(You know how I like to jump the gun.)

I spend my free time perusing the houses available in the neighborhoods we love, calculating mortgages & downpayments, wishing that our house would sell RIGHT THIS INSTANT BECAUSE DOUG! COME LOOK AT THIS HOUSE!  & then I hop on Pinterest & decorate the entire thing in my head.

Of course, my head doesn’t have a budget in mind which is a very lovely thing when I’m pinning Anthropologie & Amy Butler fabrics.

I’m in this awful stage right now of having so many ideas & dreams for decorating, but not wanting to “waste” them on the house we are selling.  Especially since the goal is to keep our current house as sparkling clean & sparse as possible. 

Sell, house.  Sell!

Well, me & Mr. Darcy because I started reading the smut sequal to Pride & Prejudice, “Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife” & I’ve been pouring over pages & lovingly attacking my husband.

BLAME MR. DARCY.

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(also, these are the books I currently have my nose in.)

isn’t my new rug mug mandie sent me just darling?  even the name “rug mug” totally kills me with the cute.

There was that time I clogged an industrial toilet & then there was this & then this.  & I realized that I totally forgot to show you my new shiny office bathroom!  Shut up, you know you’ve been on pins & needles for this.

So nice, right?  Four stalls!

You can’t see the person’s shoes under the stall doors or sides, so bathroom activities can be all ninja-like.  Nobody has to know it was you with the coffee-smelling pee.

Naturally, the risk you run with this set-up is the inability to toss a wad of paper under the partition to an unsuspecting & paper-less patron.  But they take care of this by providing ample supplies.

You are so welcome for this.

This is real-life, friends.  Please notice the drooping garland, random golf clubs, & the pizza boxes on the kitchen table where we’re using the formal dining room chairs because oh yeah, I sold our kitchen chairs & haven’t replaced them yet.  Also the Matchbox cars, strategically placed to ensure that my kid’s first real words to anyone in public will be “DAMN IT ALL TO HELL.”

& so begins the week of yuletide cheer!

I started noticing it in pictures, first.  Then the mirror.  It’s becoming more blatantly obvious every single day but I feel like I need confess that my new hipster status is not because I’m listening to She & Him on repeat, but rather because my bank account is dangerously dry these days.

I seriously can’t stop laughing.  Which proves how easily I am humored, right?

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HUGE.

I committed to writing every day & batted at a 93.3% average.

I said goodbye to my job of six years & started on a completely new career path, in a completely new industry.

We put our house on the market.

I mastered the sock bun, read books that spill poetry onto pages, & only drove through Bojangles once.

I gave away an Oreck vacuum & a Kitchen Folio from momAgenda.

I mourned the loss of my first baby.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with family & friends.

I took another new job as a writer for Babble. (more on that tomorrow!)

& I witnessed a miracle.

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I have found myself stressing about money & work/life balance, but everything seems to fall into place the moment I think my anxiety cannot take one more moment.  & then I curl up in bed to escape with a book or One Tree Hill on Netflix.

Here’s looking forward to a bright & merry holiday season.  Cheers, my friends.

We?  Are about to be tickled to death by a two-year-old.  photo by Mandy Powers.

I’m still in that weird “please like me!” stage where I hope to beat him in every day.

I rounded the corner, dodged a column, & WHAM! faceplanted.  I’m still shocked that I did not
a) break my ankle
b) blow out my knee
c) break my wrist
d) all of the above.

But the first thought through my mind was, “HOLY SHIT, I just ate marble in front of at least ten of my new colleagues.”  & I was thrown back thirteen years when I fell UP the steps of the high school building in front of the popular seniors.  So I did what any normal sane drama queen would do.  I moaned & rolled onto my back, clutching my ankle.  One lady offered her concern, but I sheepishly got up & limped to the elevator, where everyone avoided eye contact for the next four stories.

This is where I should wax poetic about how my pride is bruised but honestly?  My ankle hurts worse.

“I wouldn’t dream of working on something that didn’t make my gut rumble and my heart want to explode. “~ Kate Winslet

Like at Christmas, when a funeral home sent our marketing team a basket of treats with a bottle of wine & a note that scrawled “Thanks for all you do!”

Four years later, we still haven’t stopped wondering whether people run funeral homes because they’re socially awkward or if they’re socially awkward because they run a funeral home.

It’s all very chicken & egg, you see.