Sweet Intentions or Hot Garbage and Old Meat…it’s all in how you look at things

I think I have mentioned, a couple of times, how in love I am with this guy:

This is one of my favorite pictures of him racing and has nothing to do with this post.

Except he is handsome and I am crazy about him.

On Sunday, we celebrated (ish) 6 months of marriage. Yay!

I look hard core.

There…a little less rock and roll.

But seriously, I feel like divorce is more and more common for people our age to turn to because it turns out they weren’t really that into that person. It’s too easy for people, I think. But, we made it 6 months, and he only slept on the couch 10 times.

Kidding.

My sweet husband got up early and left me a note that said he would be right back. The only problem was, I had just dreamt that he left me. When I woke up, he was gone, and it scared the living crap out of me. Then, I found the note.

Without going into too much detail, Devin’s plan to bring me things that I love and spend the morning hanging out with me didn’t go as planned, and he really thought he had ruined the day. It turns out, the day was superb, and the problem will be solved.

As Bunky says, we can fix it with money.

So, now that you have no idea what I am talking about, let me just try this…we have a choice, you guys, about how we handle things. A nurse I used to work with used to say, “Choose Joy” every time I walked out of a mad patient’s room. It’s not easy to be in a situation with such raw anger and emotion and keep smiling. It’s not easy to go on your honeymoon for 8 days, not have any luggage for the entire trip, and still have a blast. I may or may not have experienced this.

When things don’t go our way, we can choose to sit and pout and mope about how much life sucks in that moment. We have the choice to waste the entire day/week/month/year dwelling on everything that could have gone better and affect everyone else we come in contact with that day with our bad attitude; or, we can choose to recognize that it cannot be changed, figure out if we can fix any of it, and move on. You have a choice.

I sound like Jillian Michaels.

YOU CAN CHOOSE TO GET OFF THE TREADMILL AND BE LAZY AND FAT OR YOU CAN CHOOSE DO TO THE WORKOUT!!!!

So intense.

So rude.

I love her and would pay for her to train and yell at me.

Anyway, God did not give us eyes in the back of our heads, because he didn’t want us to focus on things behind us.

The next time your life doesn’t seem to go as you have planned it (what’s wrong with that sentence?), don’t waste what could be your last moments thinking about why that situation is so awful. Seize the moment, friends!

Sunday was a tough day…but it was still fantastic…and I am beside myself happy to be married to someone who would roll out of bed for me when he could have slept in.

Dev, I was reading one of my favorite blogs (she is the cutest preschool teacher ever)…check out her box method.

I love you madly.

This is a picture my husband took the time to make for me when discussing how to handle a certain co-worker.

Try to Relax this Weekend

New Bike Day...Not New Accessory Day

I don't know if you've noticed, but bicycles have rapidly become the hottest new accessory. JCrew, Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters (ack) and the likes have plugged them into their catalogs.

Do you honestly think they ride bikes? I doubt it…or maybe they do, but if nothing else, they look good with bikes. Except for Cruella Deville on the 9 foot green bike.

That is uncool.

The whole bike as an accessory thing sorta kinda bothers me, and bothers Devin a good amount. Maybe it’s because the people who buy the bike to have a bike don’t wear helmets and that bothers me. Or, maybe it’s because while we had legit bike parts to sell to legit riders at the bike swap last weekend, the trendsters and the hipsters were browsing the booths (why are they at a bike swap, when they can play paint by numbers for a small price here?) hoping to find a hot pink bedazzled bike chain for their fixed gear. Because fixies are trendy and that’s all they know. My bike is not a fixie, hence forth, I am not trendy. Another reason I am not trendy is that I do not wear these.

Moving on to the purpose of this post: Devin got a new bike, not a new accessory, hence, we had new bike day on Saturday! It’s a Salsa El Mariachi (we’re culturally well-rounded) 29er that he found on MTBR for a steal. I sound so bike-lingo-fluent. I just memorize what Devin tells me. 29 inch wheels roll better. I remember that, too. (You will note the change in picture quality as I finally got the camera hooked up! No more iPhone pictures! Or maybe a few…)

The Salsa has a pink King headset.

The bike was set up for a girl in California (who we bought it from), hence the pink all over it. It’s so Lisa Frank.

Anyway, Devin loves his new girlfriend…

He was so happy and excited to get it ready for Old Man Mountain Bike Weekend in a couple of weeks. We spent some time at the bike shop last night working on it. By “we” and “working on it”, I mean Devin worked on it while Zach and I did this:

Dev is so happy with his bike.

Wife is happy when husband is happy.

P.S. Out with the old, in with the new. We are posting some bike stuff Devin wants to sell on Craigslist. I’ll put a link up when it’s all done.

Excuse Me, but I Think You've Got My Chair...

A couple of weeks ago, I went to meet a friend of mine, who will remain nameless, ok fine we’ll call her…Anna, to work on a gift I am creating for Devin. I can't go into the details all that much because I still haven't given the gift to him. But, I will say, it’s hot. And it was so, SO, SO much fun to do. And I won’t ever tell y’all what it is.

We stopped by Anna’s friend’s place. I was so excited to get to go inside this building. I have been DYING to go in and am tempted to sneak in every time I drive by, but you sort of need a code, and they don't like people sneaking in. Plus, Devin told me if he ever had to bail me out of jail (maybe for trespassing into a building I shouldn't be in?), he would call my brothers first so they could all 3 laugh terribly hard about it before he came to get me. Love.

This was my chance to visit, and it was perfect timing as Lyn was getting ready to move out of the Gotham City Batman Lofts, I mean the Renoir Lofts, to some new digs.

It was really, really beautiful and Lyn was so nice to let us come in and make ourselves at home. She had the most amazing view, unique furniture, plenty of wine!, and lots of windows. As she was showing us around, she told us that pretty much every single thing in her place was for sale. I became giddy and had my eyes peeled when I came across this tucked away in the corner of her study.

Look. at. that. precious. perfect. chair. I do not lie to you…it screamed my name. STEPHANIE! STEPHANIE! PURCHASE ME AND BE THE HAPPIEST, LAZIEST YET MOST INTELLIGENT READER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES!

Slight exaggeration.

But it did scream my name. For serious.

Can’t you just see me in my pajamas on a cold day (meaning 50 degrees- don’t hate, OV06) in Houston, with my coffee in hand, reading a Jodi Picoult (because I can’t seem to stray away from her for long) book while swallowed up by this morsel of heavenly reading comfort?! (use your imagination and remove/ignore the computer and random hubbub around me there).

Look how happy we are together.

…and how sassy she makes me? A true She-Ruby (shout out Allie Brooks)

And so, I toiled…and I toiled…and if you know anything about me, you know I am the most laid back yet INDECISIVE person ever,(thank you Devin, Sunday School personality test, and Methodist’s Birkman review for pointing that out to me…over and over in the past month) so I told Lyn I would get back to her. She gave me one day to decide, which did not do well with my thinking/toiling type brain.

Luckily, I am married to a decision maker. Husband didn’t care for the chair. He inquired about the ottoman (ummm…uh…there wasn’t one??), and in the end, we decided that even though Crate and Barrel sold this beauty at $900 dollars, Lyn was still wanting more than we wanted to pay for a reading chair with no ottoman. I was happy that Devin made that decision, because in the end, it was a smidge big for our apartment, and so, I had to let the chair go.

Why aren’t you crying?! This is a tragic story!

We currently have a repulsive pepto-bismol pink chair that was given to us when we got married that I thought about having recovered and stuffed, however, recovering a chair can cost as much as what we may have paid for the green one. There are always garage sales, but I have a germophobic tendency when purchasing used cloth things (perhaps this is rooted in the fact that I work in a hospital slash germ factory) from those.

There’s always Craigslist…

Seriously?

Ottoman? Check. My grand'ma’s curtains? Check. Stored in a garage? Check. Sick me out? Check.

What or who the heck sat on this?

Here we go, Dev…chair and ottoman! Done and Done!

And my favorite…

The banana chair. This ad reads that this is a “very rare piece from the 70s that may or may not need to be reupholstered, depending on your style”. I’m sorry? Depending on your style? If you buy this and don't recover it, you are gross and don't come around me with your H1N1 and everything you will catch from this disgusting chair.

So you see, Craigslist does me no good.

So, I am on the lookout for a reading chair with hopes that we can find somewhere in our place for it. But, this chair needs to have character, have a soft and unique fabric (I am fairly picky about that one), be so comfortable I have to be bribed to get up (a la Penny Benardino’s recovered pheasant chair that I could not remove myself from during my trip in Dallas), it needs to be fairly cheap, and it needs an ottoman for Devin’s reptile feet.

Keep your eyes peeled for my chair.

Then, give it to me for Christmas. Kthanks.