Once, I...

Once, I accidentally exploded a glass casserole dish on my stove.

I baked a mondo cake in this thick glass casserole dish and while I was taking it out of the oven, my housemate was finishing up her omelet on the stove. So, she moved her pan off the burner and I immediately plunked the dish down right in the newly free space, neither of us noticed the burner was left on. Two minutes later, I'm reading on the couch in the living room waiting for the cake to cool so I can icing it, and i hear the densest "crack!" I've ever heard! It was a solid "crack!" like a whip, but thicker... it was sweet. I knew right away it was the glass dish. I peeked into the kitchen and sure enough there were millions of pieces of thick brown glass EVERYWHERE. It was a nightmare to clean up, but looking back, it was the sweetest experience I've had with shattered cookware. Why, it even tops the time my mom inadvertently dropped a glass 6 cup Pyrex on my head and it broke in three pieces. It's never been proven conclusively if it had any affect on my brain/skull. Jury's still out... :/

Daaaay: Wow.

The math is going to ruin me. It's... 24 days till my birthday so that would mean today is day 26. IIIII hope that's correct.

As all things do, this blog has evolved and I would be doing the world a diservice if I didn't follow the natural flow of life. I'm still doing the challenge, (went home for 2 weeks, dawdled, got myself back into shape, and kept plugging along) but I'm bored of it being the focus of my blog. There are so many interesting things stemming off of the movement towards my goals that I can't hardly stand it!

So, without further ado, this segement is going to be about noodles. Just kidding. This segement is going to be about diapers. Gotchya again. This segement is actually really going to be about how I got fired from my job at the Elks Lodge. Sort of. ... ..... dramatic pause.... aaand que lights...

Arriving back in Harrisonburg after being in paradise (aka home, aka New Orleans) for two weeks was like going from the tanning bed to the tredmill. Still at the gym, but two totally different pieces of gym equipment. I am never going to use that analogy again. I promise. That was horrible. Anyway, it wasn't that I was annoyed to be back, I was glad to get back to taking care of my life, doctors apointments, babysitting, taxes, friends, all of it, but it was definitely an adjustment of pace. Also I finally was taking an antibiotic for my "sinusitis" (yes, it's actually called that...booooriiiing) and feeling kind of like I needed to take things one at a time. But, the day after I got back, I realized I was scheduled to work at the Elks from 3-7pm. I thought, I can't do that to myself. And asked the other two bartenders (one of which is my roomate) if they could cover for me. Jessie had a lab and Kaitlyn was already scheduled at her other job. So, I just decided to call Moe the bar manager and ask if he could do it. [Sidenote: Moe is not like other managers. He is allllwayyyyys at the bar, so if you ever need him to cover, he's like "yea, sure." It's been fantabulous. Ok... sidenote complete.] So lateeda no big deal I ring up Moe and tell him the sitch, "What do you think? Can you work for me?"
"Uhhh... siiiiiiiiiiighhhhh.... Actually... I've been putting this off, but..."
He fired me. Right there on the phone. Right then and there.
Well, that's not totally fair, I guess. He "let me go" and it was "mutual" on my part. But, it was unreal and I was pretty surprised. Out of noooowhere.
One might stop to think at this point in the blog.... This is just an example of Amelie's inability to grasp that she was not doing her job and really Moe was putting off something that probably needed to happen months ago.
And you would be wrong.
When I tell you that working at the Elks Lodge entailed NO skill in ANYTHING whatsofreakinever. I mean I mean it. You go, you sit, you facilitate alchoholism, you lock up. And of course you get to know the guys and swap stories and laugh and cry and just basically do what humans inately do: relate. S'that simple. Butttttt.... obviously that can't be the whole case because there I was on the phone with Moe: shocked, confused, hurt, happy, hysterical! I went through all these emotions distinctly. Oh my gosh, are you serious? First of all... whaaa? What are you saying? I don't understand... Ohh, I see.... Well... sniff sniff, I see... Well, hmm, that's too bad. Well, my sinuses have been acting up because of all the smoke in the place anyway, well I guess this was good, then. Hmhm, hehe, hee hee, ha ha.... bwahahahahahahahha!!! I can't believe this! This is hilarious! (after I got off the phone of course). Jessie, wait till you hear this... what? He just fired you too? Bahahahahahaha!!!!
I'm telling you people. The situation was completely UNREAL! So, there you have it. Both Jessie and I were "let go" due to inexplicable circumstances roughly laid in unrelated excuses.
But, from the blathering and it's-not-up-to-me-'s, it became somewhat apparant that neither Jessie or I were "aggressive" enough. There you have it. They got rid of us so they could pick up some hussies.
Well, if that's the case then it's a complement to be gotten rid of. I thought I had some good relationships, I thought I was getting to know the guys, satifying the human need for relating and caring, but I'm here to tell you that's not what they were looking for. And no one had the guts or grace to tell me that 9 months ago when I started working for them. Thanks. Thanks a lot. And then it all came out in one phone call, months of whining (I'm sure) for a more "aggressive" bartending female, months of talking about Amelie the "she's-too-quiet" bartender for them to finally grow a pair and eek out a pro-action. Actually, they never grew a pair, they forced "Moe the manager" to do it. Moe. The only Elk that ever really loved me. They made him do it. On the phone I knew he was upset about it and had been putting it off because it was the last thing he wanted to do. But, as I can only now assume, they complained and nagged like mean old housewives until he could take it no longer. Wimps. Part of me wanted to go in there during the fullest bar-time and call everyone out on their wimpyness. Cowards! But, after a couple of days to cool down, I realized this would do no good, and turned in my keys like a meek little lamb at the slaughter. Am I tooting my own horn here? Yes. I'm sorry about that...
Honestly, it's so good to be done with that job. My immune system took a huge fall from all the constant billows of smoke I choked down every day. Not to mention the emotional and psychological damage of watching so many older men waste their lives away one day at a time. I can only imagine the amount of damage done to my lungs and body. Thankfully, I read somewhere that a twenty-two year olds body can completely regenerate it's lungs in 6 months, even lungs with extensive smoke damage. So... fingers crossed. You can do that until your twenty-six and then something changes and you're stuck with what you got. So, that can be your fun fact of the day. Needless to say, I am on the job market again and stoked about it.

This rounds on me, boys!

Day 40

Whew, only ten days? Wow. Well, forty days till my birthday.

Things I've noticed:

I feel better in my tum. I feel good about the foods I'm putting in me, so I feel good inside way down deep in my gut. One of these days I'm going to do a segment on "the gut" because it is one of the most fascinating things in our bodies, no lie. I don't eat out as much. Although now that I'm home for a couple weeks I'm going to literally try and eat sushi as many days in a row as possible and yes one of these days I will also do a segment on sushi.

I feel a peace about where I am in life/am open to hearing what other people think of where I am in life without it affecting me negatively. That's still in progress, but my Jesus Calling book has been instrumental. I highly suggest everyone get one for themselves. Every day it's something I need to hear. How did I live without it before??

Since I've been here I went with my sis Maryann to her "Stone Creek Club and Spa" basically, a resort with a large exercise room. So luxurious! I did crossfit, woot woot. They had every gadget and gizmo in the book, but they all looked so complicated and all the men were so old and in shape, I weaked out and just used some weights and a yoga ball in the very back corner of the facility. Also I should note here that the only reason I wrote that sentence out was so I could say the phrase "they had every gadget and gizmo in the book." Uh huh. That's right.

Days 43, 42, 41

The days have been full of themselves lately with no time for a blogger's reflections. But, the busyness has subsided for the next two weeks at least because I am now home in Louisiana. However, getting here was anything BUT a reflective time.

I have to pause here before I lose momentum for the thought/conversation I am having here on the couch amidst my dad reading the news on the opposite couch, my mom standing on, my brother and sister dispersed around the room/kitchen, all of us talking about the effects of the last handful of earthquakes. I just read on twitter that the Chilean quake cause the days to be shorter (probably by miliseconds, but still), and my dad just said that the quake also shook the earth's crust and caused a "sloshing" of Lake Pontchartrain (the lake separating the north shore- Mandeville, from the south shore-New Orleans). Unreal! And all these quakes are happening on different fault lines... I'm jus sayin'... I mean, I'm sure everyone else is saying the same thing, and probably their blogs are way more informed and interesting. So, I'll stop there. I just had to say SOMEthing :]

Anyhoo. My flight was this morning at 10:30. So, last night I drove up after work (around 9pm) to Arlington to stay with my sister for the night, so she could drop me off at Dulles on her way to work the next morning (this morning). But, she was really not feeling well to start, which I think was a clue into how the next 24 hours was going to go... That night, I tossed and turned more than I ever have before. I seriously can't remember the last time I had such trouble sleeping! I never had a problem falling asleep in her bed before, in fact, that night just before settling in I commented on how much I looked forward to snuggling with her comforter. But, for some reason, my pajama pants were ridiculously uncomfortable. And then I was so hungry my stomach was eating itself. And then my pillow seemed to sink lower than my feet so that my sinuses became a wall of steel smashed against every fiber of my face. I was snotting, I was drooling, I was trying to fix my pants, I was trying to have a dream that kept getting interrupted, I was working myself into a huge tizzy. Betsy mumbled something in her sleep. I tried not to laugh out loud, but it was something about "and what sound does a cat make?" Finally, I decided my face/pants/pillow situation was out of control and I needed to move to a couch downstairs so I could prop my head up on an armrest and hopefully get it back to the natural pH level or whatever the heck is going on in your head on any given day when you're not suffering from a wall of sinuses up at bat in your face. Ahem. Anyway, around 5am I went shivering down to the couch, turned off a lamp and pulled a couple of pillows around me for warmth. Sleep came and went. My neck hurt a lot. But, I awoke at the allotted time this morning and felt surprisingly rested. Miracle? Yes.

At the airport, people were peaceful. I thought to myself, ahhh, this is what the airport should be like always. But, it was only the begining...

Long story short, I guess my sinuses decided they were too rattled to recover enough to be peaceful themselves during my two flights to NO. So, my face literally felt like it was going to explode from the pressure in my ears and nose. I was almost in tears as the first leg of my flight landed. The next flight, I bought "earplanes" which are said to eliminate pressure in ears. I plugged my ears up to start the last leg of my flight and crossed my fingers as the plane took off. So uncomfortable. So painful! But, I managed to fall asleep for most of it, waking up intermittently to close my mouth and wipe the drool off my cheek. I spent the last 15 minutes of the flight pinching my nose closed because I was legitimately worried it would explode. So, needless to say I was quite the sight. Ears plugged, coming in and out of consciousness, rocking back and forth while holding my nose closed, eyes tightly shut. I could have kissed the ground when we landed. Fortunately, the New Orleans International Airport pavement doesn't show under the thick layer of gum and garbage covering the street, so that wasn't an option.

It was that much more special when I walked up to my house and toddling up to me to say hello were my cousin's little children, wispy red hair, smiley jelly faces, "mamey, hi mamey" tiny Maggie says. Now that I'm here, I'm here. I feel good, I feel great. It's like nothing bad can happen now that I'm home. Not for the next two weeks.

Day 44

Between Lost, 24, Saturday Night Live, Modern Family, the Olympics, and youtube, it's no wonder how late I go to bed some nights. Hulu owes me one. Basically. I keep it in business.

But it was not any of these shows that kept me up. It was this video. Watch it. It's interesting.

http://www.videoweed.com/file/gcc6t94whs0m7