Marriage and Pregnancy - You asked for it.

I've had a lot of questions over the last few years about having more kids and getting married and such... Recently, a friend of the family called me up pretty much to ask if I ever planned to marry Nick since we've been together for so long and live in the house together now. So uh, here are the answers. These are only my opinions and my feelings that apply to my life... so as always - do your thing and I'll do mine (whatever it is), and we can still love each other anyway. 😀

On more kids... is that what the world really needs? Honestly?? I don't feel that it does. Not only are there wayyy too many children without homes and families, but there are wayyy too many kids who are in terrible homes and that the system simply cannot take care of. On a more personal level I don't know that I'll ever have any more... At one point I wanted nothing more than to have another child. Now, that is not the case. But I suppose that could change again. Nothing is set in stone.

First of all, FOR NOW, I don't want the wear and tear on my body; despite the fact that I've had a child I'm pretty happy with my physical appearance and I want to enjoy that for a while. Second, I don't want the responsibility; Shadow's FINALLY old enough that I don't feel guilty and evil for letting him spend the night away from home once in a while if I want to take some time to myself. Third, babies are a lot of trouble. I've been contemplating going back to school off and on... right now I feel like I need to focus on myself and where I'm heading more so than anything else. A baby would probably jack that up. While I do understand the urge to make one together with someone you love I'm just not having that urge right now. We have time; there's no rush.

Don't get me wrong - if I ended up preggers I'd be just as happy as I was with Shadow. Not only that - I really enjoyed being pregnant. It's an awesome thing. An inopportune or unplanned pregnancy is not the end of the world to me, simply a surprise that I would embrace and welcome with open arms. That doesn't mean that I'm a kid person, though. I'm not fond of the little buggers, honestly. And you definitely will not find me old and saggy with a litter. That's not my thing. Unless I somehow have twins I wouldn't want more than one more.

On to marriage! My first thought when that is mentioned is "Why?" Do you not think that in this day and age of casual sex and constantly changing minds that it's sort of an outdated concept?? I certainly do. From what I understand nothing really changes once married these days unless you've been abstaining from sex and not living together (which seems to be rare). So all that you're really gaining by getting married is the expense of a divorce in the event you no longer want to be together, which happens A LOT. Wtf? Who wants that? Not me.

I dunno. Not only that, but once you're married it's no longer your choice to be with someone... it becomes your default. I'd personally rather know that the man I love chooses to be with me every day - not that one day he chose to be with me. I mean, truly, if I'm in a committed, loving, trust-filled relationship with someone then what more do I need? What else IS there?

Aside from that I HATE hearing how about how "you're now joined as one" and all this "forever" bullshit. What is that? I wasn't a whole person before I bought this expensive ass piece of paper? Wow. It must be magical or something. And no one knows how they'll feel later down the road. I'm sorry. I'm not afraid of commitment, but I find the idea of pledging yourself to someone "for better or worse" just bogus. If I were to marry a guy who just one day started beating my ass daily I'm promising to stay in that situation? Gnaw man. Not me. No one should have to. Which brings you to divorce. So what does that say about the whole institution of marriage? It's just flawed.

Anyhoo, I don't have anything against married people. If you're married I wouldn't chase your man - but I wouldn't do that to my unmarried friends who are in relationships, either, so don't think you're getting special treatment. 😜 All in all I'm not even saying that I would never do it, but I don't feel that it's likely to be something I'm very interested in doing. If the man I was with joined the military or moved to another country I would marry him so that I could be with him if he meant that much to me. And other junk like that. But just, you know, on an average day it's nothing I desire to do.

So I guess that's it. There you have it. I feel lucky to have found Nick (we share very similar if not the same views on these subjects) because I know not many other people share them. But oh well. To each their own. Feel free to share your feelings on the subject. Yes, this is MYspace, but I'm open. 😊

My First Week of Bald

As of yesterday my head's been mostly naked for a week. As I guessed would be the case I've gotten a lot of "What made you decide to do that?" type questions. Not many people were very shocked (that I know of), which is cool - that means my friends know me. 😂

As for the answer to that question, here it is: I've wanted to do it for years, but never had the balls. It's not like I was having one of those crazy Britney moments or anything... I've been working up to actually doing this for the last two or three years. Either my concern for how ugly my head might be, or how cute my current haircut or color was is all that stood in the way most of the time.

As for why I wanted to, well, there's a few reasons for that. One is that I just don't like having to deal with hair... there's haircuts, color, combing, brushing, drying, styling, worrying about how it looks all the time... I mean, seriously, (not that I'm much of a girly girl), but if my hair looked bad or felt gross that would be enough to make me not want to leave the house. I don't like that shit. It's just too much, which is why my hair hasn't been colored in over a year and also why I'd been keeping it pretty short already (so that it didn't require much styling).

Not only that, but I feel a lot cleaner. I tend to feel dirty with too much hair (same thing with fingernails - I keep them cut off, too). I dunno. And I guess I was just curious to see what it would look and feel like (which I'm pretty happy with on both accounts). As for how long I'll keep it this way - who knows. I may grow some back for the winter, but then there's always hats. 😊 I'm really enjoying it so far, though. 

However sappy this may sound, it's the truth - the breeze, the warm sun, getting your head rubbed - all that feels a lot different (and much much better) without hair in the way. I'm definitely digging that aspect of it. And honestly I don't feel unpretty without my hair, which is a pleasant surprise. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about myself once I looked in the mirror. But I'm not disappointed with it at all. So that's cool. All in all, if you're thinking about doing away with the hair - I say give it a try. If you don't like it - you can always grow it back; so no worries. 😀

Oh, help me! My inappropriate laughter has got me in trouble again!

For those of you who know me, it's nothing new that I laugh at almost all the wrong times. Uncontrollably, even. But today I think I may have offended someone. And I feel sort of bad about it.

So here's the story: We have an ad in the paper that we're accepting job applications at work... and so this lady came in to fill one out. When she handed me back the application she noticed my hand. For those who didn't know - I've got a GNARLY rash covering my whole right palm. It sucks.

Anyway, she asked about the job, etc., and then she left. But then she came back and said she had a few more questions. So we were talking about the job some more and then before she left again she asked if she could pray for my hand. (I'm sure you can see where this is going...)

Caught completely off guard and not knowing what to say I was just like, "Uh, sure." So she came and got my hand and I'm all, "You might not wanna touch that." She said that she wasn't scared of it so I was just like, "Ok." And then she started praying. And then I started laughing. 😬

Trying not to sound like a complete ass I was all "Thank you. I hope it works." (After the fact I realized that that might not have been the right thing to say...) She just said, "It will" and walked straight out.

I feel really bad. I hope I didn't hurt her feelings because she was only trying to help. I've thought about getting her number from her application and calling to apologize... but I don't know if that would be too weird. Plus, I'm not 100% sure that I upset her, but I think I did. So what do I do now??

R.I.P. Lily

So yesterday Lily was acting a little weird. I didn't think too much of it because honestly - she's a strange bird... always has been. Well, when I noticed her in the bottom of her cage again I opened the door to touch her and she didn't move. Normally she is not ok with being touched. So I called AMC who told me to call Birmingham who told me to call Auburn... no one had anyone who knew anything about birds in the emergency office. I fell asleep waiting for the Auburn clinic to call back and when I woke up this morning Lily was dead. And no they did not call. *sigh*

Honestly, one of the worst things is knowing that one of my babies are in pain and that I'm helpless in the situation... so I guess I'm relieved to know that she's not suffering, at least. I'm sad, though... I'm gonna miss her. She was something else. I really liked her silly ass.

TOOL

Last night was the show and it was AMAZING. I am not really a fan, but Nick is. He's been so stressed that something would go wrong and that we wouldn't get to see the show or something, but last night was pretty much PERFECT. The tickets were supposed to be mailed to us, but we found out at the last minute that they'd switched us over to will call... so we didn't know how good or bad our seats were. Well guess what. WE WERE IN THE SECOND FUCKING ROW. We could have practically touched them. The only problem I had with that was that a giant security guard kept jumping up on the fence and shouting at people and I couldn't see over him when he did that. Luckily, the crowd wasn't too out of hand so that wasn't a huge deal. Also, along those lines everyone just stood in front of their seats so there was no pushing or trampling going on which was great.

Aside from that the show was AWESOME. There were lasers, screens with images (lots and lots of eyeballs), smoke, videos playing in the background, Maynard dancing like a monkey, etc... not to mention how nice the band actually looked and sounded (I'm giving props where they're due!). That has to be, hands down, the best show I've ever been to. AND, the drummer walked right by us. I don't think anyone else recognized him, but Nick did. (Speaking of, that man has a MASSIVE set up... I couldn't even believe it). AND, the venue was pretty easy to find. AND me and Nick got the last two pair of earplugs in the place (once we saw our seats we knew we'd need them). AND, I almost got the drummer's autographed drum head, but in the process I was almost smooshed by two big guys who were also going for it. So I didn't get it. But that's ok because last night was almost too good to be true anyway.

At the end of the night we decided we wanted Waffle House. So we drive by the closest one, which, go figure, was packed with Tool fans. We would've never been served. So we got back on the road and took the next exit with a Waffle House sign. We drove and drove, then saw the Waffle House. It was the exact same one. 😂  That was really funny to us for some reason. So we just waited until we got back on I-20 to stop again. It turned out really nice, though. It was great to just relax and eat and think about how great the day turned out. We always have fun, but my goodness. EVERYTHING went well. We usually at least get a little lost or something. Anyhoo...

So many topics in one post.

So today Shadow stayed with my mother while me and Nick worked our day jobs. This was his first day of being out for summer and my mom just got a pool. What better way to kick off summer than with swimming?? So anyway Nick had to work this evening, too, so I went to pick up Shadow after I dropped Nick off. It was a very enjoyable ride... the weather was nice, the scenery was pretty, and I just listened to my music the whole way there without interruptions. That never fucking happens, though, because I'm never alone. I think I'm feeling a bit bitter that it's over with. 😕 It was only a half-hour drive, tops.

Anyway, while I was in the area I decided to stop and see my grandmother... the one with Alzheimer's. She came very close to being put in a home about two weeks ago, but my uncle came back to take care of her. True to his word, at least. I haven't seen him in years (due to family feuds and whatnot...) He's still riding Harleys... that was always my favorite thing about him visiting. He'd take me riding. Now he takes MaMaw which I'm sure is a sight. 😂  Aside from the fact that he's not too happy to be back in Munford they seem to be doing well. I'm so glad to hear it.

Speaking of not being too happy to be in Munford - I can understand. Every time I go out there I always feel the need to be in a rush to get out lest I end up trapped there forever. I can't explain it. So, AS USUAL I have a ton that I need to be doing, but I'm sitting here, blogging. I think I tend to do this when I start feeling overwhelmed. It sort of relaxes me to let everything all out. So after I do one of the many things I need to do (balance my checkbook first and foremost), I think I'm going to take a trip to Wal-Mart and get some clippers. Shadow needs a haircut and so do I. Yes, I think I've finally grown enough balls to buzz my hair off. Not SUPER short because that just seems uncomfortable, but SHORT. Less is more, damn it. If it happens you know you'll see it. In the meantime I'd like to share this picture with you.

It's me fresh outta the shower. And the red - that's my good buddy Psoriasis. Though he comes and goes there's a spot on my right arm that's been there steadily for years. His name is Bob. So no I don't always look this way, but sometimes I do. And sometimes it's worse. Yes, it hurts. And it itches. No, it's not contagious. There is no cure, but I used to spend a lot of time and money at the dermatologist to "control my symptoms." It never worked and it was a pain in the ass, as well. They have to constantly change your meds so that you don't become immune to them. I finally decided that it was not worth it. 

There was a time in my life that I wouldn't dare be seen this way. I'd at least have the decency to goop a bunch of makeup uncomfortably on top of the redness. I'm really glad that I grew out of that. I think it stressed me more to worry about what other people thought than actually having this condition to begin with. I can't help this. It's me; I'm not perfect - take it or leave it. So, obviously my skin's bugging me right now... it's on my mind... which is why you're reading about it. Don't get me wrong - it's been much worse before, but I hate that when it flares significantly - I can't NOT scratch it.

See, what happens is that while your skin probably reproduces and sheds on a normal schedule mine does it, like, wayyy too fast. I'm too fucking efficient to the point of waste. So skin builds up, itches, then I scratch it off, (which makes it stop itching), but then it's red. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes it fades away, sometimes it spreads. Anyway, enough about that.

Thursday was Nick's little brother's high school graduation. As far as I know we're on good terms with him mom and everything, but we never got an invitation (though we were told about it). Well we were going to meet at Nick's mom's house so that we could follow her to the ceremony and even though we got there early she'd left without us. So we call her, she answers once, gives us some shoddy directions, then turns her phone off. WTF??

We drove out to Lincoln, got lost in Lincoln, and wasted gas and an hour and a half for nothing. It sucks that we missed it because we both wanted to be there. But no one can say that we didn't try. I don't know what that shit was about, but we were both pretty pissed. That was just plain rude. In conclusion - can anyone tell me why my dogs think it's a good idea to try to drag each other around by their NEW collars?? While it's funny to watch I don't really want to have to buy new ones again by next week. They are so silly. I suppose I should go; I really need to take them out before Scooter pees in my carpet. Later!

My puppies (n_n)

This weekend both the doggies got a bath. And their nails trimmed. And new name tags. And matching collars (Emma's is olive green and Scooter's is hunter green). We also got a new leash and a training collar for Emma so that we can take her out of the house without having to fear that she'll snatch one of our arms off while dashing for the next thing that catches her nose. And this is the result:

You can't tell me that they're not absolutely precious. Well you can, but I won't believe you. 😝