Me: If I was an animal, I’d definitely be a cat. I like to sleep, I’m pretty lazy, I’m goofy and I love when people pet me. What would you be?

Him: I don’t know. Maybe a horse.

Me: Why a horse?

Him: Because I like to be helpful. You know… people could ride me. And stuff. And then when I died they could make me into glue, and I could help little kids with their craft projects.

Me: ….

For a long time, my family had a tradition of going Christmas tree shopping soon after Thanksgiving. We’d all load up — aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, siblings — and head out to a tree farm. The tradition has sort of waned in the last few years as we’ve all grown up and gotten busy, but my sister Kelli made an attempt to get some of us together to shop for trees this year. Despite busy and conflicting schedules, a few of us were going to go out this afternoon.

But then it started raining. Pouring actually, and my dad said we should probably reschedule. Except I didn’t know that, so the Giraffe and I sat around waiting for someone to call us and say we were ready to go (we were waiting for Kel’s husband to get out of work). Finally at 1:30 I called and asked what was up. Oh, we’re rescheduling, didn’t you know?

No, we didn’t. The Giraffe and I were eager to get a tree this weekend, so we decided to go to Lowe’s, where we picked up a Scotch Pine for $15. When we got it home though, it didn’t fit in our tree stand. So back out we went to return the stand to the same store we had visited this morning for groceries. I hate return trips on the same day! We bought a new tree stand, got it home, put the tree up and realized, holy shit, it’s crooked as hell! The whole trunk, from base to top, is a complete bow. We had to stick the trunk base in at a severe angle just to get the top to point toward the ceiling.

But it’s up! We’re letting it dry out a little (all that rain earlier soaked it) before we decorate. With Christmas music of course. This is a fun time of year.

Edited to Add:

While buying beer the other night…

Me: [hands over ID]

Cashier: Oh wow, we have the same birthday.

Me: Well happy birthday in a couple weeks then.

Cashier: Thanks, you too. It’s not very exciting for me though. Only 19.

Me: Well I’m closing in on 30 soon, so not very exciting for me either.

Cashier: Really! Before I saw your ID, I would have guessed no more than 21. Seriously.

Thank you young cashier, you made my day!

I hate shopping in general, so shopping on Black Friday is essentially my hell. Which is why I have never done it, and likely never will. But the Giraffe and I did look through all the ads at my Grandma’s yesterday. There were some crazy good deals, and I understand why people fight the crowds for them, but there are few money-saving opportunities that would get me out of bed at 3am to stand in long lines with crowds of crazy people.

However, we were tempted by a mattress sale because of how awful we’ve both been sleeping lately. The Giraffe wrote all about that at S&M. We have also been wanting a portable external hard drive, but we were hoping to find one online without going to the stores. We didn’t find anything, and therefore didn’t buy one. I also clipped a 50% off Joann’s coupon that’s good only today in-store or online, but their damn website isn’t working, so that’s worthless.

The mattress was a success, but since we actually bought that Thursday night, I guess Black Friday was kind of a bomb for us. Maybe that’s what we get for our unwillingness to leave the house. Anybody else get any great deals?

Right now, I have to admit, I’m most thankful for a four-day weekend and the fact that I got to sleep in until 10 this morning. Family, friends, food, shelter, health, wealth… definitely appreciate that stuff too. I try to never take it for granted. I know I’m blessed in so many ways, and as I head off to a Thanksgiving celebration with my whole family, I’m reminded of that.

But this morning I can’t help but say a big THANK YOU for feeling rested and for the long weekend ahead of me.

Last night was Sister Night. We all got together, just the four of us, for dinner and ice cream and gut-splitting laughter. We haven’t done that in awhile. Just the four of us, I mean. We see each other often, but usually in the context of larger family functions or at least with our significant others in tow. But sister time is special. These three ladies are my best friends, my closest confidantes, and the people who make me laugh more than anyone else in the world.

(This is from the other day when we were all hanging out with our mom. From left: Andrea, Emily, Shannon, Mom, Kelli.)

Recently, thanks to Young House Love, we discovered You’ve Got Supper, a free weekly recipe email service. When you sign up, they send you a weekly email with five recipes. You select the recipes you want to try and they compile a shopping list for you.

The Giraffe and I were sick of our usual rotation of spaghetti, chili and tacos, but we didn’t enjoy spending hours searching for inspiration. With YGS, we get new ideas without having to search. We usually select one or two recipes a week to try, and if we see something interesting but don’t have time to try it right away, we print and save it for the future. Sometimes we don’t even follow the recipe but simply get inspiration for something else.

Last week YGS suggested a simple Pork Tenderloin BBQ sandwich, which we made, adding homemade coleslaw. It also suggested Quickie Quesadillas, a recipe we didn’t even remotely follow. But it inspired us to make our own version of quesadillas, something we’d never tried before.

This week we printed recipes for Crab Chowder, Pizza with Roasted Butternut Squash & Prosciutto, and Bow Tie Ziti with Tomato, Mozzarella & Sausage. Last night we made the pizza with a few variations. This is YGS’s recipe:

Ingredients
• 2 cup(s) butternut squash, diced
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 1/4 tsp sage (dried)
• 2 tbsp olive oil, divided
• 1 medium pizza dough
• 1/2 cup(s) parmesan cheese, shredded, divided
• 4 slice(s) prosciutto, torn

Directions
1. Dice butternut squash and onion into 3/4 inch cubes. Toss with 1 tbsp olive oil and sage and place on baking sheet. Roast at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.
2. Roll out dough on a floured surface. Place on parchment paper on a greased baking sheet.
3. Top dough with 1/4 cup parmesan cheese and roasted squash and onions. Top with torn prosciutto and remaining parmesan cheese.
4. Pierce dough with a fork and drizzle pizza with olive oil. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes.

The Giraffe added minced garlic and feta cheese, substituted the yellow onion with red and the parmesan with mozzeralla, and instead of dried sage he sprinkled Italian seasoning on top. I’ll admit I wasn’t dying to try this recipe, but he was, and I’m so glad. It was GOOD! I kept exclaiming just that after each bite. I think I liked it even more than him.

On Wednesday we’re going to tackle the Ziti dish, and we’re saving the chowder for another time. As usual, I’m in no way getting paid by YGS, but I highly recommend it if you need an easy way to spice up your dinner routine.

It started when I was a kid. I woke up from a nap, my mind fully alert, but I couldn’t move my body. I’d be aware of my surroundings, noises and movements, but no matter how hard I concentrated I couldn’t move a muscle. I panicked and silently begged someone to notice, to come shake me and fully wake me up. Nobody did.

It was only a few minutes, but it felt like I spent hours like that. Paralyzed. Eventually I made myself relax and tried to drift back to sleep, and suddenly I jolted up, my body mobile again. I exercised every muscle, just to prove to myself it was real.

It doesn’t happen every time I sleep, somewhat rarely actually. And usually only when I was napping, not often after a full night’s sleep. It scared me, but I never knew what it was. And it happened so infrequently that I never bothered to look into it. This inability to move while fully conscious is terrifying while it’s happening, but once I’m mobile again, I tend to put it out of my mind.

This morning I heard the term “sleep paralysis” on a radio show and thought, “Sleep. Paralysis. Yeah that sounds about right.” So I looked it up, and sure enough, it really does sound about right. I haven’t had  the hallucinations that can sometimes accompany sleep paralysis, but while I’m paralyzed, I have often wondered what I’d do if someone tried to attack me while I was in that state. I tend to think that that kind of action would jolt my brain out of it, but who knows.

The other day I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up I couldn’t move. I could hear the Giraffe moving around having just gotten out of the shower. In my head I was screaming at him to come wake me up, to wake up the part of my brain that was still sleeping, the part that controlled my movements. He didn’t hear me. It was such a lonely, terrifying feeling.

I’ve always had sleep problems – insomnia, poor quality sleep, etc. – and maybe this is related in some way. I guess I better mention it to my doctor next time I’m there.

Craigslist is so weird. I’ve never actually purchased anything from there, though I’ve used it to look for jobs, apartments, etc. So I didn’t fully understand how the whole buying/selling stuff from/to strangers worked.

The Giraffe and I got a free couch from my mom recently, so we wanted to get rid of our old one (also a hand-me-down). After asking friends and family and posting it on Facebook with no takers, I listed it as free on Craigslist. Right away I got a response, but even though they give you an anonymous email address to have people send their interest, I couldn’t figure out a way to reply using that email. So I had to use my personal email address which has my last name in it, and immediately I got visions of stalkers and murderers tracking me down. Then I realized these people would be coming to my apartment to collect the couch! They’ll know where I live!

I ended up talking to someone on the phone about the couch, and she seemed very nice and extremely grateful. Also, very normal. So I said she could come over and get the couch. And I think everything went fine – she brought a couple people to help her load it up, they were only in our apartment for a few minutes, they all seemed nice and normal. But dude, what if they come back and murder us? They know my last name! They know where we live!

It all seems very strange to me.

Or maybe I’m just crazy paranoid.

(On the other hand, it felt really good to give a free couch to someone who clearly appreciated it greatly.)

My friend Erica just uploaded a bunch of scanned photos from when we were in high school. I haven’t yet dug up my old photo albums, so you’ve never seen the younger me. But don’t worry, I stole a bunch of Erica’s to share. Ready to see me in high school?

This is me at my junior prom:

I loved that purple shimmery dress so much. I didn’t have a date that year, but I had more fun than I did at senior prom, to which I went with my then boyfriend. Boys are lame.

This one is from our Super Bowl party:

Some friends and I got together one year on Super Bowl Sunday and pretended like we cared. We smoked fake cigars (beef sticks), drank fake beer (soda), played fake poker (Go Fish, I’m sure) and had the game on in the background. Or maybe we just watched a movie, I can’t remember. My shirt says “I Heart Aerobics.” Ha!

My friends and I also had a thing about the Spice Girls. We weren’t necessarily huge fans, but we loved imitating them. We were the Spice Girls for Halloween, for fun photo shoots, and even for skits at band camp. Oh yes, band camp. That’s where this particular Spice Girls shot came from:

If you’re curious, I started out as Ginger Spice, but senior year I cut my hair short and so moved into the Posh Spice role. (Sorry I didn’t get permission to put the other girls on this site, hence the stars. But me as Posh doesn’t have quite the same affect without the full photo, so I couldn’t crop of course.)

And last, this is me and Erica in our marching band uniforms:

I played the flute from 6th to 12th grade, both marching and concert band. All my friends were in band, so I actually really enjoyed it. Erica and I met in 6th grade when she moved to our school and sat next to me in band. We’ve been friends ever since.

I promise you I was seriously dorky earlier in life, so I’ll have to dig those out someday.

Two of my best blogger buddies read my post yesterday and wrote their own accounts of adolescent insecurity. You should check out Katie’s post (at Willikat) and Angie’s post (at Found Out About Me).

That got me thinking more about this topic. I think a lot of my insecurities were wrapped up in my comparison to my younger sister (Andrea, the hot one). She was pretty and skinny and popular and athletic and artistic and talented. I, according to my own thoughts, was none of those things.

Even though I can see now that I had it pretty good then*, it was never enough because my sister always had more and better. And the worst part is that she and I didn’t get along, so not only was I painfully jealous of my younger sister, but she really had no use for me. A lot of my self-confidence, or lack of it, resulted from how I related to Andrea.

Surprisingly I was rarely teased or mocked or bullied by classmates, so very little of my insecurity issues spawned from my peers. Sure, I felt ridiculous in gym class and I shied away from direct contact with the “popular” kids, but I was spared a lot of the pain that many teenagers cause each other.

For me, it was all about crying myself to sleep so many nights because even though I was the older sister, I was much less important in the world. Looking back, I think I had some issues with depression in my adolescence, and I think a lot of it manifested itself in my feelings about self-worth compared to my sister.

Oddly though, it was that summer we spent in Yellowstone together that brought us closer. We spent nearly every day together, and we had lots of fun. We came out of that experience closer than we had ever been. It took a couple more years before I stopped comparing myself to her and learned to love myself, but it helped that we were finally friends, as well as sisters.

*I don’t think I ever really found myself ugly, but certainly not pretty. Looking back, I was such a good size – not too gangly, and not at all overweight – but I hated my hips and thighs and stomach at the time. I was not popular in the sense of being part of the “in crowd” but I had lots of great friends, and I believe I was well-liked in general with no real enemies. I’ve never been athletic, so that was no illusion. I’m not artistic, though I am pretty creative, but that wasn’t good enough back then. As for talented… I still don’t know that I’m talented. I’m capable, competent and good at many things, but I’ve always said that I don’t have a true talent. I’m good at many things, great at none.

This morning I heard someone refer to Khloe as “the ugly one” of the Kardashian sisters. I certainly don’t think Khloe is ugly at all, but even if someone else does…really? The ugly one? How dickish.

When my sister Andrea and I spent a summer working at Yellowstone, we both had a lot of fun and met a lot of guys (yes, we did as much partying as we did hiking). But as sisters, we were inevitably compared to each other.

One night we were hanging out in a friend’s dorm room. I was laying on one of the beds, and Andrea had stepped out for a minute. I guess I looked like I was sleeping (or maybe people are just completely insensitive) because someone walked in and asked, “Where’s the other sister?” And someone else replied, “You mean the hot one?”

I always knew my sister was gorgeous – people stared at her wherever she went – but hearing it that way, positioning me as the one who is not the hot one, tore up my heart. I laid silently for awhile, then pretended to wake up and nonchalantly left the room. I went to my own room and cried. And cried and cried.

Thinking back to that time, it breaks my heart that my heart could so easily be bruised. Now those words wouldn’t hurt me. Fine, I’m not the hot one, but I’m happy and I’m a good person and, you know, I look pretty damn good.

That, if nothing else, is a testament to how far I’ve come in the last ten years. I don’t need to be the hot one to feel good about myself.

Resume coaching went fine. Phew! I think it’s mostly because you guys said it would and you’re usually right. So thanks for that.

I only had one client last night, but we were able to spend over an hour working on her resume. I think I gave her some valuable tips, and I recommended she make the changes and bring it back for another look. Plus, I learned something cool from her too. She told me that she had been using Women for Hire to get resume and interview tips. I hadn’t heard of it, but turns out Women for Hire is pretty cool. It’s all about helping women with their careers, as you’d imagine. There’s advice and job boards and resume tips and templates and more.

Unfortunately I think women don’t help other women enough. Instead we often tend to betray each other for our own gain. And I’m sure you all know the statistics about women still making less than men for the same jobs (which, wow, bullshit right?). Add on the fact that the economy is sucky right now, and it’s harder than ever for women (and everyone) to get adequate work, let alone fulfilling careers.

So even though I haven’t actually used anything from Women for Hire yet (and I’m not at all getting paid in any way for any of this), I thought I’d pass it along. Maybe it will help someone else. I love the idea that one woman desperately looking for a job told me, her resume coach, about this resource, and I’m sharing it with you, and maybe one of you will benefit from it somehow. Women helping women. Love it.

[Thanks for putting up with my whiny-ness yesterday. I appreciate all the comments and support. I knew I could count on you guys to make me feel liked.]

Today I’m volunteering for the first time as a resume coach at the local Women’s Resource Center. And I’m really nervous!

When I first signed up to do this, I was motivated and excited, but it’s been almost two months since my training and I feel completely unprepared. The first month I wasn’t on the calendar, so they said to wait until October. Then I got sick and couldn’t go in the day I was scheduled. Now it’s November and I don’t remember anything I learned about resume coaching!

Truthfully, I didn’t learn a whole lot at the training. They kind of assume we volunteered for the gig because we know something about writing resumes, and they really just gave us tips on how to draw out helpful information from clients. But I don’t remember any of the tips! What if a client sits down with me, and I’m all “Um ok. So. What’s your work experience?” And they say, “I don’t really have any.” And I say, “Well, guess you can’t make a resume! Thanks for coming in!”

That would be not good. And the way it’s set up, there’s only one coach available at a time, so there’s not even someone else I can turn to if I get stuck. I’m all alone.

Not to mention that my own resume hasn’t gotten me some interviews I thought it should have, so maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about. Granted, the women I’ll be working with will have very different resumes and intentions than my own, but still! STILL!

I feel like these women will expect me to know what I’m talking about, and I kind of don’t. Ok, I kind of do, but not as much as I probably should. They maybe should have had me stuffing envelopes, not interacting with actual human beings.

We’re having trouble generating conversation and feedback at our wedding blog. And it’s frustrating. I can see that people are reading, but I guess they don’t have much to say. We really do want to hear from other people, which is why we often ask for feedback or comments or ideas, but we don’t actually get very many.

Maybe it’s vain of me to think that people care enough about our silly wedding to take the time to comment, or maybe our blog is just boring and we’re oblivious because it’s so damn interesting to us (it’s our wedding, so duh). Yet people are reading. The stats tell me so. When we write a new Shan & Mike post, and especially when I link to one on facebook or twitter or here, I can see that people are going there and spending enough time to read. Yet the comments are few and far between.

It’s hard to write in a vacuum, which is why I’m so thankful for the little internet support group I’ve accumulated through this blog. And I know that Shan & Mike is new and it’s a very narrow topic, but we’re tackling more than just the details of wedding flowers and favors. We hit on some pretty meaty topics yo! Like marriage equality and patriarchal traditions.

While, yes, I’m hoping this will inspire you to take pity on us and visit our site and leave comments, mostly I’m just ranting.

You know what, let’s just cut the bullshit here. What I really want to know is… how come nobody wants to play with me? Do I smell? Am I wearing the wrong clothes? Did you hear rumors that I like to eat worms? What? What is it!