I am the one who:

•  Loves her friends and family and would do anything for any one of them.  
• Asks what I can do for you. 
• Pretends that I’m a lot stronger than I really am but I would never let you know that.
• Would rather die trying than giving up.
• You can turn to when you need an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on
• Lives for truth, beauty, freedom and love
• Reads voraciously and swears that I can spell well because of it
• Lives for the days where you can just relax and catch up with a good friend
• Has a contagious laugh
• Still feels like the awkward teenage girl every now and then that I once was
• Spends too much time thinking about the world’s ills and feels helpless because of it
• Dreams big and goes after those dreams

I am all this and more. Get to know me and you will see this.

Who are you?

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This blog entry is brought to you by featured_grownups. Go visit!

 This weekend has been pretty refreshing. I definitely needed it. I’ve been on overdrive for the past several weeks. I think I mentioned that this past week was midterms for me. I had been so involved with trying to get my midterm finished (which I finished a day early btw), that I totally didn’t realize that I have this coming week off for a sort of Spring Break- type thing. I’m not really sure how I could’ve missed that… oh my

We went to my hometown on Saturday afternoon to hang out with my friends. We had dinner with my parents and then went over to Beef’s house for a game night. There were six of us there. We had a lot of fun. We’re all trying to save money so a night in was perfect. We played Apples to Apples (a fun game that I had never played before) and Cranium. It was relaxing and definitely perfect after this crazy week.

We had breakfast with my family this morning and then came home. The Architect has been working on our entry for the Washington Post Peep contest. It’s pretty fantastic. I’ve been more of a creative director on this project. We just have to put the finishing touches on the diorama this evening and then we should be good to go

Also, I hope to get some more done on my homemade gifts tonight or sometime this week!

How was your weekend?

I’ve got a confession to make and some of you may know this if you’ve been reading my site for awhile but let me just go ahead and confess to you that I am a Republican.

*GASP*

These days, it takes a lot to confess that. Usually I cop out and say I’m a Libertarian, which although my views may lean that way (fiscally conservative and socially liberal), I am a registered Republican and I have no plans (yet) to change that. Call me a RINO if you will, but I’m still a registered Republican.

The GOP is a big mess right now. I don’t see any stars in the party (Palin 2012? No thank you.) and I don’t see the party trying to piece itself back together at all. Frankly, I was very hopeful when Michael Steele became the chairman of the GOP. He’s a pretty moderate guy and he was the Lt. Governor of my state at one time. He ran a failed attempt for Senate a few years ago and I was a big supporter of him on that campaign. He seemed to have some sense and I was hopeful that would translate into a rejuvenation of the GOP and maybe some much needed modernization.

Thus far, this idea hasn’t really panned out. Every time Michael Steele steps out of line with the powers that be in the GOP, he has to retract statements or grovel. This does absolutely nothing for the party. Steele criticized Rush Limbaugh and then was forced to grovel and apologize to the guy. This isn’t moving the party forward.

Times are bad for the Republican party. The Democrats almost have a super majority in the Senate (there are currently 58 Democratic senators and if Al Franken (D-MN) gets seated, there will be 59). Now is the time for the Republican party to pull itself together. Neo-conservatism needs to be allowed to be pushed out because it’s getting us absolutely nowhere.

My advice to the GOP is to allow change to come to the party. And I know that change is a bad word for some of you right now because it’s Obama’s word but change is a good thing. You all need to put yourself back together before you can be a force within Congress. Okay, maybe Steele is a little off-the-cuff sometimes but he has some pretty good ideas about how to reenergize the party and actually make it accessible and attractive to younger voters ( you old guys aren’t going to be around forever). The face of the party needs to change and in order to promote that, you all need to step back a little bit and think about what is best for the party. The economy sucks right now and it’s very easy for people to hate on the fiscally conservative economics that the Republicans profess to love (although I hardly consider what Bush did during his administration to fall into the fiscally conservative economics category but that’s a story for another time).

Reconsider what you guys are doing because you are looking kind of silly right now.

I finally finished returning comments on my post that got featured last week. I replied to a lot of the comments on my own site but I tried to go out to the site of each person that commented me and leave a comment for them just to show my appreciation for all of the new people that stopped by.

I was kind of disturbed by some of the sites that had commented on my post on average beauty. The ones that I found disturbing were the so-called thinspo blogs. They had left nice comments on my post but when I visited their sites, I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t decide if I should leave e-props only or what. My post was supposed to be about seeing the beauty in the ordinary. To me, the thinspo stuff just really doesn’t mesh with the message that I was trying to get at.

Those sites make me really sad. I don’t know… they just really got me down. How is it that you can see beauty in the average, mundane things but when it comes to yourself, you don’t see anything you like? I realize that eating disorders are a mental issue and therefore it’s not going to make very much sense. Bottom line, I’m always disheartened when I see stuff like that.

Sigh…

So, yes, I’m on my way to being finished with the homemade gifts. Yay!

Mrs. Jones is our cleaning lady at work. She always has a kind word for everyone in the office and will often take a little bit of time to chat with us as she makes her way around our office. She’s really amazing. As I wrote a few weeks ago, my dad will be having brain surgery in about two weeks. I’ve been scared, really scared.

Mrs. Jones always asks about my family. I told her about my dad. She gave me a great big hug and told me to keep my chin up and just help my dad get through this. Everyday since then, she’s asked how he’s doing and if we know anything more about his surgery. Then she’ll try to cheer me up a little bit and always tells me to keep my chin up.

I’m really stunned by her kindness. Those little words mean so much. The encouragement means even more. She’s really made this whole process a lot easier. Receiving the kind words everyday from her really is amazing.

The world would be a lot happier place with more Mrs. Jones in it

Do you have someone like Mrs. Jones in your life?