Toe Stepping

I'm not the argumentative monster I was as a teenager...yet I still feel like I've been stepping on a lot of toes lately. I have a very matter-of-fact attitude towards life and conversation, I'm admittedly opinionated and am less than shy when it comes to giving one, an opinion that is. I've been accused of having chronic verbal-diarrhea, no filter between my brain and mouth and of not thinking before I speak. Perhaps all of the above is true...I really think it might have something more to do with the fact that I am just about as extroverted as possible in a human and so it feels natural to me to verbalize most things as I think them. Not every thing as I think it (what a scary world that would be!) But I am often guilty of saying anything and everything that I deem safe and harmless without considering what I find inoffensive might actually be offensive to someone else. I would NEVER intentionally be rude or hurtful (except in cases where I feel someone else is being rude or hurtful and I deem it necessary for them to swallow a taste of their own medicine.)

What’s worse is that Australians are, on average, more passive than Americans. So if I step on someone’s toes here, rather than them just calling B.S. they will make an ever so subtly passive aggressive comment and laugh at the end of it as if something’s funny. I stand there confused….are they trying to be funny or are they trying to say something else?? I want to ask “is there something you aren’t saying?” But then, if they really were only making an attempt at humor, I’d only make things awkward for both of us instead of just for me. But half the time I think that I really, truly, possibly could have offended a friend or acquaintance and they are just too passive to spit it out and say so. I want to apologize but don’t know if there’s anything to apologize for. Asking if I was rude would only be insensitive as my faux pas would seem bleedingly obvious to them and asking about it would either make me extremely ignorant or even ruder than they’d previously thought.

"Foot-in-Mouth"

Truthfully, I am extremely ignorant in these cases. Especially any time I make a comparison between America and Australia in front of Australians, and some Aussies get REALLY defensive. I only compare because I find it interesting, not because I’m trying to explain why America’s better than Australia. There are heaps of things that Australia is better at than Americans and vice versa, I’m not trying to start an argument when I say those things. Sometimes I feel like putting my hands in the air and just letting everyone else do all the talking. This could prove to make me a much more likeable and less controversial person overall don’t you think? It’s probably annoying for some people to hear me comparing all the time anyways….but that’s what’s going on in my head. It’s a coping mechanism of sorts; cataloging the differences so I might better understand them. It helps me to learn about myself and learn about Australians. I’m going to try to keep my mouth shut from now on. I’m tired of feeling embarrassed or looking back on a conversation and cringing because I said the wrong thing. I could be like Other Wybie from Coraline, you know the one that doesn't talk? Ha!

It honestly feels like the first day of high school every day. You know when you walk through the doors and are floored by the hugeness of it all and are searching the thousands of faces for one that your recognize? And then you spend the whole of your freshman year jumping from group to group trying to find where you belong, that if you say the right things they’ll give you their phone number and we’ll all go to the movies Saturday night. Only it’s worse because I feel like I’m the only freshman in a school of juniors and seniors, where everyone’s older than me and knows more and has done it before. Where everyone has their friends and their routines and doesn’t really need or have time for another face. It’s exhausting. Where do I fit in? I feel a bit lost. Maybe I try too hard. I want to belong.

Lose Weight!

http://plussize2dreamsize.blogspot.com

I'm getting pretty active in my goal to lose weight and get healthy. It's going to become a BIG part of my life so, if you don't find me posting as often in this blog here, there might be something new going on in my weight loss blog that's consuming my attention or thoughts. Just a heads up if you didn't know about it. :)

From another blogger's recent post. I'm a real sucker for these things. hahaha

1. How often do you wash/change your sheets?
Almost never. (judge me if you must :P) I don't think about it. They have to actually start looking dirty before I think "Oh yes, the sheets." Since we don't have a drier, washing the sheets means we go without them for a couple days. What's that you say? Buy another set of sheets for washing day? Scandalous. ;)

2. When is your birthday?
February 9, 1987

3. Have you ever met a bloggy friend in real life?
Assuming that I hadn't met a blog friend prior to writing our blogs? No. I'm not at all opposed to it though. I met my husband online and several other friends as well. They're just people!

4. Brad Pitt or George Clooney?
Neither. Too O.L.D. for my taste at 23.

5. If you could change one thing about your body what would it be?
My weight. It's getting really unhealthy, like REALLY unhealthy. I plan to change that myself though...as far as things I can't change that I wish I could? My shoe size. I wear a size 12. I don't want to hear any "Oh I know what you mean, I wear a size 10 and can never find shoes!" Really? Yeah. At least they MAKE shoes in your size. I don't even have Payless anymore....anyone want to send me some cute pumps?? hahaha

6. How often do you wash your hair?
Maybe once or twice a week. If it starts getting too greasy I'll rinse with some water, but I pay too much money for my color to wash it down the drain. lol

7. Do you have pets?
2 cats, Ender and Bean. Ender is a Maine Coon and lives in Texas with my parents now. Bean is a black domestic shorthair and lives with us here in Queensland.

8. How many social networks do you belong to..if you had to give up one, what would it be?
I have accounts set up on Blogger,Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Xanga, and Live Journal. I haven't been on Live Journal since maybe 2004 and the Xanga wave gave way to the Myspace Wave so I'd completely abandoned my Xanga by mid 2006 when Myspace added a blog function. Then the Facebook wave came when they opened it to anyone instead of just college students and I abandoned my Myspace by late 2008. Twitter came around and I checked it out but still don't really understand the point...and then I joined Blogger to keep in touch with my fam and friends when I moved. So...even though I haven't been on some of those for years, a lot of them are like a catalog of memories; old messages sent, old journal entries made and so on. I don't really use Twitter at all so I'd have no scruples deleting it even though some of those sites I haven't been to in years.


So, did you learn anything? ;)

The Time Traveler's Wife

I think I should reverse my technique of always reading the book before the movie....reading the book before hand usually leaves me disappointed about the movie. Now that I've read the book following the movie for the first time, not only was I so excited to read the book, I am BLOWN AWAY by the book itself. The Time Traveler's Wife book is only about 1 million times better than the movie. I thought the movie was great....but now I think, if I was the author, I'd be insulted by the movie. The book has so much more depth and color and, though a bit darker than the movie, is also much more intelligent. Wow.

I love time travel books. I think if I ever wrote a fiction novel, I'd want it to be about time travel. The idea just fascinates me. The rules in this book are a bit different than in others I've read in that there's a complete absence of the whole Butterfly Effect panic associated with meeting your former self in the past or your self-to-be in the future. It runs with the idea that everything only ever happens one way and so everything is the way it is. You can't change anything. It's kind of a pre-destination sort of thing that doesn't entirely make sense to me. Because they say, in the book, that you still have the freedom to make choices, but you will only make a choice once. For instance, you choose to read this blog. The idea is that, no matter how many times you come back in time to try to stop yourself, your future self would be blocked from doing anything to keep you from reading this blog. You've made the choice to read it, and so that's the way it will happen every time. Any person from the future is incapable of intervening. It's like instead of the analogy where the whole of time is like an infinite piece of string, the past, present, and future all exist at once. Your present is the past of your future self and your future is the past of an even later future self.....so even if a past you goes forward in time to intervene with something, in their mind, that hasn't happened yet, it HAS happened to an even furthur future self so say, if someone was meant to die and you were trying to prevent it, no matter what direction you come from to try to stop it, past or future, it will happen when it's supposed to happen the exact way it was meant to happen and you'd find yourself incapable of intervening in any way because things are what they are.....

Very very lengthy explanation, but I thought it was interesting enough to share. I love speculative/science fiction and really encourage everyone to read this book. ha.

RE: "Grocery Store Glamour?"

A response to my good friend's recent entry.

I'm a victim of What Not to Wear in that I am VERY aware of how I look at all times these days even if I wouldn't have been in the past. While college might be a bit early to be worrying about these kinds of things, ANYONE (not just women) should seriously consider their appearance before going anywhere, even the grocery store. Unfortunately (and since we don't live in a society of blind people) you WILL be judged you based on how you look, like it or not. You can stand there indignantly in the middle of the produce section in your sweatpants and XL jersey shirt, but people will judge you all the same. Maybe less so than they would have 60 years ago and perhaps more than they would 60 years from now but fashion is always going to matter. In men and in women. Either you can conform to social norms (i.e. look presentable all the time) or act out against them (i.e. wear your running shoes when you're not running) people are going to judge you either way and you will change absolutely nothing either way....just sayin. At the end of the day, it doesn't take ANY more time to throw on a pair of jeans and a cute top with a pair of sparkley flats than it does to throw on your sweats and tennishoes (maybe less without all that lacing of the shoes and the whole socks thing.) So what's the big deal? Make an effort. When you run into your boss in the bakery, you might be glad you did.

Saturday

I love waking up on Saturdays because, somehow, Chris always manages to get out of bed without waking me and he sneaks into the kitchen and cleans EVERYTHING until it's spotless...so when I wake up it's to the smell of Ajax, a furry kitten's meowing, and a big hug from the love of my life. So all I have to do is shuffle bleary-eyed into the kitchen, set the pot to "Brew" and collapse on the couch with my muesli and the remote (or, in some cases, cold pizza :) ) I don't know why he does it, frankly I don't want to ask and risk ruining a good thing, but it's beautiful and I appreciate it.

That said, I will be spending the rest of this weekend cleaning. I might even clean straight into next week.... Bleh. I hate cleaning. I especially hate deep cleaning, you know when you're on your hands and knees scrubbing base boards and dusting. It makes me wonder how much it costs to hire someone to come in once a month and do the deep clean for me. Ha! Yes, I'm really that lazy... This is my blog, don't judge. :P

SO, about Fiji. Chris and I have talked about it and we think we could def afford to go......but the smart thing to do would be to stay home. We keep doing without at home while we travel around going on mini vacations and, even though we have everything we need at home, there's lots of things we want that we've been doing without because of it. Soooo we could go to Fiji. Orrr we could buy a couch and a new t.v. and a dryer and a dishwasher.... Yeah. I think we're going to be staying home. Yes, we might miss Chris's cousin's wedding but I think it's smart to just invest our money in ourselves at the time than to keep splashing out on trips constantly.

That's all!

Health

Last night our friends at Priceline pharmacy (really are our friends, they go to our church) put on a women's health night at church. I honestly didn't think I'd learn anything new but I went to support them anyways. :) The one woman dr in town, Kaylene G., gave a speech based on the most commonly asked questions in her office. Something I was very proud of her for was standing up for women's mental health. She described the symptoms of depression and explained that it is a medical fact, as medically proven as high blood pressure for instance, and that it's nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't mean you have an inability to cope and certainly isn't something you can just "snap out of." It's due to hormonal and chemical imbalances in the brain and nervous system and is sometimes brought on by nothing at all, no reason at all....I love her for this. I expect there are many women, some whom I know very well, that are depressed but are unwilling to admit this possibility to themselves because, maybe, they don't "believe" in depression and think they should just suck it up and pull themselves up by the bootstraps and move on. That can be VERY dangerous, so I hope that part her speech hit home with a few people and helped them to at least be able to admit to themselves that their sadness is more than sadness and there are people who can help. I wish more women had come last night because it was an awesome meeting. :) She also talked about the importance of exercise which makes me glad I'm going to be getting back into the gym this week! She talked a bit about contraception and I found out that, when used every time, condoms are about as effective as the birth control pill. This was news to me. I really hate how the hormones effect me and have been considering trying a different pill....so I might go that route and see how I feel and then, if I still don't feel like myself, we might just take our chances without. Our friend Emma also gave a speech, hers was about medications, caffeine and alcohol consumption while pregnant or breastfeeding. I logged this information for later, but didn't really learn anything I didn't already know there which makes me feel happy. :)

Chris talked to some people at Fellowship Church a couple months ago about how much he enjoyed the Christmas eve service and talked a bit about what we're trying to do out here and they sent us a bunch of resources for free! SO nice of them! We have 4 sermon series on dvd and a book that's meant to address just about any question you'd ever think to ask when starting a ministry. That was really exciting to open yesterday. When Bill and Stella leave for a few weeks next month, we're going to play Ed Young's sermons they sent as the message. It should be a nice change of pace and, hopefully, we'll all learn something! I think Bill is beginning to understand that we all have a passion for keeping this church alive with or without a pastor and have plans to try and make it the best place possible with the purest of intentions. I think that, with that knowledge, we can all become comrades in raising up the congregation as a whole and making it an all-around better place. I just pray we keep moving forward and don't have to close the doors.

That's all!