Tipsy in Target

Target is already my perfect little Land of Mommy Escapism. They seduce us with their clearance sections, adorable home décor that you never knew you needed, and clothing that is sure to dazzle at the next PTO meeting. Plus, who can pass up that glorious two hour wander away from the hum drum world of sippie cups and toy explosions with nothing but the sound of a squeaky shopping cart wheel and light music in the background? It truly is a little slice of heaven.

As if Target could possibly seduce us more than they already do, with their kombucha selection and Starbucks counters, they have recently announced a location that is slated to open in the windy city by October that has applied for not one, but two liquor licenses – one to sell packaged alcohol, and one to serve beer, wine, and cocktails.

Wait. Read that again. Target wants to have a bar in their store. A bar, people. Let that sink in. So now, for those of you lucky enough to live within an hour of Chicago (or twelve hours - because really, how far is too far to drive to a Target that serves booze?), you can head to Target as per usual and come home with that perfect ceramic porcupine to fill that hole in your mantle, laundry detergent, and snacks for the kids to have after school - all while having a glass of Pinot Noir or three.

I imagine, should this catch on and roll out nationwide, that a Target shopping trip will now look like this: 

• Make a shopping list consisting of mascara, dish soap, and college ruled paper.
• Drive to Target.
• Grab a lovely glass of Pinot Noir. Yum.
• Dollar Spot. Buy $22 worth of headphones, notebooks, patterned pails and popcorn holders.
• Don't even ask what happened in the jewelry and accessories. 
• Wine. Preferably something a little cheaper than the first glass.
• Shoes. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes.
• New Seasonal Clothing. 
• Summer Swimsuit Clearance.
• Jack Daniels Shot - necessary after that dressing room experience.
• Beer Chaser. Jack is rough.
• Home stuff.
• Something about food. 
• Wine. 
• What the hell was I supposed to get here?
• Dear Uber, Come get me. I'm done.
• Arrive home.
• Realize you've spent $347. You're totally sloshed at 2 in the afternoon. You left your car in the parking lot of Target. You lost your list somewhere. And you didn't buy anything that you were supposed to buy. 

Oh, Target. I'm not sure if I love or hate you clever little jerks. I guess I will have to have Uber give me a lift back to your store tomorrow morning so we can discuss it over some Starbucks... or a Bloody Mary. Besides, I think I need mascara.

Pin Stress is For Real

Photo Courtesy Lolly Jane

I often refer to Pinterest as The Land of People Who Are Smarter Than I. Being a person who lives for creativity and inspiration, it's the world's largest proverbial candy store for me. However, with Back To School looming in front of us, my pin feed has turned into one giant ball of intimidation. Colorful photos boast titles that promise to make you the coolest of the cool. Back to School ideas that you absolutely MUST try are everywhere. Popsicles wishing all the students a cool school year, teacher photo frames made from pencils, survival kits, lunch notes, and bento boxes that are sure to impress have officially taken over the world.

Pinterest is a beautiful thing, but the pressure to perform for our children and their teachers has only fueled the fire that already exists amongst parents to compete and creates a whole new level of sanctimommy that you were sure that you wouldn't have to face again once you got past the breastfeeding vs bottle feeding and disposable vs cloth diapers stage. Suddenly, without even knowing what happened, you're measuring your worth as a parent by how many unique, amazing, and creative ways you can impress a classroom full of children and the teacher who is there to help them learn.

Why is it that parents, especially women, are so insistent on turning everything into a competition? We look around ourselves, and we see that Jimmy's mom sends love notes every day in his lunchbox, so we assume that our child doesn't feel as loved as Jimmy. We notice that Matthew's mom always looks incredibly beautiful, so our child must feel embarrassed when we come in looking like we just came off a three day bender. Then there is Alyssa's mom, who works out two hours a day, everyday, and we realize our child must be ashamed that we are still wearing the same size that we wore when we were nine months pregnant...four years ago. And let's not forget that one parent that every child in the school knows and adores, because she is ALWAYS there. In fact, you're fairly certain that she secretly lives there, taking showers in the sinks of the girl's hall bathroom, but you can't actually prove it. We become so consumed with comparing ourselves to everyone around us, that we lose sight of who we are and where our talents and treasures lie.

Pinterest is a tool, in which many wonders and ideas lie within. No one person could ever do even one percent of the projects that exist on that site. And frankly, it's not designed to be conquered the way that you conquered Super Mario Bros level by level in 1991. Pinterest is a catalog. When you sort through Amazon, you don't feel pressure and stress to buy every single item on their page to prove your worth. You pick and choose the items that are best suited to your taste, style, and budget, and you leave the rest there for someone else to purchase to suit her taste, style, and budget. We all need to be treating Pinterest, and everything else in our little parenting world, the exact same way.

Sift through Pinterest and find the items that you will actually enjoy doing - not just the things that "look pretty" or are clever. If you find yourself overwhelmed, it actually is okay to delete pins that you think are unachievable for you or are just not interesting to you any longer. It is okay to look at a pin and think, "Well isn't that cute?" and to keep scrolling. Pinterest is there to enhance the areas where you are strong, and to improve any areas that you want to work on. It is not intended to create a competition or pressure to perform like a trained monkey. Pinterest is a resource, and it is perfectly fine to use it as just that - a supplement to what you're already doing anyway.

As we all move towards Back to School, as with everything else in your life, come to realize that your kids love you just as you are. You don't have to "MAKE ALL THE THINGS!" for them to be proud of you. So keep up the amazing work, don't worry about the fact that you're in sweats in the pick up line for the third day in a row, and nevermind that back to school crafting noise if it doesn't fit your agenda. You just keep doing you, Mama. You've got this.

We Are What We Repeatedly Do - The Future of This Blog

Hi. My name is Deanna. I am a textbook free spirit. I am happiest when I am creating - music, writing, crafting, baking, building... if creativity is involved, I'm in my prime. With great freedom and great creativity comes an rigid inability to be, well, rigid. A structured lifestyle has a way of stumping my creative thinking, but being 100% fluid doesn't bode well with actually accomplishing anything. It's a vicious cycle.

What I'm learning about myself is that greatness is achieved not through structure, but through repetition. We are what we repeatedly do. And by giving myself the "freedom" to be creative, I'm also giving myself permission to fail. Thus, being a free spirit is in and of itself, a conundrum, and I'm frankly a bit exhausted by the struggle that it creates for me.

I am a free spirit. I am creative. I am happiest when I'm creating. So why am I allowing my lack of ability to be anything other than fluid to keep me from achieving what makes me happy? It doesn't make any sense. Netflix and coloring books are great for the anxiety, but I'm getting nowhere in life by staying submersed in them. And worse, I'm holding myself back from achieving the happiness that I experience by being creative. The result? The past few weeks, I've spent my days restless. It's the same feeling that you get when you're starving because you haven't eaten all day, but absolutely nothing sounds appetizing. I'm starting here.

This blog just sits here, begging to be updated. I make excuses: I don't know what people will want to read. I don't have a defined topic for the blog. It's small and has been severely neglected, so it would be fruitless. Even so, I'm taking it on. I'm going to use this blog as a place to write regularly, as a way to guide my unstructured free spirit towards some structure and a way to make sure that I'm feeling accomplished and satisfied, as opposed to hiding behind laziness and claiming failure. I can't tell you what I will write about. I can't know for sure if I will be sharing random thoughts or health and fitness updates or crafty successes or minifarm madness or parenting disasters. I just know, that without fail, I'm going to make myself show up here. Regularly. And I will be putting something out there for someone or no one to read.

We are what we repeatedly do. I am going to repeatedly write. I am a writer, and I'm done letting fear of failure rule my life and send me into hiding. All systems ignite. Prepared for takeoff.

The Tall & Skinny Of It All

Lots and lots of questions surrounding why you're reading this right now. I know. What happened to the LAFF page? Why did you leave? What has happened between then and now? Why did you come back?  Why the rebrand instead of just relaunching LAFF, and what is the direction of the new blog? Well, you've got questions, and I've got answers!!

What happened to the LAFF page?
If you are new here, and you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can just skip this section if you would like and carry on as usual. The original LAFF (Life As The Fat Friend) blog facebook page is still intact, but has been deactivated for awhile now. With the publishing and launch of this new blog, the old facebook page will be republished TEMPORARILY, and only to redirect people who are still interested in following my story to the new page and blog address. The original LAFF blog is gone entirely, due to an ethical conflict of interest with the person who was hosting the website for me. Long story short, my site is no longer hosted on those servers, and my content was lost to me in the disagreement. It is what it is, and I really don't intend to dwell on it or discuss it further. So there's that.

Why did you leave?
Even if you're new here, this is probably a good place to start, because it's a nice back-history and part of my story.

Why I left is a multifaceted answer. I'm going to try to simplify it as much as possible, beginning with the two easiest answers and the ones that hold the least weight, and moving towards the more weighted answer that is a much longer story.

At the time that I decided to deactivate the LAFF facebook page, a series of events all aligned that sort of pushed me towards that decision. First and foremost, I had the conflict of interest that I mentioned above with the web-hosting of my domain. When the blog itself came down, I knew I would have to at the very least restart the blog from scratch, and at the time, the way that happened was so hurtful that I wasn't really sure I wanted to address questions about why the old website and blog was gone and a new one with the same name was posted in its place. At the same time, I made a quiet exit with multiple affiliations with other brands. One particular brand, who shall remain nameless (someone needs to be the one who maintains a certain level of professionalism here.. might as well be me), took my exit extremely personally. The owner of that brand launched a sort of personal attack/vendetta against me, and began to manipulate statuses I posted on my personal page to be passive-aggressive towards the brand and as personal attacks. Many people were pulled in as the owner presented a victim mentality, and what was truly not personal, as I had actually left affiliations with four other brands at the same time, was just turned into a grossly dramatic mess. I went into total shut down/avoidance mode for a few months, just to try to wait out the crazy fallout.

But those were both secondary to the REAL problem. Long story short, as it's really going to need to be a post all its own, I started experiencing weight gain for no apparent reason whatsoever. I started trying desperately to get a handle on it, and nothing was working the way that science and everything I knew told me that it should.  The unexplained weight gain continued and came to a head during a several month battle with sickness that was the scariest thing I have ever faced in my entire life. At the end, I came out with one less organ, and a brand spanking new celiac disease diagnosis. Fast forward from mid-May to today, and here we are, writing this blog post.

What has happened between then and now?
I'm going to talk a little more about this in the next blog post, but really the summary looks a little like this: I started gaining weight back, unexplained. I gained back a little more than 60 pounds. I got STUPID sick. I got diagnosed with celiac disease, which explained sooooo much. I quit the gluten. I got the gluten withdrawal hangovers. I got better. I dropped weight like it was nothing. I ended up back where I started before I started gaining. I gained a fresh new perspective on life, on what my place is in this world, and the type of impact that I want to make. I grew in so many ways in such a short time, and I'm not sure I can ever put into words how much differently I think today than I did even as short as a year ago.

Why did you come back?  
Plain and simple, I'm meant to tell my story. I have had a really, really ridiculous number of friends and acquaintances tell me that they miss my blog posts, statuses and the things I did through the old LAFF page. And honestly, I really kinda miss sharing them. I strongly feel that my story, my perspective, and my voice is one that can encourage others. It can give hope to someone who has lost it - because I was in those shoes in so many ways. I've had so much of a whirlwind past few months. Some of it has been amazing. Some of it has been bad. Some of it has been VERY bad. But all of it made me realize I'm just not living to my full potential, and I need to be doing this. Even if only one person hears my voice and feels validated or wants to make a change, that's one person who made this all worth it. I gave up on my story too soon. I allowed myself to become defeated during a time that I should have pushed through and risen above. I failed, but it's because I failed and I just couldn't shake that feeling that I needed to try again that I know that the failure was just a necessary step on the path to ultimate success. LAFF served an amazing purpose. It put into motion the things that got me to where I am right now. I have a much richer life because of what was accomplished through that blog. And now, I'm ready to take it to the next level, and let it drive where it was always meant to go.

Why the rebrand instead of just relaunching LAFF, and what is the direction of the new blog?
I made the decision to rebrand because as I mentioned above, I'm just not on the same path that I was one when I launched that page in 2011. I am no longer defining myself as the fat friend. I'm also no longer defining myself as purely a weight loss story. Am I losing weight and working towards a healthier life? Abso-fricken-lutely. Am I doing it in a proper, sustainable way that is specifically tailored for me? Yes. Does that mean I'm going to be telling everyone that you need to go gluten free/count calories/do a certain program/go be a runner? NO. So what exactly am I doing here, then?

When considering exactly what part of my story I felt I needed to share the most, I became pretty hung up and frustrated. I'm not a health and fitness only person. Health, fitness and weight loss is part of my story. It's not who I am.

I'm a mom of a bunch o' kids in sports and school activities, running around from occupational therapy to football practice to cheer competitions. I'm a wife of a paramedic, who works really long and dumb hours that keep him away from our family way more than he wants to be. I'm a Team Leader with Origami Owl Custom Jewelry. I'm a chicken mommy, who also happens to have cats, dogs, a goat and rumors of a teacup pig joining the crew soon. I'm a bit of a hippy, who really does live the love everyone, be kinder than necessary lifestyle - there's just something to be said about being the change you want to see. Keeping in line with that, I'm working really hard to get back to a simpler life. So I do a lot of crafting, DIY, artsy stuff, baking, cooking, sewing, painting, blah de blah stuff. And I try to keep things as close to natural as possible, buying local organics when we can get them, and using essential oils as my first line of defense on mild illnesses and as part of the aforementioned crafty/DIY stuff. I'm a huge foodie, who refuses to let the absence of gluten make my diet lackluster. I'm an organization spaz - but don't tell that to the mess in my floors on any given Tuesday. Basically, I'm a great big ball of awesome that consists solely of a giant beautiful mess. And I don't want to have to be limited by myself to only sharing one small part of who I am with you. Yes, I will still be sharing about my weight loss journey and all that is happening with it. However, it is all aspects of my life that make my story complete, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

It's going to be an amazing journey, because Deanna said so.