Not My Usual Kind of Posts

I'm not good at letting other people in. I'm more of a hold-people-at-arm's-length kind of person. Contributing to conversations and being friendly, sure, I'm ok at that. Some of my friends recall having to wait around a year for me to return their phone calls or to come to an event that they asked me to come to, or even telling them about myself for at least the first 6 months. Goofy stuff, I'm sure I told them, but personal stuff? Not at all. It's not like I didn't want to go or call to be an ass, it's just that I kind of need a warming-up period. I'm a turtle and I'm not sure if you're crazy yet so I'm testing the waters. I've had too many incidents where I've had people go crazy over not calling them back on the same day....when I had just met them a week prior.

I say this because I have had this blog for about a year and a half (me thinks) and it seems rather unsuccessful. I look at blog's from other people and I see that they have like 1,000 friends and people contributing to their blog's etc.etc. and I've wondered "What the hell is wrong with mine?" I figured the infrequency of my writing was playing a part but when I read other people's blogs I realized that they get into SUPER DETAIL. Like, crazy, embarrassing shit. Not only do they talk about every miniscule moment of their day but they also recap their whole life story. Thinking about what I'm going through on almost a daily basis for everyone else to read makes me cringe a little. It's as if my body is rejecting the notion that other people, who are total strangers, get to read about the mess that was my divorce, the baby momma drama that I deal with from my boyfriend's bat-shit-crazy ex-wife, my doomed Etsy page (that actually made me laugh a little), and my love for running. I'm just not that trusting!

Yup, I get it. I signed up to do this. But I'm so horribly, horribly private. I swear you'd like me if you met me! I feel like constantly blogging about myself is narcissistic. Like "Hey, guys! I'm awesome and my life is wonderful and here's a whole list of reasons why you should adore me!" One thing I detest about habitual bloggers is the inevitable negative rut they can get in so they share it with everyone and their last 7 posts are about how horrible things are so they pull on the empathy of everyone and that's how they keep their blog going.

Is all this really what it takes to have a "good" blog?

 How about this for starters: I'll tell you some things about myself. It will be a random assortment but at least it's something.

Here are my "babies". Mia is my curious 3 year-old Husky, Bailey is my rowdy 1 year-old Pitt mix, and Reese...ah, Reese, he's my spunky 7 year-old lop-eared bunny.

I'm turning 29 in December and, no, I don't actually have any kids. My ex-husband was a bit unstable and kids weren't a good idea. I wanted to have at least one kid by the age of 27 but it wasn't in the cards and by then I was legally separated. So my herd of furry animals will have to do for now.

My boyfriend, Andrew, and I met through a friend because he needed a date for a military ball.

Being 5'11" makes it hard to meet guys who are taller than me sometimes, so you are correct in noticing that I'm taller than him :-) We have been together almost 2 years now and we're about to do the long-distance thing with me leaving for the Army and having to spend a year in California for language school.

Besides art, I love to run. Last Saturday there was a funeral for an 8 year-old girl who I taught. She was killed in a car crash because some guy wasn't paying attention and didn't slow his truck down and rear-ended the car that she was in the back seat of. It was tragic. She was a sweet little girl. I went running to clear my head, and what initially was supposed to be a simple 4-miler turned into a half-marathon. It was very Forrest Gump. In light of the tragedy I realized how fleeting life is and on my 4th mile I kept thinking how good it was to be alive. I kept running and on mile 6 decided to do the full 13.1. I finished it, my legs practically gave out walking up to the house but it was rejuvenating emotionally.

I'm horrible at decorating. My house with my ex-husband looked like a bachelor pad. The house I live in now looks like a bachelor pad. I love painting walls with bright colors but when it comes to furniture, hanging stuff on the walls, general "making a house look like a home" stuff I'm terrible. I'm very minimalist that way. I love the IDEA of decorating and then I think about spending money on inanimate objects that have no purpose and that it's one more item I have to pick up and move when it comes to cleaning. It frustrates me. I'm a creative person but not with that. My creativity was severely stunted when it comes to home decor and landscaping.

I'm dorky and like to use big words like "superfluous," "cogent," and "ostentatious," and other words that my friends have to ask what they mean and then accuse me of looking up a word in a dictionary to use each day.

As for reporting on things that I did today, Andrew and I went and sold some rings we had for extra cash. It feels good to get rid of them and not have them around anymore (I haven't gotten around to selling my wedding ring yet, I just got it appraised) and the extra cash is nice too. We wanted hoagies for lunch so we went to Jimmy John's and I got my fav #5 Vito Italian hoagie. Dee-lish. More importantly, I took a nap today. I was up at 6:30 am for no good reason so I needed to compensate. I'm also looking forward to grabbing drinks with a girl I used to work with at school who, like most people I meet, didn't get to know me very well in the 3 years that I worked there but I finally decided to open up and spend some time with her recently...ironically after I quit and just before I'm about to leave. Fail.

I'm just God-awful.