life from the couch

I'm not a fan of how December is starting off...I mean this month should be packed full of way more excitement than this. There's not much I can do about it being all pathetically sick on the sofa yesterday, today, and what looks like one more for the home stretch tomorrow.

But, my Mandarin Cashmere candle from Arbonne came in the mail today and made my day so much better. It's like heaven in it's simplicity and oh-so-lovely scent. I just adore it. Please excuse the shameless plug for my business, but this is why I love it so much (because the products are so incredibly amazing).

Plus, I don't know if I've told you, but our stuff is vegan so I don't have to worry about that.

Oh, hurray for the little happy things!
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"I don't know what to say, so I'll just say what's in my heart: baboom, baboom, baboom." - Mel Brooks

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Dear Last Year's Me:

Congratulations, you're graduating. You worked your ass off and you struggled with school like no one else you know so that you could get here. For you it is indeed one of your biggest accomplishments, because, Miss Bi-polar-depressive-cutter, you didn't completely give up. You're finishing, not necessarily with honors or a super G.P.A., but you made it. Today, you are still proud of yourself and grateful for the people that helped you get there. Don't worry, we won't ever stop thanking them for that.

I won't lie though, we don't have a killer job, a boyfriend, our own apartment, or even our own car right now. The job we have doesn't even use that degree we worked so hard to bring home.

But it's OK.

It's OK because of who we are. It doesn't look like we have a lot to show for it but we have become one of those truly awesome people that others really like.

No, really, people like us and we don't have to try that hard. They like us for who we are and what we've become. And you wanna know a secret? They always did. Why else would all those awesome people stick with us through all those crazy times and help however they could?

You are going to grow so much this year, and this time it's not even going to hurt that much. Sure, there will be bad stuff. There were moments I thought we wouldn't get back up. We did though, and easier than ever before. We aren't so fearful or confused about who we are now. We've embraced our independence and realized, for real this time, what makes us so very special.

And you know the Ex? The one that made you cry so much? You cut him out of your life shortly after you graduated and moved back home. Deleted his phone number and everything. We don't regret it, we were relieved and it may have been one of the best decisions we ever made. I wouldn't be here talking to you like this if we hadn't done it. I fully believe that. He called the other night after calling a couple different people to get our number. That he called was surprising, why he called was not. But this time, we really didn't feel sorry for him and we didn't do anything but listen and catch up. That night, we went to bed easily without crying and slept really well. Crazy, huh? Turns out the whole time you were the needed, not the needy. I don't know how everyone (including you) had you convinced it was the other way around for so long. Apparently, mom always knew how independent and strong-willed we are, how incredibly strong we are, but I guess we had to figure that out on our own.

You made good decisions, and I'm proud of you. Right down to the choice to wear red shoes to that graduation ceremony mom and dad made you attend. Don't begrudge them that, don't deny yourself that sense of accomplishment or feel cheesy for partaking in it. So many friends and professors watched you and knew that it was more than what it was for some other graduates, and you knew it too. We all knew that it hadn't been an easy ride, that you put blood and tears (literally) into that degree, that you truly earned it. Maybe the only way you use it is posting to your blog on a regular basis, but we love our blog so that's OK too.

We have an exciting future ahead of us. We don' t know the things we want to, like how soon we'll be in love and getting married or what we want to do about work, apartments, and such but we're going to keep moving forward.

I love you. I love us. Thanks for being so awesome.

Love,
This Year's Me

hack hack cough...augh...

I woke up this morning and thought I might be dying.

Alright, alright, that's a bit over dramatic. But I did (and do) feel awful, what with the swollen feeling in the very bottom of my throat and pressure in my chest, the scratchy throat (above the swollen feeling part) and the painfully dry cough reaching all the way from the bottom of my lungs.

Yeah, yuck, right?

So I called the substitute to see if she could work for me today and naturally she was already going in for someone else. Because why would we get sick at different times? That would make things too easy. Then I called the other girl that works in the daycare on the days I don't and was able to leave a pathetic sounding, "Wanted to see if you could go in today..." kind of voice mail. Now, since I couldn't get someone to go in for me I felt in would be irresponsible to just not show up, so I put myself together and headed off to the school hoping they would send me home.

They did and I am so grateful. I stayed for a little bit while they got everything straightened out and felt like a very bad caregiver indeed. Poor kids, I wasn't exactly being very nurturing but they only had to put up with me for about an hour and then one of the teachers came in and took over for me. Oh, the relief!

Now I am trying to continually remind myself why I am at home today: I need rest to get over this yuckiness. I keep thinking of all these little things I could get done with my "day off." However, the sensible, body-knows-what-it-needs side is doing a really good job of telling the busy, so-much-to-do-so-little-time side to keep its butt in this recliner and get better. I think it's doing such a good job because it's had plenty of practice. My body always reacts with the upper respiratory junk when I don't let it rest properly or get all stressed out. It happened so often in college I thought I might have TB. Ok, not really...but I did stop bothering to go to the doctor because I had the "diagnosis" and treatment memorized.

Blog quality will go up soon, promise.

Christmas spirit is here

Right here. Right now.

I was having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Usually as soon as the decorations and wrapping papers and bows start popping up in the Target aisles I get so excited and will just linger among them for as long as possible. But this year, I wasn't feeling it as much and was holding out hope that once we started decorating, or put up the tree, or I started baking holiday cupcakes for everyone, I would just start bursting with carols and good cheer.

Or, I thought, something magical would happen and I would wake up, float out of bed, and be dancing the Nutcracker Suite on December first. That didn't happen, but once I got over being upset since I didn't get to sleep in and my mom and I starting pulling out boxes to decorate I was getting into it.

We got out the fake tree and put it together, it's one of the ones with lights already on it. Plugged it all in and the top half wouldn't light up. I stood there for twenty minutes or so going through each little light trying to figure out what was wrong, grumbling the whole time that we should just got get a real tree because fake trees are the bane of Christmas. I've been complaining about the fake tree ever since the first year we defaulted to one. I've been begging to go get a real tree for approximately seven years (maybe more? I've lost count).

Guess what? Right now, in our sitting room there is a REAL TREE! It's soft and full and smells so good. I was hopping around Lowe's and the guy helping us with it laughed at me. We got it home and little ol' me grabbed it and brought it into the house all by myself. There are even two little real pine cones on the REAL TREE.

And now, I am very much feeling that Christmas spirit. I love Christmas trees. I love Christmas.

Note: I would have pictures but I seem to have misplaced the cord for my camera, sorry.

Well that plan fell through

Couldn't chill out the way I wanted to today, but perhaps I'll end up in bed early tonight to make up for all the sleep I missed out on this week.

Right now I'm trying to convince my parents that we should go get a REAL Christmas tree. Our fake one isn't lighting and ever since we got it I've been whining about not having a real one. I feel that after six years with a fake and with this one being busted it's the right year to go back to the real thing.

Maybe this year I'm at least getting us closer to getting a real one eventually...