direction

There's a lot going on. No I'm not announcing anything big or life changing. I'm just pointing out that in my life, my loved ones lives, my community, the world, there's a lot going on. There always is, some days it's just more obvious and pressing than others. 

I've said it before, I started this blog because all the lovely ladies of the blogs I read each day seem to love blogging. I thought, well I can try that too. I didn't have a concept in mind, I just winged it. And while I've rambled and tried to find/discover what would be great for me to blog about I still haven't exactly found my direction. 

That may have to do with me personally feeling a little bit of a lack of direction in the read world. (Yes the internet is real, but totally different than the real actual world.)

Work for me has been ... difficult on my best days. I was lucky enough to find a job that I loved right after graduating with my masters. Unfortunately for the past two years the only constant at my job has been change, a LOT of staff changes, and a lot of changes for my working environment and actual job day to day duties. When things were bad and I didn't think it could get worse, it did. So that's made it difficult for me, to make it through each work day, and in my non working hours to be happy and perky and up to other things let alone share them with you all. I'm normally a really positive, peppy, and optimistic person. There are people that have never seen me be anything less than 210% positive and happy. But like I said, it's been harder and harder to be my usual self with that going on. 

I feel weighed down, emotionally and physically. (Having packed on some pounds the past year hasn't helped that either I'm sure.) To to try to recover from all this negative I've just written a novel about for the none existent people that read this blog, the point of all of this is to say that's where I am but I'm trying to get past that. I'm trying, but bear with me. There may be weeks like last week where I didn't have five good things to high five for the week. When making it through the work week was the best thing that happened. So as I find my direction, here on the interwebs and somewhat in my life, bear with me.

And unlike boys I'm always open for asking for directions when needed, so if you have any to give I'm open to them!

high five for friday

Hey there peeps! (Sorry that was cheesy but I couldn't help myself. Sometimes you just get an urge to be cheesy and you have to go for it.) Why am I so happy that I'm being cheesy? I'm on vacation!!!

This week started off bad and it seemed like it was going to continue but I was able to "take back" this week and make it better!

1. Friends. One of our new neighbors who we're now good friends had a birthday. We had fun celebrating with her, even though it was just dinner out at a Mexican restaurant and a bonfire to relax afterwards. Happy birthday L! 
2. No Work Today. I took a vacation day. I'll be in the lovely town of Crystal River. I'll be a tourist instead of a resident for once!
3. Disney World. Hubby has a tournament and instead of being bored watching I threw caution to the wind and I'm taking myself to Disney for the day!
4. Bomas. It's a restaurant at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. It just so happens to be Hubby's favorite and I just so happen to be awesome enough that I made reservations for us to go while we're in Orlando for the day.
5. 96 hours. In the next 96 hours I'll be on a mini vacation. I have no work Monday! I've got 4 days off of work and a mini vacation planned. I'm floating on happiness right now!

Sources: 2. google images via cabins.com/3. (1)google images via foxnews & (2) SASOCF /4. google images via aklresort

I'd link up to Lauren/frommygreydeskblog's High Five For Friday but I'm away from the interwebs, let's pretend I did...

weekend update

I'm having a bad day today, and it's not even noon! You know those days, the things that happen aren't anything big but you feel like Eeyore walking around with a rain cloud around your head. Yeah that's me today. Hopefully this funk passes! 

 Source: google images via nyc152

 
Anyway, on to what I did this weekend!

Saturday. I ran jogged (and walked) and did a bit of weights and leg stuff. Which is huge because I keep starting and stopping trying to run and be active. I'm trying the C25K app and while I made it once to day 1 of week 2 I've been stuck on re-starting on week 1 a half dozen times now. Everything from my hips down still hurts but hopefully I'll keep working out and that'll pass.

Source: google images via runningonfifty

 Sunday. I cleaned a bit around the house. I tried to do more but unexpectedly our dryer stopped working. And Hubby yelled and screamed and cursed and kicked it trying to get it to work. He also kept coming into the house looking at YouTube videos trying to figure things out. We still have no clue at all what's wrong with it or how to fix it, we gave up on it for the time being. We instead went off to Hubby's uncle's house to spend the evening with them. They just moved to town from Colorado (and I'd never met him before, it is Hubby's step-Dad's half brother after all) and in the few weeks they've been around we've really enjoyed hanging out with them! It's great to have family around town!

high five for friday

1. Return to work. Who would ever think you'd be excited to go back to work!?! That's how stir crazy I'd gotten after being home all the week before sick.
2. Meal Planning. So to try to be healthy and save money (those may be two separate things but I sort of clumped it together) I'm trying to stick to meal planning. This week every single meal Hubby and I have had has come from the made ahead plan of "what's for dinner" I came up with. Or leftovers from that. But nothing else was paid for, despite the temptation of doing so.
3.The Big C. So my Showtime free trial is ending this month and I'm rushing to watch everything I can on it until then. So I'm up to the beginning of Season 2 of this show. It's funny it's sad and it's realistic. I'm really enjoy it.
4 & 5. It's Friday. It's t minus 6 hours until I'm free from my office for the weekend! That's celebration enough!

linked up to Lauren's High Five For Friday

seriously!?!

So I read around the interwebs and there are all these amazing women (okay most bloggers tend to be amazing in my eyes for lots of different reasons). I'm specifically talking about the frugal masters. The ladies that shop exclusively at thrift stores (Goodwill, etc.) and discount stores (Ross, Marshalls, etc.) and have AMAZING results. I read about their purchases steals and I'm practically drooling. I'm also a bit outraged because there's nothing like that at any of my local stores! An amazing pair of new designer named shoes that are so in and perfect for every fashionable outfit she wears, for under $20. Haha you're making that up. A perfect top/blouse/pants/any clothing item that's an amazing designer name, great quality, and for $20. Can't have really happened. A dresser you oh so amazingly made into an amazing TV stand and bought on craigslist for $30. She must have fudged that story from reality into an amazing fairytale. I guess you can get what my reactions tend to be on these fabulous ladies amazing finds.

I can't go so far as to say that I've landed anything along the lines of those major leave savers but I do think I stumbled upon a steal. You see many months ago I found these posted on a fashion blog or pinterest (I can't exactly remember) and drooled over them. 

Source: my pinterest via endless amazon's shoe store

They were $80 and while I was in lurve with them there was no way I was actually going to buy them. I may have thought about pressing that "buy" button on Amazon in a fit of online window shopping silliness but I didn't actually do it. They just sat on my "Want" pinterest board, looking pretty but not destined to be mine.

Flash forward to last thursday. After another rough day at work (long story) Hubby decided I needed to go out. That is after I'd come home before him and already changed into comfy PJs. So I changed back into real people clothes and we went out. I picked up my 365 Days of Puppies calendar and my 365 Cute Overload calendar (one for the office and one for home) that I'd reserved since they were finally 50%. (FYI we lost our seasonal mall calendar store and now only have one bookstore, Barnes and Noble, so that's where I had to shop. They let you reserve things online and they'll hold them for 3 days for you to pick it up and pay for it.) Hubby decided he wanted to go to Sports Authority. He decided he now needs a new jacket that zips all the way up in the front for him to wear while exercising while it's cold. Apparently Sports Authority didn't have anything good. 

So at the very end of that shopping center/mall is a Ross outparcel. (It was so cold I made Hubby drive us the few hundred feet to get to that store. I still froze a bit but it was much better!) While he went to look at men's stuff I went to housewear and shoes. 

Let me backtrack. There's no nice way of saying this. The shopping center/mall we were at is about *this close* to dying because stores keep leaving, there's no anchor store (besides the movie theater) and it tends to attract a more urban ghetto lower socioeconomic customers people than the other mall on the nicer end of town. So the few stores that are open aren't the nicest. And for instance this Ross is part of a chain but you better believe it's not as nice as a Ross somewhere else in a better neighborhood. I'm not talking about it being a bit rundown I'm talking about that actual merchandise they carry. So I don't shop there often because things are of lesser quality and therefore less of a "deal" to purchase (low quality and lower price). 

Anyway, they had all of 8 candles in the whole store. They were pitiful, I wouldn't spend a $1 on what they had, clearly no one else will because they looked like they'd been there for a while. (And they were not only $1) So on to shoes. Scanning the racks I saw hideous "who would ever wear those!?!" shoes. And in between them, as if a spotlight shone on them, I found these .. for $25.99. Seriously!?!

I sat there wearing them, walked hobbled around the aisle and started at them on my feet, debating if I should even spend that much on a pair of sandals in winter. And I'll be honest beyond knowing they looked like those shoes I loved they didn't seem to be made of the best quality and I wasn't really sure if it was worth it. But I wore them and knew I loved them. I can't tell if these were made specifically for "outlet" sales (like how brand's outlet clothes are a touch bit lesser than their store versions to match that outlet price they're being sold for). But in the end I went for it anyway. From $80 to $25.99, I'd say that quantifies as a "steal".

I kind of want to give myself a little pat on the back. Is that pathetic? Or good?

Note: I wanted to share this before but couldn't get my act together to publish it any time near when it happened, sorry!

mostly human

That's how I'm feeling today, after being sick all last week. Hubby is calling me Sniffles because that's what I'm doing a lot of. But I'm no longer physically attached to my tissue boxes nor are there piles of icky used (but folded) tissues around me. So like I said, I'm feeling mostly human.

Because of that I wanted to reach out and say hello, even though I don't have anything exciting to share. So instead here is something cute.

Source: one of my favorite blogs, Dog Shaming

Don't we all feel like this sometimes?