Last week, I decided I was going to be a good wife and cook more for my husband. I also got smacked in the face by a crapload of work, so maybe I need to work on my timing a little, but still. I wanted to try.

I made a magnificent broccoli cheese soup, which I was really proud of because the last soup I made just blindly following a recipe was this butternut squash and bacon soup, which sounds totally awesome but was not so great. The broccoli cheese soup, though, was totally worth all of the 5 billion calories per bowl.

Later in the week, I made this hamburger soup that my mom used to make when we were kids and that also turned out perfectly. Plus, I made brownies and lemon sour cream muffins. The pièce de résistance, though, was last night (which counts as last week because weekends are always at the end of the week, and if it's a day off from work, it's also a weekend), because I did something for the first time ever, and it came out magnificently!

I fried something in oil!

Okay, it's not the healthiest form of cooking, but I've never really done it, although I've assisted others in the frying process, and I wanted to try. I made vegetable lo mein and then fried cubes of tofu with a sweet chili sauce. Fried tofu. I received a high five from my husband, so I know it must've been as awesome for him as it was for me.

Or perhaps even more awesome, because he didn't have a gross oily mess to clean up, as I did.

But it was worth it, and I now know how to make a sauce that is just as good as, if not better than, McDonald's. That's saying something, because that clown knows his sauce.

So, yep. I pretty much win the best wife ever award. We'll probably go back to pancakes and egg sandwiches for dinner now, but at least I tried.

A+ for effort.

Okay. I am going to have the best attitude you've ever seen, starting today. I realize this statement is easier to make on a Friday morning than probably any other morning of the week, but I'm taking baby steps here.

Having a good attitude is kind of foreign to me.

I am not going to complain about work anymore. I am not going to just put my dishes in the sink anymore when we have a perfectly good dishwasher just sitting there. I am not going to eat cookies for breakfast anymore. I am not going to deliver sermons in my head to homeless people holding signs that say "God Bless" (if you think I'm going to give you money for that, you're dead wrong, so try being honest and see how far that gets you because if I ever see a sign that says, "I got fired from my minimum wage crap job and I was sick of going to work so I thought I'd just give this a try" I'll probably pitch in). Finally, I am not going to go to McDonald's at lunch with my friend and have just fries and a Coke for my meal anymore (although, I have to say, that was the best meal I've ever eaten).

No more. I am going to be kind and helpful and hard-working and not bitchy. I am going to come home after work and practice, no matter how bad my head hurts or how craptastic my day was, and I'm going to be nice to everyone. EVERYONE. Even if they're annoying as hell.

Yep. Going to do all of that.

Yep.

It's going to happen. That's going to be me.

Really.

Today.

I swear.

Ugh. I am not going to like this.

When one is faced with a situation one is unhappy with, several options present themselves:

First, one can try to pretend that said situation isn't really happening; e.g., escaping into a happy place in one's head.

This is my general approach. That's why I put it first.

Second, one can try to resolve the situation and/or make it better.

Yeah, that one never works for me, either.

Finally, one can always become part of the problem by having a bad attitude and making things worse for the others who are also stuck in the same boat.

Why do people have to be turds?

I guess I'm trying to say that we're all in stupid situations every stinking day. There is no perfect situation, except maybe winning the lottery. (That's not going to make your life awesome, statistically speaking...it's more likely to take whatever little bit of joy exists in the winner's life, wring it out, shake it up, and then hand it back to the winner like a used washcloth. Plus, look up the odds of winning. Seriously. Keep the dollar.)

Quit being such a poop to everybody else. It's most likely not that person's fault that life hasn't turned out to be the way your six-year-old self envisioned it. Geez. If the world worked that way, we'd have a billion firemen, a few doctors, and a ton of unicorn farms. Oh, and way more ninjas. Would anyone be a proctologist? Probably not. I also doubt there would be too many people working at gas stations.

So, yeah, life isn't really fair for anybody. Sometimes people are going to take advantage of people, and that's not good. Most of the time, however, the things that happen to us are results of our own actions.

For example, you, having to take time out of your busy schedule to go to the hospital because I challenged you to a throw-down in the parking lot because I couldn't deal with your idiocy any more, and I knew darn well no one else was going to do anything about it.

That's just an example. It's not really going to happen.

If it did, though, there would definitely be a trip to Urgent Care. Probably for me because I would trip and fall on the way out the door and get some kind of head injury, but still. I'm in my happy place. Leave me be.

Yesterday, I was on the Facebook and I noticed a comment on a friend's page about how wrong fat jokes are, and how they just need to stop. A few people agreed with her, and then my friend commented with one of those, "Your mama's so fat..." jokes.

Yep. That's why we're friends. I was proud.

Why can we not make fun of things anymore? I make fat jokes all the time, usually about myself, and I think it's hilarious. Now, I would never ever tease with someone I didn't know well, and I don't think people should humiliate or bully other people (that is totally different and not okay), but why can't we make a few jokes about ourselves among friends?

I think the inability to laugh at things causes problems. I think that some of the really bad things that happen are because people take everything too seriously and don't have people that they feel safe enough to joke around with. And that is very, very sad.

Do I have a solution? You bet your sweet bippy I do! (Yeah, I just referenced Laugh-In. Deal.) Don't take everything so seriously, and try to laugh at yourself a little more. Also, it's good to learn that it's okay to walk away from a situation when someone is being a poo. Kids need to see that not everything is such a big stinking deal, and that, among friends and family, a different kind of humor is allowed, and they need to learn how to navigate those kinds of situations.

They also need to know how to handle people that are just being nasty for no reason. It's a really good thing for your kids to see how you defend yourself from other adults when they're being turds, regardless of the reason. For instance, once my mom and I were in a clothing store, looking for a gift for a friend. It's a small store with no plus-size section, and this saleslady walks up to us, looking all disgusted (this was before, when my mom and I were both exceptionally large and in charge) and says, "I don't think we're going to have anything in here that's your size."

Really. We hadn't asked for help or anything. At this point, I wanted to cry, because I was around 18 years old, and I felt really singled out and embarrassed. My mom, though? Not so much. She said, "We were looking for a really special gift for a friend for her birthday." The saleslady says, "Oh! I can help you with that!" and my mom says, "Oh, I don't think so." Then we walked out. There you go: A situation where someone is putting someone down all sneaky-like, and the person refuses to just stand there and take it, but it was all very civilized and now we get to make fun of that lady for the rest of our lives.


I don't think the solution is to stop making fat jokes. I think the solution is to not make mean-spirited comments to other people that make them feel isolated and unwanted. I think more joking and kidding and silliness would be quite awesome. Just don't joke about really personal things with strangers, and make sure your friends know you love them and can take kidding before you tease them. Ta-da! 

Wow. I know everything AND I can do the Truffle Shuffle. Astonishing.

We have this room that is our TV room, and its closet is my music storage/craft storage and my husband's DVD storage and we also keep all of our board games in there. Not to brag, but for having all of that stuff in such a small space, it's remarkably clean. Anyways, I have been noticing over the last couple of weeks that I have way more projects going at once than I usually do, so yesterday I decided to do something about that, and I finished my first project of the year, which happens to be a blanket for the new poofy couch we got for TV watching (yeah...not usually into poofy, but we keep buying these awful, uncomfortable couches and we got sick of it and decided to go for substance rather than looks). 

Want to see my project? Sure you do (get ready to ooh and aahhh....I'll know if you don't and it will hurt my feelings)! Here you go!

See? Isn't it purty? Of course it is. Isn't it amazing? Of course it is.

There, now. I feel much better. Now I only have three projects going at once, and I hope to finish another one before the week is over. Martha Stewart, watch out!

(You realize that I do all of these activities in the time most people fill with a social life. Do I find that sad? Not at all. Well, maybe a little. But at least I have a fuzzy blanket now.)

It has occurred to me that I have a ton of unconditional love in my life. I think this is really really important to my sense of happiness and well-being and all of that, but I also feel like maybe other people didn't get so lucky with the genetic slot machine. That is to say, my family loves me, no matter what, even when I'm awful (which is a lot of the time), and if I ever needed someone to turn to, there is a huge group of people who would be on my list, a few of whom aren't even related to me.

This is quite fierce, but the part that is less-than-fierce is the part about other people not being so fortunate.

Therefore, I have decided that this year I am going to be more kind/loving/forgiving/etc. Last year, I tried to do more of the things I always say I'm going to do, and that worked out pretty well for me, so this year I'm going to try this one out. I'm going to be quicker to forgive and let go, and I'm just going to like the people I like and not be so afraid that they'll find out that I'm a weirdo.

I totally am, but that's part of being myself and if people don't like it, I have to learn to be okay with that. But I'm going to like them and be nice anyway, except for a few people that I've decided I just can't like. They are in my "extra nice" pile. These people are the ones I make myself be super ultra mega nice to, just because deep down inside I can't stand them, and I don't want them to know. These people are also usually the ones I'm forced to have contact with, so....yeah....a little harder for me, but I will do my best to forgive them for being stupid poopfaces.

So, basically, this would be the time to ask me for money. Not because you'll get any, but because now I'll feel free to laugh in your face, in a loving and accepting way, of course. I will, however, probably do a real laugh, not a fakey little one, and I may be wearing a unicorn head. Just a thought.

First post of 2013. Yep, this is a pretty monumental event. I had almost 7000 hits last year, which is shocking, as I don't really think about people reading this, so much as I use it as a sort of exercise to see if I can make myself write something about anything most weekdays (I think I started last February).

At any rate, I'm pretty excited about having done that...there were definitely some days in there that I was definitely stretching my topic in order to get enough to write a decent amount. However, that's all changing. I will only be doing a couple of posts per week now, since all of that is done, and since I am now working the job from Hell.

Yes, that's right. The job from Hell, capital H. When I started this blog, I was actually okay with my job. Now, not so much. I'm trying to be as positive about it as I can, but most days, I fail miserably at that. Ugh. Anyhoo, since I am spending any and all of my free time/energy on my job, I just don't feel pumped about spending time on things that I enjoy.

Things such as writing about pooping and farts. And people in heinous outfits. And moobs. 

Therefore, I will probably only get to this a couple of times per week. Which is probably fine, since I think I can only think up a couple of worthwhile topics per week anyway. I could be wrong, though...I could start having many and varied deep thoughts and writing even more than before, but this is unlikely.

So, have a happy 2013, and I hope your work is happier than mine. Or, at least, that you have a better attitude than I do, because mine stinks. I hope that during the next couple of days, this situation improves enough for me to bring you a more entertaining post, or at least one that doesn't involve how much I hate my job right now.

Because I hate it. Did I mention that I hate it? Yeah.