I Am Annoyed

Quick meditation story...

A few weeks ago I was having a bit of a crap day.  Nothing in particular, just "one of those days" where nothing was going right.  I was tired, very hungry (read: bitchy), a bit stressed and I had dinner plans with a friend that evening.  I thought it would be in both of our best interests if I took a few minutes to collect my thoughts and ... find my happy place.

I usually say a little mantra to myself as I begin meditating:

Breathing in I calm my body,
Breathing out I smile.

Read in a book once.

So, I laid down, feeling irritated and hangry (hungry + angry) and started focusing on my breath.

... breathing in I calm my body ...
... breathing out I am annoyed...

Wait ... whut?  HAHAHAHAHA.  I laughed so hard.  Instant de-crabbify.  My Brain just threw out some truth in the middle of my serene moment.  Bitch is keeping it real.  It worked though; I was no longer a grumpasaurus.

I like my posts to have pictures, so I googled "Grumpasaurus."  I got this:

I am adorable.

And for some reason, this.

It's time for change ...
A change into my BROCCOLI HAT!

But seriously ... WTF?  

Must ... understand ...

I went back to the source of the image and the title is "Baroccoli Obama."  Oh.  I see what you did there.  Clever.

Spurtle

I am writing this post from my mother's kitchen table while she bakes cupcakes nearby (I'm a good helper).  She is using a spurtle to poke holes in the cupcakes, filling said hole with lemon pudding.  Only my mother would own a spurtle.

Me:  What's that?
Mom:  It's a spurtle.  I bought it because it's Swedish.
Me:  ...

It's Swedish.

I want to talk about a couple of things in this post:

1.  My absence.
2.  April's challenge.
3.  Spurtles.

1.  In absentia.  Here's my M.O.:  I have a thing I need to do, I worry about doing said thing (doing it well, that is), instead of trying to do that thing, I shut down and do the opposite of that thing, i.e., nothing. (See what I did there?  "No thing.")  I went on a little vacation in March (more on that later) and while there, I drafted lots of funny/interesting posts (in my mind) and even drew a few pictures (more on that later), but once I got home I worried that I wouldn't be able to do the trip justice because it definitely ranks up there in the Top 3 Best Vacations Evar.  I doubted my Paint artistry (I know, right?  How crazy is that?), I doubted my writing talent, I doubted my ability to recollect and retell funny moments, etc.  If I had to pick a film to represent the last few weeks it would be this one:

So, rather than stressing about writing vacation posts, I decided to write about other shit, and get back to them when the movie representing my vacation-post-writing attitude is this:

Shiny.

2.  April.

January:  Take a picture every day
February:  Make something and/or be creative every day (I'm taking an art class starting mid-Feb, which will fit in nicely with this task)
March:  Meditate (2 minutes or 2 hours, as long as I do it)
April:  No shopping, at all (excluding food and toilet paper, of course)
May:  No eating out (I'll eat at someone's house, but not in a restaurant)
June:  Walk 100 miles
July:  No TV (this includes Netflix, Hulu, etc.)
August:  Daily dancing (dancing in my living room totally counts)
September:  Eat vegetarian (bacon, I miss you already)
October:  Try a new food (or a recipe if I run out of food ideas), daily
November:  Learn something new (a new word, a new cloud formation, how to solder properly, whatever)
December:  No SWEARING (fuuuuuuck)

No shopping.  Got it.  I kicked off this month by going on a 4-hour shopping spree with my cousin, Amy.  I'm choosing to look at this way:

Date:  April 1st
Setting:  Dulles Town Center

Amy:  What's your challenge for April?
Heather:  It's no shopping.  I can only buy the essentials.
Amy:  Looks down at Heather's shopping bags full of non-essentials.  Um...
Heather:  APRIL FOOL'S!

Look, in my defense, I honestly didn't realize it was April; it wasn't even on my radar.  I considered lying about it, but that seemed ... dishonest.  And we've already discussed what a terrible liar I am.  (I was going to link to the post I wrote about lying, but I can't find it and I need to get in the shower because it's already 4:00 in the afternoon(!) and I need to leave soon to go to my sis-in-law's house for dinner (homemade biscuits and gravy!) so I can't waste any more time searching.  Bottom line:  I'm a terrible liar.)

(Also, Penny, my niece, thinks it's "gross" to have breakfast for dinner.  She wants ice cream and Easter candy instead.  'Cause that's not gross.)

Rules?  I don't know.  "Don't buy unnecessary shit."  For example, I wanted to buy some cute undies from Victoria's Secret the other day, but then realized "cute undies" aren't not essential when I have a drawer full of "perfectly acceptable" undies at home.  So I didn't buy them.  I'm already kicking this challenge's ass.

I contemplated making a list of all the things I thought about buying but didn't buy (because I'm definitely not going to buy anything non-essential this month), but that seemed a bit dangerous.  I am likely to forget about 97% of things I would have bought, but if I have a handy list, May will likely be the month of I WILL BUY ALL THE THINGS.

3.  Spurtles.  I have nothing else to say about this topic, but I like saying the word.  When I finish writing a post I read it out loud to make sure it doesn't sound completely idiotic (no comments from the peanut gallery).

Don't judge my method.

You're totally judging my method, aren't you?

Lastly, lest you doubt my Paint abilities, here's a glimpse of the house we stayed in on our little vacation to Nevis.

This is a very accurate rendition.

Never doubt me again.

March, A Belated Recap

(You're a belated recap.)

Remember that one time I wrote that "Sass" post all about how I was going to write a bunch of new posts?  That was cute.

It's also cute how I thought I could look at Reddit only once a day.  I suppose installing a "YOU CAN LOOK AT REDDIT WHENEVER YOU WANT" app on my phone didn't help my cause.  Cause?  There's no cause.  I'm not trying to stop.  I mean, I could stop if I wanted to, but ... why would I want to?

(Word of warning:  I don't recommend clicking on that link to Reddit up there.  Trust me on this.  It will suck all of your time away.  If you've never heard of it and are curious about what it is, here's what Wikipedia has to say:  "Reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or text "self" posts."  Hm, doesn't help you does it?  It's basically a lot of silly memes, pictures of cats, stories, links to actual news, and, um, other things that are funny/intereseting.  Still doesn't help you does it?  Welp, that's all I've got for you. You're on your own from here.  Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Alternate title for this post?  Reddit Stole My Blogging Time.

I feel like this post needs a picture.  Here is Penny running through a puddle.

Don't pretend you don't want to do this.

Anyway, let's talk turkey, turkeys.  March.  Where the frakking hell did March go?  It was here a second ago and then *poof* gone.  Though it didn't go the way I had envisioned, I gave March's challenge my best mediocre attempt and I claim victory.  V i i i i i c t o r r r y!  Mostly because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to do so.  I see no point in being all "You suck at meditation, Heather. You are a failure."  What's that going to solve?  Here's what I learned:

1.  Meditation is hard.
2.  Introspection makes me feel all itchy.
3.  I don't like too much quiet.
4.  I don't like sitting.
5.  Most of the time my Brain does whatever the fuck it wants.  I am powerless against it.

But on a serious note, I did mediate most days and my biggest accomplishment was learning that when Jeff the Troll is acting like a dickhead causing my stomach to hate me, I can sit (or lay) quietly, focus on my breathing, and I'm able to calm that big bastard down.  That in and of itself makes me feel ok about my piss-poor, half-assed attempts to meditate, and is certainly enough to declare March a success.

I didn't follow any of the rules I set out for myself:

1.  Mediate for at least 10 minutes every day, hopefully increasing that time throughout the month.
Ten minutes you say?  Not so much.  I would say I meditated 20 out of the 31 days and while I didn't increase me time (suddenly I'm a pirate?) or make it to 10 minutes every day, I did ... something.  
Oh.  20/31 = 65%.  That's a D.    Whatever, it's still passing.


2.  Research different types of meditation, try those.
Nope.


3.  Eat lots of bananas because they're, like, totally good for you.
Oh, I did this one.  I love bananas.


4.  Go to the meditation class I signed up for instead of skipping it like I have been because meditating is hard.
I only went to one class.  0.o


(Holy shit, I'm going to be eating cupcakes tomorrow.  Jennie is making her infamous Heather-friendly S'Mores cupcakes and they are amazing.)

(Those cupcakes were amazing.)



5.  Focus on my inhalations and my exhalations.  Breathe in, breathe out.
Well, I did breathe every day. 

I don't know why those are spaced like a bunch of assholes (how are assholes spaced?  You'd think ... smaller), but I'm getting angry trying to fix and nobody should be angry on Saturday.

I won't lie, I am a little disappointed in myself.  As with January and February, I feel like I didn't give it my best.  Best mediocre?  Sure.  I mediocred the shit out of March.  It's so easy to let life get in the way and use that as an excuse to not follow through on the things I set out for myself.  I do realize that I am the one who decided to take on these monthly challenges and I don't have to go through with any of it, but dammit!  For once I want to say, "I am going to do this thing." and then actually do that thing.

So, Jan - Mar didn't go the way I wanted.  They're done and gone and I have nine more months (that's a whole baby!) to make good on the promises I've made to myself.  I'm on it like white on Richard.

Incidentally, my phone auto-corrected "white on rice" to "white on Richard" the other day and now I kind of want that to be a thing.  Let's make that happen.