Category Archives: Shopping

Gifts to myself

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Good Stuff, Muse, Shopping, Totally normal, WTF?

I don’t think I’ve talked about my therapy lately, well, because normally I don’t recount every session here for you to read and judge. *Smiles!* But I will share last week’s with you because it got to me like this big long shovel, reaching down into my gut and digging out the old moldy stuff that makes me have allergies and not breathe sometimes.

We talked about my childhood – the beloved golden compass of therapy, the holy grail, the manna from heaven, and my girl got what she wanted: tears, lots and lots of tears. I’ve said before that I didn’t realize how angry I was at some things, and at first, I didn’t know at what or whom I was angry. But then I wrote a letter (and six more in my head) and then my counselor asked the right questions and then suddenly I was crying so hard I couldn’t catch my breath, and I was remembering things I haven’t thought of since I was 8 and HOLY CRAP THIS WOMAN IS WORTH THE MONEY.

I really wish she read this, because she gets so many free compliments, it’s ridiculous.

I was so exhausted after that encounter that I went home and tried desperately to do more than wander around like a limp noodle, but I failed. She gave me some online surveys to take which basically measure your relationship to yourself and how you view your strengths and weaknesses. Turns out that I’m not my biggest fan, and also that my strengths are that I don’t actually kill people even when I want to. Go me!

So I guess from here on out one of our goals is to teach me to “love myself” or some other sparkly rainbow bullshit and that I should try to unlearn the learned behavior of self-deprecation and self-loathing. (I kind of just made that up.) I’ve decided to give myself some gifts.

#1: I finally used my Sephora gift card from Christmas and loaded myself up on products that no one in this life really needs (i.e. Kim Kardashian’s perfume. Don’t hate me, but it’s kind of awesome.) I wrote myself this note on the gift card in the package that said something like “yay for facing your fears” and then I put little x’s and o’s on it so I would feel like I’m making out with myself.

#2: I was really conscious over the weekend about staying on track and taking my medication (aka “DRUGS!”) as prescribed so that I didn’t have to play whack-a-mole with the anxiety that would try to pop up now and then. Again, go me.

#3: I got proactive and made BB call a painter to give us estimates on some much-needed house projects. This is a gift to me because then people in our neighborhood won’t talk about us and give our house dirty looks and send our house to a therapist for self-esteem issues, which in turn makes me feel better. Whew.

#4: I actively re-routed some thoughts in my head after one person close to me said a thoughtless, hurtful thing. Instead of waiting until I went to sleep to pound her head in, I instead snatched the thought in my head, jerked it to the left and sent it down another path. Kind of it worked.

My panic and anxiety, y’all, are just leaps and bounds and over-the-rainbow and up in space and are light years away and better than last summer and fall. I can’t even begin to tell you what a difference I feel in myself. I go back and look at my posts from those months, and I recognize that girl but I don’t feel a wave of panic when I read what she wrote. Sure I’m still insecure, and sure it’s possible that I’m a closeted introvert trapped in an extrovert’s body, and yes, it could happen that an airplane ride or a conference room or a crowded wedding could give me a little shiver. Anything can happen.

What I have gifted to myself though is the greatest gift of all: recognizing that I have a problem, accepting that I can’t fix it myself, and seeking help for it at all costs. I know y’all raised your eyebrows on Monday when every answer on my list of questions was Drugs! Drugs! More drugs! Gimme drugs! and I understand. Plenty of people I know, family members included, can’t stand to take a pill for anything – let’s walk it off, drink it down, whatever, and forget about it. For me though, these drugs are my lifeline. They are as important to me as the air I breathe and the 8 glasses of water a day I don’t drink. I’ll tell you what they are later, but for now you should know that if I am able to function even 40% better than before, I have won an Olympic gold medal.

(And actually, I’d put myself at 65%, truth be told. BECAUSE I ROCK.)

LG – 7.3 Cu. Ft. 9-Cycle Electric Dryer – White

Posted by Elizabeth in Shopping

Y’all, I am planning to buy this dryer over the weekend. I need some recommendations – do you have new/newish dryers? Do you like yours? Have you ever bought an LG home appliance (other than a TV or phone)? Ours is mostly dead and I would like to be able to dry a load of laundry in less than a day. How I wish I were exaggerating.

Days and Confused

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Daily, Lucille & Charles, Muse, Shopping, The Almighty TV, WTF?

Listen up: All comments on Half Baked, Twice as Good now through Friday will earn $1 each for Haiti relief. So comment, discuss, hate, whatever you want. Just comment and send your friends to do it too.

Good…Tuesday…morning. I’m all kinds of confused today since we had yesterday off as a holiday. Like, last night we went over to some friends’ for dinner and when we got home I was all Awesome! Iron Chef time! and really it was Bachelor time and before I could turn the channel really quick I saw Pilot Boy and Nutso Crazy Girl on a one-on-one date and I squealed and turn the TV off before anything else was revealed to me. (That part’s not entirely true, but I didn’t want this post to turn into some Bachelor spoiler thing. Blech.)

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed your weekend. Mine was part slug, part do-stuff. Meaning I laid around from after-work Friday until Monday morning, accomplishing one half of a load of laundry and THAT IS IT. Sunday night I looked at myself in the mirror and was like, Whoa. Is divorce court open on Sunday night? That’s where we’re headed when BB gets a load of this. But then yesterday morning I popped out of bed, washed my hair (doesn’t washing your hair do wonders for self-esteem?) and headed out for a day of brunch, errands, and accomplishing shit.

What’s the point of all this? Ah, I remember now.

A while back my therapist suggested that I keep a small notebook of Daily Accomplishments. One thing I’ve discovered in my countless therapy sessions is that, among my many other faults, I belittle things I have done or accomplished on a regular basis. I also am the QUEEN of self-deprecating comments, which I’m pretty sure starts to get annoying after a while. So my therapist thought if I wrote down 3 things – any 3 big, small or in-between – I accomplished at the end of the day, I’d sleep better and have a little more faith in myself.

Like any newly-started habit, I did it for about three or four days and quit. And I found myself yesterday making the derogatory comments about myself again, belittling things I’ve done or that I’m secretly proud of, and I remembered the little notebook. When I got in bed last night, I looked at it again, sitting there innocently on my bedside table and briefly considered writing a few things down in it before I drifted off into red-wine Enya land. (Those were last night’s sleep aids.) Instead, I thought of three things, committed them to memory and settled down to breathe in Lucy fur for the rest of the night.

Hindsight being what it is, I should have written those things down. I sort of remember the thought process this morning, but I don’t remember exactly what I was proud of last night. Yes, I went to Wal-Mart and didn’t have to escape and managed to distract myself from what Wal-Mart actually is. And I went to a crowded restaurant and sat by myself at a table for a few minutes while I waited for a friend. And I installed a thingy to hold my ironing board and iron. See what I mean? These are little, very little, things. But if we take stock of our days, clear the cobwebs out of our brain and think about it, little things are things to be celebrated.

Even if I did rot in my pajamas for 48 hours.

The newest addition to my bag addiction

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Shopping

Listen up: All comments on Half Baked, Twice as Good now through next Friday will earn $1 each for Haiti relief. So comment, discuss, hate, whatever you want. Just comment and send your friends to do it too.

Bought this yesterday at Nordstrom. It’s large, definitely in charge, and goes with everything. On sale at Nordstrom now!

Victory. Sort of.

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Daily, Family, Good Stuff, Muse, Shopping

Listen up: All comments on Half Baked, Twice as Good now through next Friday will earn $1 each for Haiti relief. So comment, discuss, hate, whatever you want. Just comment and send your friends to do it too.

Hey Internet, guess what? It’s Friday. You know what that means? Absolutely nothing unless, like me, you’re off on Monday for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. That means I have three WHOLE days to think about – and get myself motivated to – cleaning up the house, and cleaning OUT the closets and other various and sundry crap.

That first paragraph right there was so unnecessary. I ramble on Fridays. It’s the exhaustion.

Anyway, last night was my first step towards convincing the Bathroom Renovation Rejection Committee that actually, a bathroom (etc., but the committee doesn’t know that yet) is a great investment and it will reap tons of rewards in the short AND long run. Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions on how to proceed with my argument. All points were well-received.

First we drew up a plan for the new pantry – no, my kitchen does NOT have one, try to control your rage as I did – and then we dreamed about what the addition will look like. And then the Committee said we need to decrease our debt-to-equity ratio and I stopped listening. All I needed to hear was that we could call a contractor in March for an estimate. All I heard was yes, renovations will start in March.

And that’s victory enough for me.