Tick Tock.

So it's been a while since my last post.  And I have an excuse.  I have been super stressed out with work and life.  Things have been piling up and to be completely frank with you, the lack of sleep that goes along with stress is beginning to eat away at me.

When I put all the lack-of-sleep factors together: stress, irritating pets (who have decided to either sit on me and stare, jump back and forth over me throughout the night, or play with my computer mouse waking both my computer and me up!), or the loud ticking that is now coming from my bathroom, I am beginning to realize why I am so tired!

Let me tell you about The Clock.  I needed a clock in my bathroom.  In the morning, I typically know how long I'm in the shower by the number of songs that play on the radio.  However, when I am out of the shower, I seem to take my precious time when getting ready.  And I needed a clock to keep track of how many minutes I could spare before my 8:30am meetings.  Hence, the hunt of a clock.

I found The Clock at Target (where, if you know me at all, you know I am a recreational shopper there.)  I get almost everything from Target.  So of course I would check out their clocks first!  I found The Clock for $7, which I didn't think was too bad.  When I saw it in the sales ads this morning for only $3, I decided I needed to share my story so no one else purchases this monster.

It almost sounds like a bomb.  Not that I have ever really heard a bomb, but you know how in the movies, when the dramatic music helps build up a stressful scene with the ticking bomb and two wires.  You have 10 seconds on the clock to cut one wire.  Are you going to pick the red one or the blue one?  It's a life or death choice, and all you hear at this point is the ticking clock... five.... four... three.... two....

Yeah.  That's where I'm at now, and every other night for the last couple of weeks.  I thought I would just get used to the ticking and the tocking.  But I haven't.  I actually found myself laying in bed last night simply listening to the clock.  I swore it got louder every sixty seconds.  I even visualized the second hand getting close to the number 9 as the ticking got louder!  The then tocking would quiet down again once it got closer to the 1.  It kind of reminds me of an Edgar Allen Poe poem I read back in High School.  I'm not sure if it was "The Pit and the Pendulum" or "The Tell-Tale Heart."  Maybe it's a combination of the two.  I guess you can take the darkness from The Pit, and the loudness of The Heart, minus the deaths and rats from both of them, and you have The Clock.  Laying in bed.  Listening as the Heart, I mean, The Clock keeps me from my slumber.  This has gone on too long.  The Clock must go.

I'm not one to purposefully be wasteful.  And typically, when I don't want something anymore I give it away.  But I would not wish this clock upon anyone!  Not even that evil college professor who told me I would never amount to anything!  After this blog post, I plan to snatch the batteries from this clock and toss it in the trash with not so much as a good bye!

Silence is priceless. 

Happy 2-10 Day!

Today is February Tenth, Two Thousand and Eleven.  Not quite as big of a deal as last years February Tenth, Two Thousand and Ten.  (2-10-2010)  But still a big deal!

I have worked, well I should say, I have been paid to work for 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty for five and a half years!  My mom has been working for the company for 20 years (as of last Friday, and they sent her a beautiful clock because of it... a little more than jelly of the month club!).  I remember back in the days of second and third grade when I would get home from school, along with my good friend (and now roomie) Caitlin.  Caitlin and I would copy and staple and organize 2-10 papers and fliers and cards for my mom.  Each of us would walk away with a sense of pride and a dollar a piece.  We were young entrepreneurs and swore we were going to make it big!

My sketch from first grade when asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT?!

My mom used to tell me that every time we saw the number 210 it was a sign from the "warranty gods" and that we should be thankful.  (And when I was young, she also made me do a funny dance of praise... glad I grew out of that one!!)  Flash forward 20ish years and here we are.  I have been working for the company for almost six years (and I make a bit more than a dollar a day) and it's 2-10-11!  2-10 Day!

So be thankful.  Even when times are tough and the sales numbers are not as perfect as one would wish. Be thankful, it's 2-10 Day!  :)

Step Two: Get Organized!

Step two to get away from the "FF" is to get organized!  It's been the mission of my weekend.  I stayed home in hopes of catching up on my life, and slowly but surely, it's happening!  When my room is picture worthy I will share the "redecoration" that I did, but in the mean time, here's a snap shot at my organized desk!

Step One: Summer colors!

Step one to getting away from the February Funk:  Surround yourself with summer colors (and if it just so happens, flowers!)

A trip to Farm Fresh in the monsooning rain yesterday and this girl came home with these:

DO IT!!!

My ex-boyfriend would probably applaud this post if he read it.  I used to give him such a hard time about his love and obsession with Google.  I remember prodding at him with questions like "What if Google just died or exploded?!  What would happen then?!"  I appreciated Google, but at the time, I just didn't understand.  

What I've learned since: the possibilities are ENDLESS.  I use google applications for just about everything except brushing my teeth and feeding my pets!  If you're not using gmail, you're just plain silly.  (You never actually have to delete anything!  I believe my boyfriend has well above 20,000 emails in his inbox... crazy, I know!)  But look at the tool bar at the top of your gmail... calendar, documents, photos, web, videos, blog, shopping, and so many more!  My droid is synced with all of the above.  (And yes, I am VERY pro all Apple products, but with the convenience and ease of my google powered droid, do I dare switch to the Verizon iphone on 2-10-11?!)  In addition to my planner, my calendar is kept with Google.  This blog (and a few of my others) are all run with blogger.  I "google image search" just about daily for creative project ideas.  I'm a mac user, so I am learning to get by without Microsoft and have been replacing it with Google Docs.  I got my first Google shopping receipt last week after purchasing a $10 credit towards the Google Phone!  (I can now call anywhere in the world for just a few cents!!  I talked to my family in Switzerland for 10 minutes and it only cost me 20 cents!! Incredible!)  

Why am I rambling about this?  Because I want to tell you about my newest love.  Google Reader.  Do you have an igoogle homepage?  If not, you should.  Set it as your homepage and let it organize everything you need!  I just recently added Google Reader to my homepage where I can view ALL of my favorite blogs in one place at one time!  They don't even have to be Google run blogs!  I have links to self hosted blogs like the Julep Studios Blog.  Or fellow blogger run blogs like semi-directed wanderings.  And several of my favorite wordpress blogs yet i still dare to hope or Rather Be Making.  All easily viewed and easily read!  I don't have to go through my bookmarks and click through for updates, nor do I have to subscribe to them. (Honestly, I feel bad about not subscribing because I know there are tons of perks to having a large subscriber base, not to mention the self esteem picker-upper that people, well, uh, I, feel when you look at your blog and see more than two subscribers!)  

Actually I was wrong... I do feed my pets with my igoogle homepage!  Check out "Buddy" the hamster in the top right corner!  

So if you haven't jumped on your the Google Bandwagon, or you haven't yet added your favorite blogs to your Google Reader all I have to say is DO IT!!!  You won't regret it.  Happy Blogging!

It's called the February Funk.

'Tis the season, for things to pile up beyond belief. Sales numbers drop after already plummeting a few times in the prior months. (In the back of my mind I hear the line for Moulin Rouge "A girl's gotta eat... she'll end up on the streets!") Bills begin happening as the space heaters run up the electric bill (doubling it from the month before). Cars are having troubles, in addition to a white streak from where someone backed into the navy blue paint (that's a $650 bill waiting to happen that I might have to make some calls to friends & family to see if anyone can change the alternator for cheaper). Add to it just the simple drama of life... friend after friend losing their jobs and having no where to go.  Everyone is hungry for business, but there is no business to be had!  Everyone's busy with life and babies and moving and travels. A lot of my favorite people live at least an hour away which doesn't help the situation when I need a good shoulder to cry on.  It's windy, cold and sunshine is limited.

It's February. And this is The February Funk.

Since my boyfriend is quite busy with house stuff and I'm free-labored out, and it appears that just about everyone else has plans in place for the weekend, I think I will take the first steps to digging the hell out of the flipping february funk...

Gotta cut the tears. I'm not proud to say it, but I spent several hours today with tears in my eyes. I need to realize that I can't make everyone happy, and I can't rely on others to make me happy. I think I'm going to head to the store and buy myself some flowers along with dinner, then I may spend the evening with Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunn and a bottle of Chariot...

Gotta trash all this crap that is just lying around.  I'm a knick-knacker, and I love that about myself!  But they are everywhere.  EVERYWHERE!  Once a year (typically in January) I rearrange my house and throw out some stuff.  This year I have a roommate, so I don't think it's very fair to blindside her with my annual need for change. So this year, I will trash my trash. Starting tomorrow, things will be boxed up, cleaned up, or thrown out.

Gotta get a vacation on my calendar. I know jealousy is a horrible, HORRIBLE trait. But I get so incredibly jealous when I read about all my friends galavanting around foreign countries and facing new adventures, while I am stuck here with miserable sales numbers and nothing new to see or do.  I believe my trip to Australia has been pushed to November/December.  I backed out of my mission trip this year due to unrest in the country.  Call me crazy but giving up my droid, my blackberry, the internet, and all of the thousands of things that we take for granted each year is super important to me, and EXACTLY what I need every February.  It gets me out of the funk and kicks me back into reality every year.  There's just something about spending 2 weeks along side some awesome Jesus-loving people, in a country where they have nothing, to make you realize how stupid the February Funk is.  Since the mission trip is out, I am looking to put my travels else where this year.  Maybe something for Me this year.  This morning my god mother told me that I should take advantage of the cheap cruise rates and head to the Bahamas for a long weekend.  I told her that no one can go with me right now, and she said "Take a good book and go alone!" ...Maybe I will get something on the books this weekend.

Okay, time to feed the hound, find some dinner, get to the store, do some laundry and begin getting caught up on my life... Leave me some love that will make me smile.

Oh Taylor.

"Well she just wanders around unaffected by the winter winds, yeah
and she'll pretend that, well she's somewhere else, so far and clear, about 2000 miles from here."

My mom said I couldn't...

So last week my mom and I were walking through the Hampton Roads Convention Center and they had art hanging on the walls.  Some were beautiful paintings and some, well, not so much.  There were creative ones and simple ones and colorful ones and grey ones.  I was admiring a colorful abstract one when I proclaimed to my mother "I wish I could paint!"  Her quick, and quiet response "You can't do that."

I was shocked!  Aren't your parents supposed to give you words of encouragement?  Doesn't this fall under the "Ugly Child Syndrome" somewhere?  ( UTS is a theory I developed as a teenager that has never been proven wrong... I will have to make a post about this in the future though.)  And where does she get off by saying "you can't do that" when I have never even tried to paint?!  I guess she is thinking back to the days of finger paints, paint by numbers, and those paintings where you used water and it turned a color on the paper... But this is years and years beyond those days.  Yeah, maybe I never took art classes in school, but that was because I was in music classes.  I think it is really too bad that you cannot some how squeeze both into your middle and high school years.

So anyway after work I headed straight to Michaels (the craft store, not my boyfriend's house) to buy some paints and all the supplies I thought I would need.  I got home, and with the encouragement of my roommate, I began to paint.  I had NO clue what I was doing, or what I was creating, or what in the world blending blue and green paints would look like... but I was painting!!

I'm not too sure about the finished product yet.  My roomie said she liked it, a lot actually.  I think she was just being nice.  None the less, I hung my new art on my bedroom wall.  I'm not sure how long it will stay there, or even if I like it quite yet... but my mom was wrong, I can paint.  And if I can, I'm pretty sure that just about anyone can.  Check out my work:

The coolest part is that you can turn the art upside down or right side up and it makes it look totally different!  When I hung it on my wall, I actually hung it upside down.