Life as Betsy

But I decided to upload the disc tonight to my iTunes and had to search the song titles and artists by Google tonight. I started to notice a pattern in your song choice:

Forever’s As Far As I’ll Go
Close Enough to Perfect
Alabama
Live Until I Die
Everything That Glitters Is Not Gold
You Never Even Call Me By My Name
Love A Little Stronger
I See You In A Different Light
The Man In Love With You
Texas
I Love the Way You Love Me
Amy’s Back in Austin
Blame It On Texas
Same Old Star
What’s Forever For?
No Doubt About It
Big Dreams In A Small Town
He Left A Lot to Be Desired
Some Girls Do
You Can Dream Of Me
Keeper of the Stars

I am utterly thrilled and thankful that Sarah took pictures of my birthday party last weekend, because I didn’t even think to get my camera out until well later into the night and didn’t really get good shots. But looking through the shots, I can’t help but notice how much thicker I look in them than I really feel. And that, my friends, is defeating. I could give you a laundry list of reasons why I look so heavy and they would include:

~cookies
~cupcakes
~birthday cake
~egg rolls
~tiramisu
~chicken fetticini alfredo
~pizza
~chocolate peanut butter rice crispy treats
~almond puff
~burgers
~clucks and fries
~wine
~rum
~bacon wrapped shrimp
~mini meatballs in a sweet sauce
~truffles
~Mondo Burrito
~lack of walking for several weeks (yikes)
~drinking more soda and less water
~the pre-menstral bloating I suffer each month

Yeah, I know. I kind of referred to last week as a "wash" because I knew between several birthdays, including my own, not to mention the graduation spread that my friends Natile and Briana had been planning for their final day of school, there was little point in really trying to avoid it.

So I was prepared when we went to WW tonight (something we hadn’t done in several weeks - thank you sinus infection) that I would be up. And I was. 3.6 pounds. But really, for the amount of high point foods I consumed last week, that wasn’t all that bad.

This isn’t a lement blog entry about how fat I am and what I know I need to do to get thin. I have written too many of those in the past and even I am sick of them. But I only find it fair to tell you where I am with this battle. Right now, I am glad I gained as little as I did and am confident that this was a bump and not a large step in the wrong direction.

I can handle the cookies in the cookie jar and the individual bags of chips Mike has for his lunches. I am cool with the cornbread and the meatloaf and the homemade mac and cheese too. I just have a hard time with the cake, especially birthday cake, especially especially MY birthday cake. Sadly, I am debating downing another piece tonight, just to get more of it ‘out’ of here. But I’ll be good and finish my water and probably just take the rest to school tomorrow. Some of the girls there will eat anything you put on the break room table.

From Sarah  and Vanessa, a Spa basket filled with pampering goodness, not to mention fabulous royal purple towels and the softest lavender blanket. Some Burt’s Bee’s stuff, some Dove chocolates and Jelly Belly’s. These girls KNOW me.

From my parent’s, some new Croc’s. I already have a Mary Jane pair, but found these today and they look so cute and slender on. Working in a salon will mean being on my feet all day and unlike doctors who can wear sneakers, I will have to look cute and stylish. I definitely think these fit that bill.

Being married has awakened my baking gene and in recent months, I have found many wonderful recipes. Cupcakes are a new fascination and my parents also got me this double decker cupcake carrier. Also, Mom found these cupcake on the go cases, that hold one cupcake, you know, for like lunches.

My brother got me another Nalgene bottle, (because my husband steals mine) and I am addicted to them. Cancer-schmancer.

Also from my parents - jeans of encouragement. Jeans in the next size down . . . Mom and I both hope to be down another twenty by the family reunion and these will definitely help me stay focused.

From my friends Heather and Mark, tulips and hyacinth, which meals soooo good. I wish I had a garden of them.

From Jessica, a memo/mouse pad. I love anything stationery-ish.

From my parents, Coach sunglasses, which Mom and I went and picked out today. They are so wonderful. I love them already . . .

From Miss Nicolle, a mini rose bush. Hopefully, my black thumb won’t kill it, though Nicolle says I can blame her if I do . . .

From my husband, a white gold diamond ring for my right hand.

And last, but not least - Kate and Aja, along with my parents, are all contributing money for my shears. I am not sure when I will be purchasing them, but I am tucking the money away until it’s time to get them.

I wouldn’t say it was the BEST birthday, but it was definitely up there in the top three. I want to thank all of my friends and loved ones from coming out and helping me celebrate. I have the best people in my life.

But my family and friends made it more for me today. My husband woke me at 5 am, too excited to wait much longer to give me my birthday gift. And now, not even a year into our marriage, I have a right hand diamond ring. It’s simple and very much my taste. I arrived to school, my phone buzzing left and right with birthday greetings and I did my best to legally, safely respond to them. The girls at school had covered my station with cookies and cupcakes and soon, there was a huge hoagy sandwich joining them. I joined my parents for a lovely lunch at Gray’s on the Park and spent most of the afternoon, practicing up do’s. Kate dropped by with balloons and a sweet Gerber daisy arrangement and Mom dropped off a beautiful birthday cake at the house. Mike and I had a nice dinner out together and soon, Kate will be picking me up for a quick late night happy hour drink with Aja.

It’s little things like that, along with the occasional "Happy Birthday wish from classmates, or a jolly text from so many friends that kept me searching for old text messages to delete, to make room for the birthday ones. And then . . . to come home to the comments on my page, the emails and word from Heather and Jessica at my old job that I would be seeing them on Saturday. . . . it’s all so sweet.

Sometimes, when I pop onto a page of Myspace friend to wish them a happy birthday when I hardly talk to them throughout the year, I feel a little silly. I wonder if it really matters to them that I remembered or noticed and responded. But today, when I saw all these friends wishing me a happy day, it really made me grin. Sometimes in life, you get to feeling so small, you wonder if the world can really even see you.

I’ve embraced the reality tv surge and taken guilty pleasure in watching shows like "America’s Next Top Model" "A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila" and "Rock of Love". I was a fan, at one point, of "Survivor", "The Amazing Race", "Big Brother", "The Bachelor", and even "Dancing with the Stars". But season after season has pushed me to a point that I can no longer manage to watch an entire season of those CBS shows.

So I turned to shows like "Nip/Tuck", "Dirt" and "The Riches". All, at one point, were edgy, provocative shows that pushed the envelope in some manner and I loved that. But in their fifth and sophomore seasons (respectively) they have already grown soft and made me wonder "What happened to the show that I so eagerly looked forward to each week?"

"ER"?? What happened? It lost it’s heart when George Clooney and Julianna Marguiles left, and it lost it’s soul when Anthony Edwards left. It’s painful to watch these days, because the charm and focus of the show is gone and we are left with these third and fourth generation characters that no one gives a damn about. Does Michael Crichton even have any ties to the show anymore? Is he still proud to say he created that show?

As for "LOST", as much as it pains me to say it . . . I’m lost. Torn somewhere between wanting to carry on, hoping it will regain some direction and clarity and wanting to just say goodbye before I’m left with more questions than answers and a fuzzy memory of the first season and Boone’s dreamy blue eyes. I still am leaning toward pushing on with the show, because I have faith that a show that can start out so radical will finish out in the same manner. I can only hope.

You know what really sucks? How quickly the networks pull shows these days. And they pull the ones that were good and had promise and just needed more of an audience, but they leave crappy shows like "Cavemen" on the air. "Journeyman"?? Great show. Miss it. They just don’t give certain shows a chance anymore.

There are the gem sitcoms on NBC, like "30 Rock", "My Name is Earl" and "The Office", as well as "How I Met Your Mother", but the lot of the shows that are on the air are a waste of space, time and money, in my opinion.

Television’s saving grace, or rather, general cable for a girl who can’t afford HBO, is AMC’s "Breaking Bad", with such a modern and outside the box premise that I purposely stay up late to watch each week. I usually catch an episode of "Mad Men" that comes on right after it and find it charming as well, but my butter is currently churning for "Breaking Bad". If you, like me, are tired of predictable plots, vague shallow characters and cannot even stomach the idea of watching "The Hills", then I urge you to take a look at "Breaking Bad".

The top line is what most of the general public would view the decade of 20 through 29 to be and the bottom lines are how I additionally would like to view it. It’s funny how the older we get, the more vague we get in the description of our ages. Pre-birth, we are referred to by weeks and then once we are born, we are referred to by months until you reach about two years old (24 months) and then it’s years and half years, but school ages as well (elementary, middle schooler, high schooler, co-ed). By your twenties, it is broken down into early, mid, late but by the time you hit your thirties, it’s either early thirties or late thirties. Once you hit forty, well . . . it’s the forties and then the fifties and then, it’s just a countdown to when you can retire.

For now, I am still in my twenties and therefore, I choose to define myself as "late mid twenties". I understand that in my lovely diagram, I would be in the last year of my late mid twenties, but still in those "mid twenties" nonetheless. Funny thing about it, I am not all that concerned about getting older. Every year of my life since 22, things have gotten better and better. My purpose and my drive is growing stronger and more clear and I feel more alive and connected than I ever have before.

It is annoying when some teenager calls me "Lady" and not because she is being friendly, but because she recognizes that I am not two or three years older than her, but more like ten. It annoys me when a customer service individual calls me "ma’am" but I know that it’s a generic response. It annoys me when I am still carded for being in a bar, because while I am not pushing forty, clearly I do not look like I might be younger than 21. I didn’t even look like that when I wasn’t 21!