Not Quite Betty Crocker

{I feel like I should ‘fess up that this post was written last week.  Right this moment I’m wearing uncomfortable but really fabulous heels and talking to too many people under too bright lights for entirely too long, trying valiantly to remember what they’re telling me – and after the third session, frankly, to care at all – and wishing I was instead writing a new post for this blog.  On the bright side, I’m employed and get to wear real clothes and comb my hair for people who don’t think ponytails and no makeup are the hottest thing ever.}

Well, if that wasn’t a perfect intro to this post…. Yes, my husband likes ponytails and no makeup (on me, he not being the long hair or makeup-wearing sort of man).  That’s one reason he’s awesome.  But one of the best parts of week one of blogging the bright side is that I’m noticing all the ways in which my life is really super duper cool.  Already.

When you spend all your energy trying to tweak the small percentage that’s not working, you lose sight of the huge percentage that is.  And it is, it really is.

{I’m debating whether or not to bullet-point this list.  Pros: I like them.  Cons: What am I, working? Numbered list: fair compromise, but then I have to limit myself to one paragraph per item, and that’s just not happening.  I will bold.}

I have a really great husband.  Really.  You might not think so given the tone and content of my posts here, but you have to remember that you’re only seeing a very small slice of my life, the slice that I’m struggling to digest and so I puke it up to you in all its disgusting mess in the hopes that I can dig through it and figure out what caused the vomit.  Gross, but true.  

My husband ate Ramen and eggs and stuff from the freezer for a solid week in order to surprise me with tickets to see Sugarland and Keith Urban last Friday night.  This is notable not only because he stayed poor for a whole week when he could have been partying like a man with an out-of-town wife (you know, video games and pizza galore), but also because he remembered my comment that Sugarland was the best concert I’d ever been to but I was sad because I’d gone alone.  And then he bought a fabulous vintage side table from my favorite vintage store in just the right vintage style and put the tickets inside the drawer.

I’m hard to surprise, being all, “Here’s a list of what you should get me for my birthday complete with notes on how to save money and which options to choose.”  But he did it, just because.

Also, he tries harder than anyone I’ve known to make everyone else’s life happier, often to his own detriment (we’re working on that) but always with generosity.

And he sends me text messages every single morning wishing me a good day, and every single afternoon asking me how my day’s going.

My dog turned out pretty wonderfully.  I wasn’t so sure, frankly.  Man, puppies are… puppies.  I had an inkling of the difficulty and relentlessness of raising a puppy, but I’d never done it and now I know why.  Yowza.  Up until very recently, I constantly worried I’d screwed him up royally.  Sometime around his first birthday, he just up and became this fantastic dog.  Really.  It was crazy.  I mean, he didn’t KNOW he was a year old and therefore supposed to calm down, but he did, and he’s awesome.

He came up to me and laid his cute little head on my lap and just cuddled.  Out of the blue.  Best. Thing. Ever.  Of course, then I noticed he was eyeing my leftover peanut butter sandwich… and then I loved him more, because my dog, he’s a smart one!

{We have a second dog, but his awesomeness is through no real fault of ours, having gotten him through the trainer I trust most in the world when he was pretty fully grown.  We have, however, aided him in becoming a 90+ pound beast of a dog who likes to play with cats and show you his belly.  And we accidentally taught him to beg very effectively, which I guess is a skill.}

My job and my boss are great.  I’m in a strange role, one created specifically for me with an understanding that it would be a stretch for me to think and act strategically (versus the boots-on-the-ground tactical jobs I’d had in the past, exhilaratingly stressful jobs that I had a knack for), and it has caused me great stress and constant I’m-so-gonna-lose-my-job worries since the moment I took it.  I’m fully remote, working from my pj’s whenever I want in my own little home office, but as a verbal extrovert who thinks as she speaks, I’ve struggled.  But I get to choose my path, my tasks, my strategies, and my meeting times (not to mention my attire).

And when I had a serious crisis of confidence (okay, okay, my third serious crisis of confidence), my boss gave me a 60-minute pep talk (from a man who’s generally quadruple-booked in every time slot) without once getting negative.  It was all supportive bolstering.  So I struggle, but only with my own demons.

If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d still want to live here in this city in this house.  At least part of the time.  I never wanted to be a homeowner, knowing myself well enough to know that the commitment would cause me many panics, but we happened upon this unique and quirky house and that was it, we were homeowners.  We didn’t have to go house-hunting or weigh alternatives or engage in a bidding war.  We love the neighborhood, love our neighbors, love the fact that we can ramble from room to room as our spirit leads us.  I might move my office back upstairs and I get to pick which room to use.  I used to live in an apartment where my only option was whether to sit on this chair or that patch of floor.

Also, my face is getting more angular as I get older and I think that’s pretty cool. :)

And now I have an inkling why this bright side thing can be so difficult – it feels like bragging.  I’m itching to delete all of that because I don’t want you to think that I think that my life is perfect and I don’t have any problems and everything’s easy, because it’s so not true!  But this is true, too.  It’s all about finding a balance.

So I’m not deleting, but help a girl out by sharing why your life is awesome so I don’t feel so weird about it all, will you?