being married to me is so fun

by

Feeling Ghosty

Last year I was so stressed from moving that I didn’t decorate AT ALL for Halloween. Which made me sad (and guilty) because I like Halloween and decorating for Halloween (and because I failed to make Carla’s first Halloween in the new house Fun and Homey). This year, I’m feeling very excited about decorating for Halloween and have already been scoping out décor for weeks.

My favorite Halloween decorations are ghosts. But not scary ghosts. I prefer happy, or at the very least apathetic, ghosts. 

I came across these AMAZING ghosts, the ghosts of my heart, at a local garden center.

But my husband played the role of Frugal Spouse (we take turns) and persuaded me that $50 and $100 respectively for these ghosts was too much to spend. I perhaps disagree, but I am also cheap frugal so I did not buy the ghosts. I still think about them, though. Maybe they will go on sale and I can snap them up?

Ever since I declined to bring those beautiful ghosties home with me, I’ve been searching for the perfect reasonably-priced alternative, with very little success. I have two goals: Outdoor décor and indoor décor. I need much less indoor décor. 

Want to join me on a little online ghost perusal????

I love the IDEA of these tree-wrap ghosts… and have some good place to hang them. But I’m not sure if I love the ghosts themselves? They appear to be singing, but sarcastically?

Maybe porch ghosts just cost a lot of money???

This is a cute sign for our porch, and much more reasonably priced, but I don’t LOVE it. 

These light-up ghosts are nice and tall, and meant for outdoors, and I like how they could be bemoaning their deaths or simply yawning… hmmmm. I mean, I do prefer sleepy ghosts to scary ones. I’m on the fence here.

I suppose I could make my own porch ghost… but do I want to do that? And is a sheet really going to stand up to October weather patterns?

These little lights are cute. Maybe I could use them to ghost up my porch trees?

I love these sweet little yard stakes.

This choir of lawn ghosts is quite charming and is supposedly meant for the outdoors. I can’t tell what they’re made of though; will they melt the instant snow falls?

Oh my gosh I love this little guy.

I find these glow-in-the-dark ghosts quite adorable. And when they are all in a group, the scariest one just looks grumpy.

I like the idea of this stack of ghosts (which also glows) but I can’t tell what it REALLY looks like, and that makes me a little leery, you know? (The one review with photos still doesn’t adequately show the size.)

While we’re thinking about glow-in-the-dark, what about these cats with glowing eyes?!

We do have some trees that I could cajole into hosting some hanging ghosts.

Okay. Let’s move indoors for a moment. 

One of my favorite things to put up each year are my wall bats; so it makes sense that I find these wall ghosts deeply appealing. Do they seem a little whiny though? Would they detract from the bats? How many walls full of stick-on creatures will my husband tolerate? (I hang the bats with wall-safe sticky putty.)

Oh my goodness – a ghosty companion for my bookshelves! 

I am in love with these ghosty hand towels.

These ghosts are nice and friendly – and I’m partial to groupings of three – but are they too friendly?

I feel like these guys have a more holiday-appropriate attitude.

Ooooh I’m a fan of these wooden pumpkins. Sorry. Switched it up on you there didn’t I.

Do I need a ghosty cake stand? With a matching ghost bowl! 

I most definitely want this trio of ghost figurines.

How about a pair of stained glass ghosties to hang in my windows?

This is adorable and I love the movement. 

Ghosty candy dish!

Although I might like this ghost candy holder better?

I don’t really do a holiday themed pillow, but I might make an exception for these?!

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a door corner decoration! Love this one, too! But is there a ghost version? Yes! And ghosts with spiders AND bats! Oooh! Ghost cat with bat! 

There are TOO MANY FUN OPTIONS.

Okay. I need to stop. Or buy something to scratch this ghosty itch. Or return to the garden center and find a dozen NEW things to lust after. 

Text with my husband. Keep in mind that we have identical exchanges about electronics in which I am the frugal one.

by

Insecurity

I am having an attack of insecurity. There are (currently) four things I can blame, I think: 1. My husband is on call, and when he is on call we spend less time together and I feel ignored and needy. 2. My primary client, for the first time ever, returned a project to me and asked me to redo it. Not minor edits, but a complete redo because I had so completely missed the mark. 3. I have been ordering cute bikinis from amazon because the summery weather (which has since retreated) has me dreaming of time by the pool, and NOT A ONE has looked remotely reasonable on me and only emphasizes the weird shape of my hips and thighs. 4. My poor kid is homesick for our old house and cannot fall asleep (it is currently 1:11 in the morning egads) and I cannot help her feel better (which I know isn’t always the goal! she should feel her feelings!) or help her fall asleep.

To sum up: I am unlovable, my work performance sucks, I look terrible in a bathing suit and probably in all clothing, and I am a terrible mother.

Should I perhaps be focusing on the fact that my husband is lovely and warm and attentive 6/7 of the time, and that he is not ignoring me but is instead focusing all his energy on the very difficult work of keeping dangerously sick people alive? Should I perhaps be remembering that this client mostly asks for very small edits, if any, and also it seems statistically improbable that I would write exactly what they want every single time and also one miss does not negate all the hits, nor does it preclude me from writing well in the future? Should I perhaps stop pressing my finger into the tender bruise of body imperfection when I have a perfectly good, rear-end covering skirted suit already? Should I perhaps recall the many, many nights when I was a child that I cried myself to sleep over something or other and the many, many nights as a child and an adult when I couldn’t sleep and how none of those nights had anything to do with my parents or their parenting ability?

Should does not equal AM DOING, let me tell you that.  

Insecurity can REALLY spiral if I let it get going, so I have been reading articles titled “Top Ten Things Therapists Recommend You Do When You’re Feeling Insecure!” and “How to Conquer Feelings of Insecurity.” The thing is that I know how to stop feeling insecure. I mean, I am aware of the techniques. But most of them are long-term kinds of things (replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk; focus on your strengths; talk to a therapist) and I am working on those things, but I want a quick fix. Is there a quick fix for feeling insecure?

What I really want is to say something negative about myself and have someone refute it with convincing evidence backed by reliable sources. My husband is not good at providing reassurance of this type; he is impatient with insecurity and seems to operate under the belief that there is no need to tell a person something that they should already know about themselves. (I also worry that, if I am too insecure around him, he will stop wanting to be married to me how’s THAT for insecurity catastrophizing, hmmm?????)

Reassurance is best sought from friends, I find. But it’s too late to call or text any of my analog-world friends, so I am writing to you. This makes it sound like I am demanding compliments, which I am not because that would be embarrassing and stupid. (Also, you aren’t married to me, you don’t know my work writing and you don’t know what I look like in a bikini, so, lovely and brilliant as you are, you cannot possibly make an honest evaluation of any of those things.) What I’m hoping for, I guess, is commiseration and solidarity. I would also accept The Key to Real Confidence, if you have it.

Do you ever feel insecure? If so, what do you do when you feel that way? My negative self-talk is so loud right now, even my strategies for combatting it (talking out loud to myself; pretending my concerns belong to my best friend and saying to myself what I would say to her; referring to myself as honey and acknowledging that my feelings are valid) are inaudible over the din. 

Gah. Being a person is so stupid and exhausting sometimes.

Well, I suppose the next best thing to writing a blog post about it is going to sleep. Sleep helps most things. 

by

Two Kinds of People: Socks Edition

Elisabeth’s post earlier this week spun me on a sock tangent. She wondered whether people put their socks on before or after they put their pants on. (Go read her post to find out!) (I sometimes put my socks on first, sometimes once my pants are on. Depends on the pants.) But the more pressing question, in my mind, is HOW you put your socks on: Do you stand or do you sit?

I stand. I balance on one foot while I put one sock on, then balance on the other foot to put the other sock on. My dad does the same thing, as we discovered over Christmas. That’s the kind of riveting discussions we have around here. 

My husband and daughter sit to put their socks on. 

Based on this very small sample size, I’m extrapolating that there are two (primary) types of socks-putter-onners: sitters and standers. 

The only time I sit is when I’m putting on tights. Which aren’t socks, but are similar enough that I’m mentioning them here. 

Which camp are you in?

While we’re on the fascinating topic of socks, I have some other sock-related questions. 

Do you prefer fun socks or plain socks? When I met my husband, he wore pretty much only plain white athletic socks that he bought in a multi-pack from Target. A few years ago, I started buying him fun socks from Sock Fancy and Bomba and Happy Feet, and now he has a drawer so cram-jammed with fun socks that he cannot fit another pair in there. (Nonetheless, he got FIVE PAIRS of socks for Christmas.) 

I have experienced the opposite trajectory. I used to love fun knee-high socks in all sorts of patterns. But these days, I stick to a multi-pack of athletic ankle socks that I get from Costco. It’s just so much easier! I can rummage around in my sock drawer and grab a ball of socks and know it’s going to work.  

Speaking of balled socks: are you a baller or shot caller, I mean a person who doesn’t ball their socks? I ball my socks up with wild abandon. Yes, I have read that doing so puts additional stress on your socks, and can stretch them out. But I have never once had an issue, so I have decided it’s worth the risk.

My husband REFUSES to ball his socks. He will carefully tuck the top of one sock into the folded-over top of its mate and that’s as much as he’s willing to do. When it comes to his (now small) stash of athletic socks, he stacks them on top of one another. He is much neater than I am.

My daughter prefers a secret third option, which is to throw all her socks, unpaired, into her drawer and then complain to me that she doesn’t have any clean socks when I ask why, for the love of tacos, did she come down to breakfast YET AGAIN without her socks on. 

Do you wear socks to bed? My husband does not. I used to be firmly anti-sock while I slept. But since dealing with plantar fasciitis, and needing to wear shoes at pretty much all times, it’s just more convenient to sleep with socks on. Then I can shove my feet into my sneakers when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I also tend to moisturize my feet overnight, and I wear socks while I do that so the foot lotion doesn’t get all over my sheets. Ew. Lotiony sheets.

However, I vastly PREFER having bare feet while I sleep. It just… doesn’t work out that way, these days. Sometimes I end up ripping the socks off in the middle of the night and flinging them into the dark.

How many pairs of socks do you own? I tend to get sick of socks and then buy new socks without getting rid of the socks I already own. My husband, as I mentioned before, has an entire drawer of fun socks… and a separate drawer for athletic socks. (To be fair, the athletic socks take up a small portion of the second drawer.) That’s a lot of socks!

I did a very brief internet search for how many socks a person SHOULD own, and the answer seems to lie somewhere between 7 and 16. I started to count my socks and then gave up, but I think it’s at LEAST 20 pairs. That’s probably a very conservative estimate.

Now tell me all your sock-related quirks.