how not to make a plan

Sorry! Its been awhile!
I haven't been excessively busy or anything, just giving in to springtime premenstrual malaise.
Oh, and also freaking out about money, but what else is new, right?
I had a minor car emergency: the 'ol dear decided to need a new exhaust system (among other things) in order to pass state inspection. So I had to fork over just over $2000.00 to make things right.
It was really painful for me. I had the money--I have been saving pretty aggressively-- toward the goal of purchasing a new-to-me vehicle sometime early next year--so I had about $5000.00 in an account called "the transportation fund". I did a big pro-con list and toyed with the idea of giving up on my car and trying to sell it for parts instead of fixing it and just getting by with a bike until weather gets bad again(I tried this last summer--gave my car to my youngest sister and took the bus / biked / walked everywhere until a car cut me off on my way home one day and I broke my wrist falling off my bike, so in theory this is doable, but it makes me slightly nervous given past events). My sister pushed for immediate car shopping and using the money I had as a down payment on something new-er, pointing out that the $600 + a month I had been putting aside would be less than a car payment on most things (also, she likes to go car shopping). And then I talked to the mechanic and voiced all of my concerns and he told me that the car looks to be in really good shape (other than the exhaust) and should make it to 300,000 miles with ease(it is currently at 220,000, so this is maybe two years away). So I took $2000.00 out of my transportation fund and had it fixed. And then when it came to $2300.00 I gritted my teeth and put the rest of it on a credit card.
This was an exercize in re-working goals. I have this tendency to get really driven toward a particular goal and to lose site of other stuff, and having to go in and evaluate where I was putting my money made me realize that my $500.oo emergency fund is inadequate, and that as much as I might want a newer car, putting nearly all of my savings into one goal / fund isn't the smartest way to make it happen. Because I do get really rigid about what the money is supposed to be for, and then have trouble with re-allocation and not thinking of it as a failure. So I've restructured my savings a bit: dropped contributions to the transportation fund back to 10% of my net income and increased contributions to my emergency fund to 10% as well. I'm also putting 10% into a "house" fund (that will be way more long-term: I don't even know what town I want to live in yet!) and 10% into a sort of "undeclared" (meaning I have not stated a specific purpose for it, not that I am hiding it from the government or something) playing-with-stocks fund (through Sharebuilder, divided among 5 different index funds) that, theoretically, I can to wherever I most need the money later on . Barring sudden crashes of the economy and my own ridiculousness regarding money.
I haven't changed my pre-tax savings at all; I am still contributing 15% (which still, sadly, does not get me close to the cap of $15,500/year) of my gross every paycheck to the company 403c (but they upped their match from 7% to 8%!! so there will be slightly more money going in there after June 1). This is money I never count, although when I get the biannual report it is always nice to see those numbers and think "someday this could be mine" Haha.
I feel better about it, though I am sad when looking at the considerably lower balance in my transportation fund especially when I think about how I only paid $500.00 for the car I just fixed for $2300.00!! My hope is that it will be money well spent though, and that I will have the car for another two years at least.

bitter orange

So, contrary to popular opinion, losing weight and skinny pants are apparently not correlated in my life.
I stepped on the scale yesterday to discover that I had gained about 4 pounds. This is depressing because I wanted to lose about 10 before this incident, so now I want to lose about 15. Man. Isn't that just always the way?
I haven't been doing a whole lot of running lately, in the winter its always a little harder to talk myself into getting out and doing it--it becomes more of a "get it over with" kind of thing, rather than a "yeah! lets do this!" kind of thing, and I am just not dedicated enough to "get it over with" more than once or twice a week I guess.
Well, unless you bring weight into it. Stepping on the scale and seeing the numbers go up rather than down is always something that will make me rethink my commitment level (which obviously isn't all that high). So I know I need to do more.
Weird thing is:
This morning I was pretty much totally out of pants. I haven't done laundry in over a week, so I've managed to make most all of them slightly too grimy for work. I pull out the dreaded skinny pants--which usually fit if I'm running 15+ miles a week or so (my hips shrink, I swear) and give them a look, knowing that the scale has said they shouldn't fit right now. But I try them on anyway, because I'm desperate for pants. And they do fit. Weird. I mean, I did have to do a little shimmy to get them over my hips to begin with, but they button fine and are not saran-wrap tight or anything. its very strange.
Whats bad is what this particular information could do to that revised commitment level. Yeah. I'll try not to let the pants go to my head, but its going to be hard. I mean, they're the skinny pants!
I am so going running this afternoon. I so am.

snack attack

I'm feeling more like myself today, and less like a ball of mucus. I'm not totally better, but I am a hell of a lot better than yesterday.
I keep hearing how Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire is because she "proved she was human" and grating my teeth. What in the hell is that even supposed to mean? People do not seriously doubt her humanity--AI intelligence hasn't come that far yet, they doubt her authenticity maybe, but not her actual physiological being. And I generally think of politicians using the word "human" in phrases like "I'm only human" (i.e. "even I screw up a good bit") So what in the hell? Really?
Also, let it be known that at the moment I rather despise humanity.
With me this is a pretty cyclical thing, both the reason I want to live alone and the reason I have a feeling living alone would be a bad idea (hello modern day hermit). But in all seriousness--my roommates reprogrammed the thermostat while I was at work the other day, a full 10-15 degrees warmer at every preset time period across the board. And I'm the girl who handles the gas bill and still hasn't been paid their parts of it for June-through the present. And I've heard endless variations on how very broke they will be until their respective refund checks come in at the end of the month (they're both students) and when I got home last night they were just coming back from a little old navy shopping fest with a bunch of useless crap that was on "supersale". And I don't want it warm, for several reasons, the first being finance (oil prices are skyrocketing and my checking account balance has plummeted--I have to wait for my next paycheck to cover the next gas bill--which again they will need to reimburse me for eventually) and the second being health-- we do not need the interior of our house to reach 70 degrees in January, no sir no way cool air is better for sleeping and better for plant growth and better for human health as well.
And of course I am being a major cranky-pants and passive-aggressive as all get out (yes thats right this morning when I discovered the re-program I went back in and changed things back again to the way they'd been). I actually thought about leaving a note on the thermostat saying something like "if you plan to turn up the heat please pay your part of the heating costs first thanks bye" but then I rethought that. Instead I may just go to town on them with a frying pan. That, at least, wouldn't be at all passive aggressive of me.