Hello Lovers!!!!

After lots of thought, and a little research, I've decided it is time for a change.

I've MOVED!

Please join me at wordpress! www.mycynicalpov.wordpress.com

So, update your address links, and get your butts over to my new site! Looking forward to seeing you all.

xxxo

Hunter

Just FYI--today is my ONE YEAR anniversary at this blog! Yay!! Hope you all enjoy this one...

People are constantly trying to set me up and marry me off. "I have a friend for you" "There's this really cute farmer I know" "My nephew is adorable" you get the picture. Here is a conversation that happened between a good friend of mine and me. She's older than me, has a family, and always hounds me about getting married and giving her some "grandbabies." Yeah, right. Anyway, she's got a guy in mind that she wants to set me up with. She's brought him up several times over the last month or two, but nothing has ever come to fruition--she brought him up again today. Here is our e-mail convo after her phone call to tell me that she was back on this lovely idea of hers. Enjoy:


From: Jamie Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:03 PMTo: MJ Subject: RE:
He’s not like, churchy, is he?

From: MJ Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:11 PMTo: Jamie Subject: RE:
Ok, no.

From: Jamie Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:16 PMTo: MJ Subject: RE:
I don’t date really churchy guys

From: MJ Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:22 PMTo: Jamie Subject: RE:
I have no indication he’s churchy. Chris is trying to find a photo of him to email me. She thinks she has one of him with a deer he shot??!?!?!?!!??!??!?**!! He could put food on the table. You’d never go hungry.

From: Jamie Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:23 PMTo: MJ Subject: RE:
OMG! He's a hunter? Like how often does he hunt? Every season? Like, blood on his clothes all the time, hunts? For Pete’s sake, what do you think I am?

From: MJ Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:25 PMTo: Jamie Subject: RE:
Well…..he could find you car keys and missing shoe for you. Don’t you date hunters now? Sheesh….what do you want, a pussy city boy?

From: Jamie Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:27 PMTo: MJSubject: RE:
Lol! I’m just saying. Hunting is one thing…being a crazy hunter guy is totally different. I mean, if he’s a "deer heads in every room of the house" kinda guy…. :S
From: MJ Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:30 PMTo: Jamie Subject: RE:
You can hang your panties from the antlers.

From: Jamie Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:30 PMTo: MJ Subject: RE:
There is something very, very wrong with you.

From: MJ Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:32 PM To: Jamie Subject RE:
Ditto, Cabbagehead.

The Children Need Him More Than I Do.

THIS IS ECUADOR:

THIS IS COLORADO:
THIS IS MY LOVELY STATE OF IOWA:
It is necessary to have a visual of those three places before I tell you this story.

My friend Danielle and I decided it would be best for both of our souls to go on a man-fast for a while. As you all know, my luck with man-fasting is very bad. I don't have much will power--which is why I always fail at being anorexic, never get out of bed early to exercise, and always finish the bottle of wine. When it comes to men, I am usually the same way. I had lots of faith in my ability to pull this off this time, though.

And I failed.

I went on a date tonight. With Zach. A cute 25 year old college graduate with what sounds like a decent job (and he travels a lot, like me), and a similar love for Thai food. We met at my favorite Thai restaurant tonight (even though it is in a shoddy part of town and my sister is convinced I am going to get shot every time I go there). Conversation was off to a good start, we perused the menu, he ordered the yellow curry duck and I had the pad thai--per my usual. We talked about our jobs, families, friends, goals, aspirations, his immunizations* etc. Great date? Right?

Here's the catch: Zach leaves Saturday to go back to Denver for work for two weeks. He comes home on the 20th and then is done working. He quit his job. So that he can leave in the beginning of January to go to ECUADOR* to teach ENGLISH to the CHILDREN for somewhere between SIX MONTHS AND A YEAR. Blast! Damn noble people, anyway. "Thanks for dinner and a great date, maybe I'll run into you in South America sometime???"

I'm not very good with geography, but I do know that Denver, Ecuador and my lovely spot in Iowa are not, well, very close at all.

My sister's first question: Why are you going on dates with men who are based in Denver and are moving to Ecuador next month?

She's brilliant.

Maybe the man-fast won't be so difficult after all--especially if all the men I am interested in are jet setting to South America for the rest of their lives.

Have I ever told you all how much I hate dating? Sometimes I think it might have been easier if I had been born into one of those families who believe in arranged marriage--set me up and send me off to get knocked up with my new husband and a flock of sheep as my dowry.

You gotta have friends....

If you ever have a day that leaves you feeling like this:

I have decided the best solution is to call up your best friends. Although we live only 28 minutes from each other, we don't see each other as often as we should, so I was especially excited when these lovely ladies met me last night for dinner, and we had a blast--we laughed, caught up, shared disgust over the nasty sauce the waitress brought Danielle (seriously, sick), harassed Lucy about her newest boy, it was lovely. The photos below pretty much sum up my dear friends' personalities to a T--Lucy's changes depending on the topic of choice ( the closed mouth smirk was from when I started razzing her about the Iraqi war veteran who will *hopefully* become her husband soon; the excited one with her hands in the air came from our conversation about mud wrestling a cute boy in the rain--Lucy, not me; and the final one where she looks disgruntled came on as we decided that we had to get going. Danielle, true to form, is typically pretty excited, so that picture works, too!).


















Seriously, I have great friends. And I love them. They know that. A girl finds only a few good girlfriends in her life, and I happen to be blessed with some of the best of them! XXXO

Dysfunctional Thanksgiving

I won. I am the winner of Dysfunctional Thanksgiving—an offshoot of Dysfunctional Christmas—an event invented by my dear friend and some of her friends many years ago. This is the first year for Dysfunctional Thanksgiving, and I am the winner. What do you have to do to win? Have the most dysfunctional holiday possible with a lot of cookoo craziness with the family.

Here are the highlights of mine, and the reason I won:

-Lots and lots of wine. Like, lots of wine.
-One parent who is in the same house as me for 24 hours and doesn’t speak more than three sentences to me. Literally. I am not exaggerating.
-Going to the store with the other parent and breaking down sobbing due to other parent’s ridiculous behavior.
-Being scheduled to stay at sister’s until Sunday, and having to leave on Thursday evening after you slept off your afternoon buzz because you are so miserable.
-Letting cruel parent get the best of you to the point that you throw in the towel and go home—you win! You ruined my holiday, YOU WIN!!
-Answering your friend Kara’s phone call as soon as you get in the car and are pulling away from sister’s and continue to sob/choke/cry into the phone for the next 30 minutes.

When it comes down to it, I actually won. I won dysfunctional Thanksgiving, and I managed to salvage a great weekend and spent some quality time with some of my closest friends (love you guys), cleaned my house, put up Christmas decorations, and finished most of my Christmas shopping—I guess, all in all, it was a pretty decent weekend!

I'm a writing amateur...

So occasionally, I dabble in a little bit of writing. Sometimes it's hopeful, sometimes it's even on the verge of happy, there is a little bit of comedy, and a nice chunk of Plath-esque writing in there. I don't often share much of it, but for lack of anything better to blog about today, I have decided to share the following piece with all of you. I wrote it about 8 months ago, then let it sit on my laptop for about six months, and have been tinkering around with it every so often now. I'm not sure I'm done with it, but I think it's ready enough to share...my only disclaimer--this one falls into the Plath-esque category! Enjoy...


Eleven Days.
The cool breeze of a fall evening danced through the champagne colored curtains lightly hanging across the open window--the glass, rippled with age, projected brilliant shapes across the Van Gogh print hanging on the white wall as the street light poured the only illumination in to the room. She looked at the shapes, twice distorted due to the tears nestled comfortably in her bright green eyes.

She continued to think about the events of the past eleven days. She sighed. And then she cracked a bottle of her favorite merlot; as the glass shook in her hand, she lifted it to her lips to take a drink. The warmth of the liquid soothed her throat, scratchy from the efforts of long nights of crying. She felt that sip line her soul, and once again, she was comforted…She sat there, wrapped beneath her shall, and tapped what was left of her bitten fingernails against the rim of glass.

She wondered how it had come to this. She's young--barely 23, a college graduate who works a mind-numbing job, and in the process pays her bills. She spends much of her time in the company of great friends, and occasionally a nice man comes into her life, only before slipping right back out, too soon. On paper, it didn't appear as though she really had anything to be depressed about--so why was she so blue? Hereditary--that’s what the doctors said--a disease that has plagued the women in her family for generations--obviously, it was more severe in her case.

She lightly ran her index finger along the uneven ridges of the eleven day old red-brown flaking scab which was evolving into a pink fleshy scar that would be forever tattooed along her fragile wrist… something like those Chinese symbols or stars that the other girls tattooed on themselves. Hers wasn’t nearly as trendy, but it was just as permanent.

After “they” agreed that she was stable, they handed her the bottle of pills --“take three pills once daily for depression.” She now twirled the bottle in her hand and listened to the melodic fall of each of the pills as they made their way around the inside surface of that plastic orange bottle.

She opened the child resistant cap and spilled them into the palm of her hand, one by one until the entire contents sat there in a small pile. Blue pills. Little blue pills. They were all she needed to accomplish what she had originally intended... At least she had a good drink to wash them down with…

I'll post something happier for you all to read at a later date. In response to my sister's question--no, no need to worry, this is FICTION! :)

DBA

There is a little boy that I have gotten to know over the last year or so. He's a pretty cool little kid with a personality unrivaled by any other child...or adult...I have ever met. He has the biggest green-blue eyes that jump out from beneath his shaggy blonde hair and the sweetest little grin. This little guy, he's also quite the snuggler--a loving, sweet little boy. He loves superheros--Spiderman and Batman seem to be the two favorites. At times he can be rambunctious and loud, and he loves wrestling with his siblings. His name is Bowen, he is three and a half, and he inspires me every single day.

Bowen is the nephew of a dear friend of mine, and before I knew Bowen, I knew nothing of the disease he has been battling. Bowen has, since birth, been dealing with a rare blood disorder called Diamond Blackfan Anemia (DBA). I am no expert on the disease, in fact, my knowledge of it is quite cryptic, but I do know the basics--Bowen's body can't produce red blood cells. Like I said, this disease is extremely rare, it affects less than a thousand people in the entire world--little Bowen is one of them. He has been recieving blood transfusions since he was an infant, and now, his family hopes their next step will cure this little guy's disease.

The next step is a bone marrow transplant. His original transplant was supposed to happen last spring. There were complications with his blood which halted the procedure and led to this little guy being bound to a small backpack for four months that was feeding medicine into his body 24/7. It worked perfectly, and now he and his family are back in action--taking this next big step. His transplant is Tuesday--a gift from his big brother Ryder, who just turned 5. The whole family was at our house on Halloween night--I gave Bowen a big hug. As he climbed up on my lap, I rubbed his back and said "BoBo--your backpack is gone!!", and he said, "I know, now you can rub my back." Talk about something that'll make your heart melt.

I am asking all of you to keep Bowen and his family in your thoughts. If you pray, please pray for Bowen, if you know people who pray, ask them to do the same. Spread awareness on this disease that so many know so little about. Bowen has a long road ahead of him--one that I am sure he will face daily with those bright eyes and with the amazing resolve he has mustered in his short three and a half years. This child is truly a super hero--as is his big brother--who has been asked to do such an important thing, and to give such a great gift. These two young boys have been asked to perform big tasks, huge tasks, and they (and the rest of their family) continue on with steadfast determination, bravery and more courage than one would assume two little boys could have. They are remarkable little people, truly. May this week go as smoothly as is possible for Bowen, Ryder and their family. We're all cheering for you guys!!!! XXO

Check out these links for more info:

http://www.diamondblackfananemia.com/

http://www.dbafoundation.org/

http://www.dbaftravel.com/

I love blogging....

So, Murphy decided to stay overnight. He slept on the couch, of course. And I thought the day was shot, again. Then, Dolce left me a sweet little gift which turned my day right around! I got a blog award--and that, my friends, makes me feel pretty stinkin' special! XXXO to you Dolce.

This blog award is given to sites that:

~ inspire you

~ make you smile and laugh

~ give amazing information

~ is a great read

~ have an amazing designand/or any other reasons you can think of that makes them uber amazing!

The rules of this award are: Put the logo on your blog or post. Nominate at least 5 blogs that for you are Uber Amazing! Let them know that they have received this Uber Amazing award by commenting on their blog. Share the love and link to this post and to the person you received your award from.

***I have to add one disclaimer--I am going to be sharing this award with my bloggy friends--to my real life friends, you already know how much I love you and love your blogs! There's no secret there! So, L, K, B, A, C, D--just know I love you, but this time, I'm spreading the wealth to the bloggy friends. :)

I love blogging. I love the blogging community of gals I have established--I have read so many stories of heartbreak, success, sadness, hopefulness--I just think the world of all my bloggy friends. I refer to you all as "My friend Sara, or my friend Amanda..." And, then, when I explain to my real life people that we are blog friends, they look at me a little bit like I'm crazy. But it's true, you all have become a lovely addition to my life. It's hard to choose just 5 of you to award, but I think I've narrowed it down. So, the 5 fabulously lovely bloggers I have chosen are:

Sara Jane: for the sake of her newly sought anonymity, I am not going to link this big sexy. She is my number one blog of the day--she writes it all--whether it's about her job, her latest boys, the friends, happiness, sadness, Sara's posts are always thoughtful, and always well written. xxxo. SJ and I would be friends in real life, we've already established that. *SJ, if you want me to link you, let me know, otherwise I'll respect your privacy! Ha! :)

Amanda: I love Amanda's blog. And she leaves the best comments. She can always make me smile, no matter the day. Her blogs are often humorous, and I love to hear of her every day adventures. Plus, I totally like her posting style--check it out--it's a unique change to your typical paragraph by paragraph blog. She's optomistic, and she always makes me smile.

Bayjb: I spent a lot of time in Chicago this fall, and every time I was there, she would comment about making sure I wore a jacket or told me about the expected forcast. Although we never met, unfortunately, I always feel like we're on the same page, especially when I am in Chicago! Plus, her stories are great. Awesome writer.

Auburn Cat: I love Auburn Cat's blog. She makes me laugh--mostly because the things that she gets "cranky" about are the same things I get cranky about. I think we get along that way. I think she and I would definitely get along--she's one who writes in a variety of styles--happy, sad, cynical, dorky, and can even make light of having a nasty case of kidney stones.

Kyla Bea:I always enjoy Kyla's tales of her pups and her married life. Kyla is always astounding me with her chic-domestic-ness. This married gal can make her own preserves and knit a scarf like no one's business--but she's still cool as all get out.

So, lovelies, I hope you all know that I love love love your blogs. XXXXXOOO

Anyone thinking that we should plan a weekend and fly somewhere centrally located and just hang out and tell stories and drink wine and hang out??? I kinda do...

Murphy

I have a friend Murphy. Murphy Law. Occasionally Murphy decides to come and hang out. I don't know why, because I hate Murphy. He's not really a friend at all. Murphy decided to come and hang out this morning. Murphy Sucks.

Can anything else go wrong?

Is anyone else having a day like this?

Yes, please note, it's not even noon.

Sometimes, you just have to sit back and laugh about it!

gone

I thought about him today. For the first time. In a long time. In fact, I can't remember the last time. And I don't know why he suddenly entered my mind. Someone might have mentioned his name--its a common name, that's possible.

I might have been thinking about the younger sibling and the fucked up path she is tying up her shoes to trek down again, even though last time she was bruised and broken at the end. I can't convince her to throw those laces away and I know she is getting in the same situation she was in before. I know the type of boy she is setting out for. He is the same boy that is going to leave her in the same situation that I was in with him...before. I want to push her down--break her legs so she can't make this jaunt again, but I can't.

It might be because tonight for dinner I decided to make something that he and I used to make...and maybe, with every bite he was slowly creeping his way back into my brain--my thoughts, my being.

I googled him. I looked him up on Facebook. I don't know where he lives now. I don't know his phone number or his current job or if his hairline has receded any farther than it was when I last saw him a couple of years ago--he was always self conscious of that.

I didn't find anything. There is a person out there with his same name who is a little more popular than him on google. He doesn't have the Facebook. And, thankfully, I can't remember his number--the one that I thought would never stop ringing in my head or in my heart.

I am surprised I thought of him and more surprised I decided to look him up. I am surprised because he was such a negative force in my life--in my everything. I'm surprised because it took me so long to get back to being me after I got rid of him.

I'm so glad I couldn't find him. I don't want to know where he is or what he is doing or how his life is going. I thought about him, and I am certain that is as far as that's going to go. He's gone for a reason, a really good reason.