So much more to be thankful for.

I am seriously thankful for so much.

• My friends (and family whom I consider to be friends).  My friends encourage me, keep me grounded, and help me through tough shit.  And we giggle a lot together.
• A reasonable amount of smarts.
• My cats.  Cosmo and Nettles are, many days, the highlight of my life.  Sometimes they keep me up all night, or get into something they’re not supposed to, but they really make my life better.
• The internet and social media.  Without which I wouldn’t be able to look up all the weird crap I look at on the internet on a daily basis.  (The Oatmeal, I’m looking at you as a huge time waster!)
• 20sb.  I know I’m not very active in the community, but I’m changing that and without that community I wouldn’t have found some really amazing people.  And Erin, this kid journey has been painful for you (and mine hasn’t been happy), and I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with this.  But I’m thankful that you shared your journey with us, and I know that I am not alone.
• Did I mention that I’m thankful for eyeshadow and mascara yet?  And concealer?
• I’m also thankful that I have crochet and knit skills.  This is something that I am actually good at, and I enjoy doing it.  And very soon there will be an etsy shop to show for it.  Keep your eyeballs open for the launch!

Everything I needed to know about life, I learned from working at Starbucks

When I think of all the posts that I have about SBUX and working there, I think most of them are about rude people and bitter customers.

But I seldom talk about the happy interactions with my customers every day.  They are the reason I love what I do.  They are the reason I do not mind getting up before dawn when it’s cold as hell outside.

A recent post of mine about bitter customers was linked to on a very well written little piece on http://gumption.typepad.com/ and while I feel all excited that my post was included in a post that I feel is really great, I’m sad that it’s about bitter customers, and not the happy ones.  And that’s my fault.

So unless something REALLY ridiculous happens this holiday season at my SBUX, I’m going to report on my happy daily interactions with the people who I serve every day.

So much to be Thankful for.

I have mixed feelings about autumn.

On one hand, there is so much beauty in the Autumn.  The leaves change colors and decorate the world in golds, reds, oranges.  When and if the sky is ever blue, the blue is so vibrant and so clear it’s difficult to not stop in wonder at the naturally occurring beauty that surrounds.

But as that beauty fades in the bleakness that is winter, I grow more and more wistful.  The leaves are rejected from their trees, and fall to the ground and become empty brown shells to remind us of their former glory.

But when everything begins to fade for the winter, I’m always reminded to give thanks for all of the beautiful things.  Partly because right as thanksgiving creeps up, it’s time for everything to die.  And partly because when things get depressing, I try to focus on the good things.

So, here are some superficial and not so superficial things that I am thankful for:

1. I am more thankful than I can even describe for the love and friendship that I have with Chris.  I never ever could have imagined that marriage would have been this easy, or this wonderful.
2. My family is so supportive, and such an awesome group of people.  Everyone should be so lucky.
3. I am thankful for our jobs for many reasons.  Our jobs put food on the table, clothes on our backs, and a roof over our head.  And we don’t hate our jobs.
4. I am thankful for mascara.
5. I am also thankful for eyeshadow.  In all colors and shades.

Because my life revolves around this now.

Here’s a little warning for those of you who don’t want to hear about “woman things” or whatever, but I’m not apologizing, because this is my life now.

Lets just go ahead and say it.  My period decided to visit this past week.  No, I’m not calling it Aunt Flow, or The Old Bat.  It’s my effing period.

And let me just go ahead and say that to a woman who wants nothing more than a child of her her own, having a period feels like the most depressing thing I’ve ever experienced.  I know that there are worse things (for example, the death of a family member or losing a pregnancy), but having a period at this point certainly feels like the worst.possible.thing to endure.

It’s this little reminder, with pain, and mood swings, and headaches, and all of the other symptoms, that you still don’t have that one thing that you’ve been basically begging the universe for.

And it’s not fair.

And it effing sucks.

And it really feels like a large and very sick joke being played on  you by some “other being”.  Or if you don’t believe in that sort of thing, like I pretty much don’t, it just feels like you have the worst possible luck.  Ever.  And it’s just a simple reminder that life sucks, and isn’t fair, and it really doesn’t matter what kind of karma you put out there.  Because doesn’t it seem that those that should have the worst karma get what they want all the time?

And that those who try to put the good stuff out there in the universe get bitten in the ass more often than not?

I may sound a little silly right now, but unless you’ve walked in these shoes, you can’t imagine how depressing a period is.

 

Everything I needed to learn about life, I learned from working at Starbucks

I know that many of my posts about working for SBUX have to do with angry customers.

And unfortunately, the moments of my day that stay in my head are typically the ones with the angry people who belittle me and my baristas, or who are so bitter they just leave that toxic mess with you and it ruins your day.

I try to remember the people I see every day who are kind, and polite and who actually seem to really care about how I’m doing as a person.  Let me just mention that one of our regular customers was one of the recovery nurses in the hospital after my D&C this past august, and that she’s so kind and sweet to all of us, every day.  And I am so happy to reciprocate her kindness and make her the best damned latte I can.

But over the past year I’ve noticed how much more bitter my customers have become.  More and more of the people I serve in my cafe are bitter and in a hurry and generally unhappy.  And that brings me down.  Seriously.

It brings me down to know that so many people are unhappy.  Because despite a lot of shit that’s piled up this year, I see a lot of good stuff, too.  And I’m happy.  I’ve figured out what I needed and have found my happy place, my place of contentment, and purpose in my day-to-day.

And I want more people to find that.

Why people flake.

I’ve seen a lot of really shitty stuff happen to people around me in my life time.  And some shitty things have happened to me, too.  But overall, I think my life has been pretty hitch-free.

But during every crappy situation I’ve had to witness people go through, and the ones I’ve lived through myself, there’s something that I see others doing that infuriates me.

Friends flake when the shit hits the fan.  Of course not everyone flakes out, but you know what I’m talking about.  There’s the emotionally distant friend who can’t mentally handle what you’re going through.  There’s the friend who acts like nothings different, and then you don’t hear from them after awhile when you just aren’t the same person for the time being.  There’s the friend who lashes out when you’re going through something hard to handle.  You know, the one who makes you feel bad for feeling bad.

I understand the emotionally distant friend.  Sometimes situations in the real world are really difficult to handle for people who haven’t been forced to deal with super-shitty life moments.  I understand the friend who feels you have nothing in common or can’t see eye to eye because that person wants to go party and do things exactly like before, and for whatever reason, your life is different because of whatever it was you had to deal with.  It may take a really long time for you to be “back to normal” or in a state of mind to just let loose and party, especially if you’ve lost a sibling, or parent, or close friend.

What I don’t understand, and get infuriated when I think about it, are the “friends” who flake out and attack the person who’s having a hard time.

I’ve thought long and hard about this behavior.  In high school, my BFFs father died unexpectedly.  The man was like a second father, her home a second home, and one day he dies.  I was able to keep my shit together for my friend for awhile, but one day I just couldn’t do it, and my boyfriend of time was no help, and told me I just needed to get over it.  When push came to shove, the jerk couldn’t handle the real world (and probably still can’t) and he hurt me deeply.  So, I’ve considered this type of behavior for awhile now.  10-ish years or so.

I think it all boils down to guilt.

If your friend can’t deal with emotions, or death, or whatever it is, they begin to feel guilty.  Then, once the guilt sits in that someone is having a hard time and they’re being a little shit about it, they become angry with themselves. But these are the types of people who think they can do no wrong and view the anger as your fault, because you made them feel bad in the first place.  So they lash out, and tell you to “get over it”, and that you’re not a good friend because you’re bringing them down all the time.

Heads up peeps.  Life isn’t all pink daisies and peppermint mochas and disney movies.  Sometimes life is all about stinging nettles, ipecac, and dark dramas.

 

Top 5 fave products, currently.

Because I enjoy knowing what kind of “beauty” products actually work, I’m going to list the current things I’m loving:

1. Boots Botanics Clay Mask – Need a zit to go away?  This stuff is amazing.  I don’t know how it works, but I know that it lessens the time a zit hangs around.
2. Urban Decay 24/7 Eyeliner in Bourbon – These liners go on very smoothly, and stay for a long time.  This color brown is  perfect, in my opinion.
3. The Body Shop Tea Tree Gel Face Cleanser – Excellent cleanser for oily skin. Gets rid of the oils but doesn’t strip the moisture.
4. The Body Shop Chamomile Eye Makeup Remover – Nice eye makeup remover.  It’s super gentle if gotten in the eyes (oops), and moisturizing to the whole eye area.
5. MAC eyeshadow in Mulch –  I love this brown.  I’ve been really loving browns lately.

10 years ago ….

10 years ago today, I found my soulmate.

I used to hate that term.  HATE it. But then one day I realized that I actually had a soul mate.  That person that seriously made my life better, whole, complete, amazing…

So, here’s the proof.

Today is not my favorite.

I apologize ahead of time for the cryptic nature of this post.

Since January I’ve been facing some moral dilemmas in my life.  A situation developed within some family and things that I didn’t believe had grey areas suddenly NEEDED grey areas.

It’s hard to believe something to be strictly “black and white” and then suddenly, out of preservation and support for people that you love, you have to reconcile the amalgamation of black and white and accept the grey.

That was harder for me than I ever could have imagined.  It took weeks for me to be able to accept “grey” instead of “black”, and it has since become easier.  But I have a feeling that if I had different ideas of “morality”, this wouldn’t have been something I was able to work through.

Well, today that situation sort of ends.  Well, it starts a new book, I suppose.  And Chris is with his family while they deal with something ridiculous and heartbreaking.  And I couldn’t make myself go.  I just couldn’t.

And now I feel guilty and a failure as a wife, friend, sister and daughter in law.

But was there anything to be gained by me being there?  Who knows, but what I know is that my selfishness has left Chris there without me.  Blah.

Apartment Therapy’s Kitchen Cure Week 2

Every Friday during the Cure, participants will receive an email from AT giving you info on the next week’s assignments.

To be frank about it, I haven’t really sat down at my computer in days, and just now got around to checking emails from days ago.  This week was just plain exhausting.

So, this week’s assignment is to go through all of the stuff in my kitchen and make three piles:

1. stuff we use regularly
2. stuff we use occassionally
3. stuff we don’t use/forgot we even had

We don’t have that much stuff in our kitchen.  But we have enough to make things feel cramped, so this week I’m going to work on that.  I hope that this feels liberating and not really like a horrible chore.