Alyx might have baby brain and forgot all about Sunday Confessions this week, but I haven’t and I’m doing it anyway.

1. My local yoga studio just moved to a new location and offered free yoga on Saturday to commemorate the occasion. I took full advantage. Well, maybe not full advantage but I was feeling ambitious and took two out of four classes yesterday.

I did a Vinyasa/Hatha class which pretty much kicked my ass and confirmed that I really do need to keep taking some of these more intense classes to work on my upper body strength. After what seemed like about a billion times of doing downward facing dog and plank pose my arms and shoulders were screaming, “Nooooo! Not again!”

I followed it up with a Iyengar class, which pretty much convinced me that I need to take more of this type of class. Iyengar is a slow paced method of yoga that’s all about learning how to properly position your body to be able to get deeper into poses. I have some posture issues, namely with the fact that my shoulders like to slump forward and it’s painful to hold them in the position where they’re typically supposed to be and yesterday, I walked out of the class with my shoulders dropped back and standing up straighter than I’ve probably done in years. Unfortunately, my studio only offers Iyengar at 9 AM, but I’m going to try and figure out a way that I can make it to those classes.

2. All of the “good girl” points I got for doing two yoga classes probably should be revoked due to how much wine I drank last night. It started with going out for dinner and drinks post yoga with a few of the ladies that I’ve met through my classes. After that, I bopped into a wine shop and bought some wine, then ran home and took a five minute shower and changed clothes, and hopped on the train to Queens for a housewarming party where I drank lots more wine and got scolded by the host’s sister-in-law for eating brisket with my fingers (I am so bad at being a lady!) and at the end of the night crashed out on their couch because going home at 3AM just seemed like a bad idea.

3. I am obsessing over the Angry Birds Theme Song as performed by Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà. I am picturing a ballet inspired burlesque dance to this… Seriously considering workshopping it and returning to burlesque.

4. I’m currently working on a long overdue new rebrand, refocus and redesign of my portfolio site. To be honest, I had meant to do this back in back in May but then just as I started to work on it I got offered a gig that I couldn’t turn down because I needed the money badly despite the fact that it wasn’t really what I wanted to do at the time. This time around, I’m committed to finishing and launching. If it’s not up in two weeks from now, someone come give me a tongue lashing. Okay?

5. I’m way behind on the writing courses I’m signed up for. I don’t know what it was this past week, but every time I sat down to write on a specific prompt, I started writing about something else entirely. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but there’s this part of me that’s all, “You just spent money on these courses and now you’re not doing your homework? WTF!” I have a feeling I won’t even start trying to catch up until Tuesday because tomorrow’s James’ day off and I just don’t get writing done when he’s home.

1. I did a massive clean up of the blogs that I’m subbed to recently. One of the things that I was noticing about my life was that I was spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to get through all the blogs in my feed reader and I only gave a shit about a small fraction of them… and since I was subbed to so many, I was missing out on the blogs that I actually enjoy reading. I didn’t keep track of how many I was actually subbed to and how many I gave the axe to, but it was a lot. I can now actually make it through my daily reads in under an hour. Which is great! Except for now I have nothing to read when I want to procrastinate…

2. I’m still in a massive phase of nothing I can think of to blog about is actually good enough to blog about. I’m also still trying to figure out what this phase is actually about because that’s kinda bullshit… People blog about everything stupid all of the time, so I don’t know what my issue is. It’s like I’ve got it in my head that every blog post I write needs to be the cure for cancer or something.

3. I am mildly obsessed with Casey Desmond at the moment. It wouldn’t be surprised if James and Jed are ready to kill me over how much I’ve listened to her lately, but it’s great music for spontaneous dance parties breaking out in your living room.

(P.S. You can get her album on Bandcamp.)

4. Mission clean up the house is… stagnant. I mean, it’s not standstill or anything, but I totally lost momentum and the only thing that I semi keep up with is the dishes and it’s kinda lame to just take pictures of my sink all the time to show you that I did the dishes.

However, Room A… the one that had all of the crap piled on the floor is… different than it was. I’m not going to bother with pictures because it’s just all of that stuff packed up and piled into a corner that still sorta takes up most of the room, and all of the idealistic plans that I had for it have been put on hold because we’re gaining a new roommate for an undetermined amount of time. I might have lost my potential yoga room for now, but I’m gaining a yoga buddy so I think that’s a win.

5. I should just order things off of Amazon when I need them because I never actually end up going on the errand to get them that day. Like… vacuum cleaner belts. Ours broke on our vacuum cleaner and we need a new one. James and I started discussing where we’d have to go to buy one, because you know… we’d like it sooner rather than later. Several days later, there has been no movement on my part to get off my ass and trudge to the subway to go downtown to go to Home Depot… had I ordered it off of Amazon when I was thinking about it the first time, it would probably already be here.

1. I like to tease the cat. A lot. I think a good portion of my day is spent chasing the cat around the house, doing things to annoy the cat like putting blankets on top of him or waking him up when he’s sleeping. No wonder he likes to open my fridge and escape to the outdoors.

2. Despite the fact that people seem to like it when I write about cleaning my apartment, I find myself cringing about the fact that it seems to be the only thing I write about. Seriously… when did my NYC life get so boring that I have to write about the state of my apartment? Oh right.. it’s freaking freezing out and I don’t want to do anything outside the apartment.

3. We had company for a few days and I totally fell off the cleaning bandwagon. I have an out of control sink full of dishes that I need to take care of… Main motivation? We’re out of clean forks.

4. I have to go to the DMV this week and renew my license, and the whole thing makes me nervous. I actually probably should have done this three years ago when I moved to NYC instead of waiting for my old license from New Hampshire to expire, but this seems to be something that everyone does when they move to NYC because no one thinks to change their license because they’ve for the most part… stopped driving. But, now I can’t wait any longer. Waiting in that line is going to suck.

5. I’m afraid I’m going to turn into a karaoke addict. Last Sunday, I got introduced to an Irish pub a few subway stops north of me that does karaoke every Sunday night… and I think I’m going to go again tonight. Maybe. If I’m not feeling totally lazy and I get those dishes done. But seriously, it was a good time and some of the people singing were really good.

1. I feel like I aged 10 years while on vacation. I don’t know about you, but most of the time I feel like I stopped aging sometime around 17. Okay, sure… I’m sure I’ve matured since then but I’ve always felt young in terms of my behavior and outlook.

The first half of our vacation we stayed with family friends of James who have two kids who are about 10 years younger than us who were home from college for the holidays and their house was definitely the hangout for them and all of their friends. They were really cool, but I just couldn’t get over how old I felt! When they were hanging out to all odd hours of the night I found myself having more desire to curl up in bed instead of hang out… That’s a new one for me!

2. I spent the entire week not able to figure out if I was sick or if it was just allergies. I have some serious nasal allergy issues with dust mites which are generally not as bad in the city because there is more hardwood and less carpet… But when I go to the suburbs and more rural, carpet is more common and I end up stuffed upon and feeling like I want to curl up and die. It’s possible I had a low grade cold, but I have a feeling the allergies were the culprit and Zyrtec did zilch.

3. We did a massive declutter of a closet at my parents house that contained all my old toys. And by “we” I mean James did all the work and I just sat there telling him what was okay to throw out while running to the bathroom every two minutes to spit out more snot and blow my nose. All said and done, 6 bags of trash and 2 boxes of toys to hand off to little cousins.

4. I drank surprisingly little on this trip. It’s not that I didn’t have the opportunity, I certainly did on the first half of the trip when I was staying at a house where there were 55 some odd varieties of whiskey to sample and didn’t have to worry about driving. I snuck sips of off James’ drinks over the course of the week but to actually sit and have a drink of my own? Less than interested. Cue bit about me getting old.

5. I had so many ideas for blog entries this week but didn’t have time to write any of them. No, wait… That’s not true. I had the time to write them, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because typing on a tablet SUCKS. I’m a really fast touch typer, so I’m super sensitive to anything that makes me slow… and typing on a touch screen? Total torture to me. I just can’t type fast enough. I think I’m going to end up buying a keyboard for the tablet because I *so* can’t take the not being able to write fast thing.

1. I got a tablet!

James and I had been talking about getting tablets for what seems like months now, so we finally rallied and pulled the trigger today and went down to DataVision and bought ourselves some tablets. I am now the proud owner of a Nexus 7!

2. I need peace and quiet when I write blog entries.

I feel like a large reason why I haven’t been too active on my blog the last couple of weeks is because James’ schedule has been lining up with mine a lot in terms of days off, and when that happens… Blogging tends to get thrown out the window, despite having things I would like to sit down and write about. It’s not so much that he’s demanding lots of my time so much as he makes so much noise that I sit here, blankly staring at the screen and thinking, “GAH! I CAN’T THINK WITH THAT RACKET!!!”

I wonder how bloggers who have children are able to blog because of this whole noise thing…

3. I’m grumpy that I need to put on socks and go to the store yet this evening.

We need to pick up cat food and cat litter before we head off on vacation and leave our roommate in charge of the cat. It’s cold outside and I just want to stay in and play with my new toy.

4. We did some MASSIVE reorg around the homestead yesterday which had us crawling into bed around 7:30am this morning.

So, basically… A picture is worth a thousand words on this one… but I’ll describe it for those of you who might be blind.

So, we have this hobbled together piece of furniture we loving refer to as The Hutch. The bottom of The Hutch was a part of what I assume was a china cabinet that we found my the side of the road. The thing had fallen over between the time we originally spotted it and the time we got outside to retrieve it… but since the bottom half was perfectly good, we ripped the top part off and brought the bottom home.

Which meant when we got it home… It didn’t have a top. We happened to have a random counter top that had been acquired at some point prior to my time with James… and put that on top and it became The Hutch.

And ever since it’s been a clutter catcher.

Well, last night James got a brilliant idea to set up a bookcase that we had kicking around but torn down on top of it. So, he built the bookcase… We put it up on top of the hutch, and managed to use some vertical space to finally unpack all of my books!

Super awesome!

5. I like New Years Eve way better than Christmas.

As I was reading through all of the other posts linking up with Sunday Confessions, I felt like there was this common theme of hating on NYE… which totally bummed me out because I’m one of those people who loves New Years. I think it’s because NYE is much more of a spend it with your friends type of holiday and it doesn’t have all the crazy holiday pressures that Christmas does. Even when I was a kid, I got way more excited over getting to stay up to midnight on New Years Eve than I ever did for presents and seeing family.

1. I haven’t wanted to blog this week at all. I’ve been trying to do the Relish12 prompts, but I keep stumbling upon topics that I just don’t feel right about posting publicly… Not because they’re bad or super secret or whatever, but just because there are some things in life that you hold dear and want to keep super personal… and beyond that, I’ve just not had anything to say really. So, private writing it’s been and blogging’s been on the back burner. Sorry, guys.

2. I am in a mildly bad mood. I walked to the corner store and it was raining, and I have a bunch of chores that involve going outside of the apartment today. So NOT happy. I mostly just want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over my head. Sigh.

3. I’m in the throws of a vulnerability hangover. You know, one of those things that you get when you’re completely open and honest about something and then after you just floated it out there you start questioning why you did that, and you kinda wish you could take it all back because now you feel all embarrassed about it. One of those.

4. I deal with the news of tragedies by disassociating most of the time. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s a thing. I’ve pretty much been avoiding social media and blogging because I just do not want to hear people’s thoughts about the shooting, gun control, or anything related to that…

5. I’ve been reading what everyone else has been posting for confessions with the hopes that I could steal on of them, because I couldn’t think of my own 5th confession and for some reason I’m convinced that there needs to be five. I do this nearly every week. Of course, I didn’t find anything I felt compelled enough to borrow and weigh in on so I figured I’d just confess the fact that I did it.

1. When people comment that they’ve followed me via “the blog hop” like I have any idea which blog hop they’re referring to. I think it’s great that people stumble across me via the various blog hops I decide to add my link to, but how hard is it to refer to the name of the blog hop that you happened to find me on? There are tons of blog hops going on, and I usually add my link to a couple on the days I manage to do so.

2. I completed one of the goals on my Let’s Get Physical post already! I went out and bought a Fitbit One yesterday after I posted… and because I’m a sucker I totally bought the scale too, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the best $129 spent… but on the same token the fact that I step on the scale, and it sends the reading TO THE INTERNET and creates a graph for me without me having to remember anything is pretty damn cool. Day one of using the whole system? I have to say that I’m pretty impressed. I’m sure I’ll fall right off the wagon with the food tracking because that doesn’t exactly work by osmosis but the fact that I just walk around and it tells me how many steps I’ve taken and stairs I’ve climbed is pretty awesome. I’m also madly in love with the sleep tracking features… You wear the device on your wrist when you sleep and it detects from your motion how many times you woke up over the course of the night. I apparently had a terrible night sleep last night because I woke up 26 separate times… However, when the vibrating alarm went off this morning I went running right out of bed to see how my sleep went. We’ll see how long it is before this whole novelty thing wears of… I think it has a good chance of sticking because…. Honestly? I love seeing measurable stats, and when I don’t have to do any work other than carry around a device on my body to track them? EVEN BETTER.

3. Quinoa pasta is weird. Awhile back I ended up buying some quinoa pasta from the grocery store because I’m sort of half-heartedly looking for a pasta that isn’t made out of wheat to make a staple in the house because I’ve definitely noticed that stuff with gluten in it does that thing where your tummy feels all weird and bloated and gross. I’m pretty sure the kinds I’d had before were rice based, but the grocery store only had quinoa based so I was like, “Fuck it, I’ll try that.” It’s weird, folks. When it boils up it turns the water yellow and it’s all gummy and falls apart easily.

4. I am so looking forward to getting the bed to myself for the next two nights. James is going to Mexico for three days for a gig, so I’m going to get to stretch out and not have to deal with his snoring or the fact that he likes to sleep with his butt on my side of the bed.

5. I think clamshell packaging ought to be banned. I just spent fifteen minutes trying to open the packaging for the Sansa Clip Zip mp3 player that I bought and was terrified I was going to get cut (thankfully, I didn’t). It just seems like such a waste to wrap everything in plastic like that.

1. I actually wrote Sunday Confessions for last week, but my blog ate it. I took it as a divine sign that it wasn’t meant to be last week, and despite being totally disappointed that I ended up wasting an hour… Just let it go. Sometimes, that’s really the best option.

2. I took my first Bikram Yoga class yesterday and it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. In case you’re thinking that I just spewed a bunch of gibberish, Bikram yoga is a style of yoga that’s done in a 105 degree room with about 40% humidity and has a defined posture sequence that doesn’t change from class to class. It was challenging, and there were a couple of times that I had to sit down and rest because the heat was getting to me, but all in all it was pretty good. It’s kind of a bummer I have something to do this evening, but I would have liked to have gone back today, but it would seem that doing a class at home is going to be my only option today.

3. I really don’t want to do the dishes today. We just reclaimed all of our storage containers that were full of leftovers that we hadn’t gotten around to eating and have now spoiled (like, seriously… just did it. Like 2 minutes ago. I got up from the desk and “helped” which basically means I just tormented the cat while James did all the work.) So, now we have a sink full of extra gross dishes that I should probably clean right about now.

4. I feel like I had a really great confession floating around in my head last night, but I forgot to write it down so now it’s gone forever. I hate when that happens.

5. How on earth did I miss that Seth MacFarlane (you know… the Family Guy guy…) released an album last year? AND IT’S GOOD! I mean listen to this… Fuckin’ nailed it.

1. If I haven’t responded to one of your comments recently, it’s probably because my server randomly decides to not send me comment notification emails and I can’t figure out why. Or rather, I’m too lazy to figure out why at this particular juncture. It’s exceedingly irritating, especially since there are genuinely comments I’d like to respond to… So, I may be doing that shit by hand sometime soon. I hope.

2. I’m very glad that it’s Thanksgiving week. Mostly because I’m glad that I only have to work two days this week, plus I think it’s going to be nice to get out of the city for a few days.

3. My goal is to have the second sock of the pair I’ve been working on done before I return to New York. I think this is a sensible goal. I just finished rounding the heel and doing the decreases and now I’m on the home stretch of the foot. The end is now in sight!

4. I’ve had Dumb Ways to Die stuck in my head since I first heard it and I keep listening to it over and over. Now you can have it stuck in your head too!

5. I feel like all I’ve been posting lately is posts that have to do with linkups. Sorry, I’m not sorry if this is annoying you… but to be honest? Without those prompts, I’d probably be a very quiet blogger. Linkups with silly directives and questions at least keep me posting.

1. I have “issues” around wearing makeup. I feel like this is something that frequently comes up in my confessions… but it’s on my mind because I made a stop at Sephora last night while I was waiting around for James to get out of work, mostly on the mission to buy some eye makeup remover that I’d tried over at my pal Anna’s place that was just like a freaking magic eraser when you add it to something cottony… and in the process ended up buying a whole lot of lip stuff. I bought a sample pack lip gloss because I wanted to try a bunch of different colors without committing a bunch of money and I bought some bright red lipstick because I wanted to try lipstick because I seem to have a weird thing for lip gloss and I seem to like bright red for some reason… because you know, despite being terrified of wearing makeup on a regular basis, I can’t seem to be attracted to colors that aren’t overstated, and I bought some other color of lip gloss.

2. I hate getting my face wet in the shower. It’s not that I won’t get my face wet… it’s just that it can’t get wet and stay wet. I absolutely have to have a towel in arms reach at all times or else I get super anxious that water is going to get into my eye.

3. I’m not a big fan of the holiday season. If I could get away with just not doing anything for the holidays, I probably would. However, this year I’m going back to New Hampshire to have Thanksgiving with my parents and to go to my 10 year high school reunion. It’s not that I don’t want to go do these things… because I do, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing them… but I’m not particularly enthralled that I’m going to be separated from James for four days and there’s been a lot of dwelling on childhood stuff that’s been going on with me in the lead up to this trip, and some of it’s not particularly comfortable. I feel bad for being vague… but for various reasons, I don’t want to post publicly.

4. I have the best boyfriend ever. I’m not one to go super sappy publicly about my James very often, but seriously… I have never had anyone in my life who’s been so easy to just curl up next to and talk to about just about anything, even the hard stuff that makes me curl up into a little ball and cry…. and which shit does get hard, he just snuggles up and tells me everything’s going to be alright and it is, and then he does stuff that makes me laugh. He’s the best! <3

5. Surfin’ Bird by The Trashmen is the song of the moment due to seeing the I Dream of Jesus episode of Family Guy. We keep watching the beginning of the episode over and over and playing the song.