Happy New Year everyone!!!! So in 2008 I shall ----

lose weight!
Get pregnant (God willing)!
Get organized!
Pay my bills online the day I get them so I know they're never forgotten!
Take a photo a day and upload it to a blog (this one? probably not, but maybe)!
Make an effort every day to just be happy :)

Blog more too

You must see this...so so sweet

Birthday Gathering

Heading over to Dave and Busters again (was just there for my work Holiday party) for Lisa's Birthday gathering. Made her this card which I think she'll love because her fave color is pink :) Last night we went to the Holiday event at the Henry Ford village/museum. It was awesome, lots of fun things to do- rode in an actual Model T, walked through the village where there were fire pits, people dressed up as if they were from the 1800's (all nice and welcoming), rode on the carousel and then sang Christmas carols as they lit off fireworks. It was such a good time.

Starbucks

mmm.....I could live in a Starbucks. Comfy chairs, wi-fi, good music and food (not that you need food with all the wonderful drinks to be had). Okay so here are my fave drinks:

#1. The pumpkin spice frappuccino. Always available yet only on the menu seasonally. Delish. 10 stars out 5. Seriously.
#2. The caramel macchiato. My first Starbucks obsession. Ever the loyal macchiato lover, this is the first year I've branched out to another hot drink. Leading me to..
#3. The raspberry white chocolate mocha. Someone stop me with this one. It's made me break the "starbucks twice a week only" rule. Once. Well, maybe twice. Okay, maybe a few more times than I'd like to admit, but it's good okay?

Anyway, get thee to a Starbucks and feast your lips on one of these bad boys.

Not A Finga!

My fave Christmas movie is on. The "Not a finga" thing is from when she breaks the sexy leg lamp and he's all ticked off. Hilariousness. I laugh while I eat my turkey sandwich and cheetos. Yumm. The classic dinner a few days after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, I've got a wild hair up my ass, and it's not going to be a good thing for our "budget". (Budget? What's a budget?) Once the Holiday season is over (since I'm going to be so damn busy creating things for friends and family until then)- we're going to redecorate. Oh yeah buddy. That wine colored kitchen? GONE! The pale blue living room? GONE! White everywhere else? Oh yeah baby. Gone. We're getting some color in here and it's going to be funky and fun. Ikea will get a few more visits next year. I've been trying to avoid doing too much because this isn't our "30 year house", but I'm so sick of looking at it and SO sick of not caring.

I want a deep red living room with a beigey-yellowy accent wall. Sounds odd, will look great. Black leather furniture. Oh yeah. Sage green kitchen (I think- sage seems to be heading out as a popular color). Navy blue in the bathroom (tons of white so this won't make it look smaller). The bedroom? Eh, I go back and forth. The den is going to be dark chocolate with my scrap area (the open closet lol) either pink, teal or orange. The guest bedroom can stay that tealish color until we finally get pregnant. Then I'll pick something gender neutral.

Okay- so changing topics since I brought that up. I'm back on my meds. I'm taking the extended release version of Metformin this time so hopefully I won't have the horrible side effects and HOPEFULLY I'll be pregnant within three months. Wouldn't that be fabulous? A newly redecorated home and a baby? That's what I'm talking about. Who knows whether I'll still be on this decorating kick in January though. I might go back to leaving it plain so we can sell it without too much work.

Can't wait until next weekend. Friday is date night with Deb and Teresa. Deb had to cancel last month so I haven't seen them in a while and I can't wait. Now let this week pass quickly and let me somehow have all my Christmas cards made by the end of it. ;) Yeah right.

First Christmas card this year. I think I'm going to make a couple different ones that way I don't feel all boxed in to one style and so I won't have to make them in assembly line fashion. That's work-ish, not fun-ish. This is also my first time using my Cuttlebug. Love it. I got a hot deal on it at Michael's. 50% off and some other such coupon. left work early not feeling well and went to my moms. Baby bro had a video he wanted me to see online. I forget the name of the site right now but it was a video about religions and how they're all a crock and the population is really worshipping the sun. Not a God. Of course this scares the hell out of me because of my panic-inducing fear of death. But it's extremely interesting. Once I've seen the whole video and researched/compared a few things I will post a link (don't know why, no one knows this blog even exists but still).

Oops- take that back, Mikey and my mom know. But I doubt they'll ever bother to come have a gander since I talk to them pretty often.

It's Britney Bitch

Had to do a second post today because I need to talk about Britney Spear's Blackout CD. It's frickin awesome. She's back, bitches, and it looks like the album's going to be her fifth number one. Heck yes girl. I defend her even though she does some seriously stupid shit, and she is not a sparkling example of motherhood- but she still makes so damn catchy music. This cd is no exception- very funky, very techno- LOVE IT. I have Gimme More, Break the Ice and Get Naked in my head on a never ending cycle. Mad props Brit.

So I was looking at my blog today, and the headline reads "display my creativity"... have I ever put even one pic of anything I've created here? Maybe the oreo balls and that's about it, eh? So here are the Halloween cards I sent out this year (love the dollar stamps from Michael's), I just got a Cuttlebug (WOOT!) so hopefully I'll have plenty of cards to showcase soon. But for now... enjoy the bit of eye candy.

This was meant to have been posted last Monday (the 22nd). One positive spin? The hair got donated to locks of love. There are no other positives.

I got my hair cut yesterday. Big mistake. I absolutely hate it. I was going for the whole "Posh Spice", "Beckham Bob" cut that's so popular right now. Yeah, that's not what I got. Went to Trade Secret in the mall and the girl that used to do my hair is no longer there so I had an appt with someone else. Well, she was a bit behind and another woman did it. HORRID! It's all choppy and blunt at the ends, it looks absolutely stupid.

I look like an oompa loompa. Like I have a mushroom on my head. A gigantic penis head. She did not go anywhere near short enough in the back so it makes it look like a big bell on my head. Grrr. I want to go to another salon to have them fix it but now I'm just so disgusted I don't want to mess with it and I just want it to grow back. I HATE IT. Did I have the balls to say something in the salon though? No. I'm an idiot. I can't just go back in because they've closed it for 3 weeks for remodeling. Great.

I'd probably get a better looking cut at the frickin Great Clips down the street where they teach you to do an entire cut in 10 minutes. Well- at least she's out of the running to be my new stylist. This is making me consider going to Urban Creations again for my cuts. I wasn't the biggest fan of their color jobs but cuts may have to be them.

I watched this video online last night about 9/11. I have a few ‘conspiracy theories’ and believe a few “different things” about the attack, but nothing has really made me pause and take notice like this video did. It was talking about the buildings and how they collapsed (or imploded really) and that neither the jet fuel burning nor the impact of the crash could have taken those buildings down like that. I don’t really know a lot about engineering or the temperature that will melt steel, but they did show snippets from different materials (facts) that backed up what they were saying. It made their ideas seem not only intriguing, but downright hard to dispute.

I think it’s an absolute necessity that the American public question what they’re told. Based on the responses regarding the video alone (on a message board), it is extremely scary how many people will just dismiss another viewpoint because it makes them feel uncomfortable or because they heard the “real” story on the news. Let us not forget that the major news networks are businesses.

Okay before I start getting into the public and how blind they are (I thought I was naïve? Woah), let me get to my point. My point is that this video is really making me reconsider everything I’d previously believed about 9/11. I thought it was possible that flight 93 was shot down, I thought it was possible that the government had some advance warning that they didn’t know what to do with, I thought it was possible that Bush played a part in it because of his family businesses that would seriously profit from a war, I questioned why we’re still in Iraq (after finding no weapons of mass destruction) and yet we haven’t really made an effort to find Bin Laden who everyone thinks was responsible. But I never really believed that the government had a hand in it.

I question that now. I wonder if the owner of the buildings knew what was going to happen? How coincidental that he purchased insurance protection from terrorist attacks just 6 weeks before 9/11. How coincidental that Mayor Guliani didn’t use his emergency command center in WTC building 7 and it collapsed (no plane struck this building) from “fires”.

I can’t say that I’m 100% sure this was planned by the US government but I can say that I’ve opened my mind a bit to the entire idea. I have questions. I’ll do a little investigating. I’ll plant the seed of doubt in the minds of my friends and family.

So on Saturday the 15th of September, my mom had a stroke. A fucking stroke. She's only 49 years old. She wasn't able to use the left side of her body at all for a few days. She's finally walking with a walker, and can feel most things on her left side now- but it's just madness.

We're going to Florida in three weeks. She's stressed because her boyfriend is an immature fuck who gives her a hard time (they were actually arguing when this happened) and because she's raised his daughter since she was a baby (and therefore can't leave him). Shitty situation. My brother and his girlfriend also moved in the weekend before. Joy for all involved, I'm sure.

I had to blog this so I won't forget everything my Grandmother told me today. I took her out for lunch for her birthday (which was Feb 1st). I just asked her some of the questions that I should have asked Grandma Hall before she passed away. Like how she met my grandpa.

Grandma Hancock met him when she was 15. Her best friend Phyllis, 16,(who she is still friends with to this day-birthday of Feb 2nd, oddly enough) and her were at a restaurant and met my Grandpa Howard and a friend of his. She started seeing Howard, and Phyllis started seeing his best friend.

My Grandma stayed home from school one day because she was having cramps, and during the day Phyllis made her come out and they were hanging out on Vernor St. Anyway, once he realized that my Grandma was out of the house, her father waited for her to come home and really let her have it. He whipped her with a switch, and when it broke- his hand, and then on to a belt.

That night, she went with Phyllis to see Howard and his friend and she showed Howard what her daddy had done, the whelts and cuts all over her back. That was it. He said that she shouldn't have to deal with that, he asked her to go to Georgia with him and get married. She was 15 and he was 19! Phyllis and Howard's friend decided to do the same thing, and the guys drove in their cars and the girls (for some reason) hopped a bus.

Anyway, they had a double wedding. She ended up getting arrested as a runaway and her parents tried to make her come home, but his mom talked them out of it. They did end up coming back to Michigan when Ford called him back (he'd been on layoff). Here she had my Aunt Pat at 17 and then my Dad and then Aunt Sharon. They were happily married all their days until he passed away just before retirement. Phyllis and her husband had a son but ended up divorcing years later.

I'm so glad I got to hear this story! This is something I never would have known since my father doesn't really talk about things like that. Doesn't think they're all that important. Speaking of him, he took Tom and I out last night for dinner for my birthday cause we didn't have time to on my birthday weekend. We had a really good time. My Dad would not admit it, he only has once, but he really REALLY wants grandbabies. I am workin on it, I'm tellin ya. lol.

My mood today is an odd one. I am slowly getting myself on track. Not sure if I mentioned in the last post, but I'm starting off the first week with just no fast food and then moving on to getting rid of soda and then to counting points. One step at a time, slow and steady wins the race and all those other great motivational cliches. Anyway, so far I'm doing well with that.

My odd mood really hasn't nothing to do with my diet- I just figured I'd update. My odd mood came while driving to work this morning. I was thinking about all the cheating/leaving/divorcing that has been going on with the ladies at 2Peas. There is seriously an abnormal amount. So I was thinking about how I would feel if my marriage ended right now. Right now I think I'd be able to handle it. Yes, we've been together a long time and I love him with everything I am, but I do think since it has only been a short while since we've officially been married, it wouldn't have quite the same blow. Ten years and a few children will probably change that outlook, but right now I don't think I'd be devastated and looking for a way out of life. This led to the realization that I was actually thinking that I'd be okay with myself on my own, without someone validating me. That's a crazy thing, because it's not my usual thought process, so it's obvious why I felt the need to document it.

Another thing I've been considering recently is my perfectionism. I've never really thought of myself as a perfectionist, as I have a messy desk at home and I'm overweight, (Can you really be a perfectionist if you're not paying attention to what you eat?) but my MIL recently said that I was and it's been in and out of my mind ever since. I guess, in some ways, I am. It bothers me that the brickwork DH and FIL did last summer is not perfect, it bothers me that the under-the-counter cd player in the kitchen is not wired up through the cabinet-leaving the cord hanging uselessly against the wall, it bothers me if I make something and it doesn't turn out exactly the way I've imagined. In fact, I will sometimes stop doing something if I don't think I'm good enough at it. Hence the reason I haven't done as many pages recently.

Anyway, I'm babbling. The perfectionist thinking has me wondering exactly why it is that I'm not thin-if I am, in fact, such a perfectionist. What is it about me that keeps enabling my eating habits? It's not necessarily that I over eat, it's more that I consistently choose the wrong foods. So, other than taste, why? Why do I keep myself this way? I've considered the whole fearing men thing, and I just don't think that's it. I think fearing everyone holds more water. I'm definitely going to have to go back through Dr. Phil's book and re-analyze everything. Maybe if I deal with all the emotional baggage it will make everything else that much easier.

I'm sitting here watching the Rose Bowl, pissed off like nothing else that Michigan is playing like shit. I don't like to talk crap, and I love my team, but come on.... they are playing like shit. SHIT! It is 31-11 right now. Are you kidding me? Anyway.

So day one of lifestyle change begins with a week long, no fast food deal. I am going to go through what is already in the house, including the Pepsi we have left from last night. Week 2 and 3 will lead into full out point counting. At the moment, eliminating fast food will give me a decent drop of a few pounds. But I'm not kidding myself, I'm not going to eat crazy stuff either.