Making friends: the creep-free method.

So. We moved into a new neighborhood in December. There are like a million people in our neighborhood with toddlers and fetuses, so we fit right in, but we don't really know anyone yet. I feel like friend-making is so time-consuming and scary. It's like dating in high school, but worse because your sanity is in jeopardy if you fail. Are there friend-making websites? Like, where I can put a profile and what I am looking for? It would look like this:

Twenty-something female seeking gal-pal that takes the time to spell out entire words when texting, will compliment me a lot, is roughly in the same socio-economic class, understands the basic functions of the government, will make me food, understands my Costco thing, has a good marriage (so she doesn't try and steal my awesome husband), is also wearing fat-pants, and watches the Colbert Report. Interested parties should provide me with a resume and oreo-flavored dessert.

...But instead I am going to try and make friends the old-fashioned way. I searched trusty-ole pinterest  to find printable valentines. I found lots, but not ones I wouldn't feel weird about giving to strangers/adults. Frankly, I don't want Dave and I to accidentally lead someone on and then break their heart. So I just made my own. And then I was thinking, how can I be the only person that wants to give other adults treats and cards for valentines and not creep them out? Here you go, internets.

So click on the link that will take you to my dropbox to download the front of the card, and then the back.
Now have a wonderful, friend-making, non-creepy Valentine's Day.

P.S. the fonts I used were The Skinny and KG Eyes Wide Shut, in case you also want to download them for free from dafont.com.

Stupid Things I Hear on The Train

Passenger 1: How did you get your phone to work? I am having lots of problems with logging onto my facebook with my droid.
Passenger 2: I don't know what to tell you.
Passenger 1: It's probably the government. I just bought a tricked out new sig [gun] so they've probably taken it over.
(later, still talking to Passenger 2)
Passenger 1: I used to make tons of money doing modeling, but I didn't have a car, so I couldn't keep it up.
Passenger 2: What do you do now?
Passenger 1: I work at a pizza place.
Passenger 2: Well, you can thank Obama. He just upped minimum wage to $10.10 [FALSE. Only applies to certain federal employees]

Then an unbelievable conversation followed where Pass. 1 detailed exactly how much he makes, his last break up, and how his mom pays his cell phone bill. Oh yeah, and then he started telling Pass. 2 about how he needs a woman he can cuddle with for two years, because he doesn't need intimacy (but he doesn't know the word intimacy. He used different terms).

Seriously. I couldn't stand this. It kept going. On and on. About everything. I finally had to put in my headphones and crank up my skrillex station on pandora. Let's move on.

Passenger A (50-something in a very fancy suit. Has been discussing his stock portfolio for like 5 excruciating minutes already): So, are you going to watch the State of the Union tonight?
Passenger B: I don't think I can stand getting any angrier.
Passenger A: I know. Did you hear how Obama is going to pass a bunch of laws this year by himself?

FALSE. You sir, with your fancy suit and wads of money, are an idiot. The Executive branch cannot legislate. The legislative branch does that. That is information you learn in the first five seconds of your high school gov class. I was sitting there reading my American Congress textbook as he was spouting this falsehoods two feet away from me. But instead of correcting him I just resented him for making so much money while being so dumb.

So. That was today.

Martin Van Buren is a classy fool.

I won't stay here long.

Because I shouldn't be here at all.

I should be writing a paper (that is already late). It's about Martin Van Buren, so obviously it's going to be the most interesting paper ever.

Yes. Yes. I will post it here. Stop begging. 

That is if I ever get it written. 

Which seems likely (ish) because it's only 11 PM. 

And I'm already exhausted. 

But I wanted to show you how I am fighting my body's natural tendency to sleep for 12 hours a day.

And I wanted you to know how classy I look while doing it. 

The classy part is the fancy cup for my white-trash drink. Also I am in a hoodie, so that's not classy.

Just look at the champagne flute and ignore every single other thing that betrays in the picture that I am not classy. 

Also, one of my eyes closes more than the other. Pretty sure the (actual) classy people have special doctors for that. 

But I wanted to show you how much fun I am having pretending to be classy. Mostly because I don't have a facebook, and my husband is sleeping and won't give me the "yes, you are classy" feedback I am craving.

Also because I have a sneaking suspicion that this paper on MVB might prove to be just as terrible to write as it will undoubtedly be to read. Which is why I am taking pictures and worrying about cups and writing this stream of consciousness blog post. 

Sigh.

Gonna fill up my cup and visualize them handing me my degree to get through this.

I'll go ahead and visualize some dollar signs too, since people that get their degrees in history have so many of them.  Let's do this.

an open letter to people without kids

hey dudes. so, you don't have kids. That's cool. There are lots of reasons people don't have kids. Maybe you don't want them. Maybe you can't afford them. Maybe you haven't gone through puberty yet. But some of your friends have kids, and suddenly there is a disconnect. You always promised you'd be BFFs, but now you guys just don't have the time to hang out, and sometimes (let's be fer realsies), you don't want to hang out with them. Here I am, to tell you everything you should know about your friends who have kids, and how to navigate the murky waters of maintaining that friendship (or, if you prefer, the quickest way to not be friends with them anymore).

she gets her creepiness from me

You liked them when they were pregnant (side note: if your friends are a couple that are deeply in love and are both committed to raising this child, THEY are pregnant. Don't be nit picky about "No, only that chick is pregnant." Especially to a hormonal pregnant woman). Anyway...you liked them when they were pregnant. You might have felt the baby kick. You feigned excitement at seeing the ultrasounds. Hopefully you bought them stuff. But now there is a rift. Because you don't understand that:

1. We are obsessed with our kid. Seriously. Put your bieber fever away, because you have no idea what obsessed is. Every phase in their development is the most fascinating thing we have heretofore experienced. Holy shiz, our baby squeaks! What a prodigy! Look how small her feet are! Every nuance of their personality is adorable, and we want to shout it from the mountain tops. Like, right this second Reese is reclining in her old infant car seat singing and hugging her bear (which she has named bob). ADORABLE.

What can you do with this? Well, take an interest in our kid. Maybe you're not a kid person. So what. But you are a friend person. And our kid is just an extension of us in a way more hilarious form.

2. We want to hang out with our kid 5000x more than we will ever want to hang out with you. Yeah, sometimes we need a break, but honestly, we get those pretty seldom, so maybe break time should be husband wife smoochy time. Not your time. It's expensive, but mostly nerve-wracking to get a babysitter, so we don't really want to do it that often. Don't ask us to. We know that we're not your only friends, and hopefully you can deal with the fact that you'll never be as cool as our kid, so really, it's unnecessary for you to invite us to things that we logistically (or otherwise) can't involve our child in. Want an example? Unless our kid is over 8 and we are going to see a disney movie, don't invite us to meet you at the movie theater. You might fall into the trap of having some successful movie trips a first, when baby is still immobile and pretty much just needs liquid to be satisfied, but it won't last. If we took Reese to a movie, she would be happy eating popcorn for..say..12 seconds. And then she would want to run. And snoop. And eat crap off the floor. NIGHTMARE.

What can you do then? Well. We can go to a restaurant with you. As long as it's not too fancy and we won't be kicked out when our kid throws a fistful of artichoke dip on the floor. Basically, we can go anywhere where we can actually allow our child to be a crazy monster and it won't be too disruptive. Because restraining our kids from monster behavior is A. Horrible for us and B. Horrible for our kid. Whom we are obsessed with.

3. don't point out weird things about our kids unless we do it first. Example: a family member always "reassures" us that Reese will grow into her ears someday. Which makes me want to drop-kick them into North Korea. Reese is freaking beautiful. And perfect. And, hot dang, she's a genius. So don't criticize peoples' kids.

I feel that I have more to say, but I must end here for now. Hopefully this will get you started on the path to keeping your friends with kids.

P.S. We never mention how weird you are about your dogs. but you are.

why being poor makes you better than everyone else

You may not feel better than anyone else, poor people. especially the people driving range rovers. but you are. Don't believe me? I will enlighten you. Because enlightenment is free. And not the kind of "free"where they ask for donations at the end and you have to act all aloof like "i wasn't really that enlightened" but inside you're all "spending my remaining $.17 on food is better."

But, first order of business is that we need to define poor. There are a lot of wannabes and posers out there. So we're gonna define this a la Jeff Foxworthy. You might not actually be poor if you couldn't afford this  year's cruise because you spent all your money on a beemer instead (I don't care if it is three years old and used. Does. Not. Matter.) You might not actually be poor if you think the markdown bins at the grocery store are gross (they aren't. I just paid $4 for like a thousand pounds of salmon, so you're the sucker here. Not me.)You might not actually be poor if you own pretty much any apple products. Because poor people are all like,"No, this banana is just as good." You might not actually be poor if you look towards tax season with angst. Trust me, tax season is amazing. I think this year we will just cash our return and let the aroma fill our home. You might not actually be poor if you have never wanted to throw up at the store. Because sometimes spending money makes me want to die. You might not actually be poor if you have never let your husband trim your hair. Who wants to spend like $15 for some barely-passed-beauty school girl to screw up your hair when your husband can do it at home for free?  You might not actually be poor if everyone in your family has their own bedroom, and you still have an extra. You know, for like an office. Or a craft room. Or something else equally ridiculous.

Do we feel sufficiently segregated? Then I shall continue.

Being poor makes you better than everyone else because:

1. You can do anything. Seriously. If we can pay all our bills and then also still have some leftover to waste in our gas tank for a two hour drive to wherevers with our zero dollar paychecks, I can't even begin to imagine the mountains we could move if we made like, actual money. Give us $30,000 a year and we could buy a mansion and then also tour europe for a month. Because we are unstoppable.  Fake poor people are pathetic, with their I-make-forty-grand-a-year-and-my-life-is-so-hard-because-I-am-paying-five-hundred-dollars-a-year-on-a-gym-membership-I-don't-use-so-now-i-can't-afford-to-buy-all-these-things-i-want-from-pampered-chef problems.

2. You are so level-headed. Being poor really makes you ask "why should I buy?" For me, the answer has to be puh-ritty compelling. No impulse shopping on this side of the poverty line. My shopping usually goes something like this:
Pants: You would look great in me
Me: Of course I would, but that is true of pretty much everything (glasses, anyone?) so you're going to have to do better than that.
Pants: I would go with all of your other clothes
Me: Yeah, but that's not that uncommon either. There's not a lot you can't pair with jeans.
Pants: You need me.
Me: Need? I have like, two other pairs. Which, if I switch off and wash them in the sink between trips to the laundromat, work just fine.
Pants: I'm on clearance.
Me: Sold.

3. You are above materialism. Well, you are, whether you want to be or not. Stop being a sad poor person and just own it. You're friends will all be like, "Whoa, that poor person really doesn't let materialism rule their life like we do. They have morals and will leave their mark on this world while we are all busy standing in line trampling people on thanksgiving." You might want to consider recycling and going vegetarian to reinforce how moral you are. But don't be ridiculous, we both know that you can't afford to eat organic.

4. You are such a hard worker. I work with a lot of teenagers (do I therefore work a teenager's job? Hmmm) and, quite frankly, not that many of them naturally have great work ethic. But I do! Mostly because I can't afford to suck. Because no one is letting me live in their house, or letting me eat their food. We poor people work hard because if we don't we might literally starve to death. It's this kind of thing that will make us all not poor someday. Keep it up, sweatshop children.

Just remember, you can take the person out of the poor, but you can't take the poor out of the person. See you in europe!

it's nice to finally meet myself.

I am sad for you, dear reader(s?), when my head is full of serious things. Because this blog is my nerdy little pensieve, like in harry potter. Where the only way to get my brain to shut up is by writing it down. To give my thoughts somewhere to breathe and live outside my head. So that's what today will be.

I feel like my life has been flipped upside-down and then pummeled so hard that it has become unrecognizable. Which makes it sound, of course, far more dramatic than it appears. But to me it is that dramatic. Something has happened inside me. I've finally noticed the little mist of melancholy that has settled over my heart over the last few months. Don't get me wrong. My family is wonderful. Dave is such an amazing father to our Reese. And Reese, well, she pretty much is the greatest thing on the face of the earth.

My use of melancholy is not some sneaky way of saying depression. Because it is not that. It just seems like discontent has been slowly creeping into my life. And I have been staring it in the face everyday, but everyday I saw this stranger and wrongfully named her Tiredness, Stress, or Distraction. She never corrected me. She wanted me to figure it out on my own that her name is Discontent, and her friend Change is on her way over.

I'm glad she came, but her stay is almost over. She made me think about every decision in my life. She asked a lot of hard questions.

Which is why I got rid of my smartphone. I read a few articles waxing poetic about the beauty of a simpler smartphone-free life. Those appealed to me, but when it came down to it, not having a smartphone is inconvenient. Then I read a couple articles on how having a smartphone makes you a sucky parent. Hmm. I get where they are coming from, but I also think that smartphones allow us to be out of the office (aka with our family) more overall, so I am not completely buying that. What really did it for me was watching the news, when the iPhone 5 came out. People were so absorbed in what they were doing once the doors opened (uh, sir, you're still standing in line)that the news anchor couldn't even get anyone to speak to her. The first customer to purchase one came sprinting out (wanting to be first, of course) and when he was interviewed he said something like, "omgitssoamazingitsfasterandsleekerandiloveit,ohyeahandihaven'tactuallylookedatityet." That was the rice that tipped the scale for me. Who are we? So I told a flabbergasted Dave that night in bed that we needed to dig out my ole dino phone and go to the verizon store. Because Discontent reminded me that I don't need that in my life. She reminded me that I love to get lost. And sometimes I just want to be completely alone. So I opened the door to Change, just a crack (Bonus: cheaper phone bill!).

I've been a Business major for quite a while now. Preceding that, I have been History, Poli Sci, Art (? I am an idiot), and Business Multimedia. Business is practical. Highly employable. Dave just got his degree in Anthropology, which is a one-way ticket to grad school. At a bachelor's level, there are not many people interested in hiring anthropologists. But it's okay. This is what he wants. He loves learning. He loves anthropology. Which means that I need a more employable degree for us to always fall back on.

Wait. What? Why has that been my mindset for so long? I believe in a God that loves me. I also believe that He wants me to be truly happy. While my family is a huge part of that, I think that for me to honestly find bliss is to use my talents and have accomplishments and satisfaction outside the home too. So, while I have complete faith that the Lord will bless Dave for  pursuing an education in something that he loves, I am now realizing that those rules apply to me too. How liberating! I have been in a tumultuous on-again-off-again relationship with school. Everyone makes jokes about how I will never get my degree. Maybe it's because I had been so focused on what will get me a job that I won't completely despise. Which is like inviting Discontent to move in with you.

It's like I forgot that everything in my life was a choice, and it took discontent to remind me that happiness is not one-size-fits-all. I think this is the beginning of something beautiful.

"don't be fat," said the rhino to the cat

Basically, this post is going to tell you how to not be fat. See, the problem here is that I may not be the best authority on the subject. Which makes me the rhino. And you the cat. Is that gonna stop me? Uh, has lack of expertise ever stopped me before? (or anyone else on the internet?)

So, before I gross you out let me give you some perspective.

This right here is pretty much my body status quo from age 13 up until the time I got pregnant. Not tiny, not huge. Just spastic and normal sauce. Also I suck at bowling. Which is weird, because I feel like my technique is solid.

So then I got pregnant. And I got fat, but like pregnant-person fat. It doesn't count as normal fat unless you can't tell you're pregnant. 

So, that was like 10 days before the longest hospital stay of my life (aka the beautiful and life-changing birth of my child). I was....ready. I was definitely rounder in places I hadn't been before (look at my arrrms), but I'm still chalking this all up to being pregnant.

And then here we are like a week and a half after I had her. Which, as coincidence would have it, was my 11th birthday.

And then this happened.

Yeah yeah, I know most of those are the same day. But I don't really have cause to take pictures of myself all the time, especially when my kid is hanging around being so photogenic. Gahhhhh. It's awful, isn't it? I was having so much freaking fun on that tire swing. Probably because I had more momentum than I had EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. Omgosh, internet. I am about to be so honest with you that I might throw up. I was sitting at about 160-165 in these pictures. Which isn't that much, unless you're only FIVE FOOT ONE. Anyway, on the day I had Reese I was about 167. Soooo. The reason most of these pictures are the same day is because I was travelling for work and we had nothing on our schedule for a day, so we went a-sight-seeing. And holycrapbatman, these pictures were a shock to me when I saw them. I think I am like the opposite of an anorexic person, where when I look in the mirror I see normal kaitlin, but the rest of the world sees the "ilovefood" kaitlin. 

When I got back from my work trip, I realized that those people I met and worked with don't know that I am actually normal-sized and what they are seeing here is like a temporary  "Please pardon our dust while we remodel" type situation. They think I am the rhino. And why would they think anything otherwise? It's not like I was really doing anything about it. Once I had Reese, I thought it would all melt away, especially since I was nursing, and I would be back to status quo kaitlin right quick. NOT. I got fatter. Which I did not realize. Until these rude pictures slapped me in the face.

So I got really motivated. I went running everyday for like two weeks straight. And then I got busy. In like one day I ruined a newly-forming habit. So then I really got strict with my yoga routine. For a while. Needless to say, working out two hours a day is just not a luxury I can afford.

And then I accidentally lost weight. Dave is such a good budget-teer, and I am more of a "it will all work out" type. Which is NOT a useful attitude towards money. Anyway, he sat me down one month and said, "We need to tighten up our finances. We have x amount of debt that I want to eradicate as quickly as possible, so we need to get back to budgeting and sticking to our budget." And I was like, "cool." So we did. He would just give me a a budget every week with no instructions on what to spend it on, but it was for any/all non-bill expenses. Gas, grocery, clothes, Tiger Beat magazines. So when I was at the grocery store, if I only had $40 that day to spend, you can bet I was not going to be sucked in by the guiles of a $4 package of oreos. Instead of being lazy and just getting whatever was quick, I ended up buying things that were cheap and would go far. Like chicken, rice, potatoes. So now, not only are we never eating out, but our food takes actual human time to make. So it's basically impossible to eat solely out of boredom, because you have to spend 30 minutes making it first. 

People have been asking me a lot lately what I have been doing to lose weight, and I mostly just grunt in response. Because it's not an exciting story. I have gone on workout binge after workout binge since forever and not really seen weight loss results. It's all about what I eat, apparently. We are also not psychotic health nuts. We don't count calories or only make the "skinny" versions of recipes. I even still drink soda (gasp).We just make food, eat at meal times, and try not to be sitting all day. We have both accidentally lost about 30 lbs each. Which is cool, because now that I don't wake up with achy shoulders, I actually want to rock the house with my mad yoga skills. And I look less like I will eat your family.