgot to take my Pill yesterday and I haven't showered for a couple of days because I slept in on Tuesday and was nearly late for work and I was just too lazy to do it today. I made supper the last couple of nights (chicken caesar salad and meatloaf and pasta) but today I made my husband bring home DQ because they have been advertising Blizzards like crazy and I am a sucker for advertising. Things are going great on the dishes front, the only dirty dish in our house right now is a cup full of milk that I am drinking. The financial stuff is not going super hot, I let my husband take advances on next week's entertainment cash for Blizzards and I haven't opened the TFSA and RRSP yet. Pay day isn't until next week though, so it's not URGENT.

Anyway, that is my life so far. I am terrible at sleeping when I am supposed to and I think my migraines are caused by my glasses. Super.

Little Change 7

This week's little change is a financial little change. I got a couple of raises at the end of last month (just annual performance and collective agreement things) and it is driving me crazy that, although we are out of debt, we are making no progress in saving money to buy a house. I really want to live in a house. I want a yard. And to not be woken up by an incessantly barking dog on Sunday mornings. Seriously people, if you put your dog out on the balcony because it is barking too much, do not be surprised if one of your neighbours shoots it. (I would never shoot a dog, but after 45 minutes of barking, I was pretty fucking close.)

Also, we are spending too much money on stupid things and it is annoying me. We make a very good wage and we are living from paycheck to paycheck. It is ridiculous. With that in mind, little change 7 is:

I will open a RRSP and TFSA and make automatic deductions to these accounts at every paycheck.

Also, we will use cash for any "entertainment" spending for the next couple of months to avoid over-spending and get us into the habit of spending less. Eventually we will go back to using out debit cards, but only after we are acclimatized to less spending.

As far as the other little changes are concerned, things are going well. I was out of bed on time today, but a nap in the afternoon on Sunday really screwed up my sleeping schedule, I don't think I slept more than 10 minutes at a time all night, for a grand total of about an hour. I have been taking my pill but not my vitamin, but my hair isn't falling out anymore, so that is cool, also my (not very severe) acne is pretty much gone. I am reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven right now and the review will be posted on Thursday as per usual. I bought some new mousse and hairspray, so hairstyling is even more fun: I even curled my hair on Saturday. It was pretty rad. We have been eating supper at home and ALL of our dishes are done. I even swept the kitchen floor and had my husband take down the recycling.

I am officially back on the Little Changes Train! wOOt wOOt!

Anne of Green Gables

I love this book. I love the entire series. I have loved them since I was 10.

The End.

Just kidding. I really do love this series of books though. They are well written and the story is wonderful. Anne Shirley and the rest of the folks in Avonlea could be real people. The situations in the book are real life situations: nothing is outrageous or beyond what would actually happen to an actual person, unlike in some other novels.

I highly recommend these books to everyone and anyone. My especial favourites are Anne of Green Gables, Anne of the Island and Anne's House of Dreams, but I think my most favourite is Rilla of Ingleside. I really enjoy historical fiction and, according to Wikipedia, that book is one of the only novels to present the First World War from the perspective of a Canadian woman. It's wonderful. They are all wonderful. Stop reading this blog garbage and go read these books.

201.4

Well, it's less than last week right?

Yesterday was a terrible day for little changes: I slept in; I forgot to take my Pill and vitamin (I did take my Pill before bed, but the vitamin needs to be taken with a meal); I didn't read any books; I had a Big Mac for supper and we didn't do any dishes, speed or otherwise. I also didn't go to bed until 2:30 last night. :S

Why was I so bad yesterday? Probably because my lower eyelid puffed up like a blowfish in the afternoon, so I came home and was feeling quite sorry for myself. When my husband got home from work we just went to bed and slept for 4 hours. Which was lovely, except we missed suppertime and dishes time and basically the entire evening. And then we stayed up until 2:30 to make up for all the extra sleeping we had already done.

You'd think with a night like that that I would jump out of bed at 8 this morning. Not quite. It was cold in the apartment and warm in the bed, so I stayed in bed until 8:30. I was definitely awake at 8 though.

Shame shame shame.

Choose-day

I hate when people say it like that. I took linguistics in university and the prof would say it like that and then say that was the "upper class" way of saying it. I say it's the "douche" way of saying it. T sounds like "tuh", not like "chuh"!

Anyway, my husband and I did half and hour of "speed dishes" and we made quite a dent in the kitchen cleaning process. There is still a lot to do, but progress is progress. I think half an hour tonight and half an hour tomorrow and we should be done completely. I find it much less daunting to give myself half an hour to work on something and then stop, as opposed to just working until something is finished. It is a lot more motivating when you know that in 30 minutes you will no longer have to be doing dishes.

At about quarter to bedtime, he decided that he wanted to lose at NHL10 for an hour (to kids in Mexico that have never even heard of hockey, he is sooo terrible at that game, it's very uncharacteristic) and I wanted to go to bed with him, so I was sitting up looking at bengal kittens. Needless to say I slept until 8:30 this morning and I am still quite tired. I guess I am going to have to start going to bed by myself. *sad face*

Little Change 6

This little change goes along with little change 5.

I will wash dishes after supper every night.

Well, really I mean that I will participate in dish washing after supper. I prefer drying and putting away over washing. Washing is gross. And I cook the supper, my husband has to do something!

We are both quite lazy when it comes to dishes and they tend to pile up. This frustrates and angers me. It is also an obstacle to having people over. I am not a very tidy person, but I do not like having people know that I am not very tidy. I feel like my house should always be (reasonably) clean before people come over. This means no dirty dishes, vacuum swept, clean bathroom, etc. Right now, this means either we spend an entire day cleaning before we have people over, or we don't have people over. Except really close friends that also have messy houses. Even then, it has to be guy friends. Guys with messy houses don't notice the mess in other houses either, girls are judgmental bitches. Well, I am a judgmental bitch about other people's houses, so I assume that they would do the same for me.

In other little change news, I did not do well on the bedtime thing last night, but I will get back on the wagon for true tonight. I was up late last night doing laundry and watching Harry Potter 5. Stupid CBC. I am back on the Pill again this week and I have been taking my vitamins for the past couple of days. I am starting a new book tonight (Anne of Green Gables review coming Thursday). I did my hair today. We had supper out because it is Monday and basketball was at 6:30 and 15 minutes is not enough time to make and eat supper between work and basketball. Tomorrow will be chicken stir-fry. We are going to do dishes tonight because there is a whole mess of dirty dishes in my kitchen, and we might as well get started. I have a feeling it will take us until Wednesday or Thursday to get everything done. I am not concerned about finishing tonight, or even tomorrow, I just want to get in the habit of doing dishes every night.

That's what this whole shebang is about, HABITS.

And conquering laziness.