I am (Still) Your Nosy Neighbor

y'all it's getting worse....

I had mentioned in THIS POST that I am incredibly nosy.  I love knowing everyone's business.  Well since we moved it has definitely not gotten any better....if anything it's worse.  Now that we live in such a large complex, I feel like I have the "in's" on so much more dirt......like the guy who drove the Navigator and used to go down to the garage to hot box his car practically every hour with the trail of weed following him.  Or the weirdo guy who lives on the 4th floor of our building and left his upstairs neighbor a real nasty note asking them if they had "elephant feet" (true story).  Or the douche who ends up at the gym the same time as me and likes to hoard ALL THE MACHINES (dude, seriously we have like 4 machines and 2 benches at the apartment gym - you can't have them all).  Or the couple who lives next door to us and goes from screaming at each other to screaming loudly while they have sex (hint: paper thin walls).  And then there is the story of the used condom found in the lobby by the mailboxes one morning.

Anyways....

What I am trying to say is that I certainly have not changed and now I feel like my vigilante mentality has now morphed.  Take the ongoing battle I have been secretly ensuing with my apartment complex.  LOL yeah secretive....why?  how?  Because I decided to become BFF's with the fire marshal of Arlington County and with his help I have been getting my way but with the county's backing.  It all started when the daycare in our building decided to build this monstrosity of a playground in the back space of our building (where the dogs played).  When the construction crew showed up, they built a temporary fence.....that ended up blocking the exit of our building!  Um hello...fire hazard.  Through my sleuthing, I found out that the Arlington County Fire Department is quite active on twitter so off to twitter I went.  I was able to get in touch with the FD and they passed along my email to one of their fire marshals and now the rest is history.  Some other issues have since popped up (like our elevators like to keep breaking WTF) such as our garage door broke and was held up by what looked to be dental floss for about 3 weeks.  After a week of praying the door didn't come crashing down on me, I asked my fire marshal friend if his expertise extended to garage doors, security issues, and potential liability risks.  Lucky for me, he responded a resounding YES.  With his gentle nudge (and the threat of some fine$) the garage door was fixed in the guaranteed 2 weeks instead of oh I dunno 2 months.

Here is what the door looked like:

Is that rope or dental floss?

So safe.  

You can barely see the rope/dental floss here.

Basically my car barely fit in and out of the door but now it's neither here nor there.  The shitty thing about it all is that I requested a discount on our rent for the month of March since we pay PER MONTH for our cars to stay in this safe and secure underground garage and yeah we were declined.  BASTARDS.  Oh well - my husband and I are counting down until our lease is up and we can move out.  

To end this vigilante post, I have to show one more picture....of Arlo's little neighbor dog-friend who is also a creeper.  When I see him peering out of the window at us, I imagine this is what I would look like if I had a window where I could sit and get the scoop on the neighborhood.  

Arlo's creeper friend in the window staring at us.

If You're Strong Female You Don't Need Permission - Clean Eating Challenge Day 10

- Lady Gaga

And now I'm bopping my head to the song as it plays on my iPhone. 

Did you all have a good weekend?  I did - we didn't do jack.  Friday, we stopped by my in-laws house for a little while to say hello.  Saturday, we checked out a model home in a new neighborhood.  Saturday night we met my dad out for some sushi as a belated birthday celebrating for my husband.  Sunday, I literally laid around in my pajamas and read the third Hunger Games book.  This is the second time reading the second and third book.  I think the second book is my favorite but I enjoy the end of the third book because Katniss ends up with the person I think she should end up with.  The only reason I don't like the third is because there is just SO much going on, the first time I read it I found I had a hard time keeping track and trying to visualize as I read. 

I got my hair cut Friday and I lurve it - I need to snap a picture and post it.  My hair dresser took 6 inches off!  My hair was long and now it feels SO much better. 

I have been dealing with my insurance company again since Saturday - I swear they think it's some sort of sick joke to mess with me and my health benefits.  I went to pay for a prescription (that I have paid for many times with this insurance without any issues) and suddenly the medication is $23.52 more than it was last month.  Uh, excuse me? So I do what any sane person would do, I fire off about 20 twitter rants to my insurance company.  They finally respond and send me an email.  I think they like to draw straws and unfortunately for this one girl, she's the same one I dealt with last month when I had issues.  I mean really - it's a BIRTH CONTROL PILL, how hard is this?  It's been on the market for like 12 years too so it's not like it's brand new and people are trying to figure out how much to price it out or what tier it needs to be in (and it's name brand, which my insurance accepts, and should be in the top tier k thanks).  So the rep at my insurance company said that she's following up with the pharmacy management team to see what the deal is.  I pointed out to her about 10 times how this is illegal and the insurance company can't just go in and change the cost of the medication halfway through the contracted year and that I will be following up with my health benefits group. 

Something else to mention - so Friday I made some clean pumpkin pancakes and they were delish.  Recipe is HERE and if you read my post (I know I have lurkers, please say hello) I mentioned I had a little agave nectar.  Well apparently that agave nectar threw my whole life into a tailspin and all I did Friday was eat.  I think I had about 8-9 servings of whole grains (oatmeal and/or quinoa) and possibly more because I freaked and was like, okay it's a lot I'm just going to admit defeat and call it a day.  I was casually chatting with one of my boot camp frands on Saturday and he was telling me that when a recipe he was using called for agave nectar he did some research and found that basically the body turns the agave nectar into fructose once it's in your body.  So nutritionists chalk this stuff up to be better than granulated sugar, which to an extent I'm sure it is but I started thinking that this was probably why I was hungry all day and just couldn't get content.  Because every other day I was fine.  He said I should use the raw honey instead since there's nothing in it to turn it into fructose and believe it or not, I used a very small amount of raw honey and have had no problems.  Very interesting, thought I would share.

Also, wanting to share a new recipe for when I want something sweet. 

Basically it's just 1/4 cup white quinoa, 1/4 cup red quinoa, 1 small handful of raw plain unsalted cashews, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and salt to taste.  I don't know what it is but it makes me feel like I am indulging on a small piece of pound cake.  It has to be the vanilla but I have been thoroughly enjoying this treat when I want something sweet but I don't want any sugar. 

Another thing I do that has been buzzing around the internet is banana ice cream.  I went to the dentist today and my teeth are now sore from them scraping.  I can't really take any over the counter pain stuff anymore because they're cornstarch in it (and I can't have cornstarch) so I have been sitting here suffering but I threw some chopped bananas in the freezer and I will be eating those soon.  I figure the cold bananas will help some with the pain. 

I think that is it for me - I have boot camp tonight yay!  It's only 79 out today so I'm hoping the rain will hold off and we'll be outside. 

Things I Cannot Do with a Sliced Finger....

....that I will never take advantage of again.

1. Texting with two thumbs
2. Buttoning and unbuttoning pants
3. Changing the song on my iPhone
4. Tapping the home button on my iPhone
5. Bottom-locking the front door
6. Hitting the button to open the garage door
7. Typing
8. ...Okay there were more in my head...

Backstory: I sliced the tip of my right thumb while cutting brussel sprouts.  It was bad enough that I had to go to Urgent Care.  The MD wanted to give me stitches but I talked her into the liquid dermabond stuff instead.  Part of the deal for getting the dermabond is that I couldn't work out for 5 days.  Uh, does she know who she's talking to?  I grudgingly agreed and my husband held me to it.  The first words out of his mouth when we got into the car was, "you do need to listen to the doctor and not work out for the week."  FINE.

I kind of took this week off as an opportunity to really focus on my diet (so all wasn't lost).  I was starting to have problems eating things I wasn't supposed to and my allergy was really started to flare up again.  So I figured if I couldn't work out, this would hold me more accountable for my diet since I couldn't make up the excuse that well I ran 3 miles so I can entire this entire pizza nomnomnom.  I know with my food intolerance, it's just a matter of getting back on track and that normally can happen within a few days as long as I have willpower.  Taking the negative and making it positive, go me.

This past week hadn't been all bad.  My husband was kind enough to come home early from work most days to keep me company (and I think to check in and make sure I wasn't working out) and I was able to get some of the bloat down from this dang reaction I have been battling since Monday.  But then today happened.  Today was hands down one of the most craptastic days in the office, to put it lightly.  I won't delve into details but I will say that I am quite passionate about what I do and I am feeling conflicted with how I feel my position with the company should be going and where it is going.  And it's not one of these rawr rawr rawr they want to give me more work how dare they! but rather they want me to stop doing some of my tasks altogether when I feel what I do now has a lot of purpose.  But you know, what do I know...I'm just along for the ride.  So there's that.

Because of this god awful day, I came home raging.  Didn't help I was listening to the 90s station the whole way home (seriously I used to claim the 80s were my genre of choice but I am sadly mistaken....the 90s occupied so much of my youth that it will forever hold a place in my heart) but I changed out of my work clothes (which by the way was ANOTHER cute outfit that I forgot to snap a picture of FML) and threw on running clothes, defying the doctor's orders.  I said a quick prayer to the finger slicing gods that my thumb wouldn't bust the heck open in the middle of the woods and I took off for a 4 mile run in the sweltering heat (is it hot by you?  It's been disgusting here all summer and I kind of want to die).  I came back dying of heat exhaustion and instantly feeling better.  It's amazing what a little sweat and heat can do for the mind and body.  No longer do I feel the need to rage.....or want to down a bottle of Grey Goose.  Instead, I feel more relaxed.  It would better if I took tomorrow off but I am manning the fort since my coworker is going to go enjoy a little impromptu weekend with her fiancé.  But I get to work from home so yay next best thing!

Okay so yeah I don't know how a post about my thumb turned into a ramble about my job but let's go with it.  Anyways, I realize that work is work.  There will be good days and bad days.  I also value the fact that my job doesn't suck 100% of the time and that those days when I do feel down (which is rare), running always seems to make it better.  Or maybe it was the 90s music.  Both is superb so let's just go with that.