Just Write {1}

Today’s post was inspired by IROCKSOWHAT and her participation and The Extraordinary Ordinary’s Just Write project. You can link up your posts here.

Sorry if it’s more of a ramble than anything else. I love you, love you all. –x.

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Today, I’m feeling exhausted. I feel like time is slipping through my fingers; the more I scramble to catch it, the faster it runs. I feel like hope is a far off mountain top and we just keep climbing and climbing only to be knocked down again. The unattainable dreams of the future are fading away in the distance. I keep running and running and running and running and hoping and wishing and praying and working my fingers to the bone to make things better and nothing ever changes enough to be significant. We are stuck in the same conundrum, a circular story within a story within a story. The framework is too confusing, even for a Romantic novel. The minor characters muscle their way into the major plot and the antagonists are too numerous to count.

And I? Am I the heroine? I suppose that I am, in my own life. The protagonist, at the very least. The ability of literature to reach into my heart is never ending. I suppose I see everything as though it’s a story or a novel. I become frustrated when good doesn’t prevail or when the characters don’t behave as though I think they should. Wouldn’t my life be so easier if I really were the author of it? I don’t know. Sometimes your own characters misbehave, or so I’ve found in my writings and scribbling.

I don’t even know where I stand in the story map, at this point.

Has my life, my story, already reached it’s climax?  Surely not. I’ve got a lot more fight left in me. Is this just the exposition? Perhaps it’s just the first day of the rest of my life. But if this is still the rising action, where is this headed? Will my denouement, my ending, my finale be tragic or will it be a comedy? 

I guess I will have to leave this question for the Author to decide and realize that even some of His characters will misbehave occasionally. I won’t ever stop wondering what’s going to come next but perhaps it’s better not to know.

iSaturday

WHERE WE WENT: To my cousin Adrienne’s birthday extravaganza!

John, Kiddo 2, and I made the giant pizza costume in preparation for her “Cloudy with a Chance of ‘Meat’balls” themed party. All the food was vegan!!! (!!!) !!! And it was one of the best parties ever. There was food hanging from the ceiling, including real, live cotton candy and plastic and felt foods. There were games including an Easter egg hunt (while being chased by two people dressed as giant pizzas), a sandwich eating contest, and a Sanitation-Off.

Left: a felt sandwich hanging from the ceiling. // Right: Nate, Adrienne’s partner and the mastermind behind the whole shebang. He coordinated his booty off to pull this together and it was so fantastic. He deserves, like, eighteen rounds of applause and eleven standing ovations for pulling off such a fun and fantastical event.

 

WHAT I’VE BEEN WEARING: the heck out of some comfy pajamas and my Converse every chance I can get. My love for pajamas is new; I never used to like them before. Now I have soft nightgowns and satiny pants and cozy sweaters designated for at home wear. Isn’t throwing out the oversize tees a sign of growing up or something?!

 

WHAT WE’VE BEEN EATING: Mellow Mushroom pizza with peppers, onions, pineapple, and jerk tofu. Ohmygoshyes. // The #vegan fish market: Swedish fish! I have been carting a little bag of these babies around for two weeks and I just finished off the last few fishies.

WHAT WE ENJOY ON THE OCCASIONAL LUNCH DATE: Chinese, including our favorite where we open our cookies at the same time, then exchange fortunes to get a good laugh. This seemed to be particularly happy! We shared vegetable lo mein, plain steamed white rice, and sesame tofu.

   

I love this schexy man. // Please tell me I’m not the only one that uses my phone to check out what’s going on with my hair. Anyone? Anyone??? PLEASE?!

And I leave you with this disgusting image because Husband told me that I had to. He said that I must subject my readers to the gelatinous gross chicken-in-a-can because he thinks you all need to see how gross animal products can be. This is so sick. Ew.

Thanks for reading, you guys. I seriously love you. Yes, even you.

-x.

Wise Words

“Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.”

I saw this on Already Pretty yesterday in Sal’s post about taste and judgment. This might become needs to become my new motto. I drew this cute reminder on my kitchen chalkboard last night to remind me to think of it first thing this morning. I have got to stop drinking the hater-ade. I must stop ruminating about things and mulling them over until they make me feel nauseous. I have got to stop playing into online arguments on Huffington Post when I think people are acting ignorantly and are spewing hatred. (This is a big one, especially when people start bashing liberals for bigoted, fact-less, tactless reasons.) I must stop giving unsolicited advice because it makes people angry. (Sorry, ViSalus people who are selling a drink full of animal products and chemicals to unsuspecting clients who are desperate for weight loss.)

CAN YOU JUST TELL ALREADY HOW HARD THIS IS GOING TO BE FOR ME?

I feel like God always knows what we need. This morning, I was catching up on blog reading and I happened to click over to The Kind Hearted Blogger Pledge, which I’ve taken and included over in my sidebar. This includes a belief that the world is filled with positivity. It includes an obligation to make an effort to spread that positivity instead of unleashing more venom into the already harsh interwebz.

I know this is what I need. I know I need to fill my life with more positivity and minimize the drama, minimize the stress, minimize the anxiety. But how does one reconcile that with a lifelong fierce determination to bring about social justice? I’ve always been a basher in the past. If someone steps up with a view that I don’t agree with, I’m liable to debate them with as many facts and I can get in my arsenal from careful research and perusing studies that are published. Topics that have brought about a huge reaction from me range from women serving as clergy to the double standard of fitness in the military to pro-choice advocacy to the Ground Zero “mosque” which was neither a mosque nor on Ground Zero and so on and so forth. Recently, it’s been defending my veganism from Defensive Omnivores. (BINGO!!!!!!!!!!)

It’s almost like a personal challenge, asking myself to step back from the outspoken tendencies that make me "The Opinionated Girl” and instead offer positive opinions and solutions to the perceived problems. Sure, I’m still going to rail against social injustice (father’s rights! double standards! gender stereotypes! homophobia!) because who would I be without my causes? Just “The Girl” and that’s pretty boring.

I don’t know, I’m losing my focus here. How does one reconcile “opinionated and outspoken” with “positive and supportive?” Because I feel like I consistently piss people off and I don’t want to be that girl for the rest of my life.

TELL ME HOW, LOVELY PEOPLE.

Story of a girl.

Black shirt, $15 // Black pants, Fit 4, Target, $12 // T-straps, Target, $25 // Earrings, Grandma’d // Necklace, DIY using Nichelle’s tutorial // Beaded flower ring, made by Candis // Watch, Skagen Denmark, Atlanta Diamond Gallery, gift

       

I made this necklace using Nichelle’s tutorial on Vintage Wanna Bee for a simple but interesting piece. (This is one of the pieces to fulfill goal #20 on my list.) I think I would like it better in the future if I wore with an uncollared shirt because it kept getting hung up in my collar and neckline. My watch, earrings, and ring gave it a little more polish, something I usually lack in my usual accessory-less outfits. I am working on including more finishing pieces for my outfits, simply because it’s nice to feel complete.

This watch is so beautiful and it was a gift from my beautiful Armenian friends. (I think that Armenian women are truly stunning and captivating.) I always think of them whenever I see it and remember the fun times that we had in Civil Air Patrol together. (Don’t look so surprised that I was a cadet! This girl is an adventurer.) I was very proud to be the first female cadet commander of my squadron. They were/are a part of a squadron from below Atlanta and special events always made me very happy to see them.

Honestly, I think CAP (and JROTC, of which I was also a cadet) is one of the reasons that I found it weird to dress up when I was in high school and I still have trouble sometimes now. I spent a lot of time trying to fit in with guys because that’s who participated in my military cadet programs. Dresses were almost foreign after spending a long weekend on top of Hawk Mountain in BDUs in temps like negative seventeen degrees. High heels were difficult to fathom after wearing jungle boots three nights a week. Accessories usually meant my ribbon bars on my dress blues or my Colorguard gear (and there’s a lot of it) if we were presenting the Colors.

I think part of my focus on girly colors and sparkly pretty things has to do with my former avoidance of most things that could be labeled as stereotypically “feminine” during my adolescence. I guess I’m trying to make up for lost time. That avoidance is why I’m still learning about style. I was always told that appearance didn’t matter. It does. It really does. (More on that later.)

I think that it was a good choice for me to go to college instead of joining the USAF, like I considered. I’m just not cut out for the military life, either as a wife (dodged that bullet, too…) or as a service member. I am a proud supporter of my veteran husband, grandfather, and uncles. I am very, very proud of my active duty sister-in-law, who is in Chicago right now, who we all miss very much.

So now, I’ll just stick to loving and respecting and honoring the veterans that are in my life and looking back on my memories as a cadet very fondly. And I’ll relish in the fact that all these beautiful, wonderful, girly things are still relatively new to me, since I wasn’t like most girls growing up.

On my toes: Revlon Electric Pink polish

Thanks for reading.  -x.

Not every one is a winner.

I feel like this outfit bombed.  Not to mention my neighbor’s house is not the most attractive accidental backdrop… I liked the tee and belt okay, but maybe with pants in the future. This skirt is at an awkward length, so it’s a tough sell to wear it with anything untucked. Y’all got any ideas? If not, this baby’s about to hit the donate pile… I’ve had it since high school and I wore it in one of my very first outfit posts ever, so maybe it’s time that someone else got some love out of it.
 
Tee: Ann Taylor LOFT, $6 // Leggings: Target, $5 // Shoes: Target, $30 // Belt: Target, $5 // Pearls & skirt: from high school

I feel like my shape got lost in this pattern, even with the belted waist. What kind of fashion blogger would I be if I didn’t post some of my dud outfits as well as my style achievements? I’m by no means a perfect person and anyone who sees me on Converse-and-ponytail-days knows that I’m not chic all the time. Nope, I’m just your average, everyday, sometimes failure at dressing myself. Plus, I think I’m over these flats. Decisions, decisions.
 
On the other hand, this close-up that Hubs took shows how smooth my skin looks since we switched to eucalyptus natural (vegan) soap. It’s really helped clear up my skin. I have oily type skin and the soap has dried it out a bit and I can actually manage my skin. I occasionally wash my hair with the same soap because I also have oily type hair to dry it out and it works very well. I would definitely suggest using it if you have oily skin! Husband has dry skin and he prefers olive oil soap to moisturize and nourish.
WHAT DO YOU THINK COULD HAVE IMPROVED THIS LOOK?