It's been awhile, huh? First off, thank you all for your well wishing and/or prayers. My dad's surgery was successful. He had five bypasses which is one more than Homer Simpson. :p We were in the hospital for a total of five and a half days, and this is his third day home. It's been crazy, but I think we're getting into a routine now. I get up at 7, take his temperature, record his blood sugar and pressure, weigh him, clean his incision and puncture sites, drug him, feed him, walk him, and then do the dishes. Luckily, he can go to the bathroom himself now. *very happy about that one* Mom's taking her vacation time in increments of four hours so she'll be home around 10 or 11-- I forget which one. ^^; When mom gets home, I'm sit with dad so she can get anything she needs to do done and then have some time for herself. We do everything again when it's lunch (except weigh him). The nurse comes at two and talks with us for about an hour. Around 5:00, Mom injects his insulin. Then I get time to myself until dinner. We do the same thing every meal, but he gets a full shower after dinner. Mom goes to bed around nine after I take a shower, and Ra gets home from work around 10:30. I play sims in my room until Jeremy gets online at midnight and talk to him for an hour go to sleep around 11. Btw, my sim town is turning out awesome. :p

I'm looking forward to this weekend. Ra's going to get up early Sunday morning so I can spend Saturday night with Jeremy. Jeremy actually has a Saturday off so he's going to come here in the afternoon, and we're going to picnic on the lawn. I got a picnic basket on our trip. ^_~ Sunday, we're gaming over at J&J's house until about one when Jeremy's going to Castle for miniatures. He'll be there for two or three hours. I'm going to have him drop me off at either the mall or by the row of stores so I can catch a movie. I need to see what's playing where, though. Then I can just wander around a bit until he's done with gaming. I can stay over Sunday night too because mom has Monday off. :D

( Fitness )

( Appearance )

( Social )

( Comfort )

( Fun )

( Surroundings )

( Work )

( Love Life )

( Spiritual )

Oh my gosh, I love my sister. She just woke up a bit ago and just offered to take over so I could nap. Sweet! I'll go around commenting on your journals later this afternoon or tonight then. Hope everyone is doing all right!

Yeah, I'm sorry that I'm sucking so bad at lj friendship right now. I promise I'll do better once things settle down. I feel bad considering I just got back to having internet access. I'm afraid my dad's not doing so well. He's in the hospital now. We went in for the tests, and the heart damage was a lot worse then they thought it'd be. He's having triple bypass surgery tomorrow. It's scary, but it's also good. The doctor said that he would have had a massive heart attack sometime this week. I'll post more later. Also, thank you all for thinking of him after my last post.

Sorry, but I have to be a bad LJ friend for a few days. Yesterday my dad went into the hospital. He's back now home on bedrest now, though, and doing much better. And (on a better note) I'll be without internet for the next two or three days. I'll start this thing back up then. ^_~

Hmm, I've been trying to figure out how to actually go about posting. I think that I will go ahead and write my random musings or normal blog posts here first. Then I'll put my self-improvement categories under cuts. For one thing, they make my post long. For another, there may be certain categories people wish to avoid hearing about. For example, one person may not give a crap about how I ate an apple instead of some gummy bears one day, and another may want to skip all the religious talk. So I think this is how I'll do things for now. We'll see how that works. ^_~

( fitness )
( appearance )
( social )
( comfort )
( fun )
( surroundings )
( love life )
( spiritual )

Fitness
To put it bluntly, I am a lazy fat-ass. I have no problem with my fat ascetically. I am confident in my looks and actually find overweight people more attractive in general. I am not concerned with my weight or chub itself. I am more concerned about the health ramifications of constantly shoving large quantities of junk food down my throat between naps. But let's face it, a full on diet is not going to happen. I'd fail within the first week. Instead, I will be making gradual changes like not taking two helpings of dinner, making better food choices, only eating when hungry, replacing soda with real juice (not the stuff that's loaded with sugar), and switching my starches to whole grain versions. If I'm caving something, I will have it. And when I go out to eat, I will eat whatever the heck I want (at least at first). I will just make sure not to eat more than I need to. I already drink a ton of water so there no change needed there. I also need more exercise. The plan for that is DDR. I'll play it for an hour a day before my shower. If I want to go longer, that's fine too. After all, it's fun, and I miss playing. Once school starts, I'll do a lot more walking. Hopefully I'll be able to add to this, but I'm taking it slow as this will be one of the bigger challenges.

Appearance
Now, I could care less if someone thinks I'm ugly. The way I see it is that no matter what you look like, some people will think you're attractive, and others will find you ugly. So really, it doesn't make sense to worry about it. Though, when I'm wearing a nice outfit with freshly brushed hair and a few pieces of jewelry, I just plain feel better than I do in the shirt I slept in and a messy three-second bun. It feels like I'm more awake and together that way. I'm going to make an effort to keep myself up even if it's just when going out.

School
I've made a lot of mistakes and let too many things slide when it comes to my education. But I forgive myself and am going to leave it all in the past. I am starting a new program next year, and I am not going to waste this chance at a fresh start in life. I am determined not to end up middle aged, bored, uneducated, and wondering if I could have done something with my life. There are so many of these people at my college who are just now getting the chance to achieve their goals. Even if it takes me a little longer than normal to finish school, I am going to get through and work hard at it. I refuse to start my own life at forty.

Social
I like being alone, but my friends are all social butterflies. Most of the time, I enjoy being a hermit more than I enjoy hanging out. I have to work on being more outgoing. I will start by making sure to contact my friends once a week and going out with them at least twice a month. I have fun when I'm with them, but it's hard for me to want to get out. Hopefully this'll be a good start and I'll want to do more as time goes on.

Comfort
Everyday I will spoil myself in some small way be it taking a few minutes longer in the shower, sitting down with a cup of cocoa and a book before bed, taking some time to draw, buying a cute new pair of undies, etc.

Fun
I even have a hard time getting motivated to do things I like. I need to take the time do something I really enjoy for an hour or two a day be it video games, pole dancing, watching an episode of some anime, making D&D character sheets, or whatever else. I have to do this even when I'm busy. Same goes for comfort.

Surroundings
My room is a disaster area. I am going to get it clean before school starts and I'm going to clean it once a week. I will also hang some kind of art (even if it's just a poster) on the wall. I want an organized place to do my school work, a clean place to draw, and easy access to all my things.

Work
I am actually very happy with my work situation and don't wish to change it.

Love Life
I am also happy in this area, but there are some goals I have: Have two picnics this summer, get a new piece of lingerie every few months, and do something special once a month. I also have a daily blog of letters to my boyfriend that I'm doing for a year. It's at leena_x_leoric if anyone's interested.

Spiritual
Lately I've felt very disconnected from my faith. I think a lot of it is to do with being away from church which I can't change at the moment. But when I am able to go again, I will go even if I'm tired. In the meantime, I need to keep learning. My goal is to do the whole bible in a year thing as well as look for daily devotionals. The important thing is to keep learning. I need to keep looking for questions and finding answers. I want to feel close to God again so I need to keep questioning Him. If I give up on asking why I worship, I give up on knowing that answer.

I'm going to work on all these areas. Even if I fail, maybe I'll try again somewhere in the future and can look back on what I did wrong.