Monthly Archives: December 2013

Resolution

On December 31, 1995, I had planned a quiet evening home alone. I had spent the two months prior dealing with the aftermath of an unfortunate 2 year relationship which occurred after an equally unfortunate 6 year relationship with someone else. I really just wanted to stay home, away from people, and be by myself.  And by away from people, I meant men.

A friend of mine called to see why I wasn’t going to the New Year’s party that our mutual friend, Stephanie, was throwing. I had already told Stephanie about my home sulk plan, which she reluctantly respected, but this other friend wasn’t hearing of it. I finally caved, telling her I was going to “look like shit and have a terrible time” but I would go. I put on a t-shirt, jeans and a pair of Converse, and headed out the door to pick up my friend to go to a party I still wasn’t quite sure why I had agreed to attend.

As we walked up to Stephanie’s apartment building, we could see three guys walking out. One was Stephanie’s boyfriend, Steve, the other was their downstairs neighbor, Philip, and the third guy I’d never seen before. He introduced himself as “Wil” and said they were going to get food and would be right back. We headed up to the party, which ended up being a lot of fun because there were other friends I didn’t expect to see there. We played games, talked, danced and sang WAY too loud to the music. I finally took a break, and headed over to the food table.

I was munching on a handful of grapes when Stephanie walked up to me like we were in 6th grade, with a secret she wanted to share. “My friend Wil thinks you’re cute…” To which I responded “That’s nice. I haven’t even seen him since I passed him downstairs two hours ago.” She nudged her head in the direction of the balcony, saying “He’s out there” in a low voice. “He’s talking to a girl I’ve never seen before, which is totally fine because I decided my New Year’s resolution was no men for 6 months” I announced. She laughed as we headed back to the living room with some pretzels and beer to start playing the next game.

Another hour passed and the apartment filled with people. It was getting stuffy so I headed out to the balcony for some fresh air. I chatted with a couple of people who eventually went back inside, and found myself alone out there with only Wil. We talked for about 20 minutes when I realized I’d never met anyone like him. He was kind, intelligent, funny, and cute in an oddly charming, nerdy way. Remembering my resolution of no men, I quickly made my way back to the party.

We rang in the New Year and continued the fun until 4:30 in the morning. Exhausted, I made my rounds saying goodbye to everyone, eventually going out to the balcony where Stephanie, Steve, and Wil were. (Seriously, what’s with this guy and balconies?) Wil had a surprised look on his face and said “You’re leaving already?” “Already?!” I said. “It’s 4:30 and I have kids coming back from their dad at noon. I need sleep!” And with that, he gave me a hug and I left.

Four days later, Stephanie and Steve invited me to the movies with them.  After I agreed to join, she said “Uh…our friend, Wil is coming with us. Is that ok?” I told her it was fine, and they picked me up at 7. I know we went to see “Sense and Sensibility” but Wil and I were those people who talked through the ENTIRE movie. I was so comfortable around him and conversation came easy but I had a resolution, dammit, and I was going to stick to it.

At the end of the evening, Wil offered to drive me home. We stood outside on the curb in front of my house, talking, laughing, and obviously feeling like we should go home because it was now 3:30 in the morning. I knew the night kept going because we were both unsure of how to end it. Finally, I said “Are you going to kiss me or what?” and he quickly leaned in and kissed me. We said our goodbyes and he left but after that day, we pretty much spent every free moment talking on the phone and going out with Stephanie and Steve, but not alone because I had a New Year’s resolution, dammit, and I was going to stick to it.

After six weeks of joking that we were dating Stephanie and Steve, I finally caved to my stupid New Year’s resolution, and told Wil I wanted him to be my boyfriend. His response was “Well, I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but I’ve only been dating you for the last 6 weeks.” DAMN. I was doing the same thing. I didn’t stick to my resolution AT ALL.

I’ve never made a New Year’s resolution since that night, eighteen years ago. I may not be good at sticking to a resolution, but New Year’s will always remind me of the best commitment I’ve ever made.

A New Beginning

I got my first rescue animal, an orange tabby, when he followed me home on a short walk from a friends’ house when I was 5 years old.  After putting up signs and asking around, we found out the cat had belonged to a family who moved away and decided to leave him behind. My parents said I could keep him so I named him Dopey, after the baby dinosaur who followed Will and Holly back to their cave on Land of the Lost. And so began my life of owning rescue pets.

In 2009, our dog Ferris (who I found as a 4 month old puppy that was dumped near a local Home Depot in 2001) died suddenly from cancer. Devastated, I felt like I wanted to do something in her memory, and thus became the first of many years of participating in an annual fundraiser for the Pasadena Humane Society. Helping an organization that does so much for so many animals (including wildlife) was wonderful, so I decided this year I would do something different to promote animal adoption and help raise money for them by creating a calendar to give as a gift to donors. It ended up raising over $50,000 for PHS. Not too shabby!

The staff and volunteers at PHS were so helpful and supportive of me and my project. I was in their office a couple of times a week for two months collecting donation letters and address labels and shipping out the calendars. I would take occasional breaks from the shipping and post some pictures and videos online of dogs and cats in need of homes at the facility, which helped get them adopted. I loved being there and seeing that things I was doing for them was actually making a difference.

I had met a few of the Board members while I was there and had several conversations about the organization. At one point, a Board member asked if I was interested in becoming a member myself. I was so honored that they would even consider me, but I also wasn’t sure what that would entail. After additional in person and email conversations and a lunch meeting with one of them, I got all of my questions answered. I was ready to move forward with whatever I needed to do to become a member. I had another meeting with 3 more board members, which was scary and exciting because it was like being interviewed for a job you’ve always loved doing but have never had in any official capacity.

Last week, the Board members had a meeting and it was decided by unanimous vote to have me become an official Board member, which I gleefully accepted. I love that I get to be part of  an organization that helps so many animals, including two of our dogs, which we adopted from PHS after they had been found wandering the local streets. Waking up to them next to me in my bed, I think of the life they had before being rescued and it makes me sad. But then I look at their faces and I can tell they are happy, grateful and obviously, spoiled. I am totally ok with that.

Rescue pets are awesome.
Rescue pets are awesome.

It’s the little things….

I was thinking about how people post pictures of themselves or with friends and call them “selfles” and thought it would be funny if an elf did it because they could be “elfies” and then I couldn’t stop thinking about that until I made these.

Elfie
Lookin’ sharp for a night on the town. #elfie

 

Going out with the guys!
Going out with the guys! #elfie
Starting our night out by building a snowman. Things are getting crazy!
Starting the night out right with a stop to build a snowman with silly photo bombing friends. Things are getting crazy! #elfie
The rest of the gang met up with us! Get ready, folks. I smell trouble!
The rest of the gang met up with us! Get ready, folks. I smell trouble. First round on me! #elfie
That's what I'm talkin' about. Let's DO THIS.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Let’s DO THIS. #elfie
Hangin' with a couple of chicks at the bar.
Hangin’ with a  someof chicks at the bar. I’m not felling so good time to get out of here #elfie
Guys, I had uh…a little accident.. #elfie
On the walksing home,  I had little accident myfriends are the best. #elfie
I LOVE YOU GUYS. #elfie
BES.T NIGFHT EVAR. I LOVE YOOOOOU GUYSS1! #elfie

Break Away

When we were kids, my brother and I both knew what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a hairdresser, he wanted to be an architect. Without any support from our parents, we both managed to put ourselves through school and achieve these goals, even when life sometimes took us off that path.

After my youngest son moved out 3 years ago, Wil and I had a new found freedom and flexibility in our lives. Wil was starting to travel more for work and since I had my own business and made my own schedule, I would book clients around those trips and travel with him. I was meeting so many awesome, creative people from all over the world, which was really inspiring. But then I would come home and go back to being a hairdresser, which started feeling less and less fulfilling every time I went to the salon. I actually started to resent it.

My whole life I had wanted to have this career. I worked my ass off as a single parent working as a waitress to put myself through school. I had interned, worked as an employee in a salon, and built up my clientele before going out on my own. I built all of this up over 17 years and didn’t want to do it anymore. It took me a year and half to actually say this out loud to Wil and when I finally did, he was completely supportive of me doing what made me happy. After our discussion, I went to Lake Tahoe with my friend for 4 days to be away and figure out if this is really what I wanted.  I made up my mind and when I went back to work, I started telling my clients I was retiring.  Several of them had been with me at least 15 years, so I gave them 11 weeks notice to get them through the holidays, even giving them a couple of great referrals to send them to once I was gone. During those 11 weeks, I was excited, scared, nervous and sad, but I knew it was the right decision.

Yesterday was my one year anniversary of retiring. I thought about when I was said my last goodbye, packed up all of my belongings, and took one last walk down the main street in town, all decorated with twinkle lights. I thought about how I cried that whole drive home, finally stopping as I pulled in to our driveway.

I remembered walking in to our house that night, balloons and banners with “Happy Retirement” on them filling my living room, my dining room table displaying a huge bouquet of flowers on it, candles lit, champagne in glasses, and a card on one of the two dinner plates. I remembered crying as I read the sweet words of love and support Wil had written in it, while he served up an amazing dinner, complete with gourmet cupcakes for dessert. It was a perfect ending to a wonderful part of my life, and I was ready to start something new.

I’ve heard that the average adult changes careers four times in their life. I don’t know why I thought I had to stick with one thing when I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Everyone told me I would miss being a hairdresser and it’s funny, I don’t miss it at all. I did it and enjoyed it, but I was ready to move on. Life is too short to not do what you love. Change is scary, but if you have the desire and focus to try something new, change is good. I highly recommend it.

 

Still They Ride

When I was a kid, I lived just outside of Portland, Oregon with my parents and my older brother. My grandma, our nearest relative, lived in Southern California, and would visit us often because my mom was her only child and Steve and I, her only grandchildren.

I clearly remember my brother and I sitting on the back of our green plaid sofa perched under the living room window, excitedly waiting for our dad to pull into the driveway after picking up our grandma from the airport. She would always visit for a week, spending time with us as a family and individually. In 1980, she married and moved with her husband just north of Medford, Oregon and since this was only a few hours away from us, we visited often. Unfortunately, a couple of years later my dad got a job transfer and we moved to Southern California, so the visits weren’t as frequent. Grandma and I would write letters to each other and talk on the phone in between visits, which I loved.

Eight years ago, following the death of her third husband, my grandma went into a nursing home. She had early signs of dementia and was getting frail and needed the help. She also had a guardian who would check in with her weekly and go with her to doctor appointments which my grandma really appreciated. My brother and I went together to visit her when she first moved in to the nursing home, but he had a hard time going back. The place brought up too many memories of our great-grandmother for him. Great-grandma was in a nursing home when we were little because it had become too difficult for our grandma to care for her on her own. My grandma purchased a duplex nearby to live in and would visit her mom daily, bringing us there to visit when we were in town. When we were little, my memory of my great-grandma is riding around in her lap in her wheelchair while we chatted and I loved it. My brother, being a couple of years older than me, only remembers the smell and the noises (residents yelling or moaning, heart monitors beeping) and it seemed to traumatize him. When we visited our grandma in this nursing home, he was happy to see she was safe and well cared for, but he looked like a deer in the headlights at the sounds and smells coming from the hallway. I visited her several times a year, he just wrote letters and cards because he couldn’t bring himself to be in a nursing home again.

I had seen the decline in my grandma’s body and memory over the years and knew she wouldn’t be around much longer. When I visited this past May, I had a feeling it was the last time I’d be making this trip. Although my grandma was in Medford, I always stayed a few miles south in Ashland, a tiny town that felt like home away from home when I visited.  I had known for years that there was a bike path you could take from Ashland to Medford, so I decided on this trip that I was going to rent a bike and make the journey to the nursing home to see her.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny Spring day with blue skies, chirping birds, and new blossoms on every plant. I grabbed my cell phone and a water bottle, rented a 3 speed cruiser bicycle and set out for my adventure. If this was my last visit with my grandma, I wanted it to be an experience to remember.

As soon as I started pedaling, I was flooded with memories of riding bikes EVERYWHERE when I was a kid in Oregon. I could clearly see myself riding my green Schwinn bicycle with a white banana seat, U-shaped handle bars with green and white plastic string pompoms attached to the end of the white rubber handle grips. I learned how to ride a bike on that thing when I was 5 years old, with my dad running behind it, holding me up. I remembered that one day when I looked back and he wasn’t holding on anymore, just standing up the street, happy and clapping. Realizing my dad wasn’t holding on anymore, I crashed into a curb. I didn’t get back on that bike for a week but when I did, I didn’t need help.

I rode along a stream and over a bridge on my rental bike and was flooded with vivid memories of living next to the Willamette River. I would ride my green Schwinn down to the dock with friends, transistor radio adhered to my handlebars with black electrical tape, constantly adjusting the antenna for reception so we could listen to music. We would just wear swimsuits and flip-flops so we could jump in to cool off, then ride around the neighborhood to get dry so our parents wouldn’t know we swam without permission.  I remembered taking walks down to the river with my grandma when she visited, holding her hand and talking about fishing in that river, catching salamanders and crawdads, riding bikes with friends, and totally lying that we didn’t go swimming in it without parent supervision when she asked.

As I continued my ride under a bridge and through a valley along the pathway, I saw plants that I only see in Oregon. I remembered going to Outdoor School in 6th grade where we learned all about plants that lived in our region, wildlife and the environment, and how I worked had really hard so I could earn awards in Outdoor School at the end of the week, which I did.

As I neared the nursing home, I was starving and looked at my watch. I had been riding for close to an hour and a half and didn’t even know it. My ride down memory lane made me lose all track of time and just how far this ride really was. I stopped at a local market, grabbed a coconut water and a Clif bar and as I stood outside eating, put the addresses in Google Maps on my phone to see just how far I had ridden. TWENTY MILES.  That’s when it hit me just how exhausted I was, both physically and emotionally, and I still hadn’t seen my grandma yet. I rode up to the nursing home door, locked my rental bike on a nearby pole, and went in to visit.

That visit didn’t go as well as I hoped. My grandma had lost most of her memory, and was fading in and out of sleep. I stayed for over an hour, looking at this sleeping woman who had found love and lost it three times (The first husband died while riding a horse who bucked, his loose saddle flipping him underneath the horse who then kicked him in the head when my grandma was 6 months pregnant with my mom. The second husband to brain cancer, the third to severe anemia from a bleeding ulcer.) I sat there looking at the woman who outlived her only child who died in a car accident 20 years earlier, caused by my mom who had been drinking 10 days out of her third rehab center. This woman had tried so hard as a mother and a wife, and had carried on after losing them all. This was also a woman who had earned a Master’s Degree in Education from Occidental College, yet had been unable to write me a letter for several years. Her memory of love, life and education had all left her. The end was near and I was heartbroken. I kissed her on the forehead and went back out to my rented bicycle.

With the memory of taping a radio to my old bike still fresh in my mind, I decided to listen to music on my ride back to Ashland. I hit the play button in the music library on my phone and figured I’d listen to whatever was on it. I turned up the volume (no headphones while riding bikes, kids.) as Journey’s “Escape” album started up. I tucked my phone into my pocket, singing along to every song as I rode the 20 miles back to my hotel.

Three weeks ago, I got a call that my grandma was refusing medication, had stopped eating and was sleeping all the time, meaning she didn’t have much longer. My brother and I immediately booked a trip to go see her. Over the years, I had figured out the fastest way to get to Ashland was to fly from Burbank to Sacramento, rent a car and drive the rest of the way up. I’ve made this trip countless times with Wil, by myself, or with a friend. I knew where every rest stop, every Starbucks, every funky burger stand and every cool sight-seeing spot was along the way. I knew we wouldn’t be making this trip again so we took our time. I showed my brother all of the things I had seen and done when I’d go to see our grandma, never saying anything to him about not making the trip up himself all those years. He had his own reasons and I knew that.

We turned a 5 hour drive into 7 with all of our stops. Steve loved every minute of it, taking pictures along the way. I felt sad for him seeing these things for the first time, while I was seeing them for the last time, but he was cherishing the experience and that’s all that mattered.

Our visit went surprisingly well. Grandma remembered me (after I reminded her who I was) but I had to keep reminding her who my brother was. We talked about our kids (reminding her they are her great-grandkids because she couldn’t remember) and updating her on our lives and how much our spouses wished they could be there as well. She thanked us over and over for coming to visit while exchanging hugs and kisses and telling us she loved us. It was the only time I didn’t look back at her as I walked out of the room, because I didn’t want her to see me crying.

Yesterday afternoon, I got the call I knew would eventually come. My 94 year old grandma had died in her sleep early that morning. She wasn’t suffering, she wasn’t in pain, she just stopped breathing in her sleep, just has her own mother did so long ago at nearly 98 years old. I know death is part of life and honestly, she went in the best way possible. Although it’s sad, I am grateful that I had her in my life as long as I did. The final chapter in her life story is a peaceful one and I couldn’t have asked for a better ending.

 

 

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

Happy Sunday! Looking for something to do? If you have some free time and feel like listening to a podcast that I did along with my friend, Bonnie Burton, you can check it out here.

We talk about everything from how we got started putting googly eyes on things, to marrying R2D2, to why people are spelling out ridiculous words with Target Christmas decorations and sending them to me on Twitter (which may be my new favorite holiday tradition). We also talk a little bit about an upcoming project we’re doing with Espionage Cosmetics, but only a little because NO SPOILERS before it’s actual for reals release in January. If you don’t feel like listening to it well, then..uh…look over there! *YOINK*

The Kindness of Strangers

Yesterday, I was feeling kind of frustrated and unhappy because people were being cranky at me for voicing my opinion on Twitter about soda being unhealthy. I know. Why the hell are people cranky at me about something that everyone knows has zero health benefits? And why was that bothering me? Whatever. All I knew was I needed to get offline and go do something positive to cancel out the negative. I wanted to go out and do something kind for a stranger.

A friend of mine suggested going to Target and paying off toys that people had put on layaway for Christmas. This sounded like the perfect idea so I threw on my shoes and went straight to a Target. After speaking with the manager and their HR person about my plan, they said they don’t offer layaway to their customers, but suggested a few stores nearby that might. I decided on Toys R Us since my plan was to find someone who was trying to buy toys for their kids anyway.

When I spoke to the manager at this particular Toys R Us about what I wanted to do, she kept looking at me like she couldn’t understand what I was asking. Apparently, no one has ever asked to do this for someone else with merchandise on layaway in their store before.  I guess that makes sense. It’s not like a gift registry where people come in and buy things you requested. It’s things you’ve chosen for your child but can’t afford to pay for all at once, so you put it on a payment plan for yourself. She told me the deadline for the people with items on layaway to pay it off and pick them up was December 15th. We scrolled the computer together so I could choose some families to help.

These people have no idea who I am and I don’t know them either. There were hundreds of names staring back at me from the screen. I had no idea how to choose, so I based my decision on layaways that were set up in the middle of October, when Christmas layaway accounts could be started, because these people obviously needed as much time as possible to pay them off. I chose an equal number of men with accounts as women, and from there, by the items listed. Almost all of them were toys for very small children, one had a bike on the list, all of them had an obvious theme of what the child loved (Incredible Hulk, Barbie, Lego). Clearly, these families had chosen these gifts for their little ones so they could wake up on Christmas morning and have a holiday to remember, as well as hours of joy and entertainment long after the day was over.

Another store manager came to help out because it was a pretty lengthy process. He looked up at me and said ” You know, every shift I work I donate $5 to Toys for Tots which felt like I was doing something to help, but what you’re doing is really awesome.” That was sweet, but that’s not how I felt at all.  I have always felt that if we do what we can to help, no matter big or small, it makes an enormous difference. I told him about raising $15,000 in 5 days for the Pasadena Humane Society after our dog, Ferris had died. A HUGE portion of those donations came in just by me suggesting people skip their Starbucks for one day because that $5 can make a difference in helping others. Thousands of dollars were raised, $5 at a time because people just wanted to do their part to help. I encouraged the manager to keep doing what he’s doing, because he IS making a difference. He smiled and agreed.

The manager had employees go pull all of the items on the lists I had chosen so he could store all of the merchandise in his office. That way the families could pick them up directly from him, where he could explain why they didn’t have a balance due, and could just take their items home.

The staff was so sweet and helpful and were so awesome about helping me secretly do something kind for a stranger, even if it was outside the norm of store policies. They were just as much a part of doing something kind for these families as I was. I realized after I left that I never actually told the staff my name, which was perfect. My plan to do this anonymously followed through to the end.

I mentioned on Twitter that I did this because I knew there were others out there who would be inspired to find a way to help others. There are so many people in need of everything from food, shelter and clothing to just wanting to give their child a Christmas. I know I can’t help everyone, but after reading this, I hope it inspires others to do something, anything, just to be kind to a stranger.

 

Go ask your mother.

Even though I was a young parent, I knew I wanted to be someone my children felt comfortable talking to. As much as every parent dreads the day their kid asks where babies come from or why boys have different parts than girls, I was determined to keep my discomfort face hidden when these questions came up, and just answer as informative as possible. Of course, a 5 year old doesn’t need ALL the details as say, a 13 year old could handle. But I knew I could add the filter when necessary and elaborate more as needed.

Wil and I moved in together when the kids were 7 and 5. The boys loved taking turns going someplace with just one of us, while the other stayed home. One afternoon, shortly after moving in together, I was heading to the grocery store to get some things for dinner when Ryan asked to go with me. He was very chatty on the drive there, and decided to touch just about everything he came across in the store.

Ryan and I cut down an aisle to get to the juice section in the back of the store. He was dragging his hands across the merchandise so I said “Ryan, please don’t do that. You’re going to knock things off the shelf.” He looked up at the shelves, then back to me, pointing to the items next to him and said “What are these things for?”

That was when I realized we had cut through the “feminine hygiene” aisle of the store. I tried to keep my discomfort face hidden. I knew this day would come eventually, but I really didn’t want to have this conversation with him in the middle of a grocery store where people could hear as they walked past. I calmly said “They’re called tampons and I’ll explain what they’re for when we get home. Now please stop touching everything.”

Thinking I was embarrassed by these tampons and being put in the position of not wanting to explain them in the store, Ryan proceeded to skip through the grocery store singing “tampons tampons tampons tampons” over and over. I decided to let him sing his little song so he would realize I am not embarrassed by them, but after the 4th person passed by giving me a weird look, I leaned over to Ryan and said “You know, you may not know what tampons are but the people around you do, so you may not want to sing your little song until you know exactly what they’re for.” The look of horror set in on his face, and he immediately stopped.

We went home and I went out to start the barbecue, while Ryan and Nolan played with Legos in their room. I was kind of hoping he’d forgotten about his earlier question and I wouldn’t have to have this conversation for at least a few more years. Ten minutes later, he joined me in the backyard. “So…are you going to tell me what tampons are for?” I felt the simplest way to explain it was to do a basic drawing of the female organs to show what it is, how it functions, and why a tampon is needed. He stood there in silence as I explained it, then looked up at me and yelled “GROSS!” and took off. I guess that answered his question. He never asked about them again.

About six months later, while at the grocery store with both kids, Nolan pointed to the tampon display and said “What are those?” Before I could say anything, Ryan cut in and said “Nolan, you do NOT want to know.” Nolan seemed to be satisfied with that answer, and it didn’t come up again until about a year later. I was in a pharmacy picking up a prescription with Nolan when he noticed a tampon display* and said “Ryan told me what those are. I don’t know what the big deal is but BOY was he freaked out by it.”

Over the years, my kids grew to be completely unphased by things I said to them. Either that, or they learned how to hide their discomfort face as well as I did because seriously, who wouldn’t be MORTIFIED that their 7 year old son was singing a tampon song while skipping through the grocery store?

*I swear I don’t live in the tampon aisle.

 

I AM QUEEN OF MY DOMAIN!

Last week, after much back and forth in my brain, I decided it was time. I walked into Wil’s office and said “I can’t believe I’m about to say this but…I think…I want my own blog.”

I know. It’s like I’ve been possessed by some sort of technology demon whose evil, whispering chant keeps getting louder and louder. It started with Facebook (Which isn’t a public account, just a private one for family and some close friends where I share way too much about myself. Come to think of it, I already do that on Twitter so I’m not really sure what the big deal is. Also, why am I having this entire conversation with myself in parentheses when you can all see it anyway? I’ll have to get back to you on that.)

As I was saying before I interrupted myself, I started with Facebook and then branched out to setting up my own Twitter account two years ago. Honestly, I did that because I started to feel bad for my family and friends who had to put up with my daily postings on Facebook of jokes or puns that I made up, or my over sharing of humiliating, yet funny stories about something I once did. I needed a bigger outlet. My friend refers to me as “no mystery” which I think is fairly accurate. I also set up that Google+ thingamajig but that thing seriously frightens and confuses me.

My husband, who is my resident nerd, set this up for me because let’s be honest, I have NO IDEA how this stuff works. Right now it looks pretty basic, but I will figure it out over time and make it my own. He just got it set up for me so I had a place to get started. Well, set it up and then made the first post with a magnificent derpy face picture. There were lots of server crashing issues last night and comments weren’t working but I think it’s all better now.

You may be asking yourself, “Who is Anne Wheaton and why does she have a blog?” So I’ll tell you a little bit about myself now. I’m a 44 year old wife, mother of two grown boys, retired hairdresser, rescue animal advocate (we have 5 of our own), a googly eye placing ninja, and a sucker for a good pun. I have my own favorites in the board game department, I don’t enjoy video games that aren’t 8-bit technology, I’m not a Star Trek or Doctor Who fan but I do have my share of nerd shows that I love, and I’m pretty sure I was a circus performer in a previous life.

I wanted a blog because sometimes Momma’s got too much shit to say and 140 characters just isn’t going to cut it. I am not a professional writer so if I make mistakes, I’m really okay with it. I’m doing this for my own amusement and an attempt at doing something outside my comfort zone because life is too short to not try new things.