How are you Feeling?

Really feeling?
Me? Not so great.
I'm all over the place these days--or in all actuality, these past few years. Goddess help us all or at least the hubs.

I'm Baaaaack!

No, but really. I'm back.

My Addiction to Online Shopping

I might be a bit over-dramatic because it could be a lot worse than it is. Some people out there have a real problem and need actual help. Still, this is a big problem for me right now, and I am telling myself that it is okay because I am fighting this depression in the most unhealthy ways with booze and shopping.

What's My Story?

I do not know what I am doing.

I do not have a plan for life.

I am confused. Sad. Scared. Unlike the fun inspirational saying, this wanderer is fucking lost. 

That One Time I Nearly Lost My Mind

So I don't know if y'all have realize that the husband and I had made this big move last year. You surely had to have noticed, right?

Ha! I kid. 

The Big Move West: Or How The West Was Won.

So we moved.

"What?" you ask. "I thought you were dead."

No, no, no. I am not dead. I am still here. I have had moments of utter total breakdown, but I am still here. Barely.

I am well aware that I have this little corner in the blogosphere and that I have ignored it successfully for over a year now. I do have this tiny annoying voice in my head reminding me that my audience awaits for my return, but I just ignore it. It's what I do best. However, I don't think I can ignore it any longer.

I'm here now. Better late than never, right?

Like I mentioned earlier, we moved, the husband and I. It's been a little over 11 years since last we did something like this--something where we just up and move with a little plan and all of our crap whittled down to just our essential items and a small nest egg in savings.

"Are we crazy?" you ask. YES!

The first time the husband and I did a move like this I was a year (he was two years) out of college, and we craved a change.

I grew up in the Upper Midwest and I met my husband at an Upper Midwestern university.

After college we dicked around a bit, trying to "find ourselves" (it's quite pathetic, but I am still trying to find myself, and it is annoying). While all our friends were getting married and thinking of the "bigger picture"--a house, car payments, 401Ks, and babies--we just wanted to enjoy our twenties. We were in no hurry whatsoever to get married and finally tied the knot after 15 years together.

We did not want our lives to be the typical Midwestern story, starting off at an entry-level desk job with the potential of moving up the corporate ladder to another crappy desk job all so we could make a bunch of money to buy that house in the suburbs and start that family.

There is nothing wrong with that life. It just wasn't something we wanted.

We made a list of some cities that we thought would be fun to live in. I liked Portland, Oregon or Boulder, Colorado. The husband liked those cities, and he added Austin, Texas to the list.

I was hesitant about Austin because it was in Texas. TEXAS! But the husband threw me in a car, and we road tripped to the second Austin City Limits Music Festival. I fell in love. The decision was made, Austin, Texas was our town. We packed up two cars and drove through the night. We had become Texans, y'all.

This isn't our first rodeo. We have done this before, a move like this. But everything has changed.

I might still be in shock. We moved to Los Angeles, California. Oh, boy! We are no longer in the small* Central Texas town. Our cocoon, our security blanket. We had lived in Austin for over 11 years. Austin had treated us well.

*Austin's growth the past 11 years has been outrageous. When we first moved to Austin, it was a cute "little" college town. Now it is a sprawling city, and its essence is slowly being destroyed. I could go on and on about Austin, but not today. These are my personal thoughts on Austin, and many would disagree, but I am allowed to have my opinions.

Now, we are well into our 30's. What are we thinking?

Unlike our move to Austin 11 years ago, this move to Los Angeles comes with a tiny plan.

When we moved to Austin, there was no plan. We just showed up on Austin's front door (we did have an apartment lined up on South Lamar, something we did not have before moving to Los Angeles). 11 years ago we had a tiny nest egg; today we have a bit more. When we arrived in Austin, all we needed to do was find jobs. Cost of living was cheap, and we were 23-year-olds without a care in the world.

Now, everything is different. I keep on repeating myself, but EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.

Are we crazy? YES.

Can we do this? I am not sure.

Will I be here to write about it? I think I can manage it. We'll see.

I haven't worked in over 2 months, I'm hoping I'll find the time.

XO

hello, are you still there?

it's been a while, and i am still here.

are you excited? i'm super stoked.

actually, i have had a very busy 8 months. no i did not have a baby - do you guys even know me? - but i did have a few major events happen that took up a great deal of my time. so instead of trying to come up with some kind of balance in my life, i just freaked the fuck out and ignored this corner of the internet. too much to do and not enough life skills to help me tackle the ever-important ability to balance the many life events that are in one's life. you know, the basic, living kind of stuff.

so you ask, what has happened? the boy and i got hitched. we did it. but a few months before our big day the mister and i decided to spend all our savings - a savings that should have been used on our wedding - and embarked upon a trip to Amsterdam, Paris, and Brussels. you know where our priorities lie.

now that things have calmed the fuck down, i've been staring at this blog for some time. just eyes glazed over staring at this blank blogger post page with the cursor just blinking at me, mocking and judging me. it's time to shit or get off the pot, so here i am. and i changed up the design to make it look less like a boy-crazy-thirteen-year-old-girl's blog and more like a fifteen-year-old-girl-who-is-trying-to-be-an-adult's blog.

we'll see where this road leads us. xoxo.

my lack of self-discipline and how it's ruining my life

oh self-discipline, how i miss thee.

all summer, i've been telling myself how i want to write more on this blog. or how i want to walk more or exercise (at all) when i get home from work. or how i want to take it easy on the ice cream because two helpings of ice cream a day will certainly kill me. or how i want to read more because i am extremely behind on my reading goal for this year. my list of wants goes on and on, yet i've accomplished nothing. 

i keep on blaming my lazy life on being just that, lazy. i keep thinking to myself that maybe i'm even a little bit depressed. sure, i had a small bout of depression in January but i feel like i got over that in the spring. i keep telling myself that surly this inability to accomplish anything is a side effect of being depressed; again. but i'm not feeling depressed. work is going surprisingly well, my personal life is kicking some ass -- an upcoming European vacation and a winter wedding in the works -- it all has kept me occupied and happy. so if i'm not depressed, why can't i get shit done?

then it dawned on me. i have no self-discipline. none.

where i used to have self-discipline oozing out of my pores, i now have none. maybe i spent all of the self-discipline i built when i was an athletic teen. years and years of schooling followed by after-school activities and sporting teams. years and years of coaches and teammates, of someone depending on me. followed then by years of college and having to get shit done -- even if i was less dedicated, i still had teachers to impress and grades to be earned. but since i've been out of school and on my own for the past 13ish years, all the self-discipline that i'd built up is gone. i would say that this last year i used up the last bit of it. 

now i am desperate to re-teach myself self-discipline -- when i was learning it in my youth through sports and schooling i didn't think i really knew what i was learning and how useful of a tool it would be. the other day i did the whole google search thing; searching "self-discipline" and "learning self-discipline". i came across a lot of people in the same boat as me. who'd have thunk it? a few of the web articles i scanned -- because i don't have time to actually read these articles -- linked happiness to people having self-discipline. so right there, my idea of being depressed could be nipped in the bud with some self-discipline. i just blow my mind sometimes.

one helpful web article i came across from the blog Penelope Trunk suggested that if i have self-discipline in one small area of my life it will create a snowball effect and could lead to being discipline in other areas of my life. for some reason that advice just clicked for me. it totally makes sense.

i have a goal. it is to go on a walk everyday after work. something small and simple. if i want to jog, i can, but this is just a simple walk. i notice that this walk then gets the gears going in my life. usually on my walks, i come up with ideas that i either walk to blog about or ideas for stories. and this walk helps with exercise and my eating choices. i can see the snowball effect. love it!

up until now, my life has been in shambles -- it sounds melodramatic and really hasn't been that bad; but when you get complacent in areas of your life where you never thought you wanted to be, you just kind of give up. these past few years have been a long period of me giving up. i'm in a job that i enjoy but has no forward progress -- or the movement forward available is not where i want to go -- and i know that at some point i wont be able to physically do my job anymore. i kind of painted myself into a corner, and it's scary. but realizing i want to do something else gives hope. unfortunately having the discipline to go after it is hard to find, especially if you've lost said self-discipline.

whoa. i just went really heavy. i got to bring this back to something light.

so, let's just work on walking. every day after work. easy. i can do it. xoxo.          

(photos taken from around my apartment)

the life of a sugar addict: National Doughnut Day 2013

last Friday celebrated the day all sugar addicts devour, National Doughnut Day -- which was on June 7th of this year because it's celebrated on the first Friday in June, who knew?

i am a sugar addict! i never thought my addiction was truly that bad until National Doughnut Day.

i've always had a sweet tooth, it's no secret. ever since i can remember i've always needed something sweet; candy or ice cream or cake or brownies. my weakness would have to be candy or ice cream, but if we're being honest, i'll take anything.

when i was in high school, a friend of mine would sell this generic candy for a fundraiser for her diving team -- she became my candy dealer while at school. i sat next to her in computer class during second period, and i would buy up all the candy bars she was selling. then i would sit back in class and eat candy bar after candy bar until all that i bought from her were gone. good lord, i had the metabolism of a god back in high school. where did that go?

when i lived at home, my mother and i made the perfect team when it came to sugar and sweets. i am a batter eater and my mother is a brownie nut. i would come home from school or work and whip up a batch of brownies and then go to town on the brownie batter. i would usually eat enough batter to where i would have to make a smaller pan of brownies because i ate half of the brownie dough.

good lord i love ice cream. i usually have a hard time just eating one helping of ice cream. with my 1/2 gallon of Blue Bell sitting in the freezer, i usually have one helping in the afternoon when i get home from work and then top off my night with another helping. i'll go through ice cream phases, too. for a while, i've been all over plain vanilla topped off with Oreos that i smashed to bits. think Amy's Ice Cream -- or Cold Stone Creamery for all you non Austinites. before the Oreo phase, i couldn't get enough of strawberry shakes. before that i needed hot fudge sundaes. god, what i wouldn't give for a hot fudge sundae from Dairy Queen right now.

at present, my day job is working in a bakery. when i got this job, i remember telling my mother and her response was, "now do you really think that's a good idea for someone like you to be working in a bakery?" and i was all like "hell yeah!" what most people don't realize is that working in a bakery isn't the same as stopping by one to browse and look at all the desserts and cakes. working in a bakery has actually made me hate a lot of sweets -- i'm talking about you cheesecakes -- and i didn't think that was possible. when i make vanilla butter cream icing in bulk, it's not as fun as when i am playing with food at home.

so, back to National Doughnut Day.

i came home from work with the worst sugar overdose, trying to figure out what to eat that could bring me down from my sugar high. i never thought that in a million years i would say "i am craving a salad" but after a sweet (pun intended) co-worker decided to bring to work some assorted doughnuts to celebrate National Doughnut Day, i might concede to the fact that i am addicted to sugar. when i was looking at all the different doughnut flavors i wanted desperately to try each one. then i thought to myself that if i only try a quarter of a doughnut, i won't eat that much. after sampling 10 different doughnuts and then going back and eating more of the doughnuts that i really liked, my poor middle-aged body just couldn't take all the sugar.

and then i wanted to go and vomit.  

it will take me a few weeks to get over my doughnut binge -- which is nice right now because when i go to the grocery store i don't buy my doughnut treat, but i'm sure i'll get over it quickly. i can't stay mad at sugar forever.

epic fail: a picture a day!

i have been defeated. my lazy ass lifestyle got the better of me, and i wasn't able to keep up with my brilliant idea of taking a picture a day. what is wrong with me? it's just a picture a day. i am and always will be a procrastinator, and that was what the central challenge was with this venture. all i needed to do was to take a picture a day, but my main problem was i never thought to take one. by the time i would settle into bed, i would realize that i hadn't taken a picture. pretty soon all my pictures would've ended up being of my very small bedroom. i don't want to take a picture of my ceiling fan or of my unmade bed or of the lamp without a shade or of my clothes chair. the idea was to better observe the world around me and to work on my picture-taking skills because who doesn't want to be an amateur photographer? everyone, except the boy, wants to be an amateur photographer, and i wanted to be able to use and understand apps other than Instagram (though i do love Instagram).

my downfall started one day in february when i missed taking a picture (i don't remember the exact date.) then i missed another day and another day. then i just stopped caring - this was also during the period when i was waist deep into my "down in the dumps" time. i didn't care about anything. i tend to be obsessive when it comes to projects like this. when i miss a day or two or three i just want to scrap the entire project because it will not be whole. this notion stems from my days in school when i would take lecture notes. when i was taking notes and couldn't get everything perfect, i would have to rewrite my notes until i had achieved said perfection. if my spacing was off or i misspelled a word and i had written in pen, i would scrap it all and do it all over again. it's really weird what i am obsessive over. 

so i am going to start a new section, one where i share some pictures of my life - i know you are all dying to see what i am up to all the time because i have the most awesome life. i got the idea from the many pretty lifestyle blogs that i am obsessed with because they all do a little picture post, and i love being a voyeur. so here you go, my life through pictures. enjoy.

      

the evolution of my crappy reading tastes: part two

*this is a long post. if you want me to drag you down memory lane, enjoy.

a couple of posts ago, which in the timeline of this blog is about a month, i wrote about the evolution of my reading and how it has unfolded over time. it was epic, really. now i will conclude what i have started with part one.

after high school typically one goes on to college -- this was 15 years ago (yikes!). i am from the midwest, so going to college after high school was more of an "everyone goes to college, there is no not going to college" thinking. i was one of those people. i went to The University of Minnesota when all i really wanted was go to The University of Wisconsin. Wisconsin didn't accepted me, i was heartbroken. boo! oh, how i planned my whole college life while in high school with the notion that i would be going to Wisconsin. i was devastated. like everything in your youth, it felt like the end of the world.

in college i put reading as a hobby on hold. i was too busy with school work and some drinking, or more aptly i was busy with drinking and some school work. i was an English major, or at least i finally settled on English after spending three years of trying to figure out what i wanted to do for the rest of my life. that's a scary thought, and one i am still working on. what the fuck do i want to do for the rest of my life? ugh! so i had a number of other majors that i went through.

the list:

• Anthropology/Archaeology - because i wanted to be the next Indiana Jones. seriously. 
• Computer Science - because a number of people in my family when this route, and it seemed to make them some money. unfortunately computers are not my thing. 
• Art History - because it brought me back to my Indiana Jones roots. i pictured myself as an art historian, working in a museum all sexy and bookish and smart, but i am not any of those things. what was i thinking? 
• Graphic Design - because i loved art, and i thought this would totally be my thing. i spent a year taking all these classes only to find out i wouldn't be able to transfer into the program at Minnesota and that i'd have to transfer schools. i was like "oh hell no!" let's move on.

by my third year i was looking at what classes i'd taken and noticed that if i went the English route i would be done the quickest and have myself an honest to goodness college diploma. after all, i was already three years in, and i would be damned if i wasn't getting myself a diploma. my time was filled with lots of reading and writing. then i came across the best news ever, if i do do English i could emphasize in Creative Writing instead of English Lit, instead of writing a long-ass thesis paper on some book, i could just write my own crap. that is how i got into writing and came to actually enjoy it.

good lord, this is not my long-winded college history of fuck up after fuck up (or as i like to call it "my time where i pissed away a big chunk of money"). it's a rite of passage.

in college i read all the staples that one in college reads. lots of Shakespeare, lots of British Lit and some American Lit. no recreation reading except for the Harry Potter book series. i loved those books. i never was a hard core Harry Potter fan -- you know the ones because i'm that way with my Jane Austen fandom; dresses, hair and food -- but i did enjoy the read. honestly, towards the end of the series i was just annoyed with Harry. he couldn't get his shit together and leaned on Hermione way too much. she was da bomb. i loved her. we really need to see more characters like Hermione in YA literature. i know Harry was all busy trying to survive Voldemort, but one would think "this crazy-ass guy is trying to kill me and the ones i love. i think i will try a bit harder in my Defense Against the Dark Arts class and all my other classes for that matter." you would never see Buffy back down. she would get her shit together and work out until she could kill the evil demons. i digress. the fantasy world of Harry Potter appeals to me; who doesn't want to find out that they are a witch/wizard and are destined to live in this whole different world/life? i sure did.

after college and Harry Potter, i would read here and there, but nothing really got to me. the boy would suggest books for me, but they just didn't hold my attention. i read some Murakami, but he just didn't do it for me. i know, i know. how can i say that because everyone seems to LOVE Murakami, especially the boy, but i couldn't even finish The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

now that i look back, i just wanted my guilty pleasure books. it all started with Twilight. NO! i remember seeing the teaser trailer for the Twilight movie and thinking that it looked amazing, and i have to find out more. oh Twilight, how you've sparked so much polar fandom. from haters to lovers, this book series is just crazy. i read the entire Twilight series, and i hated it, but i couldn't put these books down. there was just something about them. i couldn't stop. i could go on and on about how terrible the story is, or how Bella is the worst girl ever, or how Edward is the creepiest (like in a lecherous way) vampire ever, or how Meyers is the worst writer ever, but the internet is full of such reviews. my favorite is here, check it out. it's amazing.

the floodgates have opened. i really like The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris aka the True Blood books. they are super easy and fast, and they make me think that i too can write a novel because i am often dumbstruck by how stupid something strikes me as being when i read these books. i like the main character Sookie. she is sassy and strong, and sometimes she just wants to make it through the year without being beat up.

most other books that i've taken to reading recently are from the wonderful genre of YA (young adult for those who don't know.)
the books that i LOVED:

• The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
• The Mortal Instruments series and The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare
• The Divergent series by Veronica Roth
• The Graceling Realm by Kristin Cashore         
• any John Green books
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak    

there. the books that i enjoy and love. i could go on an on about each series because i tend to fall in love with book characters, i'm looking at you Peeta, Jem and Four. my evolution isn't very magnificent, but it's a nice little history of my crappy reading tastes. xoxo.

the evolution of my crappy reading tastes: part one

i'm not sure if y'all have noticed, but i'm a bit of a reader.

it all started way, way back in elementary school when i picked up a copy of The Boxcar Children. oh, how i loved The Boxcar Children: thinking about how i would survive in my own boxcar; how i would find food and eat; how i would survive my orphan life. i was a bit imaginative as a child. now that i think of it, i think The Boxcar Children is what started my obsession with this whole survivalist genre in books and movies that has morphed into my post-apocalyptic obsession. (see what the boy has to deal with? prepping for doomsday and shit.)

then when i got a bit older, i moved onto The American Girl books. since i am older (thirty-something if you will), i actually remember when the Girls were introduced. at the beginning, there were only a handful of Girls, and they all came from a different time periods. because i have no kiddos of my own at present, i have no idea on how The American Girls have evolved, but it seems they have themselves a store and empire. you go Girls! i liked Molly and Felicity, but my favorite was Kristen Larson. sadly, she is retired--what does that mean? Kristen was the Girl from 1854, kind of like Laura Ingalls Wilder or Dr. Quinn Medicine Women (which i never was into but my mother totally loved--i think i have my mother is to blame for my period piece obsessiveness). Kristen was a survivalist. i had all her books. i even had the Kristen doll. hell, my aunt even made me a dress to look exactly like Kristen. i dressed up as her for Halloween one year.

i can't forget The Babysitters Club books. anyone my age has had to have read them. it is a part of being a teenage girl. it was a rite of passage written in the handbook on how to be a girl (in the 80s). i was all over The Babysitters Club. i remember thinking that my girlfriends and i should start a babysitters club because it would be "totally cool." i do, however, remember the one thing that drove me crazy about The Babysitters Club books was the whole recapping in the first 2 chapters. i detested the first 2 chapters of The Babysitters Club books. to this day, i have an issue with series' that do recaps from a previous book because of The Babysitter Club. because no one, NO ONE, will pick up a book in the middle of a series.

good lord, there is more. i'm telling y'all, this is my evolution.

in junior high i got into the Indiana Jones Choose Your Own Adventure (or at least i thought they were Choose Your Own Adventure, apparently they were Find Your Fate Adventure) books. i had such an obsession with Indiana Jones that when i first went into college i wanted to be an archaeologist. (i have always and will forever be a dreamer. i spend most my life in my head.) i remember biking to the public library in my hometown and spending all day there in the summer reading my Choose Your Own Adventure books. this was all happening during the wonderful Book-It time. y'all remember Pizza Hut's Book-It program? i remember getting the Book-It button and then collecting the star stickers to place on the button. oh boy! i can't believe it was a Pizza Hut sponsored program. sidenote, i really hope the Choose Your Own Adventure books are still popular.

in high school my book of choice was the Sweet Valley High books. oh good lord, what was i thinking? i guess it was because they were easy and fast, and i just liked to read. Sweet Valley High was easy, and they were a series. (i am sensing a trend with my obsession with book series.) back in high school, when i would have to do this stupid weight training summer program because i was a competitive swimmer, i would skip the class and sit in the empty high school hallways and read my Sweet Valley High books. oh Jessica and Elizabeth, how i always wished i was like them. i remembered them as being blond hair, blue eyed and a perfect size six, which with today sizes would more likely be a size four or even two, so sad. i can't remember if that's exact, but that's how i remember Jessica and Elizabeth.

i should mention that while in was in high school i read a lot of books that were literary works of art that had opened my eyes to what writing as an art looked and felt like. yes, i liked reading my guilty pleasures--they were a lot easier--but these literary works of art were novels that needed time and patience and demanded a slower pace to truly digest each and every word. sometimes deciding between the fast read guilty pleasure and the literary work of art is a hard choice, but the high school reading list helped expand my horizon. the first book that i fell hopelessly in love with was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but of course. another book i had to read in high school that i thought was amazing was The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. oh high school reading lists, how us high schoolers hated you, but when i look back i am very thankful.

so now that i am looking back, i can see why i am drawn to the guilty pleasure reading as opposed to the more lyrical writings that i had always thought i would be more likely to pick up (even having been an English major in college). i am finding myself more and more very day. i thought i had already gone through all this self-discovery as a teen, but i guess thirty is the new fifteen, right?

st. valentine's day & other disasters

(zombie strawberry)

good fucking lord!

this has been the longest week of my life. well, not including the week before thanksgiving, but this was a very close second. it wasn't just work's fault. i just got lazy (lazier than usual - and i didn't think that was possible), and i got very behind with my life.

working in the food service industry didn't help this week either, especially working in a bakery. this was the week of anything and everything made with chocolate, including chocolate dipped strawberries. boooo! for the past week, i've been covered in chocolate from head to toe. i am so happy that this week has ended.

happy fucking valentine's day!
so, what are y'all doing for valentine's day? i am forcing myself to smile right now, i'm sure you can tell by the tone of my typing. me and my valentine aren't big celebrators of this hallmark holiday. we'll do something every once in a while, but for the most part it's just another day. sometimes i'll buy the boy some chocolate-candy-heart crap, but let's be honest, i buy it because i know that i will end up eating it. i love candy! when i asked the boy what he wanted to do this valentine's day, he was like "Die Hard baby!" so this might be A Good Day to Die Hard kind of night, and i'm okay with that. who wouldn't want to spend this night with John McClane and his son Jack?