No! No Dammit No!

No, I won't let this be my life. I will do something special. I will do the things I want to do. I will be happy. I will be healthy. And I will have something interesting to write about, rather than rantings and ravings of things past.

I swear sometimes it's like my head is going to explode with the back and forth. Am I crazy or am I just boring? Is there something wrong or am I just lazy? Am I lying to myself? I want to be like the Sara's of the world who laugh and are happy. I don't want to fake it. I want to FEEL it.

Why won't my body let myself do what my mind wants so badly?

This is ridiculous. Thank goodness nobody is reading.

The dreaded phone...

I would like to get rid of my cell phone. I don't want it anymore. Actually, wait. I like the device itself. It helps me find directions, keeps me entertained, gives me instant information when I need it and keeps me organized. But the whole dialing out and receiving calls thing I can definitely do without.

Is that bad?

It's just so much pressure to call people and keep up conversation. Is it because I'm not talking to the right people? Like my friend Sara. I went on my first big trip in August with Scott. It was the first time either of us had gone anywhere besides a backpacking trip a few hours away, and it was certainly the first time we had gone international. We got back and almost immediately afterwards, my friend Sara left for her big trip.

Sara has one of those infectious personalities. She laughs heartily at everything and the next thing you know, everything is funny to you, too. And it feels good, so you have a grand old time. But she definitely has some draw backs that make you want to shake sense into her every once in a while.

First off, Sara has gone on an international trip for several months each year for the past several years. With a paycheck very similar to the size of mine (ahem, my previous one rather), she somehow makes it happen. Of course, she has a mom that dumps all kinds of things her way, from laptops to cameras, to brand new flat screens for her boyfriend at Christmas. Not that it's wrong. If my parents wanted to do that...fine! But the money I use to buy basic things like a camera or to pay basic expenses, like a deposit on an apartment, car insurance, car payments, are payed by me. Not my parents. So it must be nice. (Okay, I know I sound bitter, but I can't help it.)

Anyway, so she left for her third Euro-vacation with a bunch of friends. From there, her and another friend were headed to Africa for a"meaningful vacation" which is essentially paying more than you normally would to go to a developing country and volunteer.

Things that pissed me off about it PART I: Both her and the other friend asked us repeatedly to "donate to the cause" several times throughout the year. First, it was casually mentioned. Then, we were all hit up several times to donate our old clothes, jewelery, junk etc so they could sell them at a series of yard sales. When it was crunch time, we received emails and "reference letters" from the program administrators and bios about both girls and how much they look forward to "giving back" and "living out their dreams of helping others."

That's great. No really, that's great. It's nice and I get where they are coming from......kind of. It's just that, first off, why don't you shave off one week off your three-week Euro vacation to help pay a portion of your Africa trip, hmm? Second, you can hit me up once or twice, but not three, four, five, six, seven times. And then I hear from my best friend that Sara walks around saying, "I don't understand what is so hard about giving up $20 here and there."

Things that piss me off about it PART II: Here's what's so hard about it. Despite the same size of my paycheck and the additional fact that we NEVER go out (like Sara does a couple of days EVERY weekend, and throughout the week), that I NEVER go shopping, (save for once a year or so and mainly because I have gift cards from my birthday or Christmas), and that we live a very simple life (no cable, no fancy toys, etc), I still have only a little bit left at the end of the month to save some money and -GASP- maybe buy dinner once in a while when I'm too pooped to cook. I wish my parents bought me everything I ever wanted, but they don't. In fact, I make sure my mom is taken care of, and will often times step in to purchase something that she really needs.

Things that piss me off about it PART III: To top it all off, she is an incredible amount of drama. And since she's moved in with Celia (don't even get me started on her) the drama has increased immensely. So I never really like to have them around anyway, because if there aren't enough cute boys around, they get antsy. And every time I invite them for a birthday party or a celebration, they always leave early so they don't miss the deadline for whatever guest list they happen to be on at a downtown club.

Did I mention that Sara is supposed to be one of my bridesmaids? Eeesh.

Anyway, back to the phone. So she's been back for a few weeks, and I haven't called. Part of me didn't because I've been especially miserable as of late. But there's another part of me with a reason that I just can quite put my finger on. Is it "misery loves company" that keeps me away from her? Like that I'm afraid that she'll actually put me in a good mood? Or is it that I think we're so far off that I don't want to hear all the good things she has to say and pretend like I think it's all funny and cool.

Since she's been back, she's sent me text messages and emails with increasing anger, questioning my reasons for not calling. And I'm confused. Isn't the phone a two-way thing? She can text and email me, but I have to call her?

Am I missing something? And more importantly, why can't I just pick up the phone and get it over with already?!

Paralysis Shmaralysis!

I got the job!

Keep Stringing Me Along

I lost my job in July, right before a one month vacation to South America to visit good friends of ours and be a part of their wedding. Scott and I had been planning for over a year.

After five years, I had given this office everything I had. Nobody there could argue that I had the most challenging base of people to work with. In fact , two people before me only lasted a few years with them, before they were given new responsibilities in the office, due to their burnout.

Our big boss was losing her mind and completely out of touch with reality. A person that I used to be so proud to work for; that I campaigned for for two years straight, going from my fulltime job in her office to my nonpaid job in her campaign office until sometimes midnight, and pretty much all day on the weekends, was now losing her marbles. I was kind of embarrased to represent her.

With a second boss that used his apparent naivity (he spent his previous life as a pastor) to say things that no boss should ever say to anyone he supervises, particularly girls - ahem - I was miserable.

So the bitch let me go because I was "unhappy." There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the crux. Turns out the pastor was a snake in the grass, but I only heard that from his ex-collegues after he screwed me over.

So I went on the trip which was awesome of course. Except for the fact that not having a steady income stream stresses me out to no end. It makes me lose sleep and screws with my head.

Luckily I knew I had snagged (the day before we left) a 3-month internship at a hot pr firm in the area. I had wanted to work their for years, but never had the guts to give everything up and go down a new path. This time, I had no choice.

Three months passed, and so did they. On hiring me that is. Which is fine anyway because it was like working in a sorority - everyone talked like a vallley girl, and I felt pressured to wake up every morning and spend an hour on hair and makeup to make up for the fact that I hadn't gone shopping in over a year. I don't watch bad tv (when I told them I don't have cable, everyone gasped) and I don't read fashion magazines. How dare I?

I felt okay about it too, because I was thisclose to getting a job at a place I actually wanted to be. I spent the whole last month of my internship talking to the owner of the company. I met with a couple members of his staff who loved me. I'm pretty sure he loved me, but he really wanted me to meet the Operations person because that's who I would be working under.

That happened yesterday and boy did she have doubts. The owner however said that he was still going to give me an offer and that he would call me later in the day because he wanted to get me in the next morning. Great!

..Except he didn't call.

I emailed him around 7pm to make sure he wasn't expecting me in the next morning. He wrote back to say that he had had such a hectic rest of the day, and that we should plan to speak today at 10am.

I have a feeling that the Ops lady convinced him to lessen the title and the salary (which was low to begin with!).

Now I'm worried. At this point, I'll take anything. But I'm afraid the salary will be what I started with at my first job, and back then, I had no car payment, car insurance payment, health insurance payment, and paid $250 less in rent.

I know I should spend most of this morning looking for jobs just in case but...

Here comes the paralysis....

Sister in the Middle

My middle sister, Natalie, is a real pain in my ass.

She's always been very different from my oldest sister and myself, even in physical appearance. My mom used to always say that my oldest sister thinks with only her heart, and the middle sister thinks only with her brain, and me...well I have a nice balance of both (phew!).

It's true. Natalie can be truly heartless sometimes. As a child, I used to call her "the mean one" because, compared to the oldest, she never played with me or payed me much attention. Granted, my sisters are 11 and 13 years older than me. So being so young when they were in high school was, I'm sure, trying times for them.

Then she got married and moved in with her hubby (for now, I'll skip all the crap that went on in between - there are too many details and frankly a great deal of pain that I don't feel like getting into right now). She would invite me over to stay with them regularly. It was nice actually. I'd stay the night to get away from our crazy mother, and because we lived in the different ends of town, it was always like a mini vacation.

Later, I found that she was a little to cynical and way too blunt. She acted like a snob and ended up being the black sheep between my mom, myself and my sister (whom she never really got along with in the first place).

Ten years or so later, she and her hubby split up. Except she decided not to tell the family, until a year later when she confided in me about it. I think we had finally passed the time where I was the younger sister. I had finished school, had been working for some time, and had taken the role as caretaker for my mother. For all intensive purposes, I was an adult.

What bothered me about her not telling me was, well first of all, not telling me! I mean, she came to birthday parties and fourths of july and he came with her and they wore their rings and pretending like nothing was wrong. I felt so lied to. But on top of that, I felt really bad for her. She was so afraid that her family would judge her that she went through the whole thing alone. That's just sad.

But instead of getting angry, I simply asked her if she was happy. She said yes. And that was really the end of that. She explained that she was afraid I would judge her. I think she was relieved to know that I wouldn't. It was a little harder telling my mom and other sister.

And then my mom had a major surgery and all three sisters were forced to spend a lot of time together and all kinds of feelings came flying out, feuled by the stress of literally sitting in a hospital all day for weeks.

Cut to about three years later, and she's been with a new guy for a couple years. I like him a lot, and her divorce has actually brought us a lot closer together.

She turned 35 this year and went to the doctor who basically said "er, if you want to have kids then you better get going." Nice one doc.

So they decided, as she put it, that they weren't "trying," but they weren't "not trying either." And just early September she found out she was pregnant. A shotgun wedding followed, which my dad knows nothing about (neither the baby nor the courthouse wedding) and I finally convinced her to tell my mom because I thought my mom could use the good news.

I wonder what else she's hiding...

This is a Test

I started this whole thing in the first place so that I could get my feelings out when they start taking over. Ironically, since I tend to be stuck like glue to whatever piece of furniture I'm on when the feelings rear their ugly heads, I never make it over to the computer.

Thus, you see fluffy posts about weddings and food, because those are the times I feel most motivated, and can get myself off the couch/bed, into the spare room with the dinosaur computer and let my fingers fly.

When Scott is home, I ask that he brings his laptop home too. But when he's not, all I have is the dinosaur. And the dinosaur (naturally) is slow and big and isn't in a place where I feel comfortable typing; meaning I can't be sprawled out on the couch/bed pouring my feelings out. I have to walk all the way over to the room, sit at the desk, in the office chair. Sitting in the office chair is particularly bad right now, since I don't have a job. It's like rubbing it in.

I know that it sounds silly to say that "I have to walk aaall the way over to the room" (considering we live in a 700 sq ft apartment), but it truly is a test. Honestly, and this is kind of gross (sorry), sometime I don't drink water on those days because I know it would be hard just getting up and going to bathroom. Ridiculous, I know.

Anyway, the point is....that this is a test of my mobile blogging feature. I hope it works, because although I have trouble picking up my phone and calling people (more on that later), I have no problem using this thing for internet browsing and emails.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this works......

December 1, 2008, 22 minutes of cardio

Okay, exercise for me goes in spurts. Despite having a personal, personal trainer at home (my soon to be hubby), I hate exercising. I hate cardio, I like weights a little better than that, and although I'm generally happy once I'm outside, it's a familiar battle in our house to get me to walk to the park a few blocks away and play frisbee for 15 minutes.

I LOVE to walk though. Walks around the neighborhood are my favorite. Especially where we are now. We're lucky to live in an apartment that is nestled between beautiful and historic crafstman homes. And being the dreamers that we are, we love to check the houses out...what they've done with the landscaping, how much we think the place is worth, whether we like the colors they've chosen, etc. Long walks to adjacent neighborhoods are even better. I love exploring by foot!

Anyway, I'll usually get really motivated and hit the gym a few times a week for a couple weeks. (I've been known to go for months - GASP!) So I was doing really well a few weeks ago and then BAM! I hit the wall. I think it's because I was so motivated to look awesome in a wedding dress (it was surprisingly motivating, even will all my unmotivated-ness), and I've only recently let sink in the fact that I have way over a year now to fit into it.

Today, I'm trying to start that over again.

I've been feeling and looking a lot better in general when it comes to my body image. I'm lighter now than I was in high school AND junior high! And by a good 30 pounds. I think that's awesome. And now if I gain a few pounds, I feel huge, and when I work hard and get rid of them, I feel better. It's the difference between 1 pound sometimes! Once 134 creeps up, I feel gargantuan.

Okay, before this gets to lengthy, I just want to say the following....I know I'm not fat. I don't have a ridiculously warped image of myself. (It's only a little warped I'm sure.) But as a child, I was always big. Up until my first couple years of college did I realize that I can lose weight all by myself. And not until a couple of years ago when I made a bet with a friend at work, did I realize how good I could look! I got all the way down to 134 and I was ecstatic about how I felt. And now, I'm trying to keep 134 as the top of the range, and am working towards the bottom of the range...128. But that darn lack of motivation. It can easily manipulate me, and make me stop all the progress I've made, right when I'm close to getting where I want to go.

And there's just a few things that bother me still. First, when a thin person goes from, say 128 to 135, they usually still look thin in general. But as hard as I work to get down to 134, I look different. I don't know if it's because my skin has lost some of its elasticity or what. But I just don't look the same. My arms are huge. My drumsticks are...well drumsticks. Thin-from-a-child-people don't look the same. Jerks :)

And then there was Toffee for cheaters...

We decided to give yummy gifts away for Christmas this year to save money. So I found a toffee recipe made with saltine crackers, and the reviewers were right! If you do it right, there's no way anyone will know it's made with saltines. And it was so incredibly easy!

Of course, I find that most any recipe needs to be tweaked a little bit. So I had to make a couple changes:

I added an extra 1/2 cup of butter and an extra 1/2 cup of sugar, because the mixture wasn't enough to cover my saltines. Also, I crushed the saltines first, to make it less like cracker squares, and let it break up in more random pieces. When I took it out of the oven, I waited about 30 seconds (toffee hardens up so fast), and dropped in my crushed pecans. Then I waited about another minute and added the chocolate chips (I didn't want them to sink in with the nuts). I had turned the oven off, but I threw the cookie sheet back in there to speed up the chocolate melting process. After a couple minutes, I pulled it out and spread the chocolate with a rubber spatula. It didn't quite cover every morsel, but that's how I wanted it. Then I threw it in the freezer (because I'm so impatient) and it was ready in about 30 minutes.

This totally makes our gift list! I think I'm going to include brownie cupcakes (just pillsbury brownie mix made in silicone cupcakes molds) - they come out perfectly every time and they're so easy! The third delicious morsel will probably be jam cookies. You know the sugar cookies with the well of chewy jam in the center? Ugh I love those. I remember making them with a friend back in junior high. We waited until her family got home so we could share them, but they never made it! No, the cookies. The cookies never made it :)

I think that's a good balance of toffee, chocolate, and light fruity treats, right? I'll post the other recipes when I try them out.

Oh, and since I have so much extra toffee, I'm thinking about throwing some in a box and sending them my sister's way in Massachusetts. Yes we haven't spoken in over a year (can we say crazy bitch?) but I figure this would be a good way to break the ice. Apparently a sister category is forthcoming also.....

Whatever! Go make saltine toffee!

I made my first Turkey!

Okay, for my FIRST time, it wasn't all that bad. I shoulda just put the whole darn stick of butter in there though. I mean seriously. I haven't had turkey for seven years because I was a vegetarian, and before that, I never really ate it because I thought it was too dry.

This year, I promised myself that it would be lovely. And I did a pretty good friggin job. But it was slightly dry. I'll take slightly over extremely any day. But I'm determined to do it right next year! Or the year after, depending on where the responsibilities like.

Everything else came out great. Last minute (like literally last minute - I was at the store the night before T-day buying everything), one of my guests texted me with a stuffing recipe she saw on Oprah. I was a little pissy that I had to change my ingredients while I was at the store, especially because I had already bought half the ingredients at the last store I was at....but it was soooo worth it. I think the stuffing was definitely the star this year!

Of course, I did hit a bit of a problem with the recipe. I put the wet ingredients in of the cornbread mix and then checked the video afterwards where I noticed that her stuffing was dry. But I tweaked the recipe last minute and it came out fabulously.

The changes:
I used two boxes of Trader Joe's cornbread mix which is hands down the easiest and most delicious cornbread I have EVER made/eaten. Since I added the eggs and milk to it already, I just put less liquids from the recipe (1 cup instead of 1 1/2 cup of OJ, and 2 cups of chicken broth instead of 4).

I ended up with a lot extra mix though, despite the fact that I used a large rectangular pyrex. I probably could have filled another square pyrex up. I guess it could be frozen for later? It was so good, I'm sure Scott won't mind having more in January/February :)

WAIT! I forgot!

How could I forget my other secret ambition? To be able to sit around a campfire/bonfire/fake fire/fireplace, strum my guitar and sing popular songs that everyone knows the words to. On second thought, it doesn't have to be near a fire. But times like those are when guitar stringing cover song singers like me fit in the best.

Of course I have a beautiful guitar. I used to take lessons and they were going really well, but the instructor asked me to bring in music that I wanted to learn (which I did - Jack Johnson because I can sing his tunes really well...in my car at least) - and instead, he made me learn some song from the 80's that I had never heard of. It was an okay song, but not really. Not what I wanted. I lost motivation and I let the lessons go. He was GREAT teacher though, which makes this whole thing a bummer.

I've never really let anyone hear me sing. Except for my sister when I was little, and Scott every now and then. But despite us having been together for over six years, I have yet to really let him hear me sing. I'll belt out a tune as a joke here and there.

I want to sing at the top of my lungs! And now I'm at the point where I think I may suck and it's all in my head. No, I'm not awesome. But I have a versatile voice that would rock a campfire song. Come on!!!

This might help me get to know ... myself!

I love this idea! Too bad I'm too late....I wonder if this is an annual event :)

Hope the Potential Job Covers...

....behavioral health services. I say that because I truly miss my therapist. I've only had a couple but this last one was really getting somewhere. Until I left my job, just a few months after I started with her. I was learning so much!

Like how when I just want to sleep the day away or just do nothing and then I get mad at myself for being so lazy - that there's a reason behind it. It's not just that my mom was lazy and I learned bad habits (although, I'm sure there is definitely something there) but it's being overwhelmed that puts me in an almost state of paralysis.

But now wait a second - this is where I stopped seeing her. I get all that with the overwhelming feelings that paralyze me into a blob. Except that now, I don't have all those things that I was worried about last year. I took care of them. The family is fine and I'm on me time. Of course, I still don't have a job, and the last day of my 3-month internship was last Wednesday. I've had some promising conversations with a local business owner, and I'll know more about it tomorrow at my (hopefully last) interview.

I know that is definitely weighing down on me. Here's what really gets me though....after almost 4 months of not having a real job, and knowing how much a lack of steady income stresses me out (like losing sleep and angry stressing), I can't get myself to work on my resume or cover letter much. Or do any aggressive job searching. THAT is the paralysis I'm talking about.

One time I told the therapist about a similar situation. I was complaining that I can't even get motivated to do the things that I WANT to do. Interestingly enough, she said that maybe those things AREN'T what I want. Wow. I never thought about it that way.

But seriously, I can't throw everything away and just audition for plays the rest of my life. What about Scott? As a business owner, there is no steady income for him. And right now, his services area luxury for some.

Oh my gosh, I'm getting anxious just mulling all these over in my head.

Calm down Laila. Drink your water. Peruse craigslist for a second. Write another post in 1o minutes.

What?! I got the part? But I didn't even audition! Yippee!

I know - it seems as though my posts come up in the same hour on the same day, and then the whole thing gets ignored for a couple weeks. I can't help it.

This hour is the one hour where I realize that I need to get the hell out of bed, start drinking water so that maybe I'll be hydrated enough to go the gym and run my arse off. It's the same hour that all of a sudden I realize that once I find that job I'm so anxiously looking for, that I can use my spare time to do what I've always secretly wanted to do - take part in a play.

So here I am, fifteen windows open, showing everything from overdone monologues to craigslist postings of whose holding auditions. Unfortunately I found that it's a bit more complicated than I thought. You mean I can't just walk on stage, read a paragraph, sing a few lines and wow the heck out of everyone?

Well shit. I don't have the motivation to do it any other way.

I'm sorry!

I'm so sorry I've been gone so long. Not that anyone is listening! But I'm really actually sorry to myself. I promised that I would use this as a way to get out all my frustration, since my apparent social anxiety keeps me from sharing them with anyone but myself.

The last few weeks have brought a few changes. We decided to postpone the wedding for one. We'll do it in 2010 instead of 2009. Costs were rapidly spiraling out of control, and we couldn't decide on whether to invite the whole family (giving us a whopping total of 160 guests on a budget of $10k) or have separate family parties and only invite our closest friends to the actual wedding (bringing our total down to a much more doable 80 people). We're still playing with that idea.

By the way, if we go with 160, would it be totally insane to try to cater most if ourselves? I mean, we have a great Persian dish that only gets better after it's been able to sit for a few days. That would be a great app. And costco has so many wonderful little quiches and such. Why can't we just team up with the neighbors and use their ovens to take care of the hor d'ourves? We can purchase chicken from a local restaurant, but make a saffron quinoa (which we recently tried that was fabulous!) and a salad. I know it's a lot of people, but all of things can largely be prepared ahead of time, and put together by some dedicated friends and family on the day of. Cupcakes are already being taken care of by a bridesmaid and another friend.

Seriously, am I insane?