I haven’t been getting the best rest lately and I really treasure my sleep. I keep trying to get to bed early (midnight) but somehow an hour slips by without me noticing. It’s been harder and harder to get up in the morning and I don’t know if it’s because I need more sleep or if I might even be getting too much? It might also be that my timing is off, since I tend to wake up about an hour to half an hour before I get up, so waking up again makes me feel worse. Whatever the case, sleep is one of those things that most people don’t get enough of and something I’d certainly like more of. If only we could all sleep like cats, whenever, wherever, however… just look at Missy, who doesn’t mind if she’s all twisted, if it’s super hot/stifling, if the lights are on or noise is blaring. She can sleep no matter the situation. When I was self-employed, I got a ton of rest at just the times I needed. I think sleeping 1-7 is a lot less restful for me than sleeping 4-10, even if time-wise it’s identical. Too bad getting up at 10 means I won’t arrive at work until 11, which is rather late. So here’s to sleep, which is great when you can get it!
Posts Tagged ‘missy’
365great Day 215: sleep
Getting optimal sleep
After staying at so many hotels on the UK trip, I’ve learned quite a bit about what I like when it comes to my sleeping arrangement. I’ve also been noticing I need more sleep while traveling – at home I’d settled into a routine of about 6 hours, but when on the go I could sleep on for 8-10 hours if I didn’t have to get up. It makes sense since I spent so much of my day on my feet, walking for hours on end.
So what’s the best thing to come back to after a long, tiring day? Well, a cozy and warm bed. The weather is nothing like the California heat my body has gotten accustomed to and even the winter is Virginia was pretty mild so my body tends to be cold (especially with some of that crazy wind in Edinburgh!). Thankfully, the coldest place had the warmest blanket – a down comforter that kept me nice and toasty. I definitely want to get one of those for my own bed sometime! However, when I’m that snug, it’s sooo hard to get out of bed so perhaps that isn’t the best idea…
I love snuggling with Missy.
Back in college I got an amazing body pillow and between that, the down comforter I was using as a mattress topper, and my cozy blanket, I couldn’t drag myself out of bed for a week. Now that’s the sort of sleep I like best. I enjoy being in a super cush environment surrounded by soft blankets and pillows. That might be why I love having my cat sleep with me – she’s so soft and warm! Plus, she purrs and that is very soothing – great for lulling me to sleep. 🙂
In high school and college I could sleep like there was no tomorrow. I’d easily stay in bed until the early afternoon and then saunter out around 1 or 2. Now that I’ve been getting enough sleep at night, with no more all-nighters to pull, I’ve discovered that 6 hours of sleep is the magic number. I wonder if it’s also partly due to changes from aging? I mean, older people do seem to sleep less, it seems. Still, that might not be accurate since Panda manages to sleep a good 10-12 hours on the weekend if he gets the chance. It’s funny how different our bodies are. I can operate perfectly fine on almost half the sleep that he needs!
What I’ve learned and relearned over the years is that if you wear yourself out during the day, you crash hard and fast at night. I sort of miss those days when I was too busy to stop and treasured my precious little sleep. I don’t enjoy my sleep nearly as much now and if I do get really deep sleep I tend to dream, which doesn’t give me as restful sleep. Ah, the intricacies of trying to find the optimal zone of getting enough restful sleep… it’s all so complex!
Are you the same and don’t need much sleep or could you win a sleeping contest?
365great Day 160: home
Learn more about 365great here.
Home is what you make of it and to me the strongest association I’ve had for it as of late is my parents’ place in SoCal. This is the longest we’ve ever been in a single place, albeit on and off for many years. And now that I’m a new Virginian, I feel like LA is my old home – the one I can keep coming back to, where my family, friends, and alma mater are. Since the new place out east doesn’t quite feel like home yet, the best home in my mind is currently this house I’m back visiting for the week. Nearly all my stuff is here and much of my personal and social connections are too. It was nice to come home after a long day of traveling and hang out with my mom and cousin, be temporarily reunited with my cats (Missy shown here), and return to this house. When I see Missy sprawling like that I know I’m home, chillin’ and enjoying all that it has to offer. That’s a great feeling.
In the mail: a prize, skincare, and a ton of trades
Yesterday was an excellent day for my mailbox. I received my July Ipsy bag, a reimbursement check, and two trades I set up last week! Before I started sending and receiving packages, I never knew how good a Monday could feel. Let me recap the items I’ve gotten in the past few weeks:
Even Missy wanted in on the box!
This box I won from Leigh of Whimsical Adventures of a Magical Mom. It was originally supposed to be a CraveBox, but then they shut down! Leigh was kind enough to put together a nice box for me anyway, one that is similar to what I might have gotten from CraveBox. Thanks lady! I absolutely LOVE that card – it is so beautiful. As you can see, the box is filled with some great items in the bath, body, and beauty departments. It’s so nicely packaged too!
I think I saw an ad for the Origins Top 10 Skincare Sample Pack, or maybe I came across when I was just browsing their site. I’ve always been interested in the Origins brand and got to try their A Perfect World face wash for an Earth Day trade a few years back. I also purchased a face moisturizer and used that all up. When I came across this sample pack, I decided it was a good deal because I get to try a bunch of their products to see which I might want full sizes of AND I get a code to use for $10 towards my next purchase, so I basically get to test these for the $0.50 in tax that I paid. That’s a pretty awesome deal! I’d share a link with you, but apparently they are no longer offering it. Sad times.
Another brand I’m super interested in is Juice Beauty. I learned of them sometime in the past year, from all the bloggers sharing their subscription boxes. When I got a chance, I did a trade for the Juice Beauty lip gloss and hydrating mist. Still, I coveted the Green Apple Blemish Clearing Peel so when I found the 30-day skin clearing kit I sprang for it. Major bonus that the kit includes a super soft bamboo washcloth – face towels are awesome! I didn’t realize at first that this signs you up for a subscription to get it sent monthly, so I’m going to have to cancel that until I’ve tried out this set and seen what it does for me.
What I got from the trades.
Finally, trades 5 through 9 that I haven’t shown before. A Zoya polish in Neely (from a previous trade) for the one in Julie (purple) that I really wanted. The Cailyn gel eyeliner in Iron for the one in Purple (from Ipsy June). Jane Iredale lippies (from Yuzen spring box) and the J.cat glitter palette (from Ipsy June) for Butter London nail polish and Lash Food. A Bath & Body Works lotion and Nivea lip balm for the Earth Therapeutics foot scrub and lotion. L’Occitane Hand Cream, Island Girl Hawaii cuticle oil, Pangea Face Mask, Bath & Body Works medium candle, and three Bath & Body Works small candles for Julep DD Creme, lip gloss, nail polish, and samples of bliss incredi-peel & Korres yoghurt facial.
Some of the items I traded out.
I’m about to set up trades 10 & 11 now so I have even more to look forward to! So now that you’ve seen what I’m getting, tell me: what have you been getting in the mail?
On My Mind, episode 7
It’s Thursday Thoughts time with Jennifer!
These are the ones I chose to send in.
~I finally, finally mailed off the nail polish I was trading in for the Zoya Earth Day Exchange. I know, I’m over a month late, but hey they didn’t say I had to mail them in by a certain date! I kept putting it off because I didn’t like the hassle of trying to mail in nail polish, but then as it turns out all I needed to do was wrap them tight and take them in to the post office. I guess when you know there are a ton of regulations around something, sometimes you make it seems worse than it is, you know? At first I had put them all into a USPS Small Flat Rate box, but then I found out you can’t mail them Priority, so I had to repackage into another box, but that one weighed over a pound and anything over 13 oz is supposed to be mailed Priority. This was quite the dilemma for me, but as soon as I took it to the post office, they gave it a proper stamp or something and it was all fine.
~After getting my May Ipsy bag and having some items I wanted to trade, I decided to also gather all the other things I have that I won’t really use. I put up a trade list on Makeup Talk and wow, it’s been great! I loving swapping/trading and I’ve already arranged 5. It feels great to get products I actually want and will use and send off things to someone else who will appreciate the products more than I would. There are a lot of things I’d like to try that I haven’t because online shipping always costs too much, so this is a way to save on the overall cost and try those products. So much fun! In fact, I put up my For Sale or Trade list on this site too, just in case you’re interested.
My very first trade was of items from Ipsy bags – I sent a lipstick and perfume and got a lip gloss, spray mist, and nail polish plus samples.
The second trade where I sent massage oil and socks and got BB cream and samples.
The third trade with my sent items on the left and received items on the right.
~I have this tendency to want to know everything and not miss out, so when it came to Ramblings of a Suburban Mom, I decided to start from the beginning and get all caught up on her blog. There were 149 pages of posts to go through when I started about a week ago and I finally made it through them all. I admit, I mostly skimmed, but it was cool to see how her the blog has changed. Perhaps I should do that for my own blog sometime. I used to write a lot more and have less pictures, but now I make to try to include a picture with every post. There was also a period where I cycled through a text, photo, and video post to mix things up. Nowadays I have too much to write about to include as many video posts. How has your blog changed over the months and years?
~I cannot get enough of my cat Missy! I just love how she responds to my touch – when I pet her while she’s sleeping, her tail will twitch, her arms will stretch out, paws will spread out, and I swear she’s smiling a little bit. 🙂 She’s such a happy cat and she’s happy to sleep on me/next to me/near me, which is exactly what I want. She also lets me rub and scratch and pet her any way I want. What an easygoing nature! Lately she’s been learning to tug at my heartstrings to get her way though, the sly fox. She’ll meow and meow in this sad little “feed me” voice until I give her the tasty (and more expensive) treats. She gets up on the island in the kitchen and then reaches out her paw to “grab” me. Those adorable little eyes look into mine and I give in almost every time. She’s too cute!!
~What do you do to keep hair off the carpet? Between my cousin and I, I’ve found we shed a ton of hair and it’s so annoying to find strands EVERYWHERE. Vacuuming doesn’t get it all out and I don’t have time to go around picking them up all the time. Sometimes in bed I’ll stretch out and get a strand in between my toes and for some reason that feeling really grosses me out! It’s funny how hair can be so wonderful and beautiful when it’s on your head, but the moment it falls out it’s icky. If you shed a lot of hair too, what do you do about it??
~I’ve been in a funk lately, bumming around. :-/ It’s been hard to get motivated to do anything and it makes me feel like a bad person. I see all these super high-achieving people around me and I wonder if there’s something wrong with me because I don’t care to be overworked like them. I used to be super ambitious and also want a fantastic career, but now I’m more inwardly focused and establishing a good family life has become my priority. Unfortunately, that side of things means spending money rather than making it and well, you still gotta make a living, right?
So what are your thoughts on this very fine Thursday?
Sleeping ways
How do you like to sleep?
I’m a pretty wacky sleeper. I usually start on my back and have my legs splayed every which way, then throughout the night I toss and turn to either side, legs swinging along with my torso. I also have a tendency to kick the blanket off my legs – they like to “breathe.” Usually the only part of me that needs the blanket is my tummy. The rest could be with blanket thrown off at any point. Only in the colder months do I calm down a bit and keep all but one leg, foot, knee covered.
I tend to take up a lot of room too, with my legs bent out to either side or my arms out or above my head. And since I move a lot I tend to need a pretty wide area to move about. I never stay on my sides for long because of the pressure on my hips. About two years ago I suddenly couldn’t lean on my right side anymore because it was so uncomfortable on my hip. Things have eased up since then but it’s still pretty uncomfortable for me.
Meanwhile, Panda likes the blanket tucked in tight, especially under his chin (I can’t stand that). He will often sleep with his arms up over head but rarely out to the sides. He also rolls to either side, but doesn’t quite flail like me. He does tend to take up a lot of blanket though!
My cat Missy? She’s a belly-up, arms up, waist twisted kind of sleeper. 😉
On My Mind, episode 5
Ok, so I’m a day late, but I’m still linking up with Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for “Thursday Thoughts” aka On My Mind. 😛
a~ Sometimes all this stuff happens that I want to talk about but then it gets to be too much so I hold it off. So here’s a little bit of catching up!
b~ I finally tried Susiecakes back when Panda was here in LA and I really enjoyed the way they swirl their frosting! Georgetown Cupcake has their “signature swirl” and so does Susiecakes. From what I can tell, the frosting actually goes into the center of the cupcake too, for an ultimate “oozing” experience. Quite good! I wish the cupcakes were a bit bigger though, but I guess it’s better for me that they’re not.
c~ For awhile, Missy (my cat) wouldn’t go outside and spent the day napping on my bed or otherwise lazing around. To me, this was normal cat behavior, but to my mom, it was a signal of distress. She kept asking me if something was wrong with Missy and eventually it seemed like there might be. I started to become convinced that she was depressed because she doesn’t have another cat to play with. We do have another cat, Molly, but she’s old and grumpy and abuses poor Missy. I even seriously contemplated getting another cat for Missy to befriend! But hey, she seems to have recovered and enjoys a good run outside again. Third cat idea? Tabled.
d~ I got my first order for a mystery box and sent it out to a girl in Vegas. I had fun putting it together and trying to guess what she might like, but it’s hard to please people! I recently got her feedback saying she didn’t quite feel like it was the value she paid for, which made me a bit sad, but I really did try my best and I had outlined all the items she could expect. So now instead of mystery boxes I’m thinking of transitioning to grab bags so it’s even more clear what they’ll get.
Missy immediately thought: “Bed!”
e~ I’ve read up on some photo boxes used to take product photos and I found my own sort of solution. I “hacked” a photo box using a cardboard box from Costco and a solid colored piece of plastic. I’ve experimented with other things too, like tissue paper, but Missy seemed to think it was for her to play in! Check out one of the product photos I did for the Tatcha samples I got (review to come). I think it’s pretty good, though I wish the background didn’t have the blue since it doesn’t always look good. Still, not bad for a cheap version!
f~ I have been sooo looking forward to my Graze boxes and even got a sneak peek when I went to check on the status. They ask you to rate the items in the box after they send it, so you can actually know what’s coming ahead of time if you’re curious. So far I’ve received two boxes and there have been some items I really enjoyed (and wished they had larger portions of) and some that I probably won’t want for awhile. Their rating system makes it really easy to get the ones you like and ensure you don’t get the ones you disliked. Reviews to come.
g~ So as you can tell from my Aveeno review, my Influnster VoxBox arrived! I really hope I continue to get more VoxBoxes since this has been fun and I enjoy using my new night cream. We were told we get in on the summer VoxBox automatically if we were one of the first 100 to finish the Aveeno brand challenge, which I’m pretty sure I did. We’ll see though!
h~ I got suckered in to signing up for Bulu box because of a free box offer, but I think I’m going to cancel before they charge me. After looking around at previous boxes, it appears that they’re too health-focused for my taste. I’ll still try that first box and see though – maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised!
i~ I saw this super cute desk organizer at Target and I totally wanted it! I shouldn’t be splurging now though, so I will patiently wait for it to go on clearance before snagging one if I can. I find that when I have cool storage units like this, I’m much more likely to stay organized(ish). When I settle into my own home, I’m totally going to get things like this so I can stay motivated to keep things neater. I mean, when something’s fun, you tend to do it more! And how fun is a pretty little box like this? It’s just asking for me to put my pens and paperclips and push pins and rubber bands in there!
j~ In some more up-to-date news, I started day 1 of my 2-week testing for Pink Panel and just as I predicted, we got Julep products! Pretty psyched about that since I’ve been curious about their brand ever since I found out about their Julep Maven subscription service. I get to test out their glycolic hand scrub, oxygen nail treatment, and cuticle serum. The lotion and nail polish removers came to supplement the whole hand care experience so the entire testing period, I’m using all Julep products for my hands. I don’t know what to expect from the oxygen treatment and cuticle serum, but I already love how the scrub feels, smells, and works. It’s something I would definitely buy!
I held it upside down so you can see how solid it is.
k~ My Zoya nail polishes arrived today, though one got backordered and is on its way. One of the bottles was all dried out though! Whaaat? I was sorely disappointed and contact their customer service, so I expect a satisfactory resolution soon. This would involve more than just replacing the one I got, but we’ll see if they’re the “go above and beyond” types. [Update: they got back to me and they’re rushing a replacement. Meh. Maybe I expect too much of customer service.]
l~ On a similar note, the most recent Blissmo box contained a repeat item that was the bulk of the value of the box. Also not so happy about that, so I emailed their customer service. I do not enjoy paying twice for the same product when I’m paying to learn about new ones. As I mentioned to them, the least I would expect is another product from that company’s line, but a completely identical product is no bueno for a subscription box.
Cats don’t understand “uncomfortable”
I’ve gotten to spend more time with my cats lately, since I’m working from home. One thing that has really proven itself time and time again is the fact that they don’t seem to think any position is uncomfortable. In fact, they often seem to prefer the most uncomfortable-looking positions… scrunched up in a tiny space, in a twisted position, or on top of hard objects (usually with sharp edges).
Check out some of the wacky positions I’ve found my cats sleeping in!
Take Missy for example – she climbs right on top of me and plops down, without a care in the world that my arm is pinned under her so her spine gets bent all weird. Or, of all the soft, comfortable, cozy sleeping spots I set up for her, she goes for the one place I didn’t prepare – bare, firm, and cold. She also loves to sprawl right on my laptop keyboard (meanwhile Molly prefers to sit right on it). Maybe it’s the heat? Oh, and don’t forget the times when it looks like they’re doing some sort of contortionist move.
It also doesn’t seem to matter if the position is tight and condensed, or more stretched out. You’ll find Missy curled up in a ball just as much as she’s belly-up, with her arms and legs outstretched. Temperature usually isn’t an issue either; one of her favorite spots is under the covers where she’s practically suffocating. Whether I sleep on my side or with my legs up, knees bent, she’ll mosey her way in if I lift the blanket, then settle in to a warm, dark corner.
Right now, Missy is laying half on me, half on the bed (she slid off me partly). Her feet are stretched out above her head and her paws are intertwined with her feet. Sometimes she’ll tuck her nose into that mess of limbs, and sometimes she’ll twist her neck so her chin is facing the ceiling.
Missing Missy & Molly
Tomorrow I head off to Hawaii, and leave behind my cats. So here’s a clip of Missy doing her thing and massaging my childhood blanket…
Also not to be left out, a picture of Molly lounging in one of her favorite spots.
Lazy cat days
I am amazed by how much my cat sleeps. When I wake up in the morning, she is there napping away. If I don’t have anywhere to be, I like to stay with her and sleep a little more or work on the computer. Through it all, she keeps on sleeping, with a few positions adjustments here and there.
This weekend I spent the majority of my time laying with her since I don’t often get time with her like this. She’s just so cute and fuzzy and cuddly! Now how could I disturb her sleep? Plus, her presence is comforting to me. I feel more relaxed and happy to have her snoozing away on top of me. Unfortunately it encourages me to be lazy though! I wouldn’t have left the bed to eat or otherwise take care of myself if I didn’t have plans during the day. Still, it’s nice sometimes to take life at the pace of a cat and slow things down to enjoy them.
