It's just a phase...

....so we were having dinner with some friends last night.  And instead of eating a hamburger, like everyone else, I ate a veggie burger.  (Because those are decidedly more healthy, and fewer points on Weight Watchers, which I recently rejoined).  However, it obviously led into a conversation about why exactly I wasn't eating a hamburger, which prompted Tom to say something like, "Amanda's into eating healthy these days." 

Which got me thinking about all of the phases I've been through lately.  I used to think of phases as a teenage thing.  Like the "I'm so fat" phase or the "yes, I am going to date that boy and you can't stop me" phase.  The "I love that one pair of ugly stretch pants" phase, and the "pinning the bottom of your jeans is the coolest thing ever" phase.  Ok, that was more middle school than high school. 

But now, in my upper 20s and 30s, there was the "vegan for a month" phase, and the "I do yoga every other day" phase.  The "I don't eat dairy at all" phase, and the "I only eat dairy sometimes" phase.  The "I don't drink coffee phase" and the "which way to Starbucks?" phase.  The "I'm going to wear hats more often" phase and the "I'm going to learn all about football so I can get a boyfriend" phase.  The "I'm going to learn Spanish" phase and, of course, the "I'm better off learning French phase."   The "I should learn how to be a photographer" phase, the "I should get my doctorate" phase, and the revisited but not yet realized "I should just sit home all day and make crafts" phase....

I could go on and on. 

I still act like a teenager. 

Oh. My. God. I am a teenager. 

I mean, can I be defined by the phases that I go through?   Isn't that how we attempt to define our adolescence?  Am I the person in between the phases trying to be something I'm not... or am I defined as the person who likes phases?  Hmmm...

Or do I just use phases to keep life more interesting for myself?  To distract myself from the more straightforward things about life?  I have realized that with things like exercise, I'm not motivated by the sheer bliss that exercises causes in and of itself (probably because it doesn't cause sheer bliss for me).  Rather, I'm motivated by goals.  That's why I do things like run marathons and buy Insanity workout DVDs.  Cuz gosh darn it, I will do 60 days of Insanity whether I like it or not.  It's also why I'm not very good at just maintaining.  I like to do things all or nothing.  A definite character flaw, I've decided. 

I guess I'm not really sure how to answer any of those questions. 

Anyway, I have to go look up online graphic design courses.   

Nope, I'm not joking...

this is living.

I sort of love that Toyota Venza commercial.  The one where the girl is trying to get her parents to join Facebook, and instead, they are out mountain biking.  She says, "This is living."  Of course, she's talking about being online all day and having six hundred facebook friends.  But her parents are the ones out living. 

I have no idea why i like this commercial because I have no interest in Toyota Venzas.  But I did have a "this is living" moment over the weekend.  We were driving to Shenendoah Valley for a river rafting trip (the lazy kind, not the class 5 rapid kind).  It was pretty amazing. 

I had this moment - this "i have an amazing life" moment.  I was driving with Tom and Gechi in the backseat of the car we just bought.  We were going to spend the day floating down the Shendoah River with a coupel of coolers and good friends.   We came up this beautiful view of the treeline, and we were listening to the right song at the right moment, and I got this overwhelming feeling of how lucky I am to be in this moment. 

Sometimes I get too easily bogged down in the details of life - the credit card bills, the work deadline, the plans for the weekend, the rent, the car, etc. etc. etc.  to notice the "this is living" moments. 

Have you had one lately?  I hope so! 

Purses and Mammograms

So don't be alarmed.  I had to have a mammogram a few days ago, for something that we expected to turn out to be nothing, which it did.  This was my very first mammogram because I'm probably too young to be having them regularly.  Naturally, this caused a few observations on my part: 

1.  Mammograms are kind of freaky.  I mean, of course, I know you should have them yearly after you hit age 40, depending on your family's cancer history.  But nobody really tells you exactly what a mammogram is.  Or at least, either nobody told me, or I tuned it out a long time ago.   

2. No matter how convinced you are that that little something is going to be nothing, it's scary.  One little test could redefine your entire life.  It's weird that a moment such as that could be with a complete stranger in a little room, who keeps saying, "Now hold your breath for me." 

3.  Mammograms are seriously painful.  Nobody tells you that they're going to stick your breast on a machine and squeeze it to death.  Multiple times.  It hurts.  Seriously. 

4.  This is what women do.  Apparently, we have mammograms.  (Or at least we should).  As I sat in the little waiting area with my gown on and my cell phone off, my attention turned to the other women in the waiting room.  One woman complimented another women on her gigantic purse.  She had, in fact, been walking behind this women on the street admiring her purse.  Little did she know, they would end up sitting next to each other in the radiology clinic.  And then, a conversation started all about the purse, and how you can buy a base and then get different "shells" for them.  That women had an animal print cover on her purse - but she has many more at home.  Her favorite was called Cheryl, which was discontinued, but it's her first name as well.  It's burgundy. 

And this converation made me think about how amazing women really are.  I mean, we're all sitting in a room together, half-naked...about to take a very painful, potentially life-altering test.  And we can still talk about purses.  We can admire purses, we can talk about a deal, we can sell those purses as if it was our own business.  We can find community, no matter where we are or what we're doing. 

Amazing. 

If anyone's interested, I found the link to these purses. 

 http://www.michebag.com/ 

When I showed it to Laura at work without telling her why, she told me that they looked like purses for 40-year-old women. 

Which makes perfect sense.  : ) 

me and my pegboard and my crazy self

So I decided that I was tired of having a steel shelf in our kitchen with all of our pots and pans on it.  So, this weekend, I got inspired by Julia Child and decided to go for the pegboard pot rack. 

First, I went to Home Depot and spent WAY too much time in there looking around for everything I needed and getting pieces of wood cut.  On the way out, I made sure to drop my gallon of paint, which responded appropriately by exploding all over the parking lot.  : ) 



Me and my blue paint spill.  Luckily, the Home Depot guy helped me get some more paint. 



Here's what I started with: 

Then Tom taught me how to use a power drill.  Totally awesome. 



Note:  I must be blinking.  I was certainly NOT drilling anything with my eyes closed. 


Until I got mad at him because I kept threading (is that the right word for that?) the screws cuz I wasn't pushing hard enough on the drill.  I mean, obviously, Tom, I know I was threading the screws - you don't have to tell me three times in a row.  I can hear it.  I'm trying to fix it.  Duh. 

So then I told him he could just do it himself since he knows how to do it so much better than me.  Then he told me I was being ridiculous (admittedly, in a much nicer way than that).  ME?  Ridiculous?  Standing with my crazy self on a wobbly stool, sweating my ass off, holding a working power drill?  Who me?  Ridiculous? 

I mean, honestly...look at me. 



I, for one, wouldn't go anywhere near that crazy person. 



So then I looked at him square in the eye, ready to defend myself to the end about how he had made me feel stupid for not knowing how to use a power drill.   I put my boxing gloves on and was ready for this.  How dare you tell me how to use a power drill.  And then, naturally, the absurdity of that registered, and I had to laugh.  Mad at my husband for trying to help me use a power drill -- I'm lucky he didn't take that damn thing away from me!  Then later I apologized.  In the meantime, somewhere in the midst of the craziness, I had created, with Tom's assistance, the most awesome pegboard wall EVER. 



Almost done...

  

...and done!  : ) 

I wish I could tell you I learned an awesome lesson or something throughout this process.  But the truth is, I know I am very stubborn, respond very negatively to being told what to do, and can sometimes act like a crazy person.  Mostly, I just wanted to tell you a story. I did, however, manage to stay married AND have somewhere to hang my pots and pans.  What could be better? 

Oh, by the way, we do have more than two pans.  I bought the wrong kinds of hooks so have to grace Home Depot with my presence one more time!