One More Week

Next Tuesday I have my French final and I turn in my portfolio for art containing all the projects from this semester as well as the final project.  I think I'm going to do okay with a little bit of studying for French, but I'm going to have to do some work this week to get ready for art. 

Last Thursday our giant self-portraits were due.  Mine turned out really well, so I will definitely be posting a picture of it as soon as I can figure out how to get my computer to recognize my camera.  Again.  Stupid technology.  Anyway, I got the golf clap in art this week, symbolizing a success, and my teacher had very little negative to say about my self-portrait.  Yay!  I was kind of sad that the course was ending after my last two projects went over so well.  I keep having this nagging voice in the back of my head that is telling me to sign up for another art class in the fall.  We'll see.  If I make anything less than a B with all the effort I have put into this class, I am done with art classes.  Done, I say.

In addition to constantly working night and day on art projects, I've been obsessing over some other stuff as well.  I'm going to buy a house around here this summer, so I want to start looking some time next month.  I have some credit card debt (Bad Jen.  Really, I must stop shopping.) and I also don't have a whole lot in the way of savings, so I am obsessively watching each and every dollar that passes in and out of my account.  I have this crazy Excel budget and I can't stop rearranging things so that I work down my debt faster or whatever.  I have to keep changing strategies and I also keep having to reduce my savings expectations, because I so very rarely actually meet my budget for the week.

One things that constantly pushes me over is groceries.  Food is the other thing that I have been obsessing over lately.  I read the Fat Fallacy over Christmas, and was really impressed by the message in that book (which, ironically, is to stop obsessing over food.)  I've been on a mission to cut out soft drinks and all other processed foods.  I am eating worlds better than I used to.  I'm actually getting in at least 5-6 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.  Which is impressive since I've avoided them (at least vegetables) my whole life.  I make my own salad dressings and I started drinking coffee.  I'm a huge grocery snob anyway, but now that I'm on this all natural food diet and everything is magnified. 

My eating plan got thrown a curve last week when Salon had a couple articles talking about all the mercury in fish.  For the past month, I had been eating tuna fish for lunch at least 3 days a week and having fish for dinner some nights on top of that.  There's this little printable chart that you can look at to see how much fish you can eat without putting yourself at risk for having too much mercury in your system, and it's not much.  I've had to drop back to just 2 or 3 nights a week, and that's sad.  Fish is supposed to be good for you.

Now that I'm not going to be in class 2 days a week, my grocery bill is going to be even higher.  Usually, when I come in at 10pm, I decide I am too tired to eat, so I just go to bed without dinner.  Now I've got to add two nights to the roster.  I love to cook, and I have tons of recipe books, but I'm not sure what I'm going to be eating all those nights.  I guess I'm going to have to start making some casseroles or something.

Anyway, one more week of the current art-driven madness, and then I will move on to something else I can obsess over.