Good evening! How were your weekends and your Mondays? Hopefully nice! I had a wonderful weekend, which carried over into a pretty decent workday today!
The weather this weekend was not nearly as bad as they had predicted... we hardly saw any snow at all, and the roads were fine all weekend! So I was able to accomplish everything that I wanted and needed to do this weekend, so that was nice. I hit all of the stores I wanted to, including Pier 1 Imports, but I held off on buying anything, since my grandmother just moved into a retirement/assisted living community this past weekend, and she had asked me if I wanted or needed anything because she had so much stuff to move and was looking to get rid of stuff, and I said I'd love to take some kitchen stuff off her hands! But other than that, I was quite the consumer this weekend! But almost everything I bought was on sale or just cheap, so I'm at peace with it. I'm a big believer in getting the most bang for my buck, you know? ;-) So I didn't spend all that much, really. And I got a lot of great eats at Target, Wegmans, and Trader Joe's... so I am now toting a fully stocked fridge with lots of yum-filled goodness. ;-)
I was especially excited to find these bad boys:
Speaking of Kashi love, I bought two new Kashi cereals over the weekend- well, new to me, anyway- Mighty Bites and Honey Sunshine. I had a coupon for $1 off any Kashi product, and knew that I wanted to use it for cereal, but I couldn't decide which one I wanted between the two. So I figured, I'd buy both, and rationalized it in my head as rather than get $1 off one purchase, I'd be getting fifty cents off each box. :-) I haven't tried either one yet, probably over the weekend. It's too cold to eat anything but oatmeal at work. How about you Kashi cereal lovers? Which do you like? Mighty Bites? Honey Sunshine? A different one? I'm a big fan of the Kashi Go Lean. I've also had Vive and that was pretty good, but I like the GoLean better. And I have yet to meet a Kashi bar I didn't like. :-)
And my favorite treats of the weekend:
Here are the new books in all their glory. The first one is called Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: And Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom, by Celia Rivenbark. It's a series of short, humorous essays from a good ol' Southern mama. I'm a fan of short essays and all things funny, so I thought this would be good for a laugh or two! The other book is called Miss New York Has Everything, by Lori Jakiela. It's a memoir about a woman who grows up in suburban Pittsburgh in the late 60s/early 70s, but dreams of moving to New York City and making it big there, and so she does actually move there after college, and takes a job as a stewardess because it sounds so exciting and glamorous, and it turns out to be anything but! How funny does that sound? ;-)
So yeah, it was a good weekend. And I slept like a baby last night, so I was actually well-rested for a Monday at work. That doesn't happen much, believe me!
Okay, so I'm about halfway through my book Tripping the Prom Queen, and here are my thoughts on it so far. I really had no idea that women were so jealous of each other, in every arena of life. This book is completely inundated with real-life examples of women competing and judging each other over every.little.thing.in.life, from jobs, to boyfriends/husbands, to children, clothes, money, weddings, even funerals in one example! It's a real eye-opener for me. Sure, I know women are catty and backstabby and all that, but I never realized to such an extent. It makes me feel truly sorry for women who base their worth, themselves on how other women look, the purses they carry, their marital status, all that. It just seems like such a waste of time and energy.
I don't know if I'm in denial, or what, but I read these examples from these women, and I just can't ever imagine feeling that way or getting so upset by other women's lives and happiness, especially friends and loved ones. Maybe I'm just not a competitive person? I've never cared much about competition at all... at least, I think so. When I was in high school, I was on our school's tennis team, and my coach literally almost kicked me off the team because of my "lack of competitive spirit". I never cared if I won a game or not, I just liked to play! So I beat her to the punch and didn't return to the team for my senior year, because I just didn't need that pressure. And it's never bothered me when a friend got engaged or married, because that's not what I want for my life. I've had friends have babies, buy houses, travel, go back to school, change careers, get promotions, and I've never slighted them or myself over it! I have such a diverse group of friends, that we don't really "compete" for the same things and a lot of us want a lot of different things out of life, so when good things happen to them, I don't feel threatened or less of a person- I feel happy for them, glad that something good has happened to them. Am I naive? Are women really like this? I don't get jealous or feel the need to compete with people at work either- I have the job I want at my company. I feel no need to compete with anyone for anything because I'm exactly where I want to be. I don't feel like I'm in competition with my coworkers or my teammates, because we all have the same job and get the same work. I wouldn't mind making more money, sure, but as long as I make enough to support myself, that's enough, especially in a time of serious economic recession and depression... I'm lucky and grateful that I have a job to go to, so the last thing I should be doing or need to be doing is griping about the size of my paycheck. That just seems so ungrateful. Plus I figure that I'm young, and I don't have a husband or kids to feed or a mortgage to pay, and I know that as I continue to work and build a successful career, I will make more money one day, and I have what I need for now. You know? So what do I have to feel jealous about? I love when good things happen to people I care about. Why would I feel anything but? I feel like the women in this book are just so shallow. One woman gripes about how upset she felt because she was married and pregnant while her friends were bar-hopping, and she didn't even like to spend time with them, because she hated being the "boring, fat one". What is that? Rather than have that ridiculous attitude, why not be happy about the fact that you and your husband are about to bring a baby into the world and start a family? One woman tried to get pregnant at the same time her friend did, which is sad enough to do once, but she did it for EACH of her three pregnancies. That's mind-boggling to me. There's so many stories like this throughout the book... like I said, it's definitely an eye-opener. I just think it's really sad to go around in life looking at what everyone else "has" and comparing yourself to them. What kind of a life is that? Why not take all that time and energy and turn it into a more positive energy- like thinking about your life and all the things that bring you happiness, and if there's something you don't like about your life, rather than be bitter that someone else has it and you don't, why don't you try and make those changes for your own life? That's more of a win-win situation, don't you think?
I don't know... it all just seems so sad. If we can't be happy for and support our loved ones when good things happen to them, what does that mean? :-( I don't want to know. I hope that these women profiled in the book are rare exceptions, and that most of us actually want good things for the people we care about. I just need to think we're better people than that. I think that jealousy is a natural emotion, and competition can be healthy in the right environment, and so that's why I'm hoping that these women don't speak for the majority.
Or maybe I should just consider myself lucky that I don't have this mentality. I think if I spent all of my time comparing and judging myself against the world, I wouldn't be a very happy person. It seems really exhausting and self-defeating to never feel like "enough" against other people, and I think that takes away from the everyday happiness that you can find in your everyday life.
That's my two cents. It's time to get off my soapbox and surf your fabulous blogs. I really need to update my blogroll at some point... there are so many awesome blogs out there that I just love to read... I wish I could comment on them all, so you all know I'm reading, but there's too many of you lovely peeps that I rarely get through everyone's blogs every day- I wish I could! Oh, and Diet Tribe is on in a few minutes too, LOL. Is anyone else watching that? What are your thoughts? I like it! And look... a nice example of "healthy competition" amongst friends while still supporting each other... see? It's possible!!!!!!!
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