Confused Woman!

Ah, the joy of moving. The good news? I’m getting rid of lots of crap. The bad news? I am living in a warehouse.

My living room is furniture, surrounded by a sea of boxes. If I stand in the kitchen, I can’t see the living room. I’m just waiting for the forklift to drive by.

The entire first floor is so packed with boxes, furniture, and stuff to donate, my daughter and I have resorted to walking sideways. We’ve done a pretty good job of mastering the “side walk”, and I have to admit, it’s starting to tone my hips a little bit?

I have tried to pack everything that I think we won’t need in the next month. I donated and threw away some things and felt like I had made some great progress. Then, I looked in my office and almost cried. Papers filling the filing cabinet and on the desk and floor. Several plastic tubs filled with Christmas decorations. Ugh.

I need a giant shredding truck at my doorstep. The little office shredder I have will take forever to shred and overheats. I hoard and keep documents for years that I could’ve trashed awhile ago.

The Christmas decorations are nice, but do I really need to keep cheap Target bulbs from the 1990’s? Is it necessary to have ten sets of lights that I have no use for since I bought a pre-lit Walmart tree?

I feel like I’m making good progress, but know I will have last minute panic and end up feverishly tossing and recycling. The last thing I want is to move from one warehouse to another.

If anyone has good moving tips/tricks, please send them my way!

The blog post this week is to announce the newest addition to my family. Her name is Maddi and we are beyond thrilled to have her join us in our new home. For my daughter and me, she’s an extra special new member of the household, so let me share Maddi’s story.

It began with a person’s brilliant idea to give a family a kitten as a present, not knowing if they would even want her. They accepted the gift and decided that in order to keep their house nice, Maddi would need to be fully declawed.

Anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that by doing this, you’re leaving the cat utterly defenseless. If the poor kitten ever got outside, she’d be toast. Oh well, no biggie thinks the family, at least the furniture will look great!

Maddi’s (not her name at this time) owners were using a brand of cat litter that for some reason, she did not like to use. As a result, Maddi was having accidents. Again, anyone with some brains might think about switching litter brands to find one that worked for her.

Did the family do that? Nope. Instead, she was deemed a “bad cat” and chained up in these assholes’ basement FOR FOUR YEARS!!! But hey, at least they were nice enough to give her food and water, right?

This poor cat was cast aside with minimal human contact and destined for a lifelong prison sentence. Thank heavens, the neighbor convinced these jerks to give up Maddi and let her have a chance at a better life.

This angel brought Maddi to another angel, her foster mom named Amy. When Maddi arrived, she was terrified, hiding and hissing. Every day, Amy would sit next to the bedroom closet, talking to Maddi, hoping she would come out. She also renamed her Maddi, thinking a new lease on life deserved a new name.

Seven days later, Maddi came out and rubbed against Amy’s arm. She had decided Amy was okay and most importantly, she was safe. That was in February and Maddi has improved greatly since then, learning to trust again.

My daughter and I met Amy and Maddi by accident, which means it was fate. One Sunday, we decided to visit a local cat rescue recommended by my publicist. The cats there weren’t a good fit and as we were about to leave, Amy walked in.

She had three rescue kittens to drop off and told us she had two adult cats that need a good home. So the following weekend, my daughter and I headed to Amy’s home to check out her foster cats. We met the two cats and then Amy remembered she had another adult cat we could meet. Her name was Maddi.

It took several minutes, but eventually she came out to see us. By the end of the visit, we were petting her while she ate treats out of our hands. My daughter and I fell in love, and we adopted Maddi that week.

We hope she loves being with us as much as we love bringing her into our family. Our goal is, after all the trauma she’s been through, Maddi has the best rest of her life ever.

Me and my friend, Kari, were discussing this over coffee a couple of weeks ago.  Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to order a date like a sandwich? If we could build the perfect sandwich/date, what ingredients/traits would we choose?

According to Kari, this would be her deluxe sandwich/dude:

• He has to sing to me like Jon Bon Jovi. There is nothing more romantic than a serenade by the fireplace before bed with a glass of wine. He gives love a good name!
• He needs to have the strength and endurance of Lance Armstrong so we can run, hike or bike for hours on end without getting tired. Since I am very health-conscious, he’ll have to leave the juice at home.
• He can’t be a marathoner in bed, however. Please be longer than my last partner, which was 30 seconds, literally. Even worse, the guy was in his early 30’s. What is up with that? Nothing I guess.
• I like to laugh A LOT, so he has to be able to channel the late Robin Williams in the funny department.
• He has to have empathy and understanding with every conversation we have. I want him to hang on my every word, as if it’s the most important thing in the world for him to hear.
• I’m an introvert, so give me my space. Be competent and independent without me, but be available when I need you. I want to know you care, but thirty texts a day is a little excessive.
• Chef please! I love a hot man who can cook good food. If I make a meal and it sucks, just say you love it and run to Taco Bell later.
• A head of hair like Jon Bon Jovi and the body of Lance Armstrong would be perfect.
• I want him to be smart, without being condescending or arrogant. 

Is this a tall list? Perhaps, but it’s better to have standards and be a little picky than settling for just a dude with a pulse and a credit card.

It is official. We, as a society, are going straight down the morality toilet. I felt as a country we were headed that way, and it was confirmed Sunday night, watching the MTV Video Music Awards.

Miley Cyrus was hosting the train wreck, I mean, awards show. Any shred of Hannah Montana was beyond gone, replaced by an obnoxious, foul-mouthed, and basically naked person. Everyone knows she has gone down this new path, but wow. She not only went down that path but sprinted down it to Trashville USA.

My seven year-old daughter wanted to watch the show because Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber were performing. However, knowing Miley was part of the show, there was no way it would be appropriate for her to view.

I recorded the show and could let her watch those performances but that was it. The majority of acts were way too sexual for anyone under 18 to watch. I’m not a prude by any stretch of the word but I was shocked at how disgusting most of the show was.

It’s sad that these beautiful, smart, and talented female artists feel the need to be overly sexual to be attractive and get attention. Why do they think it looks good to spread their legs and grind all over someone as their boobs and asses are hanging out?

It was actually a good opportunity to explain to my daughter that you don’t need to dress and act “yucky” to feel pretty, smart, and confident. People should be valued as a person, not an object.

Unfortunately, too many pre-teen and teenage girls watch this and many other shows without parental supervision. Thanks to the media wanting to get big ratings and revenue, they go to the gutter for programming. In turn, they do so at the expense of our girls’ self-esteem and values.

Girls will watch these shows and think dressing and acting trashy is cool and how you get attention. Nowadays, nobody wants to watch “Little House on the Prairie with Good Values and no Sex, Swearing, or Fights”. 

We have been desensitized to sex and violence and will, unfortunately, tune out shows that don’t contain them. It is the moral decay, and it is very sad.