{"id":1836,"date":"2010-02-05T14:11:43","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T19:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=1836"},"modified":"2010-02-05T14:11:43","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T19:11:43","slug":"shmesashumution-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/shmesashumution-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Shmesashumution Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a month since I set my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=1794\">goals<\/a> for the New Year and I figure that, instead of ignoring them, I should perhaps take stock and see how I&#8217;m doing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Finish a half marathon.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My sister, Allison, and I ran 10 miles last Sunday. I hope to do 11 miles this weekend. Barring a flareup of my foot issues, I&#8217;m fairly confident that I&#8217;ll be able to complete this one. The race is in 2 weeks. I suppose that only time will tell.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Continue to lose weight.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have actually <em>gained<\/em> weight. But everyone tells me that I&#8217;m looking skinny. And my jeans are baggy. And I&#8217;m pretty sure that my cheekbones could be used to cut a bitch, they&#8217;re so sharp.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m calling this one a wash.<\/p>\n<p>Pass the chocolate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Book more gigs. Sell more CDs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have a couple of solid leads. And I&#8217;m going to be a <a href=\"http:\/\/hoperoth.com\/beerandpie\/?p=87\">guest vocalist for a local Mardi Gras show<\/a>. Plus, I sold 4 copies of my CD at my Grandfather&#8217;s birthday party. I&#8217;m sure that my relatives felt in no way, shape or form guilted into making their purchases. Not at all. It&#8217;s not like they love my Grandmother and want her to be happy or anything.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m declaring myself awesome and moving on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Send out cards for birthdays and anniversaries.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve missed one person (shhh, don&#8217;t tell her). And I sent <a href=\"http:\/\/dustinray.net\/blog\/\">Dustin<\/a> his card way too late for it to arrive in California before his birthday. But, you know what? Late birthday cards are just my way of extending the fun.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m declaring myself to be a craft master and moving on.<\/p>\n<p>Although, now that I think about it, I went to my Grandfather&#8217;s party, but I didn&#8217;t give him a card. Too bad. I already made my declaration. No backsies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Build my savings account back up to [redacted].<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This one was actually fairly tough. My plan was to only purchase essentials during the month of January. And, while I&#8217;m fairly sure that I could make a somewhat credible case as to why tinted moisturizer is an essential purchase&#8230; Let&#8217;s just say that I didn&#8217;t exactly knock this one out of the park. BUT, I did manage to completely curtail my impulse spending. And I didn&#8217;t pay for coffee once. The sad thing? All I have to show for my frugality are balanced bank accounts. I was hoping to increase my savings above and beyond what I already set aside. When you consider the number of people living paycheck to paycheck and off of credit cards, this isn&#8217;t exactly so bad. In the context of trying to save <em>more<\/em>? Bzzzt. Try again.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m extending my retail fast into the month of February. Good thing it&#8217;s a short month! Although, going cold turkey from purchases at Sephora and Target has taught me how much better things can be when I don&#8217;t buy stupid crap. I&#8217;ve been using up bath and beauty products instead of buying stuff that&#8217;s newer and comes in shiny packages. And I&#8217;ve been finishing up the books that I never finished reading. And dipping into my fabric stash for new projects. If I keep this up, I think I can make a serious dent in the amount of clutter in our house.<\/p>\n<p>I went to Joann&#8217;s and managed to spend less than $20 on the supplies to make invites for <a href=\"http:\/\/monkeysblog.com\/\">Jenn(ie)&#8217;<\/a>s baby shower. People, this is like a heroin addict hanging out in a smack den saying, &#8220;No thanks, I think I&#8217;ll have a diet coke instead.&#8221; I was so proud of myself, I dropped $150 at the Michaels down the street.<\/p>\n<p>Just kidding. I spent it on black tar heroin.<\/p>\n<p>Last weekend, I went through my closet and bureau and got rid of every item of clothing that I don&#8217;t wear, that&#8217;s not in tip-top condition, that&#8217;s not totally in style \u00a0and that isn&#8217;t completely flattering. It wasn&#8217;t a <em>ton<\/em> of clothes, but it was enough to make a dent. It&#8217;s amazing how having <em>fewer<\/em> clothes cuts back on the times when I feel like I have nothing to wear. I can actually see everything, so nothing gets hidden behind tshirts that I never wear but can&#8217;t bring myself to get rid of. Plus, I have a more accurate gauge of when I actually need to do laundry.<\/p>\n<p>Every time I think, &#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t it be nice to buy that cute pair of boots?&#8221; I tell myself that it&#8217;s better to save the money for something that I really need. I&#8217;m hoping that I&#8217;ll drop down a size, save up some money and then go on the world&#8217;s most awesomely fabulous shopping spree. It will be like &#8220;What Not to Wear&#8221; except that the person making snide and snarky comments will be <em>me<\/em>. I&#8217;m currently taking applications for Clinton and Stacey stand-ins. The only qualifications are fab shoes and a love of margaritas. Bonus points if you like looking at yourself in the mirror and then yelling, &#8220;Shut up!&#8221; while lightheartedly punching me in the shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m fairly confident that continuing to spend at a similar rate will be more than adequate now that I&#8217;m not rebounding from Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m declaring this one &#8220;pending&#8221; and putting it in a brown bag to bring with me to work for lunch.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>How about you? Did you make resolutions this year? If so, how are you doing?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a month since I set my goals for the New Year and I figure that, instead of ignoring them, I should perhaps take stock and see how I&#8217;m&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,5,2,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-music","category-random","category-weight-loss"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-tC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}