No time to speak of.

I'd complain that I hadn't had much time to write lately, but that would be repetitive of me, and in fact, there hasn't been a lot to write about of late, anyway. I've been working like mad, and transporting Forest to and from work, since his car's still dead, and I only have two more Christmas presents to buy. Instead of giving you a total recap of the days' worth of business, I'll just tell you what's on my mind.

Since I'm almost done with Christmas shopping, I'm worrying about money in a pretty big way. I was supposed to work for Natural Wonders again this year, but the manager is a bit airheaded, and this is the second week in a row that she's forgotten to put me on the schedule. I've started to look around for work elsewhere, but haven't had any real luck yet; most places have already hired all the holiday help they are going to hire. So I might be screwed. I've been thinking that I ought to work a nights-saturdays job until March, when I can go back to the Freeze for a little extra cash. This will help to fund the wedding, and pay down the credit card bills a bit.

I have a friend who has worked at Victoria's Secret in Lansing Mall for about 7 years. Maybe she can get me a job. At least if I'm just selling underwear there's not a chance of my spending all my earnings on the goods at hand. (If I had a job at Barnes and Noble, for instance, I would never turn a profit! They might as well just pay me in kind.)

I join Forest in worrying about his car and what the heck we're going to do about it. It's now winter, and very very cold outside. Far too cold to be working on a car. Unfortunately, the City of Lansing has decided that the car (which doesn't have wheels or an engine right now) is an eyesore, so they are planning to haul it away and destroy it if it's not in proper working order by Tuesday.

It really really sucks. What's more awful about it is that I think it's terribly unfair of them. The car is parked in the Store's back parking lot, as out of sight as we could get it, and right next door to Friedland's, which is essentially a great big dump! They recycle metals there, and the mess is HUGE. It's hard to believe that when compared with the heaps of twisted metal next door, Forest's car is such an eyesore. Some person with the initials B.N. (If I remember right) complained to the city about it, which resulted in this ticket being issued. It's utterly ridiculous. All those snobby Old Town bastards can just kiss...

Well anyway, it's a problem, because we don't have a garage in Lansing where we can store the car, and it's next to impossible to work on it when it's below freezing outside. We also can't tow it, because it has no suspension or wheels right now, and we don't exactly have a crane and a flatbed truck at our disposal. We also have to get the car licensed and insured in the next two days. This is news to me; I thought that if a car was undriveable, it needn't be insured or licensed, so we let the Neon's expire back in July. It turns out that it's a law. If you own a car, even if it doesn't have an engine, you have to buy insurance for it and license it. Period.

Sounds to me like a nice way for the government and insurance industry to gouge money out of people. But maybe that's just my take on it. My, my, I am getting cynical in my old age.

Otherwise on my mind; taekwondo, as always. Tuesday is going to be my 1st Gup test, with all 16 of my forms to be done. I'm having a really hard time with Palgwe 8, because it changes all the time. I've now learned it three different ways, and Forest knows about 6 of them. We're still not sure which one is right, and I'm now pretty heartily confused. I really need to just spend this weekend practicing and doing nothing else, but that's not going to happen, because I'm tied up with bell choir the whole darn time. I feel as though I have no choices whatsoever on what I'm doing with my time for about a week from now. Tonight I'm going to Bill and Kathy's to have dinner and meet with them. Before that I have to somehow get Kirstin's small violin traded for the large one I've been scheming on; but haven't had time to deliver. Tomorrow I have to rehearse with the symphony from about noon until about 5. I'm then free until I have to pick Forest up at work at 9. Maybe he and I will have a little sense and not make plans for after that. We need to clean our house, so that we can put up our Christmas decorations this weekend while Kirstin is with us.

Sunday Kirstin and I are both in the Symphony Pops concert at Wharton, which will probably eat the entire afternoon. It will be wonderful, but the time will be gone in a heartbeat. After that, we're hoping to get our tree and put it up, decorate our house, hang our lights, and get ready for Monday. I work monday, and then have to play a bell concert at Independence Village, in Okemos.

Then maybe I will have a little time to practice before my test on Tuesday. It's nowhere near the effort I'd like to put in, and that bothers me immensely. If it was up to me, I would spend this whole weekend doing nothing but forms. I'd kick ass on them from start to finish before I allowed myself to slack off and relax, confident that I'd do well on my test. I just plain don't have that option. Thank heavens I won't be playing bells next semester.

Master Kim has asked Elizabeth, Sara, and I to test for our black belts in April. I hope I can be ready by then. It's a challenging deadline for me, because I will need to practice all this stuff like mad between now and then, plus work on flying and spinning kicks, stamina, and sparring. All of that work will have to be done outside of class, because class is always taught to the lowest rank in the room, which will be yellow belt, most likely. I'll also want to compete at Indy Cup, State competition, and if I qualify (probably not) nationals. That's a lot of preparation for me to undertake. I'm worried I'm going to let myself down.

On the wedding preparation front, I'm still looking for a caterer. The one Forest and I wanted to use isn't going to be in business anymore at that time (retirement), so we're going to have to find someone else. I may ask the people who did Karen and Jim's wedding, I suppose. I haven't had much time to think about it. I considered doing the whole thing myself, but I just don't think I'm capable of coordinating food for that many people. I freak out about serving a party of 20! I probably had best leave it to a professional.

This morning I sat in a traffic jam for about an hour on the way to work. I had planned to be here early so I could take a long lunch and get Kirstin's violin taken care of and Forest dropped off at work. Instead I was about a half hour late coming in the door. It's very frustrating. I'm now having to consider whether I ought to just use some vacation time and ditch out of work early to get all of this done. It would take a load off my mind, but I really want to save my vacation time for the wedding and theoretical honeymoon (looking less likely all the time.)

I also need to find time to go bail out the Love Rocket. It has been repaired, and has been waiting for us to go and pick it up for a while now. When that happens, I'm going to drive it for a few days while I send the van in to have its timing belt replaced, as its owner's manual suggests. More money I don't have.

And by now I ought to have earned about $300 from Natural Wonders. But I haven't. Grr.

Anyhow, it's time for me to put some organizational smack down. I'm feeling out of control of my life and I don't like it.