Foto Friday - 4th of July Edition

The 4th of July is my town's biggest holiday, of course this isn't saying much, because it's not exactly a big town. People literally come from all over to watch our parade and our fireworks and everyone has their own traditions.  Mine consists of watching the parade from the comfort of my own front porch, with mimosa's and my Momma, I then meet best friend K at her family's parade watching spot.  We travel together through the masses to get down to the park, where hot dogs, soda and italian ice awaits (I should aslo mention that this step involves dodging A LOT of people we went to grammar school with and have no interest to ever have contact with ever again).  At the park we meet up with best friend A and Co. and travel back to A's house for what's basically an 8 hour BBQ, until we run to get a good seat at the fireworks.Every year K and I walk home (we live on the same side of town) and every year she complains that she's scared to finish the walk by herself ;-)

I don't really share personal photo's on this blog, but because it's one of my favorite days of the year, I'm going to make an exception.  Here's 4th of July, hometown style:



Mummers




FireQUACKERS - my favorite float ever

















My neighbors tiki bar, street side
















K is an avid photographer and I count on her for a lot of pictures of a lot of things.  After stalking out her life on facebook, there were ZERO 4th of July pictures online....not a single one! WTF, K?! We've been alive for 25 of them (well you've only been here for 24, but still)!!

Mid-Week Thought

I realized a long long time ago that everyone has a past, everyone has drama and that everyone has experiences that makes them the person they are.  Most of the time, these things are difficult and make you feel like there's no one out there who "gets it" or like you're never going to make it through.  But we do.  We all make it through, it's not always graceful, or the way someone else would've done it, but one way or another, we make it.  The problem starts when you carry these things from your past forward and let them dictate your future.

I saw this quote yesterday, from my favorite inspirational website Marc and Angel Hack Life:

"Too often, we carry around things from our past that hurt us – regrets, shame, anger, pain, etc. Don’t let these negative points from the past rob your present happiness. You had to live though these things in the past, and, although unfortunate, that can’t be changed. But if the only place they live today is in your mind, then let go, move on, and be happy."

So there you have it.

Happy Hump Day!

Keywords

Blogspot has this cool feature where you can track how people are finding/reading your blog.  It breaks it down by country, which Internet provider is used, the time of day and a key word search.  I had to laugh when this came up:



Maybe I should write about something more meaningful than flats and 'coock's.

Aunt Advice

“Happy” Monday!  I had a great weekend…some of my family from VA took a spur of the moment trip up to NJ and since my boyfriend was consumed with running a golf tournament, I had all the time in the world to hang out with my Aunt P, Uncle S, Cousin T and his best friend.  Dinner on Saturday was fun and after the initial shock of my weight loss (I believe Aunt P actually said “Where’s the rest of you?!” and “You were always so pretty, but you’re entire face changed! You’re gorgeous!”…I knew I loved that woman) talk quickly turned to the new man in my life (thanks Mom).   The entire dynamic cracks me up.  My mom hasn’t met a boyfriend in 10 years and the last one she met, she had to meet because she was driving us around at the age of 16.  If you couple that with what the psychic said (I’ll be getting married sooner than I think) my Aunt(s) have already begun planning what they’re wearing to my wedding and which reading they are going to read in the aforementioned dress.  I guess I can’t really fault them since I’ve had the readings selected for approximately 16 years now, but it was still entertaining to see other people more excited than I am about my nonexistent nuptials.  This entire conversation then turned to how my cousin wants either a baseball scholarship or a golf scholarship to college, and since he already has a private baseball coach, golfer would be more than welcome at the next family dinner to discuss my cousin’s “short game”.  I was told to have golfer put the date in his calendar ‘or else’….My Aunt has never actually said that to me before, so I took it at face value and informed golfer that he had no choice but to come to dinner (which he laughed about, until I told him I was completely serious and watched him put it in his phone).

Dinner led to more discussion on Sunday about this psychic and relationships and a bunch of other stuff.  I don’t get a lot of one on one time with my Aunt, so it was nice to actually hear her perspective on things, after all, she’s been married to my Uncle for 28 years, so she must have done something right.  We started talking about people who stay in bad relationships out of familiarity, people who date forever and decide to never get married, people who got married after 11 years of dating and don’t last 2 years in the marriage and people who date people and are unsure of what they want out of the relationship.  We agreed that it’s not how long you date (see the couple who dated for 11 years and after they were married, the bride found out that for the last 4 years, her husband was dating someone else), but where you are in your lives and where you want to go, that becomes more of a factor.   This could’ve very well been my aunt priming me for my wedding next week, so she could get dressed up…but I think it was more than that. 

This had me bring up a point that my best friend raised last week (granted, she used the point to prove that her ex-roommate was nuts, but I’m about to use it against her).  Her ex-roommate believed that after 2 months of dating someone, you should know if you want to marry them or not.  My best friend though this was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard and compared it to love in a movie, but I have to respectfully disagree.  I think at my age (25) you are thinking about the future with every person you date and you wouldn’t waste your time on someone who you couldn’t see yourself marrying.  Isn’t that the point of dating?  To find out what you want, what you don't want and what you need out of a partner?  That's the problem with staying in bad relationships...you're potentially missing out on the right guy, if you're wasting time with the wrong one.  If someone wasn’t giving me exactly what I felt I needed, I wouldn’t continue to date him, it would be a waste of both of our time.  I understand the whole concept of dating more than one person to ‘have fun’ and ‘see what’s out there’, but I’ve been there and done that (and by the way, there isn’t much ‘out there) and I’m not the confused immature person I was at 21.  I’ve spent a lot of time, discussing and writing about what I was looking for and dating a lot of the wrong people, so does the fact that I found what I want after 3-4 months make me crazy?  I don’t think so.  And in case you were wondering, my Aunt didn’t either. 

Foto Friday - Capricorn Edition Pt 2

This is a continuation of the original Foto Friday post, but with Capricorn traits as they relate to dating:

That might depend on who you ask...lol



Which is why I'm so scared of losing those I love!



Foto Friday - Capricorn Edition

Sorry for everyone who's not a Capricorn, but I found Zodiacchic via Pinterest and fell in love! I highly recommend you go and check out the traits that belong to your sign. 

I am a Capricorn through and through and I love anything that gives me insight to my astrological sign and for those of you who are interested in knowing a little bit more about why I am the way I am, this should help! There are a lot, so hang in there!



THIS why I didn't vote for Obama ;-)





See, Kiki, it's not my fault!





When I want to tell you, I'll tell you!



Atlantic City and a Psychic

Ah, it’s Thursday already!?  I was off on Monday and Tuesday, so there was no blogging for me, and then Wednesday I had to take a test to become a Notary Public…which was actually really hard.  I would also like for the NY Department of Defense (the branch in charge of NP appointments) to explain to me why in NY I have to take a test to notarize a document, but in New Jersey I just have to mail a form with a signature on it to the County Clerk.  It doesn’t quite seem fair.

Anyway, I went to AC this weekend with the golfer (I guess I should be calling him my boyfriend now, but golfer has a nice ring to it) and it was SO MUCH fun!  On second thought, I probably shouldn’t be writing about him in this blog, because I might have told him there ‘wasn’t really anything about him in it’….Ooopps.  Maybe one day we’ll look back on that little tid-bit and laugh.

AC was fun though, we stayed at Harrah’s, ate, drank, sang, danced (don’t get too excited, it was more like a fist pump/arm wave seated dance) and golfer gambled a little bit (and won!) I even learned how to bet while playing Craps, kind of.  Everything I was worried about beforehand (What if he has some ridiculous habit? What if he talks in his sleep?  What if he has night terrors and just screams spontaneously?  What if I actually run out of things to say?) Was a non issue, the guy doesn’t scream/talk/snore or anything, so I guess all of my worrying was for nothing. But it was a great 2 days and it kind of sucked coming back to reality, but it is what it is.

In other news, while I was coming back from AC, I got a text from a friend.  For all intensive purposes the text read: “My mom’s psychic told her that I need to be careful not to get knocked up before the wedding”, to which I replied “LMAO”…because I was actually laughing my ass off. I’ve written on this blog before about my experiences with psychics and can most of the time tell if a psychic is legit or not. After having a bad reading in March, I decided it was time to get back on the psychic saddle and went to find myself a new psychic (yes, K, you inspired me).  And I’m happy to report back that I think I found a winner!  She’s no Janet, but she was pretty damn good.

She asked me to shuffle the cards and one card flew out of the deck.  She said “Just out of curiosity, can I see that card?” I showed her and she nodded and let me keep shuffling.  Well ladies and gents, it was the career card…and with that it was followed by a ‘talking/interview’ card and a creativity card, basically having her say that by September I will be in a new position.  She stressed that my title might be the same, but the atmosphere is more creative and there are a lot of perks (she specifically mentioned travel).  She also randomly said that if I look at my current building, my new building will be behind it and two the right…I’m going to have to get a map out for that one.

She asked if I was happy with my ‘love life’ (I hate that term) and I said yes…and she said “Alright, I know you’ve got questions…why does he work with so much green?!  He’s surrounded by green” and I started laughing and informed her that he was a golfer.  She said that it was long term and we’re a good match and if we choose to have children, our first born will be a girl, followed by an excessive amount of boys…she basically said child 2-5 would be a boy…so I wouldn’t have to ‘keep going’ for another girl.  I told her I was NEVER having 5 children, so that was irrelevant to me!  She also said that he sometimes views me as a workaholic and I should tone it down a little bit, but she sees my new job allowing me to do that. She also said I had to stop being so scared of him leaving, because he wasn’t going anywhere (I’m assuming she meant leaving the relationship and not leaving the state, because he is in fact going back to FL in November). 

She also said that I would be married sooner than I thought, which kind of cracked me up…but boosts my confidence about this relationship. Sometimes I still don’t think it’s real.  I swear there are times when I’ll read a text and actually think to myself “I’m the luckiest girl in the world, how did I get here?” but then I remember all of the ‘frogs’ (to put it nicely) I had to get through to find a prince and quickly say, "Relax, you actually do deserve this".

Foto Friday - AC Edition

I'm heading to AC this weekend with golfer, which should be interesting.  Here's to hoping he doesn't have any annoying habits, or a gambling problem.



We're staying at Harrah's, I've never seen the pool during the day...






















They have indoor mini golf, a rematch might be necessary




















Golfer is a 'dancer', I am not.  THIS would be my worst nightmare.



This would be a best case scenario...

I'm also unsure how to play most casino games and just googled "how to play craps", so this should be an interesting trip...There's a good chance I come back single.

Hello, Again!

I know, I know, it's been a while...but I've been kind of uninspired lately.  Not in a bad way, there just haven't been any dating faux paux since back-pat-gate. But, since I'm me, and I'm not one to disappoint I do have something to share:  I'm going to yet another wedding with M. I swear I'm going to start charging for my services soon!  It's kind of a strange situation, M and I are very good friends, for all intensive purposes (weddings, births, funerals) I'm part of his family.  We always have fun together and I love weddings, so this is really like a win-win for both of us.  He doesn't have to bring someone that could be a hit or miss date and I get to attend a wedding and laugh for a few hours.  Yes, I understand that M is my ex, but we dated 10 years ago! 

Here's the dilemma:  Do I tell golfer I'm going to a wedding with M?  Do I just say I'm going to a friends wedding?  (I have no idea who's getting married, btw) Do I not say anything at all and when golfer asks me to hang out on the 1st Saturday he's back from Florida, I tell him I have a wedding? Do I even have to tell golfer anything, being that he's not my boyfriend? Or should I ask him if he minds that I'm going to a wedding as someone else's 'date'?

While you think about that, I'd like to point out that weather permitting, I'm meeting M for dinner on Wednesday (only if it rains and softball is cancelled) and he hasn't seen me since Christmas (aka 32 lbs ago) so this should be interesting...What's even better, is that my horoscope for Sunday (when M and I discussed dinner) looked like this:

Exes are exes for a reason...sure there's A LOT I would've changed back in the day, knowing what I know now, I just have to use that knowledge and apply it to future relationships to make them as successful as possible.