Shoooooopping

There is a difference between shoooopping and shopping. The former activity is the kind that takes hours per store. The kind where you just walk in not knowing what you want, taking all the time in the world to find that one thing you think you are looking for. The latter is the kind where you know what you're getting, you go in, grab it, and get out.

I much prefer the latter. If I want to shooooop then I prefer to do it online. Which is why I usually spend my lunch breaks shopping for cute dresses online from ModCloth. I don't buy these dresses, I just add them to my Amazon wish list and carry on. I usually forget about them a little bit later while I keep finding more cute stuff I sort of just have to have. Plus, I loathe shopping for jeans (thus explaining why I have like, none), so shopping for dresses makes me happy.

I used to have this thing on the side of my blog entry layout where I could just type in the item I wanted on amazon, and then the blog would add a picture of it to the blog with a link to the product. It was great! And then blogger fucked up updated their layout, and even if I use the old interface I still can't use the damn Amazon thing. And I don't know how to get it back because blogger isn't exactly the most user-friendly interface to begin with. So..... I'm gonna have to do this all manually, which is gonna piss me off since I'm not the one who messed it up.

Anyways, so onto the dresses.

Number 1: Tea Leaves Dress

I find that bubble skirts like this make my giant legs look a little slimmer. Plus, it has an A-line shape, which is always good. Since it's a part of the current 25% off Cyber Monday (always sounds dirty to me) sale, it can be mine yours for only $48.99! You bought me a dress! You shouldn't have!

Number Dos: Thanks a Dot Dress

The website won't let me keep a picture of the dress, so lemme 'splain it to you. It's got cap sleeves, it's navy blue, and has light blue tiny polka dot accents on it. It's 100% cotton and buttons up the front (with cute polka dot ribbon embellishment) and has little polka dotted bows on it at the sleeves. Basically, it's a glorified shirt dress, but it doesn't look like you're going on a safari. It looks like you're going to be a flight attendant circa 1965. Or you could follow the link and see it for yourself, just in order to test my descriptive abilities. It's out of stock right now, so you can just purchase it for me at a later date. It's cool, I accept presents all year round. 

Dress Number THREE!!!!!  SoCal Bungalow Dress

Purple is one of my favorite colors. And I think you can never go wrong wearing a dark purple dress, because it has the slimming effects of black, but is way more fun than black. Plus, it can keep people guessing from far away... "Is it purple? Is it black?" This dress sort of works great for anything. Pair it with a cardigan and wear it to work, or wear it as is on date night. Or you could wear it to a wedding. Maybe a funeral? Probably not a job interview, though. Just saying. I'll make this promise now, that when I receive it at my apartment (shipped from you, of course) that I will wear it at work, on date night, and maybe to a wedding (assuming I go to another one after this year is over, that is). For $50, it basically pays for itself. 

Lucky Number Four: Midnight Bird Song Dress

This one is my FAVORITE. Let me repeat that. My favorite dress on this list. It might be because of my affinity for those of Class Aves. It might be because it's simply just so friggin' cute. I'm not totally sure, so I'll say it's a not-that-creepy combination of both. Lucky for you this dress is sold out, otherwise I'd demand that you all purchase me one immediately. (Combine your resources!!!) Simply because every grandma girl needs a sweater dress with retro birds sewn on to it. 

That's it for today, though. I did recently buy myself 4 new dresses, but none of them are those listed above. They're cute, though. Only one is from ModCloth, though, as I have a hard time justifying purchasing a $100 dress that probably had a production cost of $25. 

ModCloth does have some super cute NYE dresses, though. Which I should probably start thinking about.

And no, I didn't get paid by the company for any of this post. But I probably should. (Get on that, ModCloth!)

Tis the Season.... to be stabby

I generally do everything I can to avoid Black Friday shopping because people are crappy, and the traffic is crappy, and even though the deals are great, there is nothing that really makes me more stabby than standing in an hour long line to be told something along the lines of:

"We just sold out."
"I realize you purchased this online and selected store pickup, but we failed to do this for you. Whoops my bad. So, we're out. Anything else I can get you?"
"I'm sorry, I can't actually help you with this issue, but did you find anything you wanted while you were waiting upwards of an hour for my attention?"

Or the inevitable bitching that comes from other stabby people around me during the Christmas shopping season. You know the ones.... the ones that stand behind you in line and bitch about you and everyone else in a tone that you can hear them in, but they think you can't. (Read: hypocrisy. I, apparently, am the only person allowed to be stabby in retail stores this time of year.)

Since I try to avoid Black Friday shopping, it's only fitting that I've been out shopping every day this holiday weekend. True, I got good deals. And I managed to hit up stores that either are in a not-so-busy location, or early enough to beat people. Matt and I have a good amount of our Christmas shopping done, or we have an idea of what to get those that are left, with only a few stragglers. Which is nice, since there are, clearly, more important things for us to do this month.

Like, our anniversary!

December 4th is our special day, and so on this Friday we will head out to Las Vegas to celebrate in Sin City together. Since we "live in sin" and all, this is appropriate.

Matt has never been to Vegas, and I LOVE Vegas, so we are both very excited. Along with the fact that we get to spend 5 days alone together without the worry of work, school, or errands. That makes me happy. Sometimes it seems that both our lives get so busy and we don't ever get to see each other outside of the few hours that we are home before bedtime.

PS: It's gonna be freaking cold in Vegas while we are there.
PPS: It's also the Rock 'n Roll Marathon. Which means an extra 30,000 people on the strip. Yay?

We will be staying at Treasure Island, which I've never stayed at, and has been recently renovated (I think?). It's in the center of the strip, so that makes everything super convenient. Plus, it's a fun hotel. We both planned surprises for us while we are there. I've never been able to see the Sirens show outside the hotel, because it's always been canceled for wind when I'm there. Matt has never seen a Cirque du Soleil show, and I've only seen Zumanity (which I think means that basically, I've never seen a real CdS show either) so I bought us super-good seats for the Mystere show.

My sister and brother-in-law saw Mystere when in Vegas for their honeymoon a few weeks ago. My sister LOVED it. Since she's the ballerina, I'll take her word for it's goodness.

Matt had a surprise for about a month that I had no idea about, but last night he decided to tell me what it is, so that I can plan my outfit appropriately. The surprise? A hot air balloon ride at sunrise. I can't wait! I've always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon, and the surprise is a perfect one for our anniversary. I'm beyond excited!

I'm in a balloon! Everybody look at me I'm in a mother fucking BALLOON!!!!!!!

In other news, so that Matt and I can properly document our fabulous trip to Vegas together, we decided to buy ourselves our Christmas present early. Last week at Target we saw a Panasonic Lumix compact system camera on sale for $599, but it came with a FREE 45-200mm lens, which retails at $350. This was like, a $1000 system for $600. I stood there and lusted over it for a bit, but decided to not spend that money right then and there and went home.

Tuesday I found the same deal at Best Buy, with a memory card for free too at the same price and decided it was meant to be. So, we bought it for ourselves, and called it Christmas. It's simply beautiful, and our new camera makes me happy. I just wish I knew how to use it better. It's super sensitive to movement, and almost every picture I take comes out blurry. Clearly, I shake more than I thought I did. Makes you glad I'm not a surgeon after all, doesn't it?

Isn't she beautiful?

Isn't she lovely?

I seriously don't really know what the hell I'm doing when I use this camera, except that we now have lots of pictures of our Christmas tree and the cat. And that when I try to take long-distance shots of the Christmas lights on the houses beyond the canyon, they come out with neat little light effects. Which is my nice way of telling myself that I can't hold anything still for even 2 seconds. (2 seconds has never been so long!!) If you, dear reader, know your way around a DSLR or a Compact system camera, please feel free to leave a comment.... I can use all the help I can get!!

To wrap this up, Matt and I will be outta here Friday night until Tuesday night, and I couldn't be more excited. I can't wait to spend some quality fun time with my man, and couldn't think of a better way to celebrate us. <3

"Jennifer"

Every day, for as long as I can remember, I have gotten in a fight with someone called Jennifer.

It's not that she doesn't deserve it, though. Jennifer is a hateful bitch.

You may know her as someone else, but every girl has met her at one point in their lives or another.
Some women tell her she is ridiculous and to shut the fuck up. Those girls are the strong ones. Some befriend her for just a little bit, she has their best interest at heart. Jennifer just wants you to be the best you possible. Jennifer's best interest is in physicality; and some girls befriend her forever.


I am the latter of those girls. Except I would call Jennifer a frenemy at best. She's been around for over 10 years, and we have had some really great times together. For a while now, though, Jennifer hasn't been in control nearly as much as she would like to be. Which makes her even more bitchy than usual.

(I swear I'm not actually talking about myself here, but I suppose the presence of "Jennifer" does make me more bitchy.)

For a while, it was just me. And while I wasn't happy with that, I certainly kept myself busy. I did that by starting graduate school and working out a lot. I'm talking 1-2 hours every day. More on weekends. I remember having what I would call "Super Saturdays" which were, in reality just a 5 hour exercise purge. I'd hit up two different gyms, go to two different dance classes, run, do some abs and strength, and then hit poolside for the rest of the day. Or study in Starbucks, depending on the season.

It was amazing and horrible all at the same time.

Let me explain.... when I was neck-deep in it, I didn't realize it was maybe a tiny bit  ridiculous. I thought I was a rock star. I had all this energy (Where the hell did that go?) and time to burn, and best of all I was getting skinnier so everything was awesome. On weekdays, I had a job with minimal responsbility, grad school classes which I did homework at the last minute for, which left me ample time to work out at night. I was, in essence, in a very serious relationship with my gym.

I also ate 1000 calories a day, I wrote down every single thing I intook, and I portioned out foods (ahem, when I ate) like I was on rations during the Cold War. I never touched sugar, I only drank caffeine first thing in the morning, and I drank water like a fish. (Some of these things I still do.)

In the winter I lived on Earl Grey tea. With non-fat half & half, and two splenda's. That was all I needed, really. Add a protein shake for lunch, some baked chicken for dinner and I was good. I had almost no food in my apartment, not because I was broke, but because I didn't eat it. I had skim milk (to mix with protein), diet coke, half & half, chicken, and some green beans. I thought it was perfectly normal. Jennifer told me I was amazing. I was confident, pseudo-happy, and always getting thinner.

I have always struggled with my weight. For as long as I can remember. And I always remember there being a part of me which constantly told myself that I was any combination of the following:

Ugly
Fat
Worthless
Disgusting
Lazy
Inadequate
Unattractive
Huge
Giant-Sized
Squishy
Fluffy
Gross

However you want to stack them, I knew how to tell myself these things. And I always believed myself.

Then one day, Matt came along. He picked up on my slight body image issue eating disorder, and renamed that part of me "Jennifer". So that every time I have a moment, of sorts, he can tell me that Jennifer needs to leave his girlfriend the fuck alone, because he wants to enjoy some time with her. Or some variation of that.

With all the weddings I've been in this year, coupled with stress of the 8430238596 projects I've got going on, I've been in a serious body-funk.

I've taken more diet pills this year than I know how to count. And while I know that they basically don't do anything beneficial, they do curb my appetite to almost nothing. I've starved myself voluntarily, telling myself that the hunger pain is an achievement. I've exercised to the point of passing out. I've at some point been a member at three different gyms at one time. I've eschewed almost all of my other responsibilities so that I could work out. I've lost productivity time at work because all I can think about is getting to the gym, and I've developed elaborate schedules in order to maximize my workout time and time with Matt.

The thing that bothers me is that I'm in the happiest place in my life that I've ever been in. I have a man that I love more than anything, who loves me exactly as I am. I have a job that pays me well, which I really enjoy. I have amazing family and friends, and comparatively speaking, I'm doing pretty well for myself. (Read: I'm not unemployed, broke as shit, and standing on Wall Street in the freezing cold. I'm not the 1% by any means, but I'm working hard for what I've got.) And I still have many, many days in which I'm so incredibly unhappy, and ferociously uncomfortable in my own skin that I almost end up in an anxiety attack because of it. I've started to take the hate I have for my own body out on it at the gym.

I look at my friends on facebook and in real life who have real woman bodies that they may not love as much as I imagine they do, but they're happy in light of it. They don't do half the crap that I do to my body. They know that the love they receive from their loved ones is not rooted in physical appearance. (I know this, too, but Jennifer doesn't. And Jennifer..... as much as I hate it..... is a part of me. I've somehow learned, not from any one in particular, that my worthiness of being loved and successful is rooted in my appearance.) I envy these women; these friends of mine. I wish that I could have the physical confidence that they do. Instead of feeling like I should be wearing a paper bag on most days.

I suppose my point is that no matter how hard I've tried to rid myself of this disorder, it will always follow me around. I know this. I'll always have a part of Jennifer inside me. Ultimately, though, I wish that one day I will see myself as others who love me see me. I wish that I can exude the confidence that I want to, and that when someone tells me they think I'm beautiful..... I can feel it.