Help Needed, Inquire Within

At this moment I'm just a little overwhelmed with work. Every variety of it- school work, house work, work work. Tonight I need to fill out some calendars for school, so I can get a better picture of my deadlines and know when I'm under a time crunch (as well as 5 sections of reading and Cornell notes, woo). Time is always slipping through my fingers lately. How do you successfully manage your time?

Josh "inherited" $500 from the sale of his grandparents' house. We haven't been able to decide what to do with it yet. It's sitting in a savings account right now, but that certainly isn't it's permanent resting place. Some ideas are to put it towards a short & sweet trip, split it 50/50 to each spend on what we wish, use it to finish up household projects, decide a savings goal we'd like it to go towards. If you received an surprise $500 what would you use it for?

If there is one thing that I just don't get about fashion it is accessorizing. Shoes, bags, belts, jewelry- all generally confuse me. Tights, those seem to throw me for a loop too. Feels like I'm failing as a woman sometimes. Also, despite being almost 30, calling myself a woman feels super weird. I'm just a girl, right? Anyway, are there any hard and fast rules that could make this easier? (The less these rules cost me, the better.)

So, what say you dozen or so people who might read this blog? Any tips, tricks, advice for me in any of these areas?

Things Floating Around

I finally finished reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" this week. I heart Michael Pollan. But aside from that, it has set a lot of different thoughts floating around my gray matter. Gonna do a little free-thought list here.

-Pig tails make me sad.
-I don't want to stop eating meat.
-I don't want to eat industrial meat.
-I want to start composting.
-About 1% of me would like to try hunting.
-98% of me is too squeamish to take that other 1% seriously.
-1% knows I'd break my shoulder if I shot a rifle.
-Is buying a large quantity of meat the best option for consuming local grass-fed animals?
-Is there any spot in my yard that will get enough sun for a garden?
-Why is our farmer's market not super awesome?
-Would it be super awesome if more people utilized it?
-How many people I know might be interested in buying local meat? Enough to help defray costs for all?
-I need to widen the variety of vegetables and grains I eat.
-Should I buy a chest freezer for the garage to store all this meat in?
-How hard would it be to make cheese?
-Why haven't I figured out baking bread yet?
-How many things could I really take on myself with the amount of free time I have?
-I want to re-read "In Defense of Food".

Simply Cheerful

Over the past few weeks I have been cleaning up my office at work. My office is at the back, rarely seen by clients. That translates into a storage area for boxes, furniture, and old, broken equipment. Coming into my office everyday, as the boxes slowly began encroaching, was beginning to crush my soul. So while my boss was out of town, meaning I would have less ASAP tasks thrown at me, I decided to do something about it. I couldn't get rid of everything, in fact most everything is still in here. It's just organized better, or at all for that matter. And now I can actually look out my windows to my really awesome view of the tree covered hills and downtown Fort Worth. I'll have to take a picture of it sometime to post, cause it really is great. If I stand up I can see the river too, since it flows right beside our building.

Real Simple magazine has a page at the back of each issue called Real Simple To Go. They have tidbits of information printed on perforated paper for easy removal. I went through my back issues last night and collected the thoughts cards that I really liked. Today I taped them on the edges of my flat screen monitor for daily inspiration and cheering up. When you're at your desk for around 11 hours a day you can use all the cheerfulness you can find. Here are the quotes that will be inspiring my thoughts for now.

"The Beautiful is everywhere; perhaps more in the arrangement of your saucepans on the white walls of your kitchen than in your eighteenth-century living room or in the official museums."- Fernand Leger

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for example."- John Ruskin

"There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich."- Marlene Dietrich

"You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip."- J.M. Barrie

"Nature gives you the face you have at 20; it is up to you to merit the face you have at 50."- Coco Chanel