Kony

If you are an active member of Facebook, Twitter or virtually any social network, chances are you may have already heard about this cause - if so, I hope it opened your eyes as it did mine. If not, please keep reading.

As I've gotten older, I am finding the things that fill my soul and nourish my spirit. Helping youth is one of those things. Through the Denton Women's Collective, and our work with Finding Kind, we have been able to reach out to young women and expose the issue that is female bullying. And through YOuth TOday (YOTO), I am working to mentor homeless youth right here in my community. But this problem is bigger than me, or my community. It needs the voices of ALL of the world's people to stand TOGETHER and say - This. Must. Stop.

I realize this may be viewed as political by some. But it isn't. It matters not if you are Republican or Democrat or nothing at all. This email is about helping children halfway across the world - because no one else can help them like we can. Regardless of how you feel about the celebrities, politicians and public figures featured in this video, focus on how you feel about these children who are being ripped from their homes and forced into absolutely revolting things. 

This is Joseph Kony. He is what evil looks like. He is a heinous human being who MUST be stopped. I realize this name might mean nothing to you, so I ask you to please, make time for this 30 minute video. Learn who this evil person is, and what YOU can do to help stop him. We can't all give money, but we can pick up our phones and share this video with everyone we know.

I care... I hope you will too. I will be participating on April 20th to spread the word. Who is with me?

Click here to watch the video. Please. 

Edit (3/8): In the past 24 hours (give or take), the internet has blow up with both positive and negative things about the “Kony 2012” movement.  Here is where I stand. I realize that just killing Kony would not solve this problem…but he AND the entire LRA ring do need to be brought to justice for the malicious things they are doing, not just in Uganda. I am NOT pro-war, I'm all about peace, but something has to be done. I am aware that some will view me as naive for appearing to jump on this “band wagon”, but I’d rather be viewed as naive then go against my instincts to do whatever I can to help bring this issue to light. I WILL be participating on April 20th, and I will NOT think “mission accomplished” if Kony is captured tomorrow. I know that there are many, many more just like him that will gladly step into his shoes, but that is unacceptable – and THAT is why I am throwing my support behind this. The fact that it happens, and will continue to happen in so many regions of Africa, is not okay.

Saving Face

I love a fresh, clean face. I love the way my skin feels after I cleansed, exfoliated and moisturized. I love washing the day away and seeing the colors from my make-up circle the drain. After my post about my new favorite facial cleanser and exfoliant, I had a few ladies reach out and ask what the rest of my "routine" consisted of.

"Fresh faced" after my nightly cleansing routine. Yes, I am putting yet another picture of myself on the internet with no make-up. My darling husband lovingly gets onto me for being too hard on myself...so this is me, trying to be better to myself. I have on NO makeup, and I don't hate this picture. What a revelation!

First and foremost, I try not to NOT sleep in my make-up...but I totally do like once a week. Not on purpose, but it happens. (Just being honest.) But for the OTHER nights of the week it goes a little somethings like this:
Cleanse - Neutrogena Naturals removes my make-up and cleanses away a day's worth of dirt without being too harsh for my super sensitive skin. It's super silky.

Exfoliate - Neutrogena Naturals Pore Scrub is SO gentle, but does a great job scrubbing away the dead skin.

Treat - Breakouts happen... more often than I'd like to admit these days. Proactiv Advanced Blemish Treatment is the only Proactiv product I can use...and it's also the best blemish treatment I've ever used. You can't buy it separately, so I don't know what I'll do when I run out!

Moisturize - This is where it gets a bit more complicated. I have 3 different moisturizers that I use (not all at once) from Clinique. I LOVE Clinique and have used their products for as long as I've been wearing make-up. Plus, they are cruelty free! YAY! In the spring/summer, I use Dramatically Different lotion because it is light enough to keep me from looking too...greasy. I have recently added Youth Surge with SPF 15 into my morning routine. I haven't been using it very long, but should I decide I don't love it, I'll let you know. In the fall/winter I use Super Rescue antioxidant night moisturizer (at night, obviously) and Dramatically Different in the mornings.

Prevent - Repairwear intensive eye cream. Dark circles and "bags" under the eyes are hereditary for me, and while I have no qualms with getting older, my biggest issue is how dry the skin around my eyes get. Repairwear helps keep my under-eye "baggage" check and leaves the skin around my eyes feeling SO soft and smooth.

 

I realize that was a lot of products thrown out there at once, but that's the reality of my routine. :) Do you have products you can't live without?

The Randoms of Marriage

When you get married, people love to give you advice. I was totally cool with that – in fact I was quite open to it. I loved to hear the insights people had, no matter how long they’d been married. We were told to be silly together, we were told that the first year would be the hardest (that was NOT the case for us), we were told never to go to bed angry, and that sometimes it’s okay to go to bed angry because you’ll wake up with a different outlook  - just to name a few. I took all those tidbits in and stored them away, pulling them out when necessary. But, as we settled into our married status, I found there was a LOT that no one tells you.

No one tells you how personally you will take it when your spouse has a bad day and unintentionally takes it out on you. No one tells you that when your alarm is set for 6am, your husband will roll onto his back and snore like a lumberjack at 5:45. No one tells you that sometimes you will feel like you are on different planets when you are discussing current events, or money, or overall outlooks on things. And no one tells you that when your spouse isn’t happy, finding your own happiness becomes increasingly difficult.

However, you know what else no one tells you? No one tells you that you’ll be so madly, deeply in love that you count the minutes until you get to go home and be in the same room. That even though he snores (and let’s face it, sometimes you do too), your favorite thing is waking up in the middle of the night and reaching out to feel your husband next to you.  No one tells you that sometimes you’ll look over at your spouse and be so overtaken with love that it actually makes you cry. That you’ll develop little rituals that feels like “home”. Or that you’ll feel the most “yourself” in the moments when you are just sitting together, talking or listening to music or watching a favorite TV show.

And while sometimes I wish someone had told me that sometimes marriage is SO hard, I am so glad that no one really told me exactly how amazing it is, too. Because the BEST part of marriage is discovering that all on your own.

Instagram Photo Dump

I don't have much to blog about, so here are some pictures of our furbabies. (Yes, that's what I'm resorting too, people. Pictures of my cats.) 

...Come on. They are pretty cute.

One Year Later - Locks of Love

Exactly one year ago Sunday, I chopped almost 12 inches of hair from my ponytail to donate to Locks of Love. You can read about the entire process here. I kept my hair pretty short for a few months, and then decided I missed my long hair. I'd say it was around June or July that I decided to really grow it back out. I don't know that I'll ever go as long as it was right before The Big Chop but I will definitely grow it out a few more inches. I guess I'm just a "long hair person". 

Here is the progress in picture form...

Right after The Big Chop 2/12/11

2/14/12

A few people have commented that my hair seems to be growing "slower" than it did last year, but I think it's gotten pretty long considering I was still wearing it just below collar bone length until the summer! I still highly recommend this to anyone who has the will-power to grow your hair long enough to part with 10" or more. It's so rewarding!

OH - and Happy Valentine's Day! May your day be filled with LOVE!

Happy Birthday, Ryan!

Today is my darling husband’s 27^th birthday.

I’ve blogged about Ryan before. More than once. But since it’s his birthday and since he was at the top of his Amazing Husband game last night, I decided I should blog about him again.

Ryan isn’t super jazzed about his birthday. Birthdays are a HUGE deal in my family, so sometimes I have a hard time understanding why he doesn’t feel the same way. And even though he doesn’t want a big deal being made out of it…I’m going to. Because his birthday is a big deal. HE is a big deal.

Last night is a great example of one of the many reasons that Ryan is so awesome. I had been fighting serious allergies (or what I THOUGHT was allergies) for a couple of weeks, and then over the weekend developed this cough that was a little worse every day. Yesterday, about halfway through my work day, I was really feeling crummy and not quite right, so I took ½ a sick day and headed to the doctor. Sinus infection and bronchitis. Lovely. When Ryan got home to find me asleep on the couch, he was gentle and sweet, kissing me on the forehead and asking me how I was feeling and if I needed anything. When I went to bed, it was too early for him so he stayed in the living room watching TV. About an hour after I fell asleep, I had my first “coughing fit” of the night. (If you’ve ever had bronchitis, you know what I’m talking about.) Within seconds of me coming to, realizing I was hacking and coughing my head off, Ryan was right beside me with a bottle of water, rubbing my back. He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing my back until I fell back asleep. That man…sure, there are things about him that drive me nuts sometimes (and vice versa, no doubt) but he is just wonderful. This loving, devoted, smart, TALENTED and oh-so-handsome man chose to be married to ME.

After reading an article not too long ago about a couple married 72 years who died hours apart, holding hands, I told Ryan “that has to be us”. The Civil Wars say it best, “Heaven or hell, or somewhere in between, cross your heart, to take me when you leave.” Because while it goes against the feminist outlook I have in most things, I really do need him. At the risk of sounding like the cheesiest person on the planet, he really does complete me. I feel more myself with him. I am most comfortable in his presence. We are connected, soul to soul. When he is up, I am up. When he is down, I am down. We balance each other out, we hold each other up. He is my best friend and partner in life. And even when times are tough, knowing I have him to come home to…it somehow makes the hard times feel a little more tolerable.

So yes, my love, your birthday IS a big deal. It’s a celebration of the day you were born…a day I am more thankful for than you will ever know. I know sometimes you lose sight of all the good things in our lives, but they are all around us. I love you, Ryan Matthew. And happy, happy birthday.

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

As I starting typing this blog post, I realized that I may have failed to give the blogosphere a very important piece of information. As of January 17, 2012, I am officially back in college!!

I am still happily working my full-time job, but have started taking night classes. And I am super excited about it!! I am studying psychology, a field I have always been interested in, and hope to eventually work with kids/teens/young adults. I haven't fully decided if I want to be a school counselor, crisis counselor or actual therapist yet - but I think there is time to figure all of that out.

So, in class this week, my professor in my Behavioral Psychology class asked us to write a one page paper analyzing a song that motivates us, and explain why. 

This assignment was basically made for me. 

I thought I'd share my paper with you, dear readers. I haven't even turned it in yet, but I was so darn excited about this assignment, I had to share it. Hopefully my professor doesn't stumble across my blog before I turn it in.  

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

by: The Avett Brothers

“There was a dream
One day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage a broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid, with a head full of doubt
So I scream till I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out.

Decide what to be and go be it.”

I’ve always felt driven or called to help people. When friends or family encounter problems or hard times, they always seemed to migrate towards me. And it was not ever a burden, but a pleasure, to be that for them.  As I’ve grown older, it has expanded to also include my co-workers and, occasionally, strangers.

Right after high school, I tried college. I could give you the slew of reasons why I didn’t finish then. I could tell you about how my parents were getting divorced, that my best friend had tragically died, that my long-term boyfriend (now my husband) and I had parted ways and that I partied too much. And while they are all true, they are all still just excuses. The fact is, I doubted myself. And over time, something terrible happened – almost everyone else started to doubt me too. So, I gave up and took a full-time job, just going through the motions.

One of the few things that keep my soul alive and awake is music; specifically live music. As I grew tired of my routine, I found myself constantly thinking about what I was doing with my life. Shortly after my 28^th birthday, one of my best friends and I went to see The Avett Brothers in concert.  I loved their music for a long time and have sung along to this song a hundred times at least, but that night it’s like I was hearing it for the first time. As “Decide what to be and go be it” hit my ears that night, it all just came down around me. I already knew what I wanted to do (psychology) so I HAD decided what to be; now I had to do what it takes to go be it. Today, in my first semester back in college, when I hear that song it brings me to tears and reminds me to shake my ‘Head Full of Doubt’ and replace it with ‘Road Full of Promise’.