Ring, Ring

I thought it was about time to ring in the new year somewhere online as I do intend to keep blogging this year! It's just going to change quite a bit. I'm not doing resolutions this year. I'm not even setting goals for myself for the year. I've come to learn over the years that making resolutions and setting goals is really not a good thing for me. I tend to set them impossibly high and inevitably fail because they're unattainable. THIS YEAR I WILL TAKE CARE OF MYSELF! How unrealistic and how broad is that? Many of our resolutions and goals are almost set up to be viewed as failure when in actuality, they're often not. We do plenty of things to take care of ourselves, the best we know how throughout the year. But when we set this concrete picture in our mind of a perfect existence of what "taking care of myself" looks like, it'll never be achievable. There are too many factors beyond our control to ever have that perfect picture. So this year, I'm going to do the best that I can, a day at a time. That's not a goal, that's not a resolution, that's just what I'm going to do. And sometimes the best that I can probably WON'T be too great :p But it's nice to at least acknowledge that it's the best I can for today and take the weight of impossible goals off of my shoulders.

This past year sort of showed me that there needed to be a big change like that. This was the first year that I didn't do an end of the year reading recap and honestly, I'm ok with that. When I finish this post, I think I'm going to post on Stuff as Dreams and put it on hiatus officially for now so people don't wonder where the hell I've gone to. It won't be a permanent goodbye from there. I like to leave the possibility open of going back there. But for now, the commitment that I feel when I'm blogging there is just overwhelming. I need a more private place that feels more like a journal than a book blog and this has become that. Though this will also be a place to talk about books too I'm sure, though probably much differently than I talked about them on Stuff as Dreams. I DO think I still want to keep track of what I read though, so maybe I'll start a new page for that here.

My holidays were really nice and just exactly what I needed them to be this year :) The only shitty part was a migraine that started on Christmas Eve and didn't let up for 4 days :/ I haven't had a migraine like that in years. I had to get my neurologist to call in a steroid pack to finally break it up. We did Christmas eve at my dad's house like we always do and it was nice to have tradition during this time of what's been chaos! Everyone had a really good time I think and it was really nice to have the time together. With everyone getting older now and with my dad's cancer, it's more and more rare that all of us are in the same room together, so that night was extra special.

Christmas morning was spent with tradition too with me and my sister sleeping at my mom's house and opening gifts first thing in the morning!! The only difference was my sister's boyfriend was with us too which was nice. I've really come to appreciate family even more this year. Tradition especially has meant the world to me when everything else has been so full of change and so unknown. If you haven't figured it out already, I do NOT do well with change and I don't like to have things left unknown. There's this part of my brain that wants to know everything about anything that's going on and I hate uncertainty. With my dad's cancer, I've learned more medically than I have in my entire education leading up to me working in intake at a hospital. It's probably NOT the healthiest coping mechanism, but, it at least leaves me prepared and educated. So spending the holidays without any surprises and falling into the comfort of family was so wonderful.

New years eve, I spent most of the afternoon and night with my mom and then went by my dad's to ring in the new year with him at midnight. It was a rough night with him honestly. He had a bad night. More mentally than anything...I think the coming year makes him nervous, but we had a really good talk that night and I think he took what he needed from it and things seem to be better for him since. He found out two days before that his tumor had grown. It has only grown 7mm, but the fact that it grew at all is discouraging. So treatment is about to get stepped up even more with radiation 5 days a week getting added to his chemo. He's going to have a lot of fighting to do :/ It will be an interesting year!

I'm going to try to lay out my plans for reading for the month this year at the beginning of the month! Not so much as a goal, but just as sort of a present to myself. It's almost like I get to go pick a few treats off of the shelves and lay them out for the month. Of course I can switch them out if I want to, but it gives me something to look forward to :) So that's what I did today....I picked out a few books for the month of January, a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction, adult fiction, YA, poetry, essays, things I've been wanting to read for a while and things I've just discovered :)

I'll leave you with this beautiful poem that I discovered last night that Adrienne Rich opens her collection, The Dream of a Common Language with...it's called "Power". And it's exactly what I needed to read right now.

Happy Stuff of the Day!

Another Sunday has come and gone and with it a bunch of little happy things. I liked Debi's idea in the comments of doing "happy posts" again, so I'll try to do them every now and then...trying to be more aware of the good things that the day has brought. I can't promise they'll become terribly frequent posts. It's not that there's not good stuff in every day, it's that there's not always the time to write up a post. What I CAN do though is try to be more aware of the things that bring me joy, even if for only a short moment, each day. So today...

It was the start of regular season for the Saints!! Though, yes...we played horribly and lost :( But I still love football season and love game days. We normally all get together at my mom's house and grill for the game and that's exactly what we did today. The weather was just gorgeous too. It was just me, my mom and my little brother for the first half and my dad came over for the second half. It was good to get him out of his house for a little while. He wasn't feeling great though, so he went home a little before the game ended.

After the game, me and my brother went to my dad's and finally moved a bunch of old furniture out of the house and onto the curb so that he can get a new bed. He needs one desperately. My dad has slept on a recliner for 3 years now for reasons I won't even try to explain. Not much makes sense with my dad. But he's finally agreed to get a bed with chemo likely coming up very soon. So we cleaned out my grandma's old room, which will become his now. It was tough work, but I'm glad it's done so that he'll have a peaceful place.

Speaking of my brother, I just love this picture of him and his girlfriend so much :) They're so cute together and so perfect together. They've been together over a year now and she's such a sweetheart. She's great for him too. She's been a fantastic motivator for him when it comes to school and really just life in general.

Lizards! It's no secret that I think lizards are just adorable if you take a look at my instagram feed :p New Orleans is FULL of little anole lizards, but I don't think this is an anole lizard. It's a little bit bigger and has spots on it. I've never seen one that looks like this down here...Wondering what it is!

Pumpkin Spice Lattes! It's finally that time of the year!!! PSLs are a very happy drink for me. They're not only absolutely amazing and just fill you with warmth, but they're also a seasonal drink that remind me that the worst of summer is surely over. And looking at the 10 day forecast today, there's not a single day of temperatures above the 80s! Hooray!

Tonight's sunset was absolutely gorgeous. I wish a camera could do it justice, but it just can't. It's the kind of sunset that makes you wish you were a painter. At least it makes me wish *I* were a painter :p Because I'm definitely not. But the sky looked like a piece of art tonight.

Talked to a friend tonight that I hadn't talked to in awhile for about 45 minutes and while talking to her I got my laundry done, got my floors swept, got my patio swept and got Megan's package packed up and ready to mail tomorrow. Oh and I got my overnight bag mostly packed to bring to work with me tomorrow to sleep at my mom's for my dad's biopsy Tuesday morning.

All in all, a good day :)

Thank Goodness For Sundays

I love Sundays. Which is funny because as a child, Sundays were days that I absolutely dreaded and I didn't think that would ever change. Sunday represented being forced to go to church which I always hated so much. To make matters worse, I was forced to be an altar boy as a child AND join choir. If that wasn't bad enough, the nun who was in charge of choir decided she really liked my voice and would make me sing solos. I've always been an extremely introverted person, so this was not a good thing. I did love that Irish nun though...Sister Ann. I'll never forget her and still think about her from time to time. I was sad when her convent reassigned her back to Ireland. She wrote to me from time to time but we lost touch in high school. In addition to church on Sundays, there was also the reminder that the next day was school. It wasn't even so much that I disliked school itself, but I was bullied a lot in elementary school for my weight and the fact that I was a "fag" even though I was nowhere near ready to come out. I was in denial myself those days.

I've often said that if I ever went back to school to get a PhD, I think I'd do my dissertation on sexuality in childhood. It's a touchy subject, but something that I think needs to be addressed more. I think things are much much better now than they were when I was a child, but there's still a great deal of work that needs to be done. I wonder what it would be like to be born now into a world where gay marriage is legal. That's pretty awesome. And it's amazing when we look at how far things have come from 34 years ago when I was brought into the world.

The bullying that happened to me when I was a kid definitely changed me as a person and that's why I'd like to do research on that. When I look at home videos of myself as a child, it's obvious that I'm gay. I don't mean to stereotype here, but it's obvious. I had limp wrist syndrome :p I walked with my hips moving from side to side, my voice had more of a lisp to it. Things that are unrecognizable to me now. I consciously changed those things and worked on them for years until they were gone because of the bullying. I changed the essence of who I was as a person because of the cruelty that others put on me. I often wonder what life would be like if I wasn't bullied. Would I be more extroverted? Would I not have such horrible social anxiety? Would I not be so conscious about my weight or the way I look? Would I have come out sooner and therefore been happier sooner? Would I find it easier to date? The answer to all of those questions is surely "yes". I hope so badly that the somewhat normalization of the lgbt experience in today's society leads to kids these days knowing that they're ok as they are and that they don't need to lose themselves at such a young age.

Wow...I did NOT plan on this post being about all that :p My original point is that Sundays are now my favorite day of that week :p It's the one day where I have no obligations for the most part aside from doing whatever *I* want to do. And it's the start of my weekend. So today has been a good day. Yesterday was awful. I didn't wake up until an hour before work and barely made it to work on time, so most of what I had planned to do yesterday went out the window. I did pay a few bills though, I worked, and I talked to Austin who said he couldn't come down to help move furniture out of my dad's house, so that left today free for me to get stuff done! I called CVS to see what meds they had for me to pick up and I told them they can keep one of them. I HATE my insurance company. My doctor had prescribed me a different triptan for my migraines called Treximet. If you have migraines, triptans are pretty much the only medication that will get rid of them. I take Maxalt most of the time and since a generic has come out, it only costs me $5 now for 9 pills. But I've been on it so long that it's becoming less and less effective. So she wanted to give me a second one. The Treximet would've cost me $119 for NINE PILLS!! Screw that. I know the medication is expensive, but seriously?

I did finally get a hair cut today and let me tell you I feel like a new person!!! I HATE when my hair gets to a certain point. It drives me nuts. I found a place here on the north shore called Sports Clips and it will definitely be my go to place for now on for hair cuts! They specialize in men's haircuts and the stylists stay up to date on the "latest cuts" for men. Their big thing is that they have tvs you can watch with sports games on while you're getting your hair cut. She did a great job and since it was my first time there, she gave me a free shampoo and shoulder massage which was awesome. They sit you in a massage chair while they're washing your hair and wrap your face in a hot towel and then use this massager to massage your back, neck and shoulders. Highly recommended!

Then I came home and got laundry done which was so badly needed. I had no clean towels and two loads of clothes that needed to be done. AND I finally changed my sheets too. It feels so good to go to bed in freshly washed sheets :) I didn't get to clean the patio today like I wanted to because it's rained all day :/ BUT I do love the rain, so I think I'll spend the rest of the afternoon reading and listening to the thunder after I do a bit of blog reading :) Oh, also I found this Indian scarf/cloth/I'm not really sure what? that I got from I don't know where? and decided to use it as a table cloth for my table that I got from my sister and finally put out my placemats too! It's so nice to finally have a dining room table after being in my apartment for 3 years :p

Finally, I got to work on my reading room some more!!! It's still a work in progress, but I'm happy with how it's coming along and it's very cozy :) Here are some pics! This is what you see when you first walk in:

I have this really awesome book of James Jean prints called Kindling that I've been using to decorate that's an AMAZING deal. He's one of my favorite artists and if you're a fan of art, this is a must have book at an incredible price. It's a collection of 12 removable prints that are nice quality and nice size for about $20. Here's a closer look at the prints above the sofa:

On side of the sofa are the "floating bookshelves" currently holding a few RIP reads with one of my favorite prints, the Holstee Manifesto, above it:

Here's a close up of the Holstee print...I love everything that they do too. Here's a link to their website, but be forewarned, you may want everything they have :p

And finally, here's what it looks like across from the sofa...this area is a work in progress. There's a lot of crap over there still. This room was pretty much a storage room before it became the reading room, so I need to work on cleaning this up some more. The goal is for that wall to eventually be a full gallery wall:

Right now it's just two James Jean prints, a Neil Gaiman print illustrated by David Mack, and a collage that Megan did for me probably 10 years ago that I really love! Here's close ups of the art work so far:

And that's my Sunday in a nutshell so far! It's nice to be able to cross some stuff off of the list. Wish I could've crossed more off the list but oh well...it is what it is. Here's hoping for a good week with nothing but great news :)

#38 - Bake 100 Different Cookies Update

 

I LOVE these cookies. They remind me of being a little kid and of holidays. In the family, we call them "Aunt Elma's Cookies" or "Winn-Dixie Cookies" but they're actually called Yellow Cake Cookies and I feel a bit like I'm cheating by counting them for this goal because they're so simple :p The family name for the cookies is because my Aunt Elma who's long passed away was famous for making these cookies and she always made them with Winn-Dixie brand yellow cake mix. Here's how easy they are:

In a bowl mix a box of yellow cake mix, two eggs, 1/2 cup of oil and 1 cup of whatever the hell you want to put in them! For this batch I used a mix of white chocolate chips, chocolate chips and heath bar candy pieces. Bake them at 350 degrees for 14 minutes. Ta-da!

Seriously....simplest cookie ever and SO GOOD! If you want to feel less like you're cheating you can make your own yellow cake mix of course, but I always just buy one, lol. Ah well.

#39 - Bake 50 Different Pies Update

I grew up with this pie and I'll always have memories of my gram attached to it. Lemon meringue pie. One of my favorites. For almost every holiday for as long as I can remember, my gram has ALWAYS had a lemon meringue pie at her house....this is my mom's mom. Right before I moved into my apartment, I told my gram at Easter that I was going to have to get her recipe for lemon meringue pie from her one day. I said it laughing, thinking it was a secret recipe that she was going to take to the grave with her because it tastes SO. DAMN. GOOD. So I can't even BEGIN to tell you how hard I laughed when she nonchalantly went into her pantry and came out with a box of jello lemon pudding mix and said "here you go!" Yep....she uses the recipe right off the lemon pudding jello box. She makes her meringue a tiny bit differently, but I use the meringue recipe off of the pudding box too. Three egg white and 1/3 cup of sugar. And I use a frozen pie crust too. This is a pretty easy pie to make but it's SO DAMN GOOD! See that, all in caps twice in this post....I promise you it really is :p