Once upon a time I had a therapist (side note: I have no idea if this is from a movie or a TV show but EVERY TIME I see/hear/write the word therapist of think of someone saying, “The rapist…” and then someone saying, “you mean therapist.” It is driving me crazy, ha ha.) Anyway, I had a therapist who told me that it was important to do one nice thing for myself every week.

Things that were routine donn’t count. So it doesn’t count that I do my laundry with pretty scented dryer sheets so I smell like candy, or go grocery shopping so that I can eat during the week, or that I don’t leave my shoes on the floor of my room so I don’t trip over them when I wake up. What does count is something that I keep thinking I will do but never get done, like a manicure or a bubble bath.

Generally I start out trying to do that one nice thing a week and it turns into one nice thing a month. So, I amended my new year’s resolution to include: 6) Do one nice thing a week for myself.

This week I’m taking the easy cop-out and giving myself a manicure (the pedicure from after Christmas is still holding strong – yay me!) and i settled on my favorite color: Princesses Rule! by OPI – of course.

generally my new year resolutions are vague like, get more sleep, learn to relax, lose weight, and locate Michael J Fox.  but this year i have some small and yet less vague ideas.  and i always feel that writing them down at least helps me pretend that i’m going to do something about them, so without further ado:

1. Part of my ongoing effort to waste less: Make double sided copies whenever possible.

2. Be in bed by 10 PM on work nights.

3. Spend 20 minutes a day focusing on relaxing.

4. Pack my own lunch 4 times a week.

5. Take the bus at least once a week.

Notice the trend?  I’m turning into an old woman.  All is not lost because you see I wanted to make a resolution to drink more wine and fantasize about Jacob Black more often, but well, that’s just cheating.

i looked up Auld Lang Syne on wiki the other day,  apparently it means “long long ago.”  well that makes more sense than what I thought people were saying when I was little which was, “Old Lame Sign.”

there are a lot of things that happened this year: aiden and I decided to get married; i got a new job; i inherited my dad’s old kitchen aid mixer – the one my parents bought so they could make baby food for me; i went to a family reunion and my grandpa’s 90th birthday in San Francisco; i bought a new car; i visited seattle and got to have a lovely valentine’s day dinner with aiden, kit, and ry-ry at Purple; i went to disney-land with Aiden AND saw the most amazing fireworks show AND got to see Lillian; and went to a Denver Bronco’s gave with Aiden, Alice and her husband, and our friend Sandra and her husband.

the weirdest thing that happened this year was my roommate situations.  i had, bar-none, the WORST roommates this year than I have had in any of my previous years and all I can say is that the worst roommates seem to also be the worst pet owners.

and then i had the best: my youngest sister, Beth, her dog charlie, and her friend Kevin moved in and… night and day: they clean up after themselves!  they put things in the dishwasher!  charlie doesn’t eat and chew things he shouldn’t!  or have accidents on the rugs!  or chew on the doors!  or bark and cry in the early morning hours and whenever Beth leaves the house!  they don’t watch the TV on LOUD when I’m trying to sleep!  they don’t break things and wait for me to find out about them and fix them myself!  and they don’t drink my alcohol!  it’s like… living with adults!  I’ve never had this happen before.

and anyway… i’m glad i looked up the song because i didn’t used to like it (Who wrote a song about an old lame sign?!) but it reminds you that we forget old friends and long ago and so maybe stop once in awhile and remember… that you forgot.  no, the song is still dumb.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I have been decorating my own tree for five years and I still haven’t found a topper to my tree that i’m happy with (because I can’t decide if I’m an angel tree topper or a star tree topper) – do other people wrestle with these issues?  i think i’m the only one.  so… aiden and i got a tree last week and i decorated it. ta-da!

The other day I went to my workplace gift shop with Alice to waste some time. While looking around I happened upon a pretty decent looking rosary made of painted black wood beads and cheap metal. It was only $10 and I had always wanted something like it to replace my plastic rosary.  This being America and me being materialistic the fact that I don’t actually say rosaries anymore did not give me pause in any way as to whether or not I should purchase such a thing.

Alice showed me some neat Christmas decorations they were displaying that I thought I might get as well, but I decided against it and we went on our merry way. When we got back to my desk I set down my wallet and rosary. Alice looked at the rosary, looked at me and asked, “Oh, you decided to get the rosary?”

I was just about to say yes when my mind flashed back over the previous fifteen minutes and I realized something very very bad: I had not paid for the rosary.  Alice immediately saw the look of horror flash across my face and started laughing.

“This isn’t funny! I just stole a rosary! I’m going to hell, like, today!”

Alice continued to laugh at me and I dragged her back to the gift shop with me. My plan was to walk in, act as if nothing had happened, and pay for the rosary.

Fortunately, unlike many other times in my life, my plan worked. Although I probably won’t ever be able to use my stolen rosary because, for instance, if I said it right before I got on a plane that plane would be sure to crash. And so it will be kept solely for decoration… probably in a room that is the least likely to catch on fire… in case God wants to be vengeful or something.

i have fallen very much in love with the new show on fox, GLEE, and last weeks episode solidified its ranking in my mind.  football players dancing to Single Ladies?  yes, please.  and hey – if they can do it, I CAN DO IT.

well… maybe.  i’m a horrible dancer.  just horrible.  i did dance concert once, and i mean once, when i was a younger person of later teenage years.  and oh how torturous those three months must have been for my group leader.  i tried and tried and TRIED to learn those steps.  and i practiced at home.  and i made my friends coach me.  and my only saving grace was the fact that i have about 2 and 1/2 ounces of rhythm.

but something inside me really wants to know this dance routine to do with my roommate.  and honestly, i truly do know how SILLY that sounds.  but how fun would it be to know that?  i mean, this isn’t the damn macarena.  and on youtube they even have people breaking down the steps and slowing down the song so you can learn the dance.  and with samaire’s help i might be able to get this down in 5 or 6 months years.

watch for me on fox’s When Dancing Goes WRONG.  coming 2015.

my roommate, samaire, likes to be ambitious.  she sets goals.  she cross stitches items for charity causes and commits to marathons.  we are similar in this nature as i am also ambitious but with one goal: to never try.

i actually have nothing against exercise or running at all.  i go to the gym four times a week where i run, bike, or climb up steps for thirty minutes.  and then i go home three days a week to jillian michaels who WANTS TO KILL ME.  but every time i watched oprah and some poor woman had committed to running a marathon i thought to myself, “i could live my entire life without ever running a marathon and i would be more than happy.”  and so a goal was born.

but samaire gets in the way of that goal.  she gets up early on a saturday to run.  i dutifully drop her off and bring her doughnuts to the finish line.  i even help her train.  but i have no interest in forking over money for a shirt and a chance to waste my morning running through the streets of salt lake and becoming a traffic hold-up.  and she gets all happy and ambitious like completing these goals.  and i admit that aside from having my morning to myself to crawl up the stair master and then death march through jillian michaels explaining for the 70th time why we have to do “big muscles in with small muscles” and wanting a “20 minute workout and getting a 20 minute workout”… I am a little jealous.

so to remedy this i told her that i would NOT run a marathon with her.  she can run a half marathon, which i learned is 13 miles, and i will NOT run 13 miles.  i decided to start training for this today, in fact i am training right this very minute.  i am sitting on my ass and later i will lie on the floor.  training is going so well that i suspect that by april i will be totally ready to sit on my ass the whole marathon.

who says i have no direction in life?

The other weekend I finally got around to painting my room.  this was definitely one of those projects where i thought that it would take a couple of hours and it turned into a weekend long project.  i don’t usually like to post photos, can’t explain that one, but i’m being lazy so i’m posting the journey from “ugly brown tan” to “greener than i thought it was going to be.” in pictures.

also pictured is my new bed from ikea.  now every single piece of furniture in the room is from that store.  want to hear the story about how i bought the damn bed, lifted it into my subaru, drove it all the way home and made aiden carry it into the house and then my mattress doesn’t fit into it?  well i’m not telling it to you right now BECAUSE I’M STILL BITTER ABOUT IT.

oh this just cracks me up.  i actually got some serious comment hatred today… me.  someone actually took the time to comment about how much they hate me.  so amusing.  also, on a post about healthcare – that just boggles my mind.

Seriously, if i had not been shown this blog by a mutual friend, i would not be reading this, however, i wasted ten minutes of my life to your inane ramblings. Im pretty sure your just a fat girl without enough to do in your life so you write this blog and assume that people read it, while the only people who really do is yourself, the one fat girl who calls you a friend because compared to you she looks skinny, and the boyfriend who is just waiting for something, anything in fact better to come along.

I want to break this down because I’m pretty perplexed… I have a mutual friend with this person?  I owe our mutual friend a bottle of wine for being friends with this person.  Yikes.

And then this Hatred Filled Commenter wasted ten minutes of their precious time reading my blog?  Oh, how sad for this slow reader!  But then they were so infuriated by the ten minutes wasted that they spent time penning a little love note to me.  How cute.

I must admit that there is a special place in my heart for people who leave hate comments and can’t spell.  Oh, how you tickle my funny bone you poor illiterate soul!  Was it in third grade that you dropped out of school?  Second?  Here is a fun lesson: you are = you’re.  See what I did there?  Squished those two words together, dropped the a and put a ‘ in its place.  Fun right?  Oh well, maybe next time.

Should I add that I make no assumptions that anyone is reading this?  Does that mean that our mutual friend is my “fat” friend?OR maybe you, Hatred Filled Commenter, are my secret “fat” friend?  Because I have been looking for someone to eat bacon with me.  Are you are still lurking in your parent’s basement in Pleasant Grove waiting, hoping, that I will respond and give your life meaning?  Because I am at home cooking up a batch, hurry over!

Tootles!

- Char

i went to the dentist on monday for the first time in two years.  yeah yeah, whatever.  every time i go to the dentist they tell me what great teeth i have and how pretty they are, blah blah blah.  whenever i went to the dentist it was just like my talent agency, people fall all over themselves complimenting you and you know that they do this to everyone.  i’m an insured non-drug seeker, my teeth could be falling out and they’d tell me i have great gums.

so i just forgot to make an appointment for two years.  and then i up and decided to go on with getting my teeth looked at, just in case.  and of course i have a “buckle” in one of my teeth.  what the hell?  supposedly it isn’t quite a cavity and it isn’t not a cavity.  there is a hole in the enamel of my tooth but it hasn’t quite gotten into the tooth part so they are going to clean it out, seal it and call it a day.

except that the dentist wants to “nip this in the bud” this week.  so i have to get this done the morning of a semi-important meeting at work.  and the dentist hasn’t decided yet if he wants to give me a shot, laughing gas, or nothing.  i’m hoping for nothing.  i’m pretty pain tolerant and i think i can handle pretty much anything EXCEPT drooling in front of my boss’s boss and a handful of co-workers.  awesome.

damn teeth.