Warning: Sentimental "New Year's Resolutions" Post -- Do Not Be Alarmed We Will Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming Momentarily

So, this post is going to be stupid and sentimental, so don't read this if you don't care about sentimental crap. Go back and read my "Crazy Tea" post or something. I usually don't do sentimental, but all this talk about New Years is making me think. (Crap.)
I've always kinda hated New year's Resoultions -- they're so cliched, so boring, so obvious and expected. But this past year brought on a whole bunch of changes in my life, and I think it would be wise to look to the future, anticipating change, and try to define my goals. I thought of Four:

1. Improve my health and my commitment to health.
I lost somewhere around 50 lbs in the past year, due to significant lifestyle changes, like consistent exercise and healthier food choices. But I feel like I need to strengthen this health-commitment (probably because I've gone completely off-track this past week, like seriously, holy cannoli & cookies, hot chocolate, wow.)

2. Re-evaluate how I spend my time.
My schedule is super-busy, between school and work and jiu jitsu and everything in life. When I'm spread so thin, I don't even enjoy my life. I need to re-evaluate what I spend my precious little free time on. I want to stop committing to things that I really don't want to do.

3. HUMANS!!!
I love people, but simply haven't had the time and energy for deep, rich, meaningful human relationships in the last few months, with both family and friends. This seriously needs to change. People are everything to me. So, to everyone who feels like I have been out of their loop for a while -- I'm sorry! I'll be rejoining your loop soon! Keep the loop open! I love your loops! Loops all over the place! Hooray for loops!

4. Appreciate EVERYTHING.
Life is so short and unpredictable. So many family illnesses and health issues have been branding this fact into my conscience lately. It's so important to appreciate, fully, every little joy I can find. That's actually supposed to be the whole point of this Jackpot blog -- recording all my little Jackpot moments, all those times that I can't help but smile at silly little things which make strange impacts on me. Like Crazy Tea. Or wildlife in Target. I need to try to appreciate the wildlife in my wild life.

...Whew, OK, sentimentality crap out of the way, now.

So, I decided to rearrange some furniture in my apartment the other day. Two things to say about that: Dust, and Cat. I don't know what the deal is with dust. Where does it come from? Where does it go? What the holy hell is it? And how the holy hell does it get in the strangest places? But there was certainly enough of it flying around my place. And my Kitty -- wow, she was completely freaked out, it was great! She was all nervous because I started cleaning the night before, and then on Friday my mom came over to help me move furniture and vacuum and stuff, and the cat was FREAKED! If my mom started vacuuming my living room, she'd run into my bedroom, but I'd be moving furniture so she'd run into the kitchen, but the kitchen (being the room connecting my living room and bedroom) was stuffed with crap so she couldn't really get comfy in there. I kinda felt bad for her, but it was pretty entertaining.

Oh, and to clarify: I moved out 2 1/2 years ago, when I was seventeen, and this is the first time my mom has come to really help me clean, this isn't like a weekly thing. She has this week off of work (she works in a school system) and volunteered to help me because she knows that, left to my own devices, my self-motivation would burn out in about and hour and nothing would get finished. I come from a long-line of Super-Cleaners. My mom's mom mops her kitchen floor like every day. She came to my second apartment after I'd been living there for only a few weeks, and starts scrutinizing the place. She was opening my cabinets, looking under my couch, then she opens my oven and asks why it hasn't been cleaned yet. I hadn't even used it yet!

Another reason to hate "pink" (the color)

Everyone who knows me knows that I love red. Bright fire-engine red, thick blood-red, deep and mezmerizing wine-red, that stuff is awesome. It's interesting that I so strongly hate the color pink, it being so close to red. There is a very fine but definite line of love/hatred between the two colors. One moment, I'm still loving it because it's red, but then you get just a teensy bit too light and bam it's pink and I have turned away in disgust. Pink sickens me. I have no use for pink.

Well, I have now found yet another reason to loathe "pink." As is painfully obvious from my blog, my life is ridiculous and absurd and I simply cannot catch a break. So, in keeping with the roll I've been on the past few weeks (pulled over for registration, sick with fever during finals, car broken down, now sick with cold for Holidays,)
. . . I got pink eye on Christmas Eve. Yes, Christmas Eve, when every doctor and pharmacy in the world is closed for two days. So, I suffered through two full days of untreated pink eye, including a sleepless eight-hour overnight shift at work last night. I called my doctor's office about two hundred times this morning until they finally picked up and called in a prescription for some eye drops. These are the BEST EYE DROPS EVER!!! MY NEW HERO: EYE DROPS!!!

Anyway, since I was all goopy and contagious yesterday when celebrating xmas with the family, I couldn't play with all my cute (but screaming) little cousins, so instead, I got to play with my aunt and uncle's awesome Weimeraner, Arnold. Oh my sweet holy adorable crap, this is the cutest dog EVER! He's so sweet and gentle, and he's incredibly cuddly for a giant full-grown dog. He would just sit in front of me, lean into me, I pet his ears or his head or scratch him under his collar, and he just melts, it's so cute!
WHAT? AWESOME DOG-LOVE TO REPLACE COUSIN-LOVE?!? JACKPOT!!!

One thing after another, this is unreal, I think God is trying to make a statement or something.

I can't believe it, this is unreal. My life ... is unreal.
I think God is trying to tell me something.

I'm driving to work today, everything is fine. I had just finished my honors thesis, which was giving me constant anxiety, and I finished all of my finals (except for one paper, which i am "doing research for" right now) so I've been feeling pretty good today. Then, all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky of my dashboard, my temperature gauge shot up to the red part.

Now, red is my favorite color, true, and i like everything red. But "red" on the temperature gauge is bad bad bad. So i pulled over and popped my hood. There's antifreeze spazzing out all over, dripping onto the pavement, at this point I can tell that my car is clearly in pain. So I called the men in my life -- two of my jiu jitsu friends, Chris (my instructor) and Steve.

What? Jiu Jitsu friends that always have my back? JACKPOT! (Hahaha, that's acutally a funny jiu jitsu joke, but i guess you have to know jiu jitsu to get it. Well, too bad, because i'm enjoying the joke, so it's staying.)

I cannot even tell you how grateful I am to have such awesome buddies. They dropped what they were doing and drove all the way out to me, to poke around in my car and bring my poor, poor overheated radiator some cold water. Awesome. My heroes.

But, we still have the issue that I have a broken-down ve-hicle, and no way to get to work. So, I called my mom, who picked me up in her car when she got out of work. I dropped her off at her house, then drove the hour out to work. Great. So now I'm once again stuck driving her huge Subaru, which, by the way, is like trying to drive a barge on the road. And who knows how much this repair is going to cost!?!? If it's just a temperature gauge, maybe not that bad. But if it's a new water pump (and knowning me and my luck, it's gonna be a freakin water pump) that could do some damage to the bank account, damage I cannot handle right now.

Anyway, the moral of this story is, never get too comfortable. Never take balance for granted. As soon as you solve one problem, get ready for the next one, because it's coming!!! You get everything figured out at the DMV, you get your registration fixed, you get your thesis done, get your exams done, and then BAM your temperature needle goes red. Bad times.
Never get too comfortable.

Almost too awful to be true

So, i'll just jump right into this one, ok?
I'm driving home from church yesterday morning, and a cop pulled me over. First time I've ever been pulled over, so I'm freaking out. I'm not speeding or anything, so I have no idea what's going on. Here's a little re-cap of our conversation through my window:

Cop lady: "Miss, this vehicle is not registered."
Innocent didn't-do-anything-wrong-Me: "Excuse me? There must be some mistake, I just bought this car in November '05, here's my registration."
Cop lady: "Well, that registration expired in January '06."
Me: [astounded silence, mouth hanging open.]
Cop lady: "I can't let you drive this car home, it's illegal to be on the road. You'll have to park it here until you renew the registration. Otherwise your car will be impounded."
Me: [continued, astounded silence.]
Cop lady: "You didn't get any new stickers or anything from the DMV in the mail?"
Me: ".........no......."
Cop lady: "OK, you need to call someone to come pick you up now, and leave your car in this parking lot. I'll wait."

So, I called my mom, who is very sick by the way, and she drove 30 minutes from her home to pick me up. I'm currently paying for a rental car for her, and driving around her crappy Subaru. I got home and started rifling through old mail crap, and I found a letter I got last January from the DMV. It does NOT say that my registration has expired, instead, it says that I need to get my emissions tested before they send my new registration tags.

So, why, do you think, didn't I go get my emission tested when i got that letter last january? Well, at the bottom of that letter is all the info about my car, and in that section there' a box that says "expiration date: 1/28/08" -- so, I figured I had until 2008 to get it done! I had thought to myself, "oh look, I just got this car and the DMV sent me a thing telling me i had two years to get my emissions tested. that's nice." But no, my dad says that the "expiration date" i'm looking at is acutally when the new registration (which I don't have) will expire.

So now, we're in a catch-22. Three facts about this situation:
1. I can't drive my car until it is registered.
2. I can't register my car until I get my emissions tested.
3. I can't get my emissions tested by simply wishing my car into an emissions testing facility. it needs to be driven there. CRAP!!!!!

Knowing me and my awful luck, the second i so much as turn my key in the ignition to drive the car to get the emissions tested to get it registered, a cop will be right there, my car will be impounded, I'll get upset and end up getting arrested or thrown into a loony bin, I'll miss work and get fired, I'll miss school and flunk out, and I'll end up a miserable, homeless bum on the streets for the rest of my life, forever ranting and raving insanely about emissions and registration.

On a serious note, this really is the worst thing that could happen right now. This is my last week of classes in the toughest semester I've ever had, so I have a million papers due, finals to study for, reseach to do ..... having this on my plate is really stressing me out in a bad way. There's no Jackpot here this time, sorry.