I get an F in blogging

Ummmm....yeah. My triumphant return to blogging has been...not....triumphant? Yes. I've been busy, but I don't feel like I have that much to talk about. I did not make straight A's this term, sadly. I made an A and a B+. My B was a Qualitative Research class that was pretty rigorous, and I decided I would rather enjoy my life than spend every waking moment fighting for an A. Worth it, in my mind.

Let's see, what else is new? Still enjoying the new-ish job. Still making jewelry. Still doing Magpie! That's pretty much it. Oh, Nick set the house on fire. Yes, there's that. This was a while ago. I somehow neglected to mention it in my last post. We'd had a fire, and two days later he figured the ashes were cool enough to put in the outside trash can. They weren't. The trash can caught on fire, which then caught the siding on fire, which led to me crying hysterically while some dude ran down from the park behind our house and took control (LIKE A BOSS). He grabbed our neighbor's hose, hooked it up to our house, and controlled the fire until the fire department got there. I almost wet shit my pants it was so scary. Luckily, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, we got a new side porch and a new kitchen floor out of it! Also a new kitchen window--the old one cracked and broke from the heat of the flames. I'm telling you, it was scary as hell!

Hmmm other news....I applied for the Indie Craft Parade again this year. Hoping I'll get in, but not expecting too much since I got wait-listed last year. 

Also, my grandmother (dad's mom) died on May 20th. (How's that for a Debbie Downer?) We found out in April that she had terminal pancreatic cancer, and she died the morning of the 20th with my (mostly) sweet sister holding her hand. It was sad, of course, but I'm glad she didn't suffer. She was her regular ornery self up until the very end. Janie Bell, you are missed!!

Nick was admitted to the hospital the Monday before she died. He has Crohn's Disease, BTW. Not sure if I ever mentioned that. He was in the lockup for six days, getting IV antibiotics, steroids, antifungals, anti-wormals, and a shitload of other stuff. He had a positive skin TB (that's tuberculosis for you whipper-snappers) test, so he has to take TB antibiotics for two months before he can get his IV treatment for Crohn's (Remicade). He'll have to stay on the antibiotics for 6-9 months so he doesn't actually get TB. Who even has TB nowadays??? Apparently, he was exposed to an active case at some point in time, no idea when, and once he gets Remicade, his immune system will be so suppressed that he could get the consumption (old & moldy word for TB. Don't ask me why, because I don't know.) and end up in the hospital (again) or dead. Neither of which sound like great options to me, so he's on the TB antibiotics.

Now that I look at it, we've had quite a bit of excitement in the past couple of months. Too much, I'd say.

Hearts and farts,

J

Hello

Is it me you're looking for? I can see it in your eyes. I can see it in your smile.

Just kidding I'm not Lionel Richie. It's me! I'm back from blogging hiatus, which is good, because I have A LOT going on.

I'm still in the PhD program at USC, taking 2 classes each term. I made straight As last semester. Seriously. I will post my grade report not only to prove to internet people that I really did, but because I MADE STRAIGHT A'S PEOPLE.

I got a new job. Yay! I love it so far. It's much less stress than the Ydub since I'm working on educational initiatives from a community level rather than providing direct services. I also get to wear cute clothes to work every day and not worry about getting vomit, poop, snot, drool, or any other bodily fluid on them! (If you're just tuning in, I used to work with children ages birth-5 years old, and there is a lot of contact with bodily fluids during those ages. A. Lot.)

I opened a tee-tiny little store with one of my good friends. It's called Magpie and it's freaking adorable. Click here to go to our Facebook page so you can see pictures of our little 10x10 space where we have so much fun decorating, designing, creating, and playing. We rent the space from Shinola Antiques, which is an amazing, eclectic, and crazy antique store with an owner and manager who love mid-century furniture and all things funky, macabre, and just plain weird. Click here to go to their Facebook page. Even if you don't live in the area, you should still like their page so you can see the Freaky Toy of the Day!! I only work there on Saturdays, since I have a day job, but that's the most fun day to be there anyway!

I just found out (last night at 11:00, and then I couldn't sleep for shit!) that I was chosen to be a 2012 ModCloth Style Ambassador! W00T! If you don't know what ModCloth is, we just can't be friends. Go there now and educate thyself on the fashions therein. I'm not 100% sure exactly what I'll be doing, but I'm sure it will be awesome.

I also just turned 29. I thought I would feel old and decrepit, but I don't. Well, not really. I did realize that it has been almost seven years since I graduated from college and I might have had some heart palpitations as a result, but I've mostly recovered. By the time my parents were this age they had a house, two cars, and ME. Nick and I have one car, six cats, and a guinea pig. Times sure have changed!

My sister got married last year. It was GORGEOUS. The wedding ceremony was in the Rose Garden at Furman (our alma mater), and was just for family and close friends. It was so beautiful and sweet. The reception was much larger, and was held at this great old house in Greenville (that was a funeral parlor for a while...just sayin'). It was beautiful (thanks in no small part to my amazing design sensibilities and general craft-abilities), and I got way drunker than I did at my own wedding, which is always fun. 

I think that's all the big life changes that have happened since I blogged last (April 2011? WTF me?). Holler.

Also, this

F-ing hilarious. Thank you, Cinched at the Waist.

Some craziness;

So, I got accepted to a PhD program. Insanity, yes. I start this fall. I'm still in disbelief that I actually got accepted. I had the most terrible interview of my entire life. Seriously, it was bad. I got flustered, and my face turned bright red, I started sweating, and stuttered through all of my answers. SO AWKWARD. There were five professors staring me down, so if I wasn't nervous to begin with, the sight of all those eyes on me kicked it up a notch. Lucky for me, it appears they saw something that they wanted to cultivate in their program, so there it is. Yay me.

I haven't been making jewelry as much lately. I just don't feel very inspired right now. I love having my jewelry in local stores, but being required to make things in order to keep up stock kind of kills my creativity a little bit. Hmph. I've also been busy making stuff for my sister's wedding. SO EXCITED about that!! But not excited about having lots of pictures taken. Still haven't lost any weight or started exercising (cue sad horn). Again, I'm just feeling unmotivated right now...not really sure why. I think I've just had so much going on at work that all I want to do when I get home is stare at the TV/read blogs. Hopefully I'll find some motivation here somewhere--maybe it's hiding under the bed.

Holleration

RIP Lina

My cat died. She stopped eating for no apparent reason and then died. Nick found her under the bed today. I don't want to talk about it. Just want to cry about it and be miserable for a while. I got her right before I graduated from college, and she was the best cat ever. She slept on my pillow every night, and liked only me. She had velvety black fur and green eyes. This is a lame picture but it's the only one I could find quickly since I installed our new hard drive:

The best cat that ever lived.

I love and miss you, kitten boo bear.

Inspired by Liz...the evolution of Notorious F.A.T.

So my friend Liz (who is awesome, btw, and you should definitely read her blog, Splendid Minta) just posted pics of herself on her blog. Not just any pics though, pics of herself slowly changing over the past few years. Her hope is that the pics of her will inspire her to start living healthier. Go here to read it.

Being totally unoriginal, I pretty much decided to copy her idea and do the same thing here, because (REAL TALK) I am fat. Seriously. Not chubby or plump, just straight up FAT. Now, I'm not one of those people who just suddenly got fat; I was a fat kid, a fat teenager, and a fat college student. Right after I graduated, I got my heart stomped on and my soul shat upon by a guy, and decided that I would make him sorry by getting skinny (how that made him sorry I'm not sure, but somehow in my constant post-college drunken stupor, I thought this was a GREAT IDEA). Long story short, it worked, in that I got skinny-ish. (Not in an unhealthy way, I just ran 3 or so miles every single day.) Skinny enough for me to feel super-hot and totally awesome. (The guy did feel sorry, and like a total piece of shit - which he sort of was - but not because I got skinny. More because I would get drunk and call him and scream at him like a psycho or send him threatening emails/IMs. Seriously. Don't you want to be friends with me now?)

Side note:

Who WOULDN'T want to be friends with/date me? HELLO, I'm wearing a "Fuck Me I'm Irish" t-shirt! If that doesn't scream class and sophistication then I don't know what does.

Anyway, during the time that I was skinny I went on more dates than I ever had in my entire life (seeing as I dated the same guy from the summer before freshman year to February of senior year that sort of makes sense, but I digress...), and I pretty much felt super-awesome about myself. During this time, I met Nick, fell in love, and eventually got married. But before we got married, we moved in together, and I started getting fat again. Slowly. Then, the year before our wedding I started getting fatter faster. I thought after the wedding/grad school/job stress was over I'd start losing weight again. WRONG. I kept getting fatter, and now I'm the biggest I've ever been, have a permanent double-chin, and I wear dresses every day because none of my pants fit. Literally. Not one pair. Zero.

I don't feel bad, per se, but I definitely don't feel great. Like, I could walk up a flight of stairs and have to catch my breath. Sad, seeing as I'm only 27. Plus, Type II Diabetes runs in my family, so I am setting myself up for some serious health problems if I don't get my shit together and get healthy. Here's my problem: I love to eat. I love to eat bad, fried, artery-clogging, delicious Southern food. And pasta. And pizza. And cake. God, I love cake. And Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I don't eat those things all the time, but I shouldn't eat them ever, at least until I get my weight under control again.

My other problem is that I've grown to hate exercising. HATE. I would rather roll across hot coals naked than go for a run. I would rather sleep on a bed of nails than get on the exercise bike on our porch. For reals. I wouldn't mind walking around our neighborhood, at least to get started, but there are all these seriously WASP-y, skinny ass bitches that power walk around the 'hood like it's going out of style, and I really don't so much enjoy huffing and puffing my fat ass around with them stalking the streets like a bunch of anorexic lab rats running in a maze. Plus, I am super pale and have curly hair, so when I exert myself my hair becomes even more of a frizzy afro and my face gets beet red. As much as I do enjoy looking like Bozo the fucking clown, it is just simply not a good time.

So how did I ever get to the point of running every single day and actually enjoying it? College. Seriously. I had HES (it's like PE) my senior year, so I had to workout at least every other day or risk failing, and really, how much of a fuck-up do you have to be to fail gym class? So I started there, and then one of my friends thought it would be a great idea for me to join the club lacrosse team. I'm not kidding. They needed more people and my friend swore to me that I didn't have to be athletically-inclined or anything, just as long as I was a warm body. That I was. So, in joining the lacrosse team I started going to practice a few days a week, joining in on a couple of team runs, and spazzing out during scrimmages and games on the regular. And I do mean spazzing out. I'll save those stories for another post.

So anyway, after I graduated, I was already in the habit of exercising most days, and I moved in with two of my college friends whose evenings were spent playing WoW (World of Warcraft - Google it) on the couch and watching whatever was on TV. I am not a video/computer game enthusiast, so I did not partake of the WoW fun, and they didn't really talk while they were WoW-ing (is that a word?), so I would get pretty bored after work. I started jogging a little in the neighborhood around our apartment complex, and found that it really made me feel good. Plus then the aforementioned guy did the soul-raping and heart-stomping, so I had yet another reason to run.

After a few weeks, I started to notice my clothes were getting looser, I was getting toned, and I had more energy. So it was all great, and I ran all the time and felt super. Until it got cold. Then I put my running shoes away until the next spring, because let's face it: I won't even go to the mailbox when the temp drops below 50 degrees, so there's pretty much no way in hell I would willingly spend time outside, breathing cold air and freezing my ass off running. The next spring, I moved in with some other friends from college. These friends' idea of fun was getting piss ass drunk pretty much every night for funsies. I don't think I need to explain why I stopped running. Or maybe I do. Let me spell it out for you: I was drunk. All the time. Well, not all the time, but most nights.

Then I met Nick, and we were super-glued together immediately. We would go out to dinner, go to movies (and eat popcorn and candy at said movies), and do other date-type things that didn't include exercising. When we moved in together, Nick cooked all the time, and I ate all the time. Thus began the slippery slope to fatness for reals.

Let's take a visual tour, shall we?

Halloween 2005 (the year I graduated from college) I was going to say something like, "Look, I was so confident I wore nothing but a leotard and fishnet tights in public!!!" but just keep scrolling.

Spring 2006 (I felt like the hotness in this Anthropologie dress, even though the size 10 (OMG) was literally falling off it was so big.)

Halloween 2006 (the fat is slowly creeping back on)

Fall 2007 (We just got engaged!) Notice the rounder face...

October 2008 (Our wedding day. Duh. I felt gorgeous in my dress, but literally a month before the wedding I had to have it let out because I had gained so much weight between since I bought it. Oops.)

March 2009 (WHOA MAMA. It was a Madonna-themed birthday party for one of my best friends from college. Notice that even at this size I was still wearing a leotard and leggings. Clearly I have no shame.)

Halloween 2009 (YIKES! Again, gold leggings and a gem sweater. NO. SHAME.)

December 2009 (EEEEEEK!!!! I saw this picture when it was posted on FB by a friend and immediately shit my pants from horror, then untagged myself ASAP. Horrifying. This is the reason I don't have any recent pics, and the reason I need to get serious about losing weight.

Help me, blog friends. Please don't let me forget this post and that I need to go from Notorious F.A.T. to Notorious H.O.T. Not only because I want to be skinny and for all my cute clothes to fit, but also because I don't want to get the diabeetus or other obesity-related diseases. Plus cankles are just so unattractive.

Peace.

I had to include this pic of me on Easter when I was 4 or 5. No, I am not wearing a wig. That is my real hair, that my mom cut herself. I am modeling my new bathing suit that the Easter Bunny brought me and wearing my hot house slippers, because I am the shit.

Some new hotness for your eyeballs

Check out the red hotness in the first Etsy treasury I've ever curated! Click here and prepare to be amazed. Or not. But do it anyway.