*Notably Neurotic

Pop! Goes pop culture

2012-03-02T14:30:00.006-05:00

I'm an adorable drunk.

The following sentence is the truest, most authentic statement I’ve made since the first time I declared, “If the wine’s gone, I’m leaving” at a party:

“If Kelly Clarkson and I were friends, I would totally be the Amy Farrah Fowler to her Penny.”

Oh, Courtney, your creepiness knows no bounds.

But ya know, this whole "I'm going to jump if you don't retweet me, Ms. Clarkson" thing kind of got me thinking about how fame-oriented we are a society. I'm not entirely sure how we manage to develop delusional visions of comradery with celebrities, but it’s becoming a growing epidemic thanks to social media platforms like Twitter and the immediately accessible gossip online. I think we assume that since we know all of their music (or movies or books, depending on who you’re stalking) and have read every interview in every magazine, we actually know who they are as people. It creates a false sense of entitlement too, almost like they “owe” us all the personal, gritty details of their lives or like we deserve their friendship and retweets in return. I shudder to think of the loose cannon I would be had Twitter and Facebook been around when I was 13 years-old and insanely convinced I was going to marry Nick Carter.

Our culture is more obsessed with celebrities than ever before and sadly, it doesn’t seem like a trend that’s going to be fading any time soon. I’m embarrassed to admit that I know more about The Real Housewives than I do about any of the Republican candidates or the current situation in Iran. That’s a shameful confession to make, but at least I know I’m ignorant. I follow far more musicians, actors and comedians on Twitter than I do public officials, news outlets (real news, not fake news like E!), or humanitarians. Why is that, I wonder? Is it because it’s more fun? Is it because I subconsciously value movie stars over "regular" people? Or is it simply an act of escapism from the tragedy of what’s going on in “the real world”? (No TV pun intended. Although, given the topic of this post, it’s hilarious)

Would I be more excited about Kelly Clarkson tweeting me back or Barack Obama? (Oh dear goodness, I can’t even imagine what Mr. President would ever have to say to me other than, “No, I’ve never counted how many pairs of shoes Michelle has. Stop asking.”)

It’s pretty sobering (as well as incredibly humiliating) to admit that I’m the type of American I can’t stand.

Would this be the appropriate time to say I’m the 1%? Or wait, since I’m with the majority of people in this situation, would I be the 99%? See, I’m clearly not hip with the whole Occupy Wallstreet movement.

Last night I forced myself to read two "real world" news articles for every article I read on a gossip website. Never mind that one my two "real world" articles was about sloths wearing onesies, but still. It's a respectable effort on my part.

I think I need to go on a pop culture detox.

Are you still taking Yaz? You probably shouldn't be.

2012-03-01T16:30:00.056-05:00

To this day, over a year later, Why I Quit Taking Beyaz is still my most popular blog post to date. With over 100 hits daily, this post has clearly resonated with hundreds of women who have taken to the internet in an effort to find answers about this dangerous birth control pill.

And guess what? Yaz is still in the news!

Bayer, the maker of Yaz and Beyaz, is currently facing over 14,000 potential lawsuits. 50 women have died from taking the contraceptive and thousands of others are claiming it causes potentially life-threatening side effects. Linda Rosenberg of Indianapolis lost her fertility due to complications from blood clots.

On February 29th, WTHR Channel 13 in Indianapolis ran a story highlighting the controversy surrounding the pill, talking with scientists and doctors about Yaz's new synthetic progesterone.

Note: This video may take a second to load on your web browser.

All birth control pills come with slight risk, but according to the FDA, "Yaz has additional risks because it contains the progestin, Drospirenone...which may result in potentially serious heart and health problems" in high risk patients."

Still not convinced that Yaz is bad news? Don't be dazzled by the contraceptive's promises of relief from PMS and acne. Those claims have been never been scientifically proven. In fact, the FDA sent Bayer warning letters, insisting the brand run corrective advertisements.

Talk to you doctor and then talk to her again. Do not leave her office until you have all of your questions answered and are familiar with all the risks associated with any oral contraceptive. It is your right to know exactly what is going into your body and more importantly, it's your responsibility. No one is going to look out for you like YOU.

My Musical Crushes

2012-02-29T17:30:00.002-05:00

I fall in and out of love with music all the time. I’ll hear a song, download it to my iPod (or wait patiently for a copy of the cd to become available at the library), play it on a non-stop loop while I run, and eventually get so sick of it that I literally cringe every time it pops up on the radio or my work out playlist. The only music I never tire of are blasts from the past—anything 80s, anything 90s, or anything with the words “Backstreet” and “Boys” attached to it. I also tend not get sick of legitimately good music, hence the fact that Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle” cd has been in my car since I was 16. It takes a lot to impress me and very few artists have had the honor of making it to my car’s cd case.

But flash-in-the-pan pop? I fall hard, get hot and heavy for a brief moment, and then totally bail like a frat guy after a one night stand. I kick music off of iTunes faster than Pauly D calls cabs for his post-smush Jersey skanks.

Current pop obsession:

LMFAO’s, “Sexy and I Know It”

This song is infectious and refuses to leave my head on a daily basis. It’s the epitome of everything that’s wrong with music and society today, the lyrics are ridiculous and have absolutely nothing to do with anything, and the whole song was probably written in less than 5 minutes while most of the band members were high and/or drunk, but boy-oh-boy does it cut to the core of me. And the only thing better than constantly flexing my muscles and proudly boasting to Clayton, “I work out!”, is watching Ricky Martin shake his bon bon on TV while singing, “Wiggle! Wiggle! Wiggle!”

But I’m also crushing on some majorly talented musicians right now, too. I’m pretty sure Fun.’s "Some Nights” album will be making its debut on my summer driving mix this year. My best recommendation from the cd would be its title track, but I’m sure you’ve heard their most well-known song on a recent car commercial:

And another one of my current favorites, Young the Giant, made an appearance on Glee last week and melted my heart. Oh, Blaine, you will forever be my favorite Warbler … and never mind that your heartfelt performance is edited around a montage of someone attempting suicide. That part is kind of a downer. Ignore that.

What are some of your favorite bands/artists right now?

Michael Jackson weekend recap

2012-02-27T21:37:00.003-05:00

I am happy to report that I had a positively delightful weekend, which I was more than relieved to have after the nightmare that was my panic attack-filled weekend last week. I spent a night away from Clayton (which may have been why my weekend was so great!? BAZINGA! Just kidding. I missed his scruffy face terribly.), but I had a much needed, long overdue “Girls Night Out” with my two favorite ladies—my mom and my big sister, Ashley.

Some weekend highlights:

Friday night Clayton took over someone’s night shift at his second job which basically meant he sat at an office and monitored the phones while he watched Netflix movies on the computer. Not wanting him to be alone on Friday night, I opted to hang out in the office with him and spent my evening doodling on post-it notes and napping under his desk (literally. I was exhausted). After work we came home and watched a documentary about diving missions that explored the Titanic, and in hindsight that probably wasn’t the best idea because I’m terrified of large ships (particularly the Titanic. I have no idea why, but I dream about it and its large propellers on a pretty regular basis and the fact that this giant ship is laying in complete darkness miles below the ocean’s surface seriously makes me lose sleep. I have a hard time swimming in the ocean because I don’t like putting my toes in the same water that harbors that rusted, creepy monstrosity. Issues? Me? No way.). Every time the camera panned to an image of the front of the ship, slowly casting light on the giant beast that was the hull of the Titanic, I started flapping my hands and mumbling, “Oh gosh! Oh gosh! Oh gosh!”

Saturday morning I woke up before the sun (and when I say I woke up before the sun I mean I got up at 10:00 a.m.), and laced up my sneakers to tackle my 7-miler before I headed up north to spend the evening with my mom and sister. But it was freezing outside, so I ended up cranking out my long run on the treadmill, sobbing in tandem with my strides as I watched a Sex and the City marathon and wished I still had girlfriends like Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha.

During my run, Clayton left to meet a friend for lunch and video games and other manly stuff (which I pretty sure includes lots of burping, scratching and comparing of chest hairs). Left to my own devices, I finished my work out and spent at least an hour and half getting gussied up for a night on the town in Indy. I applied my favorite new Bare Minerals eye makeup with careful precision and spent no less than a half hour curling my hair into perfect loose waves. Then I hairsrpayed the bejezus out of my head, kissed Joey goodbye, grabbed some wine and cheese for our aptly named “Wine and Cheese Party”, and jumped in my car.

After meeting my mom and sister at my mom’ s house, the three of us girls drove into downtown Indy and made the mistake of parking at the mall’s parking garage. We just happened to stroll through the best part of Circle Centre Mall on our way to P.F. Changs, so we pretty much had to stop at H&M. And I pretty much had to buy my new favorite shirt.

It has birds on it! I saw it on the hanger and it was so perfectly quirky and adorable, I had to make it mine. Totally out of character for me to buy a chiffon tank top with animals of the aviation variety printed all over it, but I’ll be darned if it wasn’t the cutest thing I had ever seen. I have a colbalt blue cardigan to pair with it that’s going to make this my new favorite spring/summer outfit.

I also purchased a navy blue, short-sleeved shirt with white polka dots and a sweet frilly bottom that looks like something Audrey Hepburn would wear if she were alive today. My mom and I practically shriked with glee when we came up with the ingenious idea of pairing said shirt with cherry red jewelry.

These two pieces of clothing are the girliest things I’ve purchased since my wedding dress and I’m actually really excited about that. I’m a jeans and tshirt girl through and through, but one of the best parts of being a woman is that I can change my style of dress whenever the mood strikes. These will definitely be my “go to” pieces when I’m feeling a little more feminine.

P.F. Chang’s did not disappoint for dinner, except when I was asked the waiter to kindly bring me a glass of their cheapest pinot noir (Classy, yes?), he brought me a glass of wine I later discovered was $11! When I got my bill, I my mouth was agape when I realized my drink cost more than my entire dinner. Don’t get me wrong, the wine was delicious, but $11!? That was their cheapest wine? When I excused myself to the restroom, I almost started weeping when I realized I literally just flushed $11 down the toilet.

Live and learn … and I always get the price list first.

"Check out this lady right here!"

After dinner we walked a few blocks to Conseco Field House, or whatever it’s called now, and found our seats for Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour by Cirque du Soleil. I have to admit, I was kind of on the fence about the show simply because the only frame of reference I had for Cirque du Soleil is what I’ve seen on TV and movies, and it looks WEIRD ...and like you need to be on at least two or more different hallucinates to fully appreciate it. I was afraid the concert was just going to be one large freak show set to the soundtrack of old Michael Jackson songs, but boy! Was I wrong!

Sisters, yes?

Ashley and I were practically hoarse by the time the show was over and I may have cried a few times, but only out of sheer happiness and appreciation for what I was unfolding right before my eyes. Yes, there were definitely theatrical elements like performers flying through the air on wires and contortionists who were so flexible they could pick their own wedgies with their teeth, but it was mostly just incredible, incredible dancing and lighting effects. The three of us were in awe for the entire show and were legitimately bummed out when it was over (not to mention I got incredibly upset and sad that Michael Jackson is dead. I kept telling my mom that the show was a giant conspiracy and he was going to show up at the end like, “Just kidding! I’m not dead! And I waited 2 years to show up in Indianapolis of all places to reveal myself!”) We started the long trek back to the parking garage blaring “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” on my mom’s iPhone and dancing at random passerby (and it was AGGRESSIVE dancing).

Here’s a video of some of the performer’s from the show on Dancing with the Stars:

Once we finally got home, the three of danced out our excess energy with Just Dance 3 on my mom’s wii. Gasping for breath between songs, Ashley and I lamented about how we wished we were professional dancers or at least had some semblance of performance ability. But I supposed Just Dance 3 is as close to stardom as we'll ever get.

Then I totally passed out and had weird dreams about Michael Jackson and the Titanic all night.

Sunday afternoon I drove back home to my love and we spent the afternoon napping and cuddling. He made us beer chicken in the crockpot and we ended our weekend watching the Oscars and reruns of TLC’s “My 600-Pound Life” (if there’s one thing I like, it’s a good weight-loss story).

We stayed up way too late and I’m paying the consequences today, but I fell asleep content and happy.

I was totally going to rock my bird shirt (which by the way, every time I put it on I start singing “Bird is the Word” and doing my interpretation of how I think a bird would dance—awkward and wing-y), but I overslept and barely had enough time to blast my head with some dry shampoo before I rushed out the door.

What are you looking forward to this week?

Old Dog, meet New Trick.

2012-02-22T17:30:00.001-05:00

You’re never too old or too set in your ways to learn a thing or two. You can teach an old dog a new trick. And I, Courtney P, in all of my infinite wisdom of any and all things cake or pop culture-related, am still humble enough to admit that I do not in fact “know it all” and that I am always willing and able learn.

Things I Learned This Week

Don’t leave an empty box of Sour Skittles in your purse because the leftover sour powder will spill on everything, including your cell phone, and you will inevitably cradle said phone between your shoulder and cheek and you will immediately begin to wonder why your eyeball is on fire.
Stop running outside with your hair up in a long pony tail. Otherwise, your hair will swing side to side into your peripheral vision and you will think a bird is attacking you and will you react accordingly.
All interoffice disputes, no matter how big or how inconsequential, can be solved with a good ol’ fashion Nerf gun fight.
If you’re ever wondering how many emails you have to send containing the world “incontinence” instead of “inconvenience” before you realize you can’t spell to save your life and that spell check is not your friend, the answer is 3. This week marks the third time over the past couple of years I have done this in my professional career.
When Clayton says, “Stop using my razor or else it’s going to rip my face apart the next time I shave”, it should not be taken as a personal challenge.
Every time a dog suddenly gets up and walks out of the room, 99.9% of the time it’s because he farted … bad.
If you ever want to hear me at my worst with the absolute raunchiest, most foul language that would make even Eminem blush, just plop me down in front of a game of Mario Kart.
After watching last night's winter finale of Glee, I came to the realization that I'm far more emotionally invested in a TV show about a bunch of singing high school dorks than any rational 26 year-old should be.
My “normal” level of sweating during the day seems to be everyone else’s “I just ran a marathon in the desert with a dead cow strapped to my back” level. Deodorant, anyone?

11 Things

2012-02-21T17:30:00.014-05:00

NOTE: Blogger majorly failed at posting my blog for me last night. It was supposed to have automatically posted while I was away at dance class, but I just logged on and found out that it most definitely didn't. But, here it is anyway. Rawr. Stupid technology.

Believe it or not, I’m still kind of recouping from the anxiety attack I had over the weekend, so I really don’t have much fodder for ye olde blog today. It’s taken me several days to get my focus back on track and unfortunately my thoughts have been elsewhere (except of the meltdown I suffered in a dressing room last night, but that’s a story for a different day). Ever since Friday night, I’ve been going to bed with a nagging fear that I’m going to wake up panicking or dry heaving. So Clay has been perched on the end of the bed after he tucks me in and doesn’t leave the room until I can say “I will be okay” ... and really mean it.

Oh, that boy.

In addition to the helpful comments I got on yesterday’s post, I received an email from and old acquaintance that I knew many years ago when I was a pre-teen attending youth group at a local church. She read my blog and offered words of encouragement, recanting her own struggles with anxiety and how for her, her anxiety cycle usually began with negative thinking that spiraled out of control to what she referred to as a “mental ‘runaway train’”. I’m very guilty of being a “worst case scenario” kind of girl and she’s right, the second that I felt that something was amiss (my tummy distress), I got lost on a runaway train of “what ifs” and ultimately made myself sick.

Her email was a tremendous help to my spirit.

I’m very much looking forward to Salsa class tonight. I think it’s our second to last class for the session and once I made up my mind to stop caring about whether or not I was “switching partners”, the whole experience has become much more enjoyable. Clay and I aren’t ready to spend a night out on the town dancing at “da club” by any means, but we’re not half bad. We laugh at each other most of the time, and I think that’s half the fun. We’re clearly not ever going to rely on dancing as a discernible skill on either of our resumes, but I’m glad we tried something new.

Next on our agenda?

Cake decorating class.

It’s going to be better than Salsa simply because it involves cake. If Salsa had cake, I might have tried harder.

Salsa cake. I win.

But since I have the emotional capacity of a wet sock and am a hot mess after my whole “ordeal” this weekend, today’s blog content with be short and sweet. I’ve seen a blog meme going around where people share 11 random things about themselves, answer 11 questions written by the person who tagged them, and then come up with 11 questions for the people they want to tag. Well, that sounds like 33 too many random questions, but I liked the 11 questions BacktoHerRoots came up with, so I’m going to use those … and then not tag anyone. Because I’m hateful like that. I just needed some blog content, people. Work with me

What’s on your favorite pizza?

I never get to eat my favorite pizza because most people find it nasty and no one ever wants to split it with me. Believe it or not, I actually can’t eat a whole pizza by myself and usually find myself settling for just plain cheese (if I’m cheating that day) or tons of veggies. But if I was building my dream pizza, it would be ham and pineapple. Something about the sweet/salty combo paired with cheese (if I’m cheating that day) gets me.

Who is your all-time favorite band or musical artist? Why?

If you asked me this question at 13, I’d answer “The Backstreet Boys” simply because I didn’t know any better. However, as an adult, I still don’t know if I have any better of an answer. For some reason, I’m just not really into most of the stuff that’s come out in the past several years. Sure, Adele sings to my soul, but is she my favorite? Nah. She’s not my favorite because I can’t belt out her gut-wrenching lyrics in my car without sounding like a moron. Her voice is too good and I feel like I’m not allowed to sing along. But I will happily tell you that my all-time favorite band/musical artist is The Beach Boys. I just love them. I’ve seen them in concert, I know all their songs, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is the song Clay and I danced to at our wedding, and they are one of the few bands whose cds I can play on repeat for days on end. Pet Sounds is probably the best album ever.

Do you like your name? If not, what would you rename yourself?

I really don’t like my name, honestly. (Sorry, Mom!) The Courtney’s I’ve seen in books or movies are usually slutty air-heads, and I just don’t feel like I have a “smart” name. I think it stems back to a book I had when I was 8 or so called My Crazy Cousin Courtney. Sure, it was the early 90s, so any of the shenanigans this Courtney character got herself into were tame, but everyone could tell that if this book were released in 2012, she's be addicted to meth and on the Maury Povich Show. However, I can’t see myself being called anything else, so I don’t know if I could rename myself if given the opportunity. But I will say this, I think my first and middle name flow together really well. Courtney Alexis just sounds pretty to me.

What would be your last meal?

It would be a giant hamburger with French fries and a chocolate milkshake. I’ve never pretended to have a sophisticated pallet.

What countries have you visited?

I’ve only been out of the country once and that was when we went to Mexico for our honeymoon. Clay and I are currently constructing our traveling “bucket list” with him wanting to explore Italy and me, France.

What was the last book that you read? Did you like it?

The last book I read (reread, actually) was Jen Lancaster’s “Pretty In Plaid”. I reread it because I love it. Lancaster is the queen of hilarious nonfiction.

What super power would you most like to have? Why?

The ability to control everything around me. And if I can’t have that, I’ll settle for the ability for 100 dollar bills to fly out of my butt at random.

If failure wasn’t possible, what’s the one thing you would try to do?

*sigh* I’ve always wanted to be an actress. I used to write Leonardo DiCaprio fan letters telling him we could be friends once I moved to Hollywood and made it big. I was a loser, even at the tender age of 10. More realistically? I’d be a published author.

What is usually your first thought when you wake up?

Do I really need to wash my hair or can I sleep for twenty extra minutes?

What are your pet peeves?

I hate answering this question simply because I feel like I have more pet peeves than the average person and I’m afraid that makes me some kind of awful jerk or something. But, you asked, so here goes:

People who manipulate conversations and situations to be only about them like they’re the only person who’s problems/topics of conversation matter
Poor listeners
People microwaving food at work and making the rest of the office smell whatever monstrosity they’re eating
Mouth breathers
People with absolutely zero regard for anyone other than themselves (i.e. people who think everyone wants to hear them hum, people who stop in the middle of the aisle at the store and make others walk around them)
Talking obsessively about money (I have no desire to hear about how much you spent on something, how much money you make, how much is in your savings account, and why people who have to take out loans or have debt are bad)
People who whine about their situation with no intention of actually participating in making it better

Vanilla or chocolate?

What a silly question! I used to not care for chocolate in the slightest, but after meeting Clayton, he got me hooked. I have to have it at least once a week. It’s a new food group.

Anxiety about getting anxiety

2012-02-20T17:45:00.000-05:00

You want an honest-to-goodness assessment of what my weekend was like?

It was absolutely retched.

And it’s entirely my own fault.

Friday night after coming home from Indy and passing out in bed for a quick nap, Clay and I headed out to the grocery store to buy food for the upcoming weekend. Napping in the middle of the day/early evening usually makes me feel slightly nauseous, but on Friday I was too sleepy to care about the consequences. So I wandered around the grocery store feeling a little sick and needing a glass of water, but I ignored the feeling until I could get home and put some food in my stomach. However, after eating some soup and drinking a homemade smoothie, I started to get an overwhelming sense of fullness in my belly. I was so uncomfortable I could barely sit still and I ended up pacing the living room, hoping I could encourage my stomach to digest faster. I had no idea what brought on the pressure in my stomach because I really didn’t eat that much, but not being able to get comfortable triggered the worst panic attack I’ve ever had in my entire life.

I’ve had anxiety attacks in the past, but they usually require nothing more than a few minutes of Clayton rubbing my back to calm me down. But this was different. This was horrible. I convulsed and shook for hours … literally, hours. I was so sick of the pressure rising in my stomach that I thought I needed to throw up and I actually ended up dry heaving several times. Ugh, it was awful.

After a few hours of crying and shaking, I was begging Clayton to take me to the hospital. Why? I don’t know. I figured they had some good drugs over there that could slow my heart rate and relax my body since I was clearly failing at doing that myself. Clayton refused, insisting I didn’t need to go to the emergency room and that I just needed to lie down.

He gave me a Tylenol PM and I laid on the living room floor watching Shipping Wars on the Discovery Channel and zoning in and out of stress dreams about Twitter (weird, right?) until about 5:30 a.m. when Clay finally drug me upstairs.

I cannot even begin to describe how traumatic that whole ordeal was. And I did it to myself … for no real reason. My stomach felt so uneasy that I convinced myself I needed to throw up and triggered an anxiety attack. In retrospect, it’s so lame and pathetic, but at the time I was more scared than I had ever been in my life. I legitimately thought I wasn’t going to make it through the night. When you’re experiencing anxiety, there is no such thing as logic. Your stressors don’t even have to make sense.

And I paid for that anxiety attack for the rest of the weekend. The dry heaving wreaked havoc on my muscles and my back, shoulders and neck were too sore to move the next morning. My heart rate was elevated for long that it hurt to breathe. My stomach was queasy and pissed off at me, so it got its revenge by giving me absolutely no appetite for the next two days. Over the course of the weekend I ate 2 bagels and that was it. I tried to run on Sunday afternoon, but my 6 miles were painful and slow because I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in almost 36 hours.

I was a mess.

So guess what? Now I have anxiety about getting anxiety.

Your mind is a powerful thing and I was so focused on feeling sick and uncomfortable, that I continued to feel that way. You can most definitely make yourself by just thinking about it. And that’s exactly what I did. And I ended up ruining not only my weekend, but my husband’s too because he stayed awake with me and took me on a drive at 3:00 a.m. on Friday night to see if that would distract me. He’s an angel, but I put him through hell. So on top of being ashamed and embarrassed of what I did to myself, I feel guilty for raking Clayton through it, too.

Has something like that ever happened to any of you? What did you do to cope with it? What can I do to prevent it from happening again? I’m scared that I have the capability of doing something like that to myself.

Remember how I talked about needing to meditate? Yeah.

Someone please leave a comment reassuring me that at least someone out there had a good weekend.

Laser light show

2012-02-17T15:12:00.000-05:00

I'm working in the Indy office today, so I won't be home until later in the evening. Since I'm usually pooped out after the long commute in 5 o'clock traffic, I'll be too sleepy/grouchy/hungry to formulate a clever post. That being said, today's post is minimal. Sure, it's minimal in length, but it's cute to the max! (I can't believe I just typed that).

In case there was still any lingering doubt that my dog is the quirkiest, most adorable beagle on the planet:

Joey's Laser Light

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You're welcome, America.

Happy Friday!

I am me

2012-02-16T19:09:00.003-05:00

Obsessed with Instagram, I am!

Do you remember a few weeks back when I wrote a post praising Bethenny Frankel’s article on Glamour magazine’s website about creating a mission statement that expresses your personal brand and life goals?

Since I wrote that post, I've been reflecting on my own mission statement. I've actually been agonizing over it for quite a while because hey, it’s the statement that defines me as a person and it's not a commitment that should be entered into lightly (kind of like marriage, unless you're a Kardashian. Then it's just a commitment you can half-ass and profit from). I even considered making my mission statement rhyme, but I quickly put the brakes on that idea and told myself to simmer down because perhaps that’s a little too ambitious … and stupid. But then again, I'm also the girl who would add clever quips and anecdotes to my English tests just to give my answers "more flare". That's me, always striving to be a lyrical wordsmith genius.

But nevertheless, I finally crafted what I believe to be the perfect mission statement for one Mrs. Courtney P., and I’d like to share it with the entire blog-o-sphere in hopes it will inspire you to write your own. (It even has a DC Comic reference!)

Design credits to my rockin' sister, Ashley.
I'm dying on the inside because I no longer have Adobe Creative Suite
on my laptop because its memory "can't handle it".

I will not be a Robin to anyone's Batman. I'm not going to waste my time playing second fiddle to anyone. I've had so many experiences in my teens and early adulthood in which I played the sidekick, or the supporting actor, and it kept me from shining brightly on my own. Being a Robin kept me in the shadows and kept my opinions and thoughts submissive to someone else's, and it was my own fault that I didn't have a leg to stand on. The only Robin I will ever be is Clayton's because he's my hubby... and lucky for him, I look awesome in green tights. But on the flip-side, I don't want to be anyone's Batman either. You're fantastic and capable on your own, and so am I.
I will live an honest, simple life governed by love and gratitude, not by vanity or material gains. Simplicity makes for a happy life. Strip away the unnecessary, the clutter, and don't make it overly complicated. Expect less. I believe I can do this by having a compassionate heart that values love over money, popularity, vanity, and material possessions. I will always be mindful of my blessings and know that what I have is always enough.
I will live a life worthy of my potential. I will not waste my talents with idle hands or by settling for what is easiest. I'll stay true to my passions.

If you haven’t considered coming up with your own mission statement, I highly encourage you to do so. I cemented my statement less than 3 days ago, but I’ve already referred to it twice since then to redirect my focus. In fact, Clayton has one too. He wasn’t entirely sure how to articulate his, but luckily for him he married a word factory and I helped him crank out a delightful mission statement that encompasses everything my husband stands for.

And of course, since we’re both huge dorks, we're getting our statements printed and put into small frames that we will keep on our corresponding nightstands. That way, we can be reminded of our life's purpose every morning when we open our eyes. It's like being smacked in the face with inspiration every single day—works better than a cup of coffee and it doesn't give you dragon breath (or if you're me, gas).

A mushy Valentine's Day post written by the sap in me

2012-02-14T17:30:00.003-05:00

Happy Valentine’s Day, kiddos! I hope you’re able to take some time and cherish your loved ones today, even if it's as something as small as simply saying, "I love you". That’s not to say we shouldn’t be cherishing our loves ones every day, but I am guilty of getting swept up in the romance and fun of pink and red hearts, chocolates, and flowers.

Why are these cupcakes not in
or around my mouth right now?

Valentine’s Day was always super fun in elementary school, and I always looked forward to going to the store with my mom to pick out the Valentines I would sign for my classmates. My box of cards was typically puppy or Lisa Frank-themed (obviously), and sometimes my mom would even allow my sister and I to tape a little piece of candy to the envelopes (My best friends always got two pieces). When I got to school on the big day, each of my classmates had paper bags decorated with glitter and stickers tacked to the blackboard, waiting to be filled with the delicious goodies and cards. I remember almost dying from embarrassment in second grade when a curly-headed blonde boy, who was eternally in love with me and tried to kiss me every day at recess, dropped a one-pound chocolate heart that said “I Love You” into my bag and caused it to fall off the blackboard. Boys were disgusting. I was humiliated.

Fast forward to junior high and middle school and Valentine’s Day suddenly sucked. Never having a boyfriend or anything remotely close except for my secret crushes that I talked about incessantly in my diary, I would wake up every morning on Valentine’s Day with a renewed feeling of hope that maybe, just maybe the popular guy who had I had never talked to and who had no idea I liked him would choose that special day to tape a bouquet of roses to my locker and confess his undying teenage love for me. So, you can imagine the heart-crushing disappointment I felt right around 2:45 when the final bell rang and I was no closer to having my romantic fairytale. I’d watch the popular, pretty girls prance up and down the hallways with their single red rose and tiny box of chocolates and suddenly want to slit my wrists.

But now, as a married woman, I can finally appreciate and actually anticipate Valentine’s Day again. However, it holds a completely different meaning for me than it did as a little girl who only had classroom parties and received a vase of carnations from her father. Now I finally understand the romantic aspect of the holiday and the universal message to celebrate everyone we love, not just spouses or boyfriends. I wish I could build a time machine and go back in time to find 14-year old me (I wouldn’t be hard to miss. I’d be the girl standing awkwardly in the hallway with self-cut bangs and acne wearing softball sweats and staring at the ground. Gosh, was it a wonder I never dated?). I would tell her not to worry so much about stupid boys who couldn’t express feelings beyond “I want to touch your boobies” and “I’m sad that you’re not letting me touch your boobies.” I’d tell her that at that age, Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a social standing and the exchange of silly trinkets wasn’t so much about legitimate affection as it was about keeping up appearances. I’d reassure her to keep on waiting because one day, a handsome lad with a scruffy beard and a big black truck would pop into her life and won't need flowers or candy to make her feel special every day.

Aw...

Puke.

I know.

But welcome to my life. My husband is ridiculously wonderful that every day we spend together is so cute it's vomit-inducing.

I don’t care that some people say Valentine’s Day is a holiday built on nothing more than consumerism. I don’t care if it’s just a government ploy to make the floral industry millions of dollars. WHO CARES?! How can any holiday that celebrates love be inherently bad?

Courtney Confessions: Valetine's Day edition

2012-02-13T17:30:00.000-05:00

Since we have Salsa class on Tuesday night, Valentine's Day came early in our house. I left the apartment on Saturday afternoon to run a few errands and when I came home, Clayton was not only painting the staircase for me (when he wrestled our treadmill up the stairs on move-in day, he took a considerable amount of paint off the railing), but a bouquet of black magic roses and Dove chocolates were waiting for me on the table. As I started to shove chocolately treats into my face at record speed, Clay walked over and presented me with a tiny jewelry box that was cupped into his paint-stained hands. We don't always do gifts on Valentine's Day, so when he pulls out all of the stops, it's always a delightful surprise that catches me off guard. I unwrapped a beautiful pair of round cut diamond earrings and was so excited and thankful that I actually offered him a bite of one of my chocolates.

But just one.

So I have to confess, even though I hear stories and cute little anecdotes about the sweet, thoughtful things that other boyfriends and husbands do for the special ladies in their lives, I still believe Clayton is the best of the best. His parents raised him right, and he's not wonderful just because he occasionally buys me sparkly things (although that's a pretty rad perk of being his wife). He's wonderful because he scrapes my car windshield in the morning before he leaves for work, and because he makes me laugh so hard that sometimes I think wearing adult diapers might not be that bad of an idea, and because he brings me brings me home Icees from the gas station just because he was thinking about me, and because every day when I get to work there's an email from him in my inbox telling me good morning, and because he can reference every good SNL skit there ever was, and because after almost 9 years of being with me he still treats me like every day's Valentine's Day.

So keeping with the theme of "confessions", here are some Courtney Confessions for the week:

I put my "Journey: Greatest Hits" cd in my car this morning and immediately started to search for "Any Way You Want It", but the opening bars to "Don't Stop Believing" started playing and even though I told myself I was going to skip past that song because it's the only Journey song most people know, I ended up not only listening to it, but I actually shouted it out the window to passerby.
Clay and I watched Frozen this weekend, a movie about 3 college kids who get caught on a ski lift after the ski resort closes for the night. When my co-workers mentioned the movie on Friday I scoffed at them because hey, how could a ski lift be scary? Logic would tell you to just jump off the ski lift and walk down the hill back to the parking lot. However, after actually watching Frozen, logic indeed told me NEVER to jump off a ski lift unless you have fancy shattering your legs and being devoured of wolves. Now I'm petrified of riding on a ski lift even though I've only been snowboarding once in my entire life.
After listening to it five times during my 4-mile recovery run on Sunday, I'm embarrassed to admit that LMFAO's "Shots" is my new go-to running jam.
The last two times I made cookies I put in double the amount of salt required because I clearly cannot read a measuring spoon.
Too lazy to walk over to the hall closet and find the measuring tape, Joey has now become a sufficient unit of measurement. This weekend we determined that our kitchen table is three and a half Joeys long.
These are the words I'm living by this week:

Ohhm!

The guy who makes love to his car

2012-02-09T17:30:00.004-05:00

On my drive home after work, I heard a radio commercial for the next episode of the Anderson show with Anderson Cooper. Tomorrow's guests include one of the teenage girls from upstate New York who, along with 14 other girls, has been afflicted with an illness that causes Tourette's Syndrome-like symptoms. Additionally, there will also be a young man from the upcoming season of TLC's My Strange Addiction who has a physical attraction to his car.

My ears perked up when I heard "a man who has a physical attraction to his car" because come on, who doesn't love a good freak show? When I got home, I immediately sat down and Googled the TV episode.

From cinemablend.com:

Coming up next month, TLC has the third season of My Strange Addiction set to premiere. The series explores some especially unusual addictions and habits that people partake in. Given what TLC has revealed about the upcoming new season, that’s probably putting it mildly. We have a video from the Season 3 premiere that will give you a better idea of some of the issues people are dealing with.

Among the addicts set to be featured in the new season is a man who has taken his obsession with his car to the next level. His love for his vehicle includes sexual attraction. Per the information TLC sent out, "While most people just wax their prized vehicles, Nathaniel takes his on dates and makes love to it."

If you watch the Youtube video, there's no way you missed this conversation:

Dad: "I don't get it. How does that work? How can you have sex with a car?"

Nathaniel: "Mainly, it's just a lot of rubbing up against him."

^^My head just exploded.

I think that any normal reaction to behavior like this would be pure disgust or bewilderment and trust me, mine was. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to doubt my initial feelings (although the sex thing is probably the creepiest thing I've ever heard). There is so much drama involved in dating nowadays and it's so hard to find a boyfriend or girlfriend who isn't clingy or a complete psycho—who can blame someone for giving up on all of that nonsense and starting a relationship with something that he knows can never hurt or betray him? Sure, his car can't return his affection or engage him in deep, meaningful conversation, but his car can always be there for him when he needs it ... so long as he never forgets where he parked it. And his car will never leave him for someone else ... so long as he never sells it.

Yes, the more I thought about it, the less strange the guy who loves his car became.

In fact, the more I reflected on me and my own life, the more I began to understand.

Where I'm at and other life updates

2012-02-08T16:30:00.001-05:00

It's been well over a month since I posted my New Year's Goals, so I figured it might be nice to revisit where I'm at with said "resolutions" (I use the term loosely) and see if I'm on track with my wishes for 2012 and beyond.

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR.

Sorry.

Anyway ...

Continue to try and eat a cleaner, healthier diet

I am actually not failing miserably at this goal. Quite the opposite, really. Throughout the day my diet is packed with mostly fresh, raw fruits and veggies and the dinners I've been making for Clay and I have been low-fat and packed full of protein. I successfully turned Clayton on (Meow!) to the taste of barely-steamed broccoli. While he typically likes his veggies to be soft and mushy when cooked, he became a big fan of slightly crunchy leafy greens with a sprinkling of sea salt (and he's getting more vitamins and minerals this way). You're welcome, sir. You may pay me back in kisses, foot rubs, or Trident Layers.

Like a good girl, I've been pouring almond milk over my generic Honey Bunches of Oats every morning and haven't missed cow milk at all. Cheese, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. I've caught myself leering at Clayton's slices of provolone cheese on more than one occasion and when I went out to dinner with my mom last Friday, I totally caved and ordered fried artichoke hearts with a creamy Parmesan dipping sauce. It was shameful and went against my new eating rules ... and it was delicious.

So I do slip up on my "no dairy" thing from time to time, but it's okay. I'm not perfect and life's too short not to have mozzarella sticks.(Obviously I spelled mozzarella wrong the first time I attempt to type it, and my computer tried to correct it to "motherland". I was like, "No! That's not even close to what I was trying to write! But hey, now that I think about it, it's kind of the same thing." Ah, a woman and her cheese.) I go out of my way not to have dairy whenever possible and if I can't avoid it because I'm at the mercy of someone else's cooking or fried artichoke hearts are on the menu, ah well. C'est la vie.

Be a better wifey

I guess the best way to update you on this goal is to go straight to the source. I asked Clay to weigh in with his thoughts about my wifey abilities. His response:

You’re being super, doll face.
As the matter of fact, that could be your superhero name: Super Doll-Face!

He flatters.

Meditate

The other day I laid on the floor of my bedroom and concentrated really hard on how many different outfits I could put together for spring with the clothes currently in my closet and I ended up falling asleep. I believe this counts.

(So to answer you question: No, I've been bad about meditating.)

Try new things

Done and done! In addition to salsa class (which last night I discovered I am AMAZING at after 4 glasses of red wine), I've been trying new recipes like it's going out of style. For a Super Bowl party on Sunday I baked a batch of dark chocolate brownies from scratch that were made with honey rather than sugar. They looked like black tar when they came out of the oven, but I slapped some icing on top and no one even noticed. I know those "new things" are really tame in the great scheme of things, but given the nasty car repair bills we were slammed with right after Christmas, I can't exactly afford to go skydiving.

But you know what other new thing I tried?

I got a tattoo! I win.

Be a better fur mommy

Joey and I go on walks every afternoon when I come home for lunch. I also make it a point to take him on a second long walk several nights a week (sometimes I even get Clayton to come, too!). Aside from walks, we're tossing his Frisbee for him far more often and on several occasions I'll lay on the floor and burrow under his blankets with him so I can tickle his feet. I'm not sure if these things make me a "better" fur mommy or not, but I feel like as long as Joey has the safest, most cozy life possible, then I'm doing my job right. And every night that he stretches out on the couch, legs spread-eagle and belly facing the sky, he tells me I am. :)

Stay positive, kick out the negative

Can you believe I'm actually doing this one? It's amazing how much more peaceful I've felt the past several weeks simply because I'm refusing to dwell on negative thoughts or feelings. In fact, when I start giving Clayton my typical play-by-play about how much of a screw-up I am and how much I hate myself, we just kind of let the conversation taper off and change the subject. Why? Because it's a boring, pointless conversation and it serves no purpose other than making me feel worse about myself. And I no longer have the mental capacity to tolerate my crazy shenanigans. And I don't want to tucker out Clayton with the responsibility of talking me down off the ledge anymore.

In fact, last night Clay was tucking me in bed (yes, I get tucked in like a 2 year-old every night before he goes downstairs and plays video games) and instead of rehashing my fears or worries about the upcoming day, we started joking around and I ended up laughing so hard I was crying and choking because I couldn't breathe. Going to bed with a smile on your face makes for a far better night's sleep.

Stop stressing my running times

Meh, this one has been hit or miss. When I run on the treadmill, I don't stress my times at all simply because I can run ridiculously fast on a treadmill (I punch in the speed I want and get two choices: either keep up or fall off). However, running out on the trail is a different story. Sunday was only my third outside run of 2012 (bad weather, being sick, and my sweet, sweet tattoo), and I looked down at my watch every time I passed a mile marker. I know it's good to check your time to make sure your pace is on track, but if I come in a few seconds slower than what I anticipated, I start panicking and speed up (which ultimately tires me out too quickly). I just have to keep telling myself that just over a year and a half ago I was running almost 11 minute miles. The fact that I'm in the low 8's (and proved to myself this weekend that I can maintain that speed for 8 miles) should be satisfying enough. And I keep telling myself that is it. I didn't set out to become the world's fastest runner. I just wanted to run. So I am.

Give More

I have to admit, I haven't made leaps and bounds with this goal. I've been pretty focused on all of the above which, in hindsight, are mostly selfish or self-serving goals on my part. I could try to spin it (as the PR pro in me is wont to do) and argue that I can't really help others until I help myself and yadda yadda yadda, but that's just a cop-out. I need to work on this one. Hold me accountable, please.

But I have been drinking more wine and by doing so I am inadvertently stimulating the economy. That's giving, right?

Focus on my writing

I guess my report on this goal depends on what you define as "success". I'm trying harder to blog, but I've yet to sit down at my laptop and write something for consideration elsewhere. When I walk Joey in the afternoons I kick around book/article ideas in my head (multitasking!), but nothing moves me enough to actually get started. I have no idea which direction to go and where I fit in as a writer. At first I thought I wanted to try my hand at chick lit, but the more I write this blog and the more I examine my own personal reading lists, I see that I clearly favor nonfiction humor. I dunno. My life just isn't interesting enough to warrant a whole book:

Chapter 1: How to Maintain a Lovely Crop of Acne at the Age of 26
Chapter 2: How To Break It To Your Spouse That You May Actually Love a Kitchen Appliance
Chapter 3: Runner's Diarrhea: What You Can Do to Avoid a Potentially Socially-Crippling Situation
Chapter 4: Why My Dog is Cuter Than Yours and Why You Should Care
Chapter 5: WHY WON'T KELLY CLARKSON BE MY FRIEND?
Chapter 6: S**T My Husband Says
Chapter 7: How to Avoid Passing Gas During a Hot Yoga Class
Chapter 8: Why Does Everything About Me and My Existence Involve Bodily Functions?
Chapter 9: Facebook Might Be Ruining My Life
Chapter 10: How to Giant Squid-proof Your House, Condo or Apartment

How are your 2012 goals coming along?

Things I'm Loving Right This Very Second

2012-02-07T13:48:00.003-05:00

Remember that one time I had a "Things I Love Thursday" segment on my blog?

Me either.

But you know what I do have for you today?

Things I'm Lovin' Right This Very Second!
(and yes, I spelled "lovin'" without a "g" because I'm hip like that)

My owl ring

Some people say the best things in life are free. I happen to believe that the best things in life cost $1.99 and have free shipping on ebay. Behold! My little owl ring with black gemstone eyes! I don't know how or why I developed this strange affinity to all things that go "Hoot!" in the night, but I'm totally crushing on owls right now.

Cardigans

Maybe it's because I'm really an old lady trapped in a 20-something's body or maybe it's because I used to be Mr. Rodgers in another life, but I do love me some cardigans. My wardrobe is actually morphing into a librarian's wet dream right as we speak. Last week I went to Aeropostale and found the perfect cardigan (light-weight material, 3/4 length sleeves with pockets) for a measly $12. In fact, it was so nice, I bought it twice ... in two different colors. For the past several months it's been my personal mission to start weeding out pieces of my wardrobe that I bought just for the sake of being trendy or fitting in and am slowly replacing them with things that I feel comfortable in, that feel like me and not poser Courtney. Enter my new cardigans.

Random, brilliant bursts of ingenuity

So if you were paying attention to me and my whining last week, you're already aware that my super spectacular tattoo prevented me from running. I reluctantly took a week off so I could let my tattoo heal, but even after a whole week of walking on my treadmill in pinch-y ballet slippers to avoid having anything rub on it, the tattoo was still scabbed and I was desperate. So on Sunday morning I woke up with the thought, "Dangit, I am going to run today." Thankfully, I saved an old pair of running shoes and had no problem destroying them by ripping out the tongue and cutting a hole so my tattoo could breathe. I did the same for an old sock and then Bam! I was ready to go. I hit the trail and had one of the best 8-mile runs of my life. I was almost weeping with joy as I pounded the pavement.

The fact that the Ghostbusters theme song just started
playing on my Spotify playlist right this very second

When I was a sprout, my sister and I had a basement full of Ghostbusters toys including a plastic proton pack and a warehouse play set that included real Slimer slime. Why? Because we were the coolest 6 and 8-year-olds on the planet.

Who ya gonna call!?

Sure as heck not me because ghosts make me go my scared place.

Cowboy Take Me Away

2012-02-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine posted this picture to her Facebook profile last week and it was one of those things that I thought was just too, too awesome not pass along (and I'm not sure where she got it, so I cannot properly source it).

Side rant: I'm actually starting to hate using terms like "awesome" or "amazing" because I believe that they are wildly overused in our culture and their frequent appearance in our daily language really downplays the impact and meaning of the words. The definition of the word "awesome" is something that is awe-inspiring, breathtaking. God is awesome. The Grand Canyon is awesome. Sure, the steak you had for dinner was really good, but it wasn't "awesome". Your new stilettos are adorable, but they aren't "amazing" because they didn't do something unbelievable like breathe the universe into existence. (Actually never mind, I'll give that one to you. I don't care who you are, stilettos ARE amazing.)

But I digress ...

I wanted to share the above quote with you because it perfectly summarizes the one thing I wrestle with the absolute most. My blog has had many a post about my hobby of comparing myself to other women and feeling as if I always come up short. And Steven Furtlick put those feelings into perspective for me in the neatest way possible.

Of course I feel inferior to other women! Why? Because just like me, every other women on the planet wants to put their best face forward and appear as if they have it all together. Why would you want to be anything but your best?

I've been viewing these glossy, gorgeous women as only what they want me and the rest of the world to see, but I compare it to everything about myself that others can't see. I know my faults, but I don't know theirs. I know what I'm insecure about, but I don't now what they're insecure about. I know what I need to work on, but I don't know what they need to work on. I only see the pretty finished package of these women, not their own inner struggles.

And other women probably see me that way too (imagine my shock and horror when I stumbled upon that revelation!).

For example, sometimes I feel like I'm not lady-like, like I'm missing the specific gene that makes a woman elegant, graceful and sweet. So if I see another women who seems to possess all of those qualities and more, I start beating myself up for being such a bumbling gorilla. Never mind that, like all humans, that particular woman burps and farts int he privacy of her own home juuuuuuust like everyone else. And she probably has horrible morning breath and snaps at her husband occasionally, but is she going to let the public be aware of that? Of course not. She doesn't want the world to know she's not perfect any more than I do.

I feel like women, particularly American women, need to put on a show at all times. We know we're not perfect, but we have to pretend like we are. Even if we're tired, PMS-ing or nursing a broken heart, we're expected to perform our daily activities like we're happy, sparkling Barbie dolls. What example are we setting for each other? I think we're only furthering reiterating the stereotypes of how women are expected to act and look. By being a slave to our cultural and societal standards, we're inadvertently keeping the ever-rising bar high for other women, too.

Sorry, it's far too early in the morning for such a deep revelation, but I started writing this last night after I dipped out of a Super Bowl party early to come back home and spend time with Joey (he was alone a lot this weekend and I felt bad abandoning him for more than few hours).

I honestly wasn't too invested in the big game this year because I was mostly bitter that the Super Bowl was taking place in my state and my beloved Indianapolis Colts weren't even close to being contenders. But, so long as Tom Brady didn't win, I didn't really care. At least one Manning got to be there ...

Ugh, and let's not even get started on the "is he or isn't he coming back?" debate that's been plaguing our home since September.

Clay, my mom and I headed to Super Bowl Village on Friday night and somehow in between kicking beer cans that were littering the street out of our way and avoiding drunk people, we accidentally stumbled right into the center of the LMFAO concert. I'm not sure if I was more shocked that little kids were singing along with the lyrics to "Shots" or that my 62 year-old mother news the words to "Party Rock Anthem".

I have a super busy work day ahead of me, so I'm going to sign off now. But, before I go, I'll leave you with the latest and greatest email exchange with the hubs:

Me: "Listening to the Dixie Chick's "Cowboy Take Me Away" makes me wish that you were a cowboy."

Clay: "Yeah, sorry about that. Big disappointment, huh?"

Me: "Yeah, you suck. Thanks for letting me down."

Clay: "Love me ..."

Me: "Is there like a cowboy certification class or something you could take?"

Clay: "I just need to move to southern Texas for a few years. That's certification enough, I think."

Me: "Sounds great! See ya in six months."

Clay: "Ok. Well ... I guess I'm just gonna go then?"

Me: "Yup. Pack plenty of underwear."

That one time I almost lost a lot of money

2012-02-02T16:29:00.000-05:00

I had a heart attack and died on Tuesday. But it's okay, I'm totally fine now. I've since been revived and given new life and a second chance.

Tuesday I received the final tax form I had been waiting for in order for Clay and I to complete our taxes. I was already pretty nervous about getting said form because it was the 1099 MISC form from the freelance colorist work I did last year (back when I got to stay at home all day and stay in my pajamas. *sigh* I had it so good.), and I wasn't sure if I did the whole "estimated tax payments" thing right. Last January when I inquired HR Block about the estimated taxes process, they couldn't help me. In fact, the tax specialist's exact words to me were, "I don't know how to do that." Really? If you're a tax professional who doesn't know anything about taxes, I'm sorry honey, but you're clearly in the wrong professional. So she "guessed" at how I should go about making the payments and I blindly believed what she said because she was wearing a name tag and standing next to a green sign that said "HR Block" (ever the trusting one, I am.).

But I digress ...

I finally entered my 1099 MISC form into my Turbo Tax account and immediately felt my heart drop into my butt as I watched the huge amount of money the government owed us plummet from happy green digits down to the ugliest red numbers I'd ever seen in my life.

I know my English isn't always that great, but I'm pretty sure that Turbo Tax was telling me that Clay and I owed the government an amount of money with far too many zeros tacked onto the end of it.

And, continuing with my proven track-record of handling life's problems with the dignity and grace of Mother Teresa, I flippin' lost my mind. I excused myself from my cubicle, marched to the front door of our office building, and shakily dialed my hubby's work number into my cell phone.

"Hi," I said, breathlessly. "I know you can't take personal calls at work, but I didn't trust myself to type this out in an email without a heavy peppering of the f' word. Now, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but we owe the government a lot of money."

A bit fat crocodile tear ran down my face as I listened to Clay's silence.

Needless to say, the rest of our respective days were not so great.

I spent a few minutes of my afternoon instant messaging a Turbo Tax customer service rep who was incredibly kind and gave me a lot of positive insight to why we ended up owing money. Sure, I had paid enough in estimated taxes, but because I was "self-employed" and had my own business, I had a self-employment tax and had to pay medicaid/medicare tax. Crappy news, yes, but I was happy to at least have an answer as to what happened.

After Salsa class (which we didn't want to go to. I was so preoccupied with our financial distress that there was no way I could pay attention to what my feet were doing), Clay and I came up with a way to pay back the government. We had the money to pay it, but we would have to pinch pennies for awhile until we could recoup the cost. Again, we kept reminding ourselves that by the grace of God we had the funds to pay the government in full and that's what was most important. We would be fine. We would just be less comfortable for awhile.

I had been dramatic when I recanted what happened to my sister and made declarations that Clay and I were headed to the poor house, but my sister brought me back to reality very quickly:

"Not to downplay what you're going through, but you've said that you and Clay were 'broke' before, but you always have money tucked away."

I was ready to go on the defensive a bit with my response, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was totally right. I was over-reacting. In my head, savings account exist for emergencies. I never even considered it spending money. So whenever we would have to take a huge chunk of money from it (I'm looking at you, my G6), I immediately start spazzing out that our stability is disappearing and it begins triggering these horrible "what if?" scenarios that ultimately end with me begging for change on the street corner in a ratty coat. But the point is, it's savings. It's there for a reason. We used it ... for its intended purpose. Get over it, Courtney.

That night I made peace with our fate and even managed to laugh myself silly when Clayton started making fun of the cramp I got in my toe from looking at my tattoo. I even went to work the next morning feeling pretty okay. If anything, this whole situation was just a gentle reminder from God that I need to end my fixation on our finances and keep my frivolous spending in check.

So I began my work day as usual, answering emails and pitching my authors' books.

Then my friend in accounting, bless her sweet, sweet heart, sent me an email asking me if I had already submitted my taxes. At that point I had not—I was waiting until I could go to HR Block this weekend and ~~give them a piece of my mind~~ politely ask for their "Second Glance" service to be sure we didn't miss anything.

"Great!" my friend replied. "It looks like there was a mistake on your 1099 form. The amount of income you received was put in the wrong box."

I quickly got the correct information from her and almost flung my keyboard off of my desk as I fumbled to log into TurboTax.com and fix the error. I typed the income amount into its proper box and watched in stunned amazement as the once furiously red numbers of how much money we owed skyrocketed back up and changed green again. I sat at my desk paralyzed for a moment.

What just happened?

Did God really just answer a prayer that I didn't even consider praying?

I felt like that silly kid from YouTube that was videotaped by his father after getting laughing at the dentist: "IS THIS REAL LIFE!?"

Then, since I had now entered my income into its proper box, Turbo Tax started asking me a series of questions about the income which ultimately led me to discover that I didn't "have my own business". This was simply extra income I did as an independent contractor. There was no tax.

The government actually owed us now.

Clayton thought he being punk'd when I called to share the good news.

My office BFF high-fived me and did her "happy dance".

I almost wet myself in relief.

And then I thanked God ... repeatedly.

God, if You're listening (or reading, which would be really weird. But if you are reading, are you using a PC or a Mac?) ... thank You.

Getting Tattooed with Ron Paul

2012-01-31T11:52:00.006-05:00

I did it.

I got inked.

This is my little tattoo, it's alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll mine and I love it dearly. It gives my Kitchen Aid mixer some seriously tough competition for my affection.

(I'm just kidding, Mixie. Mamma loves you.)

But the darnedest of it all is that I haven't actually seen my tattoo since Shannon, my tattoo artist, finished me up and said, "You're good to go, darlin'". (I have such a soft spot in my heart for large, salty men who call me semi-sexist nicknames.) My foot was immediately wrapped up in a bandage and I was handed a list of instructions that included, "Do NOT remove your bandage for 24 hours. NO PEEKING!" (and I'm all about following rules ... unless of course that rule is "DO NOT BE AWESOME".)

So out of fear of a tall, heavily tattooed gentleman breaking into my house and yelling at me for peeking, I've satisfied my urge to "look" by admiring the picture I took of my tat with my iPod Touch at the parlor. (Look at me, referring to it as "my tat". I'm considerably more bada$$ already!) I will be allowed to remove the bandage tonight after Salsa class so I can clean it (read: have CLAYTON be the one to wash off the plasma and bloody goo the instructions said are inevitably seeping from the tattoo) and start letting it air out.

But I have to be honest guys, I will not be able to run for about a week and the idea of not being able to run filled me with so much anxiety that I could not fall asleep last night. (And when I turned on my lamp to see what time it was, for some reason I couldn't see out of my left eye for a second and I immediately started freaking out that I was having an allergic reaction to my tattoo and went blind ... but that's a story for later.) But seriously, no running for at least a week? I don't know what I'm going to do. It hasn't even been 24 hours since I got the tattoo and I'm already royally spazzing out about not getting my "runner's fix". Clayton all but hates me because I won't shut up about it and his softeners for making me feel better are getting shall we say, significantly less soft.

So cue my "worse case scenario" meltdown. I was already down for the count two weeks ago when I was on my death bed with a raging cold, so my running was just recently forced to the back burner while my body "healed" and "rested" and did other stupid things that were a huge waste of time. And now I have to take another break so my ink can heal?! (Ha, "my ink". Oh, I'm positively adorable.) Gah! I almost had a conniption fit this morning when I logged onto Facebook and saw one of my friends had posted a status update about how excited she was to run on her lunch break. I almost left a comment and said, "RUB IT IN WHY DON'T YOU!?", but I can't afford to lose any more friends, so I held my tongue.

I had an outside run scheduled after work last night since global warming is providing us with the most delightful winter ever, but when we found out the tattoo shop closed at 8, I skipped my run so I could make sure we could permanently mark my body before we met our friends for dinner. I promised myself I'd get a good run in on the treadmill later that night; I would simply wrap the dickens out of my newly inked foot.

No can do. I can't have socks rubbing on the tattoo or wear constricting shoes that suffocate the wound while it heals. It can cause the scab to fall off prematurely and result in holes in the ink lines. We don't want that do we?

But, like a woman truly devoted to her craft, I did a Pilates DVD late last night to make sure I got in at least some form of physical activity. I didn't even break a sweat.

This is going to be the longest week of my life.

But this was my choice. And I do not regret it at all.

I actually went to the tattoo parlor over the weekend, my little Hermes wings idea in hand and was prepared to leave with a new piece of body art. Shannon drew something up and asked me where I wanted to slap it down on my body. I showed him the spot right below my ankle bone and said, "Here, please."

You know what he said next? He said, "No." As in no, I will not do that. According to Shannon, in all of his infinite tattooing wisdom, the skin located on that particular place of the ankle is naturally very wrinkly and creases with movement. Long story short, I'd end up hating it. It would become warped and faded and quite frankly, he didn't want word getting out that he did a tattoo that turned out so awful. "Trust me, honey," (There we go again with the sexist terms of endearment. Be still my heart...), "I wouldn't send a sale out the door unless I really believed you shouldn't get it."

Back to the drawing board.

Clay and I spent the rest of the weekend pouring over tattoo ideas. The more we looked online, the less in love I became with the wings idea. In the world of commemorative running tattoos, Hermes wings were incredibly cliche and I certainly did not want to be that unoriginal. I wanted something petite and something that not only represented my passion for running and how it changed my life, but a tattoo that symbolized me and what I stood for outside of the sport.

After a few hours, I finally found the one I wanted. It was exactly what I didn't know I was looking for. I determined how big I wanted it and where it would sit on my foot, and then I went out searching for one more detail I could add that would truly make it my own. That's when I remember one of my favorite Bible passages:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us..." Hebrews 12:1

Come on, it even has the word "run" in it!

It was decided.

So Monday night we went back to the tattoo parlor and I ponied up my drawing to Shannon. "That's pretty cute," he said, taking the photo from me. (If I can get a man covered from head to toe in motorcycles and flaming skulls to say that something is "cute", I clearly win at life.) His response to my idea only reassured me even more that I was making the right decision. When I originally went to the parlor over the weekend, I could hardly speak I was so wrought with nervousness and doubt. But when I stood in that very same spot last night, I felt nothing but excitement.

Then he busted out the needles. It was good that I was sitting down, because I felt my knees go a bit weak. More so then pain, I had a million concerns about hepatitis and other icky, needle-y diseases. "So, what exactly does it feel like?" I asked timidly. "Will it be like a flu shot needle poking me repeatedly?"

Wrong question to ask.

Why? Because he never actually answered my question. Rather, Clayton and Shannon got into a lengthy discussion about how flu shots might actually be a government conspiracy and their widespread, encouraged use was wildly reminiscent of the book 1984.

Within a span of 5 minutes, conversation went from the evils of flu shots to how awesome Ron Paul is and somewhere in between all of that I got tattooed. I was a quiet observer even though the entire process was happening to me. Clay stood back behind the front counter (no hovering!) and talked to Shannon about the Republican Primary and Shannon mentioned how Ron Paul was going to "get America back to the Constitution" and I was all like, "Hi, life-changing event happening right here to me. Okay, thanks!"

But listening to their political debate (in a tattoo parlor that had a neon sign in the window in the shape of a sperm that said "Cum in") kept me relaxed and not so focused on any discomfort I was feeling. At the beginning of the tattoo, I couldn't get my foot to stop shaking. Shannon had to stop a few times and say, "I can't draw a straight ink line if you're shivering all over the place." After assuring him I was a big girl and just had some anxiety, I was able to absorb myself in any and all things Ron Paul and finally stop shaking like a Polaroid picture.

And I wasn't even shaking because it hurt because really, it didn't. When he was working directly over a nerve it was a lot more uncomfortable than I thought it would be, but did it ever hurt? No. Not at all.

I was very pleased with the finished product and I can't wait to admire it later tonight (P.S. Shannon said that when I left the shop the first time, his assistant said I would never come back. Ha! Now what, dude? Now what?!.). I told Shannon I wasn't sure if I could even get a tattoo on my right foot because I have some scar tissue that goes all the way up to my toes, but he said it was going to be just fine. And that was a huge relief. I was very adamant about getting this on my "ugly foot". Most of the scarring from my accident is located right where the top of my foot meets my shin and after using an Instagram filter, it's not very noticeable in the picture I took (thank goodness).

While I was sitting in a black leather chair waiting to get started and shaking like a chihuahua, I suddenly had the most vivid memory of when I was 17 years old, driving my old 96' white Plymouth Neon in the summertime with the windows rolled down. I don't know why I began thinking about that time in my life or why it was such a strong recollection, but I couldn't get it out of my head the entire time I was getting my tattoo. Did 17 year-old me think that she would ever get a tattoo? She was so Ms. PlayItSafe with everything. What would she think? Would she think it was trashy or would she think it was "totally rad"? This whole tattoo experience gave me an unshakably deep desire to make her proud of me.

Maybe my mind was flooded with that memory because being 17 years-old in my car, the car I bought with my own part-time job money, were some of the care-free days of my entire life. At 17 years of age, the whole world is literally laid out for you, beckoning you to take any route you please. Responsibility and obligation hasn't laid on the breaks, broken your spirit or impaired your dreams. The future is huge, it's limitless and it's yours for the taking.

Maybe my tattoo symbolizes a tiny rebellion, or a brief foray back to the same crossroads of my youth where I had the power to make my life anything I wanted it to be. I'm 26 years old. While my tattoo is permanent, I am not. I'm not set in my ways. I still have the ability to adapt and change as I need or want to.

Leave it me to make mountains out of molehills and make my dinky tattoo such an earth-shatteringly big deal.

But my goodness, I think that's the most freeing feeling of all.

Mission (Statement) Possible

2012-01-30T15:33:00.005-05:00

I recently read an older article on Glamour.com written by Bethenny Frankel called "Bethenny Frankel Says You Need a Personal Mission Statement". For those of you who don’t know, Bethenny Frankel gained fame after appearing on Real Housewives of New York City and making margaritas for skinny girls. Now apparently she’s some kind of foodie author and was on Celebrity Apprentice or something like that. I don’t know (nor do I particularly care); I just really liked her article.

from Glamour

Essentially, Bethenny believes that everyone needs their own personal mission statement as a way to remind yourself of who you are, who you want to be, and help you stay true to your course of becoming that person. According to Bethenny, “We all know that life is about the journey, but having a destination in mind gives a sense of order, structure, and, crucially, calm.”

Bethenny advises readers reflect on what we want out of life, to mediate on it. Then, once we’ve established what’s important to us, we owe it to ourselves to shout it from the rooftops, write it down, or bury it in the ground. “Just live your mission in your own way,” she writes. “…try to see everything you do as part of it.”

And in perhaps the most profound piece of advice in the entire article, Bethenny instructs us to “embrace everything life hands you—and when in doubt, consult your mission statement. IT has the answer.”

For a woman who weighs less than 100 pounds, that’s some serious food for thought. I found Bethenny’s article to be incredibly inspiring and it has encouraged me to start reflecting on my life and craft my own mission statement. Especially after my self-image nuclear meltdown last week, I find it crucial that I have a tangible purpose that will help me achieve and maintain true happiness with myself.

What is it that I want out of life? What direction do I want to go? What is my ultimate goal for my time here on earth?

While I was on Pinterest.com pinning up a storm this weekend, I stumbled upon a quote of sorts that spoke to me so loudly that I ended up printing it out and hanging it my office cubicle today, directly above my laptop in such an obvious place that I have no choice but to look at it multiple times a day.

from theberry.com

While I find that quote to be among one of the most personally moving things I’ve ever read, those are someone else’s words and not my own. Clearly I value the “let go and let God” mantra, but how can I rewrite that idea to fit in my life, into Courtney’s life, specifically?

Obviously, if I were to take a quick stab at my mission statement, it would probably end up being something along the lines of “I was told there would be cake?”, which is exactly why I’m not going with my gut reaction for this project. Rather, I’m going to take some time to reflect and do the whole infamously clichéd soul-searching “thing” to find my true happiness and how to put it into words. I know what’s important to me and what I value most in this earthly life, but how can I put that into a concise statement that will help me refocus and regroup every time I read it?

Of course, like all things in my life, I will keep you updated.

What is your mission statement?

You're on my heart like a tattoo ... (sorry, that was lame)

2012-01-27T10:28:00.000-05:00

On and off for the past couple of years, Clay and I have discussed the idea of me getting tattoo. My hubby already has one and has been forever talking about adding more to his body ink collection, and all of his chatter has been rubbing off on me, too. But whenever we'd get into a serious discussion about my getting one, it always ended the same.

Me: "I'd love to get a tattoo."

Clay: "I'd love for you to get one."

Me: "Yes, I'm definitely getting a tattoo."

Clay: "Great! I'll go with you."

Me: "Nah, I'm not getting a tattoo."

I'm probably the most indecisive person on the planet, and not being able to make decisions on my own does not mix well with permanent body art. Whenever I need to make a choice pertaining to myself, I automatically seek out the opinions of others (i.e. my husband, mom and sister), as if I don't trust myself to reach the right conclusion on my own. I am extremely guilty of letting other people's opinions sway my own.

That's just not something you can do with a tattoo. You get a tattoo because YOU want one. You don't get a tattoo because YOU don't want one. It's that easy.

And that's the inner dialogue I've been having with myself for the past several months.

Do I want a tattoo? Yes.

Am I scared of getting a tattoo? Definitely.

But why?

I think what I'm most scared of is that I will come to regret my tattoo, that I will look down at it and feel remorse rather than happiness. And if I end up hating my tattoo, there's really not too much I can do about short of going through a painful removal procedure. Come at me with a laser, and I will kill you ...

This is so wrong. So, so wrong.

But you know what? We only get one life and I've spent the majority of mine playing way too safe and not taking any chances. What's the edgiest thing I've ever done? I pierced my belly button my sophomore year of college but ended up taking it out less than a year later when it got infected.

So for the past few months, the idea of getting a tattoo has been exciting me more and more. I've been mulling over in my head for about a year now about what specifically I would get and where, and I think the secret to not regretting my decision is all in the tattoo's placement.

I refuse to get a tattoo that does not hold meaning or symbolize something important to me. I don't think etching something permanent on your body should be taken lightly or done just because "you thought it was cute". I mean, by all means, get a butterfly tattooed on your butt if your dad was a butterfly or something, but getting a giant ship inked into your chest because you were on a boat that one time? Pass.

Naturally, my first idea was to get my favorite Bible verses tattooed in Latin. Many people have personal slogans or mantras that help them navigate through life's peaks and valleys, and I've always leaned on this particular passage no matter what the circumstance:

Psalms 27:1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

Clay and I kicked around the idea of having the scripture tattooed on my rib cage, directly beneath and to the side of one my lady bits. The script would be small and discreet, only be visible to my husband or when I was gallivanting around the beach in my bikini (which surprisingly, happens a lot). However, the more I thought about it, the more I started to worry that such a location would feel a little too intrusive. I feel like a tattoo in that location has the ability to go from cool to trashy very easily.

So after a lot thought and reflection on what I value and how I feel about myself as a person, I decided that if I do take the plunge, I will be getting a tattoo of a little set of wings on the side of my foot, right beneath that ball of the ankle. (It might be the fibula? I don't know, I'm not a doctor. Or smart.)

Anyway, I would like to get this tattoo on my right food, my "ugly" foot. My foot that has a giant burn scar from a childhood accident and the infamous janky toe that turns purple every time I run a mini. My foot that I'm embarrassed of. I want to get a little set of wings, similar to the wings on the sandals of Hermes, the Greek god who served the messenger between the gods and humans. To me, the wings symbolize that even though my foot is "ugly", with it I can run strong and fast. Even though I will never be "perfect" and even though my body itself will never be "perfect", it is mine and it is still capable of doing amazing things.

I shared the idea with Clayton and he just can't picture. He keeps saying he'd have to see it first in order to decide whether or not he likes it. Which to me, simply means, "I don't like that at all." But, like I said earlier, you can't get a tattoo or not get a tattoo for anyone else but yourself.

God might really be a stand-up comedian

2012-01-26T16:06:00.002-05:00

Exactly one week ago my beloved little car started making a weird rumbly noise from it's undercarriage that sounded like sadness and money coming out of my pocket. Every time I put on my brakes, Gia the G6 (yes, I name all my cars. That's not weird. Everyone does it. Clay's car is named Travis the Stratus) made this really weird noise that if I had to type it out, sounded exactly like this:

"Garawljsdfsdifuiosdufsdkljflamsdlaksdmpaskudioaysdgsakdhgasd!"

Not believing the noise could legitimately be a problem, I causally mentioned it to Clayton later that night. Just a few days later he was driving the car, heard the brake noise for himself and said,"Yeah, that sounds bad. We have to take it back to Eric" (Eric's our mechanic). Cue the major bitch and moan fest because I was NOT happy with that idea. We just paid Eric's mortgage 2 weeks ago when we took my car in for some problem that I am not automobile savvy enough to identify. How could something else be wrong already?

Clay emailed me earlier this afternoon to let me know that my car was fixed and ready to pick up, purposely leaving out the miniscule detail of how much this new repair was going to cost us.

"...and?" I emailed in return, waiting with bated breath for his response.

$450.

I've paid $1150 dollars in car repairs in less than one month's time.

Oh God, You DO have a sense of humor. Or You clearly do not like me ... but I'm so adorable and awesome, I know that can't be it. You are a funny, funny deity.

So with an unwelcome feeling of déjà vu, Clay and I moved more money out of our savings account and continued to help put my mechanic's kids through college. Ugh, it's so frustrating. Again, we are in the financial position to pay for this expense out of pocket and I cannot even express how thankful I am for being able to do that, but still, do you know how many bottles of wine $450 could buy?

About 56.

The answer is about 56.

In other news, Clay and I were both in good enough health to attend Salsa class on Tuesday night and it appears that I was able to overcome the post traumatic stress disorder I developed from our very first class. Thanks to our germ-infested bodies, Clay and I opted NOT to switch dance partners throughout the night, stating that we didn't want to cough in anyone's face and risk passing along the plague. Safety first, ya know.

So our second lesson was far more relaxed and enjoyable than the first. In fact, I was so comfortable shimmying and shaking around the dance floor with my hubby that I was actually able to absorb the steps we we were leaning! Instead of worrying about standing practically nose to nose with a complete stranger or wondering if my deodorant was standing strong, I was able to practice the art of dance and *gasp!* have fun. I even asked the instructors questions and let her take me for spin on the dance floor when I wasn't fully comprehending one of the turns she just showed us.

At first I was slightly concerned the instructor would be irked at Clay and I for not playing her "Touch People We Don't Know" game, but after a certain point, I just didn't care. Sure, she repeatedly announced to the class, "We should keep switching parterners!" and kind of gave Clay and I few weird looks throughout the night as we danced in our own private corner, but screw it. I didn't care. For once in my life I didn't care if I was displeasing someone and ya know what? It was liberating.

Look at me being an adult!

Clay and I even practiced the new steps when we got home that night. Why? Because we're cute, that's why. And you know what? Clayton has some MOVES. When I pressed him to admit that he took ballet when he was a child, he was quick to inform me that he got he sweet dance moves from gym class. "They made us line dance and waltz for a week in gym," he said proudly. Oh Clayton, you are man of many mysteries ...

Oh, P.S. Thank you all so much for the love you showed me on Tuesday's post, Our bodies, myself. I got a lot of positive feedback from the post, mostly by comments and emails from other women who can totally identify what I've been going through most of my life. As usual, I found myself questioning whether or not I should click "publish" and send such a personal confession out in the internet universe, and I even panicked about it a little bit when I went to bed that night,but luckily you guys put my doubts to rest yet again. Thank you! I'm so glad I can be myself. But I just hope that it doesn't weird anyone out that one day I'll write a light-hearted post about my weekend adventures or crazy people who hoard own their urine and then turn around the next day and write an uber serious post about how I can't eat like a normal human being and secretly despise myself most of the time. Maybe I should change the name of my blog from Notably Neurotic to Slightly Schizophrenic?

And one more thing, I'm totally debating getting a tattoo and I want your thoughts. And I want them like, right now. Good on girls? Bad? Location? Context? Leave me a comment or an email or come find me on twitter at @MrsCourtneyP (But be aware, my tweets are protected and you have to request to follow me. It's not like my tweets are too amazing or sacred to share with the general public, it's just that the last time I "unprotected" my tweets, I got constant requests to follow porn stars and wart removal websites.). I tweet, and I tweet often.

You can even come find me on Pinterest. But be forewarned, I mostly pin pictures of puppies and cake.

Our bodies, myself

2012-01-24T17:30:00.010-05:00

Women's body issues fascinate me. I minored in gender studies in college and was so interested in the class material that I had a 4.0 GPA my final semester of school when I was taking 18 credit hours of 400-level women's studies courses. I did the readings and studied the material so intensely that I cranked out over 100 typed pages of papers and essays that semester, most of which were granted high A's for grades. (Ah, if only I approached my Calculus class with that same gusto ... both times I had to take it.)

Thanks to the media and the subsequent lies I let breed in my young teenage mind, I am a woman who has grown to both fear and loathe her body. Succumbing to my own negative thinking, I developed an eating disorder at the age of 13 and bought into the whispered belief that women shouldn't take up space. I favored sharp, boney angles in the female form rather than the soft, nurturing curves that are, by definition, the very essence of womanhood and female sexuality. To be hungry was to be in control and to give in to the temptation of food was an act of unbridled overindulgence. And to say that such ideas were illogical and inevitably damaging was lost on my starving, self-loathing ears.

Even having a mother who worked as a clinical psychologist couldn't save me. I bought into the falsehoods of what it meant to be female and I bought into them early—my fragile sense of self never stood a chance.

And I honestly don't believe I have ever fully recovered.

I only practiced the act of starving myself for a few months before my mom, step-dad and a teacher at school intervened. We had a few perfunctory come-to-Jesus talks, my eating was monitored at both school and at home, and it wasn't long before everything was easy peasy lemon squeezy again. My foray into the world of eating disorders was never serious enough to require outside therapy or hospitalization. I was lucky enough to have a mother whose relentless love refused to let me sink low enough into my own private hell to do any permanent damage to my body. I had simply become too skinny too fast and everyone was concerned.

Going through that experience, I remember mostly feeling immense relief once I was caught and my secret was brought into the light. Having someone else be privy to my self-abuse was a huge weight off of my shoulders and I was grateful to have someone else take the reins. Hating yourself is exhausting work;I was thankful to relinquish the control I had been fighting to passionately to keep.

But there was one other emotion I remember cultivating that year—guilt. I have a vivid memory of watching an episode of Oprah with my mother when I about 11 years old. We were living in a new city, coming fresh off of my parents; divorce, and I was already starting to feel weird and resentful about life. One afternoon after the bus dropped me off from school, I joined my mother on the couch and watched the day-time TV queen preach to her studio audience about the dangers of anorexia and bulimia. A sorrowful looking woman sat next to Oprah and tearfully rehashed the painful details of her decades-long struggle with binging and purging. Without turning away from the TV my mom said to me, "I would be so disappointed if you or your sister ever did anything like that to yourselves."

As an adult, I eat like a horse and do everything that a semi-well-mannered woman would do. I am a proud member of the Clean Plate Club at home and thanks to my athletic prowess on both the treadmill and softball fields, I can consume more food in one sitting than my husband. However, one of the unseen punishments of my brief disorded eating lingers heavily in my private thoughts on a continuous, 24/7 basis—I am preoccupied with the size of my body. It can't please me. And the way it changes scares me. I was over the moon when I lost upwards of 20 pounds in the past year, but openly cried only a few days ago when I discovered that my chest size has shrunk yet again and even my tiniest bra sags and bunches.

My body shows the tell-tale evidence of weight loss, and yet it's not good enough for me. Now certain parts are too small. I traded one misery for another and proved to myself that no matter what I do and no matter size I am, nothing will be good enough for me.

And I've been monitoring myself when I'm out in public dining with friends. If any of my girlfriends don't finish their meal, I'll automatically lay down my fork in surrender, too. But the reality is, I can always finish my food ... and probably their plates as well. But for some reason I'm afraid they'll judge me for being a piggy and think that I don't have any self-control. I can't let them think I don't have any self-control! Because if they have self-control, well dammit, then I have to have it, too.

All of that being said, I still continue to read articles and books about women and their bodies, hoping that maybe one day what I know to be true in my head will finally make it my heart. I think I've read every memoir on eating disorders our public library has to offer and I've even armed myself with a copy of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls just in case God finds it funny enough to bless me with a daughter of my own one day.

Today I saw an article from GirlieGirlArmy.com circulating on Facebook that I would love to share with you. It's called The Problem With Skinny Bashing and discuses the way women's curvy bodies are always pitted against skinny bodies in a sick competition of which is the preferred ideal. The article points to the notion that tearing one body type down to prove a point about another is detrimental to all women. Check out the article and let me know your thoughts!

Is this something that you struggle with, too?

My Cold: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

2012-01-23T17:30:00.001-05:00

I’m still sick. But I’ve successfully moved on to Phase 3 of my cold, so I’m confident that I am on the mend and will be back to normal by the end of this week. Phase 1 of my cold started earlier this week with an overall feeling of “blah”, a fever, and the insatiable desire to crawl under the covers and sleep for the next month. Stubbornly I fought my icky feelings and insisted I could maintain the same level of activity, thinking “Only wusses get sick”. However, after almost falling off the treadmill because my vision started to go fuzzy, I finally gave in an accepted that I was indeed sick. Phase 2 took full effect on Friday with a rampant sore throat that caused my voice to come out in almost an inaudible squeak, like a decibel that only dogs could hear. Even though Clay himself is still sick, he found this new development in my cold to be wildly hilarious and went out of his way to make me laugh in a weird, helium-sounding way that in turn, made him laugh so hard that he ended up coughing himself stupid.

Now I’m in the third (and hopefully final) stage of my cold which merely consists of a relentlessly stuffy nose and the desperate need to cough every two seconds. Clay and I could barely make it through Moneyball on Saturday because we both took turns hacking and had to constantly pause or rewind the movie to see what we failed to hear while the other person was busy coughing up their lung.

In fact, Clay’s coughing has been so bad for the past several days that we haven’t slept in the same bed for well over a week. Out of courtesy to me, Clay has opted to sleep on the couch until he’s sure that his coughing will subside and won’t keep me awake during the night. It’s an overwhelmingly sweet gesture on his part, but our big bed is getting really lonely and I miss his body warmth. I’m not even too sure what good his chivalrous offer to sleep downstairs is doing anyone because now both of our coughing is echoing all over the entirety of our townhouse. I’m sure our neighbors hate us.

Needless to say, most of our weekend was spent intravenously dumping cold medicine into our systems and sleeping. I had to laugh on Sunday night when I opened a cupboard and saw that we have 4 different, almost-empty bottles of various cold and flu-fighting concoctions. We could open our own pharmacy.

Despite being sick, Clay and I managed to pull ourselves together long enough to enjoy at least some of the weekend. Before meeting our friends for dinner on Saturday night, Clay and I pulled ourselves together enough to go outside and enjoy the ice storm we had the previous night by ice skating on our back porch (as evidenced below).

I was also really excited to come home from a long day at the Indy office on Friday night and discover that our dining room table had finally been delivered! Clayton’s grandmother is in the process of selling her home in Tennessee since she now lives here in town with my in-laws, and earlier this week a moving truck brought the rest of her furniture up to us. She promised to give Clay and I her table and matching buffet a couple of years ago, and I was over the moon to finally see it sitting pretty in our modest dining room. We’ll have to wait until we have a home or bigger townhouse before bringing the buffet over, but for now the dining room table is a perfect fit by itself. Apparently the table was purchased back in the 50s and is quite the antique. More than finally having a table big enough to actually invite people over for a meal without forcing them to sit on the floor, I’m so grateful to have something of hers. I don’t have any mementos or belongings of any of my own grandparents, so having something from Clay’s grandmother is really special.

I did have a slight meltdown on Saturday night that I am totally blaming on the numerous doses of Nyquil I had been shooting all weekend. After having dinner with our friends, we got back to our townhouse only to realize we forgot to stop and get more cough drops on the way home. My husband, the good provider that he is, told me to relax on the couch while he ran back out to get the medicine.

“Okay,” I squeaked with my scratchy throat, sounding adorably pathetic. He kissed me on the forehead and left.

Wal-Mart is not even a 5 minute drive from our house, so when he wasn’t back in a half hour I started to feel a little uneasy. We did just have a huge ice storm, so maybe it was taking him a bit longer than usual to navigate the icy roads? That’s when I noticed that his cell phone was laying on the coffee table.

45 minutes went by. I pulled myself off the couch and looked at the window in hopes of seeing his car coming up the road. I heard ambulances screaming in the distance. I tried not to let my mind wander too much.

60 minutes went by. I started full-on panicking. There’s no way it took an hour to make a 5 minute drive for cough drops. Awful scenarios started to play out in my head as I started pacing the living room, trying to figure out what I should do next. He had both sets of keys, plus his car was frozen shut from the storm, so I had no hope of driving out to Wal-Mart myself and looking for him.

What could I do? The only thing I could do in that moment was put on my coats and boots and start walking in the direction of Wal-Mart. Almost paralyzed with fear, I shakily open the front door and gingerly stepped out on the icy sidewalk. I slowly started walking towards the main road.

It was then that a car turned the corner and I almost peed myself with relief when I made out the familiar headlights of our car. Clay pulled into a parking spot and before he came to a completely stop, I beat on the passengers door until he unlocked it. I was prepared to yell at him for taking so long and making me worry, but when I opened the door and saw his face, I burst into tears. Like straight-up sobbing. Had my boogers not been frozen, snot surely would have been running out of my nose.

“WHERE WERE YOU!?” I shrieked, my voice cracking like a boy going through puberty.

Clay enveloped me in a hug and apologized profusely for worrying me. After I finally calmed down, Clay explained he took so long getting home because on his way out of the store, he got sucked into a conversation with an elderly Wal-Mart greeter. “She has Alzheimer’s,” he explained. “And she just needed someone to talk to. I knew I had to get home to you, but she kept talking and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I won’t leave without my cell phone ever again.”

Is my husband the greatest man in the whole world or what?

After the great success I had with my Mexican meatball stew, Clay and I are on a soup kick. So on Sunday night I continued our comfort food streak and made a giant pot of stuffed pepper soup (it’s like making stuffed pepper, but for lazy people). A few weeks ago our favorite diner had it on their lunch menu and I promised Clay I would try and recreate it at home. As it turns out, it’s a very simple recipe. All you need to do is brown a pound of lean ground beef, add half a cup of chopped red and green peppers each, and simmer for about 30 minutes with your favorite spices, chicken broth, diced tomatoes, and tomato sauce. You can serve it alone or, as we did, with a big spoonful of brown rice on top. One batch of soup makes about 8 servings, so we’ll thankfully be able to eat it several more days this week.

I finally had enough of my strength back on Sunday night to attempt the long run I so miserably failed at earlier that weekend. I didn't want to push myself to the full 7 miler I was scheduled for, but I cranked out 5 at a faster-than-normal pace with minimal discomfort. It was a huge relief. When I couldn't do my long run on Saturday morning I honest-to-goodness started crying. I hate being down for the count. I am not a weak person, but being so sick made me feel that way and I could not tolerate it.

How was your weekend?

Forever Lazy

2012-01-19T18:00:00.005-05:00

Okay, I'm just going to come right out and say it—I hate winter. I want it to be spring like, right now. No matter how much I think I'm looking forward to busting out my snugly mittens and warm, fuzzy sock hats, once temperatures drop below 40 degrees, I'm huddled on the couch with three blankets and a space heater pointed directly at my feet, bitching up a storm.

If winter and I were in high school, I would have dumped it by now and started dating its younger, sexier friend named Summer.

If I was in charge of the weather (and honestly, I'm not sure why I haven't been granted that responsibility yet), I'd let spring and summer proceed as usual, but after September 30th it would stay 65 degrees every day up until Christmas Eve where we would spontaneously experience an extreme temperature drop to 32 degrees and a snow storm. However, once we woke up on the morning of December 26th, the snow would be melted and the temperature would spring back up to a happy, tepid 65 degrees.

I think what rattles my cage most about winter is how blasted inconvenient the weather is when it comes to fashion. I hate wearing sweaters. They itch. In fact, I can't stand wearing long sleeves period. Unless it's a hoodie or some ah-mazing running t-shirt I acquired from registering for a cold-season race, I have no use for long sleeves. They bug me. I don't like things encasing my wrists. I barely wear my watch. If you bought me a breathtaking diamond tennis bracelet because I'm your favorite blogger, I'd probably have to turn you down and say, "No thank you." (okay, that's a lie. I wouldn't turn down diamonds. At the very least I'd go behind your back and have a jewler turn it into a necklace ... or pawn it for cake.)

Hey, what do you know—a cake made out of diamonds!

Anyway, I don't like wearing long sleeves or layers. It's heavy, it's constricting, and it's usually very itchy. Everything makes me itchy. I have a really cute red turtleneck sweater hanging in my closet from Victoria's Secret, but I've never worn it out in public because as soon as I pull it over my head, I start feeling claustrophobic and the wool fabric makes my hair frizzy. So I immediately rip it off in a frustrated flurry of aggression and static before tossing it into the back of my closet.

And yet, I haven't gotten rid of it. I think I'm holding out hope that one day I will put on that sweater and discover that it magically changed it's texture and fit.

But, as with all things, there is a silver lining to this time of the year. Sure, winter brings dry skin (and in my case, spontaneous nose bleeds), flyways that cannot be contained with any kind of serum or leave-in conditioner, and chapped lips, but it also brings two of my most favorite things ...

... scarves and boots.

Hey, what do you know—Ugg boots made out of cake!

All bitterness against winter aside, I do love me some cute winter boots. And I have several pairs in my closet to prove it. Even though Clayton detests skinny jeans and makes an audible sigh of disgust every time I yank a pair on, I think jeans tucked into boots is the hottest thing since the stir-up pants I used to wear with slouchy socks in elementary school (I was somewhat of a 2nd grade fashionista). I used to think Ugg boots were ghastly and would will city buses to run over all of the girls trotting around campus wearing them with booty shorts, but the look of those funky little boots has grown on me. While I don't favor the Ugg brand itself and would never dream of walking out of the house wearing booty shorts with them (people would go blind I tell you, BLIND), I like the concept of the shoe. My boots? American Eagle (Adorable and affordable). Come on, there's nothing worse than the dreaded wetness stain on the bottoms of your pants from trudging through snow. My cute little booties totally eliminate that problem and keep my tootsies roasty toasty all winter long.

Another way you can make your winter less miserable? Snuggies. And if that doesn't tickle your fancy, there's always the fashionable, head-turning, babe-magnet called Forever Lazy:

Clayton and I would both be lying if we said we never considered buying a pair of these for each other for Christmas. He was skeptical about the idea until I told him they have a little trap door in the back so you can go to the bathroom without taking them off. Then he was a believer, too.

I just love that the commercial had people modeling them outside at what looks to be some kind of barbeque or cookout. Psh, like anyone who owns a Forever Lazy and wears it in public has any friends or gets invited to parties.

The Plague

2012-01-18T17:29:00.001-05:00

Clay and I share everything—a life, a townhouse, a stinky beagle, money, sometimes the same pair of his old baseball sweatpants, one brain—so it makes total sense that we would share germs, too. After spending an entire weekend with Sicky McSickerson, I ended up contracting whatever plague was (and still is) infecting his body.

(Which he takes no responsibility for, by the way. I told him it was his fault I was ill and his response? "That's what happens when you can't keep your hands off of me." He's humble, that one.)

I called in sick to work yesterday because I spent the better part of the previous night sweating through my pj's and trying to swallow the hot coals that were burning in the back of my throat. Around 4:00 a.m. I was jolted from my fitful sleep by the sound of gale-force winds crashing against the side of our house. Flashes of lightning sparked outside the window and rumbles of thunder shook my bed frame. In my delirious, fevered state, I couldn't connect the dots that we were having inclement weather and I honest-to-goodness thought the world was coming to end. My suspicions were confirmed when I sat up and noticed Clayton was not laying in bed next to me.

"Great," I thought, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, "Clayton got raptured and I didn't."

But as it turns out, it wasn't the Apocalypse. It was just a rare January thunderstorm that did little to convince me that global warming is only a huge lie made up by the government.

I felt like I got ran over by a truck and with the swelling in the back of my throat, I could have sworn I had mumps. Then I freaked about having mumps and spent 20 minutes googling the symptoms on my Kindle Fire before I passed back out in bed.

I rarely get sick. I like to credit my dedication to fitness and healthy eating as the primary reason why I rarely succumb to the sniffles. Yet no matter how many precautions you take and despite how many multivitamins you shove into your system like Pez candy, your immune system will occasionally betray you anyway.

I don't even know what's wrong with me. I have a fever (and possibly the mumps?) and my throat feels like it was massaged with a cheese grater. A pounding sinus headache was a wonderful new development this morning, as well as the overwhelming desire to play Sleeping Beauty for a few hundred years. But my nose isn't stuffy yet and I don't have a cough. Clay had a straight-up common cold; I have no idea what he gave me.

Eventually I yanked my body out of bed and forced myself to get some work done because I felt guilty for being sick (I think being guilty is a hobby of mine). But after working on a few publicity documents, I fell back asleep for what felt like the millionth time.

Everything there after is a blur.

So much to my dismay, Clay and I skipped our salsa dance class since he was still leaking snot from his face and I was apparently a walking zombie. Over the weekend I practiced the basic steps we learned in our first session and was raring to redeem myself in this week's class. But Clayton figured it wouldn't do anyone any good if I was lurching around the studio in a Nyquil-incuded haze and he was sneezing on everyone and everything.

We're a sexy pair, he and I.

So you'll have to excuse my erratic posting schedule this week. Hopefully things will be back to normal by the weekend.

Dilated Pupils: Seeing is Believing

2012-01-16T17:30:00.017-05:00

I think I had the best #firstworldproblem ever this weekend and I just have to share it with you:

A friend and I were talking about how crazy downtown Indianapolis was going to be during the weekend of the Super Bowl and we joked that it would probably be better to just fly there rather than wrestle with the inevitable traffic on the highway. That led me to mentioning that my dad was a pilot and had his own plane (because it's pretty gosh darn cool, if you ask me!).

“Great!” my friend exclaimed. “He can fly us there!”

And that’s when I replied with the first-iest first world problem of them all: “Well, my dad and I don’t have a very good relationship, so I never get to take rides in his airplane.”

*****

So did everyone have a good weekend?

I sure did, despite the fact that I was nursing a sick hubby the entire time.

Friday afternoon I had to leave work a few minutes early to drive across town for the second part of my eye exam. I had the first part of my routine eye exam last Saturday, but opted not to have my pupils dilated because it’s not really a hobby of mine. However, my optometrist insisted I have it done at a later date, free of charge (and he had me there, I do like free things) just to make sure my eyes were really as healthy as he suspected they were.

So Clayton drove me out to his office again on Friday (Clayton was sent home from work early because his incessant coughing and hacking was driving his boss up the wall), and the dilation of my pupils began. And yes, my eyes are perfectly healthy and, according to my doctor, shaped like perfect footballs. I think that was a compliment? I don’t know, but it was very specific. And apparently I’m some kind of anomaly because I have a freckle on one my retinas and it was, in my doctor’s words, “just the cutest little thing ever”.

Have I mentioned my eye doctor is the best? Seriously, if you’re looking for a local optometrist who has impeccable personal hygiene, a sharp-tongue and quick wit, email me because I will be delighted to tell you who he is and where he’s located. It’s like getting an eye exam and a show.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had your pupils dilated, but to put it frankly, it sucks. It’s not pleasant in the slighest. It takes your normal sized, perfectly happy pupils and increases their size to that of a dinner mint or in my case, a dinner plate. It allows your doctor to look more deeply into your eyes (I don’t mean that romantically) and check out the overall health of your peepers. It takes about 20 minutes for the drops to fully take effect and once they do, you can’t see for crap and you have to walk around looking high for the next several hours. Since his office is located near a shopping facility, he instructed me to go shopping while I’ll waited for the drops to work their magic. About ten minutes in, I couldn’t no longer read price tags and I accidentally ran into a sunglasses kiosk. Who knew that taking extra light into your eyes could be SO PAINFUL?

After thoroughly making fun of me, Clay had a moment of compassion and offered to take me to a Chinese buffet for dinner. I couldn’t see the sushi I was eating, but it sure was delicious … what parts made it into my mouth anyway.

By Saturday my sight was restored and I banged out a stellar 6-mile run on our treadmill. I was too chicken to brave the elements outside and decided that running inside while watching an episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta was a better alternative to wheezing out in the snow.

That afternoon my mother drove down to meet me at Oliver Winery so we could sample wine and pick out the perfect bottle to compliment our dinner. Later that night I made her steak, roasted red potatoes and steamed broccoli in an effort to repay her for the millions of homecooked meals she made for us all these years. And I don’t know why, but I get nervous whenever I prepare anything to eat for my mother. I think it’s because she’s such a tremendous cook that I just want her to be pleased with me and feel confident that her culinary skills are being carried on by both of her daughters. But, she really liked my food and commended my broccoli for having the perfect amount of crunch and color.

I was beaming.


This part made me pee a little, I'm not gonna lie. But I couldn't help but notice that this demon's pupils were NOT dilated. (Photo from DigitalTrends.com)

After my mother left, Clay and I finished the movie Insidious on our Netflix Instant Queue. We attempted to watch it the night before, but my dilated pupils made everything 10 times creepier, and Clay shut it off after I started screaming something about over-stimulation and demons being able to see into my soul by way of my giant-sized pupils.

Sunday was fairly low-key. Clay was still pretty sick with his cold, so we skipped church and took it easy (and by taking it easy, I mean we did lots of laundry). Wanting to comfort him, I made a giant pot of Mexican meatball stew which actually ended up being the perfect meal on such a chilly January evening. I always feel like a million bucks when he takes the first bite of something I’ve cooked and sighs happily. Makes me feel like a good wifey.

He also gave me one of those compliments wrapped up in an insult that I’m so found of this weekend. After downing a massive glass of water after my run, a giant belch slipped out of me before I could stop it (Okay, that’s a lie. I was encouraging it to come out … with bravado). After the ground stopped shaking, Clay looked at me, disgusted, and said, “How can something so incredibly gross come out of something so incredibly cute?”

Aw. :)

I think?

My two left feet: Salsa dance class recap

2012-01-13T13:49:00.000-05:00

This is not me and my friends.

As you are all well aware, I’m not the best dancer in the world. Based on my marvelous, proven track record with Just Dance 3, it’s evident that I have about as much grace as wildebeest and shouldn’t be allowed around anything resembling a dance floor. Sure, I can bust out a great rendition of the “Cha-Cha Slide” at any wedding so long as there is a cash-only bar nearby, but when it comes to performing calculated dance steps that involve my hands and feet doing something different at the same time, forget about it. My lack of dancing ability is a humiliating, shameful secret that was very much exposed on Tuesday night at Clay’s and my first Salsa dance class.

I went into this class thinking, “Yay! I’m trying something fun and exciting with my husband! This is going to be great!” and apparently forgetting everything that was just mentioned above. But come on, I’ve done sports since I was in kindergarten. I’m used to being able to do participate in almost any type of athletic activity with at least some marginal amount of skill. That kind of stuff just comes easily to me. Could structured dancing really be much different?

Why yes, yes it can.

I knew I wasn’t going to be great at salsa dancing. In fact, I didn’t even count on the fact that I would be good at it. I just figured I’d be able to channel my inner volleyball and softball player and get through the motions without completely embarrassing my husband or drawing any sort of unwanted attention to myself.

We began class with an introduction to thebasic Salsa steps and learned to always step onto the balls of our feet. This is when I also learned that when looking into a mirror, I can’t tell the different between my right and left feet.

Our instructor told our class, “Salsa is the sexiest dance in the world.”

To which I promptly replied, “It won’t be after I get done with it.”

Our instructor told our class, “Salsa is all about the sway of the hips.”

To which I promptly replied, “Lucky for Salsa I’m built like a prepubescent boy and don’t have any hips.”

But never mind all that, I thought to myself. Clay and I can laugh and fumble through this together.

And that’s when our dance instructor dropped a bomb on me:

“I’d like for everyone to switch partners every couple of minutes,” she chirped, shimmying herself to the center of the room. “It will be a great way for you to get used to dancing with other people and recognizing their unique cues.”

This is not Clayton and I either.

I’m sorry, but I don’t plan on ever going out “for a night of Salsa dancing”, let along ever dancing with another dude. I took this class to dance with my hubs, and my hubs only. No other man in this room is prepared to take on the hot mess that is Courtney Alexis.

But switching partners we did. I am highly disappointed to report that out of the entire 50 minute class, I danced with Clayton for maybe 45 seconds of it. I tried to hide my feelings since everyone else seemed perfectly okay to dance with complete strangers, but inside I was seething. I mean, hello? Have we ever met? My name is Courtney and I’m all about personal space. I saw the movie Bubble Boy and it didn't seem like such a bad life. I’m awkward enough on my own, I do not need to be 6 inches from a complete stranger’s face.

“Make sure you look at your partner, not your feet,” our instructor interjected as she slinked by to check our progress. Um, no thank you.

I'm pretty sure that my face was about 50 shades of red during the entirety of that class. I do NOT do well in situations where I’m pushed outside my comfort zone. I’m always willing to try something new and will give almost anything a shot at least once (Cleary. I was there, right?), but I want to crawl out of my skin with anxiousness if I have to such a close encounter with someone I don’t know. I mean, holding hands and staring into the eyes of someone I’ve never met is the most awkward thing I can imagine. And on top of everything else, the Salsa is supposed to be sexy. And I’m sorry, but I don’t have a desire to do anything sexy with anyone but my husband. I’ve been less anxious at a pelvic exam.

I kept apologizing to everyone I danced with. I tried to justify my two left feet by mutter over and over again, “I’m a terrible dancer,” which of course, just made me even more nervous.

Occasionally my partner was another woman which made me feel a little better. And dancing with my friend Dan was fine because he and I talked about everything gross, embarrassing or inappropriate when we used to work together; he’s my bud.

And speaking of Dan, it sure didn’t help that we are taking this dance class with him and his wife, Emily. Dan and Emily who have taken swing dance lessons together. Emily who is a jazzercise instructor.

And she was amazing! Emily was so fluid in her movement and all of the steps came so easily to her. In fact, our instructor kept using Emily as her partner whenever she needed to demonstrate a step and after class took her for a freestyle spin across the studio floor. I was so impressed by Emily and so wildly embarrassed by own lack of skills.

And I hate that I let myself get so flustered during class. As you all know, I’m hopelessly tense and nervous at all times. And as you all also know, I completely hate that about myself. I wanted so badly to go into this class as a cool, confident chick who was totally willing to laugh at herself and have fun no matter how terrible she was. But that was not me. Not at all. And I kept reprimanding myself for being such an awkward idiot. I made it such much worse for myself.

So while I took the first dance class as a complete failure, I’m not going to let it get the best of me and prevent me from going back. I can’t deny the truth—this is a brand new experience for me, something of which I have no previous knowledge to fall back on. And learning something new definitely takes time and everyone in that studio is there to help, not to judge or make fun of me (gosh, at least I hope not!). This 8-week dance class will be a great way for me to work on getting used to being pushed outside of my comfort zone and an opportunity to stop being so damn critical of myself. No one expects me to leave this class and head straight for Dancing with the Stars: Bloggers Edition, And I need not put that kind of pressure on myself either. I’m not expected to be good at everything I try. It’s just a dance class. It’s supposed to be fun.

And I’m going to keep dancing until it is.

Snowy Courtney Confessions

2012-01-12T15:41:00.004-05:00

It snowed today and cold, wet weather makes my heart sad. That being said, I’m too sleepy/lazy to finish my recap of our first salsa dance class. So that leaves us with another round of Courtney Confessions in the meantime. Enjoy!

I'm a huge animal lover, but sloths seriously freak me out (Could you imagine if Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds was really The Sloths?... or worse yet, The Squids!?). There’s nothing cute about this picture. It looks like this sloth broke in through someone’s window and started making long distance phone calls.

I am overly sensitive to the perceived tone of other people’s email correspondences (especially if they type in all caps) and can easily feel like I'm being yelled at. So whenever I find myself in a tense situation, I re-read my emails at least twice before I hit “send” to make sure I don’t sound mean or condescending. I wish other people would do that before emailing me, too. I’m going to invent email screening software that asks you a series of questions every time you want to send out an angst-filled message. When you click “send”, that action will trigger a little warning box that will pop up and say, “You’re kind of coming across like a d**k, are you sure you want to send this?” And if you click “okay”, it will say, “Really? You must not deeply value your relationships with other people. Good luck with everything.”

Moments of extreme mushiness make Clayton’s skin crawl. Sappy things like writing poetry or standing outside my bedroom window with a boom box over his head are not my hubby’s forte. Don’t believe me? Ask him what’s the most romantic movie he’s ever seen and I can guarantee you his answer will be Terminator 3. That’s why when he actually says something sentimental or Notebook-worthy to me, it stops me in my tracks and makes my heart go all aflutter… just like the chicks in all of those sappy rom coms I can’t stand.

I added the Glee Karaoke app to my iPod Touch last night … and then promptly deleted it when I played back my rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and heard how horrible I sounded.

Whenever Clay has a 12-hour word day and I’m left to my own devices for dinner, 99% of the time I will always make a bowl of black beans and brown rice. It provides me with a nice, healthy meal and furthers my suspicions that if I weren’t married, I’d be a vegetarian.

When I was running 5 miles of hill repeats on my treadmill last night, I got bored and decided to entertain myself by getting into a screaming match with Joey (who was chewing on his tug-a-war on the floor next to me). We taught him to “speak” when he was a puppy … and have regretted that decision ever since.

I had lunch with a friend today and we got into a discussion about how some people prefer spending time alone. She confessed that at times she wished she could clone herself and just take her clone everywhere she went so she wouldn't have to worry about trying to socialize with someone she didn't know that well. It was, quite honestly, the best idea I've ever heard in my entire life.

Lessons of the fruit persuasion

2012-01-10T11:12:00.015-05:00

I hesitate to share this with you, mostly because it makes me look like a total idiot, but I feel like being honest with you about something that literally blew my mind Sunday night. This is probably old news to all of you smart, educated people out there. But to me? Life changing.

I ate a pomegranate.

For the first time.

Ever.

Sure, I've enjoyed pomegranate in my smoothies and as a lovely compliment to many mixed juices, but a pomegranate fruit on its own? Never. Eating a pomegranate actually never crossed my mind.

When Clay and I were at the grocery store on Saturday, he suggested we buy one. When he tossed the pomegranate in our shopping cart, I could have sworn it was some kind of turnip, but my hubby has a college degree and I had to trust in his ability to be able to correctly identify pieces of fruit. It sure didn't look delicious, but I decided to give it a shot.

And Sunday night we commenced with the mind blowing.

After I prepared our healthy dinner of grilled salmon and steamed veggies, Clay treated us to dessert by taking out a knife and getting to work on the pomegranate. I looked over his shoulder, curious to see what was inside.

This. This is what was inside:

Was anyone else besides me completely unaware that this is what a pomegranate looked like? Like a beehive? When Clayton's face didn't mirror my own bewildered expression, I realized that clearly I'm the only moron on the planet who had no idea what this fruit was all about. And to be honest, it kind of grossed me out. It doesn't look like a fruit so much as it looks like a giant pocket of red pimples. Like some kind of disease festering inside your body.

There was no way I was going to eat it.

"Come on, give it a try!" Clay said encouragingly, scooping out a few seeds and popping them into his mouth. "It's really good!"

No way. The thought of one of those red pockets exploding in my mouth made me want to gag. I have this weird thing about hating the texture of some fruits. The last time I ate a slice of orange, I immediately spit it back out into my napkin and yelled at Clayton for trying to poison me.

But then Clay hit me over the head with my own weakness: "I thought you were into trying new things," he said smugly.

Dangit. Fine.

Hesitantly, I placed one of the red capsules on my tongue. "Now what?" I mumbled.

"Eat it, dummy."

Ugh. Whatever.

I cringed in preparation for the vomiting that was about to take place all over my kitchen floor and bit down on the fruit.

A small burst of juice flooded my mouth and I swallowed quickly.

"Mmmm! That actually tastes like a pomegranate smoothie!" I concluded, surprised.

Clay looked at me like I was stupid. "I think you mean a pomegranate smoothie actually tastes like a pomegranate. And yes, you're right."

I've been eating the little seeds, or arils as they are properly called, like candy. In fact, I snacked on a few of them yesterday afternoon before my tempo run to utilize some of the sugar for a quick energy boost.

You learn something new every day! Even though that thing might be something that apparently everyone else in the world but you already knows.

But did you know that a lot of children and tweens can't even recognize most fruits and vegetables? In Jamie Oliver's 2010 TV show Food Revolution, the famed chef traveled to an elementary school with an arsenal of fruits and veggies that he asks the students to properly identify. And they couldn't! They thought tomatoes were potatoes! The kids sure like ketchup and french fries, but they don't realize what those food items are actually made of. And that's frigthening.

I plead the fifth on not being able to properly identify what a pomegranate looks like on the inside, but I have enough wherewithal to know what an egg plant is. Why? Because I was raised by parents who forced me to try different foods and as and adult I make it a point to eat a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables ever day. And you can bet your sweet bottom that my children will, too. My future children, bless their destined-to-be-gorgeous hearts, will be the snobs sitting smugly in the back of the classroom, sighing at the stupidity of their fellow kindergartners. "Um, hellooooooo! That's so obviously kale. DUH."

I love them already.

Nose Bleed Weekend

2012-01-09T16:55:00.004-05:00

I was a hobbit this weekend. I think I left my house twice. And after a crazy busy holiday season, I was more than happy to take a weekend to be completely and utterly lazy!

Friday night I worked in our Indy office and even though I made it home by 7 p.m., I was still wiped out when I walked through the front door. Driving to the north side of Indy made for a total of 4 hours of travel time and despite being wildly entertained the entire way up and back down by my office BFF (I was literally sweating from laughing so hard), I just wanted to eat and go to bed. Thanks to a leftover gift card from Christmas, Clay took me on a date and we enjoyed a lovely dinner out complete with white wine and a delicious veggie burger. And then it was his turn to make me laugh so hard I started to sweat. I'm starting to think I have a glandular problem.

After dinner we came back to the townhouse and played a shoot-um-up zombie video game on his xbox 360 (which ultimately gave me nightmares about zombies attacking me at an abandoned hospital) until I was too tired to keep my eyes open. So I left Clay to finish his video games while I dozed on the couch for a few minutes ... only to jolt myself awake because I was having a spontaneous nose bleed. I've never had a nose bleed in my entire life and trust me, I treated it like the Code Red national emergency it clearly was. ("Clay, is it ever going to stop bleeding?! Do I need an ice pack? Does this mean my brain is bleeding? Where is the blood coming from!?") The dry winter air is wreaking havoc on my body this year and my sinuses were so dried out I think the skin inside of my nose just tore open.

How's that for a sexy mental image?

So one of our two adventures out this weekend was straight to Target to buy a humidifier. Carrying the giant Vick's Warm Moisture Humidifier box through the crowded store confirmed one thing and one thing only:

I am officially an old woman.

The purchase of a humidifier actually bothered me way more than it should have. I've always associated humidifiers with babies, the elderly, the sickly, or sickly nerds in giant glasses who have to carry inhalers in their backpacks and are always picked last in dodge ball.

As I got into bed that night, I popped my mouth guard into place and I asked Clayton, "Did you turn on the humidifier for me?", solidifying my decent into true nerd-om while I simultaneously died a little on the inside. The only thing missing was a pocket protector and Star Trek lunch box.

Saturday night we were going to babysit Nicholas while his mommy and daddy ventured out to a work banquet, but his daddy came down with the flu on Friday and they had to stay home. Clay and I were bummed out as we were really looking forward to the opportunity to chill with the little guy and were interested to see if I could last an entire evening without losing or breaking someone else's child, but we totally understood. Tis' the season of sickness!

When babysitting plans fell through, Clay and I decided to make homemade pizza and bake a big batch of chocolate chocolate chip cookies (meaning I made those things while he sat in the other room and didn't contribute to the project at all) before we watched movies. We also took the Christmas decorations down (finally!) which actually ended up making our house seem less depressing because it no longer had a dilapidated pine tree dying in the corner of our living room.

We also made it a point to watch the New Hampshire Republican debate because ~~Clayton is~~ we are really interested in the election. Honestly, I'm everything that's wrong with America today. I wasn't sure who half of the candidates were and I picked my favorite based on whose tie I liked the most. Don't worry, I made a mental note to stop being a drain on society and actually learn about the people who could potentially makes big decisions that impact my life. After all, I've voted on American Idol a lot, so I totally know how this whole thing works.

Kidding, only kidding. But seriously, I need to be more educated on what's really important in this world and less concerned about whether or not Vinny will be leaving Seaside next week.

In hindsight, it was a relatively boring weekend. But isn't that just lovely every now and then? No where to go. No one to see. No responsibilities or prior commitments. It was the perfect break from our typical hustle and bustle, and the perfect excuse to sit around in our pajamas and shower less often.

I'm just kidding. I showered the appropriate amount of times.

How was your weekend?

Fantastical Fart Friday

2012-01-06T16:00:00.001-05:00

I'm working out of town today and thanks to rush hour traffic, I won't be home until late. Then I have a hot date with my hubby (meow!!!), so today's post will be short and sweet.

In fact, I'm feeling so lovey-dovey that today's post will not only be short and sweet, but it will be Clay-themed, too. I'm not sure if anyone else agrees (nor do I particularly care because of that whole "this is my blog and I can do whatever I want" thing), but I find my hubby to be hilarious and believe that everything he does is mind-blowingly adorable and charming (except when he gets beard hairs trapped in the sink or leaves his pants in the middle of the hallway).

Before I relay this email exchange between him and I, let me quickly lay down a little background for you. Yesterday my sister, Ashley, sent me an email containing nothing but this picture:

Why did Ashley send me this picture? And why did I feel the need to paste it on my blog in such a large size? Isn't obvious? It's about farts. And everyone knows the quickest way to my heart is with a good fart joke.

P.S. I want to make sure I'm extremely accurate and un-copyright infringe-y, so I put on my Big Girl journalist pants and researched this image to make sure I could correctly attribute its source since it wasn't included in the original email. This is where I found it. Take THAT, media law.

Anyway, this picture was too amazing to keep to myself, so I forwarded it to Clayton. And this was his response (and one of the billions of reasons why you should want him as your friend):

"Then I'll bet you've already wished on all the stars in this galaxy."

I almost had to excuse myself out of the room because I couldn't hold my laughter in. And it wasn't just normal laughter threatening to spring from my throat and out of my mouth, it was my UGLY laugh and heaven forbid I let any of my co-workers in on my horrible secret of having an obnoxious laugh.

I love my hubby.

I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend and I will meet y'all back here next week!

$700 rant

2012-01-05T14:15:00.005-05:00

Now I’m not typically one who likes to complain (<---I almost couldn’t type that with a straight face), but I have to post a quick rant today. I’ve heard that writing down your feelings is way more emotionally mature than ripping keyboard keys off my laptop, breaking glasses and stemware, or body checking innocent by-standers.

My car is an anomaly. It’s only 3 years old, but it’s already had problems similar to that of a car more than triple its age. Some people would blame it on the fact that my car is a Pontiac. I prefer to blame it on a bout of bad luck and my punishment for spending way too much money on the holidays this year.

I knew I was having issues with one of my tires, but I opted to keep filling it with air rather than actually dragging it to a certified mechanic who could fix it for me. But when I stopped at Wal-Mart to get my oil changed earlier this month, I was feeling fancy and decided to have them replace my faulty tire, too. After falling asleep on a bench while waiting for them to repair my car, one of the repair guy’s approached me and told me that the oil change went perfectly fine, but there was no way they could fix my tire. The rim was too badly bent and for some reason that translated into them refusing to take off the tire. I guess it has something to do with the fear of being hit in the face with a tire? I dunno.

Anyway, Clay and I spend the next few weeks promising each other that we’d get the VIN number off of my car and contact a local junk yard to see if they had a spare rim that would fit it. (I guess this would be a great time to mention that the "bent rim" situation is totally my fault because I'm somewhat of a "curb driver". Even my friend, Brittany, confirmed during our movie date last night that navigating the drive-thru lane of a fast food restaurant is HARD.) In the meantime, we just continued to fill my tire with air every few days and hope for the best.

And of course, right around the same time, my car decided it hated accelerating. I could push the gas and get my little silver bullet to the 30 MPH mark, but then it would stall out and refuse to go any faster. Moving from 30 MPH to 55 MPH was a lesson in patience and I feel really bad for anyone who had to drive behind me.

My dashboard warning symbols were lighting up like a Christmas tree (which I guess was appropriate for the season).

We decided to wait until after Christmas to take the car over to our mechanic because no one wants to be depressed or poor over the holidays. We dropped it off this morning and only a few hours later our mechanic, Eric, called Clayton with the good news (I use the term “good” incredibly loosely). Clay then called me, throwing a bunch of technical terms I didn’t understand at me with one bummer of a bottom line:

It is going to cost $700 to fix.

Ugh, I know this is exactly why we have a savings account. We’ve tried really hard to save our pennies and were very fortunate to be able to see our savings flourish in the past year. But come on, I was really hoping that money could be put to better use for stuff like vacations or purses or shoes … not necessities. And since I’ve been wearing my last pair of contacts for over two months now and feel like my eyeballs are rotting from the inside out, we already knew we’d be spending a pretty penny at the eye doctor this weekend.

I shouldn’t be whining. I really shouldn’t. Because having to push the date of your hair appointment back a few weeks in order to cover a car repair bill is definitely a #firstworldproblem. It could be worse. So much worse. You know why? Because we could NOT have the money to fix my car and goodness knows, that would be scary and stressful.

So even though I’m feeling a little unhappy and a little inconvenienced right now, I’m also feeling incredibly thankful.

First World Problems

2012-01-04T10:46:00.002-05:00

Have you ever heard of the term “first world problems”? It’s a phrase assigned to an irritant or irk that is so obviously only a problem for those living in developed, first world countries such as America. While people living in impoverished third world countries go without basic necessities like food or clean water, we’re over here in America bitching about the cell reception on our iPhones and whining about the caloric value of a Cinnabon. #firstworldproblems has trended on Twitter and sometimes it’s also referred to as “white people problems”.

I’ve only heard about this phenomenon recently. Last summer my co-worker Dan came out of his office to talk to me about the problems he was having with his iPod. After expressing his frustration with the functionality of his music player, he paused and looked up at the ceiling. “This is such a white person problem," he sighed.

That statement tickled to me, to say the least. I had never heard this term before and it so perfectly encompassed 99% of the problems I experience on a daily basis. Only a week or so later I was telling Dan about an uncomfortable experience I once had in a limo, and in the middle of my rant about the lack of seating space, I stopped myself. I slapped my hands over my mouth. “Oh my gosh!” I mumbled from behind my hands. “That is SUCH a first world problem.” I was legitimately ashamed of myself.

Now #firstwordproblems has become like my daily mantra (it’s not really a mantra, but it might as well be). Any time I catch myself getting worked up over something or feel irritated, I say, “Is this a legitimate problem or a first world problem?” (Which I sometimes also tentatively refer to as a “spoiled American problem”.) It really helps put life into perspective and is a great tool for gauging if something is truly an issue or simply a superficial nuisance. I bet there are billions of people in other countries who would kill to be in a crowded limo because it's heated and would provide a roof over their head. Heck, they’d kill to eat one square meal a day.

Just this morning I pulled on a new pair of jeans and became instantly frustrated at how long they were. The first pair I initially unwrapped on Christmas morning bled dye all over my skin and had to be returned to the store. Now the new pair I exchanged them for have too much fabric and need to either be hemmed or cuffed. Ugh, what am I supposed to do? Put on super high heels with these jeans every time I want to wear them? When I got to work I began drafting a less than chipper mail to Clayton, venting my annoyance that none of my clothes can ever fit properly and how it was a huge waste of time to have to drive all the way out to the mall in the first place to exchange a brand new pair of pants that was bleeding blue dye all over everything and heck no was I going to drive out there again and …

First world problem.

I deleted the email before I sent it.

Don’t believe me? Check out first-world-problems.com for more examples of why life isn’t really as bad as we like to make it out to be. Sure, we do have legitimate, serious struggles—disease, divorce, unemployment, and the like—but do we really need to keep making mountains out of mole holes? Was paying full-price for your Ugg boots really the national crisis you’re making it out to be? Is your GPS really the “piece of technological s**t” you’re claiming it is because it temporarily lost its satellite signal? Honestly?

I just love that this is James Van Der Beek

[Last 4 images from thechive.com]

Out with the old and in with the new (year)!

2012-01-03T12:45:00.005-05:00

The hubs, fluffy white scarf, and I ready to ring in 2012!
I'm a little obsessed with the Instagram app on my iPod Touch

Happy New Year, kiddos! (about 3 days too late). I hope that everyone rang in the new year safely and happily. I personally entered the year 2012 standing in one of the city’s busiest, most popular college bars surrounded by boys with popped collars and girls wearing sparkly mini dresses that showed more skin than actual fabric. There I was, standing in the middle a sticky, beer-soaked floor in my fluffy white scarf and sensible shoes, looking at pictures of my friend’s baby on her digital camera while trying to avoid being touched by the couple dry-humping next to me. My, my how times have changed.

About ten minutes after midnight, Clay and I started yawning and excused ourselves.

When did we get so old?

But in our defense, we had a pretty eventful day leading up to our final NYE excursion at one of our local watering holes.

That morning I had my final run of 2011 which ended up being far more laborious and sloppy than I intended. I really wanted to go out with a bang, but tightness in my hips and a sore groin muscle made my run less of a triumphant end to a great year and more of a major pain that I just wanted to be over. I was highly disappointed, but it’s my own fault. I know I didn’t drink enough water the past few days and having to run on the treadmill so much is throwing off my groove on days that I can actually make it outside. Deep stretching and proper hydration are high up on my list of goals for 2012.

After my pathetic run, Clay and I cleaned up and met Jeremy, one of my best friends from high school, for lunch. He and his wife were visiting family in a town nearby, and they made the trip up to our neck of the woods to have a meal and hit Oliver Winery for wine tasting. Clay and I haven’t gotten a chance to see them since they moved to Illinois and an afternoon of catching up was more than overdue.

Once we had our fill of free wine, Clay and I took a power nap before heading over to our good friends’ house for a New Year’s Eve party. We could only stay a few minutes, but Dan and Emily are certainly some of our favorite people to hang out with and spending a short amount of time with them is better than spending no time with them.

After bidding our first New Year’s Eve party adieu, Clay and I headed downtown to meet up with some of our other friends at the aforementioned bar. While we waited for our friends to arrive, Clay insisted he couldn’t drink beer without a taco (it’s only logical), so we ducked into Taco Bell for a quick snack and to escape the cold. It was here that Clayton delivered the most life-affirming compliment I have ever heard in my entire life: “Courtney, you’re the hottest chick at Taco Bell.”

I can die now. My life is complete. That's almost like being the prettiest girl at Wal-Mart!

So that was our New Year’s Eve in a nutshell. While I’m no longer a fan of going out to college bars and I think that standing in line outside of a club in the winter is one of the dumbest experiences one can ever have, we had a pretty good evening. 2012 began with a giant smooch from the hubby and the promise that we’ll make the next year together even better than the one before. I had my closest friends by my side, drunk college girls coming out of every possible nook and cranny in the bar, and rap music pulsating so loud it could probably keep my heart beating if I suddenly went into cardiac arrest—I was happy.

I said before that I don’t particularly care to make New Year’s resolutions, but I do have some goals. I’m sure that’s probably the exact same thing, but whatever. To me, saying, “I have a resolution!” sounds too all-or-nothing, cold turkey, if-I-don’t-do-this-right-away-I’m-a-big-fat-failure. Whereas saying “I have a goal!” sounds much more tangible and like something I can work towards without fear of failing. And I hate failing. So, that being said, here are some of my goals for 2012

My lunch for Tuesday

Continue to try and eat a cleaner, healthier diet
So far, I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job at reducing the amount of dairy in my daily diet. I have eaten items that are made with dairy ingredients (breads, cookies, mashed potatoes, ect.), but I’ve eaten those items sparingly. Like I said before, trying to start any kind of new diet around the holidays is torturous and there’s no way I would say no to a hostess who was gracious enough to cook a nice meal for me. And I probably will continue to have those items when the food is prepared by others (if I’m making them myself, I’ll use a dairy substitute) or other similar situations, but I’ve done an excellent job avoiding milk, cheese, and saying no to butter on breads. For me, saying no to ice cream and Cool Whip on my apple pie was the equivalent to having my arm pit hairs plucked out individually, but I stayed strong and didn’t give in!

A couple days after Christmas, Clay and I ditched our gallon of soy milk. It was proving to be an irritant on our digestive systems and after going online to research why, I discovered from numerous reputable sources that soy isn’t really the miracle food that so many marketers are making it out to be. It’s okay in moderation, but soy milk is full of phytoestrogens (a plant derived chemical similar to estrogen), can prevent your body from absorbing essential minerals, and is difficult to digest (as we had already clearly figured out). So we made the switch to almond milk. I don’t care for the taste of almond milk quite as much, but I only ever use milk for cereal.

The fat-free corn chowder I made on Monday night

Eating lots of veggies and beans has never been a problem for me, but after diving into Crazy, Sexy Diet by Kris Carr, I’ve promised myself to make more of an effort to eat my favorite plant-based foods in their rawest, purest form. Steaming veggies a bit is perfectly fine, but your get the most vitamins and minerals from crunchy veggies that still have their fibrous skin intact.

And I will be drinking water, water, water! After reading Crazy, Sexy Diet, I learned how badly our body needs oxygen in order to function and water is the best way to give your body what it needs! I’m guilty for only drinking water when it’s convenient for me (i.e. after a run or during a workout) and for the past few months I’ve been forcing myself to drink several glasses a day. Some weeks are better than others, but I am making it a priority to drink more water all the time. I already notice how much it improves my running performance!

This photo is ... charming.

Be a better wifey

I don’t think I’m a bad wife (far from it, actually. There are very few things in life that I am actually good at, but loving my man is definitely one of them!), but I know that there are things I need to work on in order for Clay and I to remain happy as clams in our marriage. I’m making an effort every single day to wake up and say, “God, how can I love my husband the way You want me to today?” And, for those of you who are not religious, another way of looking at it would be to say, “How can I love my spouse to my fullest capacity today?” There is nothing nearer and dearer to my heart on this earth than the relationship I have with my husband and I take no task more seriously than I do being a wife. And it’s not always an easy gig. Sometimes I’m too impatient and too selfish and just too PMS-y. But that’s when I need to refocus my priorities and ask myself that question: “Am I loving my husband the way God wants me to do? How can I love my husband the way God wants me to right this second?”

Meditate

After my parent’s got divorced I went from being a carefree, obnoxious little ham who loved being the center of attention to an uptight, anxious preteen. And little has changed since then. If you’re new to the blog, I named it Notably Neurotic for a reason … I’m neurotic. And obsessive. And I worry everything into the ground.

And I’m basically at my whit’s end with it all. It’s no way to live a life because it’s not a fun life. And I’m doing it all to myself (which I think makes it even worse).

When I tried hot yoga I was amazed by the overwhelming feeling of calm and relaxation I felt afterwards. Sure, I was sweating through my t-shirt and it eventually gave me an acne breakout, but my mind was at rest and I felt like a puddle of warm goo (a huge change if you’re constantly tense and rigid). However, I can’t afford the cost of going to a hot yoga class every week ($15 for a single class? No thanks.), so I need to find something else that will give me the same zen-like buzz for little or no money. I purchased an at-home yoga DVD by Jillian Michaels and while she didn’t scream at me as much as I thought she would, I’m not feeling the same relaxed energy I did after the hot yoga class. Plus, it’s more of a cardio yoga session, so it’s not even the deep stretching I truly need.

I’m going to keep my options open and start looking for a different yoga DVD or see if I can’t find a yoga class that’s cheaper elsewhere. In the meantime, I’m going to start researching meditation techniques that may be nothing more than lying on the floor or on my bed with soft music and deep breathing exercises (although I am fearful I’ll ultimately end up falling asleep … but I guess that’s pretty relaxed).

Try new things

Clay and I have already dove head-first into this goal! We have plans to go snowboarding later this winter with Jeremy and his wife. I went snowboarding in high school and absolutely loved it (with Jeremy no less!), and I know Clayton will, too. Additionally, last week Clayton and I signed up for an 8-week Salsa dance class with our friends, Dan and Emily. We start next week and I’m already preparing how I’m going to break it to the dance instructor that I have no rhythm and if she needs proof, all she needs to do it watch me play Just Dance 3. Stay tuned for a blog post about this disaster waiting to happen.

Still as handsome as always

Be a better fur mommy

My beagle boy is 7 years old and I’m still in denial that he’s no longer a puppy (even though he will always be my baby). I want his middle-aged and golden years to be the happiest and healthiest of his life, so Joey better prepare for even more walks outside and millions and millions of more snuggle hours. He’s so precious to us, and I always want Joey to know that!

Stay positive, kick out the negative

I’m going to reach this goal … even if it kills me. Even if it’s nothing more than stopping a negative, self-deprecating thought in its tracks before it can blossom into something harmful, it will be a huge step in the right direction. Stop the bad thoughts before they even happen. If I feel a negative thought coming on, I’ll just start thinking about something else; I won’t even entertain it.

Stop stressing my running times

They get me where I need to go

I’m far too “time oriented” when it comes to my running. I focus too much on how fast I ran, who runs faster than me, and what my finishing times are. It’s taking the joy out of running because I’m forgetting how freeing and amazing the simple act of running is by itself. I need to stop ruining perfectly good runs by telling myself I’m not fast enough (see above goal). It’s only hurting me in the long run and I shouldn’t care how fast anyone else is because I’m not them and they’re not me. Being fast doesn’t make you a better than runner. The best runners run for themselves, not against a clock.

Give More

Weather it be volunteering my time, a monetary donation, or even simply lending an ear to listen, I am making it a priority to give to others. According to Luke 12:48, "For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required." In Layman's terms, to whom much is given, much will be expected. While I am not financially rich, I am richly blessed with a loving husband, a loving family, and a roof over my head. In return, I want to express my thankfulness by giving to others in any way that I can and pass on the blessings even if it's just holding the door open for a stranger or letting someone cut in line in front of me at the grocery store.

Focus on my writing

This goal is pretty self-explanatory. I’ve seen pretty sizable jumps in readership over the past year, and I would love to see those numbers continue to grow. I love writing this blog and love sharing what I have to say and what I’ve experienced with other people. I hope that it continues to be the motivation I need to start seeking other writing avenues and work towards my goal of becoming of a professional writer. A few of you have kindly mentioned that you'll be among the first in line at the bookstore to buy my first novel. So thank for you reading and I hope you’ll come back and read often in 2012!

What are some of your New Year's goals?

Fickle Friday and Happy New Year!

2011-12-30T15:12:00.005-05:00

This week one of my supervisors (you may remember her from this post two summers ago) came back to the office and proudly showed us one of her Christmas presents—a silver necklace with a little pendant displaying her initials. It was lovely, so of course I asked her where she got it.

Turns out that the little pendant is a old-fashioned typewriter key! How unique and charming is that? I did some internet research and found a couple of online boutiques that sell these vintage beauties so I could share them with you guys. I know everyone's broke from the holidays, but Valentine's Day is just around the corner (said like a true marketing professional)! Ha ha! I kid, I kid. I just think these are really cute and wanted you to see for yourselves:

Two Story Design

Buster and Boo on Etsy.com

Monkapaws.com

Anyway, yesterday afternoon a few co-workers and myself decided to partake in a spontaneous team-building exercise. The four of us took a few moments to write down what we liked about each other and then, in true getting-in-touch-with-your-feelings, sitting-around-a-campfire-singing-Kumbaya style, we sat in a circle and read our affirmations out loud. Yeah, it was pretty cheesy, but also a lot of fun ... and highly entertaining. Apparently I'm liked for my adaptability, quick wit (read: snarkiness), and ability to look pretty in scarves. Now I have the post-its hanging up in my cubicle for me to read any time I need a little pick-me-up. Aren't we adorable? Why yes, yes were are.

My favorite picture of Joey from 2011. Roar!

In other news, we are officially reaching the end of 2011 and now would be the appropriate time to relive highlights from the past year and start expressing hope for what the new year will bring.

I think I've had an interested 2011. I started the year working from home as a freelance colorist in my pajamas, then found myself working part-time at a university press, and eventually ended up back at the very first company I ever worked for after graduation. It's kind of funny how things work out. While I ultimately want to be a published writer one day, I am more than thrilled with where my career at this very moment. I can finally sit back, relax, and be content.

My favorite picture of myself from 2011.
Obviously.

2011 has been a great year for running, too! I completed two half marathons and a handful of other races, making several PRs along the way and logging more miles in this one year than I ever have in my entire life. If my scheduled 7-mile run tomorrow morning goes as planned, I will have finished the year 2011 with 857.13 running miles under my belt. And if I wanted to count my mileage total for both running and walking on cross-training days, it would be close to about 1,100 miles. Not too shabby! But without a doubt, my running highlight of 2011 was going sub-2 in the Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon and finishing the race in 1 hour, 54 minutes, and 56 seconds. I will never, ever forget the incredible rush and feeling of accomplishment as I rounded the final corner and saw the timer flashing a finishing time that was 16 minutes faster than my previous mini time.It was like winning the lottery and wanting to take a very long nap at the exact same time.

2011 also brought the birth of my best friend's gorgeous baby boy, the weddings of a few family members and close friends, the beginning of a deep, fulfilling relationship with my Kitchen Aid mixer, a bigger, better place to live, a new job for Clayton, the beginnings of a better relationship with my dad, vastly increased readership for my blog, a weight loss of 16+ lbs, some awesome new friendships with some pretty rad peeps, and many other exciting changes. When I look back at the previous year, I can only see it as good. Even during the times where I was stressed and worried about my career or finances, God always provided a way.

My favorite professional picture
of the hubs and I from 2011.

New Year's Eve will be relatively low-key for us this year. I'm not huge into celebrating New Year's anyway (I'm usually ready for bed around 12:05 a.m.), and I have no desire to get too wild or crazy. We were invited to a few parties that we are going to try and drop by for a bit, but I think we'll be spending a majority of the evening with our best friends enjoying some drinks and good music for one of their first outings sans Nicholas.

I can't wait to see what 2012 will bring! Wanna know what my biggest hope for the new year is?

Peace.

How is that for a lame Ms. America answer? But it's true. More than anything, I want peace. Inner peace. Peace of mind. Peace in my family. Peace in my marriage. I want my whole year to feel like one, 365-day long hot yoga session. Even when times are rough (as the inevitably will be at some point in my life), I want to see the good and find the silver-lining. I want to have obnoxiously optimistic hope in every situation. I want to put stress, worry, and self-doubt on the back burner and live in blissful, peaceful contentment. That's the biggest thing I'm going to work on this year—telling the negativity and self-deprecation in my head to shut up and hit the road because I have better things to think about. :)

And there will be cake. Lots and lots of cake.

Happy New Year! :)

My favorite not-so-professional picture of the hubs and I from 2011.

Courtney Confessions - December 29th, 2011

2011-12-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

I’m already jealous of Clayton’s Xbox 360. I think he likes it better than me.

I received a little Christmas cash this year and decided to treat myself to a new skin-care regime. I skipped my pimply face right up the Clinique counter at the mall and took an electronic quiz on an iPad to determine what type of skin I have (but I really don’t need an iPad quiz to tell me that my skin type is GREASY). When the consultant took one look at me and said, “You don’t look like you have acne at all”, I could have kissed her. So I bought lots of products from her.

My mom bought me an American Eagle white loop scarf from my Christmas wish list and I have only taken it off to sleep, shower, and run. It’s my new favorite accessory and I even wear it sitting on the couch in my pajamas because it’s that amazingly soft and comfortable.

I’ve watched more Netflix on my Kindle Fire than I’ve read actual ebooks. Oops.

I’m completely and utterly ashamed of how sore my biceps and shoulders are from playing Just Dance 3 on our Wii. I could hardly pick up my purse yesterday. Me, the girl who can run for literally hours cannot pull off a 3 minute Level 1 dance to Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” without pausing half way through for a break.

I downloaded a bunch of apps to my iPod Touch and they fall into one of two categories: fart sounds or words games. I’m a nerdy girl who loves her some electronic flatulence.

We gave Joey a stuffed skunk for Christmas and named him Le Pew in hopes that if we ask, “Ou est Le Pew?” (“Where is Le Pew?”) enough times, we will eventually teach our dog French.

I’m just now discovering how awesome Jay-Z’s older music is and now 99% of all of my running playlists are gangster rap. Get it? 99%?! HE’S GOT "99 PROBLEMS, BUT THE …"

… Yeah, I think you know where I’m going with that.

A very merry weekend recap

2011-12-28T17:30:00.040-05:00

I am a spoiled, spoiled girl. That’s really the only way I know how to describe what the holidays were like for me. On Christmas night while I was lying in bed saying my prayers, I told God I was in utter disbelief about His faithfulness and how thankful I am for my wonderful family. It feels almost unreal; I don’t deserve it. And I don’t ever want to take anything for granted, ever.

Clay and I had a wonderful Christmas Eve spending time with his side of the family at church and their traditional “Breakfast Dinner” afterwards. Several days prior I jokingly suggested my mother-in-law serve waffles at the dinner and, sure enough, there was a box of Eggo’s in the freezer when I arrived. She’s so awesome.

After relaxing with the in-laws, Clay and I headed back home so I could bake a pecan pie for the Christmas Day festivities. While the pie cooled on the stove, Clay and I cuddled on the couch and watched our favorite Christmas movie, This Christmas.

We woke up bright and early on Christmas Day to do our personal gift exchange before heading back over to the in-law’s for presents. I was a jittery, excited mess for Clayton to open his present. So much so, I almost lost my mind when he started gingerly unfolding the wrapping paper, taking great pains not to tear it. I’d been sitting on this surprise for almost two months and couldn’t stand it anymore. “WOULD YOU HURRY UP!?” I blurted out, impatiently. Surprised by so much emotion at 7 o’clock in the morning, Clayton ripped off the final layer of paper to find this:

Puzzled by my note, Clayton cast a cautious smile in my direction as he got up and made his way into the guest bathroom. Pulling a large package out from under the sink, he looked at me with an even more confused expression. “What is this?” he asked, maneuvering the giant box back into the living room.

“Just open it,” I said coyly from behind the digital camera I had posed and ready. “And be sure to read the tag. It’s not just from me; it’s from your parents and Grandma, too.”

With much more urgency that he displayed earlier unwrapping his decoy gift, Clayton tore the wrapping paper off of the large box and revealed his big surprise …

… an xbox 360.

Clayton is a man of little emotion, but he literally shrieked and jumped up to hug me. He has wanted one of these game systems forever and since he’s done so much for me and let me funnel so much of our spending money into my running, I felt he totally deserved something this special for himself. He’s so selfless, it didn’t even occur to him that he could ask for something like this for a Christmas or birthday present, so I was over the moon with happiness to be able to surprise him.

Then I suddenly felt really bad that we were going to be at my mother’s house for the rest of the day and he wouldn’t get a chance to play with his new toy until after Christmas. Ooops. That was harsh.

But then it was my turn. Several weeks ago Clayton had mentioned to me that what he bought me for Christmas was something that I had never asked for. Piquing my interest, I privately exhausted myself trying to figure out exactly that could be. I believe (and Clayton can attest to this) that I am a very hard person to surprise, so if you are able to completely blind-side me, kudos to you. The only time I can think of where I was legitimately, 100% thrown for a loop was when my family burst into the room with my Kitchen Aid mixer on my 26^th birthday (and we all know how life-changing that was).

Intrigued, I took the package with my name on it out from under the Christmas tree. It was my favorite shape of box, too. (Is it weird that I have a favorite shape of present box? I like them kind of rectangular, but not flat like a clothes box. Fatter, yet not very big. It totally throws me off and I can never guess what it is.) But before I started tearing off the paper, Clayton handed me an envelope that was nestled in the tree. It was a card that contained an Amazon.com gift card with the note, “This should get you started.” I was baffled.

“Okay,” he said, “now open the present!”

After ripping off the green wrapping paper, I discovered a brown box that had Kindle Fire printed on the side of it.

Clearly I look gorgeous early in the morning.

I’m not entirely sure what happened next. I think I blacked out from lack of oxygen from screaming at such a high-pitched decibel. But needless to say, I was surprised. Delightfully surprised. Like, deliriously surprised.

Clay was right, I had never asked for a Kindle before because I never knew that I wanted one. I was hesitant to have an e-reader period because I’m a creeper who likes the smell of old books and likes turning pages with my hands. But then on Black Friday when Clay and I made the mistake of stopping by the zoo that was Best Buy, I saw the Kindle Fire and told Clay it was the coolest gadget ever. But unbeknownst to me, Clay had already bought me one. Apparently he bought it right when they came out earlier in November, thinking that it was something I would really enjoy. And that just made the gift all the more special and amazing.

After we played with our new toys for a few minutes, Clay and I cleaned up and headed over to the in-law’s for yet more presents. I was already feeling overwhelmed by my Kindle Fire, I couldn’t fathom getting anything else.

But, my in-law’s are amazing and graciously gave Clayton and I some very awesome gifts including a Dutch oven (I’d been needing one for months) and a Kahlua gift set with 4 different flavors of Kahlua (do they know me or what?). After a sadly brief visit, Clay and I had to pack up our goodies and hit the road to go see my momma and sister.

Now this is where I need to further reiterate the “I’m a spoiled, spoiled girl” part from the beginning of my post.

My mother out does herself every year. Every single Christmas she tells us, “Money is tight, it’s going to be a small Christmas”. And every single Christmas my sister and I tell her, “Mom, we don’t care. We don’t need lots of presents to have a good Christmas. You know that.” And yet, every single Christmas my mom provides the most thoughtful, generous gifts that leave us speechless. She’s just amazing like that. She just wants to do nice things for everyone all the time and she’s just the best. That’s all I can say. She’s just the best.

I had to laugh out loud when Mom handed me a large box with both Clay’s and my name on the tag and said, “This is just a little last minute gift I bought on a whim. If you don’t like it, you can take it back. Like I said, I just saw it and bought it on a whim for you.”

My mom bought my husband and I a brand new set of stoneware dishes. She bought us a brand new set of dishes “on a whim”? “Well, I know you’ve wanted to get a nicer set of dishes ever since you got married,” she said. “I saw these and they reminded me of you.” And yes, she bought my sister a set, too. Ashley’s dish pattern is a colorful flower design that perfectly matches some of the Joseph Joseph kitchen items she received for her future house. Of course my dishes are earthly and neutral and yes, they match my mixer. What a silly question …

I was almost starting to panic I was feeling so overwhelmed.

And then I opened one of my last presents (I know, can you believe there was more? Again, the spoiled thing.) My mom wrapped this one up in a fancy Christmas box that we’ve had in our family for years and like to joke, “Who gets the box this year?” Well, I totally got it this year and it just so happens to be my favorite shape of present box (see above). I pulled off the lid and maneuvered a sheet of red tissue paper, revealing what was hidden inside.

When I saw what it was, I immediately dropped the box.

And burst into tears.

Like full-on, get-me-a-tissue, I-need-a-moment-to-collect-myself kind of crying.

My mom bought me the white iPod Touch that I had been yammering about wanting for months (literally months. People were seriously sick of me talking about it). My old iPod bit the dust almost 6 months ago and my mom generously let me borrow her super old iPod Nano to train for the Monumental Half Marathon. I had been chattering incessantly about how neato it would be to have a Touch because you could get a GPS app to log running miles and blah, blah, blah.

I couldn’t believe it. Then again, I’m not entirely sure why I was so surprised. This is what my Mom does. She puts herself last so that she can give her children what they want. She loves to see us happy. She’ll do it at any cost. And she knows she doesn’t have to buy us things to make us happy, but she does it anyway because she wants to.

And I think that’s what overwhelmed me to the point of tears. I gave her a giant hug and she had to brush her own tears away, but they might have been from laughing at me because I was such a ridiculous mess. It was touching.

I can only hope that the gifts I gave my family in return bring them as much joy as what theirs did for me. I was incredibly excited to give gifts this year because Clay and I were blessed with the financial means to get our loved ones things that they really wanted. While I recognize that presents are only a teeny, tiny part of what the Christmas celebration is all about, it still makes me feel good to be able to help make their holiday a little brighter. I can’t thank my in-laws, family, and hubby enough for their love and kindness. I pray that God blesses them all tenfold.

We spent the rest of Christmas Day playing cards, watching movies, and feasting on a pork roast with all of the trimmings. As my mom was preparing dinner, she pulled out a few lobsters she was hiding as yet another surprise (by this point, my heart almost couldn’t bare another surprise). We used to have lobster every Christmas, but due to financial cutbacks, we hadn’t had it in a few years. But there it was, steamed and ready to be dipped into melted butter (I totally allowed myself to cheat and have butter because that is the only way to eat a lobster. Remember my saying that starting any kind of diet around Christmas would be torture?). I love seafood, but I am terrified of most creatures in the sea when they are alive and can touch me while I’m swimming. I was a little skeezed out by my lobster’s eye and made him face away from me while I tried to crack open his claws. But I kept having visions of him “not being all the way dead” and moving around on my plate, so I had to ask Clayton to kindly dismember the rest of him for me.

Just yesterday I got a package in the mail from a girl who I have known since we were in pre-school. Emily and I used to be besties. I couldn't even count the number of sleepover I had at her house when we were in elementary school. But after my parents got divorced and I briefly moved out of town while my mom went back to school for her master's degree, we lost touch and by the time I moved back for middle school and high school, we had completely different social circles. However, thanks to the power of Facebook, Emily and I started reconnecting recently when I learned she was a vegan. I started asking her questions and she took a strong interest in my desire to start eating "cleaner", being a strong encouragement when I made the choice to reduce the amount of dairy in my diet. Well, yesterday I picked up a package from UPS and saw it was from Emily. She mailed me a copy of Kris Carr's book Crazy, Sexy Diet, a book that teaches and empowers readers to stop damaging their bodies and move towards a lifestyle of repair and renewal. I started reading it last night and can't wait to dive back into again tonight.

It was such a kind, wonderful gesture. I couldn't get over it. I couldn't get over her and how incredibly sweet she is. Isn't that just ridiculously thoughtful? Oh my gosh, I think I've just spent the better part of a week completely floored by people's thoughtfulness.

So I’m sitting here today, three days after Christmas, sipping my almost cold coffee and still experiencing feelings of disbelief and faint twinges of guilt over how blessed I am. When I say I’m blessed, it’s never to brag. It’s a statement … a statement of undeserving. When I say, “I am so blessed” in my head, it almost sounds as if it should have a question mark at the end of it. I am so blessed? Me? Why me? I am so undeserving. And yet here I am, comfortable. It’s unfair. Who am I to have all of this? Why do I get to have a roof over my head and a warm place to sleep every night while others shiver in the cold out on the streets? Why do I get to have my own car while so many others have to walk, take the bus, or just no go anywhere? Why do I get to have a job when so many people are standing in the unemployment line? Why do I have so many people who love me when so many people are all alone? Why do I get to have luxuries when so many people don’t even have their basic necessities?

That’s called grace, my friends.

And like I said before, I will never take it for granted. And I will make sure that I find ways to pass on blessings to others.

Sometimes I worry about putting any kind of religious well, anything, into my blog because I know that not everyone who reads this has the same beliefs that I do. And that’s okay, but my faith is the corner-stone to my well-being, and I am choosing to share with you the words that I live by:

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. –1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

I am a blessed, blessed girl.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, or whatever doesn't offend you ...

2011-12-23T13:00:00.013-05:00

I ended up being late to work this morning because I woke up with horrendous jaw pain and had to let some medicine kick in before I attempt to sit at a computer all day or ya know, talk or smile. I have reoccurring TMJ and even though I have a super sexy mouth guard to wear at night, I still carry all of my stress in my jaw during the day (apparently I clench my jaw a lot) and occasionally have episodes of soreness and the inability to open my mouth all the way without it making a clicking sound. Several years ago a dentist gave me muscle relaxers in a effort to alleviate the pain, but they did virtually nothing to help my body relax. I suggested Vicodin for next time and she just laughed at me.

Today is Christmas Eve Eve (and my dad's birthday!), so this is probably the last you'll hear from me until at least December 28th. Since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, our office will be closed on Monday and thanks to the joys of PTO, I have 8 hours of vacation time to burn before the year 2011 is up. So I will be taking Tuesday off as well. Even though I'll only be sitting at home in my pajamas watching my Christmas tree slowly whither away and die, I probably won't get around to blogging. Unless you want to hear about the pajamas I'm wearing ... or how quickly my Christmas tree is dying.

As Christmas Day draws nearer and nearer, I'm finally feeling my Scrooge McDuck hard-candy shell melt away like Frosty the Snowman in a global warming-induced heatwave ( is it sad that I still associate A Christmas Carol with a white duck that doesn't wear pants? Charles Dickens is probably rolling over in his grave.). 50 degree weather or no 50 degree weather, I am excited about Christmas! I can't wait to decorate Christmas cookies with Clayton tonight, I can't wait to go to Christmas Eve mass with my in-laws, and I certainly cannot wait to see my mom and sister on Christmas morning. Not to mention, I think Clayton is going to pass out when he sees what's waiting for him under the tree.

And thank goodness! I was starting to get really worried about my lack of holiday cheer. It was so out of character for me. So I don't know if I got hit in the head while I was sleeping ( ... Clayton) or what, but I woke up this morning humming Christmas carols and sprinted downstairs to smell the pine needles on our tree (after tripping over Joey who was still doing his morning stretch routine).

It's almost here!

I hope everyone has the merriest of Christmases! (and if that offends you, Happy Holidays or ...just get over it) And I'm not even going to put "I hope" in the front of this next statement because I am demanding that you do this: Squeeze your loved ones tight, sing "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" at the top of your lungs, overindulge in holiday treats, and please, keep enough joy and love in your heart that will last all of next year, too!

That being said, I'm leaving you, dear reader, with the greatest Christmas gift of all ... the Christmas gift of boy bands past:

Courtney's Book Club (kind of like Oprah's, but better)

2011-12-22T17:45:00.011-05:00

I kind of failed at spending time with my Christmas tree yesterday (that sounds odd), and I didn't get a chance to finish wrapping presents. I ended up having a lot of small errands/chores to finish before the weekend, so I didn't get any time to myself until after nine p.m.. And after a speed work regimen on the treadmill, I spent the remainder of the evening with my nose stuck in a book. I read for almost 3 hours and didn't fall asleep until one o'clock. But you know, I don't regret it at all–I'll happy dwindle away any evening doing nothing but devouring a good book.

I've thrown out a few book recommendations in the past (The Help, She's Come Undone, Bossypants), so I'm gonna toss another good read your way. I found Monica Holloway's Driving With Dead People through a random Amazon search and was intrigued by the book's (a memoir) synopsis. Later I found out a friend of mine was currently reading the book and she said it was dark, depressing and intense. Apparently I find those three characteristics to be wildly attractive in a book because I immediately reserved a copy at the library. And I can't put it down. I've read the book late into the night every day this week and have found myself misty-eyed on more than one occasion. The abuse and abandonment in Holloway's youth is heartbreaking, even heart-stopping at times. I've audibly gasped at some of the things that were said and done to her, at the acts of betrayal and hatred from her own family, and I've felt physically nauseous once or twice when some of her emotional turmoil hit a little too close to home.

Praise God that I have never experienced the trauma of being physically beaten, neglected or molested. I have loved ones who have been victims of such cruelty, and sometimes I wonder how they can be so brave and function normally when their childhood and innocence were shattered to pieces at the hands of someone they were supposed to be able to trust. Even during my tumultuous early teen years spent living with an angry step-father, I was fortunate enough to have a mother who loved my sister and I fiercely and a father, though distant and unavailable, who would never lay a finger on me. However, once I stumbled upon the following paragraph in Holloway's book, I nearly fell off of my bed in shocked recognition.

“I wished there had been obvious signs of destruction on all of us kids: bruises or burn marks, something that indicated how violent our house was, but words and neglect don't leave visible marks. And that confuses even the person who knows better. (169)”

If you like being traumatized by a book right around the holidays (like I obviously do), I highly recommend that you read Driving With Dead People.

From Publisher's Weekly via Amazon.com:

Death lurks everywhere in Holloway's childhood. A neighbor boy accidentally shoots and kills a train conductor; a little girl is mowed down by a motorist. Her father's main hobby is filming grisly car wrecks and natural disasters, and her best friend's family runs the town mortuary. Observing the dead in their coffins, Monica wonders: would she be better off in a casket than alive in her parents' home? In this memoir, Holloway (an actress turned writer) tackles the horrifyingly familiar story of father/daughter incest: the secrecy that surrounds it and the ways it corrodes families from the inside out. Even though her memories of the abuse were repressed, evidence cropped up everywhere, from her chronic bed-wetting and compulsive lying as a girl to her adult attraction to abusive men; when her older sister, JoAnn, comes forward with her recollections, Holloway begins to remember her own trauma. As a writer, Holloway might not be in Mary Karr's league, but her blunt sentences deliver the unvarnished truth. In coming to terms with her tragedy, Holloway writes, "Knowing there is no cavalry is much better than hoping for a cavalry that never comes." Her memoir sings with the power of a disenfranchised woman finally finding her own voice, and her brutal memoir is hard to forget.

But I think I owe it to myself to read a more upbeat, happier book next so I don't have the blues on Christmas morning because I'm haunted by what a sad, miserable world we live in. So I got a second book from the library the same night I checked out Driving With Dead People. It's called Columbine by Dave Cullen, a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology.

Oops.

Where's the holiday spirit?

2011-12-21T18:00:00.033-05:00

It’s all about baby steps, people. Yesterday was my first full day of giving up dairy products in my diet even though the official, balls-to-the-wall beginning of my dairy-free lifestyle will commence on January 1^st. I realized a minute too late that there was milk in the ranch dressing I used on my spinach salad at lunch, but I did successfully turn down a glass of spiked eggnog at my in-law’s house later that night (And if you know me at all, passing on a delicious holiday adult beverage is a bit out of character for me. But don’t worry; I put whiskey in my Diet Coke instead. Tis’ the season! ).

And I really like that neither my in-law’s nor my sister scoffed at my decision to start removing dairy products from my diet (My sister did call me a hipster, but that’s okay … she sucks). But I made sure to preface my explanation with “I’m not promising I’m going to be good at this or stick to it 100% of the time, but I am at least going to try …” Nothing I hate more than telling people I’m going to do something and then look stupid when I don’t follow through with it. (Let that be a lesson– The surest way to make sure you do something is to make other people aware of what you’re doing in the first place. It keeps you accountable and prevents you from looking like a liar with her pants on fire.)

I told Clayton I had already reconciled that this would be marking the official end of my love affair with whipped cream in a can, but he assured me that my suffering would be much greater whenever my mother-in-law made cheesy potatoes at family dinners.

I’m not going to lie, hearing that made me die a little bit on the inside. But hey, who knows, maybe by July all of this dairy-free talk will just be a silly memory of the past and I’ll be shoving cheesy taters in my face with the best of them.

Like I said, I’m not going to be perfect at this because I don't want to be. There will be slip ups. I am a woman who loves Chunky Monkey ice cream (I just started openly weeping on my keyboard) and string cheese. And I crave chocolate consistently. But the important thing is that I’m going to at least try. And hey, if I can’t completely eliminate every trace of dairy from my daily diet, at least I’ll be able to greatly reduce it. Yes, I can already tell you that I will succumb to my chocolate cravings (and probably will frequently, especially around a certain time of the month). This is going to be an experiment not only in will power, but also to measure any noticeable difference in my physical well-being. In a comment on yesterday’s blog post, my bestie in North Caroline said that even though she’s lactose intolerant, she still goes a little weak in the knees for pizza. Glad to see I’m also not the only person who has romantic feelings for their food.

A couple of people who made comments on yesterday’s post may not have clearly understood what I was saying or they may not have thoroughly read everything that I had written (It’s okay; I’m a speed reader, too … which absolutely did not come in handy when I tried to read The Odyssey in my sophomore Honor’s English class). In yesterday’s post I recognized that women are far more susceptible to osteoporosis than men, and I also mentioned that I was going to make sure I still get adequate amounts of both calcium and vitamin D (vitamin D encourages the absorption and metabolism of calcium) from other foods. These other foods include leafy green veggies (spinach, broccoli), soy, beans, almonds, and even tofu. Trust me, as I said yesterday, I’m not approaching this dietary change ignorantly or blindly. And I'm also not approaching this with the expectation that I won't have dairy at all, ever ... just significantly less. :)

My goals: I am going to try to eliminate dairy as much as possible from my diet. Given what I know about myself, I know that this will not be realistic in every area of my life at all times. I'm not setting myself up to fail at this because I'm going into this process already aware that I will not be able to (or necessarily want to) avoid dairy 100% of the time. Having 0 traces of dairy in my food choices simply does not suit my lifestyle. And I don't believe dairy to be evil. I just don't want to consume as much as I have been in the past for all of the reasons I stated yesterday.

In other news, can I just go ahead and say that Christmas feels totally lackluster this year? Last year I had Christmas spirit shooting out my butt, but for some reason I can’t really muster up much enthusiasm this time around. I’m not 100% sure what it is, but I have my suspicions that my indifferent feelings to the holiday spirit have everything to do with the weather. Last night Clayton and I drove around a few neighborhoods hoping to admire lights and decorations, but plastic Santa Clause statues and decorated bushes look almost pathetic in 50 degree, rainy weather. I’m not an advocate of freezing your gonads off and am generally okay with unseasonably warm winters, but this is insanity. It’s hard to feel festive and joyful when you’re running around town without a coat. This is how Christmas in California must feel.

According to a weather website, there’s a 20 percent chance of snow on Christmas Eve.

Who wants to start taking bets that the 20 percent chance of snow ultimately ends up being a 100 percent chance of rain?

Last Christmas it was at least cold. Sure, we didn’t start getting buckets of snow until well into January, but at least I could see my breath when I stepped outside on Christmas morning.

The most jolly I’ve felt all season was the night we put up our Christmas tree. Then everything thereafter has been kind of “meh”. Don't get me wrong, I've thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas festivities so far this year, it's just that I'm lacking the usual amount of anticipation I'm normally drowning in right about now.

It just doesn’t feel like Christmas.

And hearing sleigh bells jingle in the background of every Christmas song on the radio and spotify.com is just a huge tease because if you were going to go take a ride in a sleigh right now, I guarantee you won’t get very far before getting stuck in the muddy brown grass.

Tonight I think I’m going to sit by the Christmas tree with the TV off and just zone out with a cup of peppermint hot cocoa (Gah! Does powdered hot chocolate have any dairy in it!?). I also have a few more presents to wrap, so hopefully doing those things will coax out a little holiday cheer before Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve is my favorite and if I’m not feeling festive by then, I’m just going to have to hang myself with some garland). It’s not that I feel bummed or depressed about Chrsitmas, I just don’t feel anything at all … and I guess that’s depressing in and of itself.

Honestly, all I want for Christmas is a little snow or at least a reason to wear a coat.

No dairy? No whey!

2011-12-20T11:44:00.005-05:00

I typically don’t make New Year’s resolutions … partly because I never stick to them and mostly because I don’t have any dangerously unhealthy habits (like smoking crack or kicking kittens) that I need to quit in order to become a happier, healthier version of myself in the upcoming year. Plus, I don’t believe that I have to wait until New Year’s Day to start making changes in my life–if I need to work on something, I’m going to do my best to start on it ASAP rather than wait for a calendar year to start over.

Anytime that I’ve attempted to make a resolution, it’s been something rooted in my character development like, “This year I’m not going to worry so much” or “This year I’m going to be more patient”. But those resolutions usually going flying out the window right around January 2^nd when I find myself stuck in rush hour traffic or standing in a really long line, and then I spend the rest of the year beating myself up for not being able to keep my own dang resolutions.

But this year I’ve decided to take on a more realistic New Year’s resolution with the assistance of my reluctant hubby. Starting on New Year’s Day, Clay and I will be officially trying to remove most dairy products and as many processed foods as possible from our diet. Why do we want to do this? Glad you asked. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading about vegan and vegetarian lifestyles and while I don’t feel like I’m ready (or ever will be ready) to stop eating meat, I am very interested in the health benefits of eliminating certain animal products from my diet. We chose to officially start our plan on January 1^st2012 simply because trying to start any kind of special diet during the holidays is just cruel and unusual punishment.

And before you say anything–yes, I already did some research and found a butter substitute. So yes, I can still have cake. What, did you really think that wasn’t the very first thing I looked in to?

I've already mourned the loss of Cool Whip, but I am confident that with enough time and a lot of intense prayer, I will heal. My heart WILL go on ...

Humans are the only animals on earth that consume the milk of another species. We are also the only animals that continue to consume milk once we have been weaned off of breastfeeding. However, there is no biological reason to drink milk past this stage. Milk is designed solely to deliver nutrients and proteins to growing babies during the largest growth spurt they will endure throughout their entire life–infancy.

In his article “Dairy: 6 Reasons You Should Avoid It at All Costs” , Dr. Mark Hyman debunks some common milk myths and provides evidence that our bodies do not need quite as much calcium as the government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) suggests. According to Dr. Hyman, drinking milk has not been shown to reduce the risk of bone fractures. In fact, countries with the lowest rates of dairy and calcium consumption also have the lowest rates of osteoporosis. Dr. Hyman suggests that our primary sources of calcium should come from leafy greens and beans, foods that are better utilized within the body than supplements or dairy.

According to Nutrition MD, having dairy in your diet can contribute to some of the following diseases and conditions:

Osteoporosis or accelerated bone loss
Cardiovascular disease
Cancer
Diabetes
Lactose intolerance
Vitamin D toxicity

Likewise, some of the possible benefits of eliminating dairy from your diet are as follows:

Healthier, clearer skin
Reduction of body odor (and hey, everyone wants more friends)
Lessened PMS symptoms
Lower body mass index
Better digestion (less bloating)
Minimizing cholesterol content in your body
Lessened production of mucous and phlegm that can result in less colds and illnesses

The plan
Though I cannot make any promises and can guarantee that there will be slip-ups, I am going to do my best to eliminate as many dairy products from my diet as possible. I have already started to do this by replacing my normal skim milk with low-fat soy milk. If you’ve never tried soy milk, I sincerely urge you to do so. It has about the same caloric value as a cup of skim milk and has a subtle, sweet taste of vanilla that goes wonderfully with my morning bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats.

I am also using Earth Balance, a margarine (or butter substitute) that contains no dairy.

Likewise, many big name grocery stores and local food retailers carry a wide variety of non-dairy cheeses. But if non-dairy cheese isn't readily available for whatever reason, I will definitely opt for a low-fat, skim option.

While eggs are not actually dairy (dairy refers to the product of the mammary glands of mammals and eggs are simply an animal byproduct), I am still going to use an egg substitute in my cooking or baking.

As I go along with this process, I’m going to continue to do research on the proper ways to remove certain dairy products from my diet without putting myself at risk for any kind of vitamin or nutrient deficiency. Women are at a much greater risk for developing osteoporosis, so I’m going to make sure I’m getting enough calcium and Vitamin D in my body from other sources. However, aside from having adequate amounts of calcium in your diet, it is important to strengthen your bones by getting daily exercise.

If anyone out there has successfully eliminated or reduced the amount of dairy in their diet, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to let me know what worked, what didn’t, how you feel, and if you are still able to eat normal amounts of cake.

Pickles

2011-12-19T18:00:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite conversations from this weekend as Clay and I were driving to back-to-back Christmas parties:

Me: "Here we go—another Christmas party, another surplus in my caloric intake for the day. But that's okay, fitting into your pants is overrated."

Clay: "True. You can always buy bigger pants."

I love this guy.

But yes, over the weekend we tackled a total of 3 Christmas parties as well as 2 additional social engagements and needless to say, Clay and I were pretty wiped out by Sunday evening. However, I'm not sure how anyone could really complain about spending their entire weekend hanging out with friends and family, admiring Christmas lights, and sampling a vast array of holiday goodies.

It's kind of funny too because over the past week and mostly over the course of the weekend, I had numerous friends, family, and co-workers mention that they read this blog. And I have to admit, I was really quite shocked and even felt embarrassed (which doesn't even make sense because I wrote this thing to be read and if I put something in here that I don't want anyone to see, it's my own stupid fault. But just the thought of how many times I've mentioned "runner's diarrhea" on here makes me feel like my head is going to explode.). But more than anything, I was absolutely delighted. I knew of a handful of people that regularly tuned in to this train wreck I like to call a blog, but I had no idea how far-reaching it was (and by far-reaching I mean like 10 people read it). So that was pretty cool. And now I feel tremendous amount of pressure to keep writing decent content so I don't end up losing those readers, but that's a good thing for me ... I need to feel some pressure to keep myself motivated. After all, I'll never become a writer sitting at home twiddling my thumbs.

One of Clay's second cousins (at least, I think she's his second cousin. And that makes her MY second cousin by marriage. If she even is a second cousin? I dunno. Their moms are cousins. So I don't know what that would make their kids ... but now my brain hurts and I feel like I just lost 5 IQ points), asked me "How did you get into writing?" And I explained to her that I had been writing short stories since I was in elementary school, but the bigger question I had for her was, "How did you finish law school with a brand new baby at home?" That's what I want to know. How amazing is that? And she's taking the Bar exam in February. She's going to rock it.

But perhaps the most wonderful surprise of the weekend was the Christmas party we attended for my father-in-law's side of the family on Sunday afternoon. As we all gathered at my in-law's house and prepared to gorge ourselves on even more delicious food (after all, isn't that what the holidays are really about? That and something about Jesus ...), my mother-in-law tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Did you notice what I put out for you?"

How could I not notice what she put out for me? It was the only dish of food at the party that had a glowing halo of light shining around it. That's right, my mother-in-law put out a pickle and olive tray at the Christmas party.

And just how did she know about my affinity to having a pickle and olive tray with a holiday feast?

"I read it in your blog," she said, smiling at me.

#winning

American Girl dolls and ... the Predator

2011-12-16T17:30:00.007-05:00

My devastatingly handsome husband took me to lunch today at our favorite mom-and-pop restaurant downtown. We’re regulars and tend to eat there pretty much every Friday afternoon, but we haven’t been able to take a lunch break together in a few weeks because of job training, traveling, ect. There’s something so wonderful and familiar about sitting in a cozy booth with my hubby and eating a warm bowl of yummy soup—I can’t even describe it. I hope it’s still like that when we’re old and gray and have to eat soup not because we want to, but because it’s all our dentures can handle.

While we were eating our lunch I told him about a status one of his relatives posted on Facebook earlier that day about American Girl dolls. Are you familiar with these? They were a big deal when I was a kid, and I’ll never ever forget the Christmas morning that I tore wrapping paper off of the coveted long, white box and saw my Samantha doll peeking out at me with her honey brown eyes.

These dolls swung into huge popularity right around the time that I received one from my parents, and at that time there were only a handful of girls in the doll collection. Each girl came from a different time period and had corresponding books that told her life story.

Samantha Parking’s books took place in 1904 and she had a very well-to-do, Victorian style. I'm pretty sure her only shenanigans was the time she tore her stockings on the day of a big country club party, but I didn’t care about any of that. She had brown hair and brown eyes and looked just like me.

My sister and I eagerly tore through the American Girl catalogs with the same enthusiasm and relish that I exercise with my Victoria’s Secret catalogs as an adult. After only a few hours in our house, the American Girl catalog would become a crinkled mess full of dog-eared pages and black Sharpie cirlces on all of the clothing and accessories we desired to have for our dolls.

In short, American Girl doll paraphernalia was like crack to an 8 year-old.

So I was tickled to death when I saw that Clayton’s cousin, Nancy, was starting to consider the idea of getting dolls for her daughters. However, Nancy was asking for suggestions of which particular doll would best suit her girls in terms of appearance. Nancy’s daughters are two of the most beautiful Chinese girls you have ever seen in your entire life, and I am shocked that American Girl only offers one doll that has almond shaped eyes.

I dated myself like 10 years by telling Clayton that “back in my day” there were only 3 dolls and it took forever for them to introduce an African American girl in the collection. They finally brought Addy into the world of American Girl as a slave girl living in the 1800’s. I know, right? My doll was gallivanting on Park Avenue and poor Addy was trying to escape a plantation.

ANYWAY.

American Girl has done a fabulous job reinventing the dolls, and My American Girl now offers the opportunity to customize dolls with a variety of choices for skin color, hair type, and facial features to match its owner's. I totally love that you create a doll that looks just like you. In fact, I wish that option would have been available when I got my doll because then I could have her made with crappy hair, a big nose, and gross feet. But then I probably wouldn’t have played with her because she sounds ugly.

Regardless, with all of the progress that American Girl has made to accommodate every type of girl out there, it’s kind of disheartening that some of the “minority” dolls are still limited in their appearance and have less options than the Caucasian ones.

Anyway, I told Clayton all of this over soup and salad and he pretended to know what was I was talking about.

“Surely you had some kind of toy catalog that was delivered to your house when you were a kid,” I said matter-of-factly around a mouthful of lettuce.

“We did,” he replied. “We used to get an Eastbay catalog that had nothing but sports equipment in it, and I used to look at that thing cover to cover.”

“See? Then you can totally relate to what I’m talking about. Ashley and I used to fight over who got to look at the American Girl magazine first,” I said before pausing to dunk a cracker in my tomato bisque. “I was always jealous that Ashley ended up getting a bed for her doll. I never got any furniture for Samantha. I was too into her fashion to care if she had a functional place to sleep at night.”

So NOT the same thing.

“Well, I never had a DOLL growing up, Courtney,” Clayton interjected. “But I did have action figures and they had some pretty sweet accessory-type things.”

“That’s not the same thing. Plastic weapons don’t count.”

“Um, excuse me,” Clayton replied defensively, “but I had an action figure of the Predator and he came with a removable mask. And my Terminator? You could totally change his sunglasses.”

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much that is not the same thing.”

“How is that not the same thing?” he asked, frustrated.

“Because,” I said, climbing up on my soap box, “unless you can buy the Predator a wardrobe full of cute bell bottom jeans and put a teeny tiny issue of Tiger Beat magazine in his hand, it most certainly is NOT the same thing.”

“Well, that’s just stupid, Courtney. The Predator didn't wear pants.”

I can’t wait to see what we argue about when we’re old.

I hope you have a good weekend! I’m hitting up 3 different Christmas parties. Hopefully you guys are doing something equally festive and fun!

Apparently I have a lot of thoughts on the Victoria's Secret 2011 Holiday Fashion Show

2011-12-15T18:00:00.007-05:00

Before I dive into today’s post, let me just get pleasantries out the way by wishing you and yours a very merry NATIONAL CUPCAKE DAY! Our country devoted a holiday to cake. This is definitely a world I want to live in. Trust me—I am treating today’s holiday with the utmost respect and am embodying the same level of festive spirit in which I celebrate Christmas (if not more).

Should I mention that I have a Pinterest board dedicated entirely to cake?

Anyway, talking about cupcakes makes today’s blog topic kind of ironic and hilarious … to me, anyway.

Last night I made the unfortunate mistake of eating half of a DiGiorno’s pizza while I watched the Victoria’s Secret 2011 Holiday Fashion Show on TV. I love VS and have a total obsession with any and all things in the PINK collection (my closet is a shrine to colorful undergarments), but being completely devoted to a line of lingerie is immediately put into perspective when you watch 6-foot tall gazelles who weigh 90 pounds and some change parade the sexy undies that you so clearly will never look that good in right in front of your face.

There I was, eating more pizza in one sitting than they have probably eaten in their entire lifetimes. And there they were, looking better half naked than most people look completely clothed.

I hate that I couldn’t enjoy the fashion show because I was too wrapped up in my own insecurities and saw each model as a walking threat in bedazzled stilettos. Clayton claims he's not into chicks built like that, but I think it's a blatant lie because even I'm into chicks built like that.

Never mind that earlier that evening I logged over 6 miles running up and down parking garage ramps.

Never mind that during my post-run shower I looked down at my body and was, dare I say it, satisfied with what God gave me.

Never mind any semblance of self-confidence I was feeling at all that night—just drop a few stick-skinny models in my living room whose lot in life is to be ridiculously gorgeous, and I’m right back to square one.

And yet, I never changed the channel. I watched, like a mesmerized idiot.

Whenever Miranda Kerr jiggled down the sparkly runway, the cameras immediately panned to Orlando Bloom who was sitting in the front row, clapping and smiling at her as she walked past. This happened EVERY.SINGLE.TRIP.SHE.MADE.DOWN.THE.RUNWAY. We get it, Orlando—she’s your wife. You and the 5 cameramen working the fashion show made that abundantly clear to the baby Jesus and everyone watching at home. But honestly, does it even really make a difference? Did any dude that didn’t star in Pirates of the Caribbean or rocks a magical mane of blonde hair in Lord of the Rings ever stand a chance with her? I think you’re safe, dude. Chill.

Adding further insult to injury, in between trips down the runway, the fashion show provided its viewers with a segment of mini bios so we could learn all about the Victoria’s Secret Angels (dreams really DO come true!). However, instead of just talking about themselves, the models were filmed talking about each other, candidly describing their BFFs’ sparkling personalities and fascinating interests (even though I’m pretty sure 99% of the straight male population’s level of interest stops at “boobs”.).

One of the models, in an adorable English/British/Australian/I-didn’t-pay-enough-attention-to-figure-out-where-she’s-from accent: “Bahati is an adrenaline junkie. She loves hang gliding and going on adventures.”

So this girl is unnaturally hot AND she does extreme sports? I might as well just kill myself now. Game over.

But honestly, even though Nikki Minaj was dressed like Lisa Frank on an acid trip at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, I couldn’t help but notice that her body is ten times sexier than any of the waifs strutting down the runway next to her. She’s shaped like Jessica Rabbit for Pete’s sake! Why isn’t she sportin’ a tie-dye thong for VS? Why do we let women whose body type represents approximately 1% of the entire world population’s model our mass-produced sexy lingerie? I don’t get it. Surely no woman is delusional enough to believe that if she buys that diamond-encrusted Brazilian g-string she will look anything remotely close to Candice Swanepoel? And why would she want to? Aside from a handful of women who were lucky enough to be born with the same DNA as Olive Oil, nobody looks like that. So how and why did that body shape become the coveted holy grail of sexiness in the first place?

Her waist isn’t even natural. It’s has to be some sort of voodoo magic.

Watching that fashion show tempted me to run upstairs and dig out all of my gender studies books from college so I could try and rationalize why I simultaneously felt both disgust and jealously over everything that was parading around on my TV screen.

I need more pizza.

More Courtney Confessions

2011-12-13T18:30:00.005-05:00

I hate coming across in my blog as whiny or pathetic or vain, especially when I know that there are far worse thing in life than anything I'm currently dealing with. But I'm glad I did open up about my embarrassing struggle with adult acne last night because I got a lot of wonderful comments and suggestions from my friends on Facebook on how to go about fixing the problem. It's the little things like that encourage me to always be open and honest because 99% of the time there's someone out there who knows exactly what I'm going through and can offer advice that I may never have thought of or found myself. Solidarity my sisters!

I'm certainly not the first (and I certainly won't be the last) person to get a pimple in their mid-20s, so I should probably just relax and stop stressing about it. Clearly Clayton can still tolerate looking at me with the lights on, so we're good to go. I'm hopeful that one day, if even for the briefest of moments, I will have the lustrous, glowing skin I've always wanted (and not because it's oily.) Or, at the very least, one day I hope to have clear skin for Pete's sake.

Every time I watch Real Housewives of Atlanta (guilty pleasure), I marvel at Phaedra's flawless complexion.

But in honor of coming clean about my acne stresses, I thought this would be a good segue into another round of Courtney confessions. As always, feel free to judge me or comment with your own idiosyncrasies.

More Courtney Confessions

I finally got notification from our local library that Tina Fey's Bossypants was returned and ready for me to pick up (me too cheap to buy a book? Definitely). I couldn't drive to the library fast enough. I was on the library's waiting list for several months, and last night I stayed up far later than I should have plowing through the pages. Tine Fey is my hero. I guess it's not really a confession since I clearly have no problems proclaiming my love for her from the blog-o-sphere, but my obsession with her is border-line inappropriate. She's not only the writer of one of my favorite movies, Mean Girls, but she is smart, witty, and has had huge success in a male-dominated industry--what's not to love? Check out her acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize, it's inspiring!

Apparently HTLM coding hates me and I can't actually imbed the video.
But feel free to check out her rad acceptance speech here.

I have not done laundry for going on 3 weeks now (if my mom is reading this, I'm really sorry. This is in no way a direct reflection on your parenting abilities. Clearly it's not you, it's me.). Luckily for me, I have an arsenal of underwear and far more shirts and tops than one person will ever need, so I have not been personally affected by this tragedy. However, you should see the mountain of dirty clothes in our laundry hamper. I'm pretty sure Joey could scale it ... it would be his Everest.
I pulled a muscle in my upper back and I'm 99% sure it's because I was dancing on the treadmill while I ran last night. Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" came on my ipod and I just couldn't help myself.
I received an email notification yesterday from the race people at the OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini Marathon letting me know that I would be placed in a preferred corral for the race this year. Preferred corrals are for people who register for the half marathon claiming they can run the race in a certain amount of time, and can then provide evidence as such via results from another race they participated in earlier that year. These people are then "seeded". Thanks to my sub-2 Monumental Half time from this last November, I felt confident enough to request seeding for the OneAmerica race. I won't be at the very front of the start line, but I certainly will not be as far back as I was last year, and that makes me feel like I accomplished something. I was really excited to get the news (the dumbest things excite me), but I have to be honest, I had a brief moment of panic because I'm secretly terrified of getting trampled. I keep picturing The Running of the Bulls in Spain ... but with water stations ...
I refuse to ever see The Muppets movie for this reason and this reason only:

Seriously? No, really, SERIOUSLY?!

What the heck is that thing anyway? A rejected Geico caveman? I remember being scared of him when I was a toddler, nevermind that I'm now a grown woman and he still makes me uncomfortable. I thought muppets were supposed to be adorable, not menacing. And I'm sorry, but naming this muppet Sweetums does not make him any less creepy ... nor does having him stroll down the street with pink shopping bags:

Tra-la-la-la-la!

Sorry for myself

2011-12-12T18:30:00.005-05:00

I was going to do a weekend recap for today’s post, but this weekend was pretty much uneventful and totally not worth talking about. It’s one of the few weekends that Clay and I didn’t have any commitments or social engagements, so we were pretty much lazy bums that got in A LOT of quality time with Netflix. I made Clayton watch the Wild Wonderful Whites of West Virginia and promised him that this documentary would change his life for the better. And I was totally right, it did.

I didn’t get home from work in Indy and last minute Christmas shopping until well after 9 on Friday night, and that kind of set the tone for the whole rest of the weekend. I think the most productive thing I did was make a new wreath to match this year’s red and green Christmas décor (yes, everything in my house has to match) and run 7 miles on Saturday. But even my 7-miler was sluggish and I just blame it on my body’s overall feeling of “I don’t want to do anything but sleep and eat Christmas cookies”.

But for what it’s worth, here’s my Christmas wreath:

I went to 5 different stores looking for mini red or green bulbs and had zero luck until I finally went back to Michael’s for the second time this weekend and found them buried behind some sparkly crap that no one was ever going to buy. The whole process was frustrating and I ended up putting way too much time and thought into making this darn wreath, and the whole experience made me frustrated because I was really looking forward to this craft project, but all it did was turn out to be a giant headache.

And then I got even more upset because I wigging out over a stupid piece of fake garland shaped into a circle and felt embarrassed because clearly I don’t have any real problems.

Speaking of ...

I woke up feeling like quite the Debbie Downer this morning and it’s probably a safe bet to assume it has a lot to do with my impending “special lady time” that usually makes me an emotional basket case for days in advance. However, I been fighting some icky feelings for several weeks now and I’m starting to think that it’s rooted in causes deeper than hormonal changes.

After church yesterday, Clay took me to McAllister’s for lunch and I poured my heart out to him over a bread bowl filled with Asiago Cheese Bisque (YUM!). For a 26 year-old who’s had a lot of blessings tossed her way, I sure do like to create my own problems. I think there’s a term for people like me … and I think that term is “dim-witted”.

It’s ridiculous the amount of time I spend worrying about things that don’t matter and how easily I let myself feel inadequate or inferior. I have a very low tolerance for people who have the power to change their situations but choose to grumble and mumble about it instead, and I must be the biggest hypocrite of all because I’ve been guilty of doing that for the last few years. And I’m mad at myself for not changing that behavior. If the things I fret and obsess over aren’t a big deal in the great scheme of things, I need to find a way to get over them … and fast!

In short, I’m feeling really sorry for myself because my face has literally exploded into a pimple-infested field of ickiness. As I mentioned in my “Winter ‘Ew’s” post last week, no facial cleanser or zit cream can cure the problem. I’ve been washing my face religiously in the morning, after workouts, and at night before bed, but nothing is working. Pimples keep coming back in full-force and they’re red, mean and nasty. For some reason my skin’s new magic trick is to develop giant, painful zits under my chin and along my neck that are completely resistant to salicylic acid. They made their debut sometime late in October, and I’m afraid that they’re going to be sticking around until well into the spring. It makes me feel like hiding. Christmas parties are coming up this weekend and I'm going to look like I had an allergic reaction to the holiday spirit.

Also, even though I really like my new job and am delighted to be back on my old stomping grounds, the fact of the matter is, I’m still the new kid. And thanks to switching jobs, changing schools, and moving several times throughout my life, I feel like I’ve had my fair share of being a “newbie”. And it totally stinks. In every situation, everyone has always been incredibly warm and welcoming, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still takes time to get acquainted with the already established cliques and groups in the company, school, or neighborhood--that's normal. It's an adjustment and sometimes I just get really impatient.

And how pathetic is this: The other day I was having an email conversation with a friend about something we’ve both recently experienced. Since we’re both kind of going through the same thing, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share something a little personal about myself that I haven’t had a chance to talk about with anyone else, especially with someone else who might completely understand how I’m feeling. Feeling a little bit vulnerable, I hit “send” on the email and waited anxiously to see what my friend had to say.

She said nothing.

As in she just stopped emailing me.

And I felt stupid for the rest of the day.

That’s basically why I stopped divulging personal information to anyone other than my husband and family.

So those are my stupid, selfish problems that I inexcusably let bother me all weekend. Sick of reading about them? Good, because I am totally sick of talking about them. I know we can’t help what brings us down, but we can control how long we let it keep us down. I need to be a big girl and pull myself up by the boot straps and carry on (and might I mention, my old boots tore on Friday and I replaced them this weekend with a pair of adorable brown knee-high boots with a kitten heel!). Nothing is ever as bad as it seems and it could always, always be so much worse.

Reindeer Romp

2011-12-08T19:36:00.002-05:00

For those of you wondering, our 3-year wedding anniversary date was wonderful and I enjoyed every bit of it! We talked about our wedding day and recalled our favorite and not-so favorite moments. We reminisced about the incredible high we both felt next morning when we woke up to the sweet reality that it was finally just him and me for the rest of our lives. We dreamt about the future, who we wanted to be and what we wanted to do ... it was blissful.

And dinner was delicious. I'm not a huge fan of beef (unless it's a hamburger), but we ordered a "T-Bone Dinner or 2" and my piece of meat was about the size of an infant. After a small salad, a baked potato, and two glasses of the most delectable pino noir I've ever had, I was struggling to finish my steak. But don't worry, I'm an American ... so of course I finished it.

While I was buttering my third dinner roll, Clayton put down his fork and stared at me in awe. "I don't understand how you're not fat," he said.

I think that was a compliment?

I did practice a smidgen of self-restraint and left a little trimming of fat on my plate so I could take it home to Joey. After all, our wedding anniversary is a family affair and our fur baby deserved something special, too. However, as I mentioned above, by the time we left the restaurant I already had two large glasses of wine under my belt and somewhere in the chaos of picking out candy to sneak in the theatre and totally having my mind blown by watching a cartoon in 3D for the first time, I kind of forgot about the steak all together.

I feel like I'm the only person in the world who can say she has a piece of steak in her car right now (because yes, it's still in there. Every time I get in my vehicle I think, "Man, it smells like steak in here" and yet that's not enough to make me dig under my seat and throw it away.)

*****

I realized that I totally forgot to mention the Reindeer Romp 8k I participated in last Saturday. Or I guess I should say, the Reindeer Romp 8K I almost completely missed last Saturday.

No matter how much time I think I have to make it to a race, I need to force myself to leave 15 minutes earlier than that. The Reindeer Romp was located in Brown County State Park down in Nashville, Indiana, the farthest I've driven on an actual race day (for my mini marathons I always stay in Indy the night before). The race started at 1:00 pm and I allotted us 45 minutes of travel time, assuming that would suffice. Well, apparently everyone and their mom was out for a early Saturday afternoon drive that day and it took forever to get outside the Bloomington city limits. Once we were finally on a straight-shot to the state park, we got stuck behind a line of cars who appeared to be more interested in sight-seeing and counting how many times they could tap their breaks in the span of 30 seconds than actually driving the speed limit.

Of course, I started panicking. It was 12:37 and we were still well outside the state park. It was right then that I also received a text message from Mandy letting me know that once we were actually inside the park, it would be another 10 miles before we got the Nature Center (AKA, the race starting point).

So of course, I started panicking more and even threw in some tears for good measure. I've never missed a race, and I certainly didn't want to starting doing so now, especially when the race was titled something as festively adorable as THE REINDEER ROMP (never mind it was 60 degrees that day).

At 12:55 we made it to the state park entrance, forked over $5 to enter the park, and went well over the suggested speed limit to drive the 10 extra miles in record time. We eventually started seeing signs along the road for various mile markers like "8k-mile 3" or "5k turnaround". We were clearly driving on the race course. "Oh great," I started whining, "not only am I going to be late for the race, we're probably going to run over people who actually managed to get here on time."

When we finally spotted a parking lot full of cars, I let out a sigh of relief ... but only for a second. Right beside the parking lot were a hundred or so runners standing at the start line and facing our car. If we didn't move out of the way, things were going to get ugly really fast.

"They're getting ready to start!" I screamed, wrestling myself from my seat belt and throwing open the car door.

While Clay parked the car, I went sprinting towards the group of runners which in hindsight, was probably one of the most embarrassing things that has ever happened to me. Here I am, late to the race, wasting precious energy running full-speed towards a large group of people flailing my hands and yelling, "Wait! Wait! I'm here!" Adding insult to injury, I was also wearing a giant Santa hat.

Tardy, but FESTIVE.

Since I was FACING the start line when I got to it, I joined the crowd right at the front of the pack. I found myself standing next to the top finishers in the race series who consistently run 5k's in 16 or 17 minutes and then loop back around to run another 5k while all of us normal people are still finishing. I also couldn't help but notice that the serious runners were NOT wearing Santa hats or reindeer headbands.

I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

Then I remembered I didn't have my race bib and started looking around nervously for the registration table. I tapped a fellow runner on the shoulder and asked where the packet pick-up was. She kindly directed me to a table that no longer had anyone sitting at it, and I began accepting my fate that I would be running this race bibbless, unrecorded, and without the t-shirt I paid $16 for.

Then I had a stroke of genius

Being as I was at the very front of the line and only two feet away from him, I gathered all my courage and walked right up to the race director who was getting ready to make an announcement into his mega phone (the announcement probably being, "Ready, set, go!"). "Um, hi there," I said timidly. "I'm late. Can I still get my race bib?"

What better way to delay the start of the race then to bother the person who's responsible for starting it?

Every one was very kind and incredibly sympathetic to my time-telling disability and helped me get squared away with my race bib (and the race shirts are SO CUTE! They have dancing reindeer printed on the front. I didn't even know that reindeer DANCED and this clearly proves that they do!). I pinned the race bib to my t-shirt with shaky, nerve-stricken fingers and barely had enough time to select a playlist on my ipod. I didn't even have time to stretch.

Within 10 seconds of securing my bib, the race started and I was on my way.

Can you spot me!? I'll give you a hint, I'm the only runner who looks incredibly awkward.

Besides risking missing the race all together, I hate being less than on time to any running event because I believe it's crucial to have a few quiet moments to reflect on the task on hand. Not only was I running a 5 mile race, I was running a 5 mile race in one of the hilliest state parks in Indiana; this was no easy task. And I had zero time to mentally prepare for what I was about to put my body through.

Luckily I got into my groove within the first half mile and had a great race (probably because I got a good warm-up sprinting to the start line like an idiot). Given the elevated course of the race, I'm beyond thrilled that I finished the 8k in 40 minutes. When I registered for the race several weeks ago, I was unsure if I should run the 8k race or the 5k, but I'm glad I ultimately stuck with the longer one. Aside from adjusting the incline on my treadmill, I haven't had a lot of opportunities to run hills thanks to all the rain we've been getting. It was a nice change of pace and my legs appreciated the challenge.

Imagine my dismay when I saw this picture and
realized that I'm shaped like Ronnie from Jersey Shore.

That was my last race of 2011 and I'm already greatly looking forward to what 2012 will bring race-wise. Next up on my race schedule is the OneAmerica 500 Festival Half Marathon in May, but I'm sure I'll be doing some smaller races beforehand. Feel free to check out my "Race Schedule" page to see what I sign up for!

3 Years of Wedded Bliss

2011-12-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

I’m writing this post early and scheduling it to automatically post itself tomorrow night (but if you’re reading this then it’s technically “tonight” or “right now”. Man, the future is complicated.) because I know for a fact that I won’t be around to do it myself. Wanna know why?

Because I will be out on the town celebrating my 3 year wedding anniversary with my darling husband!

I know it’s not normal to meet your husband at the tender age of 17, but for myself, I could never picture it happening any differently.

When I met Clayton, my home life was challenging. My mom and I were struggling to make ends meet, I was adjusting to my sister living 2 hours away at college, I had a non-existent relationship with my father, and all of us were trying to heal the wounds left behind after escaping an abusive home life several years prior. To put it plain and simply (and mildly cheesy), Clayton was a life raft cast out to me at precisely the right moment.

Falling in love as a teenager is a selfish, dramatic, what-romantic-movies-are-made-of kind of love, but it’s a pure love. You love that person simply for being there. And I did. And I do. But I am incredibly thankful that Clay’s and my relationship continued to blossom past the “he’s my boyfriend!” and “she’s my girlfriend!” stage and grow into something deeper, more mature and nurturing. At the early stages of any relationship, especially a teenaged one, flaws are overlooked and annoyances are deemed endearing all for the sake of keeping the coveted “in a relationship” status. But as a relationship continues to develop, accepting the flaws and annoyances rather than just overlooking them becomes essential in learning how to love someone completely and unconditionally. Clayton demonstrated that (and continues to do so every day) by choosing to love me, even at my most unlovable.

My closest friends and I all got married within the same 2 or 3 years of each other. While it was commonplace in my circle of friends to meet their mates at an early age, I can easily recognize that this is not the average for most people. Even looking back on my own wedding and my relationship with Clayton, I can see that 22 and 23 years of age is considerably young to be entering into such a lofty commitment. However, as I said before, I can’t imagine my life any other way. Clay and I had a rare, wonderful opportunity that most couples can’t say about themselves—we not only grew up, but we grew up together. A lot of people have said, and I typically agree, that you can’t know and love another person until you fully know and love yourself. While I do believe this to be true, I feel like myself and some other lucky souls out there are the exception to this rule. Being a “we” while I was becoming me (that’s a tongue twister), helped me become a more patient, selfless, giving person than I would have been had I navigated my formative years solo. I’m not saying that I am the world’s most patient, selfless, giving person (far from it), but I know that I’m better because I had Clayton.

I keep a stationary box under my bed that holds all of the letters Clayton wrote me in high school. Since we lived in opposite ends of the state, we relied heavily on snail mail to communicate during the long stretches of time apart. I love that I still have those hand-written letters and all of the pictures he colored for me, and I love that I can pull them from their box and relive our early history any time that I want. While the letters are an outpouring of puppy love and teenage sentiment, they are momentos of the most precious time in my life that I never want to forget, no matter how embarrassing or cringe-worthily cheesy.

In several of his letters, Clayton told me he was going to marry me one day and that we would have a life and family of our own. While I never questioned the fruition of his promises, I'm still delighted that Clayton is a man of his word and wanted to continue the fairy tale even when it became muddied or challenging. We entered into our holy union three years ago today and, as I said in my wedding vows on December 6th, 2008, I greatly look forward to continuing to be Clay’s wife and partner until the Lord calls me home.

For our previous two anniversaries, Clay and I have managed to slip away for weekend getaways. However, due to the nature of my job change and the increasing costs of Christmas, we are very happy to stay at home and celebrate in our own city this year. Thanks to signing up for a new cable service, we received a $100 Visa gift card and tonight Clayton will take me to Janko's Little Zagreb for the best steak in the Midwest before we head to the movie theatre to see Arthur Christmas.