Seems to be a trend...

I was really trying to keep up with the Blogtember challenge this month, but it's just not happening. So since I really wanted to post something today, but I'm sort of lazy, and a bit of a copy cat, and not at all feeling inspired to write anything deep and meaningful, I'm stealing Erin's idea of making lists. Juliette did it too, so I figure it's completely okay for me. :) 

Five things I'll be doing over the next week:

1.) Taking lots of walks. I love this kind of weather, and I love going for walks. When I get to combine the two, I'm a very happy camper. 

2.) Cooking. I've been looking at some recipes on Pinterest, and my little chef-wannabe brain is just tickled about all the awesome and fun cooking opportunities that come with the fall season. 

3.) Agonizing over my Survivor pick...again. I picked the Ravens to win last week, and they did, but I was stressing out for most of the game. WHO SHOULD I PICK, GUYS?!

4.) Reading. I have to finish this book for the Blogger Book Club and I haven't even started it, so I need to get my act together. 

5.) Getting my nails done (hopefully). I am not a very vain person - I don't do my hair often (more because I'm completely hopeless and can't than because I don't want to, but still), and I don't wear a lot of makeup or jewelry. The one thing that I really like to do to feel pretty is to have my nails manicured and my toes pedicured. With the job security issues I've been experiencing lately, it has been much harder to keep the mani/pedis up like I would like. 

Four items I need to purchase:
1.) New boots! I am in desperate need, and since I like to wear them so much during fall/winter, I need to make sure I find good quality ones. 
2.) Fresh chicken. The stuff we have the in the freezer right now is old and totally frost-burned, so I definitely need to upgrade that. 
3.) A gym membership. Running has been completely awful great and all, but it is wreaking havoc on my joints and my back, and I just hurt all the time. Not ideal. I don't get enough cardio just from walks though, so I need some kind of low-impact cardio that I can do, like an elliptical or swimming. I think it would definitely be worth the extra expense though, because I always feel better when I work out. 
4.) A peppermint hot chocolate from Starbucks. I've been craving one for days and just haven't had the chance to get one. I need to get on it, ASAP, since peppermint is a seasonal flavor, therefore I need to get as much of it as I possibly can in the few short months that it's available. Right? Right. 

Three shows I can't wait to have come back into my life:

1.) The X Factor! I am so geeked about this show, it's almost embarrassing. I started watching it last year, and was completely obsessed. I do NOT love the new judge Paulina, or whatever her name is, but the other three I do like. Except for Simon, whom I absolutely adore. And the talent this year already looks like it's gonna be amazing. 

2.) Vampire Diaries. Um, hi. Let's talk about Damon for like, one second. Because holy hotness, Batman. He was hands down my favorite undead guy from the very first episode, even though for the first two seasons, everybody was supposed to think that Stefan was like, THE BEST THING EVER. Also, I kind of want to be Nina Dobrev because she is JUST SO PRETTY. Except I hate that they always dress her in skinny jeans and ankle booties. So if they change up her wardrobe this season, I'll be happy about that. 

3.) Bones. Booth and Brennan are just so cute together. And I hate Christopher Pelant. And I love Hodgins and Angela, and Lance, and like, I just love everybody (except Pelant)! 

Two reasons I'm excited for fall:

1.) I have discovered recently that I enjoy wearing scarves, and I've always liked layering.. So I'm psyched about that. It's a lot easier to put together cute outfits that hide trouble areas in the fall than it is in the summer. Probably mostly because it's a lot easier to wear a lot of clothes in the fall than in the summer. 

2.) The colors. Fall in the midwest is just ridiculously pretty. The green that I absolutely love in the springtime morphs into a cacophony of browns and reds and yellows and oranges. It's just so, so gorgeous, and refreshing to the soul. 

One thing that's currently bothering me:

There are three females that work in my office, and two stalls in the ladies' room. We are all grown women who should have a solid grasp of how to properly handle bodily functions. And yet, somehow there is always urine on the floor in both stalls!! I don't know if it is because both of the other parties in the office have the same troubles, or if there's just one who typically uses both stalls (which is kinda weird in and of itself, right? I mean, am I the only one who has a favorite stall that I use whenever I can?), but whatever the reason, it's disgusting and annoying. And the office only gets cleaned twice a week, and I don't think they do a whole lot in there anyway, so it tends to smell kind of gross in there. WHAT IS THIS ABOUT?! I mean, seriously. Learn how to pee, people. 

It's Friday. Let's confess and stuff.

Hey Friday, everybody. Has this week kicked your butt like it has mine? I mean, dang. I am not complaining, because I know it could be like a billion times worse, but boy, this week was rough. I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend!



One of my favorite things to do on Fridays is to link up with Leslie to confess. So without further ado....






I confess // that I have completely dropped the Blogtember ball this week. Which is sad, actually, because I really liked some of the prompts for this week. Hopefully I will still be able to get to them sometime. 

I confess // that I had ice cream twice this week, and I don't even feel bad about it. #sorrynotsorry

I confess // that the times I went #runningforsupernannykenz this week have been really really tough. I don't know if it's because of where I am in the month, or because of the fact that the weather has been weird, or what, but it's been a LOT tougher than previous runs I've done, even ones when I was in worse shape than I am now. But I've gone a total of 14.85 miles for this, so I'm excited about that. 

I confess // that I really, really, really want to go to a corn maze this year. There is a pretty big one about an hour away from where I live, so I am hoping we will venture that way before too long. 

I confess // that I hate the taste of pumpkin stuff. I just really don't like it at all, so I am like, less than excited about all the pumpkin spice latte happiness that is going around. I do, however, enjoy that Starbucks has their peppermint flavoring back, so I can spend my fall drinking peppermint hot chocolates or salted caramel hot chocolates. 

I confess // that I really don't like eggs, and I am more than a little bit annoyed that there are some showing up on my BLT salad today. I mean, seriously people, who puts eggs on a BLT sandwich?? Oh, nobody? Right, so why, pray tell, are they on my salad? Dumb. 

I confess // that I have some potentially lucrative projects that might be coming my way, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that things work out for that. Especially since I just bought a car (I'll probably write a post about that later), and have to find a way to, you know...actually pay for it. 

I confess // that right now, with all the bills I have to pay, and all the stress of uncertainty in my current life-in-flux state, and the fact that I really need to get some new clothes but am not entirely sure how I will be able finance a shopping expedition, I think being a responsible adult is sometimes wildly overrated. 

But then I remember that I get to drink wine, and that makes it okay. 

What are your confessions today? 

"I can give you advice, I'm GREAT at advice."

Ten points to you if you can name the movie from which my post title is pulled.

Moving on. I'm one of those really ridiculously annoying people (yes, I'll admit it) who likes to give advice for like, everything anyone tells me. It's like, the minute someone tells me a story, my little brain just goes wild over all the different ways that my oh-so-brilliant ideas could cure whatever ails them (literally or metaphorically), and I get super excited to tell them my ideas. Because hello, who doesn't want to hear all of my awesome thoughts?!

.....besides basically everyone who hasn't asked for them. Whoops.



But the point is this: basically, I know some stuff. And most, if not all, of the gems I'm about to share with you are ones I have received from others, and now pass on to you. These little nuggets have come in real handy on more than one occasion. So you're welcome. 

- Stay hydrated. There is not much worse than a dehydration-induced headache, or its accompanying grumpiness. Drink a lot of water. Your body will thank you. Just don't be this guy:

- Lefty-loosy, righty-tighty. Ever gotten confused about which way things are supposed to be screwed into other things, like when you're putting together a bookshelf, or a desk, or something? There's your answer. 

- Changing behavior does not change the person. If you tell me that I do XYZ thing that bothers you, and you'd like me to stop doing it, you're not asking me to change who I fundamentally am as a person; you're simply asking me to change a behavior. People are separate from their behaviors. Sort of like this... 

..only not really. :) 

- Taking responsibility for your behavior is powerful. The minute you accept responsibility for every little thing you do, and purpose to live a life of intentionality, the world opens up to you. You instantly take the driver's seat in your life, which means that you actually have control over almost everything that happens to you. Don't like something about your life or situation? Change it. You've got the power. 

Go on a three month vacation? Heck yes, I will.

Sorry this post is late! I got a whopper of a headache last night and didn't feel like finishing it. I still feel gross, but I'm powering through to keep up with the Blogtember challenge! 

I love vacations. I love the idea of going somewhere different, maybe even someplace new. I love the notion of doing new things, trying new restaurants and foods, getting deliciously sunburned, etc. But I mean, doesn’t it always seem like vacations are just too short? Like there’s never enough time to do all of the fun stuff you want to do, or see everything you want to see?

So when I was given the option to go on a three-month, all-expense paid vacation prompt to talk about what I’d do if I could take three months off to do anything I wanted, my little wanderlust brain went positively bonkers. Oh, the possibilities!!

But I mean, basically, I’d just travel. Everywhere. But mostly Europe. Oh, and Australia, because, well…the boys have fun accents, and I hear it’s pretty. Plus it is starting to get warm down there this time of year, so summer in Australia? Don’t mind if I do, matey.

But Europe. I mean….EUROPE. Yes, let’s start there, and if we end up blowing the whole three months there, well then so be it. I’m very happily attached, so I don’t need any boys with cute accents anyway.

So here are all the places I would ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY HAVE TO SEE in my three month vacay:

Venice {via}

Rome {via}

Greece {via}

Paris {via}

And while I'm in France, I will of course have to make a stop to see Patricia. Because le duh, she's awesome. And funny.And also the reason that I finally mastered the spelling of the word "croissants". 

London {via}

And of course there's no way I'm leaving the UK without finding some way to visit Belinda, because she is awesome too, and I really kind of just want to sit and drink coffee with her. 

Auschwitz Concentration Camp - Poland {via}

Swiss Alps {via}

And then if I had time, I’d also go to these places:

Tokyo {via}

Hong Kong {via}

Vancouver {via}

And I’d really really make it a point to do these things as often as possible:

Parasailing {via}

Sky Diving {via} 

Swimming with sharks {via}

If you haven't noticed yet, my life's biggest dream is basically just to travel. I'd pack a lot of reading material (or a fully-loaded Kindle, for ease of transport), and then head off on a grand adventure. It would be AMAZING!! Who knows, maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to be able to do all of this! 

What would you do if you had three months off to do anything you wanted?

Where I come from, it's cornbread and chicken...

Oh hey there, blog. Long time, no see. Sorry that I'm a loser blogger and can only seem to manage to write something like, once or twice a week. Hashtag FAIL. 

Buuuuuut I was busy doing life-like things, so you know...I still win. 

Anyway. So I had a pretty fabulous weekend, thanks for asking. I'll get to that in a minute (hint: there will be photos), but first I'd like to talk a little bit about my family, and what makes me "me". 

I grew up in what is generally considered to be a pretty large family - I'm one of six kids. And before you ask, no, my parents aren't Catholic. It's just how it worked out. Anyway, almost every one of the kids were pretty extroverted growing up, or at least we all were with each other. I grew up in a noisy, active household, and thought it was completely normal to have eight people sitting around a dinner table, all fighting for some air time to talk about their day at the same time they were fighting over the last dinner roll. To this day, I still think of dinner as the "debrief" time, to sit down, enjoy some face time with your family or friends, and talk about your day. I LOVE getting into conversations about things I've learned during the day, current events, or interesting events that happened. And it's all because of my big, crazy family who all always had something to say. 

I was also a middle child (a distinction I shared with my 21-months older brother). And yes, we were totally the forgotten children. Okay, I'm sort of kidding about that, but only sort of. I certainly don't think anyone "forgot" about us - well, me, since I can really only speak for myself - intentionally...it's just sort of how it happened. The first four of us were born within 5 years of each other, and then there's a five year gap between me and Baby #5, and then another five years between #5 and #6. So the oldest four were always kind of in this little group, and then my sisters were referred to as the "little girls". I was always the youngest of the oldest, and the oldest of the youngest, and I never really felt like I had a specific place that was all mine. 

Middle kids, having a blast

That feeling is still with me today, to be honest. I am nearly 30 years old, but I still struggle with the feeling that I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I can't say that I'm at a place in my life where I really feel like I "belong". I wish there was a better word to describe that than "belong"...that's not quite right, but I hope you know what I'm trying to say. 

All six of us were home-educated (Jolynn went to a private school for 7th-12th grade, but was homeschooled before that), which was awesome and horrible all at the same time. I would have really loved the ability to experience things like home football games, going to my own prom (maybe even helping to plan it!), being able to participate in sports during the school year, being on an honor roll, etc. But at the same time, I know that I was given a phenomenal education that I may not have otherwise received. I was also instilled with a strong love of learning, which has stuck with me. I love learning new things, and find myself endlessly fascinated by the world around me. I am in no way trying to brag, but I am fairly smart, so I have a lot of opportunities available to me that would probably be more difficult for someone who doesn't have my brain or my education. (That sounded elitist - it wasn't supposed to). 

One of my favorite things that I was given through my education was a love for reading, and the ability to read really fast, like around 500 words a minute. This is totally fabulous, because it makes it really easy for me to read lots of books in a short amount of time. Plus it makes picking out Christmas and birthday gifts for me easy for my family, since it's pretty tough to go wrong with a book. :) We weren't allowed to watch a lot of any TV, either, so reading was the only way we had to "escape", as it were, and we did it often. One of the worst punishments we could get was if Mom took away whatever book we were reading at the time...but the best punishment was getting sent to our rooms, since you know...that's where our books were. :) 

I was blessed to be born into a pretty great family. My grandfather's uncle, affectionately known as "Unk" to pretty much everyone, turned 90 last weekend, and his two kids threw him a surprise birthday party down in Kansas City on Saturday. I was supposed to be in South Dakota last weekend, but that fell through, so I went to my dad's house to spend the weekend with him, and we flew down to KC together in his plane. I even got to fly it this time!! Legit, I flew for like 20 minutes, and did some turns, and ascended and descended a little bit and everything. It was pretty much awesome. 

But what was even MORE awesome was the fact that when Dad and I arrived at the party (we were a bit late, so we missed the surprise), Unk was sitting at his drums, wailing away and singing with his jazz band. Yep, that's right, my 90 year old uncle still plays the drums and sings in a band. He's that freaking awesome. 

And now, as promised, here are some pictures from the weekend. 

one: quick airport selfie before getting in the plane to go to KC
two: Papa's plane in his brand new hanger
three: beautiful scenery on the trip, in the backwaters of the Wisconsin River
four: me and Papa on the way to KC
five: state line - that's Iowa on the right side, and Missouri on the left. Cool, huh? 
six: action shot of me flying! 
seven: Unc on the drums. Told you he was cool. 
eight: Grandpa's sister - we know how to have fun in my family! 
nine: Papa's sister, for whom I am named. She's one of my faves. 
ten: Grandpa's sister and her husband
eleven: Grandpa, Unc, and Dad. Handsome men in my family, huh? :) 
twelve: flying by the sunset on the way home #nofilter
thirteen: my tiny little hometown at night.. I tried to get the runway lights, but I was too slow. 
fourteen: a burger from Pete's Hamburger stand - the best burger I've ever had in my life. 
fifteen: enjoying the beautiful day along the river on Sunday 
sixteen: best root beer ever!

Gourmet tongue. Or something.

I'm feeling very creatively stilted lately, if you haven't been able to tell. Every time I sit down to write something, it's like everything just stops, and I can't write anything. It's really frustrating!

But, since I really wanted to write something, you're stuck with whatever random nonsense is currently taking up space in my brain. I'm sorry, and you're welcome. All at the same time. 

- Despite my creative slump, I somehow managed to completely revamp my "About Me" page. 

- One day, I will have a large, beautiful kitchen, and I will have people for whom I can cook. Don't get me wrong, I can cook a little bit for me and Boyfriend right now, but we have a tiny little kitchen, without a lot of space for ingredients or kitchen tools. So I can't quite cook or bake the way I want to yet. But once I AM able to?? Ooooh, look out, I'm gonna be cooking all ze time. And I will get le fat. And I will love it. (P.S. Did you see how I threw a little weird French in there? Yeah, that's me pretending to be an awesome French chef.)

- I didn't watch the VMA's last night, but judging from the Twit and the blogosphere, only two things of note happened: number one, 'NSync reunited for like, 2.2 seconds. And number two, Miley Cyrus made a complete and total fool of herself and Robin Thicke and also made every single person who saw the debacle for which she was responsible extremely uncomfortable. Oh, you missed it, you say? Well here's just a tiny little moment of what you missed. Again, I'm sorry, but you're welcome. But now that you've all seen it, maybe somebody could explain what in the HELL is up with Miley and her ridiculous tongue. Did something happen that has made her physically unable to keep it in her mouth anymore?

-Moving on. Does Blogger ever just really suck to use for any of the rest of you? Cuz right now, this formatting stuff is ridiculous, and is basically making me want to just throw my computer out the window and forget the whole dang thing. 

- Blogging can be tough, speaking of it. It's weird, because there's all this discussion about how there's like, this great wonderful community, and people can make all these great friendships, and all of that... And while I'm not going so far as to say that's not true, because I have "met" a few great people through blogging, I will say that it's not quite what I was expecting. I guess I just know like, what I would do if people reached out to me from my blog, or bothered to send a nice email out of the blue or something, and I think I just expect everyone else to think and respond in the exact same way that I think I would. Which is not a real bright idea, so  I really ought to get over that. 

- And actually continuing on that line, I have a question: I was having a discussion yesterday about whether or not letting go of expectations constitutes giving up on something and/or settling, or if it is just a way of accepting that sometimes, the expectations we place on others to think/behave/react in a certain way can often be the biggest cause of disappointment in our lives. I'm interested in what the blogging world thinks about this. Weigh in, people, and let's discuss. 

- I've got Dance Moms on in the background right now. Holy train wreck, Batman. I haven't watched this show since I left Vegas, and I had somehow managed to forget how crazy the drama is. I honestly don't know if the moms and Abbey are really as psychotic as they look - and I have a hard time believing that they are because, uh, hello, they're CRAZY, and who would want to even ever be around that nonsense? - or if they're faking it for the sake of television. I'm leaning a bit more towards the latter, but either way, it's just crazy. The little girls are really cute and talented though, so props to them. 

- I've decided I am going to participate in a couple new things for the month of September. Number one, I'll be participating in "Blogtember", with Jenni. Jenni also orchestrated the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge that I did, and I really enjoyed it, so I'm looking forward to doing this as well. 

AND, even though I'm really not a runner at all, I was inspired by Kenzie's post to show solidarity to another Kenzie during the month of September. So now, in support of Kenzie, I will be joining in on the #runningforsupernannykenz campaign. You can keep up with me on that via Instagram, if you feel so inclined. You'll probably see a lot of pictures of me looking about like this: 

Annnnnd that about does it for me. Hopefully my brain will feel better in the coming days/weeks/months, and I'll feel more inspired to write, and to write things actually worth reading. We'll see what happens!