Hi, I'm Amanda.
I like almost everything. I like people, problems, challenges, honesty, pooping, school, conversation, sleep, food, work, water, dogs, peanut butter, cheese, smells, rain, mud, hair, beards, football, walking, moving, music, dancing, travel, photographs, inspiration, motivation, and unexpected love.
I don't like over-easy eggs. I don't like complaining or whining, I don't like selfishness, manipulation, drama, fake appearances, ungratefulness, pessimists, pimples, or wet socks.
That's all.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Attention please!
Hey bloggers and bloggees, I started a new My-life-when-I'm-in-Australia blog. If you so please, revert to that one for a while, as I'm sure I won't have time to post in both.
mandersinaustralia.blogspot.com
Thanks and cheerio America!
-Mandi-Pies
mandersinaustralia.blogspot.com
Thanks and cheerio America!
-Mandi-Pies
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Hey, I'm easy to please!
Here's something I like about myself.
I'm easily amused. I'm easily satisfied (this could be a problem but I'm not going to deal with it in depth right now). Also, a smile can easily be put on my face.
I notice this a lot when I'm at work. No matter how far I am in the pits of despair when I get to work in the morning, I always end up leaving with a smile on my face. It can't possibly be the job, it's not like I get deep satisfaction out of putting people's money in their bank accounts.
So while I was chewing this over this morning, I realized that whenever a customer comes in and says, "How are you today?", I always answer with a response that's at least as optimistic as "good", if not "great" or "fabulous". And I never feel like I'm putting on a front or feel pained to have to say such a blasphemous lie, because I'm not lying.
BECAUSE....It's impossible for me to not be having a great day when even one single person takes the effort and care to ask me how I'm doing today.
Oh, the simple joys in life :)
Mandie Pies
I'm easily amused. I'm easily satisfied (this could be a problem but I'm not going to deal with it in depth right now). Also, a smile can easily be put on my face.
I notice this a lot when I'm at work. No matter how far I am in the pits of despair when I get to work in the morning, I always end up leaving with a smile on my face. It can't possibly be the job, it's not like I get deep satisfaction out of putting people's money in their bank accounts.
So while I was chewing this over this morning, I realized that whenever a customer comes in and says, "How are you today?", I always answer with a response that's at least as optimistic as "good", if not "great" or "fabulous". And I never feel like I'm putting on a front or feel pained to have to say such a blasphemous lie, because I'm not lying.
BECAUSE....It's impossible for me to not be having a great day when even one single person takes the effort and care to ask me how I'm doing today.
Oh, the simple joys in life :)
Mandie Pies
Monday, January 16, 2012
Home Alone
Reasons having the house to yourself is awesome:
- No one grinds coffee or runs the jackhammer at 5 o'clock in the morning
- Clothing is optional
- The dog and cat are great listeners and never tell you how large your butt looks today
- I don't feel guilty for making a mess and proceed to leave a trail of garbage behind me wherever I go
- I don't have to pick up after anyone else
- I can play music as loud as I want
- I can sing as loud as I want
- Don't have to fight for the laptop!
- Can watch awful, juvenile high school television shows and ridiculously sappy chick flicks and no one can judge me!
- I often allow the cat and dog to sleep in my bed with me
- When I'm not in my bed, I'm sleeping wherever the heck I want. And whenever I want.
- Can have friends over! (Don't worry mom and dad, G-rated slumber parties only)
- Can leave my laundry in the machine for days at a time and no one throws it on the floor!
Reasons having the house to yourself sucks:
- No one makes you breakfast. It's hard to cook when you wake up and all you can think about is putting one foot in front of the other.
- No one to talk to. The dog's a great listener but doesn't really give any feedback.
- I don't feel guilty for making a mess so I make a mess....
- No one to catch a ride to work with
- I have to do the chores by myself...
- No one cleans up after me
- Mom's not around to baby me when I have a tummyache
- The dog chews everything to pieces if I ignore her for a second
- Sometimes the heat doesn't work and I haven't the slightest notion how to fix it.
- No one to make sure I get home safe!
- I miss my family...
- No one grinds coffee or runs the jackhammer at 5 o'clock in the morning
- Clothing is optional
- The dog and cat are great listeners and never tell you how large your butt looks today
- I don't feel guilty for making a mess and proceed to leave a trail of garbage behind me wherever I go
- I don't have to pick up after anyone else
- I can play music as loud as I want
- I can sing as loud as I want
- Don't have to fight for the laptop!
- Can watch awful, juvenile high school television shows and ridiculously sappy chick flicks and no one can judge me!
- I often allow the cat and dog to sleep in my bed with me
- When I'm not in my bed, I'm sleeping wherever the heck I want. And whenever I want.
- Can have friends over! (Don't worry mom and dad, G-rated slumber parties only)
- Can leave my laundry in the machine for days at a time and no one throws it on the floor!
Reasons having the house to yourself sucks:
- No one makes you breakfast. It's hard to cook when you wake up and all you can think about is putting one foot in front of the other.
- No one to talk to. The dog's a great listener but doesn't really give any feedback.
- I don't feel guilty for making a mess so I make a mess....
- No one to catch a ride to work with
- I have to do the chores by myself...
- No one cleans up after me
- Mom's not around to baby me when I have a tummyache
- The dog chews everything to pieces if I ignore her for a second
- Sometimes the heat doesn't work and I haven't the slightest notion how to fix it.
- No one to make sure I get home safe!
- I miss my family...
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
25 Ways To Pass Time At Work
Next bestselling book methinks...
1. Count money
2. Vacuum
3. Dust computer keyboard
4. Google blond jokes
5. Practice your phone answering voice
6. Straighten all the bills. Rubbing them against a counter edge is effective.
7. Google random, useless facts
8. Balance your checkbook
9. Count how many days until your birthday
10. Dust
11. Antibacterial wipe the crap out of everything
12. Blog about ways to pass time at work
13. File paperwork
14. Rummage through drawers and find out where backup supplies are kept
15. Photocopy your face
16. Take out the garbage
17. Look up recipes online
18. Do stretches
19. Read all of those really long work e-mails that don't really pertain to you
20. Google important work-related facts and terms
21. Practice making yourself look dignified while yawning
22. Try to guess the exact temperature outside and then check your answers on Weather.com. Do the same thing with tomorrow's forecast.
23. Figure out your wage per minute
24. Test the ink in all the pens
25. Smell everything! Never know what kinds of fascinating new smells you'll discover.
1. Count money
2. Vacuum
3. Dust computer keyboard
4. Google blond jokes
5. Practice your phone answering voice
6. Straighten all the bills. Rubbing them against a counter edge is effective.
7. Google random, useless facts
8. Balance your checkbook
9. Count how many days until your birthday
10. Dust
11. Antibacterial wipe the crap out of everything
12. Blog about ways to pass time at work
13. File paperwork
14. Rummage through drawers and find out where backup supplies are kept
15. Photocopy your face
16. Take out the garbage
17. Look up recipes online
18. Do stretches
19. Read all of those really long work e-mails that don't really pertain to you
20. Google important work-related facts and terms
21. Practice making yourself look dignified while yawning
22. Try to guess the exact temperature outside and then check your answers on Weather.com. Do the same thing with tomorrow's forecast.
23. Figure out your wage per minute
24. Test the ink in all the pens
25. Smell everything! Never know what kinds of fascinating new smells you'll discover.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Metamorphosis
I have a thought in my head that I can't get rid of. It might be that in the face of my life's most recent events, it's something that's been weighing heavily on my mind, who knows. But writing always gives me a great opportunity to sort out my thoughts, analyze them, and then recreate them if they don't make sense.
That said, what follows is a pretty big revelation to ME, but it might seem like common sense for most others. If you're one of those most people, pardon my ignorance. I was homeschooled.
Breakups suck. They feel almost as though someone split your skull and then continued ripping you in half from the top down, and then threw away one of the halves when they were finished. It just makes you feel all awkward and off balance. Like you only have one hand to do the work that two usually does. Amiright?
They suck, and being a person who's had to go through what I believe is far more than what my share of breakups should be (that's not a cry for pity, trust me), I'm in the process of trying to come up with a way to make them suck less. Not only would it benefit me, I could be like the woman who found the cure for....relational cancer.
However, I don't actually think I can come up with a way to make them completely absent of any suckiness whatsoever, because if that were the case, I don't think the breakup would actually exist. Like in a perfect, sucky-less world, there would be no breakups, everyone would be with their one and only other half, and they'd all be happy. And the fact that a breakup would break up that perfect little idealistic existence would just make it suck. I'm ranting!
BREAKUPS SUCK!!!!
But it was at this train of thought as I was laying on my back on my living room floor that I realized that they shouldn't suck so much. Like, why is it that they're so fearfully dreaded? I feel like they're almost equated to having one's Mom die, which is just suckiness epitomized. What I realized (after I realized that they shouldn't suck so much) is that almost always (I apologize to the exceptions out there) do they open up a door for something so much better to happen, that couldn't have happened had the breakup NOT happened, you get what I'm saying? It's like the caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis process... remember when you were a kid and you nabbed caterpillars and put the poor souls in a glass jar on your kitchen counter? You watch that pretty little caterpillar for a while until one day it's like "OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRETTY CATERPILLAR, he's all wrinkly and brown now and all wrapped up in that nasty sack and ...gross he just looks like poop!" (well at least that was my reaction). But I know at least I, as a child, liked the pretty orange and black butterflies even more than I liked the striped yellow caterpillars, and so all ended well and I wasn't upset for too long. Moral of the story, Sir Butterfly had to look like poop for a while before he could look better, which is what I feel my love like looks like. It goes through definite stages of poop, but each time it does, it takes a tiny step toward something better.
So you know when you were little and you started realizing that this is what always happens with cocoons, and then you started getting excited for the nasty wrinkly little sack to appear? Well, I'm not saying we should get excited for breakups because if I did, I'd get boo-ed offstage. What I'm saying is there should be at least a glimmer of hope as we fight our way through the breakup and start looking for the butterfly.
That's all.
That said, what follows is a pretty big revelation to ME, but it might seem like common sense for most others. If you're one of those most people, pardon my ignorance. I was homeschooled.
Breakups suck. They feel almost as though someone split your skull and then continued ripping you in half from the top down, and then threw away one of the halves when they were finished. It just makes you feel all awkward and off balance. Like you only have one hand to do the work that two usually does. Amiright?
They suck, and being a person who's had to go through what I believe is far more than what my share of breakups should be (that's not a cry for pity, trust me), I'm in the process of trying to come up with a way to make them suck less. Not only would it benefit me, I could be like the woman who found the cure for....relational cancer.
However, I don't actually think I can come up with a way to make them completely absent of any suckiness whatsoever, because if that were the case, I don't think the breakup would actually exist. Like in a perfect, sucky-less world, there would be no breakups, everyone would be with their one and only other half, and they'd all be happy. And the fact that a breakup would break up that perfect little idealistic existence would just make it suck. I'm ranting!
BREAKUPS SUCK!!!!
But it was at this train of thought as I was laying on my back on my living room floor that I realized that they shouldn't suck so much. Like, why is it that they're so fearfully dreaded? I feel like they're almost equated to having one's Mom die, which is just suckiness epitomized. What I realized (after I realized that they shouldn't suck so much) is that almost always (I apologize to the exceptions out there) do they open up a door for something so much better to happen, that couldn't have happened had the breakup NOT happened, you get what I'm saying? It's like the caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis process... remember when you were a kid and you nabbed caterpillars and put the poor souls in a glass jar on your kitchen counter? You watch that pretty little caterpillar for a while until one day it's like "OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRETTY CATERPILLAR, he's all wrinkly and brown now and all wrapped up in that nasty sack and ...gross he just looks like poop!" (well at least that was my reaction). But I know at least I, as a child, liked the pretty orange and black butterflies even more than I liked the striped yellow caterpillars, and so all ended well and I wasn't upset for too long. Moral of the story, Sir Butterfly had to look like poop for a while before he could look better, which is what I feel my love like looks like. It goes through definite stages of poop, but each time it does, it takes a tiny step toward something better.
So you know when you were little and you started realizing that this is what always happens with cocoons, and then you started getting excited for the nasty wrinkly little sack to appear? Well, I'm not saying we should get excited for breakups because if I did, I'd get boo-ed offstage. What I'm saying is there should be at least a glimmer of hope as we fight our way through the breakup and start looking for the butterfly.
That's all.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Listening
Read this article for a class and pulled out a few snippets…it’s called “The Art of Listening” by Brenda Ueland.
“Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorius, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself…
…we should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one”
“Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorius, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself…
…we should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one”
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