if there is a before then there must be an after

Poor poor neglected blog. I treat you so bad. Forgive me.

So, like I said, I redid my bedroom and I may have promised some people some before and after pics. I was all gung ho and then I stopped caring. But now I care again.

There are rules. First one, all these pics are from my iPhone. It's as good as I am prepared to promise. Rule the second, the before ones I remembered to take the second before I started moving furniture and my room was a pigsty. Get over it. Rule C, if you hate dark walls and are perhaps my mother, then look away. Or be prepared to bite your tongue. Number 4, it is night time, there is no natural light. I am truly sorry.

Just remember, I love it and that's all that really matters here.

Before:

Weird windows.

Dainty white curtains. So much love for my curtains. And that cute child.

Steel Wool. The most romantic name for a paint colour.

You can tell which bedside table is mine. The man doesn't read.

New bedding on top. New headboard fabric on bottom.

Every girl needs a place to hang her hats.

Old light? Was the standard nipple dome light. Ewwww. This is the new one. Again with the love.

The end.

2nd annual pop chugging contest

The children wanted to perform. In honor of the Oscars...and such.

They are stars. Seriously, they are.

Sadly, the video got cut off again, it always does. The winner was unable to give his acceptance speech but in my humble opinion, the burping says it all.

if you give a moose a muffin...

Forgive me Nutritionist, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession. And in that two weeks I have had Chinese food twice and 3 Crave cupcakes.

If you give a girl Chinese food she's going to want a Crave cupcake to go with it. So you'll drive her to the cupcake store and she'll spend forever trying to decide between Red Velvet Elvis and the Dark Angel. And when she's finished eating it she'll want another.

And another.

So just don't even start with the whole Chinese food thing. Okay?

And for penance she will plan to run and run and run and run to burn off all the cursed Chinese food. But in the meantime, if you give a girl an idea to paint her bedroom she'll go out and buy paint. And if you give a girl paint then she'll ask for a paint brush to go with it. When the brush is in her hand she'll paint a bedroom at mach speeds that leave her so sore the next day she can't run.

She can't even sit on the toilet to pee without wincing and whimpering in pain. Pain from the painting.

This makes no sense, I am aware. But it happened. For real happened and not maybe sort of, might have, could have happened like the Battle of Troy. Or King Kong.

When the girl paints the room she'll notice that her bedding doesn't match. And neither does the headboard. Or the pillows. And there needs to be curtains.

Because dark rooms need light curtains.

She'll ask for a store that sells curtains. She'll shop for curtains and the curtains will remind her that she hates her light fixture. So she'll buy a light fixture. And a mirror. And a curtain rod. And fabric for a headboard and picture frames and a cute little crystal flower wall hook system and...

Stop the madness.

She'll spend two days putting it all together to create an amazing, romantic love nest that she'll never want to leave again. And it will be a good thing that she doesn't want to leave because she can't leave. She's too sore from moving so fast and so hard for two straight days.

If you give a girl muscles that are so sore she can barely sit to pee she won't want to run off the Chinese food. If she can't run off the Chinese food then she has to confess her food crimes to her nutritionist who will be so thrilled with her sore muscles that he'll give her weight lifting exercises to do over the next week so as not to lose the momentum of her residual muscle soreness from the painting.

Penance. Punishment for crimes committed against the body. In the form of Chinese food and Crave cupcakes. And painting. And now squats and lifts and lunges and all sorts of demented contortions of the body.

Well, this and one million hail Mary's.

The girl will determine that this level of physical activity will make her hungry. When she realizes she's hungry she may want Chinese food to satisfy her. But...if you give a girl Chinese food she'll want a Crave cupcake to go with it.

And another. And another...

7 days until my next confession.

candy crush saga

Once upon a time there was a girl named Erin. Erin posted on Facebook that "candy crush saga is crushing my soul, I'm so addicted."

Addicted to a video game? That is absurd. Who gets so into a silly game that they feel they need to confess said addiction on Facebook? Come on, now. It's ridiculous.

We will not discuss the torrid relationship I may have had with Plants vs. Zombies. That's none of your business.

Immediately I looked up Candy Crush Saga in the app store. I mean, I may have stumbled across it.

What?

It was free. I'm all about the free. So I downloaded it. And then I ignored it because really, as if I need one more thing to be addicted to.

Until last night. Last night I had a killer stomach ache. I was restless and ill and frustrated. I opened the app and figured out the stupid game and then played. And played. And played and played and played.

And then I died. And died. And died and died and died. The game told me I had to wait many many minutes to play again. Um, I don't think so. So I deleted the app and reinstalled it and played and played and played.

And then my phone died.

When I went to sleep last night I saw candies being crushed behind my eyelids. They were moving into place to make rows, to reach goals, to move on to the next levels.

I craved sugar until I passed out.

This morning I had an appointment with my English professor to discuss my confusion regarding the paper due next week. He uses big words. When he talks I have to concentrate real hard-like because it's jagged, not fluent, disconnected and disjointed. He has ADHD speech. Lots to say. It's all over the place and after a couple of sentences I have to give my head a shake.

"Just spit it out, man!" I want to say. I get so exhausted in class after 75 minutes of trying to follow his speedy thoughts.

This morning, as he spoke his big, fancy, university type words, I stared at his face. I was losing myself. I couldn't hear what he was saying. I wanted to shake my head but he would surely notice that, he was looking right at me.

"Focus." I repeated in my mind. "You have to concentrate." I begged myself. "Do you not want to do well on this paper?" I tried to bring myself back into the moment. "What is the matter with you?"

"FOCUS!"

But all I think, all I could see, was that if I could just move his big fancy, sprinkled candy nose between his candy eyes I could crush that candy!

the hills are alive...

Allow me to set the scene for you. It is 8 pm. I am in bed with Bertha, Winnie and Paisley.

In bed is really the safest place for me to be.

Who are Bertha, Winnie and Paisley? They are my laptop, my iPhone and my weighted blanket. Respectively.

The two youngest are in bed. The second oldest is doing whatever it is he does best. Which I can safely say is probably torturing anything that can be tortured. ie. his sister. His sister, the oldest is rehearsing for her audition tomorrow. She is singing, like actually singing, right now, in the kitchen. She is practicing My Favourite Things for an audition to be in The Sound of Music of which I have seen no less that 10 bazillion times and she has seen exactly zero.

Zero times has she seen this musical, yet she wants to be, more than anything in the world, a lead in the live high school production.

As I sang and performed for her earlier this eveing, in the most stellar of fashions, the very song she will be singing tomorrow she sat wide eyed staring at me. A look nothing short of amazement and awe on her face. I'm sure it's because she could hardly believe her mother's mind blowing talents. She claims it's more because she can't believe she has such a mother but I know she's lying. I asked her if she wanted me to go get the DVD of the musical and we could sing and watch together. She gracefully declined my offer.

I don't know why. She has never really made much sense to me. She is strange, like her father.

Anyway, back to why I am in bed at 8 pm. Actually it's 8:12 now. I had a great day. It was organized and productive, mostly. I worked out hard. I ate well. I even signed up to run a 5K in June. I prepared 75% of dinner for my family as well as for a lady from church who just had her third baby in as many years. I read and studied and cleaned my kitchen. All before 2:45 pm.

I cleaned my kitchen. It was clean. A clean kitchen is a woman's best friend.

I taught piano and then blammo! it was 5 pm. My world turned to total chaos and mayhem. All of a sudden I only had 15 minutes left to get 45 minutes worth of work done. I was madly chopping salad, making cookies, I mean burning cookies, grating cheese, I mean grating my thumb, trying to get kids here and dinner there and then dinner spilled all over the seat in my truck and...

KAPOW! I was cranky, tired and bleeding profusely from my thumb in my very messy, very unhappy kitchen.

And now I am in bed.

See how that works?

You know, none of it on its own is very earth shattering, or mind blowing or even that interesting to talk about but yet it has completely flipped me upside down emotionally. And I am wondering what that is. Is it a fatigue I'm not registering? Is it hormonal? Is it dissatisfaction?

Who knows.

What I do know is that I would have made a much better princess. A princess with her own lady in waiting. Let someone else work in the basement grating their thumbs into the casserole and burning the cookies.

Why should I have all the fun?

pet peeve: numero uno. a vlog

I've been holding this inside for a long time. Feels good to finally get it off my chest.

Deep breaths....

for shame, for shame

There are some things that really burn my britches. For example, when children lie to the grown ups. Children should not lie to grownups. The Bachelor. That stupidity sets me on fire. But being the conscientious consumer I am, I watch, sort of. You know, so my opinions are not hypocritical. 

Okay fine, I am a hypocrite, but this is neither here nor there. Let me tell you what tindered my kindling and then turned into a small, yet ferocious bonfire earlier this week.

I wrote a paper. I wrote a paper for a class in which I had to read a certain text and then write an opinion paper. And this was my opinion.

Are you kidding me?

Let me back up. The text? The Courtier. The paper's main question? Does the ideal of the perfect lady relate to modern day?

Well, I certainly hope to the heavens it does not.

Allow me to quote some of the marvels I found within: “so it is becoming in a woman to have a soft and dainty tenderness with an air of womanly sweetness in her every movement.”

For real. It says that. It also says that “beauty is more necessary to her than to the Courtier, for in truth that woman lacks much who lacks beauty.” Ummmmm, rude. Really really rude.

How about this: a “certain pleasant affability is befitting.” Okay, that's not so bad. But wait, what about this? “Whereby she may entertain politely every sort of man with agreeable and seemly converse, suited to the time and place, and to the rank of the person with whom she may speak.” You want to know what I think about that? If you want to talk to me then you can come and talk to me. If you don't then don't and that little nugget applies to both men and women alike.

Chew on this for a moment, “wild and unbridled familiarity” is not cool. But this might be my favourite part, “when she starts to dance or make music of any kind, she ought to bring herself to it by letting herself be urged a little, and with a touch of shyness which shall show that noble shame which is the opposite of effrontery.”

Do you know what effrontery is? It's insolence and impertinence. So we should be shy and nobly shameful? Okay, good to know. But no insolence or impertinence. Let me get this straight, we are shy and shameful OR we are insolent and impertinent. There is no in between? No middle ground?

I think impertinent just became my middle name.

And I should mention that the author of this text said that it does not befit a woman to play tennis or wrestle. Well, I don't play tennis, so...

Here is the straw. The icing. The part that lit my britches aflame. Brace yourself. “Therefore let him take care not to leave her to fall into any kind of error, but by admonition and good advice let him always seek to lead her on to modesty, to temperance, to true chastity, and to see to it that no thoughts find place in her except those that are pure and free from every stain of vice.”

So, in a nutshell, the ideal woman is supposed to let a man do her thinking and save her from error. And! We are supposed to take our modesty, temperance, and chastity related cues from men. Ohhhh...my poor sensibilities have never thus been so polluted. 

For shame, for shame.

Is it any wonder we rebelled against such thinking? Who put the men in charge anyway? I would have been hung for my insolence if I had lived in such a day.

But, you know, their dresses were real pretty....