You can be a woman marine biologist

Actually, you can be anything you want to be, but maybe you already knew that. Be the best you that you can be.

High 5 yourself every day in the mirror when you’re brushing your teeth. I have recently started reading Mel Robbins’ book The High 5 Habit. It is sort of rubbing off on me.

It is the second day of the new year. Woke up with triangle pillows on my face. More on that later. I have been up since 5:30. No caffeine yet.

Must.Have.Coffee. And maybe an omelet. Food! Yes!

See how easily I get off track? Sorry. Not sorry! Hahaha

I have been thinking about picking up my old habit of writing inspirational messages on my bathroom mirror again. This time in dry erase marker, not lipstick. Last time, the shadow of my lipstick message haunted me for months.

I call them Pollyanna Sunshine Farts.

Just kidding.

But what a visual right? Eww.

Seriously, get a dry erase marker and write yourself a message today. a little reminder about how wonderful you are. Your own mantra. Whatever gets you excited about the day and feeling empowered about being the best you that you can be.

Mine goes like this:

I AM AWESOME IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

Have a great day!!

High 5

12/27/21

Time and distance doesn’t matter when you have at least one true friend, right?

I have been blessed to have many friends in the half century of my life… many have come and gone, including family members who were friends. And now they’re not. An ebb and flow.

Don’t we all go through this, though? It is life. People come and go, friendships fade away. And family members sometimes have disputes and are dead to each other. Forever.

It isn’t sad anymore. It’s tiring. And it really is just life.

I have spent many hours thinking about many of my interpersonal relationships. Dwelling on the memories: the good and the not so good. Spent way too much time stuck in my brain over lot of them, crying my heart out sometimes…whole days wasted. I will admit to weeks, months, YEARS wasted on this junk. Apparently, that can be a serious problem with my bipolar. It can really do a number on me. The anxiety makes it worse. Other people see me self-destructing. I cannot. All I can feel is that I am falling apart. Again. Drowning. And that just is, too. It is a part of who I am. I may never be an even-keeled human being.

And that’s ok!

See, I’m a hypersensitive sort of person, sort of a wilted flower, a wounded butterfly. Really, I’m still pretty emotionally wimpy, even though I’m supposedly a grown up person.

But gosh, that sounds like I’m insulting myself… which is something else I am working on. I’m learning to love myself and treat myself with care and love. I mean, it’s exhausting being this reactive. Years of therapy, journaling, staring into the abyss, trying to figure out what I did wrong, what happened, why I wasn’t good enough.

All of this time and energy and resources spent… For what? Well, to heal, of course. I guess? (Don’t I have to find a reason??) But I wasn’t ready then. (Then being the day before yesterday. Eek!) I say all the time that I am ready, that I am finally happy. But what is happiness? It isn’t a stable relationship, it isn’t spending an hour flopped on the couch next to a snoring dog, it isn’t ice cream, or even a sunny day. (Though a stable relationship really helps me keep this stuff in perspective. Sometimes.)

Happiness is not a permanent state. If it was we’d all be manic as hell. All the time. Chaos. There would be no growth. No rest. And what would be the point of living?

Gotta have a down for every up. And an up for every down, praise God. The darkness never lasts. That’s hope. I don’t care what faith you are, or what culture or background: hope exists. The need for acceptance, the desire for human contact. Even if I push people away sometimes, I don’t want to live in a cave all by myself! Glad I have people that love me but also understand my need to isolate sometimes.

Finally, I am learning to accept the fact that the emotional growth process doesn’t necessarily ever end, and that sometimes it IS ok to look back, as long as I don’t stay there. And good news: deep down, I know that I AM good enough, I AM deserving of all good things, and I DO want to live. And THRIVE.

So… here we go. Into the New Year… a renewal and restart. A rebirth of sorts. I have been stuck in the 90s for way too long. My fashion style, too. Haha.

Anyway, that’s all. Happy Monday. And remember to give yourself a high 5 in the mirror. Every day. Mel Robbins is right: it works.

Originally posted on 7/9/21. Again a blogspot post. Excited to move it here.

Recently, a few friends told me I’m a good writer. Wow! That’s a huge compliment. I have always wanted to be a writer. But who’s to say I am not? Isn’t it all about asserting the positive? Speak it into existence, and suddenly it just is?

I find myself thinking about compliments like this for days. I begin to fancy myself a published author. The rational thought process evolves into daydreaming. All of a sudden I am a published book author. People are lining up in droves waiting for me to sign their copy of my latest novel. 

In my head.

The reality? I am typing this from the toilet. Not in the potty, on it. As in I am sitting on it. Pee, not poop, thank you. We had a hurricane drop rain on us the other night, at high tide in the southern coastal town where I live, and so I have the windows open downstairs in order to air out the dampness that is quickly becoming mildew. And possibly mold. 

I spend a lot of time in my bathroom. It’s where the magic happens. When I say a lot, I mean hours. At a time. We call it my “other office,” and that’s not really a joke. Much thinking about what to do next and planning how I will conquer fear. Or the world. Because I have a world of fears in my head. 

I sometimes listen to music in my other office, or an audio book. Whilst taking a shower I might have a thought or seven that must be put down on paper right away… so I keep a pen and notepad on the counter. The notepad is wrinkled with water droplets. If I wait until I get out of the shower, I will lose the thought. 

My bathroom window faces the backyard. I can see the pond, two of my dogs are out there enjoying the fresh air and morning sunshine. Scratch that, it isn’t fresh. It smells like raw sewage. Wafting by and assaulting my sniffer. 

I said it was pee, not poop. The smell is coming from outside. Pay attention, please!

We have chickens and rabbits. They’re poop machines. All they do is eat and poop. Everywhere. Our dogs poop anywhere they like. These are large dogs. The sewers were backed up for several hours while the waves rolled through my front yard. Along with a possum and our half-drowned cat, who swam to safety. Also a few paddle boarders and a girl on a raft. In the sewage water. I don’t know what became of the possum. The paddle board and raft people hopefully made it home and bathed. 

What was I talking about? 

Ah yes. Poop. Or poop smell. 

Wait a minute. Is this where I want to go with my first blog post? No.how did we get here? We may never know.

Time to make the coffee. And do the things. All of them. Or maybe just a few. It’s been a long couple of days. 

Thanks for being there. 

Next time I will try not to concentrate so much on poop. But I will definitely be writing from the toilet seat again. Count on it!

Originally posted 12/27/14… which was a long time ago. It was sort of a one hit wonder. On blogspot. But keeps coming up in my memories on Facebook. moving all of that content here.

No matter what we have been told, we all are deserving of happiness. But what about when life has pelted you with lemons for years, and it seems as if you’re are making no real headway in the storm? You hate to complain, you know you have so much to be thankful for, and others have been through things you cannot even fathom the pain of, but, still, in the quiet of the night, though ultimately you know you’re ok, still something is missing. You think all that self-help crap won’t work with you because you just don’t truly believe you’re worth it. The questions begin to arise: Is this really all there is? Am I alone in feeling like this or am I just the only one brave (or dumb) enough to admit it? Will anyone even read this? Does anyone else get tired of saying “I’m ok,” over and over again, when the truth is that life itself is sometimes a struggle and survival on anything but a primal level seems questionable? Are there any other professional fake smilers out there? Yeah, well….bottom line is that YOU deserve to be happy, too. And guess what? Happiness is a CHOICE. But choose wisely: surround yourself with people who actually care. Speak your truth until someone, anyone, will listen. And then listen out for the truth that others will speak to you. Find people you can trust, and be trustworthy, yourself. Communication is essential, and the sad part of modern society is that we rely on text messages to convey our truth. Get face to face and stop judging. Life is about getting out there and LIVING. Be real, be well, and be HAPPY.

French tucks and pegged pants

Originally posted 7/14/21 on blogspot. Which I do not like. It is not user friendly. Or maybe it just isn’t friendly to me. No matter.

Ok, here’s a fashion question for those of you who were teens in the 80s: did you ever “peg” your pants?

We never called it a “tight roll,” but apparently that’s what it was. 

I specifically remember some of us doing this with our jeans during high school, and most of my classmates looked at us like we had 3 heads. But squatting down to redo the roll several times a day was a pain. Ahhh… to be young again, and willing to do what it takes to be cool, or in this case, to stand out. 

Fast forward to 2021. A few weeks ago, I watched a video Jennifer Garner posted on FB making Leftover Chicken Soup. Which looks delicious, by the way. She was wearing her t-shirt sort of half-tucked into her jeans. I thought it looked super cute on her. Even though I am in my 50s, I like to attempt to look cute, if not super cute. Or even super duper cute. Yes it’s a thing. In my head.

Jennifer Garner is about my age, right? Because in my mind it is completely ok that I admire her flair for fashion, even if she is in the kitchen. Sort of a gurl crush thing. 

(Wait, did I actually just say “super cute?”)

Anyway, I found out that this way of tucking a shirt is a real THING. In the fashion world it is called a French Tuck or Half Tuck. There are actually TUTORIALS of this all over the internet! I even found a 12-minute video showing how to do this on YouTube. 

All it involves is tucking in the front of your shirt. 🤷🏻‍♀️

In my research (aka googling, or looking it up on my smartphone, which I LOVE being able to do, thank you 21st century inventions) I discovered that Tan France of Queer Eye coined the term, French Tuck. I never watched the show, but I can certainly see why it caught on. (The French tuck and the show.) Not sure if I like this tuck on men. But as I wear large shirts that don’t really cling to my body, I like this trend aka fad, whatever.

What planner do you use?

I have used The Happy Planner System before. Or I tried to use it, or make a go of it, or whatever. I didn’t succeed in being Happy at all. And though many things got Happily Planned, I quickly overwhelmed myself by writing down ALL.THE.THINGS. All of them. But… Yay! I was Productive in Planning. Right? Uh… when days and days got away from me without doing ALL.

THE.THINGS because of the sheer number of Things that I had so Happily Planned, I thought, oh my God, how on earth will I be able to do all of those things that the rockstar network marketers do… and how can I even read the words I wrote, because I had to write so tiny and so it came out looking like chicken scratch? Nope. Not Happy. Frustrated and Felt Like a Failure. Which caused me to lose more days.

Want to know about my Sticky Note Adventures? That was a Fun System. Good times. I love sticky notes, so I figured I would love The Sticky Note System. Did you know they come in 14 different colors and sizes? It took me days just trying to decide which brand, which color and which size would be the cheapest. Then which of those could I get at the best price? And what if lower price equates to terrible quality? Not to mention that no one else will ever even see these notes. Don’t get me started. I am still finding these things everywhere. Little colored reminders of how unproductive I am, staring up at me from all over the floor. They don’t stay sticky and they don’t hold a Julia Note because a Julia Note isn’t a note, it’s a Freaking Chapter. Of a long book. 🤦🏻‍♀️ It’s The Never-Ending Story.

Next, I tried The Master List System. Using spiral notebooks. I made a Master List of everything you could imagine. Literally E.V.E.R.Y.THING. Even “go to the bathroom” got written down on that list. Every day. Why? To be able to cross it off, of course. Duh. How else can I pretend that I am being PRODUCTIVE? These spiral notebooks were purchased – you guessed it – after another incredibly painstaking research process (see The Sticky Note Adventure, above.) They are available in a veritable rainbow 🌈 of lovely colors. A Skittles rainbow. They even reminded me of Skittles as they sat stacked up on my desk. I called them Skittle Books. They Skittle skattled right off my desk and onto the floor, too many to count and way too much to keep up with. I had one color for each topic I feel that I need to cover in my business. Then I decided to assign each color a topic. And promptly changed my mind and then forgot what color was for what topic. Trust me when I say I am NOT the Master of anything, and so… The Master List System didn’t work. I didn’t even get far enough to cover anything I need to cover in my business. Except… I did cover the pages of the notebooks with lots of scribbles. In different colored pens and pencils, also assigned a topic, but you can guess how that went. I even had cute little white silicone erasers that I put on each pencil and a handy little pencil sharpener that I felt I needed to sharpen each pencil with before I used it. Obsess much??) So… back to the notebooks. After being scribbled in, they Skittle skedaddled onto the floor in my messy office. Next to the 3 dog beds. And the 3 dogs. Who sleep on the floor next to the beds. My office is only 12×15 with a lot of furniture in it. And me. And 3 dogs. One dog likes to chew paper. So there is that. A no-go on the spiral notebooks. Into the recycle bin they went. Except the curly wire part. I saved those. So cute! I might even use them for Christmas wrapping next year… and make tags with the index cards I am about to tell you about. 😂 YESSSS 🙌 Gotta do my part to save the Earth. (You did watch the movie Wall-E, right?) Oooh, that reminds me, I need to add Skittles to The Master Grocery List. That System doesn’t work in our house either, because it stays right there on the fridge instead of going to the market with us. Yes, I know, make a Note in my iPhone. (Are you kidding me?)

Most recently, I tried The Index Card System. I thought about 3×5 cards. But my Dad always used those, and he died suddenly in 1998, so it made me sad to think about using them. I decided to go with 4×6. Researching colors, quality and price was another time suck, but surprise!! Let’s just say that The Index Card System did KINDA work. By KINDA I mean they are easier to pile in little stacks. Before falling to the floor. And behind The Desk and into The Cave of No Return. Oh, and I did mention the dog that snacks on paper right? He also eats Scentsy boxes with warmers in them. No scented wax, just warmers. We enrolled him in obedience school, which is set to begin next week. If that doesn’t work, I will begin trying to hire him out. Maybe the Recycling Company that picks up our bin recyclables (they no longer take glass!) but somehow manage to leave paper scattered all over the street, along with other things. He does eat a crap ton of other things besides paper. And then poops maybe 5 times a day. Along with the 2 other dogs, who also poop at least 3 times daily, that makes at least eleven piles of poop I have to pick up. More on Poop Shotput in a future post.

Ok… so in all seriousness… I just ordered the planner from the success store and I like it so far. It looks like The Happy Planner that I started with, so I may realize that I am stuck in a vicious cycle of Planning Systems. But I love the tracking pages at the beginning, and maybe I can focus on staying focused (let’s not kid ourselves here) and make it work? If not, I will just go back to flying by the seat of my pants. 👖

And don’t get me started on pants now that the holidays are here. Somehow I am back on The See Food Diet. You know that one, right? I see food, and I eat it. My next commission check will be paying for bigger pants. With pockets. Because don’t we all need pockets??

Yep. Haven’t had any coffee yet. I was trying to find a Blogging System that works for me. I have tried 3 so far and settled on WordPress. For now. Welcome to my life as a _____. You can fill in the blank because I’m not even sure about the original topic of this post.)