I’ve been friends with Lilly since middle school. Over the last decade, we have been through a lot together, especially when it came to self confidence and relationships. Now, I’ve always considered Lilly beautiful. She has a perfectly symmetrical face, toned body, and a personality to match. Unfortunately, she’s had a harder time accepting herself. During middle school and most of high school, she considered herself too skinny and felt very bad about herself due to acne. She dated and had boyfriends but never felt too confident in her relationships. Over the years, they all ended for one reason or another but a general theme was apparent: the insecurity about herself.

Once Lilly entered college, however, she began to transform.

Five years ago, right before I gave birth to my daughter, I had the full intention of going back to work after my 12 weeks of maternity leave. 

Then she was born, and I couldn’t go to the bathroom in the hospital without wheeling her crib thingy into the bathroom with me.  Those first twelve weeks passed in a blur or sleeplessness, total fear, depression, anxiety, and lots of bodily fluids flying around.  Layered beneath, and perhaps fueling all these feelings, was this gargantuan love that I felt for this teeny weeny, helpless baby.  I couldn’t even really go there and try to measure the love.  It was too scary.  And when I thought about going back to work, I couldn’t really go there either.  It gave me such a sick feeling in my stomach, made the back of my neck sweat.  It was like a primal response.  There was NO WAY I could leave this baby in someone else’s care.  Life at home was weird and scary and hard, but I would choose that any day over the pain of leaving her.

But what about my ideals?  I went to college!  I had a career!  I finally had a job I really liked.   I wasn’t going to give all that up for a mere baby.  How boring.  How 1957.

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1. Hide two snowballs behind your hand.

With all the news we hear about the bleak economic situation in the U.S., it can be easy to forget we aren’t the only place suffering. With a global economy that links the financial highs and lows of multiple countries, others are certainly feeling the effects.

If you’ve watched enough reality TV or news in the last ten years or so, you’ve most likely heard of Japan’s capsule hotels. 

 It doesn’t happen very often, but there are a surprising number of scenes in movies that can actually make guys cry. This is opposed to most females, who I’ve found start bawling every time anyone kisses in the rain during a movie. What do you mean I’m generalizing?

In any case, these ten scenes will at least bring a hint of a tear to even the manliest of men, and ladies, if your man doesn’t look mildly affected by any of these, you’re either dating a robot or a serial killer. At times I was even choking up watching the scenes to put this thing together as they’re that good, even out of context. Check them out below, and keep in mind that this is clearly going to be SPOILER HEAVY for the movies mentioned.

“You can travel back in time, however, you cannot change events. What point in history would you visit and why?”

It seemed easy enough at first until I realized that every point in time I’d go back to…would be a point I’d want to change the events of. I mean, what’s the point of going back in time if you can’t make a difference? However, after keeping it on the backburner for a few days I came up with my answer.   Continue reading →

I’m in love with Flo, the Progressive Insurance commercial lady. There, I said it.

This is a secret crush, well more than a crush, that I’ve been carrying around with me for sometime now. Just look at my lovely Flow, eyes bugging out of her skull, lips blindingly bright red.

There’s just something about her.  Continue reading →

 I guess EVERYONE who also showed up to the airport before 3:30 AM was also pretty smart, because the check-in counters didn’t actually open until 4 AM…resulting in LONG LONG LONG lines.  Terrorist, I don’t know if your country has roller coasters, but if you know what those things are…the check-in lines were longer. 

I’ve been thinking about writing this entry for a long time. Sometimes I would start and quickly delete what I wrote. Sometimes the pain would be too much that I couldn’t bear to even look at the screen. But now..Now that I have lost my best friend to an abuser, I feel that I must shed light on this situation.

The stories that you hear. The Lifetime movies that you watch all focus on one thing. Men beating women. Men raping women. But you never hear stories about women beating or raping men. People think this is ludicrous and that it can’t happen. People believe that the man is probably weak or probably deserves it. I’m here to share this true story to debunk those claims. Continue reading →