Glossy

Life can be pretty darn hilarious sometimes. Falling-to-your-knees-choking-for-air-can't-catch-your-breath laughter rumbling through your body till your sides hurt. I like laughing. life is funny... except when it's not. And sometimes it just isn't.

There are lots of parts of me that's aren't very funny or pretty and truthfully, they can be down right filthy ugly. But I try as I might to cover those over, wrapping up my whole self in a shiny tidy glossy box (with a bow, of course!) to present to you.

This is me.



From the outside I think I look pretty darn good, ifIdosaysomyself.

God did a great thing when he made it so that people's outsides don't have to match their insides. We don't have to show off our broken pieces, scars on our hearts, painful reminders of what has hurt us in the past. God doesn't make us carry those with us... we do that to ourselves.

Somedays I get crippled by what has been done to me or said to me. I don't have the words to explain to my husband why my insecurities make it hard for him to touch me or love on me. He loves me SO MUCH. But I never will feel like I deserve it, that I'm worthy of that because I've been told (and my mind will tell me NOW) that I don't.

I build up walls around my beating heart as wide as they are thick and find comfort in keeping people out of reach, 'don't touch me!' Closeness makes me nerve-y. The deeper the yuckier.... the darker. I'm an onion I tell ya.

A glossy (and sometime stinky) prize-winning onion.

The Saga... Part 1

I don't think that there is anything more stressful than car buying. There's so much anxiety looking at features, sweating over interest rates, and negotiating price. I wouldn't let myself into a new car for fear I'd vomit all over the meticulously vaccummed seat. They should consider serving a valium with their free bottled water at the dealership, geez.

I have been driving a black 2007 two-door Hyundai Accent for a few years, but two car seats later and more than a dozen road trips that just wasn't working out for us much. We needed safety, space, and cargo room and an SUV seemed like it would be the best option for us.

Brian and I both are on Team Anti-Minivan. We narrowed down our options and price range when we happened upon a modestly priced 2003 BMW x5. We met the salesmen at his house because he lived closer to our house than the dealership which was in Dallas. Of course, we fell in love with it. There wasn't much to not love about it, leather seats, sun roof, AH-MAZING safety features, and enough trunk space to haul a decent stash of Ikea furniture, you know, the really important stuff.

We prayed and negotiated the terms of our loan and felt truly blessed that everything seemed to be falling into place...

I'll go ahead and tell you that whenever things seem like they are working in my favor I immediately start to doubt the situation.

Sure enough, we had signed at every last x except for the last page and the terms and numbers were not AT ALL what we had agreed to previously. I'm not sure where the mistake happened and the sales guy swears it was a mistake, but long story short, the deal was a no-go.

We were heartbroken.

At that point my stomach is pretty turned and I'm ready to give up. But we went back home and hit the internet again looking, listing, and exploring our options.

The following morning we went to a Nissan dealership for an appointment to look at a 2006 Nissan Murano, same price range but a little newer and less fancy.

We met our sales guy, Genuine.... Let's ponder the irony of that, a used car sales man named Genuine. Riiight.

We test drove a white Murano, and I immediately knew that this car was the one. After all, we had looked over the features and price on the internet the night before. I was ready to sign on the dotted line as soon as I turned off the engine.

Except that this Murano was not the Murano we came to see.

My first question of course was, "so, how much is it?"

"Genuine" didn't know the price. But promised it would be close to what the original Murano was.

Aaaaand, we waited, and waited, and waited.

Genuine came back with a sheet with sharpie marks scribbled all over it and dropped it on the table.

My heart starts racing and I can feel the heat and anger rising in my belly when I see that he's got a number that is $8,000 MORE than the one we came to see. No where near the same price range!

I had about had it with car people at this point. It was past lunch time and the kids were getting retless. My parents were with the kids playing in the lobby and I went to pull them together so we could leave.

Unimpressive

I am one step closer to becoming a scholar once again! Yes, that's right, I'm taking the GRE in just a few weeks so I can get my butt back in the classroom and on my way to that effing masters degree I've been putting off for forever. But I'm already dying painfully slowly from studying for this damn test.

Math? Seriously, what is that about? I have an iPhone, I can just google the answer to a fraction question anytime I want. Who needs long division? Masochists, that's who.

I pretty much really suck at math. It's the frickin bane of my existance. I've never, ever, ever, everevereverever been good at math. That (math) is for the birds, I tell you. Nothankyousir.

That's not to say that I don't have talents in other areas. I'm just not certain that the committee who will be reviewing my grad school application are going to be all that impressed with what I have to offer.

Here is a list of things that I have managed to accomplish/perfect in my lifetime. Don't be jealous.

1. Singing the alphabet backwards - yes, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba. My steel trap mind has held on to that tidbit of information after picking it up from a very naughty stand up comedian. Though this talent has yet to pay off monetarily, it has won me quite a few respect points from a bar full of strangers.

2. An ability to win "free crap" in sweepstakes - Karma/good luck tend to work in favor, I'm not going to lie. Maybe I'm a reincarnated martyr or just saved a lot of kittens in another life, just saying. There is no rhyme or reason why I've been able to walk away with free vacations, electronics, and lots of knick nacks.

3. An ability to look at a candy bar and gain five pounds. That's pretty self explanatory.

4. I can pretty much reenact Disney Pixars "Cars" movie word-for-word verbatim. That, I can blame on my preschooler.

5. Actually live a nightmare and live to tell about it. You know that nightmare you have where you wake up and suddenly remember that there is a class that you signed up for but never attended and it's the day of the final? Yeah, in college I enrolled in a for-credit scuba diving class that was on Saturdays. I figured it would be super fun and cheap, plus I was about to go on my honeymoon and I was psyched to school my fiance with my sweet moves.... But the first day or class came and I went and I was completely missed it... and the second week as well. Yeah. I did that.

So I guess you could say that I'm more a "life experiences" kind of learner. I've all but abandoned hope for the math portion... let's just hope I knock the essay section of my application out of the park!

Bathroom Makeover - Be Awesome Today

This past July we celebrated three years of being in our home. So much has happened in that time yet it does still feel like it was a blink ago that we were unpacking boxes and preparing for our first (of two eventual) little bundles. I got the itch to makeover a space while on a routine trip to Home Depot. Now our normal color pallette for our home is pretty close to this:

But I really felt like I wanted to step out of my neutral comfort zone, do something a little different than what I would normally gravitate towards. I'm a huge fan of Young House Love, Sherry and John are such an awesome couple and I'm in awe of everything they have done in their home. They too have been stepping out of the ol' comfort zone and have made some fantastic and dramatic changes to their home. I saw this fantastic tealish/blue-ish hue that they painted their guest bedroom:

So I attempted to find something that was close to that at the HD when I spotted two gallon size cans of oops paint that was a pretty close, but a little different. I toyed back and forth with the idea since it wasn't exactly the happy teal/blue-ishy color that I had been dreaming of, but for $5 I figured it was probably worth it. I had all of the other paint supplies at home and I knew instantly the room that I was going to tackle, the guest bathroom!
With two little ones (including a little dude who is potty training) I thought it would be a good idea to "kid-friendly" up this room before too long. That meant covering over the standard builder flat paint on the walls. Since the room was so small it only took a few hours to finish the room...
The hardest part was finding a shower curtain that complimented the room color. (I know, I know, that's a little backwards to paint a room without a concrete plan, but just go with it.) I fell in love with this shower curtain from Anthropologie:

But for $118 I'd have to clothe myself in it for the next year to make up for the price. I scoured the internet looking at different places including Target, CB2, PBTeen, Ikea, and a few other big box stores but had no luck. Finally when I was on a toilet paper and trash bag run to Walmart I made at stop at their home section and there was the absolute perfect shower curtain, and it was only $14! SCORE!





Project breakdown:

Paint: Behr, oops (color unknown): $5
Shower curtain: Walmart, $14
Accessories: already owned
Number 1 and 2 Hooks: Hobby Lobby, $1.50 each
Wall Art: By me, old canvases repurposed.
Galvanized bucket: Thrifted, $2.

All of the accessories including the shelves were items that I already owned, some were just repurposed, like the canvases. Overall I am very happy with it all. I'm already dreaming up (and bookmarking on pinterest) more dramatic ideas for the rest of the house. I can't wait to see what will be next for our little family and for our house during the NEXT 3 years.

(Semi) Permanent Scars and the 9-Minute Cake

It's true, I am no baker. I don't have the time nor talent to create an meticulous masterpiece of edible art but dang it, do I know what a good cupcake tastes like. I'm a conesseur or carbs, you might say. Generally, I don't stray away from Betty Crocker in the rare event that I do decide to bake up something sweet. Two eggs, a cup of milk, some butter, and a little bit of oil and you are golden (or yellow cake, hee hee). And icing is a whole other monster beast that I'm sure I would royally screw up. Things that are outside of my comfort zone make my stomach nervous which kind of ruins the carb eating enjoyment, you dig?

My mom bought me a fancy Pampered Chef rice cooker not too long ago and which is a rockstar dinner time saver. You just zap it in the microwave and instant poofy white rice. Delicious. But there is also a recipe for a 9-minute cake that can be made in the rice cooker. You can find the recipe here and lots of other places on the internet. I know it works and the cake is AMAZING because we successfully made one with my mom when she was visiting. So, doubters, this is legit.

I went to Aldi to grab groceries and I picked up a box of cake mix and frosting because I was all about to get my carb freak fix on. I got home and followed the instructions, dumping my chocolate cake mix and the can of fosting into the rice cooker and set the microwave for 9-minutes, anxious to go all sorts of dirty things to that cake when it was finished. I waiting patiently (as much as I could) for the microwave to ding and then I pulled out and popped it open only to be completely disappointed. The cake hadn't cooked AT ALL. It was kind of a (delicious) gooey-ish mess at the bottom. FAIL.

So what does one do when something isn't quite cooked all the way? I put it back in the microwave for 5 minutes. I figured that would be about enough time that there should be some decent cake action that would edible. You can imagine my shock and horror when I walked back into the kitchen only to find it full of smoke and reeking of burnt plastic. FAN-EFFING-FREAKING-TASTIC. It only got worse when I opened the door, a stream of cloudy black smoke poured out of the microwave waifing through the house. I managed to open the rice cooker top to assess the damage only to find a full on boil and charred plastic "caking" (how funny) inside of the cooker. I tried to put it outside to cool down but that didn't work fast enough so I thought I would douse it with water.

The smell, naturally, is gagworthy. So I'm trying to get as much of the "cake" down the drain that I can with my hands, including the giant chunks of char and uncooked dry mix. My hopes for cake and most of my pride were washed down that drain as well.

Sad day, indeed.

It wasn't until much later that I examined my hands that I noticed I may have accidently left myself with a permanent reminder of my big fat cake failure.



I have tried everything short of bleach and steel wool to get it off but it's not working. I have no idea how it happened! I've always joked about getting a tattoo of a potato to represent my love of carbs but this is kind of ridiculous. This is my scarlet letter to wear as a fatty, I guess. SIGH.