I have said good bye. I have moved. I have cried my weight in tears. I have thrown up almost every meal I've tried to eat. I have medicated myself to sleep. I have mostly unpacked. I have obsessively rearranged. I have re-watched the first two seasons of Teen Mom.
It's been a struggle, but today was the first day I've felt... ok.And as I was sublimating my feelings into some serious basement rearranging, I realized: It's time to start blogging again.
So from now on, this will be a new blog. A new place for me, documenting this new place in my life.
but, I'm suddenly exhausted, so the lengthy posts will have to wait for tomorrow. Until then, here's a picture of the sweet Giraffe shelf my mom gave me today:
yes, I am holding it up with a thumb tack. (class)
It has yet to be a year, but we are wrapping things up here at Year of Firsts.
I broke up with Addie in January. And for a bevy of reasons (the prevailing one being an overly optimistic desire to stabilize our friendship), we decided to stick it out until April. But, shit happens, as it tends to do, and the fact that we broke up couldn't be ignored anymore. So today, Shayne and Dad are coming to move me back to Virginia.
Suffice it to say, that between preparing to move suddenly and coming to terms with what is really happening here, this has been the most heart breaking week I've endured. And while Addie and I are leaving on relatively positive terms, we are still dealing with a lot of hurt. But the hardest part of all of this is that I'm leaving my best friend.
Break ups are awful. We both keep telling each other that it will get better.
First, I had lunch at the amazing Daddy D's Suber Soulfood in downtown Hendersonville, where I had a life changing fried pork chop, magical mac-n-cheese, and the world's best green beans.
I ate half of the first Fried Pork Chop before I remembered to get a picture.
And when I got home, I checked my email, and I got an out of the blue message--
It's going to be great to potentially reach more readers. I'm a little embarrassed that my first link on their network has me jibbering about MS Paint, alas; I live to serve my public. (such a class act.)
So if you see an ad on my page, click on it! Support it, support me, support free speech, support the world, man.
After being ridiculously excited, I started in on my Valentines Day tradition of eating steak, drinking red wine, and watching horror movies (Let Me In is as good as Let the Right One In, and just as sad).
oh yes.
my serving size appropriate dinner
Addie's caveman size appropriate dinner
And then there was the Teen Mom 2 season finale, and me going to bed tipsy and full of delicious red meat. Solid day.
Today, after a valiant 4 hour shopping experience, I found a pair of jeans that fit and aren't terribly ugly for $8. It was a Christmas miracle. I basically only buy jeans every 3 or 4 years, when they start falling apart. And my go-to pair finally got a hole in the keister that tunic tops could no longer cover. When you're almost 5'10" and have some extra baggage in your lower trunk area, pants shopping just sucks.
This is why it's easier to wear tunics, dresses and leggings 90% of the time.
On Friday, I took myself out on a date. After all, I appreciate me, and I need to show me more often. So after work, I drove up to Biltmore Plaza, spent all my Barnes and Noble gift cards on the Deluxe Edition 2012 Writer's Market, walked down to La Traviana and enjoyed some wine and a caprese salad, and finally, I took myself to see Episode I: Phantom Menace, 3D.
super sexy Audrey date night
Obvious Conclusion time: Episode 1 is by far the worst Star Wars movie, and it definitely makes my Top 10 list of worst written and worst acted movies of all time, but hey. It's Star Wars. And I love my Star Wars. And even though the Gungans are more irritating than extracting your own spleen with a spork that's dull and dirty with beefy crunch burrito juice, I'll still sit through it. Because every franchise has a weak movie. And soon, the originals will be re-released again!
DAT SCORE. DAT VADAR.
So it was a good night, even if I did come home to fall asleep at 11:30. (wild chiiiiiild)
Saturday was Finish Making the Email Database for Work Day, wherein I did nothing but enter addresses to an excel spread sheet. I had an insane urge to watch Episode III (also bad, but much better than I, and is totally my second favorite behind Empire), that wasn't letting me get any work done until I was watching it. And I don't own Ep III.
Drat.
When it comes to movie urges, I'm like a diabetic whose blood sugar
is bottoming out. I get overcome and distracted and bitchy until I get
what I need--in this case, cheesy melodrama, terrible writing, and
awesome light saber battles.
Off I went to Best Buy, Target, and Wal Mart, but they only sell the sets of 1-3 or 1-6, and a) I couldn't afford them and b) there's no way in hell I'm paying for Ep 1. So, I convinced Addie to go to Blockbuster and rent them for me (that's the Blockbuster that hired me but that I blew off so I don't go in anymore because I'm the maturest 13 year old ever). His caveat was that I had to go in with him. Knowing how terrible I get when I have an un-satiated movie craving, I agreed. I wore my hoodscarf and hid behind my phone while the manager who conducted my interview and hired me on the spot checked us out. I have never felt more awkward, even though Addie said the guy didn't recognize me. But I'm sure he did.
And for the next like, six hours, I finished most of the data base and watched Ep II and Ep III, occasionally getting distracted by falling into the black hole of the Expanded Universe online. This was much to the chagrin of Addie, who could care less about Star Wars.
However. For someone who claims to "hate" Star Wars as much as he does, he sat behind me spouting off insight after insight, and burning me on trivia and fun facts. I think someone is a self-loathing closet case.
And somewhere during the weekend, Whitney Houston died.
I will remember her as I've always remembered her: that singer who was part of the oddest sexual pairing on the silver screen.
Kevin Costner. Really?
The Bodyguard was one of those Mom Movies that my mom and all the moms in my neighborhood watched all the time--the same with Pretty Woman, Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes and Fatal Attraction. Hm... it makes me shudder to think that the modern day equivalents to 90's Mom Movies are The Time Traveler's Wife, The Notebook, The Vow and PS, I Love You.
Damn, I miss the 90's.
Anywho.back to Sunday of work and nerdery.
Oh, and side note: we got some fluffly snow flurries yesterday, and the wind came in gale force, and the temperature dropped to Hoth temperatures. It's finally winter!
I came home with every intention to write and be awesome until Teen Mom which I will watch and become even more awesome, but, continuing in my Synaptic Mis-Fire Tuesday, I decided to try and do my taxes this year.
Why the hell did I think that was going to be a good idea? Between the part-year residences and the IRA distributions and the 1099 I got that I don't think is correct and NC being a bigger tax butthole than the grand old commonwealth, I'm about to kick turbo tax in the face.
I'm just going to crawl back to my old CPA boss and have him handle it.
I miss the days when I'd get amazing refunds. But now I'm over 25 and female and childless and single and don't own a house and I'm not in school anymore, so I'm kinda boned. Thank you, Government, for taxing my life choices.
And I hope the next person who comes at me with how GLORIOUS their refund is ends up having terrible car problems that take up all of said GLORIOUS refund. Whatever happened to talking about how much money you make being one of the rudest things to discuss?
In fact, he has a cabinet full of snacks. I'm not a big fan of snacks. Sure, I like to snack on rochets, cookies and ice cream occasionally (and Reese eggs, pumpkins and trees), but other than that, I never really crave snack cakes and chips and candy and the like. But Addie does. So he buys snacks that are on sale and stashes them away so he won't eat them all at once. And then he forgets about them, and snacks on other things. And tonight I made so much fun of him for it, that he was forced to do a snack inventory, or a snack-ventory.
emptying the snack cabinet
look at all that snacky carnage
buddies looking at snacks
organized snacks
handsome man wants snacks!
I made this entry just to use the word snack in almost every sentence.
Fun Fact: Addie has 5 different flavors of Moon Pie. I didn't know they came in any flavor other than Gross.
it's funny how once I've finally resolved to being awake, after I have made my coffee and have situated myself at the computer that the restless dog finally falls asleep, the mice stop running in their wheel, and Addie stops snoring.
Story of my life.
Yesterday was pretty damn awesome. I woke up early and wrote pretty steadily from 10:30-5:30, and then scattered from 7-11, and pretty solidly from midnight-2. I feel like I should have more pages, considering how long I worked, but I'm just happy to have written more than a couple of sentences.
Take that, writer's block!
Actually, I can thank the sudden, obvious, realization I had on Friday during my daily "Why Aren't You Doing More" pep-talk/beat down. I was in the middle of berating myself for not looking for more online outlets when it clearly dawned on me: in order to submit pieces for publishing, I actually have to have pieces to submit for publishing. That means sitting down and writing. Writing words. And stuff. I can't very well go around trying to send in the same 3 stories that I wrote in college.
So, I'm taking a break from my book and am starting hard work on a couple of essay-type editorials and a satirical short story. And as soon as they're done, I'll start shopping them around online. I hope this will be a nice change of pace.
In the mean time, here is my latest Velociraptor + Things I Love: a squirrel, a giraffe, and a velociraptor having a nice time on a Sunday morning:
Have a nice time watching the Super Bowl, if that's what you're in to.
Apparently, holding your arm up in an unknowingly awkward Z-shaped position in order to get a better control on your mouse so you can draw velociraptors will strain all the muscles and ligaments and what not in your fore-arm from your knuckles to your shoulder.
Typing, texting, brushing my teeth, stirring coffee, opening things, folding socks, blow drying my hair, stretching my arm up to put on deodorant: all excruciating. See, I only get injured in the most incredibly badass way possible.
But it's ok, because that raptor drawing was totally worth it. And I'm working on another one, inspired by this badass card Shelby got me from The Oatmeal:
best card ever!
I'm also gearing up to make the worst dinner ever, using Alton Brown's Pork Tenderloin marinade and grilling tips. It seems like a pretty easy meal to make, but I have a bad feeling about it. I was supposed to make it on Tuesday night, but I didn't realize the marinade took 6-24 hours (Once again, I need to start reading the entire recipe). And on Wednesday, I opted for a nap instead of doing anything else. So last night, in the midst of a full-on hormone attack, I started making the marinade and got into 16 different arguments with myself--the biggest one revolving around trying to get finely grated zest from a lime, using a cheese grater and FML I just realized that I forgot to put the freakin' chipotle pepper in the marinade and it's been in the fridge since 9:30 last night DAMMIT. Also, I'm not very good at grilling things (at all), so I'm not looking forward to that. Also, also, I hate that the cheapest I can get cilantro and parsley is like, $3, and they're only used for garnish. Why don't they just make garnish-sized bunches? I just hate wasting fresh food.
Basically, I'm never making this meal again. I swear to god.
I am however, making the Bacon Peanut Butter Cookies that Mandy mentioned. Hopes are high that they are as life changing as everyone says they are.
OH, and in brighter news, I'm now at over 10,000 views!
I know that 10,000 views in 9 months is nothing in the real scheme of Internet Views, and also that most likely 60% of those page views are from my mom, and that my blog is really tiny compared to everything else out there, but it's still exciting to me, because my blog is important to me. My mom reminded me of how excited I was when I hit 1,000 views. That feels like a long time ago. It's crazy to think, at this point last year, I was quitting my full time job, taking my last vacations to visit friends, and starting to pack, crawling with anxiety over what I was doing.
Ugh, self-reflection. That's a post for another day.
For now, it's 2:30 and I've done nothing constructive on this day I took off of work just so I could be constructive.
I've decided that, in lieu of writing, I'm just going to make mash up drawings of Velociraptors and Everything I Love.
First up: Velociraptor + The Wire
Ziggy Raptor!
I also splurged and bought a new office chair, because my old office chair was for suckers (so I gave it to Addie).
OoooOooo, lookit all dat support.
It was on super sale, and is already 100% more comfortable than any other desk chair I've had (save the super tall, regal arm chair I had in high school), so hopefully this is an omen for increased productivity. Like, maybe some actual writing instead of just Raptor Drawings. (but hey let's not get cocky).
