Sleepless in the south

I've recently got into this horrible routine at night. I go to bed but instead of going to sleep I get on Pinterest. If I try to go straight to sleep I lie there pondering about a thousand plus one things. Just random things, never of any significance. So I peruse Pinterest until my brain unwinds and my eye lids get heavy. Sometimes my eyes get so heavy they threaten to close with the view of one more pin. So at this point I put my phone on charge and try to drift off to sleep.

My eyes are now wide open. My brain screams out, "suprise! You thought you could sleep but here's a list of everything you need to do tomorrow and well...for the rest of the year".

So I lie there. Tossing and turning. Sleep deprivation knocking at my door. Before you know it my 4:30AM alarm starts screaming out in the silence of the early morning. When did I fall asleep? Why do I feel drunk? What was in that list to do today?

11:00 AM rolls around and I need a nap. My day is all screwed up now. My sleep is all over the map. The other day I was watching the afternoon news and before you know it Kyle is shaking me awake at 4:00pm. What the crap just happened? Am I narcoleptic now?

After much thought into why this is going on my only answer, in which I can't even guarantee is correct, is stress. I need to de-stress myself...and maybe drink a gallon of whiskey. Wait perhaps that's a bad idea, a hangover isn't going to do me any good.

How do you de-stress yourself? Any remedies for an amazing night of sleep?

xoxo Haley

Intolerance

For quite some time now I just haven't felt good. Not the "I have a cold", "my belly hurts", etc. feel good but more of the I'm fatigue, I'm dizzy, frequent headaches, I could fall asleep any second, I rather crap my pants than walk to the bathroom...okay, you get it. I just feel like crap no pun intended. I had gone to the doctor months ago to figure out what was wrong and why I was randomly getting so dizzy I couldn't make it through a full work day. After stealing multiple tubes of blood from my body and making me pay a ridiculous co-pay, a week later I received my test results.

"Everything's fine. Your test results had no abnormalities."
...and they sent me on my way, no further testing, nothing...

'Scuse my french but are you EFFING kidding me?! Last time I checked it is not normal to be dizzy and lethargic on a day to day basis. You can take your PhD and ram it so far up your hiney that it will never see a day of sunlight. Needless to say I refuse to ever visit that doctor's office again and should have took the note down when my friend told me they almost killed him when wrongly diagnosing him.

I left it alone though. I abandoned my health concerns in hopes that they would sort themselves out, it will go away...I'll be just fine... After seeing me slowly deteriorate my mom, metaphorically speaking, came knocking on my door telling me I wasn't in this alone and we would figure this out together. So she set me up an appointment to have more blood drawn. This time we would be checking for my food allergies.

Who knew you could be allergic to something and never have a fat clue!?

I finally got my test results back and I'm allergic to many things that I consume on a daily basis, one being gluten. Bye bye beer. Grapes, so long wine. You can only imagine the big ball of pity I'm rolling around in over here...not to say that I'm an alcoholic but I like to consume about two beers a week, three if I get wild, and an occasional glass of Riesling. Do I even need to speak my love for an all-american burger? Well, hello turkey burgers...we may need to get acquainted quite sooner than later. Oh and remember that coffee addiction I was talking about? Yeah, I always use vanilla creamer, as seen above in my yellow intolerance list... I won't lie, I'm crying a little river on this side of the blogosphere.

So what's there to do now? Go through countless recipes and try to figure out what I can and cannot have. Within those recipes that are gluten-free I have to find substitutes for the things I can't have such as white wine or soy, etc. Throw away all of the knowledge I've gained throughout my journey of becoming more domesticated in order to prepare Kyle delicious dinners, because quite frankly those dinners were on the road to killing me and I'm pretty sure he would rather eat poop for dinner than to not have his wife, or maybe I'm flattering myself. On top of all of this I pretty much have to change my entire lifestyle. Kyle and I attend small group every Wednesday and each time is rotated between houses and who to cook, it's not fair to them to have to abide by my weird diet because my body is pissed at me and doesn't want to digest anything therefore it's just floating around like, "hey strawberry, how long have you been here?". Therefore when attending our bible study I will either have to eat prior or pack my dinner. Same with our Sunday brunches at Kyle's Nanny's house. Yeah, my head is still trying to wrap around all of this.

In all seriousness, even if you do not have an intolerance to gluten I would strongly suggest to try to eliminate it from your diet. If you ever do research on what it actually does to the body you, much like I, will want to sue the FDA for allowing such in the American diet. Selfish assholes. To sum it up we might as well let the FDA approve rat poison in our Lucky Charms.

Coffee addict

4.) Something you got to do when you were young that you would not let your children do.

As a child, and still to this day, I have always been my mom's sidekick... always. Anything and everything she did I wanted to do as well, which I'm sure always kept her on her toes to do the right thing because she always had me less than one step behind her. 

I remember Saturday mornings always being my favorite. She was off from work and I would get to enjoy her the entire morning before other festivities took place. I remember I would wake up and run down stairs to crawl in bed with her and have our Saturday snuggles, which were the best. Once we were up and moving we would head to the kitchen and I would wait while she fixed the coffee.

Anyone remember Chip from Beauty and The Beast? Yeah, I owned that coffee cup! After Mom finished making the coffee we would go sit on the back porch and chat all morning all while I, an eight-or-so year old, drank coffee. 

Looking back I don't know if it was such a good idea to let a child drink coffee. Still to this day I cringe at the thought of starting my morning without it. I remember in high school I would get up two hours early before school started so I could go to Starbucks beforehand. On the days I don't go into work to help my dad I can drink a whole 12-cup carafe of coffee, no big deal. I'm just saying, I may have a coffee problem.

Though there are plenty of things much worse that a child could do, I'm still not so sure that I would let my child drink coffee with me. As much as I cherish these moments of when I was a child I think I'll let my kid have their own fix, maybe chocolate milk with added syrup...maybe apple juice garnished with an apple wedge...I'm not really sure. 

I would like to say I will never give my child coffee but over the years I have fallen in my mother's footsteps more than a time or two. Since I currently don't have children I can't say what I would and would not let my child do other than the obvious, ya know like roller blade while juggling knives or something. My childless self is screaming "heck no I am not giving my kid coffee, I'm sure they will have more energy than I can handle as is!" Who knows though, maybe my kid will be like me and need a pick-me-up. 

So my question to you is: Would you let your eight year old, give or take, have coffee?

Naked

This past week I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and came across a post saying "Colbie Caillat was tired of continually being photoshopped so this is what she did...". Immediately my curiosity piqued so I clicked on the link provided which led me to Colbie Caillat's music video for her song Try. After viewing the video all I could think of was, "I wish this existed when I was in high school." Throughout high school I always had plenty of friends. After coming out of my awkward middle school years I finally colored my hair darker, gained a little weight, and applied makeup daily which resulted in me being at least average. This gave me a confidence boost and I quickly turned into a social butterfly.

pre-hair&makeup

Even here with a pushup/padded bra it was apparent I was flat chested. I had bushy eyebrows, dishwater blonde hair, and makeup and I had yet to become best friends. 

Meet high school.

I had finally gained some weight, not looking so anemic and like I actually ate and kept my food down. I met makeup, I learned you could wax you're eyebrows, and my cosmetologist mom agreed to color my hair darker. I remember in middle school there was a girl who I thought was the coolest of the cool. She was not a 'mean girl' but she had a ton of friends and I thought  to myself "I wish I could be one of her friends", unbeknownst to me I would become not only her friend, but her best friend and attend her wedding years later. Not because of the change of hair or makeup but because once I did make those changes I finally had the "balls", if you will, to speak to people and be sociable.  I finally had an amazing set of friends and I even met my high school sweet heart. Unfortunately, a wrench was thrown in the path I had planned for myself. I moved to another city the second semester of my junior year in high school.

I was devastated.

I thought my world was ending.

What would become of my high school sweet heart and I?

My first day at my new school I was looked at as if I had two heads, each having horns attached. No one would speak to me, I was alienated. I didn't get it, at my old school if we had a "new kid" we all became overly excited and rushed to meet them in hopes of gaining a new friend, many of which I took on... not here though. My insecurities resurfaced and my only outing was to my boyfriend that lived an hour away. Our nightly phone conversations started to become repetitive...

him "hi sweetie, how was your day today?"

me "horrible, I hate this school, everyone sucks..."

him "oh, just be patient I'm sure everyone will grow to love you!"

Then I would spend about 30 minutes to an hour whining and crying about how I just wanted to be back home. I slowly started alienating myself from my hometown friends. They had the life I once had and wanted back, I had to prove something, I had to make new friends, I had to pretend that my new "home" wasn't so bad and I would be a-o-k. 

It wasn't, at all. After about two months of being at my new school I finally had two people start talking to me. A bisexual female, T, and a homosexual male, D. You can imagine the reputation I quickly acquired by befriending these two. Somehow, I didn't care. I needed someone, something, to take my mind off going day to day with no one to talk to because now my HSSH was randomly becoming too busy to talk. Later D confessed that on my first day of school he was going to ask me to sit by him and once I took the seat he was going to walk away and laugh...I might want to add that D was a total diva! The only thing that stopped him was T telling him he was a horrible person and talking him out of it. 

D & I on the last day of the semester.

I remember going home after school each day and jumping on the treadmill and running my ass off while repeating in my head, "I will be skinny like the popular girls, they will eventually talk to me, I will soon make friends..." mind you, I only weighed 110lbs, so fat right? insert complete rolling of eyes. Looking back I want to cradle that girl that I was, tell her she was good enough and beautiful, and that it wasn't her, it was them. 

Fast forward to years later I am happy in my own skin. I will be the first to admit I love makeup, I love changing the color of my hair, and I love getting my eyebrows, toes, and nails done. However, I do this stuff for me, not anyone else. I am comfortable in my skin to go to the grocery store with no makeup on, not caring who I run into, with my hair unwashed and on top of my head. I am right where I want to be and each night I get to lay down beside a gorgeous man with my naked face and wet hair and guess what, he still loves me.

 For the sake of the video, here I am naked, exposed, and still beautiful. Why? Because God didn't create me to have a full face of makeup on when I came out of the womb and dare I say that he created something less than beautiful. Makeup should be for fun, not to hide behind.

Side note: I later went to prom with D (his senior year, my junior) and we had a blast. I still keep in contact with him today but not often. I didn't marry my high school sweet heart, we broke it off a month before my senior year prom. I got into the 'popular' group for two weeks until they spread rumors around the entire school that I was a lesbian thus leaving me to eat my lunch in the bathroom  stall (because I would have food thrown at me during lunch) until I befriended T which led me to eat my lunch in the Art room with her. 

Girls just gotta have fun

What? Sometimes girls just gotta have fun! Seriously, who doesn't love some Sophia Grace? One thing I absolutely love to do when I'm in my girly girl mood is get my nails and toes done! I love soaking my feet in the jetted foot tub at the nail salon while sitting in the massage chair that you can control to massage where ever you want! Lower back problems? They have a setting for that. Neck ache? They got that too. I absolutely LOVE being pampered.

More often than not my mom and I do this together. We sit in our massaging pedi chairs and chit chat then head over to the mani stations. While she is more natural and gets Shellac on her nails I actually get acrylic nails.

I absolutely love the set I received Wednesday of this week. Inspired by Pinterest I went with a seafoam green with white polka dots on the middle fingers and white with sparkles on my ring fingers. I love them, they're so much fun!

However sometimes getting your nails done is not always glitz and glamour. Luckily I found a salon that I can actually understand what the nail techs are saying... for the most part. Other times, I just nod my head and hope for the best.  When they start speaking Vietnamese I won't lie, I often become uncomfortable. If you haven't seen Anjelah Johnson's skit on getting your nails done, I highly recommend it.

Pretty sure she hits the nail on the head with this one.

First, let's talk about a #Selfie

We've all seen it, we've all heard it. Selfie. The latest hashtag phenomenon. So much so, that there's also been a song made. Mind you, there's been countless debates and opinions shared that have gone on and on and...on about how horrendous, and quite frankly repulsive, this is. I'm not going to do that. Originally I wanted to write a post about how being a stay at home wife I don't get out much and how on a regular basis you can find me with no makeup and a t-shirt with my hair undoubtedly on top of my head in a messy bun, however the post, I decided, should be about something completely different. Why?

Once I uploaded this picture of how I randomly, on a day I wouldn't be getting out and a day I wouldn't be seeing anyone other than my dogs, decided to put on makeup and sit on the front porch all while taking selfies because I wanted to capture my moment of fabulousness I realized I rather blog about the selfie phenomenon. I don't know why... just stick with me here. What is a selfie you ask? Well if you're asking I'm going to put aside that you live under a rock and instead give you the definition via UrbanDictionary.com :

A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website. You can usually see the person's arm holding out the camera in which case you can clearly tell that this person does not have any friends to take pictures of them so they resort to Myspace to find internet friends and post pictures of themselves, taken by themselves. A selfie is usually accompanied by a kissy face or the individual looking in a direction that is not towards the camera.

Now I can guarantee you that my slightly embarrassing selfie photo collage did not make it to Facebook nor was it posted to MySpace (I didn't know anyone still used the MySpace platform?) Really it would have never even became acquainted with the web if it were not for me blogging about it. Why did I take a selfie? Because I wanted to capture the one day I decide to apply makeup so it wouldn't be another day feeling less than fabulous. I could go on and on about how ladies, and gentlemen in some cases, need to put away the kissy face and the 'emo' persona but too many people have covered that topic on how less than fabulous one may look when making such faces. So instead let's give a duck faced selfie taker and an 'I obviously am very in touch with my emotions' emo selfie taker a round of applause.

If making such faces make you feel beautiful, liked, confident, or whatever other positive energy flow than you keep doing you! Pucker those lips and snap a few extra for me. However! You may want to keep such a scenario in mind before uploading for the world to see: I once was a hiring manager and there came a time where two applicants fit the bill and I was completely indecisive on which one I should hire. Both had clean backgrounds, around the same age, both had reliable transportation, and they both lined up equally with one another. To take my hiring process a bit further I did what some larger corporate companies do. I Facebook stalked. One girl had pictures of herself with friends and family and some photos that were 'caught in the moment'. The other girl, however, had a photo she had clearly taken herself of her kissing her boyfriends cheek and then the rest of the photos were selfies. Legit kissy face, ducklipped, arm in picture selfies. After analyzing the photos on each girls account I ended up hiring the girl that had photos with friends that were actually taken by someone other than herself. Though it may be judging a book by the cover the girl with the selfies looked more like she didn't have many friends (which told me she may not be good in a team environment) and also looked like she was more into herself than others...which also is a red flag. I am not going to say taking a picture of yourself makes you a total loser. I will snap a photo of myself after getting my hair done and upload to Facebook. I will even take a photo of myself making an absolutely obscene face to send to my husband. AND! If one day I feel pretty, I will capture that moment and leave it in my iPhone camera roll to look back on until I need to delete it for space for new photos. Sometimes you need to take some feel good photos for your own viewing pleasure. With that being said take note that not everyone, and we are probably talking majority, care to see your selfies. I rather see a fun day at the beach, what you recently made (food or craft), or pictures of your children growing, a family portrait, etc. You know the saying, "If you don't have something nice to say, then don't say anything at all," well same goes for picture sharing... if you don't have a share worthy picture to share... just don't share at all. Just some thoughts from yours truly. What's your opinions on 'Selfies'?