Wow, did I spend a ton of money these last three months and I am so paying for it.

In November I took a trip to LA. Then in December I went to Dallas, and in January I went away for my birthday. Then I spent a ton of money on buying a new battery and tires for my car.

And I really messed myself up with my taxes this year. I claimed 2 on my exemptions and I'm barely getting a refund. YIKES! I really like getting a refund on my taxes. I think I may go back to one exemption depending on what my merit increase looks like. I probably would have owed money this year if it wasn't for my deductions.

I just can't spend any money till June now. I hate that. Not that I should be buying new clothes anyway because I feel so fat and gained some weight over the holidays. I'm wearing my fat jeans because they're so much more comfortable than my size 8 jeans right now.

I'm still buying a laptop because I really want one, but not till April when I get my little tax refund. In March my company bonus is supposed to come and since I get paid every two weeks instead of twice a month, I get an extra check in April.

If I'm careful, I will still be on track for paying off my car and all my credit cards this year. I won't be completely debt free because I'll probably go one some kind of vacation this year, but I'll be able to pay it off quicker once my major debts are gone. I think I'll also still be on track for my savings goals as well, if I don't buy anything other than my new laptop.

Thank god, I am pretty through with upgrading everything in my apartment. I still want to upgrade my monitor and get a flat screen, get new computer speakers, and upgrade my printer get a new printer/fax/scanner combo, and upgrade my operating from 256 to 512 because my home computer is just way too slow, but I'll be able to do that after June.

I shouldn't be too whiny about my finances. I'm in the best financial shape I've been in ever, but I hate feeling like I've overspent myself and I so feel like that right now.

I was supposed to work out on Thursday, but my anxiety started to kick in again. At least it happened after I had writte my four pages for the day. Then I just went home and watched TV all night.

"Queen of the Damned" was on and although the movie is sucky, the soundtrack rocks! I was going to buy it until I found out that the Korn guy who sings the vocals for the movie, isn't on the soundtrack cd. Some kind of contractual issues prevented him from being on the cd; what a drag!

I've been having wild dreams all week. I don't remember any of them except that I wake up thinking to myself, what a weird dream. I've been feeling so BLAH this week, and thinking that my life is do drecky! I don't think it's always been this awful. I seem to remember being happy not too long ago.

I still think of the red-haired guy, and I'm sure that's the main cause of my general misery. Honestly, thoughts of the freakazoid will not leave my mind. It's so maddening! I feel so haunted. A friend of mine whose mother was some kind of famous psychic in Paris suggested that he could do a clearing for me. He did it for free which was nice, but he didn't find anything. He told me my misery was internally driven. I hate that! Why would I want to make myself miserable?

Anyway the psychic clearing must have done something, because on the way home I stopped at Borders to look for a book that I need for my Greek Drama. They were out of it at the college bookstore, and a huge bookstore downtown told me that it was on backorder from the publisher for two weeks. But at Borders the book was half off, how great was that? Good thing too because the prof assigned a play out of it this week.

I'm reading "Philoctetes" by Sophocles. I'm also reading my way through CS Lewis' Narnia books. After my CS Lewis kick, I think I'm going on Graham Greene kick since he's my new writing inspiration. Did I mention this before? The New Yorker did an article on him and wrote that Graham Greene wrote 4 handrwritten pages a day.

I like that I'm writing a ton even though I'm fairly depressed. I just hope I don't have to be depressed to write because that wouldn't be a good thing for me.

I decided to count how many pages I had written to see what kind of progress I've been making with trying to establish better writing habits. And much to my surprise, I have written as of today 54 pages. Mind you it's all handwritten pages, and some of the pages are outlines for chapters I'm writing and a character interview as well, but still! That's a lot of pages. I am so impressed with myself!

I still want to get to the point where I'm writing every day, and not taking days off like I have been. Even if I just write one page on busy days, it would still be better than no pages at all. But I know I still have the attitude that if I can't fit in writing four handwritten pages, I'm not going to write all. I have to figure out to break this mindset because when I do take a break, it does take awhile to get back to writing. It's like I lose some momentum every time I take a break. I'd rather have the momentum build slowly and daily till it really starts cooking along.

What's surprising is how easy the 54 pages came. Oh sure I complained a ton and found the whole exercise completely onerous at times, but in retrospect I'm amazed at the number of pages that I've written compared to the amount of time I've put in. It really does all add up, even if you do it a little bit at a time.

It's like saving money I suppose. Even if you just save a little at time, over time the amount keeps growing. Speaking of money, I've been watching it fly much too quickly out of my accounts lately. January is always like this for me. I so freak out at the amount of money I've spent, what with Christmas shopping and holiday spending. I hate digging into my savings, but that's what the money is for right? To pay for things that are out of the ordinary expenses.

God, I can't wait till I pay off my car at the end of this year. I can't wait to have that money freed up. Of course it will all just go into savings, but it will nice to be able to save more money.

So considering I hardly put any effort into my new job and am now an official clock watcher and I scramble out of here at the stroke of 5 pm, I received a "Meets Requirements" which in the corporate world is grade equivalent of "C" grade. My boss said she was very happy with me, but that I needed to take more initiative and not be afraid to speak up at Board meetings. Whatever.

A "Meets" will still get me a 3% or more merit increase which is like a $100 more or less a month, and in this economy that's not a bad increase. At my last company, we didn't even get that much. I also get a $3,000 company bonus in March for our company's 2004 performance. If I factor the 2004 bonus in and the pay increase I received in this new job, I received the equivalent of a 10% merit increase in 2004. And that's incredible given the bad economy out here.

So I can't complain at all about how things turned out job wise, considering where I was around this time last year. I have a job where I work hard but not too hard and still get paid well, and where I can leave at 5 pm without guilt and work on my writing. Nope, can't complain at all.

Now if only I could say the same about my personal and my writing life. But I intend to get those two areas handled this year. I'm definitely laying the foundation for my writing life. It's my love life, I have the most doubts about and what's always been the hardest for me to get a handle on.

I think most people have the opposite problem. They seem to be able to handle their personal life issues better than they do their work life. I'm backwards. Work and other outside activities have always been the easiest areas of my life to control.

When I was getting my massage at Osmosis on Monday, the massage therapist told me that "you get into relationships with people to complete your issues from childhood." I was thinking about this last night and freaking out. My red-headed guy was like cross between my grandparents who raised me, and I'm like no wonder I was miserable. I was reliving my bad childhood with my boyfriend. What is up with that? There's got to be another better way to complete my childhood traumas without having to relive it with a boyfriend or worse yet in a marriage. I am so not having another unhappy childhood at this stage in my life.

Happy Birthday to me! Today's the day. My best friend and I planned a trip up north. On Sunday we went hiking up at Point Reyes and we saw whales spouting and elephant seals lying on the beach.

Then we headed to the Inn at Occidental, which is one of the top 100 hotels in the world according to Conde Nast. It was a very nice B&B, and my friend had a hot tub in her room so we hung out in the hot tub. We had dinner at Negris across the street, and passed out early Sunday night from too much wine and food.

Then we went to Graton to a jewelry outlet, an antique store with pretty nice antiques, and an art gallery with some decent art. We had lunch in Graton, and then headed off to Osmosis Enzyme and Bath. Osmosis is the only day spa in the U.S. that offers the Cedar Enzyme Bath, a rejuvenating heat treatment from Japan.

We sat in an enzyme bath full of woodchips and rice bran, then each had a 75 minute massage. It was very relaxing and supposedly very detoxifying.

It was great way to spend my birthday and I'm very grateful to my friend for planning the whole event!