They say confession is good for the soul

So here goes.....Hello, my name is Timberley and I'm addicted to American Idol Auditions.

I love them! I love to watch the wack-a-doos who only want to be on TV. I love to be surprised when I prejudge a person who ends up having a lovely voice. I love the judges responses, Simon makes me laugh. I never watch the show past Hollywood week; I could care less who wins. I just like the train wrecks and surprises that ARE the very essence of the "Auditions". And I only feel a little guilty. ;)

Ok, my soul is settled. I'm off to bed.

(side note: I've blogged more this month then I did in all of 2007. What's with that?!)

invisible, forgettable me

"Pity Party for One, your table is now available."

I don't know what it is about me but I must be invisible. I must have some kind of cloaking gene that no one knows exists. People will run in to me all the time. Physically bump in to me! I will be in a store, make eye contact with the person headed in my direction and they will STILL run their basket in to me. "Oh, sorry! I didn't see you there!" Really?! Seriously?! Daniel thought I was exaggerating but he's been with me twice now and has had a chance to witness my invisibility. The second time I got hit he said "Wow". Yep, that about sums it up. Wow. I can stand in a group of people and never get noticed. One time in college I was driving friends to a party. A girl got in, said hello to everyone in the car but me. It was brought to her attention that I was there as well and her response was "Oh, I didn't see you there." IN THE DRIVERS SEAT. Really?! (She was probably just a horrible girl - but still, it's something that obviously stuck with me!)

And I must be forgettable as well. I've "met" people several times. I've worked at the same company for 6 years and I "meet" some of the same people every few weeks. I get asked all the time "are you new?". That makes me feel warm and fuzzy. When we eat out, it doesn't matter if I'm in a group of 5 or 20, my meal is going to be missing. Not wrong - completely missing! I try to give people the benefit of the doubt but by the time my friends are halfway through their meal, I know I've been forgotten. Some of my friends don't remember my birthday either. Even the ones that have a Facebook where you're sent reminders! Argh. The person who performed our wedding promised to send us a copy of our vows on our one year anniversary. That was August. He's known me most of my life and yet he forgot me. :( That one hurt a lot. He's never mentioned it either.

Maybe it's the wine talking but I fear I'm invisible. And I doubt I'm very memorable either. Maybe I should be louder or wear neon pink or a silly hat made of Foil.

Maybe I should just be content to be loved by the ones immune to my Invisibility gene. My family loves me and they can see me! And they remember me too! And some of them think I'm pretty witty! :) I have a handful of dear friends that remember me as well, some of them will tell you I'm a bully but they're just confused. :) And there's always my Daniel. I like to pretend I'm all he sees. :)

Ok, that feels better. "Pity Party for One" no longer needs her table.

Today's Soap Box

It just breaks my heart and makes me sad. They can be found every where you look - the mall, the movies or walking through the halls of High Schools. The young girls sporting the ever trendy “baby bump”. They walk around with a baby like it’s the newest, hottest accessory. And I just don’t get it. Who has failed them?

Is it the parents? The ones that don't know how to broach the subject so don't. Are broken homes to blame? Are girls struggling with the ever popular "daddy issues" - looking to replace a love they've missed?

Is it our education system? School districts that feel teaching abstinence is "too Christian" so they replace it with "safe sex" education where students are educated on condoms and STD's. And then provide childcare options for their students when the "safe sex" lesson doesn't stick.

Is it our society as a whole? A society that idolizes unwed teen mothers by making them the lead story on national news. A society where Teen Mom's get their own TV show, SEVERAL TV shows! I'm disgusted with the amount of "teen" shows that are filled with sex.

We've all failed them. We failed to tell them they are worth more then that. Our young girls are confused. They think love = sex . They are putting their little bodies through way more then they should at such young ages and they don't see anything wrong with it. They absolutely do not see anything wrong with it. It's just what you do. How sad is that? They are WORTH so much MORE!

Call me old fashioned but I earned the right to wear white on my wedding day and I was PROUD. I wasn't ashamed, I wasn't embarrassed! I understood at a young age that sex changes everything. I also knew I never wanted to have to get married and the ONLY sure way to avoid pregnancy is to wait. It wasn't always easy but it was always worth it. Because I was worth it. And I waited until I found someone that knew I was worth it.

But where do we start? What will it take to make a difference? I think we need to start with our girls. Girls have the potential to hold all of the power and if more of them understood, things might be different! I think if we reach our young girls early there might be a difference made. The problem is our young girls are searching for something. They all desire love and acceptance and they are finding it in all the wrong places. If it is ingrained in them at a very young age that they are strong and powerful and worth SO much, would it make a difference? I can’t help but think that if they knew how fantastic they were - they wouldn't have to keep searching.

Girls today don't know they're worth it. And it makes me sad.

Paw Prints

Our Atti Poo is doing better. The jumping on the bed has stopped! We're trying the "ignore him until he calms down" when we get home and it's working wonders!! He calms down quickly and isn't jumping on us as much. We've had him a little over a month now and I've learned a lot from our little Pound Puppy.

1: No matter how often I clean the floor, it's never going to be clean ever again. :) There will always be hair...everywhere. And there WILL be paw prints on the back door. (And this is major growth!! I'm a little bit OCD!)
2: He loves us no matter what. We can punish and we can fuss but he loves us still.
3: Dogs WILL pee where they sleep. Our first week with Atticus, we had him sleep in a crate in our bedroom. Everyone says "crate trained dogs are happy dogs!". Yeah, not ours! No matter how many times we praised him, he acted like we were torturing him every time we put him in it. One night he cried so we let him out to go to the restroom but put him right back in when he was done. So the next night (4am to be exact) we woke up to him peeing in his crate. No warning, no whining - just peeing. Lovely! So he hasn't slept in it since. He sleeps fine on the floor and hasn't had any accidents since. People also told us "Dogs won't go to the bathroom where they sleep." LIES!! All lies!! Either that or we found the one exception to the rule, which let's face it - with my luck, that's probably it. :)
4: He loves to dig. Not dig out!! Just dig. He keeps 'relocating' his bone so the backyard looks like we have a Ground Squirrel infestation. :) 11pm one night we let him out before bed. He's outside for a long time so I look out the window and he's just a digging in the middle of the yard. I tell Daniel he can't come in the house with those dirty paws!! So my loving husband throws on some shoes, grabs a towel and heads out. (I can tell from the look on his face that he's repeating "I love my wife, I love my wife" over and over again in his head.) So while my husband is attempting to clean his dirty feet, I go out to investigate the hole. Well, Atti freaks out and comes to save his bone from discovery. He grabs the bone and spends the next five minutes running circles around the yard. So Daniel and I are trying not to wake the neighbors while convincing our dog that it's time for bed. I love my husband. He hasn't fussed once about cleaning the dogs little dirty paws. :)
5: Atticus gets car sick....every time. We've tried not feeding him - no good. We tried medicating him - kind of helped, he made it in to the house before he spewed. :) And I'm not sure what our beloved dog endured before he came to us but he's terrified of his brush as well.
6: We love him. He makes us nuts and he's underfoot all the time. He tore up my doormat and our fountain cover. But we think he's pretty awesome and we love coming home to him.

He really is a good dog. I make it sound horrible but he's mostly a well behaved dog. We're the ones that require training. :)

Until next time....

BAD DOG!!

But just so darn cute!!!

The Honeymoon is OVER!

Not with me and Daniel, we're still great! :)

It's Atticus, our beloved Pound Puppy. We spent a few blissful weeks where the trials were nothing terrible! And then HE LOST HIS EVER LOVING MIND!

For the past two mornings little Atti has thought it was OK to jump on the bed when Daniel leaves the room. He has NEVER done that before.

We leave him in the backyard while we're gone. He has a nice big backyard to play in with a fantastic screened in porch for shelter. And up until yesterday, he was happy with that. But when I got home last night he had torn apart my umbrella - shredded the poor thing! - and dumped over potted plants, spilling potting soil all over the back porch. More sadness.

Today we leave him for a little over one hour to come home to a SHREDDED door mat, more spilled plants and his crate all ajar. Argh! And now he thinks it's OK to chew on the carpet. What?! Excuse me! What happened to our sweet little Pound Puppy?! I'm pretty sure he's been possessed by the Devil.

Somewhere we've lost control. He thinks he's the boss. He's not the boss of me! How do we get it back? How do we get back the control we didn't realize we lost?! Do we crate him? Who wants to be in a cage for 8 hours a day?! He has an ENTIRE backyard! And we ALWAYS come home, why doesn't he realize that?

This has me concerned about our parenting skills. If in only the span of one month we've lost the control of our DOG how on earth are we going to handle CHILDREN?!

Now I'm searching the Internet for helpful tips on training a dog, hoping to channel Cesar Millan and magically have all the right answers to make our dog a calm, submissive member of the family. Argh.

Losing Dad

My friend recently lost her mother and she asked me if it ever gets better. That got me thinking and here's what I learned when I lost Dad...

1: It doesn’t ever NOT hurt. The pain is always there; the loss is always there. Some days it just hurts less and the pain feels farther away. I equate it to a dam, day by day I work on building my dam. And weeks go by and months go by and the dam holds up! Then I hear a song or smell something and it springs a little leak. Sometimes I can fix the hole before the flood but other times I can’t. And then the dam breaks and it hurts like it was yesterday. Regardless of the strength of my dam, the hurt is always present.

2: When he died, life went on. I remember being so angry with people who were laughing and enjoying life. Did they not understand?! Could they not see? But it wasn’t their loss, it was mine. Bob Schneider has a song that says “It’s not the end of everything; it’s just the end of everything you know.” There is SO much truth in that simple little line. My world changed when I lost my dad but it didn’t end. I still had to get up and keep going.

3: I don’t remember much about that year. Everything is fuzzy. I have two lifetimes - Before Dad Died & After Dad Died. And I cried all the time and for no reason at all. And then some days I would be so busy I would forget and when I remembered, the tears came.

4: ALL milestones A.D.D. are bitter-sweet. Graduations, weddings, births – these are all things that he will miss. I have to leave the room during all Father-Daughter dances at weddings. It breaks my heart so I distract myself.

5: People don’t know what to say and I had to be forgiving. They panic and say the first thing they can think of which is usually something like “He’s in a better place” or “You’ll see him again some day!” NONE of these are comforting; they ALL made me want to shake people until their eyes crossed. My best friend came to my house the day after he died, sat on the back stairs with me, said “This SUCKS!” and then cried with me. That was perfect! That’s how I felt! It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right and it SUCKED. But I had to forgive people, they didn’t know any better. They thought they were being kind and supportive. They will also tell you how you should be grieving; people who have never experienced loss gave me books and recommended how I should be handling it. :) Bottom line, people do what they think is helpful.

We're a family that handles things with humor so we made each other laugh and then we cried.

Yesterday was his birthday, the dam has a few leaks. :) But tomorrow's new and maybe my heart will hurt a little less.

Until next time...

2010 - Bring it on!

I hate making resolutions. LAME-O-RAMA!! Mainly because as soon as I make said "resolutions" I forget what they are. Now I'm putting them is writing which totally sucks because now I'll have constant reminders of what I promised myself I'd do. Well, here goes....I resolve to....

1. Find a Church. I hate looking for Churches. I don't like new people and I hate being pressured. I just want to sneak in the back, figure out if it's going to be a good fit and then leave once the service is over! I don't want to stand and announce 'I'm a visitor'. I don't want people calling all week to see if we're going to make it back next Sunday. I should also resolve to have a better attitude apparently. If anyone has any churches to recommend in the La Porte, Texas area please let me know!

2. Find a new job. I need to feel like I'm contributing more and it's time I move on. I guess I should add 'figure out what I want to be when I grow up'. This resolution stuff is getting complicated!

3. Learn to sew. I got a sewing machine for Christmas and I'm so excited to start my new adventure! Although I'm a horrible perfectionist so we'll see how that goes.

4. Be more creative in the kitchen. My dear husband never complains but I'm sure he's tired of the same 'go-to' meals I keep making. :) I have recipe books! I need to use them.

5. Get healthy. I've gained some weight since we got married and I think that's adding to my poopy attitude. I need to figure out what I'm going to enjoy doing (yeah right) and stick to it!

Ok, that wasn't so bad! I can do this! I just need to get a game plan, make some lists, do some research and stay focused. I can do this...I can do this...

I have all year, right?!