Watching People Fall Is Funny

What is it about watching people fall that is so funny?  You feel terribly bad about it but at the same time it's just so damn funny that you can't help yourself.  As long as no one gets hurt watching people fall is funny.  Sad but true.  Falling as an adult is always embarrassing.  I wrote a post about a tumble I took down concrete stairs at the front entrance of my job here aptly titled Fall Down Go Boom.   

Well, these ladies fell on the job too when their only assignment was to walk.  I only feel a little bit sorry for them.  It's hard to feel too sorry for a tall, beautiful, thin model who gets to work the runways of New York Fashion Week.  The scary thing about heels is that once those ankles start turning you are in trouble and your fate is solely at the discretion of gravity and momentum.  I tend to stick mostly to flats and 2"-3" max in heels not only because they are more comfortable but they are also safer!!

You will not make it through this 3 minute video without laughing uncontrollably. I promise. It's hilarious in the same way that treadmill accidents are.  If you need a good laugh, and don't we all?  Watch it.

We Didn't Get the Memo About Fall

Seriously.  I can't even put it into words how perfect Saturday was.  It was like a gift from mother nature.  The high was 91 degrees and it was magnificent.  I sat by the bay and switched between reading magazines and gazing out at the beautiful water.


We were there for the 4th annual Dragon Boat Festival at Mission Bay Bay Park.  They have the professional category made up of people who actually train for it and know what they are doing and then they have a corporate category open to the community for amateurs who just want to get out there and have fun.  I have never even heard of Dragon Boat Racing.  Mj had never done it before but if it's athletic and even slightly competitive he's willing to give it a try.  He works for a huge company but it's always the same people that sign up for these things.  It's a really cool group of people that I see over and over at Flag Football or Kick ball or whatever else Mj's signed up for.  I think of them as the unofficial BAH athletic team representatives.


They got to do three races.  Each race had 3 teams, except the last one had 4.  There are 16 people packed into each boat.  Each boat has a drummer who sits in the front and there is a Dragon Head at each end.  Hamburgers and Hotdogs were provided by the company and we brought some snacks of our own.  We were there hanging out in between races from about 9:30am to 3:30pm.  I don't even know what place they got.  If they had won, I'd know so I know they didn't win but I don't know where they placed.  At the end of the day winning is awesome but no one seemed too upset that they didn't.

I love that sun drenched and exhausted feeling that I get after a fun day outside.  I feel all hot and gross and worn out but in a good way and I can't wait to get home and take a shower.  On the way home I said to Mj.  This is why we can never move.  This is why we live here.  This beautiful place is our backyard and I love pretending that it's still Summer in October.

We didn't get the memo about Fall.  The one we got had flip flops and shorts written in all caps and I didn't mind it one bit.

Breaking Bad and Thongs

A little bit of random...

It really sucks waking up for work on Friday morning when your husband has the day off and is slumbering away in bed.  But such is life.

I'm really proud of myself for breaking the shopping habit.  I was clean and shopping sober all last month and I plan to do it again this month.  Okay, so I did purchase some exercise DVD's but that's essential to my health and well being so it doesn't count.  Save, save save is my mantra until Vacations and The Holiday's show up to kick my financial butt.

Like everyone else I love, love loved the Breaking Bad finale.  I love it how everything was wrapped up and seems to have happened exactly as it should.  On the surface the show was about a Biology teacher with cancer turned big time meth dealer and the twists and turns his life takes as he switches careers.  The take away message was so much more then that and in the end I was able to identify with Walter White the way I had in the beginning before he got all evil and I started hating his guts.  We all want to be successful and good at something.  We want to provide for ourselves and our families, but if you let your desire for money, power and success overcome your morality it will destroy you in the end. It might take a while but evenutually it will.  Not a bad message for a show where eleventy million people were murdered over meth.

Confession Time!!!

I confess that I've never tried a Pumpkin Spice or Pumpkin anything and thanks to blog land it truly feels like a deep dark shameful secret.

I confess that it was 65 degrees on the way to work and expected to get to 81 ish by afternoon and I'm still loving it even though everyone has gone all goo goo ga ga over Fall.  The boots and sweaters are still off duty and I'm totally thrilled.  Thanks to blogland this also feels like a really deep dark shameful secret.

Linking up with Leslie @ A Blonde Ambition
I confess that I can't swim.  I never learned as an itty bitty child and then when I was around middle school age there were a few rounds of swimming lessons but by then I think it was too late.  I can doggy paddle but if I were tossed into the middle of a body of water I would definitely drown.  My dad is the only one in my family who can swim.  I think my bones are too heavy.  We were watching Iron Man 3 and there was this awesome scene where he gets everyone to hook together when they fall out of the plane.  He saved them by dropping them into the ocean when they got close enough.  I was thinking, how cool that he saved all those people-except if I were one of them I'd still die.

I confess that I get really excited when my underwear matches my outfits.  I'm not sure why since no one else can see that I am perfectly coordinated but somehow I feel just that much more "finished" and put together.  While I'm on the topic of underpants are people still wearing thongs?  I just can't.  I never found a thong that didn't feel like something uncomfortably lodged in my butt.  I wore one a few weeks ago for a few hours and it was awful.  Oh the things we do for our husbands!

I confess that my posture is terrible.  I feel like I'm sticking my boobs out if my back is too straight but I think that's just because I'm not as used to sitting up straight as I should be.  Actually, it's gotten a little better as I've tried to be more aware of it.  Having a husband who yells out "posture" like some kind of personal image coach drill sergeant has definitely helped.  If I don't want to hear his mouth I better pull my shoulders back.

I confess that I will be out enjoying our Non Fall weather at Mission Beach on Saturday and chilling at home on the couch on Sunday. 

Happy Friday!!

Why I Like Being a Small Blog

I haven't been posting a whole lot.  But that's okay.  I can do that.  We don't like to but sometimes we just can't help comparing ourselves to those blogs that earn money, have thousands of page views per day, get a ga-zillion comments or boatloads of free stuff.  That is all well and good but it comes at a price that some of us little blogs don't have to pay.  I realize that "small" or "large" when referring to blogs is subjective but I think we have a general idea of what category our own blog fits into.  Here are some reasons that I really like being a little blog.

1)  Pressure.  In order to keep those page views up and keep the money coming in from advertisers or sponsors or whatever else you have to generate a lot of content and buzz about your blog.  As a smaller blog I simply don't have that pressure.  I don't have sponsor posts, product reviews, link ups or giveaways that have to go up.  I didn't even realize that posting every day was a "thing" until I kept reading posts apologizing for not being able to post everyday.  What? I'm just not that creative and I don't want to post something just to call it a post.  I've never been a daily poster.  Well, except that one time I posted for days on end about my European Vacation which ironically enough is the kind of post that a lot of readers hate.  I don't feel that pressure to come up with the next greatest blog post to keep readers entertained every day.  I don't feel any pressure to compete for top blogger.  When I finally get around to turning that blog draft into a post I do and if there is nothing I feel like blogging about I don't.  I may or may not plan guest posts when I go on vacation.  Don't get me wrong.  I love writing and coming up with great content that people enjoy.  It's such a rush!  But I like not feeling pressured.  My goal is to show proof of life for myself and Blogher with at least one post a week.  I usually do more then that but I like it that I don't feel like I have to. 

2)  Scrutiny.  They say that you know you've really made it when people start talking about you.  And not always in a good way.  Chances are I'm not going to be a GOMI victim or find myself the center of some big controversy because of a blog post that I wrote.  I simply don't have enough page views to attract enough of a buzz for anything I write to go viral.  Not that it's impossible.  Just a whole lot less likely.  All bloggers really put themselves out there and it can be a really scary thing.  As a smaller blog I don't worry as much that everything single thing I write is potential material for trashing.  It's the internet so really it is, but I don't feel it so much.

3)  Hate mail.  Big bloggers are targets for those who are green with blogger envy.  Success breeds jealousy and jealousy very often leads to evil comments, finding yourself caught up in blogger drama or as the target of a website dedicated to bashing you.  People can be so so nasty.  It's really sad to see some of the negativity that has swirled around blogland.  I was so shocked at first because I've always seen it as a supportive and happy place.  Well, nobody is hating on me.  Nobody is jealous of my blog and all of my followers.  I've seen smaller blogs get attacked too but in all my years of blogging I've never gotten a nasty comment.  This could mean I'm really boring or that my life doesn't appear perfect enough or more then likely just that I don't have the visibility to make anybody jealous enough to hate me.  I don't have a thick skin.  I'm not sure how I'd handle it and I'd hate to have to deal with that.

4)  Reader interaction.  I don't know how some of those big bloggers deal with the sheer volume of comments they get.  Unless you have an assistant it's obviously not possible to reply to every single one and still have a life so you don't.  Then you might worry that your readers feel ignored and the truth is they probably do, but there simply isn't anything that you can really do about it.  I got an auto generated reply e mail the other day.  It said thank you for commenting.  I can appreciate the thought but I'm still not sure what's worse.  The generic auto reply or nothing at all.  I don't have to reply to or feel badly about NOT replying to 50 million comments on every blog post.  Life gets busy.  I don't reply to every single one but I would say I get to reply to almost all of them.  If I get a new commenter I'll often pop over to comment on their blog.  If I were getting 50 comments on daily posts there is no way that would be possible.  I'd probably try, not be able to keep up and end up feeling really bad about it. 

5) Blog Reading.  If I was spending every day trying to generate a new blog posts, reply to comments, organize link ups and giveaways, set up sponsored posts, do product reviews, analyze traffic stats and whatever else it is that big bloggers do I wouldn't have half the time I do to actually read and comment on other blogs.  I am addicted to reading blogs.  I read way too many and as it is sometimes I have to hit "mark all as read" because I simply can't keep up.  I can't imagine how little time I'd have for it if a lot more of my blogging time had to be dedicated to blog business.  

6) Social Media and Marketing.  I want people to read my blog but I don't want to spend a lot of money on giveaways or multiple sponsorships every month to try to get my blog noticed.  It has become routine for me to tweet my posts once or twice in a day and post it on my Facebook page.  I've always had a personal Facebook but I started a Facebook Page, Twitter and Instagram just for blogging.  I don't schedule tweets.  I don't have sponsors to shout out.  I'm not concerned about my lack of presence.  If I drop off the face of the social media planet it's fine.  Except for the most part I haven't because I started to enjoy twitter and Instagram.  It's such a ridiculous time suck but I like it so I try to limit how much time I spend on it. 

7) Blogger burn out.  I can't tell you how many posts I see apologizing because their heart isn't in it anymore.  It's time to scale back sponsorships and no longer will daily posts be possible.  Many take an extended break because blogging has turned into a dreaded obligation that they no longer have time or desire for.  A very popular blogger totally quit last week-indefinitely.  Bloggers are running themselves into the ground obsessing over numbers and trying to be that awesome gung ho blogger.  I see it over and over again.  There are times that I'm not as motivated to post as others.  Sometimes I just don't feel inspired or I'm too busy but I've never felt burnt out or that blogging was something I "have" to do.   I don't do a lot of things the big bloggers do.  To me a lot of it feels to "businessy" and there are too many strings attached so it becomes work.  I do some of the things that the big blogs do but on a smaller scale.  I  have the freedom to blog or not to blog and I like that.  It keeps me coming back for more because it's on my terms.  I came to a realization that the times I have become most disenchanted with blogging had less to do with actual blogging and more to do with all of the external blogging stuff.  Thinking too much about numbers and comparing myself to other bloggers kills my confidence and overall satisfaction with blogging; but only if I let it.  Once I block out all that noise I'm fine.

If blogging was my full time job that paid me full time job kind of money I'll gladly treat it like work.  I wonder how much of the joy of blogging would be stolen if it was my job but I'd suck it up and consider myself lucky.  For some it falls into their lap and they don't have to try very hard.  Those are the ones you really love to hate, but I think the majority work their butts off for it and I can't help but think about the sacrifices that all of them make.  I think about how it might start to feel like work and how much pressure they might be feeling to keep it all going.  I don't want to HAVE to post 5 times a week and spend 25 hours a week on my blog.  I already have one job that doesn't pay me enough.  I don't need two.  For every blogger that is earning a solid income or a decent chunk of change there are thousands upon thousands who work just as hard doing everything they are told they are supposed to and still make little to no money.  That's the kicker; and I just don't know if it's worth it.  And maybe I'm only saying that because my blog hasn't become "successful" by definition of numbers and promotional opportunities.  I've never tried NOT to be a big blogger but I also don't think I've done everything I could to try to be one either.  If blogging on my terms at my pace doesn't translate into a large following that's okay.  Not every small blog is a big blog failure.  That's not necessarily the goal for everyone. 

I started this blog because I love to write.  It works for me. I don't get to quit my "day" job, but then again most don't.  I don't get to be "best" blogger or get a lot of free stuff but I get to spend less time on the business of blogging so I have more time to dedicate to the joy of blogging.  For me that's reading, commenting, engaging with other bloggers and posting about whatever inspires me whenever I feel like it.  I love sharing my writing and I want people to read it.  I get excited when I see page views go up or I get another follower.  I love this community and I love my blog.  I still pour a lot of time, energy and care into blogging but on my terms without a whole lot of strings attached.  And I kinda like it that way.