Why I Blog

Mr. Rogue: “What are you writing?”
Me: “A blog about my life.”
Mr. Rogue: “Why?”
Me: “Because it helps me to think and reflect about where I am and where I am going.”
Mr. Rogue: “But you already know about your life you are living it.”
Me: "But this will help me later when the memories start leaking out my brain."
Mr. Rogue: "You know a woman lives an average of 7 years longer than a man, I hope I am not around when you start leaking!"

Mrs. O.C. finds out she is pregnant

I got a frantic call today, one where Mrs. O.C. was clearly hyperventilating. It seems that the girl took some pregnancy tests where all 4 of them turned out POSITIVE. Now normally this would be a good thing except that this particular pregnancy was unplanned. In fact it is doubly amazing because not only is it unplanned Mrs. O.C. thought she was going to have a hard time getting pregnant because of some medical issues. Seems like Mr. O.C.’s super sperm and Mrs. O.C.’s mind lapse that antibiotics cancels out birth control equals a little baby in nine months.

After I got there and calmed her down a bit we started to try and look at all the positives. She was married, she owned her own home and she wants kids were all excellent points. Sometimes in situations like these you have to focus on the good and ignore some of those niggling concerns like timelines; because like it or not that little line is not going to go away on that pee stick.

I can’t wait for this little beautiful baby to be born so I get to whisk them away to play all day and be an Aunt!

Mind Game’s

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk. Of course the muttering and grand arm gesture could be misconstrued as being crazy and then you are in the same place regardless of which option you choose.

I just kept walking the wrong way and looped around the block, because by the time I made a decision I was almost to where I needed to be. Some decisions are just too complicated; at least I got some exercise.

Luck vs. Skill

As I get older I think life is about windows opportunity and luck and not about how hard you work. I see the same people doing the same things and person A somehow makes it while person B always seems to fall a little short. I am thankful that so far I have been at the right place at the right time but not everyone gets to live their dream when they grow up.

What Is THAT

Me: “I can’t believe this.”
Mr. Rogue: “What?”
Me: “Look at this!”
Mr. Rogue: “What is it?”
Me: “I think it’s a rabbit.”
Mr. Rogue: “No”
Me: “YES”
Mr. Rogue: Let’s look up Google images.”
Mr. Rogue: “That is screwed up.”
Me: “This may be the most amazing thing I have ever seen.”
Mr. Rogue: “Yea, it’s damn close.”

Angry could be Bold Pink

Today I got in trouble for a text that was meant to be sarcastic but was taken as being mean. I am letting the technological world who created texting that there is a great need for sarcasm font; for instance a multicolored font for different moods so we can get tone and inflection through our texting world. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Porch Present

I was ecstatic when six o’clock finally rolled around and I was able to leave work. It was one of those LONG LONG dreary days in which the seconds on the clock seem like days. I don’t have anything to do at work right now which makes the days go by EVEN SLOWER. Then to have to drive home in the hour of traffic with all the horrible Los Angeles traffic just was icing on the cake. All that however changed when I pulled up in front of my house. There was a large package on my doorstep, a very large package, yea the first of our wedding presents has arrived. My mother’s old work friends had all chipped in and sent us 8 serving sets of the china I wanted. Booo Yea! Eight down four more to go; what a great way to end such a terrible day.

Stilts

Most people have a favourite part of their body. Mine is my legs and feet. I love wearing a short skirt and a pair of adorable heels. I ran across this photo taken at my California Wedding shower and it really sums up my obsession.



Now if I could just get the rest of my body image to match how I feel about my legs.

Bridesmaid’s Shoes

In a fluke one of the wedding choices was taken out of my hands. You see Ms. Pool Shark had purchased her dress and while she was at the bridal salon she decided to get shoes dyed to match. The problem is that I had not even thought about what shoes I wanted the girls to wear. When it came up a week later I was a little shocked that she had gotten shoes without asking me but she did not know and since we both have the same taste in shoes everything was a ok.

So I had her just send me the link and I forwarded that to the rest of the bridesmaid. Another decision crossed off the list.

I Used to Hunt

I used to hunt, to prowl through bars and nightclubs surrounded by my girls flirting and flashing a smile across a room trying to catch something good. Now that I have caught the man of my dreams I should be ecstatic and normally I am but to be honest lately I have been feeling a bit invisible and I have had a hard time identifying to myself the problem and then writing about it because it is not something that is supposed to be talked about. I am feeling a little restless. I think because I have been with Mr. Rogue for a few years and I am starting to get a bit itchy sometimes thinking about FOREVER. I am not a person that cheats, it is not in my DNA, not something that I would EVER do but with the wedding looming nearer and those vows weighing on my mind I just wonder for a moment can I really do forever.

I know I can, I know I will but sometimes I cannot help but think of a life of being single, of not being partially responsible for another’s happiness for not taking into account not only my reaction to things but to theirs as well, for being responsible FOREVER for someone else. It is a daunting thing and one that on most days I relish. Today however I am toggling and although I know that it is normal I wanted to put it down here and get it off my chest.

Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Relationships, real relationships are work, they take work to maintain, they take work to grow, and they take work to stay strong. I am so grateful for all that I have and to be spending the rest of my life with my choice and I am going to work at having the best marriage possible, a marriage like my parents, something that is never perfect but always amazing.

Breaking Down and Joining Face book

Ok I know that I may be just a little late jumping on this fad but I just don’t know if I want to. I joined MySpace over a year ago and intermediately found it entertaining so when I heard about Face book I rolled my eyes and turned my back. Now it is so popular that today I finally caved in and joined. Not really sure how I feel about all that hype or how much cooler it is than MySpace but mostly I am just annoyed. Maybe because I am getting old or maybe because like my VHS tapes I don’t want to have to go out and buy all new DVDs. But I gotta stay cool at least just to keep tabs on my little and my future children.

Life Talk

I have always been a believer in talking to the person you are dating about life goals, ideas, beliefs and expectations of your future life. Even though 99% of my relationships did not make it to the accepting of the ring phase it is good to have light conversations about what you both are looking for in the long run. Now it is never good to bombard a man that you are dating with all these questions but over the course of Mr. Rogues and I 3 year courtship we were able to get the basics down. After the engagement band went on my finger I felt that subjects that I would have normally skirted around were now open for honest debate. Needless to say we had a lot of things nailed down already, or at least the things that were most important to us. I think in general we had very similar ideas of what we wanted out of life. We come from very similar backgrounds, we are both from homes that nurtured and loved us, we both had amazing childhoods and we were both confident in the future together.

When I found out that we needed to do couples therapy before the wedding with our minister I was a little bit shocked but also a little bit intrigued. Our minister is wonderful, a man I have known almost all my life, talking to him about some of the things was a bit awkward but in the long run both Mr. Rogue and I found the experience pretty easy primarily because we had most of the questions that the minster asked already answered. I felt really good after our third session almost like we got an A in the counselling. And I love me an A. Hopefully we will also get an A for our marriage and live happily ever after.

Why Didn’t Someone Stop Me

You know when you get an idea and you are like FANTASITIC. Then 30 percent into getting it complete you step back and state to anyone within hearing distance of your screams, why oh why didn’t someone stop me. That is what happened today. Mr. Rogue and I woke up early and made breakfast. As we were eating I decided spur of the moment in a time where my Finance is working so much overtime he resembles more of a zombie then a flesh and blood man, and while I am trying to plan the largest and maybe most important party of my life (that is the wedding). That moment is when I decided to undertake the daunting task of redoing the side of the house. A project we have wanted to do for a year.

You see the side of the house is a wasteland of weeds. Both my neighbour and I decided a while ago to pull out all the weeds, buy some fruit trees and rock the entire area. So we went and got all the supplies and the nursery and started pulling the weeds. Covered in sweat and panting like a dog with only half the weeding done and a mountain of rock to lie and trees to plant I look up at my wonderful fiancée and start to cry.

Thanks to our wonderful neighbours who nicely offered to help and my fiancées ability to help me keep my shit together we were able to finish the job. As we were sitting around surveying our long day of hard work my elderly neighbour comes out and started asking us to tweak this or move that. Sometimes I feel like people complain WAY too much. We worked all day to get the job done; she because she is old sat in her air conditioned house watching us through the blinds as she watched all 7 of her soap operas. If I would have given this woman a bottle of Champaign she would have handed it back and said you are damaging my liver!

The Art of Conservation

I visit my grandmother and am astounded by how frugal she is with every penny where I am hilly nilly all over the place with mine. I live a life of excess, of Vodka and late nights. I was shocked to find out my grandmother still washes out her zip lock bags for the next use and my mother I remember that she would plan meals around what needed to be eaten in the refrigerator. I on the other hand chuck items from the fridge when it gets kind of close to the expiration date. I live a life of excess.

Men With Butterscotch Accents

I stooped once to dating a man with an accent, a beautiful man, with a beautiful Australian accent, did I mention he could sing like a dream. He had me at hello. I am a sucker for tall, dark, handsome, and an accent. Too bad he was about as intelligent as my microwave. We dated, mostly just went to karaoke so I could listen to him sing and preen at his accent. It did not matter what he said it was the WAY he said it. Of course it was a bit annoying when any woman within hearing distance responded the exact same way my traitorous body did, as if life on earth seized to exist and the only thing that mattered was this wonderful gorgeous man with this wonderful gorgeous voice. This man could be talking about anything, he could be describing how he did laundry, or picked lice out of his dogs ear but in my mind I could only hear him speaking of wonderful vacations and expensive Champaign, I knew from the start that this relationship was not going to work but some primal part of my person was desperate to throw my panties at him. I resisted the urge and kept my dignity. I will now insert crochet hooks in my ears until they bleed so this does not happen again.

Confessions of a Shop-aholic

Today I broke into a color that I have been avoiding with every fiber of be being. I have an issue with yellow. It has been a color that I have not liked since I could remember, and I blame my mother for painting my baby room yellow. It was not completely her fault, she did not know if the baby she carried was a boy or a girl so she choose a yellow as an androgynous choice. What she also did not know is that she would traumatize her child so much that she would have a 29 year battle with the color. Today I am taking the first step into rebuilding my relationship with yellow with these Baby Dollhouse Flats. Adorable and super comfy.

The Unrealistic Dream

Like many brides I had an idea of what I wanted for my wedding and then realized how unattainable some of them were either financially or time wise. I think the wedding is such a big deal because besides the fact that you are going to be saying I do up there at the church there is alot of planning and negotiating and redefining expectations that you have to work out with your future husband to be. So far it has been a great learning experience on how both of us can work together to get something this big pulled off.

CC treatment

Mr. Rogue gets the best deals yet we make the same amount of money and I have a higher credit card score. It does not make any sense to me and honestly it drives me a bit crazy. It is like he is in the Olympics and I am in the SPECIAL Olympics. I wonder what makes him so ideal for preferential treatment, because he is male?For instance I got a notice in the mail for him today. It said in big bold red letters that he is a Super Preferred Customer. Not a simple Proffered but a SUPER PROFFERED. I can just see the men at the credit card company in suits sitting around their board table brainstorming about how to let people know they are special. Humm we could call them very preferred but no that is not special enough, how about pretty proffered but that sounds to fluffy. So then they come up with this Super Proffered just to let all those wonderful people that write them checks every month know that they are so super special. I am going to tear up the offer and throw it in the trash, that is how PROFFERED I think their offer is.

Wedding Dress Is Here

I purposely ordered a dress that was 2 sizes to small hoping that I would lose enough weight to fit – I did not so the dress is defiantly to small (I did lose one size) so my powerful deductive reasoning skills lead me to believe – dress does not fit therefore we need to do something about it. There was no way the dress was going to fit, ever, unless I starved myself, or kept having realistic expectations of how much I could lose. Instantaneously all I wanted to do was cry, or call the whole thing off after I smoked a cigarette (never had one so this is a huge deal) or both. But I did not do either, instead I took a deep breath and decided this was the perfect opportunity to create the corset back that I originally wanted but I had fallen in love with a dress that had a zippered back. Grandma would be so proud that I took my lemons and made lemonade.

Water Torture

Today I met with Mr. & Mrs. Bulldog to take our puppies to the dog beach, their new puppy Mickey and my eight year old Rottweiler Rogue. As we drove up to the beach we were all apprehensive. We were not sure what Mickey would do, she is a puppy so we didn’t know if she would LOVE or hate the water and Rogue well he just about hated anything to do with water but I thought that MAYBE just maybe he would take to the beach.

I was soooo wrong.

We were on the beach for less than an hour and every few minutes Rogue would throw me this look and telepathically send some type of message. His rants went something like this...

“Seriously are you TRYING to kill me. You know I don’t like the water. Why the HELL do you think I would like the beach.”

or

“Is this about the time I opened the recycling bin and spread the trash all over the floor because I told you that the cats did it, it was not me, I don’t deserve this type of punishment.”

or

“At least have the decency to tie me in a sack if you are trying to drown me you cold hearted murder.”

or

“Water!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO I don’t want to go in the water. It is evil I tell you. Things, evil things lurk in the water. I swear I will MELT.”

I mostly ignored Rogue’s incessant complaining. Mickey was less melodramatic than my dog. She just went with the flow. Isn’t she adorable?

If It Was Easy Everyone Would be Thin

Sometimes I wish the government would give everyone one pill a day and that would be the total calories, vitamins and nutrition that you would need so I was not faced with the indecision of it all. Food sometimes SUCKS and losing weight is HARD. Why is it so hard:

1. Food is love/reward in our culture. Parents give treats for doing things well, we give ourselves treats on the weekends for a long week of doing good.

2. Habits are hard to break. Habits take weeks or months to form and it is difficult to change a lifestyle that you are accustomed to.

3. Convenience and time makes us lazy. With a McDonalds on every corner and frozen pizza dinners filling up our freezers it is just too easy to not eat healthy.

4. Our culture is against us with the “clean your plate” mentality and the fact that restaurant portions are triple what you should eat.

5. We can have whatever we want when we want it. Back in the olden days there was a great amount of expending energy (hunter/gatherer) to get food, Now we live in a land of plenty and eating is as simple as walking to the fridge.

6. Food is a social mechanism. In America we very rarely eat alone so most times we are eating in a group situation where the group influences where, what, and how much we eat.

7. A lot of times taste trumps nutrition. Most industrialized food that we consider tasting good is empty calories. Also it is hard because the cheaper food is eaten more because the healthy food is expensive and time consuming to prepare.

Food sometimes sucks!

An Addictive Personality

I realized from a young age, probably 12 or 13 that I could never do things in half measures. I remember it clearly; I had a deep driving force that would not allow me to detour once I set my mind to something. From that point and continuing throughout my life I have had to be careful of the things that I allow myself to do, too terrified that if I allowed just a bit that I would slip down a slope that I could not crawl out of.

For that reason I have NEVER touched a drug; smoking, any type of narcotic NOTHING. I even waited until I was 20 before I had my first drink and past that I usually only had one drink once in a while because of a fear that once I got addicted I would NEVER be able to stop.

Call me weak or call me preventative but I am happy that I learned so early on what type of personality I have and how to avoid the pitfalls it could potentially create. I am proud that I used my addictive personality in a positive way to challenge myself rather than a destructive way of falling down a rabbit hole.

Hole

So here I am still in the hole and I am still confused as to how to dig myself out. I have not talked about this in the past because it is to damn hard, hurtful, confusing. I almost can’t handle the stress of trying to cope with seeming to be normal, with the stress of trying to remain calm and level-headed as I try to get through every day without collapsing on the floor in a pile and scream and cry until I stop breathing. I am afraid of the pile that will be there in the end and that I won’t be able to get back up. I have not handled any of this well at all and I have felt completely responsible, FELT, I know I am not responsible but I FEEL like I am. And we all know what we know and what we feel are at war. The perceived guilt has been almost too much to live through. So I wait, and I wonder, when tomorrow WILL be a better day.

Where’s Waldo

Since I moved away from home over 11 years ago I have moved so often that an overabundance of stuff was never possible. With each move I tended to weed through my things and discard everything but the necessary. Now that we have a house with a vast amount of storage I am realizing that I am a little bit of a packrat. You never know when a man is going to show up at your door gun in hand and demand to see the box that your remote came in. And what do you know I just happen to have that wedged between a basket that the handle broke off of that I have been planning to fix and the last 10 years of bank statements. And because I have that box the gunman decides that GUESS WHAT you get to live.



Seriously I need to do something like find a few needy families and let them go to town in my greenhouse.

Boycott The Wedding

Hey, have any of you guys noticed that some people just don’t think beautiful weddings are necessary these days? Outside of the wedding industry, I mean. I feel like I get mixed feelings from friends and family some are so excited but others think weddings are kind of…lame. So I decided to do some research and ran across a book called “One Perfect Day, the selling of the American Wedding” by Rebecca Mead. And that’s not all– I’ve noticed a lot of stuff in the media calling attention to the massive amounts of money brought in by the wedding industry; it is then implied or outright stated that people are wasting their money. Then we’ve got shows like “Bridezillas” or “My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding,” which chronicle brides who spend exorbitant amounts of money fulfilling their childhood wedding fantasies, complete with poofy white princess gowns, 10 foot tall ice sculptures and thousands of dollars in “bling.”

I get comments like why don’t you just go down to the courthouse and save the money for something else, I get comments like “VEGAS” (as in ditch the wedding and just jump on a plane with no family or friends to get hitched by Elvis in a little white chapel smelling like liquor). I feel like people think I have some kind of hole that I am trying to fill with a big ring, an expensive dress, and inviting all my friends and family. What is my motivation (And I am sure a lot of brides motivations) for having a large wedding and spending a lot of money on one day is about spending a special day with everyone you love and creating a beautiful memory to keep for the rest of my life. Some of my favourite times in my life are of weddings of cousins or friends. I am super excited about celebrating with my fiancé and family and I am sure I will remember my wedding day for the rest of my life.

Getting Old

I love my friends, my wonderful life and my fabulous family. I appreciate my husband to be and cannot wait to take on the rest of our lives together but living in Los Angeles I think is hard on people who want to age gracefully. I don’t care about liposuction or being a size 4. I would never trade the wrinkles on my face or a flatter belly for the gifts that I have in my life.

As I have gotten older things have gotten more out of whack but I have also found that I don’t beat myself up for not having perfect hair, or compare myself with other women thinking that I am lacking. I am getting kinder to my wonderful qualities and less critical of the things I don’t like. I don’t beat myself up as much for the things I like and I don’t worry about what others think as much. Aging is freedom.

As I get older I learn to deal with more heartbreak. Losing loved ones or helping a friend struggle through hardships or dealing with dehabilitating life changes breaks your heart but broken hearts are what give us strength to understand, to change, and to become better.

I have made choices that have not always been the right choice. I have agonized over mistakes that I have made in my life but as I get older I care less with others think and I don’t question myself anymore. I have earned the right to be wrong occasionally.

Being old has set me free and I will eat desert every single day if I feel like it.

The Hair

I feel like I need a change but I am defiantly not doing anything until after the wedding. Sadly I am beginning to see a touch of grey, just a strand here or there but enough to start making my eye twitch and I have had the same haircut for a long time. I was thinking of maybe going to red or cut my hair short. I will probably just end up leaving it as it is. Can’t really be dying your hair when you are pregnant. No mom I am not pregnant yet!

Levels of Consciousness

I find myself annoyed at some people around me, people who just seem to accept and not challenge what they think and what they believe, people incapable in my opinion of changing how things have always been, go with the flow people that I sometimes just want to smack upside the head. Sorry but you people you really annoy me.

And I am sure I annoy others with my bad grammar and run on sentences.

The Question

Ms. Wise met Mr. Rogue at Mrs. O.C.’s annual Fourth of July party today for the first time, a work friend that I have had for the past year, and she asked the same question almost everyone has asked. A question I will probably get for the rest of my life. She was wondering with how quiet and introverted Mr. Rogue is if he was really the RIGHT person for me.

He may be quiet, especially in a big group of people, but when it is just him and I he makes me laugh. He comes out of his shell and does the craziest goofiest things and we have such a wonderful time together ALL the time. We NEVER fight, we hardly ever disagree and he gets me on a level few people do. If he has any flaws it is that he cannot transition the person he is with me to the rest of the world. But if that is his only flaw then I am happy to take him as he is and love the fact that he shares his secret self with me and me only.

The Art of a Phonetic Speller

I am too creative that is what I have been told time and time again. And that is the reason that I am giving myself for not being able to write or spell. There are just some things that no matter how hard I try, how hard I memorize, that I just cannot get right. Certain words are especially hard for me. Here are some interesting words that I constantly am getting wrong.

- Torcher - Torture
- Concouring – Concurring
- Tommarow – Tomorrow
- Definately – defiantly
- Melincoly – melancholy
- Liqiour – liquor
- Schymanitcs – semantics
- Minitues – minutes

One day I will make enough money where I will either hire a person to follow behind me and correct these erroneous errors OR I will suck it up and take some classes to fix my most terrible flaw.

One Big Day

Mr. Rogue and I have discussed the budget for the wedding numerous times and inevitably one or both of us would take a moment, step back from the excel document and guzzle a bottle of wine. The money that we are spending on this one day could be put into a fund to send two kids to college OR create a nice sized nest egg. Or go toward a million other things. Sometimes the commercialism of the wedding industry really smacks me across the face and on days like today I wished I had decided to elope and spend all the wedding money on shoes.

Of course then if that was even possible I would wake up the next day and bemoan the fact that I am not getting my one special day, a perfect memory to last me a lifetime, a celebration with all my friends and family surrounding me.

It is a double edged sword.

My Broke Down Bridesmaids

So there is something going on in the world for some reason my bridesmaids are cursed.

First Ms. Babydoll gets in a terrible accident. Thank GOD she is ok but seriously look at her car she is a LUCKY girl.



Then there is the fact that two of my bridesmaids are currently sporting a different type of fashionable footwear. You see this photos, do you notice something different about the two on either side of me...



Yes they both broke their foot and both are planning to have to wear the boot during the wedding. ARRRGGG. I guess at this point I will just be happy if they all make it alive to the wedding.