They pull you back in again.

I no longer have credit cards. The credit lines are open but the cards have been meticulously cut with my kitchen shears. Slowly, deliberately and painfully I snipped them into hundreds of tiny, unnecessary pieces. Must. Get. Out. Of. Debt.

We've stopped going to the bars, we try to stay in on the weekends prefering to watch stored up episodes of Jeopardy! (you haven't lived until you've watched five episodes in a row. And yes, it goes without saying that I have revealed that I'm an incredible nerd) and movies from Blockbuster.com (the best expense we have in our lives...because we take full advantage of it, we pay about $1 a movie at this point). I do not go to the mall anymore. I live close to this mall, that's right...there are over 365 stores and boutiques! It used to be my life. When I started dating John I would actually stop at KOP (that's what we locals call it), buy an entire new outfit including cute undergarments with no previous history and change in my car before I sped to the city just to take everything off again.

In my more distant past, I owned a retagging gun. I would go to the most expensive stores and buy $300 jeans without a blink of an eye...one pair had gorgeous aquamarine beading at the waist band making a sparkling faux belt. Then I would wash the clothes or dryclean them, retag them and take them back without an ounce of guilt. Poor girls have dreams too. Through the retagging gun, I lived those dreams. Like a junkie, I miss the rush I felt as I swiped my card and went home wth bags full of useless clothing.

Well, it is official. I will have to live in a bunker because designer outlets have come to my small town. That's right kids, within three minutes of my house there is a fix. However, with that being said, I tempted everything and went and checked them out on the opening day...and I came home satiated, I window shopped but purchased nothing...and felt just fine doing so.

John and I made a pact not to go out and blow all our money at the bar during this holiday weekend...and we followed that pact, however, I came out of the weekend with $58 in my checking account. Catch-22 right?

We did go out, we just did it on Thursday (not the weekend, you see?!?). We met up with John's brother ER at one of the three bars in town that he's not banned from. Sadly, he can't come with us to thitwbar...but we're working on that. If John and I aren't banned from there, neither should ER. From there, we went to thithwbar to play some pool. We thought in some naive way that we could go in there, play some pool and then go home...not so. We ran into EVERYONE there! So of course, we grabbed bar stools and stayed awhile...probably too long.

Friday was a day of recovery for the two of us. In our drunken state we agreed to host an after party for another one of our friend Tony's drunk bus tours (his band plays somewhere and he rents a bus to bring along a crowd). Again, we were proud of ourselves for not partaking in the night's activities but I guess at the time (Thursday night's drunkeness) we wanted to still be included...not so much on Friday night. We planted our butts on the couch and began watching Black Christmas. Within seconds John was snoring happily while I watched the incredibly stupid plot of a spree killer with yellow skin killing people on Christmas Eve...oh, and he really likes to eat eyeballs. Whoo! As I alternated between watching dumb movie #3,900,432 of my lifetime and watching my slumbering husband (who was, by far more entertaining), I realized that in a few hours there were going to be lots of drunken people in our house. I was tired. I didn't want to host anyone at my house anymore. The idea seemed so perfect after several drinks but it seemed pretty damn flawed when sober. I got up off the couch and announced to John's prone body, "We are not having an after-party here!" and I marched over to the door and locked it. Now, I would've had a tough time explaining this to the disgruntled post party goers but as luck would have it, I fell asleep watching Law & Order on the couch and never heard their phone calls.

At around 3:30am, John and I both awoke (John having slept for 8 hours and I having slept 5) and we were wide awake. So we did what any fun couple would do...we decided to go to an all night diner and have some breakfast! Well...except for one thing. When we arrived at the diner (fun fact* it was the first place I ever puked from drinking as a teen), I realized that I had left my cash at home. We turned around and John tried to continue to love me and we ended up at a different (much better) diner after we stopped at the house for the forgotten cash.

Saturday was spent in two ways--cleaning/organizing and drinking. I've mentioned it before but John plies me with alcohol so that I will be productive in the cleaning process and so I won't pout. It actually really works...and I actually worked too! We sorted my clothes, washed countless numbers of laundry loads, made a gigantic pile for Good Will and filled my IKEA wardrobes (yes two...I had to steal the one that was meant for John) to the brim. Eventually, John declared that we had done enough work and we set about to do as many Jagerbombs in our kitchen as we could. There's still an enormous amount of work to do in our back bedroom but shockingly, there's no Jagermeister left...funny how things work like that, isn't it?

Yesterday we saw Grindhouse and I thought it was amazingly good! My favorite parts were the fake trailers that came in between the two movies. John swears that he would really go see Machete but I think I would want to see Thanksgiving.

This movie, looks pretty exciting to me too. What could be better than killer sheep?

Is it March yet?
My cell phone keeps presenting me with a white screen of death rather than a cute drunken picture of me, T and John. My contract isn't up until March and if I buy a new phone I'll be paying some crazy price for a phone that I will drop into the toilet eventually.

The worst part? When my phone signals to me that I have a text message but I can't read it.

GAAAAAAAAAH. Please send flowers and monetary donations...or a straitjacket...I will need all of them to stay sane.