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RAWR!!!!
Its so frustrating to see our society becoming so overwhelmingly rude. Cell phone etiquette is known by few, appropriate classrooms and workplace behaviors are disregarded and people have a sense of entitlement that is just plain ridiculous. Basic courtesy (along with chivalry) is gone.
Its very sad. Our culture is all we have... Im starting to see more mammal than human. Im starting to see how similar we are to animals and how fine the line is between humanity and chaos
-IJG
My thoughts on individualism vs collectivism as it pertains to marriage and warning signs to look out for from day one.
Changing your last name to your husbands last name has been a long standing tradition in many cultures. And until recently no one really questioned this notion. It wasn't until the feminist movement that feminists began to urge that women keep their own name. Some stated that keeping their own last name "was tradtional", showed respect to their family, or helped them keep their independance to some small degree, and finally the childish "why can't the man change his name" argument. All in all i believe that a woman COMPLETELY unwilling to changer her last name is a warning sign.
Lets address tradition- Tradition, to some people, is some meaningful behavior/occurence/ or thought that has been sustained over generations that in some way expresses the beliefs of a group of people. This does not necesarily imply that tradition is a good thing. Traditions can include something as stupid,unecessary and brutish as female genital mutilation. In my opinion, a tradition is sometimes an excuse to continue a behavior that otherwise has no intelligent reason behind continuing it
respect to their family- how about respect for your new family...period.
independance- The whole principle that marriage is based on is partnership and the union of TWO people not any of this independance nonsense. Marriage IS BIGGER THAN YOU. So get over yourself and get ready to be selfless its not about "me me me" anymore.
"why do I have to change my last name, why can't he" - Look if you can find a man thats willing to change his last name to yours (since it is legal in most, if not all states) thats fantastic but if not JUST CHANGE YOUR LAST NAME!
NOW DONT GET ME WRONG.
I am not saying that ALL woman who don't change their last names are bad wives or selfish people. But I think a woman so unwilling to change her last name that it becomes a debate/issue has other underlying issues that will surely manifest themselves in ways that will affect/ hurt the marriage. Stubborn uncooperative and selfish behavior in a decision such as a name change is a sure sign that stubborn,uncooperative,selfish behavior will pop up again in the marriage. These behaviors are rarely situational they are universal to that individual's behavior and personality. Mark my words and good luck if you encounter these signs in your partner!
So really.... what is organic?
Who really knows is the answer.....sooooooooooooo Brandon and I decided to do something about this disturbing realization. We have promised our selves and each other that by 2011 ( 1yr and 4 months away) we will buy a stand alone freezer, find a small farmer somewhat locally that will sell us a whole cow and pig.... We will then take our cow and pig to the local butcher who we will pay to "humanely kill" ( as humane as it can be at least) our animals and prepare the meat as they would in a deli. We then use this meat for the remainder of the year. I know it may sound a little mean but its nicer than what is done to the animals whose meat ends of up on the shelves of Wal- Mart not to mention god knows what those animals eat, what conditions they live in, and how they are slaughtered. At least in this way I will be one less person contributing to the inhumane conditions, diet, and slaughtering of these animals. Eating truly organic meat will also be much healthier for Brandon and I.
Yes, this will take additional work on our part (arranging the whole situation) and learning how to use an entire animal won't be easy. I will have to find recipes and ways to accomodate all types and cuts of meat but it is completely worth it.
We considered the vegetarian option for a few minutes but realized it's just not realistic for us (especially for my hubby) and I am not going to cook two seperate meals every day.
So this is what we have decided. I think its the least we can do. It's really not THAT hard and its MUCH MUCH cheaper in the long run. The freezer's can be found from 98.00 to about 350.00 which is nothing after savings. Also if your single or you just don't eat that much meat you have the option of buying a "side of beef" which is a lot less than a whole cow
But reason #1 for me is that the quality of life for the animals wont be compromised. I know my cow and pig wont be consuming irresponsibly large doses of hormones. I know they will have comfortable living condtions. I know the food they eat will be locally grown and I know they won't be mistreated when their time comes.
I also believe that the benefits of a cow's healthy lifestyle translates directly into healthy meat for me to eat.
THE END
Either way I have been getting kisses ever since!!
GREAT SUCCESS!!
I am currently clicker training my dog (Moose) to kiss me. My dog is not a kisser (he's mouthy, but in the not so adorable way). And since clicker training has worked in the past I figured it would work again. How does clicker training work? Well in this case i show him a treat and once he achieves the desirable behavior he gets the treat. Moose is HIGHLY food motivated and has done clicker training with me before and knows that no treat comes for free. He must earn it. So when learning a new trick (such as kissing on command) he displays all of the old tricks he knows in hopes of recieving the delicious treat. When he sees that that's not working he begins to engage in a variety of random behaviors.He was struggling with this one so I aided him by putting my lips sort of close to his muzzle and making a kissing sound. When he finally, accidentaly kissed me i clicked the clicker and moose got his treat. The second time I didn't give any hints as to what I was looking for and it only took two minutes and every time after that took less than one minute. BUT I encounterd some problems during my kissing training.
Before achieving the desired response Moose sometimes attempted behaviors that were not only incorrect but extremely undesirable. He would hi-five me (not so bad).... that wouldn't get him his treat so he tried to hive five my face OOWW!! Then he pounced me! OOWWW!!! Then he mouthed my arm OOOWW!!! You get the idea. The problem with this is that you cannot reprimand a dog during clicker training. The concept of clicker training emphasis positive and negative reinforcement (giving or removing desirable objects) and NOT PUNISHMENT. Telling a dog "no", yelling or hitting a dog only make the dog apprehensive and frustrated, This is likely to result in the dog feeling anxious,timid, or withdrawing from training altogether. This is bad for many reasons but mainly because you can't succesfuly train a dog who doesn't particpate in the training. So what did I do? I took it. Teeth marks, scratches, and tackles. Just brushed it off. I know it sounds crazy BUT IT WORKS! AND if you have even a morsel of a heart you will feel good at night knowing you didn't contribute to society's overwhelmingly high number of unstable,fearful,anxious, aggresive dogs (yes you...dogs aren't born with problems)....anywhoo, I digress.
Problem number 2. Moose doesn't understand the concept of a kiss. He doesn't understand that a kiss should be gentle and display affection, so on and so forth (he's a dog for goodness sake) So when we did begin to have some success it wasn't the type of success I was looking for. To guide him in the right direction and to build his little doggy self esteem I began by rewarding (treating) behavior that was ALMOST correct such as a kiss on the cheek. This may have caused some confusion initially because I was getting kisses on my eyeballs,my nose, my ears etc. I can only imagine his thought process
Moose's thoughts: Put my muzzle on human's head....human gives me treat....treat is fantastic.....weird human.....do it again
LOL!
Anyway once he got the vicinity correct (my head) I became more particular; only rewarding lip kisses. This frustrated him some because kisses on eyeballs that were getting him treats five seconds prior were no longer working. His frustration caused his kisses to be sloppy and rough causing me to be accidently bitten on the nose once and slobbered on various times. When he finally got the idea!!!!!! His kisses weren't sweet and gentle. It was more of a close mouthed muzzle jab at my lips!!
OVERALL I would say we had great success. Not exactly the kisses I want but thats what tomorrow is for. He will get it sooner or later. I have faith in him. For now.... I will settle for muzzle jabs in the face hahahaha. Ill update on this soon.
So my husband and I were reminiscing the other day about our awesome house hunting days when he had a poop recall. While visiting one prospective house (that was still occupied.... 3 children and the nanny were home) he has a poop emergency!!! He tells me that he's going to take a poop on the 3rd floor bathroom and to do whatever needed to keep the 3 kids, the nanny, and the realtor downstairs. I was nervous as all hell because I didnt know if he was going to take 30 seconds or 30 minutes!!! Some 2-3 minutes later he came out...unscathed. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
BUT SERIOUSLY!!!! who does that hahahahah LMAO! I have the best husband ever!!!! He pooped in some poor families house!!!
Imagine if there had been no toilet paper ahahhaha!!!
Ok so you saw that I married my sexy boyfriend. We are still happily married with cute dog and purty house but there are just a few little nuances that i REALLY need to get off my chest!!!!
Ok so on May 21st of this year we completed one official year of dating (most of it spent living together...I kno I kno we jumped the gun...moved in together after one month of dating and bought a house after 3 months of apartment living....thank God i was the exception and we worked out) but he proposed on May 18th of this year just shy of the one year....WONDERFUL!! so far so good.
Well about a week and a half into the engaged life we sit down and create a budget...we both wanted a big wedding in the sense that there would be a lot of people in it but not a super expensive fancy one but doing the typical banquet hall type wedding was going to cost us approximately 10,000.00 with a guest list of about 140....well we both know it's going to take us forever to save that kind of money up so our next best bet is a lone....which we weren't thrilled with but willing to do. unfortunately my husband is TERRIBLE with money...EXAMPLE: Takes us out to dinner and a movie and realizes he didnt set enough aside for groceries and charges groceries on his credit card...blah!!! (this will end soon....he admitted his inability to do our finances a few weeks ago...we joined accounts and now im charge...he gets a weekly allowance and that works for him) so in the meantime (while I get us out of doubt) our income is only 100$ a month more than our output....which is cutting it STUPID CLOSE
so we couldnt even afford to pay back the loan for the wedding if we wanted one not to mention Im sure we wouldnt qualify ( we applied for a different loan recently [b4 i realized our financial situation] and we were denied...reason "escalating debt" on his end and "insufficent income" on mine)
long explanation to say....we realized it would be a while before we had our big day. He didn't like that idea and suggested we get married in the courthouse and do our big wedding later to which i said "sure ok...sounds good to me" . Two days go by and we have a conversation that goes as follows:
B: Well did you look into it?
Me: Look into what?
B: Getting married in the courthouse?
Me: No not yet...
B: Well what are we waiting for if we're going to get married lets do it!
Me: okay okay...*opens laptop...googles.....researches* ok we have to call and make an appt
B: OK CALL!!!!
Me: Ok relax! *calls makes appt for 4 days later*
That gave me just enough time to tell my parents and some really close friends. Aunts uncles cousins co workers and friends learned that we were married days and weeks later (some people are still fiinding out).
It was super informal ( I wore a nice black dress because I didnt know what to expect)
As a result I had an impromptu engagement/bridal/marriage kickback at my house with 8 of my favoritest girls. No bridal shower, no real engagament celebration, no bachelor or bachelorette party. NO wedding band (because we cant afford it) and from the looks of it no big wedding "later"
Call me vain...call me superifical....or too traditional but I feel cheated. I wont have pictures of me in a white dress to show my kids. I dont even have a proper day to celebrate my union to my wonderful husband.... I downplayed the court ceremony because I figured that I'd do the big SHABAMM wedding later. if I would have known that was going to be EVERYTHING I would have at least worn a white summer dress and invited some people to join us.
We never had a housewarming because we were too broke to etc etc etc
I feel like being rushed is our MO and its getting old. Now I dont know what to do i still want to have some type of wedding reception but have NO MONEY to do it. I cant save up, our credit cards are maxed, we cant get a loan. Im stuck between a rock and a hard place..... sigh. I though about doing a backyard BBQ style wedding party like a wedding BBQ celebration so that I can have SOMETHING but dont have a yard big enough at my place and dont know anyone that does and to be honest I dont even know If I can afford that.... we're tight!
We cut our tv off to try and pay down some bills..... im just in no position to celebrate my marriage right now
I dont want to be bitter 4ever
ANY SUGGESTIONS?!?!?
just needed to be vulnerable somewhere because im too "strong" to appear anything but happy and upbeat in real life
and i couldnt be happier!
it appears the video on my last post didnt show up correctly....
here is the link..please watch the video....it will definitely open up your eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnCHKQRw3
thanks all!!!
Please say no to animals in the circus...we have to speak on their behalf
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I got a new puppy and his name is Moose!!!!
He's the perfect yellow english labrador (looks kinda like the dog from Marley and me) but I cant be with him because Im stuck at work (u know... the one I hate)
Anyway...how is everyone else doin?!?!?
- Mood:
anxious
Yay!!
