Writer's Block Challenge: Day 2

Your Opinion on Cheating

Well, well, well this is a fun one. My opinion on cheating. If you don't want to know the answer to this one than quit reading now. If you don't like what you read, don't say you weren't warned.


Now, onto the fun part. Let's start off by saying that though I have had opportunity I have never cheated on someone when I was in a committed relationship with them. Let us also say that I have been cheated on many, many, many times. I'm not really sure what that says about me to be honest. I'm sure we could mention something about loyalty and probably naivety or stupidity.


At any rate this being said I have some experience in the role of the person who is cheated on and here is what I think about it.


If you really love the person you would not cheat. Period.


If you use the excuse "I didn't want to hurt them" in terms of not wanting to break up when they find out that you're cheating (and they will) it will hurt them more.


If you are cheating you have no respect for the person you are with.


You can use the excuse that you are not getting what you "need" out of the relationship that you are in. If that is the case then you need to reconsider the relationship you are in.


Basically, in a nutshell, that is my opinion on cheating. Take it or leave it.

Writer's Block Challenge: Day 1

Introduce Yourself and Fifteen Interesting Facts

1. I am OBSESSED with Twitter, to the point that on my way back from Ardmore once my phone was dead and I couldn't check Twitter and had a little breakdown.

2. I have recently discovered that if I don't work out every day I feel guilty and icky.

3. I resisted Pinterest, but now am addicted.

4. I have a love/hate relationship with my treadmill.

5. My guilty pleasures are ABC Family original shows.

6. I cannot go into a book store and not spend money.

7. I think Apple/Macintosh/anything starting with "i" is pure evil and cult-like.

8. I think my mp3 player is psychic and knows exactly what I need to hear.

9. I don't hate coffee, but I don't love it, however for the adventure I'm planning I feel like I need to learn to love it.

10. I can do a whole lot of things at once and still know exactly what you said and repeat it back to you.

11. I love, love, love Blue Bloods, but only allow myself to watch it when I am running on the treadmill.

12. I have tried to do Couch 2 5K twice and I have stopped at week 4 both times (though this time I just changed to a different interval training that is working better, so it is still a victory).

13. I sometimes wonder if I was switched at birth (why, yes, yes, I watch way too much television).

14. I have found recently that I really, really, really hate driving. I would enjoy it if I had a new car and I was the only one on the road.

15. My thirtieth birthday absolutely changed my life.

Writer's Block

I am suffering from crazy writer's block lately. Usually the blog is my stress relief and I guess since I turned 30 I have chosen to not allow myself to be stressed, thus no need to write. There have been some big things (10th anniversary of 9.11.01) that I tried to write about and the words would just not come. This has been happening over and over on both blogs.

In an attempt to remedy this situation I am going to start another blog challenge. That will at least give me something to write about and maybe in a month I'll find something to write about again!

Fall

As I sit down to write this I am looking out my window and watching leaves fall. Yes, it is true fall seems to have arrived. While technically fall does not begin until the 23rd it seems to have arrived in Norman last Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning to go to church and almost had to go back in to get a sweater. Fall had certainly arrived.

To reinforce the coming of fall even more Saturday we came to the conclusion that my pump for the pool had died a sad and pitiful death. I made the (responsible) decision to go ahead and close the pool. So also while I look out my window as I type I see a sad, sad pool with a cover on it. In reality I wouldn't have the time to get it back to clear (lots of algae issues this season) before it was time to really close it. I can have the pump replaced this spring and get it vacuumed and throw in A LOT of chemicals and it will be fine.

The conclusion of the pool season is always sad and this one seems a bit more melancholy. In a little over six months I will open the pool for the 2012 season. In the time that the pool is closed a lot of decisions about my future will be made.

I have a love/hate relationship with this particular season. For the most part the idea of fall makes me giddy, however the reality of it always seems to make me sad. You have football game after football game, fairs, school is back in session, church stuff starts up again full swing, as does Junior League, you enjoy crisp weather, beautiful trees, An Affair of the Heart, Halloween, Thanksgiving, the beginning of hot chocolate weather, and cuddling weather. All of these are things that I LOVE, however they also all tend to revolve around "couple-dom".

I am happy with where I am in my life and I would under no circumstance change it, but it still seems to make me a little sad. The majority of my relationships of the past have seemed to either start or end in the fall, so when the weather turns cold after the drudgery of the summer months I tend to be a bit reflective and kind of sad. Looking back I'm glad for every relationship that has ended, however it does bring back those feelings of intense sadness.

I am still in a mood where I am solely focusing on myself and being the best me I can be to prepare me for the adventure I have planned after graduation in May. When I go through these feelings of melancholy it tends to reinforce that I am right where I am supposed to be and am going right where I need to be.

So even with the mix of happy and sad that I feel during the fall I know that something big is forming just under the surface. I cannot wait to see where I am when I open the pool in March. Big things are coming.

Single

When did this become such a bad word? Why is it that when one is single they get the words "oh well you'll find the right guy at the right time"? What if, this is a crazy thought I might get locked up for, we don't want to get married? What if we don't want to date? What if we make the conscious decision that this is not something that is meant for our life at this point in time and frankly could never be meant for us? Is that wrong?

When I turned thirty at the beginning of the month something inside of me just clicked. No longer did I have the desire to try to play catch up to all the people around this part of the country that seem to think the only way you have value at my highly advanced age if you are married and have children. I have an amazing life. I do a lot of volunteer work, I am finishing my Masters, I have amazing ideas of how to help the world, and yet I spent most of a decade thinking that wasn't good enough. Basically I wasn't good enough for me. And that is stupid. I spent a long time trying to do the things that others in my world were doing, as much as I could without the necessary husband and children, just so I could keep up. Do you know what I realized this week? The ones I was most trying to keep up with were the ones that I disliked the most. Why on earth would I want to be exactly like people that overall I don't even like?

Yeah that was a life changing moment. One of those where you look at your entire life and start thinking about it in the correct perspective. Over the last month I have made some pretty big decisions about my future, following graduation in May. I am really excited about these decisions and plans. What I have found, though, is when I mention that I have big news people automatically assume that it involves dating, engagement, marriage or babies. It doesn't. It has to do with me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to dating, engagements, marriage and babies. They are all fine for other people, but at this point in my life they are things I am completely not interested in. I am swearing off dating until next June (at the earliest). When I say this I don't mean it in the reverse psychology sense of thinking "well if I say I'm not going to date then magically Mr. Right will appear from around the corner while I'm not looking." Oh no, I am so serious about this one that I am looking around every corner, just to make sure someone isn't lurking that could mess with the plans I am making, which I truly believe is the perfect path for me. If I hadn't been through everything that I've been through then I wouldn't be set up so perfectly for this adventure.

Yesterday I was at Borders' closing sale and while looking for the travel section (everything is all consolidated as they have less and less inventory) I happened to find myself in the self help section. Whoever thought of this section I truly think should be shot, as well as most people that write the books that find themselves in this section. A particular book stuck out to me:

Words cannot express how offended I was by this title. For starters it has one of my least favorite words in it: settling. After fifteen years of dating I have learned the most important lesson: DO NOT SETTLE. I have settled, over and over and over again. I have been the girl that looks (and looks and looks) for any guy who will pay the slightest bit of attention to me, which is, settling. When it comes to spending my life with someone under absolutely no circumstance will I settle. Period. I would rather have a full life that involves no husband than settle for someone who is just good enough. Two things stand out in this to me. The first is that the woman who is settling for "good enough" doesn't truly value herself as good enough. The second is that the guy that will allow a girl to settle for him as "good enough" doesn't value himself. I refuse to be with someone who makes me feel less valuable than I am and I refuse to be with someone who does not have high value for himself. Just not happening.

Thankfully in the past when I have started to settle the relationship ended. I totally value those relationships now because they taught me extremely valuable lessons about myself and about who I want to choose to spend the rest of my life with. While I think there is an element of fate to falling in love I also believe that there is an element of choice. We can choose to fall in love with the wrong person, or we can choose to fall in love with the right person at the right time. I don't like using the word "wait" when talking about falling in love. I truly don't feel I am "waiting" for the right guy to come into my life. By waiting I am impatiently looking at some cosmic clock that is ticking away until the alarm goes off. Instead of "waiting" I am living my life, completely to the fullest. Right now living my life involves a large amount of alone time, self reflection, and working on being the best "me" I can be. I do not view this as making myself better for someone else. I see this as improving myself to be who I want to be, not waiting on Mr. Right to come out of the woodwork.

I know how many thousands of conversations I had with my closest friends during my twenties about wanting to know when "he" was going to finally show up. I can honestly say, if "he" doesn't appear I'm going to be okay. Forget that. I'm going to be a whole lot better than okay. My self worth does not come from another person, it comes from inside myself. My confidence does not revolve around who I am in a relationship with or how many children I have. My value does not come from what I have or how I can impress people, it comes from how I choose to live my life and what I do to make this world a better place.

It has taken me a long time to finally grasp this concept and truly understand it and most importantly to believe it. If in the future I meet someone who loves me for exactly who I am then I will consider myself extremely lucky, but at no point in time am I going to sacrifice the person I am to be in a relationship just because the world around me thinks that I should be in a relationship.

I would apologize for this post, just in case it offends any of my MWC (married with children) friends, but this was tweeted this morning and I truly agree with it:

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth. - Benjamin Disraeli

I tend to be a people pleaser and I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Because of this I tend to get my feelings hurt a lot. I want to make everyone else happy and tend to ignore myself and my own feelings. I have finally realized that I cannot be everything that everyone else wants me to be. I cannot be at every football game, every birthday party, every little thing that goes on in other people's lives. I would love to, but I can't and I have finally come to the point that I am okay with that. If these people love me, for who I am, then they understand that I cannot do everything and they shouldn't expect me to.

What I hope people can understand is that not everyone fits into the mold that you may have for your life. I am glad that so many of my friends have children because whenever I need a baby fix I can get one. I also am glad that they have this so that I can see how wonderful my nice, quiet house is. I don't think that anyone has made a wrong decision in their life. The decisions that you make are what is best for you at the time that you make the decision. Just please understand that the decisions that I have made, while they are not the same as yours, are the best decisions for my life. You do not have to understand my life, but please do not down play it because I do not have the same responsibilities you do. Just because I am not in a relationship or have children does not mean that my life is any less important or stressful or busy or fulfilling than yours.
Because I love quotes and I love Sex and the City I leave you with some good ones:

When it comes to relationships, maybe we're all in glass houses, and shouldn't throw stones. Because you can never really know. Some people are settling down, some are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less. Than butterflies...

Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.

 
And one that I think sums up how I feel about my life and the kind of relationship I want in the future, if it is meant to be:

Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free til they find someone just as wild to run with them.

Restless

I realized today that I have become very, very restless. I also have realized that I missed two months this summer. I didn't get the pool opened until mid June because of the liner "issue" so I think that was the problem. I also kind of retreated to my little house for a few months and I keep thinking that it is June. Just today I was at a JL thing at the Baby Steps house and we had extra food, one of the girls said we could leave it for the staff to snack on next week and I said, out loud, "do they work in the summer?" Yeah it is August 27, and school is back in session. Good grief.

Back to the restlessness. I don't know what I am so antsy for, but I have just been ready. I have a tendency to live in the future and I'm afraid I am doing that again, what with my big plans for after graduation and all. I am trying to live in the moment, but it has been hard this summer because as busy as I was I didn't really have anything going on. I really just retreated into myself, which I think was a good thing and something I should do from time to time. Now as September approaches, however, everything is starting back. Today was Junior League new member orientation which kicks off the JL season and I know I'm about to be busy with that. School started Monday, though I only have one online class which will be a piece of cake. I'm having a little trouble getting my internship all lined out (which I have to do in the next week so I can get enrolled). Youth will start up again soon. Lots of other stuff is going on at CrossTimbers and that will take some time. Football is a week away.

I know that I am going to blink and it will be June. That equally excites me and terrifies me.

I know that very soon everything is going to change and all the signs are pointing the exact direction of this change, which is really, really exciting. I am going to enjoy the next nine and a half months like they could be my last, because they could be, or at least the last as far as I know it.

A Good Day to be Born

Apparently August 17 is a GREAT day to be born (not as good as August 2, but still pretty good). So here are my birthday shout outs for the day:

Birthday Number One

I must first start with Chase Taylor Pillers. My most favorite baby boy born in August 2010. Chase's mommy and I are good friends and we were just CERTAIN Chase was going to be a Charlotte. We were wrong and that doesn't make me love him any less! (Though I'm going to have to rethink the tea rooms and pedicures for Aunt Wennie bonding experiences!)

A bit of Chase:

He likes to stick his tongue out!

Him and his buddy JJ

A little more recent (I had to shamelessly steal this off Britt's facebook page because his daddy is in the Air Force and they travel a lot, so I don't have a whole lot of pictures of him...I will work on that this year!)

Birthday Number Two

My darling cousin Ryan turned 34 today! We were not close growing up, however in the last few years we have learned that we think entirely too much alike and when together are a force to be reckoned with (which is scary, especially at funerals). There have many many days in the last couple of years that I don't know what I would have done without Ryan-Cousin!

Birthday Number Three

My beautiful Junior League friend Erin also shares this particular birthday. We only met last spring, but I am so so glad to have her in my life!

Birthday Number Four

Last, but certainly not least I must give a birthday shout out to this man (photo shamelessly stolen from his Twitter):

That's right: Mr. Donnie Wahlberg shares this awesome birthday (and birth-month) as well. Favorite New Kid on the Block from WAY back, the most positive individual on earth, Twitter addict and the sexiest cop on tv these days (seriously, watch Blue Bloods, awesome show, awesome cast, Fridays at 9 on CBS!). Mr. Wahlberg is celebrating the second anniversary of his 40th birthday, and I must say, he looks just pretty darn good for this age!

So to you all I hope you had a wonderful birthday today! August pretty much is the best month to be born in! :)