Been awhile...

I have to admit that when it comes to the blog, I have been mentally M.I.A. lately.  In two weeks, I am getting married, leaving town for almost three weeks, and then upon return, having our reception two weeks later.  Planning the trip and the reception have been exhausting and anxiety enducing at times.  Getting on here to keep up with everyone as well as post, got pushed aside.  Which is too bad because as I read everyone posts, I feel like I have been missing out on a lot!  Traci, I loved your post on AGING.  So sweet and you are such an amazing mother!  Jen, I got a peel last month with the intent to post about but didn't so will do that now. 

Vitalize Peel
I went into the dermatologist on Wednesday for the peel.  They suggested this day because it is supposed to take approximately 2 days for your face to start peeling.  Doing it on Wednesday, will contain the peeling to the weekend and minimize your contact with the public.  From my experience, this is more for the public's protection than yours.  Unfortunately, I started peeling on Thursday with my heaviest peeling day on Friday.  I looked like a freak of nature and on top of that it kind of hurt.  It was raw skin where the old skin had peeled off.  By Friday, I was convinced they had done something wrong and I was going to be scarred for life.  I was never getting a peel again.  EVER!  I spent most of the day researching my symptoms online looking for other horror stories.  Then I woke up Saturday morning and I looked slightly less scary and I was in slightly less pain.  THEN I woke up Sunday and I was magically all healed up.  I had pretty much finished peeling.  My skin was not bright red and raw any longer.  I had this beautiful, new, ridiculously soft skin.  I loved it.  I still do.  It is so much softer to touch.  It didn't get rid of my sunspots as I had hoped it would but the effects are noticable and I will probably get another one in the fall.  The lady that performed the peel suggested I get them once a quarter/season but I am going to skip the summer peel.  In the future, I will schedule them for Thursday.

$$$$
Talk of money always makes me anxious.  I have always had issues with IT.  I think it was last week, an article came out listing Austin as the highest "spending" city in the US.  Austin's annual spending is 77% higher than the national average.  B and I joked that "our" spending (really HIS) is probably triple that.  Even though I laughed at the joke, it is not really that funny.  It scares me actually.  Over the years, I have cut down on my spending significantly.  My god, I could consume!  I would shop every week.  I would eat out mutliple meals every week.  I made a lot of money when I lived in NY and I had a lot of money to burn.  But that changed when I had Campbell, and traded in the money for flexibility.  My problem was that I didn't change my lifestyle with my pay decrease.  I had a good amount of money saved up that is now gone.  And with that, my lifestyle was forced to change.  I get sick to my stomach sometimes thinking about how much money I wasted away.  But all I can do is learn from the experience and hope to never repeat it.  Yet... I am marrying a spender.  B LOVES to shop.  He is the king of the deal.  I need to plaster the Suze Orman quote upon his credit cards.  I honestly don't know what my goal is this month if any.  Again, I get anxious just thinking about it all.  I have told B a couple of times that we need to open up a joint account to pay our bills out of and he hasn't met me with much of a response yet. Hopefully we will get that done in the next few months.  Other than that, I just don't know.  I need to think about it more.