It was completely spur-of-the-moment, but on Tuesday, I knocked another item off my 101 goals in 1001 days list. The fact that it was the one goal that I was very interested in accomplishing, yet the one that I was THE MOST nervous about, makes it worth an entry all to itself.

The item?

76. attempt to reconcile with a particular former friend

And on Tuesday, I did. Not just attempted, but actually DID reconcile with her.

Here's the TL;DR version of the backstory, which, knowing me, will be a short story in itself: In late 2003, I was in school taking my legal assistant course and in a LTR with my ex, S. I *thought* everything was mostly fine, other than money was tight and I was struggling with my weight and depression at the time. Turned out, he was apparently really unhappy. My former roommate/friend C, who had been on a hiatus from the SCA, came back to it and S & C hit it off and became good friends, with things eventually progressing from there. S had apparently been planning to break up with me eventually once I was finished school, but the presence of C sped it along as he was interested in her.

My depression was really bad at that time, and the breakup was a big nasty drawn-out thing, at least emotionally, with me living with S for a few months after we were actually broken up so I could finish school. We tried to stay friends at first, but it didn't happen and by the time a few months had passed after I moved into my own place, I was at a place of hating both of them. Enough that if I even saw them at an SCA event, my most recent meal would threaten to make a reappearance (as anxiety was the way my body expressed that hate).

As time went on, and I got my depression dealt with, went through counseling and got my meds stabilized, and as enough time passed for me to be able to look on the situation with a more rational and less emotional view, I was able to look back on the situation and see just how bad my mental health was at the time, and see all the things I couldn't see back then. This helped the anger and hate pass, and with that gone, I started missing my friends. I have lots of new friends who I love and am thankful for their presence in my life, but I missed them - S. on a friend basis, as opposed to as my partner, because obviously I have Ian now and I adore him and he's awesome, and C., as someone who was at one time a good friend and probably had the absolute most in common with me out of any of my friends. Obviously life's changed a lot for all of us since then, but it was something I wanted to do.

On Tuesday morning, a friend of mine posted on Facebook, and I commented on it. A short while later, C commented as well (we have dozens of friends in common on FB). This made the whole idea pop into my head again. And I finally got the guts up to actually do it. It took me all day (in short little bits here and there) but I wrote an email to her, and sent it via Facebook. And she responded, like within an hour or so! We spent a bunch of time chatting last night, and it's almost as if we never lost touch, in some ways. :)

She did make a comment on Tuesday that if we wanted to be friends offline as well as just being in touch on Facebook, I should probably extend an olive branch to my ex as well, so last night I sent him a FB-mail too. He hasn't even looked at it yet (my FB Messenger app for my iPhone can tell me if a message has been read yet or not). Though I don't expect any problems there, since when I sent C the original mail, she discussed it with him before she responded and then told me she had, and that he was open to the idea. So that's that.

I started this entry back on Tuesday, and work was so crazy busy on Tuesday and Wednesday that it has taken til now to get the darn thing finished. I really shouldn't complain, though, as I'd rather be busy at work than slow, which makes the days drag on and on. Anyways, last weekend was a most excellent weekend.

I booked Friday off to give myself a four day weekend, and it was well worth it. Ian had to work (and actually worked Monday as well, since he gets paid at a ridiculous rate on stat holidays), and I spent most of the day just relaxing. I did a bit of housework here and there, but nothing major.

On Saturday, we went to Ikea (again - we'd gone the weekend before to replace Ian's coffee press, but they had been out of them at the time and he ended up buying one at London Drugs instead), and I picked up a plain wooden shelving unit. We have this area in the house - I never know what to call it, because it's bigger than the living room, but it's sort of useless space - it's like a really wide hallway between all the other rooms, and I think it was sort of intended to be used as a dining room, but we don't use it that way. It contains a pantry cupboard, short bookcase with my cookbooks on it, my craft table (which is currently more like a CRAP table, as it's piled high with random junk), and a microwave stand which does triple duty as my altar on the top, herb storage in the middle, and liquor cabinet in the cupboard on the bottom. And then there was this area sort of across from the kitchen
door which tended to collect random miscellaneous junk on the floor.

Well, I got sick and tired of it on the weekend, and I decided that to hell with attempting to have everything inside of cupboards and stuff, hence the shelving unit. We put it together that evening and I put it right next to the pantry unit, basically right where all the junk tends to accumulate. I'm still in the process of arranging everything just the right way, but I've moved some of the bigger countertop appliances out of a cupboard onto it, so that I can put the little junk into the cupboard and get it put away. It's already gotten TONS better.

We also finally got some work done on wedding stuff this weekend. We picked out a likely candidate for our wedding invitations and I ordered a sample. We also put on a batch of wine, though I am trying to persuade my parents to fund us going the legal route and buying alcohol to sell at the wedding instead of going totally illegal and doing the u-brew route. I had wanted to work on the website as well, but that didn't happen.

Oh, and on Sunday, we had brunch with estrellada (Ian's sister), who is going to be our day-of coordinator for the wedding. I think the wedding is going to be awesome, and she's perfect for coordinating things on the day of the wedding.

And overall it was just a nice weekend of time with Ian and my furbabies and a feeling of "life is really awesome these days".

It's been a looooong time since I've paid any attention to this, or done an update, so it's definitely time for one.

So, here's the goals I currently have in-progress or recently finished:
41. learn to sing a song in a different language - Be Thou My Vision, learned as a possible entry for Lions Gate Bardic Defenders, though I didn't end up using it
54. enter an SCA bardic competition (full entry, since I've already done a single entry into Tir Righ Bardic) I entered (and won!) Lions Gate Bardic Defender in 2012
57. get back to archery practice, score a Royal Round and then improve by at least 20 points over a season - in progress, I've started going to practice again, and my starting score for a Royal Round was 8.
60. get one character of each class in WoW to level 85 on the Alliance side, all on the same server (I'm sitting at 9/10 finished right now) (still at 9/10, but that 9th character only has 20 levels to go)
66. meet two friends in person that I know via the internet only at the making of this list (if I can get a trip to Portland in, this will be super easy) 1/2 (met catwithclaws)
67. try absinthe (I'm not going to consider this even in progress yet, but Ian's best man says he'll be bringing the real stuff from Europe for our wedding).
77. Pack my lunch to work every day for 2 months (4/40)
78. eat breakfast at home and not purchase anything on the way to work for 2 months(4/40)
88. get 10 pictures of friends and family and frame them and put them up around the house (5/10)

Erm, hi! Remember me?

I am so freaking behind on posting that I don't know if I can even catch up at this point, so I'm just going to do a bunch of point form stuff in an attempt to pack as much into this post as I can.

i. My birthday is in 9 days! Whee! I ordered myself a birthday present from Sihaya Designs 2 weeks ago and I can hardly wait until it gets here. I'm doing a birthday dinner at the New West Spaghetti Factory on the day of my birthday, and if there's any locals on here who aren't on FB who would like to attend, you're more than welcome (though I don't think there's anyone other than someone I've already talked to in person who isn't on my FB).

ii. Back on March 31st, I entered Lions Gate's Bardic Defender competition... and won! I'm still kinda stunned about that. I played my harp, and did Frog Galliard and Beer is for Girls - the former was arranged by, and the latter was composed by Lady Isolde de Lengadoc of Ealdormere, who blogs at Well Tempered Harpy. Now I am looking for pieces to learn to enter Tir Righ Bardic 2013 (2012 is too close to the wedding to enter).

iii. The wedding was 6 months away as of last Friday. It's time for us to get our butts in gear in working on things. I need to get on the invites ASAP, plus get Ian's input on the website, arrange our engagement shoot with Tish, and get going on my dress.

iv. Ian's work has been doing a whole bunch of position shifting, because people have been quitting. I'm going to make a more detailed, locked post about this later, but I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that he can get onto dayshift sometime in the not too distant future. That would be SOOOO nice.

v. My work has been fine, if a little slow, lately. This is perfectly fine with me.

vi. I am SO thankful that the financing company that my car loan is done through is reasonable. I just called and shifted my next two payments very slightly to align better with my paycheques, and it has made a world of difference in my budget for the next 3 months. Whew!

vii. It's going to be a quiet summer for me, SCA-wise. I'm going to a few local-ish events, but we are really focusing our finances on wedding stuff, so I won't be able to do much traveling past Chilliwack, and even then just once.

viii. The two things most frequently in my thoughts lately? my spirituality and creativity. I need to do something about both of those things, and haven't been lately. Must rectify.

ix. well, that and archery. I actually got my membership this year, and have been out to the range twice so far. We will probably go out again this weekend. hopefully I can find my glove easily.

and, that's all I can think of right now

It's Friday, and you know what that means.... well, other than it being almost the weekend. It's time for a list post!

i. work was boring this morning, but all of a sudden it got busy just before lunch time, and for a while there the office felt like grand central station. it has FINALLY slowed down a bit so I can have a few minutes to catch my breath.

ii. My new vacuum cleaner hose arrived yesterday. This makes me ridiculously excited. It's been a long time since our place has gotten a good vacuuming, because the old hose made the vacuum unusable. I will be vacuuming my house to within an inch of its life this weekend.

iii. I got to babysit one of the most adorable little blond boys out there this week, my honorary nephew Jack. We watched Dumbo together and I worked on my plaid underdress. It was good to get a dose of cute kid in, and remind me of why I should embrace the honorary nieces and nephews but not have any kids of my own. Hehe.

iv. I have Lions Gate Baronial Banquet tickets for sale! Only $10 each! The event is March 31st, and if you go during the day, you can hear me perform and compete for the Lions Gate Bardic Defender title. I will be playing my harp, and possibly singing. :)

v. Tonight, I am going to out to the Newcomers Session and spin on my drop spindle for the first time in aaaaages.

vi. I am being a total copycat and stealing Cat Valente's idea, which was originally borrowed from Unfuck Your Habitat and I've started a Tumblr to document my efforts at unfucking my own life. No, you can't have the link yet. :)

vii. I really need to get off my butt and start working on the mockup for my wedding dress. I am again having thoughts of "screw it, let's just elope".

viii. I've been making lots of beads lately! I need to check whether or not I posted the picture of the last finished bead project I made.

That's all for now, I can't think of anything else to say.

It's been way too freaking long since I've posted here, so I'm going to do a State of the Karla post to catch you all up.

Work's been fine the past few weeks. I had some major stress there for a little bit, but I suspect my own anxiety and PTSD probably inflated that to be a lot worse than it should have been. I'm just doing the best job I can here to keep this job as long as I can (hopefully until I have something else), and keeping on with my job search.

Things are great with Ian. Pretty much no complaints at all there. We're working on getting him back to school sometime in the near future - he's going to go into a trade. I'm looking forward to that, so that we can then get onto a similar work schedule. Plus once he's done with his school and into his new career, I'm going to work on getting myself back again and changing careers. I have no idea what I want to do yet though.

My health is holding steady. Ian and I are working on altering our food intake to include a lot more whole grains and veggies than before, and we started the South Beach diet a while back. He's been pretty strict with it, and has taken off almost 20 pounds so far. I've been a lot less strict, but still eating way better than I was before. No idea what the scale says though, I'm still pushing HAES.

I'm looking forward to the weather warming up some more so that we can start going for long walks on the weekends with the dog again. I'm also looking forward to outdoor archery season starting up again. I think that's usually about sometime in April, and I have already budgeted in the money for my membership. I need to pick up a new bow stringer, and also get some finger savers for my string, but both of those are quite inexpensive. I'm also going to make myself a proper bracer now that I've got some leatherworking stuff, since the little one I have doesn't do me much good. But I'm really looking forward to archery season, and this year I am bound and determined to not hurt myself so badly that I can't go out and shoot.

As for my mental health... that's pretty much holding steady too. Now that most of my situational depression is gone, I'm still having some down periods which can pretty much be chalked up to existential depression. I'm learning how to ride them out, though. While I may still HAVE the bouts of feeling really meh and blah, I've learned to recognize that it's just this chemical imbalance talking, my life really isn't horrible, and that I need to find something to distract myself from those feelings. Either that, or go snuggle my furballs and wait for it to end.

The state of our apartment is improving too. Last Friday, I thought I'd lost my wallet - well, I wasn't sure if I'd lost it (the most likely explanation being it had fallen out of my backpack on the bus), or if it had fallen out of my backpack or purse in the house and had just gotten misplaced. That was the catalyst I needed to get fed completely up with the den and rip through it in one weekend. Now, other than the layer of dog fur on the floor, it looks awesome. The layer of dog fur is due to our vacuum hose being busted, and our new one not having arrived yet. That will hopefully get here sometime this week. I also managed to get through most of the rest of the house, and with a little bit each day from now on, it's going to look awesome.

Oh yeah, and I found my wallet when I got to work this morning. It had fallen out of my backpack and landed behind my wastebasket. I had had my debit card in my pocket at the time, and there was no cash in my wallet, so the inconvenience factor if I had totally lost it wouldn't have been too huge, but it's a big relief having found it and not having to replace my driver's license. Whew!

So I think that's all the mundane shit. Now that life is pretty calm again, hopefully I can get back to the more interesting stuff sometime soon. :)

Ok everyone, time to cross every appendage you have for me, please. I had a phone interview yesterday that went extremely well, and I'm going for an in-person interview with the guy today after work. The job is a 15 minute trip from my house, would pay at least a bit more than I'm making here and has awesome benefits. AND I just got 2 glowing references to use, so I'm way ahead of where I was a year ago when I was looking for work. I can't see how he WOULDN'T hire me, but I'll take all the help I can get!

More later when I have more time, but please send good thoughts for me!

Screw Baronial A&S... I want to go to Emerald City Comic Con on March 31st! *pout*

I am a Fire Dragon! Rawr!

This means I'm turning 36 this year. And I'm planning to make 2012 MY year.