I bought a little container of planted Venus fly traps over the weekend that I’ve brought to work. There’s been gnats irritating the crap out of me in the past week. I think they’re coming from the avocado trees’ soil. Hopefully this’ll resolve the problem, altho it doesn’t look like it’s caught anything yet. All the little pink teethy mouths are still open and hungry looking.

Today marks the first day I’ve gone to the gym in 9-10 days. There were plenty of little excuses — lunchtime work meetings, evening HOA meetings, bartending class, my trainee being unavailable due to her own lunchtime meetings and errands. I’ve even leaned heavily on the fact that I’d injured my left wrist months ago by benching with an easy bar (yeah, don’t do that; use a straight bar or skip it if the straight bar for your weight isn’t free), and now it hurts to support any weight whatsover so my constant heavy weightlifting through the pain has lengthened or maybe even worsened the problem. But the real reason for my lack of appearance at the gym is that I haven’t felt like going. Today, because gym trainee and I both hadn’t gone in over a week, we decided to make this a cardio-only week to give my wrist an extra week to heal and to warm us back up into working out. 10 minutes elliptical on hills, 10 minutes run on a treadmill, 10 minutes stairs, and we were sweating bullets. Serves us right for being so lazy the past week.

Saturday, Mr. W and I had dinner with my parents, my aunt, and her sort-of significant other. She refers to the guy as her “best friend” and “soulmate” but she’s still married to my uncle. Anyway, the guy is a definite fan of the gym and is wider than he is tall (all muscle), and all evening long, in between his pill-popping of various supplements, digestive aids, and fat burners, he insisted that Mr. W adopt his workout and supplementation regimen, with a GIANT push for creatine. Mr. W pushed it on me and said I won’t let him take creatine, but I just didn’t want to get into that stuff with a fanatic. It got awkward as they were leaving, tho, cuz he hugged us goodbye (really friendly guy, been in my aunt’s life for over 10 years now) and then said to Mr. W and me that he’ll see us soon, if not then he’ll see us at the wedding. After they left, my mom said that my aunt had told her that he can’t go to our wedding because her husband will have a fistfight with him. I guess I’m only addressing the envelope to Mr. and Mrs., then. I don’t want two grown men fistfighting at my wedding!

On Sunday in the middle of watching “Angel,” I felt my first twinge of stress since planning the wedding. A couple of people had asked me last week how the wedding plans were coming along, and I’d answered honestly that I haven’t done a thing toward that end in months. It used to be because I was so ridiculously far ahead in wedding planning that I haven’t thought about doing more, but now that it’s been months since I did anything except order that cute little cake topper that came today, I started to feel like I’ve let myself fall off-track and waste weekends doing nothing but hanging with Mr. W idly playing Wii or watching “Angel.” So I ran off into the other room, typed out an email to MOH Vicky and my mom to schedule measurement day for our dresses, scribbled out a to-do list for the 2 weeks of vacation I have coming up in May (which I will fill with wedding and home repair stuff), and felt better.

Sunday night, Mr. W invited his neighbor over to my makeshift bar in Mr. W’s kitchen. I wanted to get drink mixing practice in, but I don’t really drink and there’s not enough adults to drink my stuff ordinarily. Sunday night, I gave the guys a menu based on the liquor we had on-hand, and I made Mr. W a Long Beach Iced Tea (gin, rum, vodka, Triple Sec, tequila, sweet & sour, splash of cranberry juice), his neighbor a Sour Apple Martini (vodka, Sour Apple Pucker, splash of sweet & sour) and a Washington Apple Martini (Crown Royal, Sour Apple Pucker, splash of cranberry) which his neighbor has now decided are his all-time favorite alcholic beverages ever, and I made myself a makeshift Red-Headed Slut (Jaegermeister, peach schnapps, cranberry juice; I didn’t have peach schnapps so I substituted it for a shot of Triple Sec and it came out tasting nearly identical). I forgot — on Saturday I also made Mr. W a dirty extra-dry blended gin and vodka martini, and made myself a Bacardi Cocktail (Bacardi Premium [dark] rum, sweet and sour, Grenadine). 2 drinks in a weekend is bad for me, especially when I haven’t been at the gym.

I think the guilt over not fixing up my house (removing bathroom wallpaper, repairing the ceiling damage caused by the roof leaks) is permeating my subconscious. This morning I was trapped in a nightmare about there being a landslide and my house being half submerged underwater. In my dream I thought for some reason that I could just leave it underwater cuz the inside’s dry, but then suddenly the walls got moist and the ceiling started leaking in the upstairs hallway, and Dodo was getting concerned. I also dreamt that I kept trying to go to work, but 3 attempts all landed me at Disneyland. So in my dream I seriously considered calling in sick from my physical inability to be anywhere but Disneyland. Oh, and some staff member at Disneyland was trying to peddle some nutrition meal substitute on me.