Day #13

Topic: Discuss some of the things on your bucket list.

This is a hard one, as I've never actually taken the time to sit down and think about my list. Not even after seeing the movie "The Bucket List." So I'll have to think of a few things I'm hoping to do, and proceed with this discussion.

-I'd like to learn to sew. When I was a child, I used to have this fashion design kit that I played with ALL THE TIME! I absolutely loved designing clothes. Then I lost the body stencil and couldn't draw bodies myself so I quit doing it (nice excuse, right?) I'd really like to learn how to make my own clothes, and maybe one day move into being able to design some of my own. That actually might be a good thing to ask for as a birthday gift - a sewing machine. My mom does a bit of sewing so I think she'd be willing to give me a beginner's lesson.

-I'd like to become more adventurous with outdoor stuff. One of the things I want to do this summer is go camping with Chris. I haven't been camping since I was a kid. I used to really enjoy it, and then eventually I reached an age where I was like "what? Go into the woods with no electricity or internet? I don't think so!" Now that I have someone I wouldn't mind spending a couple days in nature with, it's something I want to get back into. And we do live in Idaho. It seems like a waste to not take advantage of the beautiful outdoors we have.

-I would like to see the country with Chris. I don't have a specific goal to visit all 50 states or anything, but I do enjoy showing him new places. I'm really excited for our trip to New Mexico, as that will take him through 3 new states. I'm even considering hitting up the Four Corners on our way home. I've really only been in the western US myself, so it would be fun to explore new places together.

-I want to finish a piece of writing I'm really proud of. It doesn't necessarily need to be a novel or anything, but just something that I know is good work.

-I want to make a difference. This is a simple one, but important. I'm not sure how yet, but I have two preferred methods at the moment. One thing I'd love to do, if we had the funding, is start an animal sanctuary. I originally wanted it to be only for cats, but I'm starting to think we can open up to more animals. I was inspired by an episode of Must Love Cats on Animal Planet where they featured a shelter called Cat House on the Kings. This women houses something like 900 cats. She cares for them and adopts them out. If they aren't adopted, they get to stay there and live out their life in peace. It's no-kill and cageless, but not just cageless in the sense that they have little rooms to wander though. No, the cats have the entire property (something like 10 acres) to wander around as they please. What a wonderful thing!! My other way that I think I'd like to make a difference is by pursuing my new found desire to make women more accepting of themselves. I haven't figured out exactly how to do that yet, but it's something I'd like to do nonetheless.

Has anyone actually sat down and written out a bucket list for themselves? If so, what sort of stuff is on it?

Days #11 & 12 (a 2-for-1 deal!)

So I forgot about blogging yesterday...oops. I figured I'd just do both entries today. Here it is, for your reading pleasure, days 11 and 12.

Topic #1: Something about which people seem to compliment you.

I've got to admit that I'm around some nice people who give me nice compliments. :) Just tonight Alex said I was "wise beyond my years"! But I suppose a few more common ones I've heard are that I'm a good writer (not sure on that one), that I have pretty hair, and that I always wear nice clothes. When I was thinner people would tell me I could be a model. The ironic thing is that I'd still need to lose a decent amount of weight to even be considered a plus size model. That was actually something I really wanted to do when I was young. I was so upset in 4th grade when I won "Most Likely to Become President" rather than "Most Likely to Become a Model"! Ahh, the foolishness of youth. I have thought about trying to pursue something in modeling once I lost some weight, but now it seems I might be old for that anyway. It may just stay a dream never realized.


Topic #2: Something you hope to change about yourself and why.

I promised myself I wouldn't say weight for this one. I guess I'd have to say I wish I could change my urge to get even with people. I'll admit this is a big flaw. When my sister was in the middle of her divorce and her ex-husband was in full asshole mode, I spent a lot of time pondering how I could make him pay. I even looked up voodoo death curses online...shhhh! ;) I've thought the same about Ryan. Not so much anymore, but after it first happened. But now I figure the best revenge for him is to be happy, which I am. Anyway, when people cross me, I just have the tendency to want to fight back and I wish I had more patience. I wish I could just brush things off more easily.

In other news, I am considering starting a website dedicated to the topic of my blog post on Day #9. A site for women about building confidence and breaking bad habits of our past. Anyone think that would be a worthwhile pursuit? I figured it could be fun, but then if no one visits it, I'd be a little sad to have wasted the energy.

Chris is busy planning out his summer and fall semester schedules. It's a little tricky with the trips we have planned, especially the two week jaunt to England in September. The exciting news is that I'm planning to take classes with him! Hopefully this time I won't drop them all. In the summer I am taking Survey of World Mythology and Introduction to Film and Literature. In the fall I've enrolled in Ethics and Introduction to Criminal Justice. I'm feeling pretty excited for all of them, so hopefully that enthusiasm will see me through when I'm thinking "I don't have to do this homework, why am I subjecting myself to it?"

As a final note, if anyone is wondering what I do at work, take a gander at this:
http://www.cwidaho.cc/programs-and-degrees/downloads/2012-2013_CWICatalog.pdf

That's my baby! I invested lots of time and energy in preparing that. My boss is also totally awesome, by the way. The other day she gave me a thank you card for all my help on the catalog, saying I'd relieved her of a lot of stress. If that wasn't enough, she gave me a $25 gift card to The Cheesecake Factory! Chris and I are really looking forward to using it.

Day #10

Topic: Something at which you've been a champion or the best.

Sorry for the let down post after my all-inspired affirmation entry yesterday, but it's back to the topics from the 30 day challenge. Although on this particular topic, I don't have much to say. Normally you are judged as a "champion" or "the best" in sports, and I'm not a sports person. The only thing that comes to mind here is winning first place in the hula hoop contest in 1st grade on Field Day (did you guys have those? I loved Field Day!) and winning first place in a writing contest in middle school. I also seem to be one of the more talented people I know when it comes to tying cherry stems into knots with my tongue. :)

In other news, have people figured out how to use Pinterest for spamming purposes? I got an email saying I'd been tagged in a strangers post. The weirdest part was the post was on a wall that was solely dedicated to pictures of skinny women exercising. I thought that was a little ironic after yesterdays discussion.

It was really nice to receive back so many supportive comments over Facebook about my entry. Now it's time to practice what I preach! Chris and I got a boot camp exercise pass over Groupon and we are going to be starting that soon. I'll admit that I am terrified! I usually avoid exercising in front of others as I don't want them to see just how out of shape I am, but I think this will be an effective way to really get some good physical activity in. We are supposed to start tomorrow, but are considering procrastinating it for another week. I'll let you know what happens.

In closing, I'm wondering what are my readers answers to this topic. Have any of you ever been dubbed the champion or the best at something?

Day #9

Topic: Body Issues and Self Confidence



After hanging out with one of my best friends last night, I decided it was time to write a post about how horrible we are to ourselves. This past week, I've been getting more into finding and reading blogs about healthy body images and accepting yourself. Maybe that's the reason that this self-abuse we women inflict on ourselves is becoming more and more obvious.

It seems like every single girl I am friends with complains about her weight. It doesn't matter what size she is. I have a friend who is close to my size who wants to lose weight. I have one that is a size 13 and wants to lose weight. I have one that is a size 6 and wants to lose weight. What is wrong with everyone? It seems like it's a requirement of being a woman these days that you have to want to lose weight. All I hear from people is how they need to lose 10, 20, 30 pounds. Or about how they used to be a size ____ and they just wish they could get back to that. It's time to wake up girls. The grass is always greener on the other side. You need to learn to love yourself how you are, or you never will...even when you're 10, 20, 30 pounds lighter.



It seems like every woman I know also talks about how they want to improve their wardrobe, but they want to wait until they've lost some weight. You need to put yourself first. Come to terms with who you are and how much you weigh because it doesn't matter! If you wear nice clothes and feel confident, that will be projected to others and you will be much more attractive than if you keep wearing clothes you hate and telling yourself you need to go exercise and not eat such-and-such for lunch. For all my friends out there that keep going in circles over this issue, here are some awesome shopping sites I've found this week with bigger sizes and gorgeous, fashionable clothes. My advice is to do some shopping:

http://us.dorothyperkins.com/
http://www.igigi.com/
http://www.swakdesigns.com/
http://www.torrid.com/
http://www.forever21.com/ (they have a plus size section)
http://www.simplybe.com/
http://us.asos.com

Go buy something that fits your current size...not your dream size! Buy something that will make you feel sexy and flatter your CURRENT body shape!



So how did we get this way? Who put the idea that we need to be skinny to be beautiful into our heads? And more importantly, why did we let them get away with it?? Probably a lot can be said for the media holding a good chunk of the blame. They project the image that thin=pretty in almost every avenue of entertainment. There's also some blame to go to the fashion industry, who often makes clothing that only goes up to a certain size, therefore making you think "damn, I'm too fat for all these cute clothes". For example, Victoria's Secret only carries clothing/lingerie up to a size large. Not even a extra-large! That's why I don't shop at Victoria's Secret anymore. The last persons I might suggest holds some of the responsibility in this current state of sad affairs are our families. I love my mother to death (and she'll probably be mad at me for saying this) but since I was young, she's been encouraging me to lose weight and it's had a strong affect on how I see myself. Too often we pick up cues from our mothers about what beauty means. Even if your mother didn't specifically tell you that you should lose weight, I'll bet that you observed her being unhappy with her own looks at some point. We are basically programmed to believe that we should never be happy with our looks, because there is always something that could be improved on.



In closing, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be concerned with our health, because that's important. I do want to lose some weight, but it's not because I'm disgusted with my looks, it's because I want to be healthier and be more in shape so I can enjoy active activities in my life with Chris. I think we all need to take a good hard look in the mirror, but this time don't pick apart your flaws as I know we are all prone to do. Instead, concentrate on your good qualities. Maybe you have great hair, beautiful eyes, sexy curves. Figure out how to enhance those things. AND THEN GO DO IT! Make your happiness at this current weight, at this current time, a priority! If you are happy and confident in yourself, you will be better in all other aspects of your life because you'll have one less thing to worry about.



For more reading, please check out these blogs I have found and LOVE:
http://www.stylehasnosize.com/
http://thecurvyfashionista.mariedenee.com/
http://www.plus-model-mag.com/
http://mylipstickonhercollar.com/
http://curvyisthenewblack.tumblr.com/

Day #8

Topic: Vacation hiatus!!

(Since I didn't get home until midnight last night, I had no time for blogging. Therefore I'm using my actual challenge topic of "vacation hiatus" to cover. :))

Day #7

Topic: ???????

Chris' suggestion for today's topic was to post about Lucy, as he feels it is unfair I didn't include her by name in an earlier posting mentioning my cats. Not sure it's a good use of the blog, but since I have nothing else, here are some pictures!





Lucy is about 8 months old now and came to be a member of our family in January. Her full name is Lucy Goose Grapes, and she is often called by the nicknames Goosey, Gooser, Lulu, and (this is only a Chris nickname for her) Goosingtons.

Surprisingly she fit into the family pretty fast. We were worried as we have tried to integrate other cats into the family before and Charly was having none of that. As you can tell from the picture of her and Lucy snuggling above, she's come to accept Lucy's presence. She even chews off Lucy's whiskers while grooming her, like she's done to Phoebe for some time.

Lucy's most unique/annoying trait is her meow, and I say that in a loving manner. She meows all the time! And her meow is really high pitched and whiny sounding. It just makes me laugh. I may need to record it sometime just so people can experience the delight of a Goose meow.

She's a great kitty and we are happy to have her in the family!

Tomorrow night I am off with my bestie Cheri for dinner and a movie. :) Maybe I'll be able to get her to come up with a topic for the blog!

Day #6

Topic: "Something that excites you and fills you with joy."

I'm not really feeling the blog vibe today, so I was very tempted to write "See yesterday's post for answer" but I figured that kind of beat the purpose of this 30-Day challenge. So instead, let's just say ditto to all the things I said yesterday for this question and here are a few more answers:

-Reading a good book. Nothing is better than getting so involved in a book that you have to stay up just 10 more minutes reading...and then before you know it it's 2am!

-Watching a good movie. I've always been a bit of a movie buff. At one point my dream job was to become a movie critic, but as that seems like a one in a million shot, I gave it up. Now I've started posting short movie reviews to Facebook. Ha! I'm not sure anyone even pays attention to them but it's kinda fun. We just saw "Cabin in the Woods" on Sunday and I'm already wanting to go see it again, now that I know what's coming. It was awesome.

-Writing. Unfortunately this isn't something that I am very good about making myself do. I signed up for Script Frenzy this month. It's a competition where you're supposed to write a 100-page screenplay in the month of April. The first day I got 7 pages down and I haven't worked on it since. My problem is I seem to get really excited about an idea, get the prologue written, and then lose interest once I have to dive into the meat of the story. The only thing I've written of substantial length is a horror screenplay I started when I was 11. I just recently re-read the version I did in my college writing class and it was sooo bad! I know I had started revising major plot points, but I seem to have lost all the revisions and now I'm too depressed about its crapiness to start the revisions over.

-Going dancing! I wish dancing was something I'd gotten into as a teenager. I absolutely love going dancing downtown with my friends. It's an awesome, fun way to exercise. I think I have decent rhythm. When I used to go with my friend Shannon, who was a go-go dancer at the time, people would ask me why I wasn't a dancer there too...but it would be safe to bet that most of the people saying that were probably drunk. :)

-Plain and simple: Good food! How do you think I got to where I am today? ;) I have a major sweet tooth, and I think I'm missing that gene that makes people think certain foods are "too rich". I'm not sure I've ever met a food I would consider "too rich". I've been completely spoiled having Chris here cooking meals for me. He's an awesome chef. :) And nothing is better than a night out with my sweetie, going to dinner at a nice restaurant.

I suppose that's a decent list for tonight, especially since I didn't want to write anything! As a side note, on the 30-Day blog list I am using, the next three days are marked as a "vacation hiatus." I asked Chris to come up with a topic for me for one of the days. If anyone out there has suggestions for a blog topic on one of the other two days, please feel free to share in a comment. :)