The Moral of the Story

In fourth grade I was not the most popular kid, shocker. I wore a lot of elastic stirrup pants. Our schedule was messed up for some reason because I was in the red-headed step child class(no offense red heads or step children). My class ate lunch really late so we were provided a snack time.

One day I had purchased a pack of starburst from the school vending machine, which is super surprising because I always got Gardettos snack mix (saving the best for last - rye chips, duh). During snack time this particular day we were sitting on the floor listening to a story or some lesson. I happily chomped down my starburst just as you would expect a pudgy little fourth grader to do. Nearing the end of the pack I carefully unwrapped an unknowingly wily piece. I popped it into my mouth and began to chew, the juicy flavors swishing in my mouth, when suddenly this fruity candy jumped out, flying in the air. As any good super Nintendo player, I had excellent eye-hand coordination, and went to catch this roaming sugary mass. However, for some reason this piece was particularly bouncy. It hit my hand and bounded right out directly into the miniscule gap in the back of a girls pants in front of me (clearly not wearing elastic stirrup pants). Talk about being astonished. I shockingly surveyed the room to find that sense of camaraderie one looks for when something amazing happens. Yet no one else was reacting so I was left alone in awe. As the lesson finished up I debated thoroughly on whether or not to tell this girl what had just occurred. While I am typically one to save face, for some reason I couldn't help but think when this girl finds a chewed piece of candy in her pants she is going to be completely and utterly dumbfounded. So after the lesson I half laughed and whole embarrassed informed this girl that chewed starburst had leapt into her pants. Directly in front of me she angrily shoved her hand down her slacks and retrieved it.

The next day I purchased Gardettos.

You're welcome.

Authenticity

As a continuation of my previous post I would like to inform you, reader, that I was working on the side of my house this weekend.  After only 10 or so minutes of working out there I looked down and had what looked to me to be small ticks all over my shirt, and some on my legs that I could feel pinching me.  Jon thinks they were small spiders (I’m a city girl, ok? I don’t know anything about bugs).  As soon as I realized this I screamed, brushed them all off of me and went running inside.  I started yelling for my husband and began stripping all of my clothes off.  Jon would have been into that until he realized that I was taking all of my clothes off to rid myself of potential critters. Over the next hour Jon had the blissful task of checking all of my body that could not be self-inspected for any rogue creatures. The joys of being married…and home ownership.

Unrelated and pretty much unfunny, I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be your authentic self.  This actually started from the dumbest thing ever.  I was watching a terrible show on Bravo called Miss Advised and this topic came up.  I can’t speak for anyone else but it is something that I have struggled with my entire life.  I think it has a lot to do with an incessant need to be wanted, liked, popular, etc.  I also have a very conservative family, 3 of the members are my older siblings (I’m the beby) so I always wanted to be like them and therefore did not want to get made fun of by them (although that’s hilarious in my family since that’s all we do). I never wanted to disappoint my parents and so there have been things that I have kept hidden.  I mean to most outsiders I would say that the things that I have hidden are not really that big of a deal but just things to keep my parents from getting upset.

I think that as I have gotten older, and honestly I would say a lot within the last few months, I’ve been trying to give up that fake, not real self, that I pretty much always have been.  The thing that I have identified (and is sad at 27 that I’m just really starting to figure this out) is that people like my real self better than my fake self.  It’s funny how people have some sense of the fakeness, whether they are cognizant of it or not. However, the problem is that I have trouble always determining what is the real vs. the not so real or the straight up just not real.  I guess in short, I don’t really know who I am sometimes.  I imagine this is just a part of being young(ish) but probably also has been contributed to by the fact that for most of my life I haven’t been myself.

I think that this blog, in part, is a piece of me owning who I am.  I’m not really hiding anything here, as this is clearly a blog written as stream of consciousness for the most part. To take this a bit further though I’m about to list a few things that I am letting go and just owning. I’ll always be a WIP (work-in-progress or process for you non-business school people ha) so I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to share everything.

·         I bite my nails a lot, especially when I’m anxious or excited about something.  I’m trying to stop this b/c I like French manis and they don’t look as good when you have tiny fingernails.

·         I have some sort of weird OCD-esque thing about paper.  I can’t throw it away unless it has been used on both sides.  It’s horribly annoying b/c I have this giant box of scrap paper because of it.

·         I would like to have a better relationship with my family.  We are close in a sense but we never hang out really unless it’s like an obligatory holiday or birthday party. I think I may be the only one who feels that way though because everyone else has kids and I think they are busy with them.

·         I have two really weird fears, both of which I’m pretty sure I got from dateline or 20/20.

1.       WARNING: K DO NOT READ THIS!! I have a fear that a snake is going to come up through the pipes and come out of a toilet in my house.  I’m especially afraid of this at times when I’m actually using the restroom. :/

2.       This is a bad one.  One time I watched a story about a man who murdered his neighbors and he said that he did it in his sleep.  I mean I logically know that this is absolutely crazy BUT people sleep eat, and sleep have sex and weird stuff like that.  So, really, why couldn’t someone sleep murder?  I have a fear that I am going to pick up a knife in my sleep and stab someone. I know this is insane. 

·         Sometimes I wonder if I have some mild form of depression.  I especially feel it when I’m alone and bored but feel it somewhat during other times as well.

I feel the need to leave this on a positive note.  I feel that with all of my craziness and silly self-reflection, I have a really good life.  I honestly have THE best husband on the face of the planet and I have a really great family.  It is nice to know I have help whenever I need it and that I have a lot of people to make fun of. J

That Poison

The list item I am currently working on is tearing out the m****** f****** yard. I apologize for my bad language which is not typical of me (except lately for some reason I’ve been using the f word a lot, sorry mom!) but if nothing else deserves such bad language, my yard does.  My house was an estate sale, and no, no one died in the house. Apparently though the old lady who lived in it before us lived to garden.  Much of our yard has been gardened and it’s infuriating.  The reason is that I’m sure at one time it was lovely but from what we have been told, she got sick the last one to two years of her life and couldn’t keep it up.  The house was then on the market for almost a year and her family definitely didn’t see a need to keep the yard up.  All of these things + 2 years of living there with minimal work done to it (unbelievably there were more important projects to work on first + our wedding) = a jungle in the midst of Northern Kentucky.

This Spring/Summer we have been in a good position to work on it. Jon and I have been really bad about wearing any protective items because we’re tough and awesome, or so I thought. I have been warned to stop wearing flip flops while shoveling (I know, I know) and to watch out for poison ivy (which I have never experienced so am clearly not allergic to so why wear long sleeves in 104 degree weather??).  Well, one particular day I tore out this fairly small area that was just jam packed with horrible greenery.  The next day I found this weird bump on my toe and then broke out on my nose (infuriating b/c I am 27 and should not be breaking out).  I then found a few bumps on my arm.  I started panicking about what I am allergic to now as I had literally just recovered from a hive attack after being exposed to a laundry additive that makes your clothes smell good (I can’t help that I’m a delicate little flower!).  More and more bumps started showing up so I asked Dr. Mom to look at it.  She immediately said, “That’s poison ivy.”  I mean duh, I should have put that together but I honestly thought I wasn’t allergic. My mom is smarter than me though and is a poison ivy expert because if she stands near it and the wind blows I swear her eyes swell shut.

As the hours and days passed the rash continued to spread…my chin, the sides of my face, neck, my arms, literally covering my stomach (including the inside of my belly button, vom) and thighs, and my bikini line (I swear I had shorts on). My WTB hubs kept encouraging me to go to the doctor but I kept saying no because I’m stubborn and well, just plain dumb.  The reason I was saying that is because by the time I really realized how bad it was, parts of me were already healing.  However, for those of you fortunate enough to have never experienced this atrocious reaction, there are not words to describe how truly miserable it is.  When you have one bump it is really annoying but when it is covering your entire body you want to rip off every piece of your skin.  Again, I am dumb.  Finally, when I developed an unrelated case of bronchitis did I go to the doctor.  While I was there, I showed her part of my rash (PART, mind you) and the horrified reaction from her really made me feel better (I for realsies love my doc).  She shot me up with some steroids and I’m now back in the game.

This story was just to illustrate the use of mfing and why I hate working on my yard.  I will forge on though b/c I’m a bad ass… and also because I now shower with Dawn after every single time I do yard work.

This is a VERY small sample of the ridiculousness of the yard (this is also after days of working on this area). You can barely see it but in the very back of the photo there is a thing that looks like a bush in the lefthand corner.  That is where the PI culprit resided.

Gut Puncher

Welp, the whole reason for the list and the purpose of this blog have totally just gone to hell.  My WTB husband’s visa has just been denied. Now, before you think, “Good Lord what has this man done?” it wasn’t his fault, apparently.  From what I have been told (3^rd hand) the UK has changed some regulations with regards to work visas and people at his level will not get them approved.  They feel that people in the UK should be able to do the work.

Punch. In. The. Gut.

I’m not going to lie, when I found out yesterday I seriously thought I was going to start crying.  I was just unbelievably sad for my WTB hubs.  He was so looking forward to it and now his dream (that may be a little dramatic) has been crushed. I was telling my friend that it bothers me so much because he is such a good person and it doesn’t make sense. Cliché – Why do bad things happen to good people?  If it happened to me it would make complete sense. I am a HORRIBLE person!

I’ve been feeling kind of down lately anyway and this news just made me feel worse.  I get that hopeless feeling that things happening has no purpose.  You might just get the crap end of the stick. However, while I wanted the WTB hubs to know how sad I was for him, I did not want to go around moping.  So, after I got off of job #2 (which is at a retail store and for the record is not a necessary evil, I just like punishing myself) I decided to take him out.  Now, please note that this was a Monday evening and I got off at 9:45.  I go to job #1 (my real work) at 630am so I usually go to bed at 10/1030/11. I felt that we needed a little pep so I didn’t tell him where we were going and took him to…drum roll… Steak and Shake.  Listen, this was all I could come up with. I have to say that whether or not our little outing helped him, it sure helped me (in the uplifting sort of way, not in the weight-losing kind since I consumed not only a chocolate shake but French fries as well). I dubbed it a mini date.

The question for you now, reader, is whether or not I will continue this blog when, as mentioned before the ENTIRE PURPOSE has diminished.  Don’t be worried, though. I find that not sharing my hilarity in print would be selfish.  I’m thinking the concept will remain the same, crossing things off of the list, I just won’t be doing it so alone.  So the title of this blog is completely worthless but it started out with good intentions so I think I’ll just leave it because just maybe in this sense things do happen for a reason.  We shall see.

STL.

When one’s WTB husband decides to trot off to the jolly ol’ UK for 3 months what would you expect one to do? You’ve guessed it. Take a girl’s trip immediately prior to his departure. I’d like to think of it as a tad bit of revenge.  However, he probably enjoyed it more than I did (no offense K, Jon just really, really likes times away from me).  I also have this problem that a few times a year I feel trapped in my sweet Midwestern city (shocker!!) and need to get out of it.  So, as any normal person who needs to get out of their Midwestern city would do, I visited ANOTHER Midwestern city, the STL.  Brilliant.

As you might imagine the trip was full of all-consuming, dramatic and adventurous times.  Ok, that is what I would like to think happened.  Instead, it was filled with Scrabble and Boggle playing, napping, nursing a hangover, and taking photos in front of things (not actually experiencing them). Jealous, eh??  It was actually a lot of fun.  We met some interesting strangers, ie. the cabby who provided life advice that hit a little too close to home for some of us (oopsies), a bartender at the classy hotel bar passing around the rumor that K and I are on a mission to get F’ed up (real word, not just F!!), the man in the teeny tiny Arch pod holding 5 people being loud and obnoxious telling us about Whooppass, MS (insert southern accent and note to all of you outgoing people – SHUT UP when you are in a teeny tiny tram crammed with 5  people), and the old Floridian men who tried to befriend me when purchasing hotel Tylenol out of a vending machine (when you are 50, dressed in clothes like Carey Hart and carrying a 12-pack of PBR, I’m not interested in talking to you.  This should have been made clear when I continued to face in the opposite direction as you and avoid eye contact despite all of your attempts). I should have known that when my travel companion, K, who was behind the wheel on our journey there, posed the question, “Where are we going?” this was going to be a raucous vacay.

One negative thing about this trip was that I actually missed my WBT hubs A LOT.  It is a skerry thing since I was only away from him for 1/21th of the time he’ll be away (check my math 4/84 days). I guess this should be where I talk about the importance once again of the list but my bummerness about him leaving is making it difficult (I’m also extraordinarily hungry at the moment). 

Speaking of the list, I’m F’ing one thing up currently.  Hit My Goal Weight.  To be honest, this one kind of started as a cheater item.  I started the year out at 171.2, whoach.  I started doing weightwatchers and training for a 5k.  I’ve already lost about 20 lbs. so only have about 15 left.  This is still a significant amount of weight to lose but I already have momentum so that’s why I feel like I’m being a cheater.  Who is the ref though? I’m playing the game, making the rules, and reffing this shiz. This vacation + the 4^th of July holiday has pushed me back quite significantly so now I have to RE-lose weight. Blargh. (Plus! I have a groupon to get some dolsot bibimbab at Riverside Korean.  Delish but soooo bad. OMG so hungry.)

It may only be 11:09am but I am off to microwave my lunch.  Yeah, yeah insert joke about being 90.