And They’re Like … It’s Better Than Yours

I had a not-so-awesome week at work this week and on my way on Thursday, I was thinking to myself “oh how I would love to relax with some vino tonight.”  Well, lil 19 week old fetus says “that ain’t gonna happen, Mom” so I tried to think about what would be the next best thing when lo! a highway detour took me right by Cookout.  (Thank you, single lane on 52 NB.)

Oh, Cookout.  Delicious, delicious Cookout. I literally have not had a Cookout milkshake since 2006.  I know the exact year, because Zac and Jamie and I were going to see Failure to Launch at the $2 theater (terrible movie) and we snuck in our milkshakes.  I had just started working at Wake teaching the weight loss classes for a research study and thought “Hmm, maybe I should look up the calorie information on a Cookout milkshake!”

Terrible, terrible idea.  I haven’t had one since.

Although this information was partially enlightening to explain the good 10 or so extra pounds* that I carried around in college.  You see, after many a fraternity party, my girlfriends and I would somehow find a “willing” pledge to drive to Cookout and get us milkshakes.  And hush puppies.  The combination which should preferably be eaten together – hush puppies dipped into your milkshake.  If you’ve never tried this before, I suggest you start with the Oreo and go from there.

While I was waiting in the drive-through line for my milkshake – and oh what the heck, my hush puppies too - it suddenly occurred to me that I never once paid for my milkshakes in college.  Never!  Who did?  Was it the pledge?  Was it the brother who sent the pledge?  I suddenly felt horribly guilty that someone had footed my milkshake bill for the better part of 3 semesters of college and I had never once even asked someone if I should chip in.  How entitled was I?!

But then I decided that since women have to go through pregnancy and childbirth, it was the least the males of the world could do to pick our milkshake tab for us in college.  So that settled in and I felt better about this debt.  (Although I still do wonder who it was who paid for them?)

These are the things I think about sometimes.  I should probably keep them to myself instead of blogging about them. 

And just in case you’re wondering, the hush puppies and milkshake combo is every bit as good at 19-weeks and totally sober as it was at 19 years old and, um, not. 

I’m just not going to make it a weekly thing this time around.  I promise.

Although I don’t think someone would mind if I did….

 

(*Editor’s Note: Those 10 pounds also maybe also a little something to do with beer.  Or Fox Run White Zinfandel mixed with Sprite.  Or the fact that you could Pizza Hut on Deacon Dollars.  Or the Benson candy bins.  Just sayin’.)

A Cautionary Tale

Three years ago, a well-meaning couple adopted a scrawny, neglected dog who had been found pitifully wandering along the roadside. His hair was matted, he had heartworm and hookworm and huge trust issues.

They brought him home.

"Look!", they said, "He's so pitiful and scared he won't even take people food from us!"

They welcomed the little pupdog into their home with lots of love, long walks and, hey why not he's so skinny! the errant table scrap.

The pupdog was eventually won over.

And now, that couple gets to enjoy each and every meal with a side of pupdog eyes looking for his portion.

Oops.



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T-Shirt Necklace / Scarf

This was literally the easiest craft ever, so I feel capable to write a tutorial that won’t make someone end up with a total hot mess of a project.

Start with an old t-shirt.  Mine was one of my husband’s and it was a soft, gray cotton.  I don’t think the size of the shirt matters, obviously a bigger shirt is going to make something you can loop twice and it’ll still be loose versus a smaller shirt will be closer to your neck – or just looped once if you did a child’s shirt.  I did a solid color, but I think it’d be fun to do this with a print or a stripe.

Big ol junky t-shirt.

Start by making incisions along the one side about a 1/4” wide.  Stop when you get to the armpit.

Cut all the way across the shirt – don’t stress about straight lines.  Once you’ve got a bunch of loops, start by just stretching them out a little bit between your hands and you’ll notice they sort of coil up on each other.  I didn’t take a picture of this step because it did require two hands… sorry!  Set one loop aside.

Once you’ve got a bunch of coiled up loops, start lining up the seams in one of your hands – it’s okay if the seams on the other side don’t line up perfectly – you’re going to coil the necklace anyways and it’s meant to look a little imperfect.  (Thus, why this is a great craft for me!)

Once you line them up, take your set aside loop and start wrapping it around the seams in  your hand.  I read a few tutorials that said they used a fabric glue to hold it – I just tied a small knot in the end and tucked the loose ends under.  This is what it looked like:

As I said, this makes a really long necklace or scarf (whatever you want to call this) – I didn’t like the way it looked hanging all the way down. That could just be my preference though….

I recommend making a somewhat constipated look when you take self-portraits.  It really helps you feel like less of a goober than you already do in these situations.

So anyways, I prefer to wear mine double looped – it always helps to hide the fact that the ends aren’t totally even.

And there you go!  T-shirt scarf.  Or necklace.  Whatever.  T-shirt thingey!

Ronald McDonald House Benefit

I'm really not trying to give Anne a big head but once again, I owe her kudos for this weekend's plans as well.  (Hey girl, what am I doing next weekend??)  This weekend was the first Ronald McDonald House benefit that was thrown by our Resident Spouse Association (which Anne happens to be in charge of social events, and thus largely responsible for pulling off this shebang.).  Basically, we wanted an opportunity to wear fancy dresses and dance to a band and eat yummy little finger foods -  once you outgrow sorority formals and most of your friends are married off, you have to create your own events for these pursuits.  Although it is always best if you can spend another organization's money to do it...and then raise money for charity at the same time.  Win!

 
(I also failed to take any pictures once we there so I am unapologetically borrowing these off our RSA website.)

It was a super fun night, fancy dresses, great band, finger foods and the likes.  Our friend Rebecca's brother-in-law was the music of the evening and he was great - one of those bands that could go from playing a Michael Buble song to a Ke$ha song and make both dance floor worthy.  Yes, Ke$ha.  (In fact, I think I might have liked their version of Tik Tok better.)
 
And we raised some money for a great cause...hopefully this is an annual benefit and hopefully I'll find a way to swindle myself an invite even though I will no longer be a resident's spouse anymore! (Woohoo!)

My only two pictures are off my phone… showing off my dress that I love which was actually a bridesmaid dress from Pam’s wedding in 2009 and the other is with my husband date, the resident portion of Resident Spouse Association.

Page A Day Inspiration

More thought provoking questions from my Happiness Project Page-A-Day Calendar.



- What's the most helpful advice you've ever received?
Because I can never answer a question succinctly, I have to answer this in 3 parts.

"Just take it one day at a time." These wise words were actually uttered to me by my high school boyfriend, who was wiser than his years at 16 years old, as I sat bawling my eyes out one day about being scared to go off to college. (I am one of those rare freaks who absolutely loved high school...). He said that to me then, and I've said it to myself a hundred, million times whenever I'm going through something that I'm scared or frustrated about. And it makes me giggle that a high school boy was the source of such sage wisdom.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."
I can't remember where I heard that advice but again it was sometime around the end of high school or early college, and it's remained my favorite quote ever since. I try to remind myself of that when someone does something I don't understand that seems hurtful or ignorant, and in my job as a coach I often get the rare opportunity to peel back the layers of people to learn about the hard battles they are fighting. Reminding myself of this piece of advice gives me pause when I find myself about to judge someone - including myself. (This quote is generally attributed to Plato, although I'm not 100% certain of that. Anne G could probably verify that!)
Will this matter in one year?
This was a very recent piece of advice I came across and I've started trying to use it as a gauge for how much energy and attention I should let my monkey mind devote to any sort of issue that arises. Sometimes it's works, sometimes even when I know the answer is "of course not" I still want to wallow in stressing out for the sake of my own pity party. (Please bring cupcakes.)

Those are my top 3 pieces of advice, although I also had to refrain from quoting line by line the entire book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie which is the best book of advice I've ever read.

-What's your happiest time of day?
I love going to bed. I love the act of getting in bed, piling the covers around me, grabbing something to read, situating Buddy nearby for snuggles, chatting with Matt if he's not working.... and then falling asleep. I hate to admit it, but my favorite time of day is bedtime.

-What were the last 3 books you read?
- Bossypants by Tina Fey
- Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
- My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler (my book club's pick)




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Pinterest Party

I often refer to my friend Anne as our "social chair" - and this is fitting considering she is technically the social chair of the one and only organized club I belong to here in Winston, the Resident Spouse Association.  Whether it’s RSA functions, tailgates or dinner parties, Anne is always my one friend who is constantly scheming up new get together ideas.  The best part is she's very creative in her ideas for get together - which I love about her. 
 
Okay, enough ego boosting for Anne. The point of that intro was to say who else would come up with an idea like she did this weekend - a Pinterest party!  It was a simple concept - bring the makings of a craft or food item you've pinned on Pinterest but haven't made yet… and make it.  Such a great idea!  I have 65 items on my crafty board and it is by pure self restraint that I don't have 6,500... yet I rarely make time to do them.  What a better way than for me to put it on my schedule AND know that I was going to be in the company of good friends making their crafts too.
 
(Even better was some people had food pins to test out on us…happy guinea pigs, indeed.)

It was very fun and we all made good progress, if not finished, a craft or recipe.  Katie and Anne did needlepoint, Tommie and Anya worked on crocheting hats, Akanksha made a mason jar soap dispenser, Sarah painted the cutest little "P" using a pencil eraser, Jamie made a jewelry tray and I tackled DIY mercury glass. 

 
My mercury glass project was easier than I expected it to be, but it was just one of those things I had been putting off getting started on.  I bought all these little vases at Goodwill for 25 cents a piece and found the spray paint at Wal-mart for $9.  I read a bunch of tutorials on how to do it and they all seemed to say about the same thing – spray, dry, repeat 5 times, spritz with vinegar, wipe down.  (For more specifics, this is a good example of one of the tutorials I read.)

While my glasses were drying, I even tackled a 10 minute t-shirt scarf project.  Bonus craft!

We had a little mascot overseeing all our crafts…

I loved Akanksha’s mason jar soap dispenser… that might be next on my to do list.

 
I was really happy with how both of my crafts came out.  The mercury glass especially came out lovely – I love seeing them twinkle on my mantle now!

And I’ve already worn my t-shirt scarf/necklace out once…

Obviously I loved, loved, loved this idea for a party.  We all definitely agreed that we need to do it on a regular basis - and we're going to leave it up to Anne to schedule it.

16 Weeks

It’s amazing how a week of vacation will take you from looking like you hit the Golden Corral buffet a little too hard to legit pregnant.  Bam.  Just like that.

I definitely prefer this – while I’m still at the stage where a stranger might think twice about asking if I was preggo lest they stick their foot in their mouth (even though someone *did* do this to me at EIGHT weeks) – I am definitely feeling more comfortable in this version of my pregnant body than the first not-pregnant but not-normal couple months.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to feel really, really good the majority of this pregnancy so far.  I had a few days early on with some sickness and the infamous fatigue of the first trimester was annoying, but I really have so very little to complain about so far.  The first few months I didn’t have much of an appetite – nothing made me sick, but nothing sounded good either.  (Except for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets.  I am quite sorry, Baby Cline, for you did not start your life off with an all organic, non processed food diet.  I hope you like cheese-powdered foods as much I do.)  That’s gone away as well now, and I unfortunately no longer have a great excuse for skipping the entire produce section on my grocery trip.  I’ve been able to keep doing Body Pump and Dance Trance, which I think has actually kept me feeling really good.

I should probably stop talking now before I tempt the fates or piss off my friends who did not have such easy first trimesters. 

It took me well past 12 weeks to really and truly believe that I was pregnant, so it’s kind of bizarre to think that in another month, I’ll actually be at the halfway point!