wow, I'm actually.... depressed...

I'm in a rare mood today. 

Before I started taking my anti-depressants almost ten years ago, this mood was quite normal for me. It wasn't caused by anything in particular.... just an imbalance of chemicals in me ol' noggin. Sadness, anger, frustration, confusion; then, it was for no reason (seriously, really I had a great life)- now it's because well, honestly I live in a really dry and boring town and I have no way out.

I made a list of things this town lacks a few weeks ago and decided to make a humorous blog post about it last night, but as I was typing I realized... there's nothing funny about what this town lacks and there's nothing funny about feeling trapped. I can bring humor to anything - that's how I get through life and I like it that way... but this time -- there's nothing to laugh about.

********************************

What's making this even worse for me? My husband is in the middle of opening a gun accessory shop here.

Yes. He's setting us up to be stuck in this awful redneck town forever.... selling things that I hate to the likes of people I can't stand.

Our plan was to open an eccentric ethnic bohemian store but he chose guns instead.

Depressing?

Very...

And what's making this worst for me is that my husband is going through one of his insomniac spells so he's a grumpy zombie and I can't talk to him about how much this is hurting me.

Please forgive me for being such a buzzkill.

I've just got to get it out somehow.

big beards, big tears

Ah, so it happened again.

Hollie is too advanced for this shit kicker town of rodeos and livestock auctions.

I dared to cross the line again- I hosted a beard and moustache competition. Shame on me for being so... daring...

The event was a flop.

It was fun... but it was a big old soggy FLOP.

We promoted the hell out of this event, we were in the papers, websites, flyers all around town...

Our Facebook event page said 50 people were coming with 30 "maybes" and over 500 people were invited.

The results?

About 8 people came to watch the competition...

10 people entered the competition, 4 out of those 10 didn't even know about the competition until they came to the bar for their Saturday night drink.

I'm actually getting teary right now writing this post.

I'm so tired of living in a town where everyone complains about how there's nothing to do but no one will do anything about it. I try so hard to bring new and interesting things to this town. I really do, but everyone's just too damn afraid to get their feet a little wet.

In a city of 143,000 I stand alone.

Well, not completely alone. I have my crew (seen below, minus one person).

I've brought this town steampunk balls,  its first zombie walk, and it's first and only friggin Renaissance faire for crying out loud... what's so bizarre about a beard and moustache competition? They're everywhere!

Oh yeah, to make matters worse, the sound guy I hired spilled his beer on my laptop last night and tried to cover this up by cleaning it and not mentioning it me. The laptop was in his possession the whole time so I'm sure he did it. Needless to say, my keyboard doesn't work. I sent him a message requesting he pay for repairs but I haven't heard back from him yet.

I'm not a very happy person right now.

Er, I'm just gonna leave you with these photos. I don't have anything else to say.

it's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Yesterday was the most uneventful birthday I've ever had. I would love to write a long angsty post about how depressed I am about the whole thing but wallowing in my woes would just make it worse. Plus no one likes to read unhappy crap- I know I sure don't. So I'll just keep this brief  about why my birthday sucked so much. 

First, none of my immediate family called, emailed or even texted me to wish me a happy birthday- no gifts, no cards- nothing. I don't know why. 

My husband declared yesterday that we couldn't afford to go out for seafood like I wanted but said he'd think of something for us to do... eh, he didn't... So I spent the evening moping about washing dishes and halfheartedly fiddling around on Pinterest. 

The first half of my birthday started off rather promising though. Packages started being delivered to my door one after another. Even though only one was an actual birthday gift, I was stoked to get these packages in such good timing. I received a birthday check from my mother-in-law, a long awaited Ebay purchase finally came in along with a cute little froggy tea infuser giveaway prize from Tilda of Tea With Squirrels.

 It's been raining so much that this package was mushy and all the stamps began to peel off. These are my ear weights from Malaysia! Yay!

 Also, the day before yesterday a gift for River (from my Aunt) came in. River's gifts are my gifts so I'll count that as one. It's a play pen with a raised level to keep younger babies in. Flip the little bassinet over and it's a changing station! Cool!

Oh and how can I forget? My sis-in-law got me a pack of Shiner Bock which is one of my favorite beers.

Everyone knows that the way to a Hollie's heart is with good beer.

*******

Have you ever had a crappy birthday? Dish! Dish!

special goods with an itty bitty rant

Ok. Here's my rant. Ready? Here goes- I'll keep it brief.

A buyer left me negative feedback on Etsy. Ok, so what's the big deal?

I've been buying and selling on Etsy for over five years now and I have 100% positive feedback rating. 

A buyer RUINED my rating because she was impatient about getting her package!! I'm so steamed about this!! Ugh, I could go on about how frustrating this is forever but that's not going to fix the issue so I'm going to move on  and show you folks what awesome online deals I've scored lately.

***********

I've been wanting a piece of jewelry featuring a creature in resin forever. I finally took the time to search on Etsy and found a shop (UrbanRiot) selling these crazy yellow desert scorpion necklaces for $1.50 each! YAY!! I'm going to glam it up by putting it on a pretty beaded necklace or something like that. I can't wait to get it in.

Now I've got my eye on this beauty!

I'm gross, I know.

*****

And these. Can you guess what these are?

I'll give you a hint:

EEEEEWWWWWWWWW!!

HAHAHA! It's true! They're Indonesian ear weights!!

Lemme explain - my ears are only stretched to 0ga but I would like to go up to half an inch. (That's really not  as big as you think). I've been trying to stretch my lobes to go up to 00ga but it hurts like hell and I don't want to tear my lobes off and have them flapping in the wind behind me like an old hound dog. So I'm going to slowly stretch my lobes by using this ancient and primitive method.

Trust me, I'll stop before I start to look like... that. 

Anywho, I found these ear weights on Ebay for $17! Just a few minutes before I bought them I was looking at a similar pair on a different site $66. It's a no-brainer which pair to buy right?

photo taken a few months back.  See, my lobes aren't freaky, are they?

feeling a little sorry for myself

So, I'm 35 weeks today I'm really starting to feel pregnant. Not that I haven't been feeling pregnant before, it's just that now- I'm really starting to feel it.

Sleep has been pretty terrible for me lately but last night really sucked. I think my poor sleeping last night came from over-working myself to get the kitchen cleaned and organized. We still have packed boxes here and there from our move in June and I'm tried of looking at them.  I was in the mood to clean. My husband removed his camping gear from the hall closet and installed some shelving so we can have more storage space. After an hour of what one could easily call "light work" AND with plenty of help from my husband, my back and groin felt like I had just completed a fifty mile hike. The discomfort only got worse when I went to bed. As soon as I would find a fairly decent sleeping position, I would doze for maybe an hour then I'd have have to get up to pee. Getting out of bed is painful and getting settled back into bed is painful. Now I've decided to start getting painful gas during the night that just builds up and wont pass unless I get up! What a snappy vicious cycle!

I'm trying to be very careful with my words (having been taught all my life that it's possible to speak bad things into existence- I don't want to go into labor early) but I'm ready to have this baby. I'm ready to feel like myself again. I like to clean and move fast and stay busy but being pregnant has slowed me down sooooo much. Now I just spend all of my time sitting on the couch surfing the internet.

I see photos of other pregnant bloggers, all cute and glowing in their cute little outfits, going shopping and cooking healthy little dinners and it just makes me wanna vomit. I thought that would be me and I'm super jealous. When I see another pregnant woman in the grocery store, hustling and bustling here and there, I see red. Here I am, dragging my feet, unattractively bowed backwards from the weight of my belly, shuffling slowly through the store like a freight train as Super Preggo breezes past me. It's very discouraging.

Jabba the Hut understands me.

People used to admire my speed and efficiency and I took pride in how fast I could move and how much endurance I had... now I feel fat, gross and useless. I used to be strong and flexible- now I can't even put on my underwear without needing some kind of assistance.


Honestly, I'm starting to feel a little hopeless and I'm afraid that after I have the baby, my recovery time is going to take too long and my house is going fall apart and I'm going to get super obese and that I'll never be my high-energy take-on-the-world self again.

Surely I'm not the only woman here that feels this way? What was your experience during and after pregnancy?

FAQs about my pregnancy

When you're pregnant, everyone loves you and cares about you and wants to coo and coodle over you... well... I'm not a coo and coodle kinda person. In fact I like to avoid human interaction as much as possible when I'm in public- but when that bump is thrown out there- :sigh: ya just can't escape it.

So here's a list of questions that I must answer from darn near everyone I come across. If anything changes... I'll update the answers. Hee hee! Maybe from now on when someone asks me a series of questions from my pregnancy I'll just say, "Read my blog. I'll send you the link"

Q: How are you feeling?
A: Fine.
This one is usually followed up by an awkward silence as if their saying, "Really? That's all?"
Then I'll find an excuse to walk away before they can ask more questions.

Q: Have you had any morning sickness?
A: (as I've told you a million times before) I didn't really get morning sickness...
To which they usually reply, "Boy, you're lucky! When I was pregnant I got sick blah, blah, blah number of times a day until blah, blah, blah..." 

Q: How far along are you?
A: X amount of weeks (or months if I know they're unfamiliar with the "weeks" system")
This question (the most common of all) will be asked at several more times by many more people before I get to stealthily sneak away.

Q: When are you due?
A: January 15th.
The most common responses to this are, "My birthday is in January", "My sister (friend, other family member) is due in January. My response is usually...

Q: Do you know what you're having yet?
A: No. (Unspoken sarcasm: A baby)
This is usually followed up with an awkward silence and then the story of why they did or did not find out the gender of their baby and when they did it. This conversation performed several times a day can get a bit tiresome.

Q: Are you going to find out?
A: I don't know yet. Probably not. But if we do we won't tell anyone. (Then immediately regret saying that for that answer opens up a possibility for a very much unwanted extended conversation)
Q: Is it because you want to be surprised?
A: Well, no...  I, I...:stutter, stammer: (Here, I'm trying to find a lie to avoid telling them that I'm not going to reveal the gender of my baby so that my house doesn't get flooded with a bunch of crap that I don't want or need before we register for items)
The person questioning me usually feels that they must comfort me and tell me it's ok to not know they gender of the baby- just buy everything in green and yellow... 

Q: Have you thought of any names yet?
A: Not really.
This is the best one. No one usually has anything to say to this. They just smile and walk away and I feel like the champion of vague answers. But every now and then someone won't accept this answer and they'll linger- waiting for me to explain my horrific actions. 
Q: Are you going to keep it a secret when you decide?
A: Mmm... I don't know...
The truth, I don't want to tell anyone ever again the names that I have thought about. Why? Because every woman knows what she wants to name her child from the time she was a little girl. I've been stuck on the same names for years. When I told people what I liked the I got:
"Why would you name your child that?" 
"You're kid is going to get made fun of."
"Mm... well how about this name? I like that name."