If this past month hasn't been one of the longest of my life, I don't which has been.  First one of my brothers got in some more legal trouble.  Then another brother and a cousin got falsely accused of another crime and later proved their innocence.  While all of that was happening, a different cousin had to have a brain surgery in which they removed the top of her head.  She's a week younger than I am.  My mother had to cancel her foot surgery because of all of my brother's legal troubles and meetings were conflicting with her appointments, but she's going to have the surgery in two more days if all goes well.  Then she won't be able to walk for about six weeks.  I stopped going to the gym for several reasons.  I got sick of not seeing the scale move for about three months, so I figured that if all of that working out wasn't going to do it, why waste the time?  I also didn't feel right making exercise a priority with so much going on with everybody else.  So I stopped going to the gym and started eating everything in sight.  I gained about five pounds in that month.  That's really scary and I now know that I can quite easily gain back a lot, if not all, of that weight I lost.  So I started eating right again and today I came back to the gym with a new resolve and a new plan of attack for weightloss.  I'm going to cut back on the intensity and frequency of my weight lifting and try for more cardio.  I have to see numbers dropping if I'm going to stay focused long-term.  I've also started saving for a trip somewhere I haven't decided on quite yet.  I figure if I save at least fifty dollars per week, in about six months I should have a tidy little sum for a vacation someplace far away, especially if I plan it out well.  I'm thinking about Jamaica or Ireland, but it's still a large time away.  In the mean time, we had record highs this week in temperature, so I and a couple brothers and a cousin had a two-day car wash to earn money, and I got to put aside a little more than I thought, which was awesome.  Now that I have that new goal, I seem to have no problem going without my expenditures.  I am notorious for not being able to manage money well, but I think it's because I never feel like I'm working toward anything.  With this new goal in mind, there's a huge incentive not to waste money, and it's a lot easier than I thought it would be.  On top of all of the other stuff that has been going on, we threw my mom a surprise birthday party.  It was a lot of work to get everything ready while keeping her in the dark about the whole thing.  And Mom has a sixth sense about knowing when something secret is going on around her, so she started getting mad a couple of weeks ago when we would be secretive about certain things we were doing and places we were going.  But I think the party was a pretty big success, everybody seemed to have a great time, and Mom was really surprised.  She's been pretty stressed lately, and is behind on getting papers done for Thomas' financial aid, so she's been feeling the need to get away for a day or so by herself, but with her surgery coming up, I think it might be awhile.  Maybe she'll get a break while she's laid up, though that's probably not what she's had in mind.  I'm just hoping this won't be as hard on her as the eye surgery was.  That was pretty bad and she was in a lot of pain, but I don't think this will be nearly as bad.  On top of everything else, I have my appointment with the plastic surgeon in less than two weeks (if I don't get bumped again, that is...grrr), so I'm getting excited to find out how it's going to go and to see if it's going to be weeks, months, or years between when they do all of the different surgeries they're going to do...that is, if they're going to do them all.  That's another thing I need to ask about.  So if all goes well, my brother will soon end his legal drama, my mother's foot will get better, I'll get my dates for plastic surgery, and finally lose a few pounds.  Woo hoo...