Losing My Mind

Guess what I've been doing when I haven't been working on my new Paula Apro web site? I've been feverishly and painstakingly building, not only a new web site for YogaDudes, but an entire new shopping cart. Like bamboo under the fingernails, nails against a chalkboard, or maybe a root canal. I can't think of many things I would rather do less than go through that process again any time soon.

The site went live this morning and, of course, it's chock full of bugs. I spent 30 seconds testing the cart and realized that the cheapest shipping cost was $34 - no matter what you tried to buy. All day I couldn't fix the shipping rates and I was ready to start getting hate mail from shoppers. I was just waiting for the, "Hey YogaDudes, have you lost your mind with your shipping rates?"

I have been chained to the computer all day and night. Luckily I did manage to fix the shipping rates (thanks to Karlo who mustered up 5 minutes of patience from some unknown place), but I still have a mountain of other issues to work through. I think I'm starting to count down the days until vacation. Lord knows I'm going to need it more than ever.

To check out the new and (hopefully) improved site and cart, please click here. If you find obvious problems and errors, please leave me a comment and I'll add them to my bugs list . . . and then I'll go and drink one shot for every bug on my list.

My New Website At Last

It's finally complete. Well, maybe almost compete. Or maybe complete enough because I'm losing my patience with it. In the midst of building websites for clients, I decided that I didn't already have enough work to do on my computer and 10 hours a day isn't nearly enough for my retinas to be burning out. So I decided that I needed my very own place on the web. Somewhere to call my own. Not for my yoga business. Not for my art gallery. Not for my photos. But just for me–Paula Apro. So I had my handy dandy cousin purchase me my very own domain name, because everybody should have a 'dot com' after their name, right?

So without any further ado, here is my new web site www.PaulaApro.com. It's the one place that pulls all the aspects of my life together. My various other sites and blogs link from it. And speaking of blogs, I intend to start another one. Not quite sure when I'll make the time for that, and so far I have nothing posted on this new "My Life Through a Lens" blog, but my intention is to have a dumping group for various pictorial stories. Every picture tells a story and I just want to document some of those stories in the hopes of one day pulling then all together in print.

Don't worry, this blog will still get all the attention it deserves. This will continue to be my aimless ramblings about my life, my thoughts, my complaints, my . . . OK you get the picture. But if you want to drop in at paulaapro.com once in a while I would love to see you there too.

Transitional Dressing

I need help with it. I really suck at this ‘in-between-seasons’ dressing. I either need it hot or cold. I’m fine at either extreme, but I don’t do well with this not hot enough for sandals, but not cold enough for sweaters weather. I’m just lost and looking very shabby during this period.

Last weekend I did the big closet switcheroo and ever since then, the weather has turned colder. It was such a thrill to pull all the summer clothes out, but it’s risky putting away all my boots and turtlenecks. Now for two weeks I’ll be dressing poorly. I’m not ready to leave the house at 6:30 AM in sandals, let alone a skirt and sandals. My boots are all gone and my shoe choices are slim. I swear shoes are always my biggest wardrobe challenge. First, there’s the problem of finding shoes that fit. But then there’s the challenge of picking the right shoe for the outfit and I’m just not very good at it. Maybe that’s because my wardrobe doesn’t include the right shoes. I got the dressy shoes and I got the totally casual shoes. It’s the in between shoes that I lack. Let’s say for example, you’re wearing casual pants (or jeans even) and you have a casual zippered hoodie on. It’s too cold for sandals. What should you wear on your feet? The outfit is too casual for dressy flats. Sneakers would dress you down even more. I’m looking for that appropriately casual, but not frumpy or overly sporty solution. I just don’t have a complete set of footwear choices in my closet.

Good example: For 10 years I’ve been looking for a super comfy shoe that I can wear traveling. Something that I can walk for miles in, but yet not look like a total dope walking around in a city in. I still haven’t found that shoe and it drives me nuts. If anybody out there knows of that one perfect pair of traveling shoes, please share.

I’m so ready for summer. Bring on the heat. At least I know how to dress for that.

Now That’s Better

I must say that things on the happy front are improving. I made it through the scene at the DMV without much incident. Karlo brought a book and was quite content to sit there. I got a lot of freelance work done with my laptop and I even brought all the correct paperwork the first time, which was a huge plus. So that unpleasant task is now happily behind me.

Friday night was our first attempt at the Netflix movie streaming and I’m happy to report that the set up was brainless and quick and the experience was outstanding. I was thrilled at how easy Netflix makes it to search through movies and set up your instant watching cue. It has to be at least a million times better than the pathetic excuse for ‘on demand’ that Charter offers. Kudos to Netflix.

And Saturday I scored an A+ for having fun. I completely lost my mind and forgot to do P90X first thing in the morning. I still can’t figure out what possessed me to get up and take a shower before working out. Of course the fact that I did this pained me, but Karlo convinced me to “pretend the day didn’t happen” as far as my work-out schedule goes . . . and I did just that. I just ‘let it go’ and seemed to have suffered no repercussions from it. I guess the world doesn’t end if you make one screw up.

So instead of P90X we took our hour long, moderately strenuous hike, but we did it at a slower pace, which actually made it enjoyable. I took my headphones and phone (since my iPod is still dead but I’m not going to let it anger me anymore) and I was bopping around the trail, lost in my own music-filled world. It was fun!

Upon getting home Karlo took up a nice spot on the back deck and read his book. I sat in the house so jealous I could cry. You see, I wasn’t supposed to be in the sun this weekend due to my most recent chemical peel. My skin was literally falling off in sheets and the sun was 100 times stronger to my venerable face. It just wasn’t fair that I couldn’t sun bathe on the deck too. So instead I sat in the dining room, cutting up my magazines and making more happiness collages. Once again . . . it was fun!

Then we went for a motorcycle ride. I was safe from the sun under my motorcycle helmet and I had a ball. This was my first real ride on my new bike, and except for one accidental horn honk, I rode flawlessly. It was fun!

We also accomplished some chores around the yard, but even those were fun. I found my big floopy hat and ventured outdoors into the sun. I had some new shrubs to plant and some transplanting projects to get done and what better time to do them than right before the rains. So we got busy and with not much effort made some big changes in the yard. I just love the instant gratification that planting new things give you. Looking at the pretty results was fun!

Another Attempt at Fun Gone Wrong

You might have noticed that one of the things on my list of Fun Things To Do was shopping. Normally nothing cheers me up more than a shopping spree and the timing was perfect to receive the new Kohls sales flier in the mail. I sat at the kitchen counter and could feel my spirits rising as I circled all the things that I wanted to buy. I literally had something circled on every page. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to get to the store.

And since I had another facial scheduled for yesterday afternoon and my beauty salon is right down the road from Kohls, it was shaping up to be the perfect happiness solution for me . . .

But, needless to say, things didn’t go as planned. I guess I forgot how frustrated I normally get at Kohls. I have sworn, cursed, and muttered under my breath so many times in the past trying to find anything that fits me in that store. I have come to the realization that they don’t cater to skinny chicks. Many of the brands aren’t even offered in my size and the brands that are were completely picked over and it seemed that every size small in the store was already gone. Out of the 25 things I had circled I found only ONE thing – a simple tank top – an undershirt really. How exciting is that? And here’s the biggest kicker. I thought it was black and when I got it home I realized that it was actually brown. Unreal.

I gave up all hope on finding any shorts, capris, or skirts that fit. I did find one top that was not on my list. And it's a funky one that I think Tina would approve of so that's a big accomplishment. That was my consolation prize after being defeated looking for the things that I actually wanted to buy. Oh, and the one item that I wanted the very most, the one that really drove me to the store was a new waffle maker to replace the one at home that I love, but is dying. And of course, they didn’t have any in stock. In fact, they didn’t even have any more online. The whole trip was just a frustrating flop, certainly no fun at all.

Oh well, there’s always tonight to try the fun thing again. And this time will be hoot for sure. I get to go to the DMV. Wooooohooooooo. I can hardly wait. Good times will be had by all!

The Scale is Tipping

Is it bad that the amount of people that I like in this world is being outweighed by the amount of people that I don’t like? That probably is indeed bad, but I think it’s the sad truth. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive and irritated by many people these days. Maybe I just need a break from all the work and stress of my life. Seems no matter how much and how hard I work, it’s never enough and I’m reaching the breaking point. I need a vacation from life. And holy cow, I don’t even want to touch that subject right now . . . talk about stress. New topic.

So in an attempt to move from anger to happiness I made a list of things that I enjoy–my Fun List. This whole ‘fun’ thing has been a real struggle for me. Our New Year’s resolution for 2010 was to have more fun in our lives and I gotta say, we are failing miserably. I’ve come to the conclusion that Karlo and I just don’t know how to stop working long enough to have any fun. I thought I would make this little list and try to dedicate 30 minutes a day to doing something that I really enjoy, something that I consider fun.

Yesterday I opened up a little notebook on my desk and started my list:

Fun Things To Do:

• Playing Wii games
• Taking pictures
• Playing with digital pictures
• Scrapbooking
• Making my ‘Happiness collages’
• Writing
• Making glass jewelry
• Dancing
• Shopping
• Taking leisurely walks with my mp3 player
• Riding my motorcycle

I went back to work and then opened my notebook an hour later to see if I could add to the list. That is when it hit me. I didn’t list “Riding my BICYCLE.” What is up with that? I love biking. That is what I do. It’s my passion, my sport of choice! When did it become not fun? I need to reinvent the good old bicycle ride. The one you do ‘just for fun” where you don’t have to get suited up in spandex, gloves, funny shoes, and a heart rate monitor. I want to remember what it’s like to just jump on a bike and pedal without worrying about speed or attacking the next hill. My goal is to have at least one ‘fun’ ride this season.

And I went home last night, with my new list in my hand and managed to accomplish NONE of those fun things to do. Instead I figured out how to pay 3 years of delinquent business taxes, worked out for an hour, continued building my new shopping cart and web site, and finished a little freelance job. Yeah, THAT was fun–not! I need help.

I Made Jess Famous

There's no doubt that Jessica could make it onto a billboard on her own some day, but in the meantime I had fun making these graphics. Is that a gorgeous picture of her or what? Or course it helps to make a gorgeous picture when your subject matter looks like Jess! But the real point of this blog posting was to share this little web site with you. You can pick from all sorts of backgrounds and upload your own pictures to make lots of fun images. Then you just save and download from the site. It's totally free and totally fun. Give it a whirl at: http://www.writeonit.org/

Week in Words 3/19

I honestly can't think of much to say to recap this week except for my new bike. That was the only thing that stood out from an otherwise dull week. Not a whole lot of excitement happened this week and by far the most exciting thing was nearly crashing my bike on it's maiden voyage. But I don't really want to detail that episode so we will leave it at that. Instead I'll show you a picture of it's first 'Karlo bath' with a pressure washer, of course, because Karlo has to do everything to the extreme. This is the equivalent of most people taking photos of their child's first haircut. My bike's first bath . . . .

So now it's squeaky clean and sparkling and just ready to be driven. If only Mother Nature would cooperate from this point forward.

The weekend was fast and uneventful. It was filled me with ticking off items from my never-ending To Do list. As usual I got about half of what I wanted to get accomplished done. But that is the story of my life. On Saturday we got out and tried to have some fun. We went to the line dancing bar in Rhode Island, but 'we' didn't do as much dancing as I hoped. I, on the other hand, did have a ball on my own. I'm not ready to start another week . . .

Sunday got off to a slow start due to the late night and pounding headache. My allergies are not getting off to a good start this year, but I still managed to do my P90X workout, followed by our big hike, and then on to my still-not-ending To Do list. We ended Sunday with a fun bonfire and way too may roasted marshmallows.

There, That's Better

My run of being bike-less is officially over.

Today I drove home this baby.

I do love it. It's great to drive, runs smooth as silk, handles better than the old one, but there's a little part of me that just misses the fire engine red. This bike is just too manly looking I guess. There is nothing 'girly' about it and certainly nothing 'Paula' about it. Well, not yet. Give me time and I'll find a way to give it my personality, hopefully short of painting it purple.

And after all this trouble of getting a new(er) bike, I took this picture and realized that my headlight is still square. This whole itch started when I compared my old bike to the new bikes. My headlight looked so square and old fashioned. I wanted a round light. Karlo made fun of me and told me that was a pretty expensive headlight that I wanted since I needed a whole new bike to get the round head. And after all that, here's my updated headlight. uuuugh.

It may be silver and boring right now, but on the upshot it does match Karlo's bike. So now we finally have a cute couple on the road together. The bikes, not us!

The Netflix DVD That I've Been Waiting For

This has to be the best Netflix DVD that has ever arrived in our mailbox. It's not exactly a movie, but a means of watching movies via our Wii console. For whatever reason this functionality has been built into the PS3 forever, but finally made it's way to the Wii. Karlo and I haven't streamed a movie to our TV in months because we are far too lazy to hook up the laptop. And to think, we have a little toy laptop for this specific reason. But still, booting it up, hooking up the monitor, inserting the streaming audio device, squatting down by the laptop trying to pick a movie . . . it all took the fun out of watching the darn movie.

But now, supposedly, we will be able to insert this magic DVD into our Wii console and stream movies directly from our online cue. I'm very excited about this. I'm not quite sure why, as we can barely watch the one movie that arrives in the mail in any given week. But still, just knowing that we can stream, when and if we find the time, makes me happy. Let's just hope I have the patience to set it up and learn how to use it.

Last Week's 3 Words

Just realized that I never posted my 'week in three words' last week. And I'm thinking about this because I'm at the computer and can't think of a darn other thing to talk about. As usual I'm overwhelmed with all the other crap going on in my life. I was talking to a coworker today who said that I 'seemed happy being so busy.' Hmmmm. I'm not so sure that I am, and I do wonder how much happier I would be without 55 business-related things to do looming over my head, in addition to a mountain of bills to pay and endless other household tasks to get done. I would enjoy just one night at home on the couch without a laptop on my lap and without pouring through lines of code in hopes of finishing the last freelance web project that just won't end! When will I learn how to say that magic word? Will it ever happen? Probably not. See, I still can't say it. I give up.

The Last Tile Project

And I mean that two ways. This is the most recent tile project we have completed and it will (hopefully) be the last tile project we will do . . . well, in this house anyway. I have been dreaming about this particular project since the day we moved in. Come to think of it, it was before we even moved in. We had the luxury of sneaking into the house a week before we were due to move in so that we could paint most of the rooms. I knew the guest bathroom would be purple the day I first saw it. But I always wanted to take it a step further and add white tiles. My original vision was to tile the entire lower portion of the wall below the border we just completed. I thought the contrasting green glass tiles would be so cool against the purple walls. And let me tell you, it took me months to find the right sized glass tiles to fit the white blanks. And even then we had to do some fancy footwork to actually execute it. I guess we got a little lazy because I went from thoughts of white tiles on the lower wall to thoughts of embossed white paper. Something like this:

I am still considering the paper project, but that can happen at any time . . . whenever the home improvement itch comes back. I might have to do another Photoshop makeover to help me decide if I want the bottom portion to be white. Hopefully I can get some friendly blogging feedback to help me decide. We will revisit that idea in the Fall. Now I'm ready to move outside to yard projects.

Not a Fan of Texas

I may be jumping to conclusions and being too hasty in my judgment, but so far I can honestly say . . . I don't like Texas. Now granted, Texas is a really big state and I've only seen a fraction so maybe I should rename this blog title to, "Not a Fan of Houston." I can see no reason in the world why I would ever want to come back here. If I ever come to Texas again, I hope it's to Austin as I hear that place rocks.

My biggest problem with Houston, so far, has been the eating challenges. My exact words yesterday afternoon were, "I've never been anywhere where I didn't find something on the menu that I liked." Well, I was wrong. I'm really not a picky eater. I'm just a healthy eater and that seems to be impossible in some of these 'southern home-style' restaurants. I've spent weeks in Asia and nothing there repulsed me nearly as much as the food I came into contact with yesterday. It all started at lunch with this order of fried okra. What the hell is okra anyway?

Seems like people love to fry everything down here. I wanted some fish, but every single fish on the menu started with the word "cat" and I don't ever want to see that word on my menu. So at dinner time I thought I found my perfect dish. I ordered a turkey club on whole wheat bread. Doesn't that sound healthy? I was so excited. Well, when it arrived I picked it up (to pluck off the pound of bacon) and my hands were soaked with butter. I swear there was one stick of butter saturated into each piece of bread. Disgusting. The best part of dinner was looking at the painted cows inside the restaurant.

It wasn't until this afternoon when I encountered the coolest food item that I don't think we have at home. At least I never saw them. How cute are these watermelons? I considered shoving a couple into my suitcase.

I'm here for work, mostly to film some customers in their shops. Yesterday was neat. We spent the day at a monster truck shop. And today we sort of played at the pits of a big race that will go on this weekend. I never really got anywhere near a race track, but I have to admit that it was cool to see all the pro stock and funny cars and hang out with the crews in the pits.

Houston, we have a problem . . . Paula is hungry! I've been promised a non-southern dinner tonight and I do look forward to that. Signing off from Texas . . .

Easter 2010

Luckily Easter was much nicer than Good Friday. Actually the entire weekend was darn near perfect. On Saturday we took our first ride of the season, and by ‘ride’ I mean I my ‘real’ bike. I thought that would ease my pain a bit. Nothing made me forget the loss of my motorcycle faster than the sweet feeling of pedaling my road bike.

And on Sunday we exchanged chocolate bunnies and treated the dogs to some of their own special Easter goodies. We had fun watching them chewing in tandem.


Then we took the dogs for a nice hike in the morning and they had a ball being dogs.


Karlo even found me some tiny little flowers and picked me a special Easter bouquet. How sweet.

In the afternoon we took a nice relaxing kayak ride where we did much more sunbathing than actually paddling. Now that is my kind of kayaking. And to top the night off right, Karlo cooked us a special Hungarian Easter dinner. I think Easter definitely made up for Bad Friday. I would like another few days exactly like that one please.

Not a Very Good Friday

I used to say that Good Friday was a GREAT Friday because it's a bonus day off from work. And this year it sure was shaping up to be a great one. The weather was superb and more than we could ever even have hoped for so early on in the season. I had big big plans of playing all day.

But then I made an appointment for 11 am . . . to show my beloved motorcycle to somebody who was interested in buying in. I'm still not quite sure how it got that far. I had a couple of fleeting thoughts last Fall of selling my bike in order to upgrade to the exact same bike, only a few years newer. And I'm not totally sure how that silly idea even popped into my head. It had something to do with extra freelance money burning a hole in my wallet and my big mouth opening when it shouldn't have. But long story short, the deal that I tried to make, luckily went nowhere and I took the stash of cash and invested into my awesome iMac. A much much better investment, no doubt.

But then several months later, I'm innocently sitting at my desk at work when I get an email from a complete stranger (a friend of the original lady that I offered my bike to) and she wants to know if I still want to sell it. Well, I didn't, but for some reason I asked Karlo what to do and of course he told me to "go for it." So I started chatting with this nice lady and before you know it I got in deeper than I expected . . . and soon thereafter her husband is driving my baby out of our driveway. It's GONE. My bike is gone!!!!

Well, there went the rest of my day. I was seriously depressed at the thought of being bikeless. I thought coloring some eggs would help, but that turned out to be a small disaster and my ugliest eggs to date. The day was just not going as planned.


Karlo and I hiked and puttered around the house. The one thing that brought me joy was framing and hanging one of the photos I took in NC. That actually brought a smile to my otherwise Bad Friday.