By Heather
There are times when I take along look into the rearview mirror and think of my youth. Just to see how far I've come and yet how far I have left to go. Growing up I was picked on a lot, made fun of for my off sense of humor, now I've made a blog out of it that quite a few people seem to enjoy. I was made fun of for my drawings (not the ones I do on here) and now I make a decent profit at it. When I joined band I was only ridiculed more by those I considered friends and then realized that they were my friends out of pity because I didn't have anyone else. But you know what? That's fine, because the freedom I found in music is what kept me going through the worst of those years. Now I have the ability to learn any instrument I want. Looking back I am so glad I didn't cave to peer-pressure because if I did I would be sitting here in regret of what I missed out on. On what I could have done. Only giving up to fit in will lead to nowhere, but if you stick to your guns on what you love to do and find salvation within yourself. Then you will find a much richer life and a freedom that very few will ever know. And now having that freedom I can pass this knowledge and advice onto those I come into contact with. If you have to change who you are to fit in with your friends, then they are not your friends. Real friends accept you for who you are. And if these people don't then they are not worth catering for either.
I am writing this now more so because I still get quite a few e-mails from kids that I used to do counceling at an after school program. I know you all don't think I'm being honest when I tell you how much I was made fun of, how much people brought me down, and how much I didn't like who I was. And how long I didn't like myself because of how people made me feel. I'm not saying this for people to feel sorry for me, I'm saything this because what you are going through now does not last forever. And people only make you feel that way when you let them. Ask yourselves some serious questions. In the long run do those people and their opinions of you matter? No, no they don't. Are you really willing to let that person dictate who you are or what your future will be? No, absolutely not! Then don't give them that power. Walk away and continue doing what makes you happy, drawing, music, writing what ever it is you find your freedom in. Don't be afraid to tell your teachers or parents about what's happening at school. I never told a soul until years later, don't know why but I never did. It never occured to me that anything could be done about it. I just sort of let it happen until finally people just forgot about me and moved on. All I can say is, don't let that be you. It took me along time to get over the social awkwardness that ran my life. That awkwardness was caused by me not doing anything about it, allowing other people to make me believe there was something wrong with me. Made me fear breaking from my routine, fear talking to others because I for some reason wasn't normal. Now there is no fear, just joy because I have moved passed it and those people that were the cause of it are not in my life and have not been since school ended. Will I ever let anyone make me feel that way again? No, never again. I have grown so much since then and have found someone to be weird with. If there is someone out there like me then there is someone out there like you. God apparently has that sense of humor too. My brother-in-law said "There is a lid for every pot." and he is right.
By Heather
Now I know that this blog is entitled "Misadventures of Working Retail" and I know I haven't made any posts of working retail lately. One, being that I have changed jobs and yet to have any bad experiences with co-workers (which is unlikely at any rate cause there are only two of them and they remind me of my brother and his friend I aptly call "the butt" so therefore have no qualms with either of them). Two I've only been working there for three weeks so I've yet to become embittered enough to write anything worth reading about. And hopefully I never will become embittered with it because I'm more than ready to be in a job that I enjoy doing. I'm going to take a while to decide on re-purposing this blog as a wait and see what happens but I will continue making posts about random aspects of my life like the title also states "...and Random Posts about My Life". But as always I promise it to be entertaining.
Now having started this new job Ryan and I are now on the same pay schedule. We were on alternating pay weeks and I am going to say, that was grand. But now having to re-work bills suddenly and juggle a few till next pay therefore having to pay late fees has kinda brought us back down from the new job high. We are sweating a bit but its nothing we can't handle and nothing that we haven't had to do before. I was out with my best good friend Panda yesterday, planning for her wedding, putting center piece ideas together and we were out most the day. It was the longest I had gone without seeing Ryan in a few weeks. What I like most about this job is that I've had more time with him in the passed three weeks than I had in two years at working at my last job. But I digress, I got home around nine and when I got in it looked like Ryan had just lost all the blood in his face. I thought something horrible happened. He told me that since I didn't get paid last week because of the change in jobs we could only afford to pay half of our bills and we'd have to pay the rest next pay to catch up. He was stressed because ever since our bank account got hacked and the bank took forever to re inverse us for the loss we have been hardly able to get ahead and stay there. Now to all you married women or even you women out there in a relationship I'm going to impart some very powerful nurturing advice to you on how to comfort your man when this happens. Are you ready for this spectacular and revolutionary tactic? Stand in front of him while he's sitting and place his face in your boobs. Trust me, it works.
Before you accuse me of being dirty there is logic behind his tactic. One, other than the fact that they being smothered by fun bags, they can hear your heartbeat which is a proven fact to make them feel calm and relaxed even if it is in the slightest amount. Two, this gesture is made that you understand their frustration and that you are there now. Three, this is a gesture of love and that immediately makes the stress level go down. Four, no lack of money can make this go away. You can now assure them that yeah, things are harder but not undo able, the budget will just have to be tighter for the next few months or how ever long it takes. It won't always be winter, that massive gas bill won't always be there. There is always a silver lining. And Five, humor, using your fun bags to distract them from their financial brooding. But a good distraction never the less.
You can argue my tactics all you want but I have substantial proof for that at least in my case it works. Knowing how to keep a balance, when to make each other heavier and each other lighter is a good sense to have. Yeah, we are a young couple, we are going to make financial mistakes, but they are ones we learn from and learn to avoid. You can warn your kids all you want but those mistakes are going to happen with or without your input, that much I've learned. Not that we don't appreciate the advice and warnings and I'd like to say that I listen and do as I'm advised but never really do. Sorry for that, but its true. The follow up to this tactic is to turn everything off and go to bed. A good nights sleep can take a huge load off. A wise man I worked with at my last job once said this "When you get older you come to realize there are only two things worth their weight in gold. A good nights sleep, and a good bowel movement." More and more I'm finding this to be true...oddly enough. At least for the sleeping part. I guess the point of this blog is that things are never as dark as they seem and to never let things like finances bring you down to far. If you let it get you down to far it gets really hard to see out.
And that is my nugget of advice and humor for the day.
By Heather
#1 Prisons
I don't believe my hard earned money should pay for some thug to eat three meals a day, a gym, cable television, and health care. Just so when he gets out he does something else stupid to get through back into prison because he gets taken care of so well there. The death penalty people, yeah people have the ability to change, I do believe that. But if people are repeat offenders to the worst of crimes they should be taken out of the equation and I don't mean an eighteen thousand dollar shot, I mean a dollar fifty bullet right in the temple. Quick and painless. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles. There goes at least a third of the people my taxes are paying to feed, cloth, and keep healthy.
#2 Welfare
Since the system no longer serves the purpose it was created for I don't believe I should be paying for it. The system was created for a leg up, not a way of life for people. Unfortunately the people that genuinely need this assistance can't get it because they are "to well off" to receive any. Which raises the question, "Why is there still welfare?". These people are living better than I am and I'm paying for it.
#3
Did you know that the government owns GMC and that the government spends a lot of money making you feel good about your vehicle purchase. Scratch that, they spend a lot of your money just so you can feel good about a car you bought. Did you know that no one wants to by a Chevy Volt, and the government is subsidizing the company about two hundred thousand per car because they're trying to force people to buy the Chevy volt.
#4 Failed Green Energy Companies
That stimulus package that was passed in 2009 was used to pay off bankruptcy for these companies. And I'm going to connect this one to bail outs. If you are a business and you did not spend your money responsibly and you are going under, then you deserve to go under. Solyndra, have you heard about this? They make solar panels and they were trying to sell them for five dollars less than it took to make them which leads to bankruptcy pretty quickly. So the government gives them $500 million, they took it and they still went bankrupt. And to top it all off, Obama's justice dept. threw out the last hundred years of loan litigation by putting his campaign a head of the tax payers that actually paid for it. This situation has happened at least twelve other times.
So while I was doing research for this I couldn't find an itemized list of what our taxes go to but these are just a few examples. If anyone has anything they'd like to add to the list of things we shouldn't have to pay for please leave it in the comment section below.
By Heather
Some memories just stick with you. Some have no significance at all but you remember them. This particular one is just special to me because it was something out of the ordinary. When I was a kid, I'd say around fourteen maybe fifteen years old it was just me, my brother BG and my dad. My mom was off at SRD. SRD is something that members of TOPS weight loss group go to. It lasts about three to four days so in that time it was just us three. Now I love my mother more than I can put into words but at this time she was going through the beginnings of menopause and she was for lack of a better term (crazy). Not "I'm gonna kill you and rip off your face crazy" but still not herself. She would fly off the handle if you dropped a can of beans.
But while she was away during these times there was no cooking in the house, there was just eating out. Maybe one morning one of us would be ambitions enough to pour a bowl of cereal or make a piece of toast. So on Sunday was when we would go somewhere nice after church and this time around it was a restaurant in the mall. This place the meals were so big that they looked like as soon as you took a bite it grew back. Now my dad is a comfortable home body and if he's not at church or out for dinner on Sunday he's at home passed out asleep in his sleep shorts in the recliner. But for some reason this Sunday after dinner he said lets take a walk around the mall. So we all started walking together, I held my dad and my brother's hands as we walked because its not all the time we get to spend a day together so I took those moments when I could get them and just enjoy it. We walked into a Game Stop and my brother and me are gamers so we looked at the new titles that were out and some of the older classics that we didn't yet have but have played. Now usually anything over twenty five dollars if me or my brother wanted it we'd have to earn the money to buy it ourselves so this was a surprise when dad said go ahead and get what you want. I don't remember what my brother got but I got my own copy of Lunar SSSC for PlayStation. It was something so simple but it wasn't something that he normally did and it was just something very nice and sweet that he did. He also stopped off at the Dairy Owl on the way home and bought all of us ice cream. It was just such a good day. Now every time I think of a game to play just to play I always grab that game. Yeah the storyline is predictable and often corny but I love that game because it is a nice feel good game.
And that is my fond memory for this post.
I love you dad.
