Reasons Why I'm Awesome

http://blog.pigtailpals.com/2011/08/waking-up-full-of-awesome/


In honor of this blog, I am thinking of reasons why I am awesome.  Here I go...




1.  Because I'm Joe's mama!


2.  I'm fricking hilarious sometimes.


3.  I'm a good cook.


4.  I am searching for my own pair of ruby red slippers.  They HAVE to be glittery.


5.  I "owned" a drill by age 6.  I used to drill holes in the porch.


6.  I know all the words to Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff," which was Number One the week I was born.


7.  I invent new words on a regular basis, a lot of them dirty.


8.  I can tie 3 knots in a piece of licorice with my tongue before it gets too soft and falls apart.


9.  I am telepathically connected with one of my cats.  (He may be a mind-reading alien.  I'm not sure.  The other cat is just absolutely adorable but rather useless.)


10. My legs have literally stopped traffic at Station Square on a Saturday night.


11. Dirt doesn't scare me.  Neither does grease or spit.


12. I'm honest to a fault.


13. I know a LOT about pop culture as it pertains to music.  So do a lot of my friends.


14. I wear plastic frame dark green glasses.  Sometimes I wear plastic frame dark purple glasses.


15. I have a friend with the college nickname of "Flounder."  I love him to pieces and his wife is the closest thing to a twin I'll ever have, right down to the swearing.


16. My blog has an awesome name.


17. I broke a tooth while singing along with Grace Slick to "Somebody To Love" at the top of my lungs.


18. I had a lady stop me at the grocery store today to tell me my shirt was hilariously awesome.


19. When I break something, I do it with style and mess it up real good.  ($6000 deer damage to my car, anyone?)


20. I have a pink chrome-y piggy bank.


And the last one...


21. Because Charlie said I was.  (I cleaned that up a little.)

Oh Holey Wall

There is no longer a me-sized hole in my living room wall.  It's fixed.  I didn't do it, though.  Charlie did.

I had fully intended on fixing it myself.  I was going to turn it into a bookshelf.  As it turns out, I didn't think that through very well, and it would have been the world's most shallow and useless bookshelf.  I told Charlie last week that I wanted to finally fix the whole over the weekend.  I left it there for four months for two reasons: I had been pretty much gone every weekend since Charlie and I met, and I wasn't ready for it to be repaired.  I spent many hours looking at that hole and pondering all aspects of my life.  I thought about where I've been, where I'm headed and how I got to "here."  I defined vague goals for the future and decided that the future would always be "someday" if I didn't decide to change the "now." I changed my attitude.  I changed my direction.  I stared at the hole and cried; I stared at the hole and laughed at the fact that sometimes it literally takes a wall crashing down around me for me to get the message.  I'm no dumb cookie, but sometimes I can't see what is right in front of me.  I needed the hole to stay in front of me for a little while to absorb it's meaning.  I ran the gamut of emotions while my wall was broken.  My spirit was broken, then I was ANGRY.  So angry.  Then I was sad and embarrassed.  I had let this happen because I'm dumb and not worth anything better.  After that came a slight show of humor.  I could sometimes joke about my holey wall.  I began to see the strength within that hole.  I was strong enough to break the wall but not my back; I was strong enough to break the self-inflicted chains of my situation but not forget how I had put them on.  I also began to see the re-construction of that hole, both the wall and my soul.  The wall could go two ways- I could leave the scars visible on the wall and my attitude, or I could rebuild the wall like it never happened and change my attitude like I was never hurt.  Neither change the fact that it happened, or that I remember it all, but I think maybe that is part of the point.  Not everyone needs to see the events that shape you as a person, and wearing them on your sleeve isn't always necessary.  All that matters is the positive effects of those events on you, and how you are with other people.  I am more patient with myself now.  I am more relaxed, also, and that has made me much easier to deal with.  Very few of my life's stressors were of monumental consequence, and I fnally let them go.  It doesn't matter if my laundry is wrinkled.  I have a dryer and can un-wrinkle them when I want to wear them.  It doesn't matter that I have 47 different colors on the outside of my house.  Nothing needs repaired and I'll finish painting everything someday.  I'll plant bushes and more flowers and all of that.  It's not worth losing sleep over like I used to.

This past Saturday, Charlie and I went to Lowes and got a sheet of drywall and all the other junk to close up that part of my life.  I needed direction on how to do it, but I was going to fix it.  Without ever saying a word about it, Charlie did.  He quietly and gently took over the job without me realizing he had done it until he was almost done.  He asked me if there was anything I wanted to put in the wall; any reminders of Nick to seal away.  I said no, but I did have one thing- the calendar page from that fateful day, the one that was in the frame hanging beside the hole.  It read "Life begins after you dump the damn psycho."  I thought about the irony of the whole thing.  One man literally tore me (and my wall) down, and without saying a word, another very unexpected one built everything back up.  He fussed and fretted at finishing the wall just like he fusses over me, quietly, gently, intently and very deliberately without me realizing what he's doing.  He is part of that hole now.  He has helped me turn something very ugly into something beautiful.

But You Gots Blood In Yo' Eyes!

It's almost 1AM and what am I doing?  Typing.  Why?  Because I'm stupid and decided to watch something creepy at bed time.


I recently decided to see what all the hype about "True Blood" is.  Like I had a dose of "V," I got hooked.  The first season was a little creepy but more campy.  I've watched all but the last show of season two, and the last episode I watched kinda freaked me out a little.  The people in the town are under the spell of a maenad, and they have creepy black eyes.  Not black and white eyes, black eyes.  All black, like a bug.  The eyes are stuck in my head and making the back of my neck itchy.


This would not normally bother me if I had watched this through the day or even with somebody.  Like an idiot, however, I decided to crawl into bed and watch this.  Vampires crying blood tears (which is gross and makes my eyes water) and creepy black-eyed empty brained robot people is not a comforting thing to watch all snuggled in bed.  Add to that being alone and in the dark...  I should have known better.  Not even the southern accents of the creepy people were helping.


Now if you will excuse me, the dishwasher suddenly sounds like it may have been taken over by a demon.  I'm going to put earplugs in and hide under my covers until morning.

Super Organizational Wonder Carrie

I couldn't find my camera.  I knew it was around here... somewhere.

See, I have the BEST ideas about organizing my stuff and how cute and neat it will all look when I'm done, but...  Follow through is not my strong suit.  I'll start on a mega-organization spree, get overwhelmed, take a "break" that lasts anywhere from a few days to a few years, and mess up what was already done.  I am a Type A personality to the Nth degree.  At any given time, I have dozens of projects flying around inside my head.  Most if the time I grossly underestimate the time needed to complete each project.  Then I feel like I am behind on my self-imposed schedule and get frustrated.  Throw in a dash of perfectionist, and not only am I behind schedule, I'm not happy with what I have done.  I realize that most of the flaws I see in my finished product are only visible to me, but I see them like a neon sign at night.

In some ways, my juggernaut personality has helped me.  If I decide I am going to learn something, dammit, I WILL learn it and be better at whatever it is than most.  I'm too stubborn and cranky to be anything else.  I learned how to give great pedicures because I couldn't afford to pay someone else to do them for me.  You would never know I did my own french tips and I have zero calluses on my heels.  Yes, I am so stubborn that I learned how to file my own nasty dead feet-skin so that I could have toes that looked like I spent $50 on them.  That's pretty damn stubborn.

In other ways, though, my overzealous perfectionist has not helped me.  Case in point: the camera.  I knew where I had deemed it to live during my last organization spree, but it wasn't there.  Nor was it in it's previous place.  I knew that I had used it when Joe and I went...  I don't know where.  We went somewhere and I had it in my purse.  My purse!  Okay.  I checked the last three purses I used.  Not there.  Holy cow was this frustrating!  If only I had the perfect, most organized house Martha Stewart could dream up.  (Never mind that I would get distracted and leave stuff out of it's place.)  I vowed to finish my purge and organization just as soon as I found my stupid camera.  And put the junk I needed the pictures of on eBay.  Then, with more junk purged, I would take pictures of it and put it on eBay!  Yes!  I was pumped to not only find the camera but clean, organize and put nameless, faceless junk online.  Never mind that it was already 10 o'clock on a Tuesday night.  My perfectionist self is usually not rational in how things are in reality.

After looking for another half hour or so, tearing my bedroom, dining room and den apart in the process, I hit a wall.  I was tired, cranky, hungry and irritated.  I hadn't eaten dinner because I was too wrapped up in my evening's projects to remember to eat.  I decided dinner would be dry Mini-Wheats as I looked at a gossip magazine.  (Dinner of champions for the body AND mind.)  By the time I was done, I could barely keep my eyes open.  I crawled into bed, and you know what my last thought was before I fell asleep?

The camera is in the book bag in the closet.