Wednesday, September 30, 2009

True Confessions...

How I love a list! Here are a few recent confessions of things I have recently done, thought and experienced. I am writing about these because I may need to review these every so often in order to continue to work to become a more patient, kind, thoughtful and better person. This is a little embarassing.

1. I am a blogcrastinator... well, and sometimes I just don't have anything to say that anyone else should waste time reading. And Ryan made me insecure about blogging. (explained later)

2. I am trying to crate train the girls, which is shocking, I know, since I am the biggest anti-crate training person alive. Would you keep your child in their closet for 7 hours with no access to food/water/stimulation of any sort? But, the other morning, Doodle jumped up on the bed with her two front paws to wake me up and accidentally scratched me right across the cheek. As I jumped out of bed to see the damage after screaming an expletive at her, I stepped in a fresh pile of Rylie Boo poo on the bedroom floor, which I'm pretty sure was God's way of telling me that I should not start out my Sunday mornings screaming expletives at innocent animals. However, I did at that moment realize that my girls are spoiled rotten and out of control. Of course they are beautiful and sweet and do some great tricks, but none of their training is really useful and Ceasar Milan would kick my hiney for "personifying" my animals with human emotions. Thus, the crates. They are VERY slowly learning to go in them and will eventually only spend the night in there because I still believe in my "kid in its closet" theory.

3. Today, I went to Wal-Mart. And I liked it. Anyone who really really knows me knows that I haven't been to Wal-Mart and purchased anything in about a year and that I have severe, deep seated, anti-walmart sentiments because they don't pay women as much as men in equal positions, are terrible about hours for moms, are slowly choking the life out of the small American retailers and a myriad of other reasons that no one wants to hear about... anyway! I was on the way to the barn and as my little suburban Acworth melds into the pretty lake Allatoona area and slowly into more rural country there aren't a whole lot of places to shop. I needed some epsom salts to soak my horses foot in and Lord knows I LOVE a good Walgreens, but there is not one on the way to the barn so I was FORCED to stop at Wal-Mart since epsom salts are sort of an obscure item to be shopping for. I parked by the garden center, took a deep breath, and entered. I expected some good people watching since I was perilously close to the Paulding county line and there's really nowhere else to get your PallMalls, spray cheese, and baby wipes all at once, but alas, mostly everyone had their teeth and were appropriately attired, which was a bit of a letdown. Then, I started seeing merchandise that I liked! UGA dog scarves, my shampoo at almost $2 less than I pay for it at the grocery store... cute Halloween decorations, orchids, vitamins, OMG! I grabbed the epsom salts and the UGA dog scarf and tore to the checkout, reeling in disbelief and disappointment in myself. It was horrible, and exhilarating. I don't know how to feel about this.

3. Why is a four pack of razor blades $14 when a package of 6 disposable razors (that also have the same 3 blade style and comfort handle) $4.89? Does the lavender vanilla aloe vitamin E anti- aging sensitive skin smoothing strip on the blade really cost that much to manufacture? Do I really need the lavender vanilla aloe vitamin E anti-aging sensitive skin smoothing strip on the blade? And why now do I have to throw away 6 disposable razors in the landfill that will NEVER degrade because of my current economic circumstances? Thanks Gillette, for polluting and being expensive and BTW lavender vanilla mango smells like a gas station bathroom.

4. Khloe Kardashian got married to a dude whom shes known for all of about four weeks. WHAAAT? On a more positive note, if Kim married Reggie, that family is going to have some very good looking mocha colored children with "good butt" genes all around. Watch out Beyonce, you're not going to be the prettiest anymore!

5. I felt super fat today. Then, to add to my self loathing, I was eating M&M's in my car at a red light when one of those near death looking runner types ran by my car and actually jogged in place while waiting for the crosswalk. Have you ever wanted to jump out of your car and tackle someone and take her straight to Zaxby's? I am all for physical fitness, but this chick was on the verge of "forced feeding tube" thin. EWW. Somewhere the has to be a happy medium and until you find it- stop running!
And thanks for making me feel like a hippo.

6. I have a STATS test on Friday and I haven't studied for it or been to either one of the review sessions. Good idea Ellie, way to live on the edge.

7. Ryan makes fun of me for blogging. I just ignore him but it makes me insecure a little. I think he's just jealous that he doesn't find it as easy to communicate as I do and he doesn't care about keeping a record of our lives! He says I'm a nerd and no one reads this. WHATEVA...

8. I have discovered that I have zero patience for people that ask inanely dumb questions in my Psych class while simultaneously using incorrect grammar. My mom said this does not bode well for my bedside manner as a future nurse... I reminded her that natural selection may not be such a bad theory after all.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

I FINALLY did it!

I got a new blog background! Thanks to Danielle and her super cute and funny baby blog see:

www.sweetchloelight.blogspot.com

And... (disclaimer, this one gets a little deeper than my usual blog entries)

I am shaking the "swine flu"/strep throat like sickness I have been battling for the last two weeks. Throw in a little PMS and my my, what a cocktail of misery! No wonder Ryan "went fishing in Savannah for the weekend"...

But more important than all that, I reorganized our living room furniture, cleaned out my jewelry studio and started on a new little collection for a late fall sale, tried KFC grilled chicken, am actually enjoying Chemistry and Statistics class (gasp!) and went one whole week without the poodle chewing up anything with more than a $10 value. Awesome.

The new living room format started it all over the last two weeks! The new format is much more conducive to having guests and watching movies, but I'm not sure about the level of "design intergrity". (I think it's ugly) Unfortunately, since we have a great house (cough cough... big mortgage payment) and one of us is gainfully employed while the other is underemployed, in school, and addicted to participating in equestrian sports; my perfectly sketched out living room furniture and design, including rug, is to remain in the same folder as the: barn plans, pic of the white Aston Martin Vanquish convertible, build your own F-250 King Ranch printout, 50 acre horse farm with original historic stone house, lake and adjoining organic farm ad, and the business cards from my favorite estate jewelry dealers which I have been collecting for years.

Sometimes, I look at this folder and wonder when or if any of these "material girl dreams" will in fact materialize. I also have much more realistic desires like granite countertops and a fenced backyard and sometimes think about where the heck my "bailout" check that must be lost in the mail from Washington is! J/K about the check. Anyway, then, I think about whether or not any of that stuff really is important and whether I should spend time wanting it at all. Maybe I am still in the "quarter life crisis" stage of life (don't laugh, this really happens) or maybe I was just reared in a culture where material things were paralled with "dreams" and markers of success. Am I not sucessful until my folder is empty? Will I be satisfied if it is? These uncertain economic times have slammed my generation on its "I have a college degree and therefore a job, a 3 series BMW, and I eat sushi in Buckhead 3 nights a week while wearing Tori Burch flats and a Tibi top" entitled hiney. We can all pretend that we aren't shocked by stories of people our parents age losing their entire retirement saving in the stock market or when we open that letter from our credit card company lowering our limit "just because", but I think we ARE shocked. This was not the plan. This generation did community service since middle school, we are college educated and multi-lingual, we gladly took unpaid internships and worked at summer camps to build our resumes. We did all the right things and burst into the "real world" expecting the same things we saw those just a few years older enjoying and BAM...the real world said, "put it in the folder honey cause youre not gonna see it anytime soon". So no new furniture and no fenced yard. We work our hineys off to do what we should and pay the mortgage instead of expecting someone else to save us. We slowly pay off those student loans and we get letters in the mail about how the "homestead exemption" has not been funded by the state this year and the property taxes are going up. After spending a few days realizing that after the mortgage, health insurance, car payments and insurance, bills, etc... are paid, there's still more to be paid, it hit me. The stuff in the folder is SO not important and so not an indicator of success. The things my culture taught me were important to have were only important under a completely different economic context.

We are successful because of what we've done and are doing NOW, not because of what we have. We are working and are lucky to both have jobs. We are paying the bills and we aren't losing our home. We have great families and great friends and great hobbies. We are loving and enjoying life, and even though we HAVE to laugh about not having 401K's and investment portfolios or 8 month emergency savings accounts, we are, at this time and in this culture, successful. I am not a pastry chef or a candy maker and I don't NEED granite countertops, even though I think they are pretty and that I need them because I love things made out of rocks.

So I FINALLY did it, I chunked the contents of the folder. It was hard, I won't lie. I am incapable of not wanting things, I know, but I think I FINALLY grew up a little. I walked back inside my cute little house, sat down on my green couch with a little dog hair on it, put my feet up on a hand-me-down ottoman, drank a glass of cheap pinot grigio and said a little prayer to thank God for my blessings and my family and petted my dogs. And really, at that very moment, I had everything I wanted.