The Good Men Project

I just read a couple articles over here and I think I am in love. It seems that the writers at Good Men Project are thoughtful, intelligent, empathetic people and the excuse 'it's just what guys do' is not quite as acceptable there as it is pretty much everywhere else. I love it and it's bookmarked!

The other thing I did this morning was our Save The Dates... very affordably through Zazzle, I might add. I just signed the contract for our place and the caterer and sent that along with lots of money so it's on man!

Da da da da da?

Maybe I've played a few too many computer games, but this video felt like watching my Sims have a conversation... oh and also my ovaries exploded. lmao

Twin Baby Boys Have a Conversation

Siiiigh...

I find it infuriating that people demand to be heard and helped by their elected officials and when they are, everyone complains. When everyone gets royally screwed, there's not a peep.

I'm talking about what's left of the middle class because the rich get whatever they want whenever they want it lately - with no regard for the people they are taking from.

There are so few politicans that give a crap about any of their constituents but thank you, Pat Quinn, for at least caring...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/illinois-s-quinn-says-budget-cutting-governors-have-it-wrong.html

Just wait until Repubs lead us straight into another recession... And then blame Obama. Again. It must be awesome to never be held accountable or have to be responsible for anything. If you think voting doesn't matter, I say that is the same bullshit attitude that got is in this republican mess and I blame it squarely on people that didn't vote.

Grr.

A Little Wedding Porn

Did I mention Paulie and I are engaged?

I forget!

It happened on January 13 of this year. Very exciting time! Since then I have learned that wedding planning is not my thing. I do have an idea of what I'm going for though and here are some pictures I found that I am trying to work off of...

We picked May of next year so I was thinking of a springy-woodland-rustic-fresh kind of theme. Moss, ferns, flowers, little fairy lights and muted, earthy colors. I always dreamed I would get married in Autumn but Spring is definitely growing on me... and now I am acutely aware of springtime's amazing wonderfulness. The sunshine, the longer days, the blossoming flowers and the birdies coming back. I do love every second of it and I'm so excited to marry my Paulie. We decided to have both the ceremony and reception at The Old Mill. It was THE place I loved when I was looking online and I was so pleased it was all I wanted it to be when we visited. Seriously though, that's all the detail I can handle! Everything else is overwhelming so I am starting to understand the importance of patience and lists. It will come. I think I just need a little guidance.

Anyway, more pics. The fun stuff!

These are not my photos obviously. Just gathering some ideas and, I gotta say, Martha Stewart's site is quickly becoming my most visited.

The more I think about it and talk about it, the more excited I get. The more I see the cost of everything, the more I want to throw up. :) LOL. I have faith that it will work out and it will be a gorgeous, awesome day. If I make some wedding progress I will be sure to blog. Not IF, WHEN!

Little Angel

We had a great christening day. My little nephew/godson was the most perfect little angel in church and he held up well through the party. Of course he did. He's amazing! I love that he is smiling and laughing now... and he's getting so big. It's hard to believe he's over three months old.

My family did a hell of a job again with food, decorations and everything else. They are the best. We had a lot of family there which was so great. I saw some kiddies I haven't seen in a very long time! It's amazing how fast these kids grow up... and I remember when I was a kid it felt like I was little forever. I couldn't wait to grow up. Now I'd give almost anything to have those days back again. Hm, well there are a lot of things I love so much now too so maybe I'll stay in the present.

*powering down time machine*

This is the face of a kid who was ready for Baptism Day to be over.

The handsome men of the family!

Most beautiful baby EVER...? Yes, I'd say so.

Paul and baby boy had similar patterns on their sweater vests and I loved how they looked together. Unfortunately I didn't have enough light but, considering the circumstances, I think the photos turned out so cute! Any picture of that gorgeous smile is awesome to me.

Last night Paulie and I watched the movie Hereafter featuring Matt Damon and the lovely Cecile de France. I really enjoyed it which is suprising considering the subject matter. Normally movies about death, the afterlife or Armageddon throw me into panic mode and I have an anxiety attack. This one was much more gentle and sweet... and I didn't have nightmares so that was a big plus! I also enjoyed that pieces of it are in French. Mmm... it brings me back...

The Big Picture

I'm a fan of Barry Ritholtz and his blog The Big Picture ... even if I don't fully understand it all of the time. He posted this on March 25th. I understand it and I love it!

A Flowchart to Help You Determine if You Are Having a Rational Discussion

His sense of humor is the best...

I always have something to say...

Mr. Holland's Opus is on. This movie came out in 1995... and I can't believe how long ago that was... fine, not in the grand scheme of things but for me anyway. It's currently at a particularly stressful point in the movie and I think it's time to change the channel. lol I don't need this on a Saturday morning.

The 'No Facebook' experiment is going extraordinarily well. I don't miss it at all in fact. So many people are saying they wish they could do the same thing and I say GO FOR IT! Disconnect forever. It had become such an unbelievable waste of time for me. I'm so glad I'm off the stuff. :) Hahaa.

Does anyone else get annoyed at that Butterfinger's commercial with the Southern girls? Just wondering.

Also, I'm fairly certain that no teenage or young 20-something girls will ever see this page but please pass this message to any that you know - pancaking makeup on your face will not work forever and it makes you not look like YOU. Which will be very disappointing to whatever idiot you randomly meet at a bar and wake up to one morning. My message to the idiots is stop falling for this and then insulting the women with your friends after. The whole process brings all of us down several thousand evolutionary notches and it's totally unnecessary. For as long as I am alive, these kinds of attitudes will always be a sticking point with me. I am an idealist that has been hit by the reality truck. It's a huge truck.

Ok I'm done. Time to hang out with some of my besties from high school... one of them has a gorgeous one year old daughter. It's been way too long since the last time I saw her. I can't wait!

Happy Saturday!

So little time!

There is so much to talk about and so little time. A busy weekend is already beginning!

Last night Paul and I bought running shoes. My knees hurt just thinking about it. We got home, laced up and ran out the door. I was awesome... for about two minutes. We were only out for about 20 minutes and I definitely needed to alternate between walking and jogging. Yoga is how I exercise so this was a shock to the old system. It didn't help that it was about 35 degrees out either. Still, I am proud of myself for doing it. Paul, on the other hand, could have ran a few miles. I'm sure of it. He did a hell of a job. Afterwards we both did yoga which was also pretty wonderful and then I had the best sleep ever.

This morning was interesting. I had a dream that I was riding a bed down the sidewalk. What the hell is that? I even stopped to fill it with gas. lmao...

Interesting news item - today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. What an unbelievable disaster. If you are one of these 'let's take away worker's rights and destroy labor union' types, check your history and google this tragedy.. a tragedy that could have been avoided had these poor women been treated like human beings.

It's also time for the Cherry Blossom Festival. :) What beautiful trees they are! One of my favorites. It might be a little chilly for them but I hope we see some pretty cherry blossoms soon. I love Springtime!

Lots to do this weekend... parties, friends, christening, baking. Hopefully there is some sleep in there too.

Font Fun

Obviously we are going through some changes here... just can't figure out why my fonts are all screwy. Oh well. :)

Hey this Words With Friends game is really fun. I'm playing with my sister and she's in NJ.

Technology!

Resistance is (not) futile!

It's been several hours since I kicked Facebook to the curb and it feels good. Also, I'm still alive. I'm sure of it because I checked to see if my breath showed up on a mirror. All good. I thought I would feel worse about it than I actually do right now. Facebook is ok, even if I don't have warm and fuzzy feelings for it's creator (or thief posing as creator?) but it had started to take up way too much of my time and I couldn't control myself after a while. I was on it pretty much constantly and consider that pretty sick. Now I feel as good as I do when I get over a cold.

Last night I did more in a few hours than I've done in a week, sadly. This is why Facebook had to go. Cooking, cleaning, dishes from dinner all done. I also fell asleep faster because I wasn't thinking about News Feeds and Status Updates. Unfortunately the bad dreams about Paul were still there... I'm working on it. Last night's dream was particularly wicked but at least he's a nice guy when we're awake.

It's probably a nice time to write about Paulie. A lot has changed since I got back to Pennsylvania from France and he is one of the most important topics (next to my outrageously adorable baby nephew godson who was born in December 2010, I'll get to him!).

So I returned to American soil permanently in August of 2009. It was bittersweet for sure. I was starting to have a ridiculously difficult time in France and not having my family around was hard. I scraped together whatever money I had, shipped my boxes back here, had some particularly wild evenings in Nice and then shipped myself back. I certainly miss the good times and there were a lot of good times... Not much has changed here which is comforting and also pretty boring. I enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the South of France and the always changing cast of characters. In the States it's the people that I love. Where I live in particular is not so interesting!

In any case, back to my Paul. We have known each other for maybe 24 years now and in all that time, before December of 2009, we might have said 2 words to each other. Maybe. We met in first grade as little six year olds. I remember him as a very brazen, brash, smiley, cute little boy. He was certainly one of the troublemakers. Paul got yelled at ALL of the time and still I rarely saw him without a smile. He couldn't be contained and I watched him with a little bit of fear and I think some reverence. Even to this day I could never be as bold as he was as a kid and I admired it. I was insanely shy and quiet. When you are easily embarrassed you stay away from people like Paul was for fear of being verbally torn to shreds... even though he wasn't that mean to the other kids in the class, he just liked to buck the system... but when you are like I was, anything terrible is possible. Anyway, we went on like this until seventh grade. Paul stuck with his crew and I with my nice lady friends. In seventh grade Paul was tossed out of school and it was actually supremely unfair. He went off school grounds to chase after a kid who stole his friend's bike. I think our very awful teacher and principal at the time were just looking for an excuse to get rid of him. So that was the last time I saw him, which is definitely not to say the last time I thought about him! His family runs an auto body shop in our area. One of the shops is very close to my parents' house and I mistakenly thought he worked at that one. Every single time I passed by it I would look for him. Of course I never saw him but he was never too far from my thoughts. Obviously I never thought anything would happen between us either. In my mind he was still the adorable bad little boy that I knew in school and in reality he still was, for a while anyway. I have to say it's thanks to Facebook, yes, that we reconnected. It's also thanks to that habit of becoming friends with people that you are not actually friends with in real life! So Paul and I became "friends" on Facebook in June of 2009 and didn't talk to each other. Again. I came back to the States and I started to stalk Paul's page and pics a bit. Finally, I summoned some courage from wherever and inboxed him in the early evening of December 8th.

"I don't know why I feel compelled to tell you this... but after commenting on that group you joined, I got to thinking about grade school again... and I was laughing because I think I was a little afraid of you when we were kids. lol Just something funny... and I wanted to say hi too. Hope you are doing really well."

I assumed I would not hear anything from him. Seriously. However, that message started a barrage of emails that ended a little after midnight. Then text messages the next day because of course we exchanged phone numbers. Then more emails the next evening. We went on a date two days later and the rest is history. We have our ups and downs but at the end of the day he is one of the most positive, resourceful, strongest, bravest, kindest, most handsome, funniest, craziest men I've ever known and life is a lot of fun when we're together. The thing that is so awesome to me is that the growing up that we did brought us to similar places at the same exact time. I feel so blessed and so lucky.

On to my other handsome man! My nephew Ronan was born a few months ago and I love him more than anything! I was there for the delivery and I saw little man being born. It was unbelievable... indescribable! I'm so glad I was there and I'm so proud of my sister and her little guy. He is the sweetest baby ever and so darn cute.

I love holding him... I love when I can get him to stop crying. I love cuddling him and I kiss him way too much. I wish I could spoil him as much as I want to but that's not working out right now! Still I love him so much. He's the best. He's such a good baby and he started to smile and laugh a little bit which is probably the cutest and most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. He is my little godson and he will be baptized on Sunday. I will admit I'm not the most religious person... at all... but I will be there for my little guy.

It's funny when you are with a baby or holding a baby all these things that seemed innocuous before are suddenly possible dangers. It's like you see the world with different eyes... not necessarily to become a paranoid freak, just to rule out any potentially bad situations. I guess maybe it's my worrying nature but it's an interesting thing to experience.

Anyway, there are a million things I could talk about but I'm going to quiet down for a bit and get some stuff done around here.

Today is Harry Houdini's birthday and there's an interesting related news article today - Dorothy Young, the last surviving stage assistant of illusionist Harry Houdini and an accomplished dancer, has died at 103. Farewell Dorothy. :) Tell Harry we said hi and he's still a big hit!

I guess we can consider this blog resurrected.

Kicking the Facebook addiction!

Well I've wasted many hours on Facebook only to learn that there is only a handful of people that I know that really share the same interests and personality traits as myself... and everyone else wants me to shut up (haha). So it's been an interesting experience and I think I might be over it now. Thank god. *deep breaths*

I think I might use my new found free time (well after I finally delete my account which is in the offing) to breathing some life into this blog. I have plenty to talk about but I guess, in the end, FB wasn't the place for me. Maybe this will be.