I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. A purge. Then things like the earthquake in Haiti happen, or you read a particularly moving piece about a homeless person, or you see a friend lose a beloved pet, or you see two friends lose them… and it makes even more sense.

I have all these things, these material things that sit unused on shelves, or tucked into little corners of the house or shoved under the seat in my car. Thousands of dollars worth of THINGS. Unused, uncared about, unnoticed and completely unnecessary. Last weekend, on a whim, I ransacked my closet and got rid of anything I couldn’t remember having worn in a year. There was a lot more I could have gotten rid of, but, baby steps. Then I made Cassidy do the same thing and she got rid of more than I did. Off to the Goodwill it all went. I always have Cassidy go with me when I donate stuff. I think it’s important that people she be a part of that. I did some searching the other day though and found a battered women’s shelter in a nearby town so this weekend, when I do another purge, that’s where we’ll be taking them all.

Then I’m going to move onto some of the big ticket items. I realized on a daily basis I carry around about $2300 worth or stuff between the purse, DSLR + accessories, Flip, iPhone, etc. It’s silly. But, unfortunately it’s all stuff I’d feel lost without. The spare iPhone that’s been sitting there unused for a year, the two Window’s smart phones, the HD mini camcorder… not so much! I don’t need five Coach purses, I don’t need 10 pairs of black strappy heels, I just don’t. So I’m going to start getting rid of these things. Sell some on Ebay, Craigslist, some of it I’ll just give away. We could use the money right now for sure, bit good karma can be just as important.

There is so much more though. The guest bedroom is full of boxes we haven’t unpacked since we moved a year and a half ago! THINGS! I haven’t used my desktop for anything other than data storage and a print server in over a year. THINGS! We have a cat house that the cat’s haven’t cared about just sitting there (although, moving it upstairs where they always are might help), extra dog crates, the list just goes on and on and on.

After The Purge, The Decorating will once again commence. Looking at Brittney‘s pretty pictures of her house inspired me. The clean, uncluttered, pretties are what I want in a home. Keyword: UNCLUTTERED.

I can’t wait. And of course, I’ll take lots of pictures along the way.

I’m sure if you are reading this on the internet, or have been near a TV or a radio or a newspaper or another human being in the last 24 hours you’ve heard about what happened in Haiti. I just spent part of my lunch reading the devastating stories of bodies piled up in front of buildings, people dying on the streets because there is no room in the hospitals and people searching fearfully for their missing loved ones.

I saw this link posted a few times on twitter and wanted to share it:

Six ways you can help in Haiti.

The comments are full of even more links and phone numbers you can use to help. Do something, please. If you can’t afford to contribute, repost this to your own blog, tweet it, add it to your facebook status, emial it to a friend, just get the word out.

We got Kumo a sister. We’ve wanted to get him a playmate for awhile now and had been looking at puppies and dogs online and decided last Saturday to drive to the Salinas shelter where we got Kumo just to look and see if we could find a puppy. We tried two other dogs first, a 10 month old Mastif and a tiny lab mix puppy. The Mastif was SO CUTE and already as big as Kumo but when we brought him into the pen next to where we had Kumo, he was REALLY aggressively barking and growling at Kumo. Then we tried the puppy which was a COMPLETE SPAZ and spent 10 minutes chewing anything that came within 10 feet of his mouth. And peeing. And barking.

Then we tried Danica and she came in the pen and crawled in between Ben’s legs and put on her cute face. And we were hooked. We introduced her to Kumo and they did pretty well together. There were two moments, one in the pen and one in the room before we left, where she got a bit snippy with Kumo but I think it was just because Kumo was really excited and once he got a little too close to her neutering incision. But the girl has spunk for sure, that was clear right away. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she ends up being the alpha even though we have taken steps like feeding him first, allowing him to walk in front of her and out the doors before her. But I just figure they’ll work it all out eventually.

We weren’t prepared to be bringing a puppy home THAT DAY but we had pretty much everything we needed left over from Kumo anyway. Crates, toys, bowl… all we needed was a NAME. When we adopted Kumo we had to wait four days for him to be microchipped, fixed and the last of his shots and it took the entire four days to come up with his name.

So on the way home we started throwing out names. We knew just from meeting her that it would have to be a strong, sassy female name. Ben threw out Danica right away and I liked it but we didn’t want to jump at the first name.

Me: What about Seven of Nine!
Ben: Well we’d have to call her Seven, not Seven of Nine.
Me: What about Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One.
Ben: *sigh*
Me: What?! I’m just throwing stuff out there!

And then Cassidy’s head exploded from the geek overdose. What can I say, I love my Star Trek.

We ended up going with Danica because it fits our theme. Our cat Hans’ full name is Hans Devise Stuck after the Hans Device, a racing neck brace, and Hans Stuck, a famous German race car driver. Kumo is named after the Kumho brand of racing tires. We dropped the ‘h’ so it would be easier for the kids in his Kindergarten class to spell his name.

So Danica just made sense.

So, blog friends, welcome our newest family member Danica Hirsch:

I’ve lost 15 pounds. I’m not sure exactly where that 15 pounds went. My pants feel a little less painted on in the morning but other than that I’m stumped. Knowing my luck 5 of it came off my feet and the other 10 were just cleaned thoroughly out of my colon. We’ve been eating very “clean”. Whole grains, lean meats and LOTS AND LOTS of fresh veggies and fruit. Over the next few weeks I’m going to feature some of the recipes here because most of them have actually been much tastier than I’d think something good for you should taste. Gone are the days of rice cakes and plain egg whites that’s for sure.

Of course, Ben has less weight to lose overall but has already lost more than me. He’s at 20 pounds lost. It’s totally awesome for him, he’s doing so well. But certainly there is some twisted higher being out there that was drop kicked in the face by a woman at some point and now we’re all paying the consequence by having to do twice as much work to lose the same amount of weight.

We’ve also been hitting the gym pretty regularly. It’s amazing to me how in two months I can do the same workout on the treadmill but my heart rate average has gone down 40 beats per minute. FORTY. BEATS. PER. MINUTE. I thought for sure during that first workout that my heart was going to commit mutiny. He was going to band together with my spleen and gallbladder and find the quickest exit possible. I’m not sure how important a spleen or gallbladder is but I do know that I’d be kinda screwed without my heart.

Today I made an appointment with a personal trainer that I routinely see TRY TO MURDER people at the gym. Tonight a man just WALKED OUT in the middle of his hour. WALKED OUT! Dude is INTENSE. And I’m really really looking forward to it. Also, I’m wondering how hard I’d actually have to hit him to knock him out to run away. Maybe kicking hm would be better. I guess we’ll find out Wednesday.

Breakfast @ 6:30AM: I need to work more protein into breakfast. Even if it means getting up earlier to cook something at home. I don’t WANT to do that though. When I start P90x I want to start having a Shakeology before I leave the house or on the way to work. That’s 17 grams of protein, 17 of carbs and only 150 calories! I also forgot flax seed meal AND my vitamin today. DOH!

1/3 cup of Danon Light & Fit Vanilla Yogurt
1/2 Fuji Apple
1/2 cup Puffins Peanut Butter Cereal

Calories: 168
Carbs: 20
Fat: 1
Protein: 4

Snack @ 9:30AM: I forot to take a shot before I ate it! DOH! I’m new to this! I’m sure I’ll start to remember in no time!

5 Ellie Krieger lemon shrimp
1/4 cup Ellie Krieger Soup cream & Chives Smashed Potatos