I am so drawn to seeing this movie. I count it as a good thing that I could not dig up a girlfriend who was free this weekend to see it, because ultimately I went out and bought the book.

This movie could not have come out at a better time for me, because very honestly, I find myself on a page in my life where all I feel is unhappiness and negativity. The past year has SUCKED in a big way. The idea of vanishing for a year on some inner spiritual journey and working towards clarity is something I would give my left arm for. Yet…..by the same token, I could never at this point in my life leave my son for that long a period of time

This is not who I am. I am the person who always saw the bright side of things. I always had a knack for letting things go and not digging them up later as weapons. I was the kind of person that people wanted to be around. I had a social calendar rivaling that of  Paris Hilton, but on a much healthier scale.

I’m not me. One bit. I am cranky. Everyone around me is cranky. And life goes on in the world while I just sit here and get more and more negative. I am missing out on life, friends, family, adventures and FUN.

This week I dug up an article  that I just keep re-reading. One night I googled “living defensively” on the notion that SOMEONE out there may have possibly or remotely have felt the way I do. And bam…there it was:

The Art of Shaping Your Beliefs

Read it. The opening question……..Are your beliefs shaped by your experience or do you experience what you believe?

Didn’t take me longer than two seconds to answer that one.  And the result of my answer…..Defensive attitudes around your beliefs mean that your experience shapes your beliefs. This smacked me in the face several times.  I realize……I perpetuate feeling awful because I’m not open to anything new or positive.

Have you read the Eat, Pray, Love? I am on page 116, having picked it up just yesterday.  So many of the things she writes ring bells all over the place for me. Maybe she wasn’t living defensively, but she was living within tight walls.  The book is her journey into expanding herself and pickup herself up and out of a life less than satisfactory.

I have decided to let go. Let go of the past. Let go of living defensively and get back to ME. The me that enjoyed everything. Found humor in everything.  Didn’t sweat the things that are really irrelevant.  Who cares HOW the house got cleaned…it got cleaned. Who cares that someone was 15 minutes late or that they didn’t do something MY way. It doesn’t matter.

When you have to defend any position, you are limiting your ability to bring full awareness into the situation. This limitation results in being surrounded by challenges, lack, and other forms of negativity. Over time, you become keenly aware of life as something that is lacking the strength to exist on its own terms without having to take defensive actions to protect something that is too weak to exist fully on its own.

See that paragraph above? I have printed that out from the article link above and have it staring me in the face by my desk.  I’m done living a life that’s limited because of my walls, fears and past.  I’m done with trying to get things to go the way I want them to. I’m back to enjoying life again and everything it brings me.

Have you read the book……and will YOU see the movie with me?

Ya know how you never really notice subtle changes in the people you see every day?

Over the past 5 years I CLEARLY noticed my husband gaining wait. To the tune of about 90 lbs. THIS, I noticed.  And yes, I did notice that he’d been losing weight since January 1st. If you asked me,  I would have guessed it to be 20 pounds. But it wasn’t until we were getting ready for a big event on Saturday night that I noticed how much he has really lost:

SIXTY POUNDS.

No lie. In 5 months he has lost a total of 60 pounds. Gave up drinking, which directly lessened his junk food appetite. Amazing stuff.

I know you must think I’m a moron to be so blind.  In my defense, the man rarely ever wears or needs to wear suits or slacks.  With athletic apparel, it’s tough to notice what is going on under there. Elastic waists, tee shirts/sweatshirts. Tell me you’d notice weight loss in that clothing?  Bad excuse, I know. I suck.  It’s not like I haven’t seen the man naked in 5 months.

I on the other hand have gained 10 lbs. I have the crumbs embedded in my laptop keyboard to prove my Chips Ahoy cookie issue. You’d notice this in my clothing.  I’m growing a muffin top.

On a side note:   Isn’t it the worst when a big crumb gets stuck under a key on your keyboard and you have to press it really hard (20 times) to crush it? Hate that. Wonder if I can vacuum my keyboard?

And I guess  I have no right to bitch that he didn’t notice the complete makeup makeover I gave myself about a month ago? The guy lost 20% of his body weight and I didn’t notice.

Bad wife! Very bad wife!

Until this week.

It’s this incident that got me to   CHILL   out and wake up the humor in me:

I bought a dress for a Bat Mitzvah I was invited to. This dress has been hanging on the back of my bedroom door for two months because I can NOT find shoes for it. People have gone through their closets for me, they’ve gone shopping for me. I have scoured every website on the planet and have found nothing. (Nothing that is because I refuse to spend $225 for a shoe I will wear once.) You have no clue what a saga this dress/shoe thing has been for me.

Today, finally a friend of a friend overheard my (ridiculous) shoe problem. SHE had the perfect shoe. Completely, totally perfect. I looked at them and just KNEW they were perfect. Brought the shoes home. Put the shoes down on the floor of my bedroom, took the dress out of the garment bag and put it on. Bent down to get the shoes and one was gone.

And this is my favorite part. The part that still makes me laugh……..

The lost shoe? It was taken by a four legged thief who chewed up the heel.  Left it rendered unwearable. Unrepairable. The day before I need to wear it. (Which is tomorrow, by the way.)

Seriously? A two month mission for shoes should have been the first clue that I needed to lighten the F up.  Who CARES what I wear to this thing?

And FYI, I’m not a crappy friend. I was able to find the same (discontinued) shoe on EBay to replace my dog’s chew toy. New in box, It’s currently on it’s way to me and headed right into the friend of a friend’s closet….. 

‘Someone’: Can you come here a second and help resolve this problem?

Me: Sure

‘Someone”: I am of the opinion that The Prince’s pants are wet and that he should not be sitting on the sofa with them on.

The Prince: They are only just a little bit wet.

Me: (Walks off stage with a dose of the evil eye)

Why I was really called into this? Seriously? So that I would be the bad guy who yells, threatens to ground and gets told “I hate you” instead of that ‘Someone’ having to hear it all?

On a side note, The Prince is still on the sofa. In his pants.

A free General Mills box of cereal coupon to the first person that guesses who that “Someone” is.

Coupon Sherpa:

One of the better coupon iPhone Apps in iTunes. Large selection of national retailers and they had me at Banana Republic. Click a retailer and it shows you the offers available as well as the expiration date. It shows you the nearest location and then lets you view the actual coupon to present at checkout.

You can also elect to email yourself the coupon. Thoughtful. I’ve tried using the coupon directly from my iPhone at Ann Taylor and was told they needed the actual paper coupon. So while the app is pretty good, some of the retailers…suck.

At free, it’s a shopaholic must have!
Download from:
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Yesterday, my son asked if he could sit in the front seat now. And he can. He’s 10, he’s over the height requirement now.

So now begins the era of his hands all over the controls for the heat, air conditioner and worst of all….the stereo.  It made me laugh to see him try to adjust the sun visor to keep the sun out of his eyes, as air bag height requirement or not, he’s too short for the visor to have any positive use.

I like not feeling like the hired chauffeur anymore. Having his company up front with me is pretty nice, though I’ll miss reaching back there for his little boy hand to hold at stoplights.

Winter is anything but long when you get out there and just enjoy it.  We’ve had massive amounts of snow the past two weeks and there is more predicted for tomorrow. 

The stats on my site here show that I’m in minority. My top search related terms are variations of the phrase ‘countdown to summer 2010′  from this post.  They account for 595 hits from search engines since the post went live in August of 2009. These hits have made ‘Summer Countdown’ my most read post. Unfortunately I’m sure all 595 people were disappointed. The post has an image that is stuck on 311 days.  

As of today there are 120 days until summer officially begins on June 21, 2010.

Come to think of it, I’m ready for summer too.  I bought a bathing suit this weekend in anticipation.

Early last fall a local family moved away to a nearby town. Our sons played together. We had gone to the beach together as families.  I shopped with her,  did “mom night’s” with her.  Our husbands helped each other out with projects.  The friendship though started to fade away about 2 or 3 years ago.

The husband works for an auto dealership and she works part time.  Their house was small but impeccable. Everything updated, beautifully furnished.  They were amazing and gracious hosts and always having friends and neighbors over for parties and holidays. The wife was also always impeccably dressed. I envied her clothing and sense of style.

The way I had originally heard it, they had listed their home for sale and it was purchased faster than they were prepared for.  They decided to move in with the husband’s parents in a nearby town until they found a new home to move into.  The children were pulled from the town’s school and we have not seen them since.

The other day I was at a friend’s home and she told me a different story. Completely different story.

Apparently the wife was in charge of the family’s finances.  She fell behind in the bills because as the old adage goes: You can’t spend more than you earn.  She hid this from the husband.  She then went and refinanced the house back to the bank but couldn’t keep up with the payments then either. All hidden. Until the bank foreclosed on the home. They owed more money than the house was even worth and even in living with family, they are struggling financially.

I guess stories of foreclosure and people struggling financially are nothing new in this economy.  Who isn’t hurting right now?

However. this is where it even becomes more of a soap opera. She owned up to having an affair that had been going on for 4 years. 

How must the husband have felt on hearing all of this? To have no idea that he was losing his house? To find out that his wife had been having a long term affair?  I can’t imagine…….

Gossip…..stinks. I can’t help but feel badly even for the wife.  I wish them nothing but a brighter future.

Now I get why.

Bump for iPhone & iTouch: 

 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

A truly fantastic FREE application that allows the sharing of information between devices to be an incredibly simple thing to do. No typing, no searching. Just open the application on both devices, select the item you’d like to share and…..bump your phones together.

The app only works if both devices have the “Bump” application installed, but at the walloping price of FREE,  there’s no big deal there.

The first time you use the application you’ll need to enter your information.  I kept it simple and just entered  my phone number and email. However you can create a complete contact card and bump all of your information if you wish. You can also bump photos and other assorted files.

In my book, it’s a must have application. Bump is considerably easier than  emailing a photo or file to another iPhone user.

You can download Bump for free at iTunes.

There is one though that I will never forget.  Valentine’s day of 1987.

I had moved out of my parent’s home just a month beforehand and into my first apartment. I was single, starting my career in New York’s garment center and living in a tiny place with a girlfriend.  I was boyfriend-less, since I had just been dumped a few days prior to the 14th. 

I had stopped by my parent’s house to pick up “whatever” and there sitting on the kitchen counter was a bouquet of flowers. From my dad. For me.

Forget Me Nots.

And the card read:

Forget Us Not. We miss you! 

Love,

Dad

I still have the card.  And the first flower I planted in the garden of the home my husband and I bought 10 years later? Forget Me Nots. My favorite flower.