Since my first two Week in Review posts were wildly popular (meaning I didn’t lose every reader I have), I’m finally back with another one. I realized the flaw in calling it a Week in Review — I can’t be counted on to keep a weekly assignment. Rather, from here on out, I’ll dub them Inside My Brain.

Fun fact: When I left work for my maternity leave, I created a document for Katy called Inside Jackie’s Brain. We still use it from time to time, 5 years later. So I figured, if that title was so successful for that, clearly it’s going to explode like wildfire here.

So, in no particular order, here’s what’s swirling in my cerebrum.

1. Being a homeowner sucks sometimes. 

Thanks to a busy, busy weekend last weekend (which of course I still haven’t blogged about), I hardly got to any of our mountains of laundry. Since I’m off on Fridays, I designated today Laundry Day. I know you’re as excited as E. was about the prospect of it.

This morning, I realized there was still a load of clothes in the dryer from last weekend (please tell me I’m not the only one who does this). So I restarted the dryer to smooth out the wrinkles fluff up the clothes and started a load in the washer. After about 20 minutes, I went to retrieve the clothes and they were still cold and some were frankly a little damp. I tried again, this time on high. Five minutes later, still no difference.

Yup, the dryer has officially stopped drying clothes. I mean, I suppose the good news is if I want a big tub that can twirl things around, I’ve still got that going for me.

I’ve feared it was coming. This is our 10th year in the house and before I could stop myself, I wondered outloud to  my husband recently what would be the first appliance to go. Oh, that Murphy is a cruel bitch. In the past couple years, we’ve had to replace the hot water heater and the entire AC/heating system, so we knew it was only a matter of time before the appliances turned on us.

I called Sears because that was the number listed on a sticker on the dryer. Sometimes, Big Brother tracking is cool. Using our home address, they were able to tell us when the previous owners bought the dryer — 1998.

I’ve scheduled an appointment for them to come next Friday to look at the dryer. The fun part is that we have a washer/dyer combo (they’re stacked on top of each). So if the dryer truly is toast, we have to replace both.

In the meantime, we’ve started the process of seeing what else is out there. It turns out that we can get a decent discount on Whirlpools through my husband’s company (random).

And I may have started dropping hints on Twitter to the Universe, aka Kenmore.

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/momjoviblog/status/312587913164636162″]

It can’t hurt, right?

Of course, during all the dryer drama, I forgot the most annoying point — that load of wash going through the spin cycle. Crap. And of course, it was the whites, which means lots of little things (underwear, socks, tee-shirts, etc).

After it finished, I loaded it all up and E. and I went off on a grand adventure to the laundromat. It was quite the novelty to her.

It also helped that there is a 7-Eleven next door, so she got a Slurpee as the clothes dried. Fun times all around.

2. Falling Off the Exercise Wagon

Let’s just say that the past couple weeks have been a disaster, exercise-wise. Thanks to my trip to Syracuse, I sort of bailed out of the last week-and-a-half of Best Body Bootcamp. Then, just as I was starting to get back into a slight running groove again, daylight savings came along. I just cannot get up in the morning anymore.

I’ve always battled mornings and even during BBB, I was used to getting up in the dark. But my goal has been to get up and run because I’m running the Winter Park 10K next weekend. Well, every morning, I wake up and stupidly imagine it’s going to be somewhat light at 6:30 in the morning for me to go for a run. Newsflash: it never is. And I’m a wimp about running alone in the dark. There have been a lot of break-ins in my neighborhood lately (mostly during the day) and I just don’t feel comfortable running around in the dark alone.

I know I could drive to the gym but it feels so stupid to drive about 15 miles roundtrip to run 3. Then again, it’s also stupid to not run.

I’ve been trying to squeeze in some runs during my lunch break at work.

Thankfully, the weather has been PERFECT lately for some lunch runs so that’s helped. It’s just not helping in the distance department because I try not to run too far for both time and sweating purposes (thankfully, we have a very casual office but I don’t think they want to look at my sweating face all day).

I’m hoping to make up some mileage over the weekend. The three of us are running/walking a St. Patty’s Day 5K tomorrow, and I might try to sneak in some more miles after that.

By the way, because my body has an amazing sense of humor, I thought you’d find it as funny as I do that during my not-really-working-out phase compared to my going-to-the-gym-five-days-a-week-and-kicking-my-own-ass phase, I’m now down 2 pounds. Of course I am.

3. Cats are evil.

Dear Katy — I’ll save you from making the I-told-you-so face. Just skip this section.

Our cat is batshit crazy.

She spent the first couple months at our house locked out of our bedroom at night and it was never an issue. I kept our bedroom door closed because of my allergies. As I started getting more used to her (which has thankfully happened. I’m not even taking anything anymore and I never sneeze around her these days), we started leaving the door open. Big mistake. HUGE mistake.

For the first couple hours, she’s OK. Then, around 3 a.m. every night, she starts to attack me. She bites my neck. She attacks my feet. She sits on my head and paws at my hair. Every time I flip to the other side, she leaps over my body to get in my face again. When I throw the comforter over my head, she pulls a Houdini and somehow winds up under the blanket with me, shimmying her way up my back.

When I finally get up and throw her out of room, slamming the door shut, it gets worse. She sits outside our door and meows at the top of her tiny cat lungs. Then she starts scratching on the door and trying to dig her way under it. The other night, she shredded the carpet that was peeking under the door in an effort to get in.

I hate her at night. I’m not going to lie — at times, I have heaved her off of me. It’s true; they DO land on their feet!

Somehow, my husband sleeps through it. I shouldn’t be surprised. He did the same thing when E was a baby. Last night, kitty and I got our revenge though. He fell asleep on the couch, so I went to bed and shut the bedroom door, leaving the two out there. At about 1:30 he comes bumbling into the room, accusing me of putting catnip on his toes because she was attaching them so much.

I didn’t but if I’d thought of it I would have.

And don’t even get me started on her constant need to be touching some part of my body.

Look at her. You can just see the plotting in her eyes. Evil kitty.

If only she wasn’t so cute and already such a beloved member of our family. If only.

I suppose it’s her only form of revenge for constantly being treated like this.

For the amount of aggressive loving she tolerates, I suppose she actually is a pretty good kitty. Except at 3 a.m.

4. Looking at old pictures is fun

This week was my friend Julie’s birthday. We’ve been friends since 10th grade, and she was one of my bridesmaids at our wedding. Now she’s an elementary school teacher and she’s always sending E some kickass learning supplies, like fun books and sight words and math games. She’s really been instrumental in helping E learn to read, even though she lives all the way out in Arizona. You’d think that’d be reason enough for me to get my act together for a change and get a birthday card out to her. You’d be wrong. I’m terrible at sending cards.

Since her birthday fell on Thursday, I decided to take part in my first Throwback Thursday with this gem:

That was our senior year of high school when we decided we needed a spring break, so we came and stayed at my grandparent’s house in Kissimmee. Yeah, my legs were pretty bangin’ once upon a time, huh? Stupid teenage metabolism + playing sports year-round.

I’m more obsessed with Julie’s knee-length shorts and shoes in this picture. God, the ’90s were so amazing. For you kids out there, as you can see, tucked in tees were so hot. So hot.

And could my shoes be any whiter? Apparently I didn’t exercise in them, which doesn’t surprise since I never ran if I didn’t have to.

It was really hard to pick just one picture, though. But since she’s a respectable teacher now, I decided not to post any of our Cancun or Senior Week pictures. But perhaps I’ll share them with you all … another day.

5. Last, but certainly not least … GEORGETOWN SUCKS!

I’ve been writing this on and off all day Friday, and I’m finally finishing it up after watching the Syracuse-Georgetown game in the Big East Tournament. We went to OT. Against our biggest rival. In our final Big Eat Tournament. And WON. Instant classic.

This is basically how I felt after the game.

Now, THAT’s the Syracuse-Georgetown game I was hoping to see on my trip back to ‘Cuse. Oh well. If we were only going to win 1 of 3 games this year, this was the game to win, obviously.

Next stop: Big East Championship game!

What’s inside your brain this week? And does anyone have any advice for dealing with a cat at night? I’m seriously considering locking her in our scary, crowded garage. It’s getting that desperate.