A pep talk for my perfectionist side

Will someone please whip me in my ass and tell me to get off the couch and get going this morning? Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghh!!!!!!! Lol I'm sitting here drowning in indecisiveness, a little grief, and a lot of being unsure. UGH!!

Music will need to be loud today. Deep breath in...and...ok...going! Just do the things, right?



Time waits for no one!!!!!!!!!

Prep, movies, shows, goals, and a caterpillar

Yesterday was a unexpectedly crazy day of cooking. More like preparing. It was time to trim back the herbs in the garden so I had a bunch of basil, curly and flat-leaf parsley, and cilantro. To the store I went to gather some things and I ended up creating salsa verde, tomato pesto, and a whole new ton of basil pesto. I'd never made salsa verde or tomato pesto before but it turned out great and by the end I used up everything except for a small bit of parsley and cilantro. Win, win and moving on!!

One of my goals this year was to read at least two professional development books in my field. Gotta stay on top of my game you know! Anyway, quite a few of my textbooks from grad school have now been superseded by newer editions which means I have some updating to do. I've made a list of all the ones I'm interested in at the moment and lucky me, I found one at my public library. It may take a few renew's to get through it but you can't beat getting it for free!

So...movies...yeah, I'm skipping my March theater movie experience. It's ridiculous that I can't get excited about a single movie playing right now but that's the case. I refused to even look at the Bollywood's because I'm determined to stretch my gift cards out by seeing a couple American movies first. Therefore, my coworkers and I had a discussion about movies and things and I was given a bunch of recommendations of wonderfully weird stuff to check out from the comfort of my couch this month instead. Here are some that I've consumed and dug!

The Hateful Eight


Nine


Charlie the Unicorn


Llamas with Hats

Great coworkers they are! :) Here's to hoping that something, or two somethings, will come to theaters in April that'll excite me.

I'll leave you with something random from the week. My oldest and I were grocery shopping the other day and noticed we had a caterpillar on the front of our cart. It absolutely changed our entire shopping experience! LOL He pushed the cart with more care so as not to bump it, I placed things gently into the cart after we noticed it would jump if rattled. We spent a lot of time looking at it and discussing it and it made the whole boring trip go by in a flash. Here's a pic of our passenger.

As soon as we got outside it came to life and was crawling around so we got a stick and left it on a nearby tree. Cute little guy! 

Oh what the heck. Here's a quote, too!

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."
-Dolly Parton

Byeeeeeeeee!!!

A sleepy St. Patty's Day Sunday

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm sleepy this morning so let's do a lighting round just to catch up.

• Tried some more new types of alcohol recently of which Bailey's Irish Cream was a favorite.
• Paid off another student loan which means I'm down to one. 
• Starting a new full-time job in April and I'm nervous about time management. Trying to come up with some plans for how to "do it all" without failing. Ha!
• Garden is completely planted and things are still going good. Its already time to make pesto again. Will fertilize today or this week.Here's a quick pic!

• Financial goals took a hard hit this week from learning about a very large, unexpected cost. One of my money goals will have to fall by the wayside this year to make up for it. Trying to decide which that will be. 
• Rode on the fastest go-karts in town yesterday. They were so fast that after three races I was dealing with motion sickness for the next two hours. They were so fast that you could drift around corners! They were so fast that when another racer clipped my back corner at top speed, I "spun out" in the middle of the track creating a eight car "pile up". The smile on my face was HUGE!  
• I haven't been cooking or reading as much though I have started a couple new books since we last spoke. The kids have been home for spring break so there's literally no peace and quiet save for the middle of the night. This may explain why I've been up at 2,3, and 4am each night just basking in the silence and thinking. Its killing my motivation during the daylight hours.

Three things I'm grateful for today:

1. My dad. I have the cutest dad in the world and I learn about and appreciate him more each year. He's semi-retired now and each time I call he's picked up a new hobby or expanded on an old one. After watching him work for the same company for decades, day in and day out, its so fun to call and see what he's up to now. The latest? He bought an old clunker mail service truck and will be the local mailman on Saturday's. How cute is that?!
2. My new job. So grateful for the opportunity to make enough money doing what I love to be able to follow my dreams of which I have many!
3. The internet, for providing the constant flow of information I need to satisfy my unending curiosities, and I do mean they are deep and unending! :)

I'm off to deep condition my hair and put a mask on my face.

Dark places

It's after 3am and I won't sleep yet. Gotta get this out I guess. I can hear everything in the silence; my husband's breathing as he sleeps in the next room without me, the dog panting next to me, the hum of all the electronics, my typing.

I went to a former coworkers house today who is grieving and it has me a little stirred up. She clearly needed to take our conversation to dark places so I went to dark places. It was a beautiful day today and I'd just come from the beach with my kids and then there I was, discussing human suffering, death, grief, the meaning of life, Christianity, mental illness, support groups, etc. It was jarring, though not exactly unexpected.

Anyway, when I left I felt...dirty? Or maybe like there's a dark blanket in that house, one that I'm all too familiar with, and I couldn't wait to get it off me again. I definitely shut down completely over there to be able to have those conversations and I ended up telling her that in the grand scheme of things, I didn't trust her at all. That because I'm not connected to her and never formed that kind of attachment with her, that it was never something that was needed or came up for me. I could see in her face when I said it that it hurt her and its something I wouldn't have said out loud if I wasn't in that head space but without emotions I can be very, very blunt and brutally honest. Mean, even. I feel very sorry that bit happened. As I left, she told me she loved me, which makes my skin crawl with guilt, and wants me to come back more often to hang out more. Sigh. I came home and immediately fell asleep for awhile but even after waking up, it just felt like I lost all my momentum for the day. I wondered around, not really doing anything but not doing nothing either. Now, I'm here...

There were warm things in my day. The warmest things I have actually. Things that make life worth living and things I'm thankful for. I'm going to think of those things and try to get some sleep...

Thoughts from a Thursday

Quick update!

Baby corn is growing despite it almost freezing two nights this week.

Baby corn a few days ago

The "Internets" say its time to thin out the weaklings, add some extra nitrogen fertilizer, and then they'll be on their way! When I am SURE that there won't be any more cold nights, I'm going to plant the bean and cucumber seeds as well as the tomatoes and eggplants! Garden still going good!

I finished How to be a Woman. So good! When I was coming to the end I didn't want it to stop. She was like that aunt or older cousin that doesn't have to be your "parent" figure and just told you things straight. I'm lucky I had one of those cousins growing up. Anyway, there are still things about feminism and being a woman that I haven't quite figured out how I feel about yet. What this book did for me was to expose me to some new ways of thinking I hadn't necessarily heard before and in the most hilarious ways. Loved it! Now I'm ready for something COMPLETELY different and on the hunt!

Today I got a bigger and better job. It will be the first full-time job I've had since 2007 when I left the working world to stay home with my kids for their first few years. I've been after this job and working my way up to this since 2014 and I now have only one more step on the ladder before I reach the height of my career aspirations. After that, I'll make new career goals that will probably have to do with contributing to my field. However, one step at a time and I plan to settle in for a good year or so of learning. I'm scared to death. Lol More on that in a later post I presume. Oh! This also happened to be one of the HUGE goals I had for 2019 so I was able to mark that shit off the list today and it felt good. Yeah!!

Tomorrow is International Women's Day so in honor of our day, here is a little segment I saw today on YouTube from the World Surf League.

Being a woman isn't easy. Being a man isn't easy. Being a human being isn't easy. There are moments when I hate being a woman because of all the things that go with it but most days I'm really proud to be in my "group"! I get inspired by hearing women's stories and experiences like these and have been since I was a little girl so I'm grateful these stories and experiences are out there.


Quote time! I've been mulling this one over this week...

“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle. ”
-Reverend Phillips Brooks

I'm out!!

Pesto and Bats!

Basil happened!!

First basil harvest of the year!

 So pesto happened!!

A ton of pesto!

Yay and yum! I love how bright green it is when its fresh and the smell was heaven. All basil and garlicky. Mmmm. I got a lot more basil than I anticipated from just the tiny bit it had grown so far and its just going to keep growing. Basically, its going to be pesto summer 2019 in here.

• Pesto on baked potatoes
• Pesto on pasta
• Pesto on eggs
• Pesto on rice
• Pesto on steak
• Pesto instead of pizza sauce
• Pesto on baguettes
• Pesto on steak
• Pesto in soups
• Pesto everywhere!!! 

Fortunately, everyone in the house loves the stuff. My littlest couldn't stop sneaking little tastes while I was making it. I'll be keeping the bigger container out and will freeze the bags. Anything that can come out of the garden, be frozen, and still be good later is wonderful, isn't it?! Plus, pesto is expensive at the store. I'm grateful not to have to buy it for awhile.

Guess what else? I believe the corn started sprouting today! I'll catch a pic in the next day or two once I see how its going to do. This is pretty much exactly what I looked like when I went out to the garden this morning to check and saw it...
via GIPHY

Guess what else, else? lol We have bats at my job that come out each night (obviously as that's what bats do lol smh) and now that its getting warmer, if it's not busy we like to congregate outside to see them off. For some reason this never gets old and the sounds they make are extremely cute. This week I caught a bit on video because I wanted to put it here so I could always remember a happy thing from this job.

That's it for tonight shit-stains! I'll leave you with these two quotes that resonated with me this week.

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

"Trauma creates change you don't choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose."
-Michelle Rosenthal

Goodbye!!!!!!!!