Carrie Ann Makes Me Ashamed to Be a Carrie

Tonight on Dancing With The Stars, Carrie Ann quick-stepped way over the line in my opinion. In fact, I believe she owes Ms. Cloris Leachman a lengthy and heartfelt apology. If you missed it, here's the rundown. Cloris comes out, does her very basic dance, makes a few mistakes, waves to the crowd....and THEN Carrie Ann opens her fat mouth. She says, and I quote "You know I love you Cloris. You've taught me so many things, like that you don't have to behave when you're old. But, I mean, Toni was eliminated last week. I just hate to see one of our talented dancers get kicked off for THIS." What?! That little scamp. I am furious. Lets talk for a minute about tact. Lets talk about respecting your elders. Lets talk about not acting like a whiney bratty biatch.
Cloris is NOT a good dancer. We know that. However, she IS 82 years old. When I'm 82 I hope I can still get out to the grocery store once a week. Lets give some credit to a woman who takes her 8 decades old body to the dance studio everyday and gives a spunky performance every week. Did I mention that her partner actually lifted her tonight and spun her around by an ankle and a wrist....and she lived. Yes, Cloris is irreverent. No, she is not a gifted dancer, BUT she does it. And she makes the people laugh. There is something to be said for that. She is a pretty amazing lady as far as I'm concerned.
It is not Cloris's fault that Toni was eliminated. It is not Cloris's fault that she is not the most talented dancer on the show. The people cast their votes and week after week she makes the cut. She works just as hard to be there as Brook, Warren and Lance. She worked as hard as Toni. She is elderly. GAH. And to make matters worse, you could tell that her feelings were very hurt. I hope that lame-o Carrie Ann is happy with herself. She makes me ashamed to be a Carrie. I truly hope she has to sit and watch herself be such a winey baby over and over again someday when she is 82 and cannot make it to her orthopedic doctor once a month without a wheelchair and an escort. I hope Cloris gets to watch and laugh from Heaven.
Bad form Carrie Ann Inaba. Bad form.

I'm Still Here

So the people are getting antsy for a new blog. I'm nothing if not a people pleaser....so here you go. It's finally fall which makes me super happy. I want nothing but hay rides, bonfires, saturday hikes, leaves, football and apple cider for the next 2 months. I can't wait to wear my favorite sweaters and my pretty coats and scarves. I hate being cold....but I love the accessories. (The only thing that seperates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize - that's for you S.)

Yesterday was my dad's birthday. He would have been 55. I miss him more right now than I think I ever have. There is nothing good that happens to me that isn't a little bit bittersweet without him here. He was and always will be my compass....my true north. I'll always be a daddy's girl. Happy Bday Dad.

I have had a lot going on, but nothing as noteworthy as the arrival of the much anticipated baby theif of hearts Lucy White. She is, just like her mommy, beautiful. You can already tell she has a heart as sweet as Holly's too. She is the most peaceful baby I've ever met....with the longest eyelashes!! It was love at first sight. Her Aunt Carrie is head over heels.

Michael just took the LSATs. I am so super proud of that kid, and hope to stay on his good side for the free legal advice someday. He will start law school next fall. Go baby bro!

There are lots of other super fantastic things going on, but if you want to hear about them you should probably try to find me on a patio with an Oktoberfest Sam Adams somewhere around town.

XOXO

Me me me

So…you may be asking yourself “What is going on with Carrie? Did she finally clean out her closet? Is Macy still eating hamburgers for lunch? Is Holly ever going to go into labor?” Well, my sweet little lambs, you can relax. I’m here to demystify you. The answers, respectively, are: a whole whole lot, yes she did, no she isn’t, and gosh I sure hope so.

I finally cleaned out my closet. I think I understand this organizing obsession of mine now. It’s control. I can make it happen and it brings instant gratification. I literally sit around and daydream about what I’m going to organize next. (This would be a good time to give a lot of credit to Sarah G. She has the best apartment ever. Everytime I go to her place I come back with new ideas about where to put stuff.) So anyway, its virtually the only thing I can do that no one can mess with. I feel like I’ve made something monumental happen. Its like Zen. If only I could dedicate this kind of determination to anorexia…..

Macy finally got some dog food. For the record, I only fed her 1 hamburger. After that I made her meals of corn, carrots, chicken with broth, and rice until I had time to go to PetSmart. Cooking dog meals is less time consuming than going to Pet Smart you might ask? Well, no probably not, but it’s an issue of motivation. I hate PetSmart and I didn’t want to go. But I did, and then rewarded myself with a trip to Borders afterward. It’s the little things, kids, the little things.

Holly is still waiting on Lucy to get motivated. She must feel the same way about being out of the uterus as I do about PetSmart. She really doesn’t want to go. So anyway, yesterday Holls ate lots of Chinese food, pineapple, a glass of wine, did some acupressure, and tried to have a good cry. She also drank castor oil. All of this stuff is supposed to induce labor. I personally think its just stuff to keep you occupied while you’re waiting to go into labor. Anyway, it hasn’t worked yet. I’ll keep you posted.

In other news, I had a great time celebrating Sarah G’s birthday last night and kicked ass at Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit. Everyone wants me on their team next time. Awesome.
I’m looking forward to a fabulous weekend with all of my best girls, and I promise starting next week I will blog about something other than myself.

XOXO

Hey Girl

So I am basically having the busiest week ever. I need a personal assistant, a driver and a yoga instructor stat. I cannot even imagine what life is like for all you married people with kids. The only thing I can figure is that you must make them do some stuff for you instead of just doing everything for them. See, I have 46 kids of my own that I have to take care of all day. The only problem is that they are all grown men. They keep me entertained though, so I’ll keep em for now, but geez do I need a vacay?!
I’m still waiting to collect on a couple of promises this week. Just a few things meant to keep me sane, including but not limited to - and in no particular order:
A mixed CD from Bird
Dinner/Lunch with my mom
A baby from Holly (not for me. for her. She is due today and it is making me a nervous wreck.)
Happy Hour
A letter of recommendation for a good nutritionist to help me get rid of the 40 (count em) pounds that I have gained in the past year as a result of this ridiculous underactive thyroid of mine.
A phone call that never comes
A knock on my door that I sometimes hear in my sleep, or is it my dreams?
Love that I am supposedly in ownership of but never actually experience. (You know what I mean if you’re around enough to hear my stories, otherwise, don’t worry about it )

So, if you owe me something on this list then get to gettin’. I need ya.

Following is a song that basically got me out of bed this morning both literally and figuratively. Thanks to Garrison, Bird and the Marine for your contributions. If you need some help feeling ready to fly today, know that you are not alone.

What makes you think you gotta hold the world on your shoulders and handle that load?
Who gave you the fine-toothed comb to judge your every move before you've even started to make one?

Hey girl, It's a beautiful day for flying.
Don't you wanna open your eyes?
Hey girl it's a beautiful day for flying.
Don't you wanna open your eyes?
You're dying.

Subtle was the way the clouds rolled in on you to fog up your windows and darken your view.
An unforgiving face who dared you to escape, living for the chance to scare you back in place.

Hey girl it's a beautiful day for flying.
Don't you wanna open your eyes?
Hey girl it's a beautiful day for flying.
Don't you wanna open your eyes?
You're dying.

It's no way to live, so safe all wrapped up in my fears till I just suffocate.
I will get through if it's the last thing I do.
If it's the last thing I...

Hey girl it's a beautiful day for flying.
Don't you wanna open your eyes?
Hey girl it's a beautiful day for flying.
Don't you wanna open your eyes?

Peace to your hearts, laughter to the tips of your toes,
Love,
Carrie

Thoughts from Grandmama's House

I am sitting in "the study" as its called here at Grandmama's house on top of the hill that overlooks her little town. The town where my mother grew up as the Preacher's daughter and the high school cheerleader. The town where we all come to escape from one thing or another from time to time. This place has never been my home, but here inside these wood panelled walls I feel more myself and more secure than anywhere I have ever been including my own childhood home. This is my safe place. This is everybody's safe place if you are lucky enough to be a member of my family, and usually even if you are not but found a way to get in anyway. We like to feed people and we like to laugh. That makes for a pretty perfect combination if you ask any southerner. We are southern. There is no mistaking that.
It is a habit among the women in my family to pose as ridiculously as possible for pictures. Grandmama is a lady with pizzaz from her fully sequined Atlanta Braves hat to her sparkly little nick nacks all over the place. The woman doesn't leave the premises without at least 10 pieces of jewelry on. (We're talking real stuff here, none of that costume nonsense.) Case in point, I went with her to the local Food City a couple of weeks ago in preparation for the big 4th of July cookout we had. She has the prime spot in town for firework viewing. We took the convertable, top down of course, and I got to drive. While walking through the parking lot she announces "I feel so naked. I don't have on a stitch of jewelry." I offered to loan her a piece of my own to make the excusion more comfortable, but she refused. She's not really into sterling silver. So anyway, Grandmama made sure that we were always paraded about as young girls. Beauty pageants, cheerleading, dance, you name it. I had the best dress-up box of any kid I knew growing up with every manner of sequined, feathered, fringed pageant and recital costume imaginable passed down from my famously gorgeous Aunt Angie. As you can imagine, there is a lot of posing involved in the aforementioned activities. Now, we do it just for fun. At Easter we took a series of pictures of me posing senior portrait style using a column on the front porch as a prop. Among the hundreds of albums scattered throughout the house you can find shots of mom and Angie grinning like cheshire cats holding up a potted plant and pointing a perfectly manicured finger. Sometimes they do the whimsicle look up at something in the sky pose with the tip of one finger lightly touching a temple. I have no idea where this one came from, but it shows up with shocking frequency. Then there is my famous flamingo pose that I struck for every photo taken between '86 and '91. One leg bent in the fashion of the tropical bird and one hand on a hip. I recently realized while watching some late night TV Land that Chrissy from Threes Company strikes this pose in the opening credits of the show. It all fell into place. As a small child, having no idea that the concept of co-ed living was still rather taboo, I watched the show religiously. If you ask my mother about it today she will offer you no explanation for why I was allowed to watch this program as a child. I was also allowed to watch The Young and The Rest of Us as I called it. I've always known what I like. There is really no arguing with my preferences. Sherry discovered that early and its a good thing for both of us. Never have 2 such strong willed women shared one roof for 18+ years in the history of time.
Anyway, all of these ramblings aside, everyone should be so lucky to have a place like this where they can hide away. In under 45 minutes on any given day I can take a trip up I-75 and be in the warmest and most precious place I know. A place where no one calls me by anything other than Carrie Leigh, except for my Grandmama of course who never calls me anything other than Princess. Usually, My Little Princess. As a 26 year old woman it has never dawned on me to find this strange. In this house it is who I am. I am the Princess. I am the first born granddaughter. The loud one. The funny one. The one who recently found her place no longer as the spoiled college student who sits at the kitchen bar watching everyone else do the work to prepare the meals and clean up. Instead, I am becoming the woman who runs the errands, wraps the presents, maked the deviled eggs and designs the tablescapes. I am the one who does the emergency last minute Christmas shopping for everyone else. I am the one who they call for decorating advice and to ask for a recipe. I am a woman in this family now. I change diapers, run errands, help with the cooking....and the dishes. I will always be the Princess, but now I am the go-to girl, the adult who can be counted on. I have never had to do anything to earn my keep in this amazing family, but now I am contributing to it's flow, to our traditions, to our collective sanity. I am so proud to be a part of it. I am so blessed to have this house on the hill to run to and to make memories in. I am so happy that now my being a member of this family is more about giving than recieving. I am part of an elite group of women so warm, so caring, so fabulous, beautiful and gracious I honestly cannot imagine anyone not having what I have. I am so thankful. There are no words. Only thank yous that lift up from my soul to my Maker. These women are so a part of me, and I honestly could not ask for more.

My Weekend also known as The Extreme Loft Makeover

So this weekend I was a woman on a mission. I started in the storage closet. The very thought of that dark piled up slightly smelly mess of a space used to make me shudder. In fact, my favorite blanket has been taking up residence there for a good 3 months now, and I have refused to even attempt to fish it out as it would have required 10 minutes of rearanging falling apart stuffed to the gills with who-knows-what cardboard boxes to get to it. Now, if you know me, blankets are a big deal. I'm a highly sensitive soul (more on that later - its a new revelation) and comfort is a big deal. Favorite blanket = no emotional breakdown.

I pulled everything out, divided, threw away, repacked in newly purchased rubbermades, deodorized, alphabetized, labled, stacked neatly, catagorized and conquered. Ah! Instant happiness. I even hung my coats and scarves in order of casual to formal and color coded. Then I installed a handy little hook for my umbrellas (see previous post) and found a cute little mason jar in which to put my laundry quarters on the shelf right next to the detergent and the fabric softner....imagine that! Now I love my utility closet so much I''m thinking of putting in an armchair and making it a reading nook. It is utter relaxation going in there to throw away my coffee grounds in the morning. An organized space created by moi. Aaahhhhhh. Satisfaction.



Oh and I am not finished. Oh no I am not. Not even close. I made my list and headed out the door. Doormat. check. Rug. check. Unbelievably cute $80 bar stools on sale for $17 (!!). check. Big woven basket in which to roll up my favorite blanket next to the newly slipcovered sofa as well as space for the magazines I now throw away on a monthly basis -RECYCLE....don't worry-and for my unsightly laptop. check. Good job.



Then I reorganize the inside of my armoire so my dvds are all in a row on one side and my games are all stacked up neatly on the other. Perfect. Move a vase. Hang a flower bucket on the front door. Do a total declutter of the bathroom. Rearrange the bedroom. (This task deserves more than a sentence, but I'm tired just thinking about it) Hang some pictures.



I even purchase new vaccuum cleaner bags. This is a big day. Big. Huge.



So, I guess after 8 1/2 months of living in my cozy little place I have finally nested and commited to staying put for a while. Its a nice feeling. It feels like....home.



So I didn't dare even attempt my closet. I may be great at getting things done when I set my mind to it, but I'm no superhuman phenom. Check in next week for an update. It should be done by Sunday night. I would like to note though, that it is already arranged in order of catagory of clothing and color. Its the shoes, the 2 huge boxes of handbags and other assorted randomness that really needs a good rearrange. I can feel the relief already.



You know the wierdest part? I actually loved doing all of that work. Maybe thats my calling. If I can make my tiny 1 bedroom loft feel like a home imagine what I could do for people with actual storage space! Carrie Shope - Organization Guru - bringing peace and order into your home and life.

Unvelievable.

Rainy Day

Today I went outside to get in my car for lunch and by the time I got there I was drenched from head to toe. I’m not really one of those plan ahead type gals at 7am so needless to say I neglected to bring my umbrella….make that one of the 5 umbrellas floating around in my car. Anyway, now soaking wet I have to find a way to make it from Cedar Bluff to Papermill in the monsoon that is coming down, stop to get a hamburger for Macy because her mommy forgot to buy dog food, and manage to cram something down my throat (because I also forgot to buy people food). So as I’m dodging trash cans that are floating down the river formerly known as Middlebrook Pike on my bald – and I mean bald- tires, relying on iffy breaks, and praying there is no need for a seat belt seeing as how mine is broken I realize that my back window wiper is also not working. Perfect. So I get the hamburger, paddle a little further upstream, and finally make it to my apartment to change clothes and feed the kid. She inhales the hamburger. I peel of the waterlogged skirt I’m wearing and scramble around to find something warm seeing as how they finally fixed the A/C in my office and the coworkers have become a little over zealous about cold air. I throw on my work appropriate jeans, a long sleeve black T and some Chacos and dash back out, this time armed with a raincoat. I hop in the car and look at the clock. 12:50. what?! Ten minutes to make it back. The rain has miraculously stopped just in time for my lunch hour to end. I can make it. Yeah….not so much. Half an hour later, back downstream, I pull into work. I have officially taken a long lunch. See, the sales guy and Teir 3 computer geniouses can do that without anyone so much as batting an eye. I on the other hand am the mere doormat that smoothes over every possible issue imaginable with our ever needy and seldom friendly customers. I don’t get long lunches. Anyway, I sit down at my cubicle and realize that I feel like some kind of industrial sized rubber band is squeezing my Big Mac back out of me. What the heck? Oh right….I’m currently gaining weight at the speed of light and my only cute jeans are about to catapult themselves off of my ever expanding body. Perfect. Four and a half hours of wearing jeans 1 size too small to look forward to. Bring on the Tums. It would be important to point out at this time that I got around 4 hours of sleep last night, overslept this morning, and managed to get ready and out the door – without breakfast or coffee mind you – in exactly 12 minutes. This has been one fantastic day.
There is no moral to this story. No silver lining. No cute anecdote about life. I’m just having a crappy day, and I figured if I had to live through it, the least you could do is read about it.

Random thought: Without music, I’m pretty sure I’d quit life. Oh, and on a positive note, I learned how to play Rock Band last night. I am a drummer in my soul. I’m so glad I know that now.

Thank you God for the rain, but next time can it come when I don’t have anywhere to go?
It is all about me after all. J

4th of July

Two things are true for me about this holiday.
1. It was my dad's favorite, so it makes me miss him....and his awesome food
2. It would not be the 4th without one Miss Bonnie Brezina

I'm so glad I got to hang out with one of my nearest and dearest on our official holiday. This year we celebrated by having a singing/screaming competition from our boat to the other boatload of our friends at my brothers fantastic lakefront farm. Never have you heard our nation's songs sung with such passion....or volume. It was a blast.

I had 4 whole days off from work, which hasn't happened to me since....well, since I started working. It was amazing! I was so relaxed, but then I had to come back to work. The leftover relaxation from the glorious weekend diminished in under 5 minutes. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

Anyway, thats pretty much it for now. I know....I'm so interesting :)

Drum Roll Please......

....Ta Da! I have a blog! I'm a blogger. Interests? Blogging. Bloggety blog blog blog. Such a versatile word....where do I even begin. I'm guess I'm here to talk about the things that make my life mine. My Very Important News. Well....maybe not very important. Maybe not important at all, but news nonetheless. So stay tuned. More to come.