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Hey there! I'm Holly. A 40+ year old insurance-nerd wife, mom, beauty lover, and about a million other things in between.
This is the place where I share about our lives, what I'm currently loving, books I'm reading, plus-size style, beauty recommendations, health + fitness endeavors and anything else I'm finding interesting at the moment.
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Monthly Archives: September 2009
Because God Likes Juxtaposition…
This weekend was nothing short of amazing. As I told you in my previous post I was spending this weekend at a blogging meetup called The Blathering and boy was I nervous. But honestly, after being there for only half an hour I was already feeling like — HOLY MOSES THIS IS SO COOL! THESE LADIES ROCK AND AREN’T EVEN SCARY! And that was even before Elizabeth’s fabulous Thai Noodle Salad.
(Immediate Sidebar: Can you please read her recipe right away, do not pass go, do not collect $200, and cook it NOW? It was that good. Ok, great. Moving right along.)
I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a wonderful recap of all the parts of the weekend. I mean seriously, there was hammock-breaking, a female dog with a mustache, gay country line dancing, and hello? Lots of delicious wine. Really, is there any better way to spend your weekend?
Survey Says? NO.
And if you want to read a proper recap of the weekend please click on over to any of these lovely posts here, here, here, here, here or here.
But having such a wonderful time all weekend made Monday morning hit all the more like a ton of ugly bricks. Crazy deadlines and ASS-EARLY classes to teach where I had to be bright eyed, bushy tailed were really making this week feel like a marathon. I was having trouble sitting down to write and then today — well, as of today, this officially became the week from Hell. Garrett was notified that his job is being eliminated as his entire department is being relocated to Denver, Colorado.
(Something to note if you are new here, Garrett and I work at the same company, just in different departments)
We did not see that coming.
It isn’t happening immediately, but a 60 day notice is impending, and the shitty part is that it could come at anytime, everyone is being hush-hush and vague about it. It is kind of a relief that it’s not happening right this second, but honestly it is not the consolation prize that many of the higher ups in the company are making it out to be. Isn’t it Great? Garrett’s getting laid off! But not today, maybe tomorrow! Or maybe the day after that! Who knows? Nobody knows! You’ll never know when it’s coming, but c’mon everyone likes a surprise, don’t they?
Well, I don’t like surprises. Did I ever tell you about the fabulous surprise birthday party my parents threw me when I was a young girl? Friends and family, balloons and cake, good cheer and music, and most of all a giant SURPRISE welcome when I unknowingly walked in the door, and well the cliffs notes is that I was so embarrassed I hid in the laundry room most of the night crying.
(Second Sidebar: God, what a little douchebag I could be. )
Anyway, I don’t like surprises. But even more than that, I also don’t like limbo. Just give it to me straight. Good or bad, I just want to know what the hell is going to happen and when. Don’t beat around the bush.
The other thing that is terrible is that I work in a very small department of Trainers, and half of my department (not including me) supports this department that is moving to Denver. So guess who got the wink wink, nudge nudge suggestion that they should start looking for new jobs today? It just makes me so sad. These are my good friends. My work buddies. My career confidantes. And they are all in limbo as well, waiting for the axe to drop. I can’t think of any more eloquent way to say it than just to keep saying how much it sucks.
It sucks because 10 months ago I urged Garrett to apply for this job, solely because it was in a much more “secure” industry than the finance-related industry that he was in. It sucks because we thanked our lucky stars the other night about how stable his job was and how lucky that felt during these times. It sucks because this type of change is scary, and I was already having a rough week, and seriously dude! This is so not what I needed.
But I keep telling myself that things will be okay. I know things will be okay, actually, but I get my feathers ruffled so easily when the Universe reminds me that I am not in control. (Wow, that just sounded really hippy dippy, but hopefully you know what I’m saying.) It is not happening tomorrow (we hope). We have some time to scale back and plan for the worst (and maybe it will never even come). We are already very conservative with money, and as long as I have my job in theory we could survive on my income in the worst case scenario. We are going to make it just fine, it just feels so chaotic when life is uncertain.
I was thinking about it this afternoon when we went to lunch — btw, I was so stressed I went straight for the Club sandwich and onion rings. Garrett? Well, bless his heart, he ordered a salad. Who stress eats a salad?— and I told myself, if it had to happen, we really couldn’t have been better prepared. Garrett is so conservative with money and that has really rubbed off on me, and I have lived through enough tough scenarios in my life to know the kind of resilience that resides inside me and that has definitely turned Garrett into more of an optimist. So I think together, we will handle this well as a team. We have such great families and friends that support us, so I know we will get through it all. But honestly, when I came home this afternoon I was sort of hoping my whole family would be waiting inside my front door with a cake and throwing confetti, because honestly I could really use a good cry in my parents laundry room right now.
13 Things You Should Know If You Have Never Met Me
Do you know what is scary? Making friends as an adult.
You move to a new place, don’t know a soul — I mean, who do you invite over to watch Real Housewives of Atlanta and then discuss how trashy Kim is? Who gets you motivated after you fall off the fitness wagon and skip the gym for the frumdillionth time? Who do you talk to about the crazy people that you just spent 5 hours with in the waiting room of Kaiser’s Urgent Care?
I’ve been lucky enough, since moving to Sacramento, to make some great friends at work, through Junior League, and of course some of my besties have ended up moving to this area. But do you know where I did not expect to make friends?
This blog.
When I started this blog in 2006 I did it to have a space to pour out all the crazy drivel brewing up in my head throughout the day. But instead, I have had interactions with people from ALL OVER THE PLACE, and I never would have guessed how meaningful or exciting that would be.
That being said, I am meeting a bunch of fun bloggy peeps this weekend at The Blathering. I still can’t believe someone organized something here in little ol’ Sac and can I tell you, the roster is chock full of some of my favorite people to read. I can’t wait to meet these ladies in person. And with that in mind, here are a few things you should know about me, if we have never met:
1. I am loud and obnoxious. I’m telling you this because whenever I meet people at first they think I am really quiet and polite. It’s cute.
2. I don’t shy away from discussing polarizing issues, so I’m just going to come out and say I like Rachael Ray. I don’t always like her food, but I think she is a pretty inspiring entrepreneur and certainly likeable to the vast majority. That’s about as polarizing as I get, so if you want to have a heavy conversation that involves lots of healthy debate, maybe talk to the gal sitting next to me?
3. I’m happy to be in my 30s and I don’t at all feel any sort of dread about aging, but the other day I looked an LL Bean catalog and thought everything was cute. I immediately ran to the mirror and looked at myself and said HOLY SHIT, I THINK I MIGHT BE GETTING OLD. Also, after many years of saying “I don’t know if I’ll have kids,” I am officially on the baby crack wagon and I want one. Like, Now. I guess I’m just saying I might be having a little bit of an identity crisis, so who knows what will come out of my mouth. Watch at your own risk.
4. Nothing really embarrasses me, so I freely make an ass out of myself on the regular. This is especially true once I get a cocktail or two in me. That being said, I pretty much want to crawl under a pillow when I watch the audition portions of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. Earnest effort (when the byproduct is awful and all of America is laughing) makes me turn fuschia!
5. I like to do things that scare me a little. If I’m not challenged, I get bored.
6. In the past I have been prone to snap judgments. If you would like to read about what a bitch I was to my boyfriend when I first met him, solely based on his previous employer and the amount of gel in his hair, read this. It almost didn’t work out because I was all Judgy McJudgerpants and let me tell you, that taught me a valuable lesson.
7. Speaking of that boyfriend, he hates that I write about him on the internet. Yet he loves that I do arbitrary things like go to bloggy events where I meet strange people from the internet. He’s a contradiction, that fellow. But I guess that’s why I love him. Another reason? He looks a little bit like Penn Badgley and I have a baby crush on Dan from Gossip Girl.
8. I know I called you a strange person from the internet, but I don’t really think you’re strange. Actually the fact that are even going to The Blathering already makes you cool in my book because — hi, large groups of women you don’t know can be scary! To this day I still can’t believe I survived Sorority Recruitment.
9. I hate my hair right now.
10. My toes look like doll toes.
11. I have a sink full of dishes calling my name right now and I just told them to Eff Off! This is why I don’t work from home very often because I end up talking to the silverware. Also, I was serious when I mentioned in that questionaire how much I HATE doing dishes. I need a dish fairy!
12. I LOOOOOOOVE tomatoes. For a while I used to tell people that if I could only eat one food for the rest of my life it would be tomatoes. But then I discovered sushi, and amended that answer quick!
13. My car does not have air conditiong. It is 900 degrees outside in Sacramento and I am delicate like a flower (ha!). The weather here does not really promote driving in a car with no air conditioning so if I show up somewhere and I’m hot as hell, and everyone else seems fine, it’s not because I have weird temperature control issues, it’s because I just drove through the fiery flames of hell to get here. I like to think of myself as dedicated, but you just may think of me as sweaty.
You’re excited to meet me now aren’t you?
Related: Things You Might Not Know An oldie, but informative and still true.
Dreamgirl
I wasn’t sick very much growing up, but on a few occasions when I was so sick that I was bed-ridden, I’d have the same recurring dream of balancing a checkbook. It wasn’t always my own checkbook, sometimes it was a company’s ledger, a friend’s budget, but it was always the same formula — some type of elementary math pertaining to money and the frustrating feeling of numbers never adding up correctly. It was exhausting and the sleep never felt restful. I’m sure it had something to do with my fever rather than a deep seeded hatred of math, but I like to think those dreams are at least partially responsible for steering me clear of any career involving numbers. Being an accountant, for me, literally would be a nightmare!
I’ve always had incredibly vivid dreams. I like to bombard Garrett with the detailed stories about things I’ve seen or done in my sleep right when I wake up because it’s such a unique feeling to put dreams into words immediately after having them. Most often what was just so clear in sleep comes out like a drunken Lewis Carrol imitation. Everything that made perfect sense moments ago vaporizes into absolute gibberish in a literal blink of an eye, and as someone who loves finding the perfect words in order to communicate an idea — it’s sort of an amusing exercise in futility.
Granted, Garrett is not always amused by my effusiveness, since I often do this in the middle of the night if my dream was particularly noteworthy. Most of the time he at least he plays along and acts impressed with my spectacular feats of subliminal imagination, although he usually patiently commands that I go back to sleep. For the record, however, I also sleep-walk, sleep-shower, and sleep-get dressed for work in the middle of the night, so I guess in comparison my midnight monologues sort of pale next to waking up and finding that I have turned into a zombie-like version of myself, but you know, you take the good with the bad, right?
I know, I know. Sorry boys, I’m taken.
Shortly after my father passed away, a number of people who surely intended to be a source of comfort told me I should “watch for him” in my dreams. I kind of chuckled at the hippy-dippy thought of all that, but 11 years after the fact, my father and I have had a remarkable number of very spirited sub-conscious interactions while dreaming. One of the most memorable dream encounters with my father found me sitting at the kitchen table in my grandparents old house (why, I have no idea?) looking for relationship advice about this new found crush of mine named Garrett. It was shortly before we started dating and Garrett was being Mr. Mixed Signals, so obviously I must have been having a frustrated moment. As an aside, when my dad was alive we were totally prone to these “Girl Talk” chats, so it was no surprise to be table-side with him listening to my romantic woes. Though I can’t even remember what dramatic thing I was complaining about, what I do remember is my dad just laughing hysterically and in a clear throwback to his University of Hawaii days, giving me the Shaka sign and saying, “Calm Down, Holly,” in his oft-used Hawaiian Pidgin. “Everything’s gonna be alright.” And every once in a while when I realize Garrett has yet to kick me and my crazy night time behavior out of bed, I think to myself — it totally is.
Cabin Fever
I have the worst cabin fever right now! I’m itching to get out of this town and go somewhere cooler, wetter, greener…Even the Best Summer Ever has its limits. Bring on Autumn and it’s cool weather!
I’m thinking Portland?
Seattle?
Canada?
All of the above?
It could be that perhaps the tales of my Aunt and Uncle’s trip up the coast this weekend has inspired me. Or it could be that cute little thing that I do when I get stressed where I shut down and go totally escapist!
Either way…I’m all over the internet searching for flight deals today. My wanderlust is hard to quell.
