I've Shed My Shell...

Hi friends!

I know it's been a long time... If you're wondering where I am, I've shed my shell and can now be found at http://lifenblacknwhite.wordpress.com/.

I hope you'll come visit me there :)

Shelly Don't Play Dat!

In today's world, with today's technology, where people can share 'what's on your mind' with anyone and everyone, from anywhere in the entire world - be it on Twitter, Myspace, Facebook or some other social networking forum. How does it not occur that you should stop and ask yourself 'how will this information be perceived?' before pressing that "Share" button?

And if you post updates that could be construed as insensitive, disrespectful or vulgar. How is it that you're surprised when people respond negatively or remove you from their friends list or, worse yet, you get fired?

If you're on my friends list, there are certain things you should know about me:

First and foremost, I make no pretenses.

You know if I like you and you know if I don't. If you're not sure, neither am I.

I am strong minded and opinionated - and it's okay to disagree with me. I understand that not everyone is going to see things the same way I do. And although I may not necessarily agree with you, I'm completely comfortable with agreeing to disagree.

When I'm right, I'm right and I will remain right until you prove to me that I'm not; at which time I will admit I was wrong and apologize - if necessary.

I know what I like and what I don't. And if you don't want my opinion, don't ask for it.

So, when is enough, enough?

Here's my philosophy:

If I don't like you, I will ignore you - feel free to do the same to me.

If you post about topics that don't really interest me, I'll hide you - feel free to do the same to me.

If your negativity begins to have an impact to my mental well being, I will remove you - feel free to do the same to me.

If I don't want you involved in my life at all, I will remove and/or block you - feel free to do the same to me.

Last night, I came to the conclusion that someone on my friends list was negatively impacting my mental well being. I could have just as easily hidden this person, but after giving way too much thought to some of the comments that were made I decided instead to remove all temptation to respond in kind and deleted her from my list.

Now, at the time, I did not realize how important it was for some to have you remain a "friend", as I would rather you remove me from your list than put on false airs and honestly, unless you're someone whom I stalk regularly (you know who you are), I probably wouldn't even notice if you were no longer in my list.

Well, today I learned just how important that 'friendship' status is to some very sad and lonely people as this was the message I received...

Subject: thanks

"I noticed today that you deleted me from your friends list... Hopefully that was an error but n e way... Thanks A lot!!"

I thought long and hard as to whether or not I would even bother with a response; but taking all things into consideration, I was unable to just let it go. After all, anyone who knows me knows that Shelly don't play dat!

WAKE UP!

It was 5:00 a.m.

She hated being woken up before her alarm was scheduled to sound; but on this morning nothing had happened to cause her to awaken early - no loud clap of thunder, no big bang, no children standing over her, nothing... So why was she awake? No, not only awake... WIDE awake.

After several unsuccessful minutes of lying completely still, surrounded by total darkness, listening to the silence in a desperate attempt to recapture that extra hour and a half of treasured sleep, she popped one eye open to glance around the room, catching a glimpse of the expensive clothes hanger in the middle of the bedroom floor, and that's when she heard it...

Listening to her hearts desire - the conversations of her mind when she had those precious few moments alone. The ones where her secret wishes to make a change would come to the forefront, but she didn't know how or when she would find the time to do what she knew needed to be done.

God's whisper.

He had woken her up early enough to get up and exercise before beginning her day.

"Okay, God." She silently argued, "I hear you; but why, oh why would you get me up at 5:00?"

"That's too early and I'm still really tired. How about I make you a deal?" She pleaded, "You let me go back to sleep this morning and try again in a couple of days - but how about we make it 5:30 next time, m'kay?" And she rolled back over, fluffing her pillow a few times and finally drifted back off to sleep.

Several weeks have passed since that original conversation with Him and she still had not gotten up any earlier in an attempt to get that morning workout in; BUT, she did recently join a gym with complete resolve to make herself attend at least three times a week.

Fast forward to yesterday morning, when the puppy woke her up at 4:30 a.m. to go outside.

If that's not something you're familiar with, let me just tell ya: standing outside in 40 degree temperatures ,while you wait for a puppy to piddle, is a sure fired way to get your blood pumpin in the morning and make it extremely difficult to settle back in for a few more hours of sleep - but somehow she managed.

I was telling a friend at work about my conversation with God the other morning, when he got me up at 5:00, and how I had made a deal with Him to try back in a few more days. So, when I told her of this morning's pre-dawn activities she so kindly reminded me of the deal I had made just the other day - stating that I had PROMISED Him I would make an attempt to get up and exercise.

"Yes, that's true," I admitted. "I did say I would get up and exercise the next time He got me up early, but I distinctly recall telling Him 5:30."

Well, NEVER say that God doesn't listen because this morning - despite the fact that I have been going to the gym and working out all week long, including last night which is why I was so wired I didn't get to sleep until well after midnight - He again had the puppy wake me up early.

And while it was 5:00 when I got up to let her outside, guess what time it was when I came back in....

Yep, you got it! It was 5:30 a.m. (almost on the dot).

I had no excuses left. That was the deal I had made, I was wide awake and although I could almost hear the comfort of my warm and cozy bed calling to me, I had no choice; I had to get my butt up on the elliptical and work out.

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Huh? What? Who's there??

Oh, so sorry about that...that was my face hitting the keyboard as I fell asleep telling this story.

Guess who's going to sleep goooood tonight?!?!?

Moral of the story??

Be careful what you promise - He has a way of making you keep them ;) I'm so thankful He's patient with me :)

The Class from Hell

You may recall that I recently signed up for sadomasochism joined a gym.

On day one I told you I got my ass kicked in a body pump class.

Seriously, after that first workout, my legs were like limp noodles. For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to get the thirteen year old to drive us home because my leg was shaking so bad I couldn't maneuver the clutch.

Thank goodness the gym is right around the corner from the house - I drove home that night praying that I wouldn't catch a red light for fear I wouldn't be able to get out of first gear.

Day two wasn't so bad. It was orientation night, I came home and got changed to go meet the personal trainer. She took down all my statistics (weight, body fat, BMI) the bitch and then she took me around to each piece of equipment and showed me how to set it up - seat height, how much weight to lift, the proper way to lift the weights, etc. Afterwards, I jumped on the elliptical and got in about a 45 minute workout.

Saturday morning (day three) I got up early and went to the gym doing both the weights and 30 minutes on the elliptical.

Monday night, the teen and ol' pro go to the gym. On the way there, they talk about what they're going to do: Sugar decides she's going to check out the cycling class and I was going to repeat my Saturday routine (weights and elliptical).

Well, for those of you who've ever gone to a gym you will know, Monday's are always the busiest nights at the gym and everything seemed to be taken so I decided instead to join Sugar in the spin class.

About twenty minutes into the workout, I came to the conclusion that the instructor lady was trying to kill me.

I soooo couldn't hang.

Finally, I quietly gathered up my aching butt and my burning thighs and took them to something that I knew I could do - yep, the elliptical (my favorite!)

Spin class my ass - HA! - more like purgatory!

In other news: I'm SO proud of Sugar - who stuck it out for the entire workout (and survived)! She's awesome!

Signing up for Sadomasochism

Not one to make New Years resolutions, she did tell herself that she would make an effort to attain a couple of personal goals in the year 2010.

The first goal she wanted to work towards was putting aside more time for one of her favorite pastimes - blogging. While it is still only January, she has made an honest effort to delve back in to her love of story telling and hopefully, as time ticks on, she will be able to continue with a schedule that allows her the necessary time for this passion.

The other thing that she has told herself she would like to accomplish is to get back into shape. Realistically speaking, she knows there are two things that will have to happen in order to achieve this goal: 1) keep her mouth shut - aka step away from the food - and 2) get off her butt - aka exercise.

Today she took the first step towards reaching her goal.

Today she joined the gym.

And today... she got her ass kicked!!

After signing up for sadomasochism joining the gym, she went back up there for her first - and quite possibly her last - Body Pump class.

Did the instructor not notice how big she was??

Did she not take one look at her and equate all that girth to the fact that this girl was most likely out of shape??

I'm not sure she did, because that woman tried her damnedest to kill me!

Apparently, I enjoy torment because my plan for tomorrow - provided I don't wake up dead from this afternoon's torture chamber session workout - is to go back for more... *sigh*

Lord, give me strength (to get out of the bed in the morning and be willing to do this all over again). Amen.

Cardboard Pizza?

It had been a long week:

Still getting back into the swing of things after the holidays. A spittle of snow had fallen over the city - closing the schools - with two day highs reaching a whopping 7 to 8 degrees.

Friday had finally arrived!

Sugar called to ask what they were going to do for supper. "Can we go out tonight?" she asked.

Way too cold to even think about getting out and trying to wrap up all of her work before heading home for the weekend, she didn't have time to give much thought to dinner.

"No baby, it's too cold to go anywhere tonight." She said to the disappointed teenager. "I'll think about it and figure something out before I get home."

Sometime between hanging up the phone and arriving home, pizza popped into her mind.

It's quick... it's easy... it's perfect!

Now on to the next important quandary: what kind of pizza would it be?

Pizza Hut - Nah

Domino's - No

Papa John's - Not tonight

What then??

Freezer section - Kroger - DiGiorno (three meats, stuffed crust pizza)

Mm-mm! Just as good as any of those others and cost less too.

That decided it - Pizza it was!

She calls Sugar and tells her to preheat the oven, then heads to Kroger to pick up their dinner. She comes home, unwraps it and pops it into the preheated oven - reading the directions, she sets the timer for...

What?? 6 minutes...

"Wow!" she thought to herself as she heads towards the restroom to change out of her work clothes, "I knew it didn't take long but that's remarkably fast."

Not giving it another thought, she changes clothes and the timer soon goes off. As she heads back towards the kitchen, she starts thinking to herself, "there's no way that pizza can be ready this quickly."

"Wait a minute." She says to Sugar, trying to stop her before she gets too far into cutting the slices, "is that pizza really done? "

"Yes," Sugar replies, already having sliced it into fours.

Looking at the pizza, she clearly sees that it is not done so she picks up the package and reads the instructions again:

Bake 25 - 27 minutes.

Where in the hell did she get six minutes from?

Oh well, back into the oven it goes.

21 minutes later, the pizza is really done and as they begin slicing....

Have you ever heard the term, "It tastes like cardboard?"

Yeah?!?!

Well, they discover where that saying came from when they realized that they had cooked the

pizza.... *drum roll please* ....

on-the-cardboard!

And this, folks, is why I leave the cooking to the thirteen year old.

Brrr - Who left the freezer door open?

I went to bed in Mississippi and woke up in Alaska.

Who left the freezer door open?

What is up with this weather??

Never, in my history of living here - which has been all of my life - can I recall us ever having temperatures in the single digits (and that's not even accounting for the wind chill factor).

I hate cold weather!

My feet have been freezing all - day - long!

It's cold at the office on a regular winter day, where the highs are in the 40's and the lows are in the 30's. Can you imagine what it's like on a day like today??

My manager and I have to take turns using our heaters because if we both run them together, we blow a fuse - we learned that lesson the hard way (a couple of times). Then we get fussed at because technically they tell us we aren't supposed to have heaters.

Well, if it weren't freezing in there all the time, we wouldn't need them now would we?? You think I could convince the company to buy us all a Snuggie?

So today, I worked with a blanket over my lap, a scarf around my neck and at one point I even had gloves on. Can you imagine trying to type with gloves on your hands?? Let me just tell ya, it ain't that easy.

In my next life, I want to be a bear so I can sleep through this whole miserable season. Grrr!

Who woulda thunk the day would ever come where I would long for temperatures in the 40's?!? Heck, at this point I would even take the 30's...