It’s the little things: May 2009

Each month, I want to list out five things in life that are small but never fail to brighten my day. It’s like at the beginning of “Amelie” when the narrator lists what the characters enjoy. I’ll start with what inspired me to write this post to begin with.

#1: Licking cake batter off the beaters after mixing a cake.
This is something I always enjoyed doing as a child (I think it’s the only way my mom could get me to help her bake…I’m not worth much in the kitchen). Yeah, sure, there’s a risk of salmonella from the eggs, but I eat raw cookie dough too and still haven’t died.

#2: Narrators in movies.
Speaking of “Amelie”, I have discovered that I really like it when a movie has a narrator doing voice-overs. I have no idea why. This occurred to me a couple days ago, when I was watching “Little Children”.

#3: The curve of ballerinas’ feet.
Every time I go to the ballet, I always watch the ballerinas’ feet when they are en pointe. I really like it when they have a good arch, haha. I’m so weird. I swear I don’t have a foot fetish.

Source: raek6g6 on Flickr

#4: Having exact change at Chick-fil-a.
I get a chicken sandwich and a brownie when I eat there for lunch. At the Chick-fil-a across the street from where I work, this comes to a total of $4.26. This means I need some one dollar bills, a quarter, and a penny. Today, I only had a twenty. Oh well. Can’t happen all the time.

#5: Receiving a card for no reason.
Okay, this hasn’t happened in quite some time, but I’ve always really liked it when it does. Cards are like flowers. They are better when they are given when they don’t have to be.

And the vacation has been planned…

Thanks for all your concern about my last post! I’m doing better; it was just a rough day. We all have them from time to time.

The good news is that I have a vacation on the horizon! In a little over three weeks, I will be traveling to Europe for two weeks! I cannot be more excited. My mom will be accompanying me as we take a quick tour through Paris and Italy.

First, we will fly into Paris. Our hotel here is the Classics Hotel Bastille in the 11th arrondissement.

Things are a ton of things I want to see in Paris, so I hope we can fit most of them in. I definitely want to see the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre. I’d like to walk by the Moulin Rouge and take pictures (apparently the hotel is within walking distance, so that shouldn’t be an issue). The Science and Industry Museum sounds cool. Then, of course, things like the Notre Dame Cathedral, Sainte-Chapelle, Orsay Museum, the Pantheon, the catacombs, and Versailles would all be awesome to see. We will be staying there for three nights.

Late on our last day there, we will be catching an overnight train down to Milan. From Milan, we are traveling to Como, and from Como up to Bellagio, which is our next stop. I’ve read that Bellagio is rated one of the most beautiful cities in all of Europe, so I’m excited to see it! Our hotel here is the Hotel Bellagio, which is on the lake and not far from the gardens. I’m sure carrying our luggage up these steps will be fun.

We are spending two days on the lake before catching a train to Venice. In Venice, we are staying at the Comfort Hotel Diana, which is just off St. Mark’s Square.

After two days in Venice, we will be renting a car and attempting to navigate our way down to Florence! We will be keeping the car the entire time we are there, so we can explore Tuscany and take a day trip to Pisa. In Florence, we are staying at the Hotel River, which (obviously) is located on the river.

We have four nights here, so we’ll (hopefully) have plenty of time to drive around the countryside, as well as see all the sites in the city. After that, we’ll be flying back to boring ol’ Tennessee.

I can’t wait!

I’m hanging in there…

I thought some people may have been concerned with all my recent depressing Facebook statuses…

Soon after Ben and I officially parted ways back in February, I had a doctor’s appointment. It was mainly a general checkup (since I hadn’t been to a GP in, oh, 10 years), but also to get medication for my asthma that I’ve had for roughly 9 years and never did anything about. During this check-up, my blood pressure was taken three times. It was high every time. My doctor was, of course, concerned. I explained I was going through a rather traumatic breakup, and she said that could definitely do it. She scheduled another appointment for two months later so she could check up on how the medication was doing and whether my blood pressure was still high.

Cue April. My asthma medication wasn’t working, so she put me on Advair (which is working great, by the way). My blood pressure was again checked three different times. (Can I just say that I’ve almost started hating the blood pressure cuff thing as much as needles?) Again, it was really high. She told me to monitor it over the next few weeks (by checking it at drugstores) and to report back. I have yet to do this because I highly doubt that it’s gone down. I have another doctor’s appointment at the end of June, so I’m hoping to rectify it before then.

There are two reasons I think it’s so high, and I’m sure they are related: stress and lack of sleep. I haven’t slept for a full 8 hours since….December? I started having severe asthma problems around the end of December (hence, prompting me to schedule the February appointment) which interfered with my sleep, and my body just hasn’t corrected itself. This may be due, in my opinion, to stress. There are currently three major things stressing me out at the moment, two of them being work and Ben’s presence (no offense, Ben, but you know it’s true). I’m not going to get into the third, because it’s a really stupid thing to be stressing out over.

All this stress pretty much reached a climax over the past two days. I had a major argument with Ben over various random things yesterday, and then my work stress peaked at about 4pm today. What everything basically boiled down to is that I felt that no one was appreciating anything I did, no matter which part of my life it was. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty selfless person, but, as I said a few weeks ago, I think I’ve turned into kind of a doormat. The problem is that I get frustrated being a doormat and all that frustration comes out at one time.

That day was today.

Being in a bad mood, for whatever reason, also causes me to have all sorts of other negative thoughts like how I’m scared I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life and that I’m never going to find love again and all this other emo crap that I don’t normally think about.

I tried, tried, tried to get out of the house to calm myself down, but no one was biting. I had already eaten dinner at Mellow Mushroom alone, and the last thing I really wanted to do was spend more time with my frustrated self. I wanted to just go sit somewhere other than my house and listen to someone else talk and maybe get a nice hug. That didn’t happen. In all my frustration, I stopped paying attention to important things like walking and fell down my stairs and hit my head. Ouchie. So now I’m frustrated and stressed out with a mild concussion (although the headache has gone considerably down) and still unable to sleep. It’s not been a good night.

I dug out my childhood teddy bear to comfort me, but I think I just depressed him.

Here is to tomorrow, with hopefully no stress (at least it’s Saturday and I won’t have to deal with work) and no concussions.

How I Spent My “Wedding” Day

As most of you know, yesterday was the day I had spent over a year stressing out over and planning every meticulous detail about. Therefore, I was concerned that it was going to be a huge letdown to not have any of that happen and would be moping all day. Not because I think that we should still be getting married (I do realize that it’s for the best, and I am over the heartbreak for the most part), but because so much time, energy, money, and excitement was put into something that just wasn’t going to happen. Luckily, my best friend Sabrina had other plans for me.

She showed up Friday night, with a bouquet of tulips in hand.

Then we went and hung out at the Opryland Hotel. A local high school’s prom was apparently that night, so we ate dinner and commented on the prom dresses we saw and joked about going to put on fancy clothes and seeing if we could pass for high school students.

The next morning, we headed down to Franklin, where we had lunch at Logan’s. (By the way, their mesquite grilled chicken is really good.) She had told me before I had gotten ready to make sure my legs were shaved, and I discovered why next. She was taking me to a spa! I got a 30-minute Swedish massage, which was great and relaxing. Afterward, she took me out to Chili’s for molten chocolate cake.

It was a pretty great day.

Later that evening, I went out to the art crawl with Wayne and got lots of free (albeit, cheap) wine. I was pretty exhausted after all that, so I just came home and went to bed.

I’m thankful to have great friends to keep me distracted. And I will note that it would have been raining and we had no backup plan for the outdoor wedding, so I’m sure I would have been more stressed out if the wedding hadn’t been called off, haha.