Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people once a year.

Christmas corner.

OMGHI!

I know that I’ve been Teh Suck at updating regularly and I could totally lie to you and say it’s because I’ve been SO BUSY with… THINGS! Important things! Things that take important time!

The truth is I just haven’t felt like writing.

But since it was Christmas and all I thought that I should take the time to make some kind of Christmas type post so you don’t all think that I’m some horrible holiday hating Scrooge or something. Because that’s only partially true.

I do love the holiday season. I love the house lights (and really think that they should stay up all year and not just because I hate taking ours down, they are pretty and the neighborhood seems so boring and bland after New Years), and I love cookies (as witnessed by the two pants sizes my ass has expanded in the last month), and I love the music (as long as it’s MY MUSIC and not that crappy mall muzak shit, Kenny G playing Silver Bells with that horn thing he uses puts me in one mood; the mood to sleep). Ben and I just had a rough few months prior to the Christmas season so it was hard for me to get into the mood right away and it didn’t really hit till about a week before The Big Day.

Hannah Montana is the Supreme Ruler of the World.

I think one of the hardest things for me to grasp this year is that this is probably going to be Cassidy’s last “Santa” year. She’s already really skeptical but I could tell that there was still a glimmer of magic in her eye as she asked the questions you expect a kid to start to ask when they are putting the pieces together. Next year she’ll have become one of those precocious 10 year olds that pretends to believe in Santa because she knows she’ll net a bigger profit if Santa is involved. She’ll start to complain about having to take the lights down, and she’ll start rolling her eyes at the Kenny G musak and she’ll see the cookie making as a chore instead of a fun activity and it’s all just kind of depressing.

For the Alliance!

But! I still made the most of it and Christmas day was great and she ripped open 30 presents in 4.7 minutes flat. We now have more Hannah Montana CRAP in the house than I’m comfortable with and I’m pretty sure that I funded the next month of Hannah’s life with said CRAP.

And I wrapped some of Ben’s presents in Alliance wrapping paper. That alone made Christmas day ROCK.

And now the obligatory list of fabulous loot. I’ll keep it to the big and fantastically bad ass things.

  • KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in Red from my mommy. <3
  • Senseo coffee maker also in red from Cassidy.
  • Tickets to see Beauty and the Best in May when it comes to the city from my dad. It will be Cassidy’s first Broadway type play and we are both really excited.
  • A really nice laptop bag from Ben.

And last but certainly not least was DxO from Ben. It deserves to be separate from the bullets because it is THAT bad ass. It’s this really advanced photo correction software that uses all these complex mathematical algorithms to correct photos caused by known “flaws” in camera body and lens combinations. So in layman terms, it make pretty pictures EVEN PRETTIER. They have a free demo if you have a DSLR and want to give it a try.

And now, the look forward to 2008 which will require another obligatory post about the past year and what I expect for the NEXT year and I’m sure that “Rinse, Repeat!” isn’t going to cut it so I’ll be back sooner than you think! But just in case I don’t, have a great New Years Eve everybody! Drink lots, don’t drive and ring in the year with people you love and don’t want to punch in the face if you do get too drunk!

*hugs*

It’s all about me.

I’m always fascinated when people throw the “narcissistic” ball at bloggers. And there really isn’t a valid way to argue against it, right? I write about me because I assume that you are going to be interested in what I have to say about me. So yeah, anybody that has a personal domain carries around a healthy amount of The Veinâ„¢.

015/365 - It's all about me.

My dad likes to tease me about the narcissism of blogging and self portraits but we laugh about it because, it’s TRUE! I love me! IT’S ALL ABOUT ME! And my dad bought me the PJ’s to prove it so really, I blame him. 😉

My question to YOU is why YOU care so much? I write about me because I think that I am awesomely fantastic. But why do you read about me? And when you do, and you’re so appalled by it, why do you come back? Over and over. To read more and more. Why do you take time out of your day to comment or email and tell me how vein I am? Because all you’re doing is inflating the ego. I HAVE FANS! I must write more! MORE!

It’s this never ending debate I see rampaging the internet every where I turn. The bloggers write about themselves and the haters write about how much they hate you writing about yourself. “Mommy bloggers” are especially prone to this because a lot of parenthood is about failure. Lots and lots of bumps and bruises and finding out what works by realizing what DOESN’T. I’ve not come across a SINGLE mommy blogger that doesn’t have at least ONE regular commenter there telling them in every comment thread:

“I can’t believe you gave your child SODA! You fucking monster!”

“I can’t believe you posted yours child’s PICTURE on the INTERNET! What about predators?!”

“I can’t believe you told the WORLD about when your child fell down and cracked open his head! Where were you? Probably BLOGGING, you horrible, unfit, asswad! Get off the internet and raise your kids!”

And here I am saying it: I don’t get YOU. At least my focus is on ME. I write because it’s an outlet. I have this grand illusion that people will actually want to read what I have to say, that maybe they will enjoy it and get a little chuckle, or walk away with a new perspective, or just slightly less bored than when they sat down. But at the very core of it, I write because when putting it down “on paper” I have to actually form my thoughts and opinions into complete sentences and organize them in paragraph form and I’m foced to confront them. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten half way through a blog post and gone, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Epiphany!

I sit down and blog knowing that today I will probably learn something new about myself, and two years from now I can look back on today and see how stupid I was back then. YOU sit down to read what I have to say to pick it apart and twist it into something evil and wrong and *gasp* vein!

So you tell me, who sounds like the bigger fool here?

P.S. – I don’t really have any haters. The “I” here was written to speak for bloggers as a whole. Remember, I’m too awesomely fantastic to have haters. BAM!

“You don’t need strength to let go of something. What you really need is understanding.”

At what point in your life do you realize that holding on to animosity and grudges rob you every second you dwell on them? I guess everybody has to find that realization in their own time and in their own way. For me, it happened in the last two weeks. If you’d have asked me six months ago if I was aware enough to know this I’d have said yes, but I’d have been so very wrong. And in another six months I might think the same thing about this moment right now… But for right now, I’m there. I’ve chosen to not carry around those feelings like an egg on a spoon, always afraid that a gust of wind will come along and knock them off to stink up my life.

I let go. I hope others can do the same in the long run. I guess time will tell.

I’ll be back to blog soon. Once to post this in more depth but behind a protected post. I’m adding a plug in to let “select” registered users read them. I’ll let you all know more when that takes place and how to gain access.

And! Ben and I are having a little debate about how far Neo’s ability to bend the space time continuum extends and we need The Internet’s opinion to settle it. 😉