Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Things

I'm not always the best at realizing things that I love or that I'm truly thankful for, large and small. I think, like most people, I find it easier to point out the things that I don't love. So I've decided to make a list of both. It may be a little premature, since Thanksgiving and Christmas are still several weeks away, but perhaps it's good that I'm thinking ahead for once.

I may post again later to add or change or update. It's just how I'm feeling today.


I Absolutely Love:
*Baking... pound cake, carrot cake, cookies, you name it
*Getting my hair cut... especially when there's color involved
*Shoes... pretty, high-heeled ones
*The Boyfriends scruffy beard. I just want to reach through my monitor and touch it!
*Being (not even) 5'2"... people generally feel a need to look out for or take care of short people
*My nose
*The feeling of accomplishment after surviving a Jillian Michaels workout
*Sushi
*The excitement and happiness that oozes from my brother's e-mails
*Standard time... as in when the sun sets early in the evening
*Haagen-Daas chocolate ice cream... I could eat an entire pint by myself
*Sleeping on clean sheets for the first time
*Surprises... giving and receiving
*My dad's laugh when he gets really tickled and can't stop
*Hymns... easily my favorite 20 minutes (collectively, give or take) of church
*Doing or saying the exact same thing as my mom at the exact same time... especially if my dad's there because it drives him crazy
*Kevin on a rampage... it's just so funny
*My little family (Mom, Dad, Coley)... love, love, love them
*The Boyfriend... how can I not?
*Black clothes... all articles, seen and unseen
*General Conference
*My mom's chocolate cake... it's to die for
*Wrapping gifts... it's therapeutic for me
*Coca-Cola Classic... it's just so delicious
*Blog-stalking
*Tombstone pizza... especially with Coley after a football game
*Vacation days

I Don't Love:
*Taking out the garbage
*Making my lunch to take to work... why is this so tedious?
*Waking up early... especially for work
*Working out
*The number on the bathroom scale this morning
*Green peppers
*Raw onions
*The silence from my mom that screams disapproval/unhappiness/disagreement/discomfort. She'll never say it because she'd rather I make my own decisions. But I feel it, which makes me feel horrible.
*Diet soda, any flavor - Coke, Sprite, Orange... it's gross and feels like it coats my throat
*Dr. Pepper
*Lizards
*Putting away laundry
*Good-byes... even if they're only temporary
*Being ignored
*Wikipedia... it's not a valid source

Monday, October 12, 2009

Oh, Stop!

As all three of you know, I'm an admitted blog-stalker. I've probably mentioned this before. Practically every day during the week, I make my rounds to all of my peeps that I love to watch from a distance. In my attempts to not be so creepy, I will admit to the author that I stalk them if I happen to see them. If I don't ever see them, I don't have that opportunity and I'm sorry if they wonder who I am. If one of them is reading this right now, then we can just call it even, right?

Anyway. I happen to read a blog that I found while creeping around and it's as public a blog as I have ever been involved with. It gets awards and has contests and whatnot, but it's also fun to read and there's a little Gospel tidbit in there every once in a while. (It's
here if you want to take a peek.)

Just now I was reading a post about how kids are always proud of themselves and rarely complain about a compliment. They usually will agree with you before thanking you for it. Somehow as we grow up, we are more hesitant to accept compliments and it becomes difficult for us to do. She asked a simple favor, to smile and say thank you the next time one receives a compliment instead of discounting it, and it made me think that that's something that I should work harder on.

The Boyfriend is great at this. He's very quick to agree with a compliment you give him. He'll probably even correct you if your compliment is lacking (i.e. "You like good today." "No, I look dang good today!"). You would think it could get annoying, but I happen to love this about him. There's no shortage of self-esteem there, but it's not over-powering and we often joke about whether we need to roll a window down to make room for his ego.

He's not shy about complimenting others, either. Okay, I can't make that general a statement. What's more accurate is that he's not shy about complimenting me. I should really be more grateful for that. There are tons of people out there who take never say a positive thing to their significant, even replacing compliments with put-downs. Instead of complaining him how fat I am (which he hates) I should just do something about it and be satisfied with the knowledge he's happy with me just the way I am. This doesn't mean that I'll stop complaining about the hateful Jillian Michaels her heinous hour-long work outs.

Baby steps, right?

P.S. I love getting a hair cut and got one on Saturday. While I wanted to look like this (bod and all, let's be honest!):



I ended up getting two inches trimmed off the ends. I only got a trim because The Boyfriend likes my long hair. (Imagine that! I get that he LIKES it long!) And frankly, I like that he likes it long and I'm okay with keeping it if it means I get to keep him.

I did learn something this weekend, though. If I ever want to cut my hair crazy-short and have him not go into cardiac arrest because of it, the time to do it is when he's studying for mid-terms. He was non-responsive to my attempts at trickery and said it was just hair and would grow back eventually. This is completely uncharacteristic because two short months after we started dating, I couldn't even complete the sentence "I'm thinking about cutting my hair..." before he yelled "No!" Yes. He yelled. The end of that sentence was to be "to my shoulders," but he wasn't taking any chances. That was a fun night... :-)

Monday, October 5, 2009

Ahhh Memories

Yesterday afternoon, while e-mailing back and forth with Jen (to make the day go by faster, of course), I was reminded of what great memories I have of my prom and homecoming experiences from high school. Please don't misunderstand me. I went with the people that I wanted to go with, but other surrounding circumstances didn't make for as magical an evening as I had envisioned.

I was asked to prom my sophomore year by a senior who used to "keep me company" while I waited for my mom to pick me up from school every day. When he asked me, he said it so non-chalantly that I looked at him, made a face that probably said "What kind of crack are you smoking?" and said "No!" without even hesitating. I really thought that he was just joking around, but I was wrong. Regardless, I didn't go with him and I think he also stopped stalking me after school because of it.

My junior year, I was finally asked to homecoming by a certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed surfer boy that (practically) the entire female population of SHS was lusting after. At the time, I thought he was pretty hot myself, though I don't think that I was all that into him. I like to think I was just testing the waters to see if I could land a date with someone way out of my league. After much negotiation performed by a mutual friend, he finally got the balls to ask me. Why he took so long, I'll never know. Obviously I said yes and we went with Jen, her date, and Michelle.

We had a decent time and I have pretty pictures to laugh at now, but I don't remember too much about the evening anymore. I do, however, remember that I was starving after getting my hair done and ate a Big Mac late in the afternoon. This resulted in me not being all that hungry when we went to dinner, so I probably only ate one quarter of the dinner that he paid for. I also remember him being mad at his mom because he wanted to drive her nice, newer model Camry, but she made him take their older car with an air conditioner barely worked. And when we got home after the dance, we opened the door and my parents, aunt and cousin started yelling "Wet paint! Wet paint! Be careful!" They decided to paint the foyer while we were gone.

Something happened to me between my junior and senior years. I was no longer capable of landing the hottest guys in school and was left to fish in the band pond. Don't get me wrong, I dated the head bandy - the drum major. (Go big or go home, right?) He was nice enough, I guess, and it took little convincing to get this guy to ask me to homecoming. We had a decent time and started dating shortly after homecoming (and when his Mono cleared up.) Sometime between Valentine's Day and prom, he broke up with me. Yes, folks, I got dumped. Via instant messenger, too!

He was such a winner, though, that he asked me to prom even though we were no longer dating. I only said yes after one other person (that I definitely didn't want to go with) asked me and my dad gave me a really hard time about how I'd "regret it" if I didn't go to my senior prom. So several days after the initial invitation, I agreed. That, my friends, is when the real shenanigans ensued.

He asked what color my dress was so that he could match, or so I thought. When I said gold, he decided he wanted to wear something silver. When he asked where we should go for dinner, I suggested a seafood restaurant in Cocoa Beach on the river. He simply said "No." I wanted to scream "Well why did you even ask, then?!" We ended up going to an Italian restaurant where our server scrawled her name upside down, in crayon, on the butcher paper that served as our table cloth. There were little kids running around in shorts and t-shirts. While eating dinner, he suggested that we go bowling before going to the actual dance. He said it kind of sarcastically and as though he were testing me somehow, so I just said "I'll bowl in this dress. And I'll win, too." So we did. And I did.

The real kicker was his getup. I was slightly annoyed that he had no interest in renting a tux because that's generally what people do for prom, if not a nice suit. He was having no part of that, despite my not-so-subtle hints and enlisting the help of one of his friends. He arrived in black pants and a black coat with shirt on that was half white and half black. The piece of fabric behind the buttons was some weird pattern, too. But that wasn't even the worst part. The absolute worst part was the white top hat that he decided to wear. Without any mention of it to me beforehand, mind you. My dad still laughs nervously when we talk about this. And all he can say is "She was pissed. I didn't even know what to do about it."

To this day, I wonder if he purposely left my corsage at his parents' house so that we'd have to go by their house to pick it up and they could see, with their own eyes, how badly he was torturing me. He later told me that he looked for white cane, but couldn't find one. I told him that it was a good thing because I would've sent his happy behind home. Alone.

Anyway... All of this was brought up yesterday when Jen and I were discussing how great I have it now. Of course, The Boyfriend always thanks me for "setting the bar so low" for him. As if I did it on purpse. Clearly, I didn't, but I do have a better appreciation for him because of all the winners that came before him.

Jen summed it up pretty well by saying, "It's going to take a lot to recover from the top hat and tails debacle of 2000, but if anyone can bring about redemption, it's the Double R."

I'm pretty sure he already brought it. On our first date. It wasn't that difficult to do.