North Dakotan Sensibilities...

I am not a fashion guru or icon by any means, but I do occasionally watch “What Not to Wear” and I also enjoy flipping through People magazine and offering my opinion on “Who Wore it Best?” So, since I have now established my credibility, here are the things that need to be rethought you silly citizens of Fargo-Moorhead:

1) If your children are wearing winter coats and boots, you should not be wearing a short sleeve shirt and shorts. Your children’s sensibilities should also translate to you.

2) If you are wearing a winter coat, it is not seasonally appropriate to be wearing flip-flops. Every appendage should be free from frost-bite.

3) If there is still snow on the ground, do not wear summer gladiator sandals to church (or ever, if you ask me). You look silly and you will get cold.

4) 50 degrees DOES feel like a heat-wave, I understand. However, your 3 year old child might be a bit chilly in a short-sleeve shirt on the playground. And no, your cigarette smoke will not warm him up…it actually makes my child cough.

5) Not necessarily related to fashion, but to common politeness – Please pick up your Starbucks AFTER church and not BEFORE.

Professionalism

So, I’ve had a bad day.

I got a lecture from my supervisor (whom I think very little of) about my unprofessional posture at an internal team meeting. Dear Blogreaders, it is true. When I was in a closed meeting room, with 2 coworkers and my supervisor, and as the meeting rounded into its second hour, I did indeed slouch in my chair for a period of approximately 2 minutes as my back was cramping up.

I sincerely apologize for how deeply this must have offended you. This was indeed quite unprofessional of me. I should know better.

This is what I wanted to say: “Oh, thanks for bringing up the topic of professionalism. There are a couple things that I wanted to mention to you as well. Here, let me outline them so your feeble mind can follow along:

1) When I have to wake you up at home to remind you that you are already late for meetings, that is generally frowned upon.

2) Spending the morning harvesting your crops on FarmVille, I fear, is typically a ‘no-no’ as well.

3) Showing up late to every single meeting because you are outside smoking, and then reeking of stale smoke, could also be considered unprofessional in some people’s eyes.

4) Having to fudge purchase order numbers so as to not alert your supervisor of your excessive company spending, can reflect poorly on your organizational and fiscal skills.

I hope that this brief outline will also help you to learn what is and isn’t professional when determining what choices to make while you are at work as well.”

I'm BA--AACK!

I’ve been staying away from the blog for quite awhile now. I’ve been cranky, irritable, and quite depressing to be around. I feel like I’ve been white knuckling it for awhile – but NOW I’m doing better. I also have the following to report:

I have made affirmative steps to “take” my life back. (very dramatic, eh?). Come hell or high water, I will be either starting or joining a law office mid-late summer. I have spoken to my previous supervising attorney and it definitely sounds like we can work something out. This would be GREAT and less scary than starting out from scratch… but still risky. My husband is choosing to keep his head in the sand, so he continues to cheer me on – which I appreciate to no end. More details will follow as soon as I know them.

On a completely different note, I am trying out a new antiperspirant called "Certain-Dri" - ever heard of it?? You need to use it at bedtime and it supposedly lasts for 72 hours. Yippee!!

Seven Pseudo-Interesting Facts About Moi.

So, silly Laura has tasked me with providing you three with 7 interesting facts about myself. Hmmm.... I do not know what is interesting about myself necessarily, so I have in turn tasked my family and friends with providing me with interesting facts. Oddly... only a couple of them had anything to say. I'm trying to not take this personally. Here's what they had to say:

My mother said:

(1): Intelligent, nurturing, sense of humor, impatient, loving, caring,
dominant, assertive, good speller, endearing …. Should I go on???

(Nope, that's good. Thanks, mom.)

My co-worker and new friend said

(2): You went to law school for 3 years and now spend your time arguing
with Indians all day long. Also you are VERY quick witted!

(This is true. My job does mean that I need to argue with actual Indians all day
long. At any given time I can tell you what time it is in India.)

(And for the record, she was my friend before she wrote these comments)

My bestest friend in the world that I have neglected since Brandon was born said this about me

(3): i think most things i know about you are probably more personal
than what others know and you probably don't want me to share... ;)
(Yes, that is true.) A rated G one, though, is: the tip of your noes
moves downward when you say "M" words. (Again, very true.)

My latin buddy (the language, not the heritage), HS friend, and re-discovered adult friend said this:

(4) Hmm.
I find your intense and long-lasting love of all things Bon Jovi
pretty interesting. Lots of people have fleeting loves, but yours is a
constant.

(I do love this man forever and always as long as we both
shall live.

Oh wait.. that's for something else.)

And --

(5) This may or may not be interesting, but I remember how you always
used to intentionally button up your sweaters the wrong way so that the buttons
were off by one. Like, the top button would go in the second button
hole.

(This I have no recollection of, and since I didn't have a drop of
alcohol until I was 20 2/3 years old, I know I wasn't drunk. I must have thought this was funny? Oh wait.. knowing myself in my high school days, I was probably trying to make a "statement" about nonconformity and doing what was expected of me...)

She goes on --
(6) In fact, that might be a pretty interesting thing after
all--the fact that many, many of my adolescent memories involve you. (insert: "Awwww that's sweet" here) Here's a brief rundown: Mexican Village salsa with a hint of onion, Junior Mint fiasco, "Hello, boys!" (again... I don't remember this one but I'm having a 'tip of the tongue' phenomenon with this one.), wool mittens from Herbergers (no real story, other than I always think of you when I think of mittens, which is fairly infrequent out here in the desert), and chicken
delivery.

(I would like to clarify that it was NOT Mexican Village salsa -- it was
either the closely packaged "Village" salsa or "Paradiso" salsa, and we found an entire damn onion in there. If you know the consistency of Mexican Village's salsa, you understand how shocking this was; the Junior Mint fiasco occurred during a screening of 'The Age of Innocence' -- when the lights came up, I had melted mints all over my sweater; I have a love of mittens; and the chicken delivery reference is a story worthy of several blog posts, but I'll leave it as "Yes, I have inadvertently and unknowingly participated in delivering frozen chickens across state lines, in a dilapitated van, in order to see a Cure concert.")

(7) I'm having a hell of a time formatting this post and it is infuriating me to no end. (Please reference my mother's description of me... she's right. I'm impatient. I'm done for tonight.)