I met my good pal and the greatest attorney ever Jeff O’Brien. The place was awesome. It took over the former Spill The Wine space. Great food…really good beer…great company.
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Rock N Roll Bingo #100daysoffun
Big win at Rock N’ Roll Bingo #100daysoffun
100 days of fun!
So I’ve made a decision over the last month or so…life is too short. I’ve spent the last couple of years working myself to death. Not even sure why now. It seemed as if I was just trying to replace something that was missing.
So I decided it’s time to have more fun and have more experiences. I’ve also decided to write about them in true Hick City Chick fashion.
So keep an eye out for some interesting and fun posts coming from me!
Cheers!
For Christmas I give you love.
It’s no lie that I have had to deal with a lot of pain in my life. There have been many times where I have wondered why any of it has happened to me.
What’s great about the pain is that it caused me to take a deep look at the world around me. I have seen through observation what power people have over others. It’s not all horrible. It’s actually amazing what a little gesture can do for someone.
What’s difficult is how so many people live behind whatever persona they have created for themselves. They spend so much time trying to maintain this that they completely forget what’s most important. What really sad about this is that most of these people are dealing with so much themselves and not even addressing their issues.
I spent a lot of time in my younger days trying to live a lifestyle. I worked two jobs through high school and college trying to create this. Then when I was 19, my apartment burned down and I lost everything. I didn’t even have things like underwear or socks. It was an eye opener because even though I didn’t have these things, I was still able to live.
But still I got sucked back into living a lifestyle. I lived this way for many years. It wasn’t until I was heartbroken and the life I always knew was gone, that I fully snapped out of it. I was broke, I didn’t have my kids with me every day and I felt completely alone and helpless. I feared so much what people would think of me, the judgements they would have and I had every insecurity that I could possibly have. I didn’t feel good about myself.
But what’s crazy is this. People still loved and cared about me. The most random people came out of the woodwork to just say hello and see how I was doing. I didn’t understand why anyone would do anything for me. I felt like a loser.
However the love continued. It was heartbreaking in the most amazing way. My heart grew so much that all I can now is love. I could honestly care less about having anything I had before. I’m so content with everything that I do have and it has nothing to do with materialistic things. That stuff is just a bunch of bullshit as far as I’m concerned.
So if any of you have ever wondered what you can do to help me or anyone?……cut the crap. If the only things that make you happy are things that cost money, ask yourself….Does your life have any meaning???? Have you ever done anything for anyone else that made you feel good or that caused someone else to feel love?
We all have so much power. We need to use it wisely. Always think about others. Always live through how you feel in your heart. Share your love with others! Hug as many people as you can! Most of all….believe in people. They will always surprise you
The Truth About my divorce. Part one of the “20 things you never knew about me”
I have written quite a bit about this on this blog. As most of my posts portrayed, I did some pretty deep soul-searching over the last couple of years. But this is the honest truth and this is the whole story.
When I met my husband, it was exciting. He was a complete wild child but seemed to have some balance with his life and his work. It seemed to be the perfect mix good/bad boy.
But a few months after we started dating, I found out I was pregnant with our first child. What’s funny is that I got pregnant one of the first times we ever had sex. Our life went from simply having fun to being the complete opposite. A few months later we had moved into a new home and seemed to have a completely domesticated life.
With both of us coming from divorced parents, we didn’t want to rush into marriage. We truly wanted to give our children a good home life and didn’t feel rushing into marriage because of pregnancy was the best idea. We took the time to really figure out if we were meant to be.
After having our son, I started to notice that we had some pretty serious issues. But honestly I really wasn’t good at communicating my feelings. I kind of expected him to know. I never said a thing until the occasional big blow up and of course the 5 or 6 fights we ever got into were pretty epic.
We decided to finally get married back in 2006. Even then, deep down I was scared to death about this. The process of getting towards the wedding day caused a ton of stress and anxiety with me. There were so many signs that should have caused me to walk away. One of which was the day we had dinner with the judge that was officiating our wedding. I kept feeling nauseated and ended up fainting twice. The same thing also occurred right before i walked down the aisle. When I walked down the aisle, I looked around and saw all of my family and friends. My eyes were watering. I think people thought I was being emotional but I literally felt like I was going to faint again.
My wedding day was the most telling about our future, My ex husband was drunk before we even walked down the aisle and after the ceremony, I hardly saw him. Once during dinner, during our first dance and maybe a couple of times after. When we went to the hotel, it took some convincing to get him to not want to go in a friends hotel room to party. I felt like everything was a big show.
Nonetheless, I truly did love him. I loved him to death. I chose to give up everything I thought I ever wanted for him. When I say “I chose”, it’s the truth. I knew he wanted a certain type of woman and I knew I would lose him if I wasnt that woman. For the longest time i blamed him for this. It took a long time for me to realize that this was my fault. Instead of communicating my wants, needs or desires, I conformed to what I thought I should be.
All of this caused my to completely lose track of who I really was. I felt completely alienated from who I was, from my family and friends. At one point I was starting to completely shut everyone out. I felt like a zombie. But we always played the perfectly happy married couple. Nobody ever knew we had problems.
Finally one day, I decided it was time to get back to being myself. I starting working hard again and trying to rebuild my career. This was a difficult thing and my ex-husband could see that I was changing. It caused a ton of insecurity on his part. This ultimately led to our biggest argument. My ex-husband took this opportunity to explode and share every issue he had with me. All while be in front of our closest 40 friends while camping. He shared every deep secret that I had or my family had. I was completely humiliated.
The next day I left. I got a hotel room and as far as I was concerned, it was over. I could tell by the look on his face that this was the first time he ever took me seriously. He knew how wrong it was. He came to my hotel that afternoon and we managed to work it out. However things were still very shaky.
Our moment of reconciliation was short-lived. Things didn’t get better. I knew divorce was coming. It took me several weeks to work up the courage to have the “talk” with him. Then, we got the word that his sister, who had only been married for a few months, was getting a divorce. I couldn’t handle adding more stress onto his family, so I waited. The next few months went by and I just got more and more angry because I felt stuck. All it took was one small argument to send me over the edge. I asked for a divorce at a moment that was completely unplanned. He was pretty shocked even though we had this conversation 6 months prior.
I started seeing a counselor right away. Even though I had thought this over for quite some time, I was devastated that my marriage was over. I was filled with worry about how my life would now be. A couple of months into our separation, after lots of counseling, I decided to talk to him and try to see if we could work it out. I felt like I was in a better place and capable of communicating better. But the bad news was….he had fallen out of love with me a while ago.
So this is the short story of how we ended up as we did. What I can tell you that the failure of my marriage was more my fault than his. Yes of course we both had our issues but I sucked at communication. Its definitely something I am great at now. I have accepted my failure and I have and continue to learn a lot.
Protected: Heartbreak/confusion
Does the flag you wave matter?
Making this Sh*t Real-My thoughts On the Debate
Last night I sat down with a friend to watch the Presidential Debate. I was asked about my political opinions and as always I stated “I really don’t share my political opinions with anyone”
However this morning I thought about all that was said during the debate, I was annoyed. The main thing that annoyed me was Romney’s need to mention some random person that he had run into that seemed to think that he would be able to help them.
My story is unique I think but so are many others.
When I was married, my ex-husband made a substantial income. I also had income but it was not a necessity for me to work and my ex-husband had issues with my working in the capacity that I wanted and now need to.
Our divorce went on for well over a year. During this time I racked up a lot in attorney’s bills. Also during this process my ex drained every asset he had and left me with….a whole lot of nothing. But hey…I kept my head held high because I was lucky to have found a home for my children and some how be able to manage to live. Besides the fact that I will no longer have to deal with a complete idiot! He on the other hand, lives at home with his mother and lives a great lifestyle.
However one of the bigger issues was insurance. I was always covered under his health insurance that his employer paid 100% of his premium. My attorney had explained that there was a statute in Minnesota that said that if a divorce spouse’s premium doesn’t change, that I would be able to continue my coverage under his plan. Well it turns out, that wasn’t the case. Because of the way his insurance was paid, I couldn’t prove that his boss actually reimbursed him for his premium. (He was charged on his paycheck and then given a per diem of $50/day to cover the costs…obviously when we were married, I knew what the per diem was used for but when I questioned it after I was told it was used to “tools and Equipment”….Bullshit)
So here I am now, without insurance. The Cobra costs for me were tremendous, I have shopped for me own policy however….there’s a catch…I have a pre-existing condition.
Romney’s opinion per the ABC news Fact Check
“Mitt Romney does not think insurance companies should have to cover people with pre-existing conditions who have not had continuous health care coverage.
It is not a small population who would be cut from health care coverage under a proposal similar to what Romney has suggested. A Health and Human Services report published in January 2011 estimated that between 50 million and 129 million people currently have a pre-existing condition in the eyes of insurance companies. Twenty-five million of those do not have health insurance, according to the report. That number does not take into account those who have had gaps in coverage, suggesting a much larger number of people have pre-existing conditions but have not had continuous coverage.”
Whats funny about my pre-existing condition is that it doesn’t require frequent visits or care. I had surgery on a birth defect when I was 20. The only care I require is an annual check up and occasionally I will get sick and end up with phenomia and have to be prescribed antibiotics. But yet insurance companies still consider it to be a preexisting condition and I have been denied coverage because “Obamacare’s” rules about preexisting conditions hasn’t gone into effect yet.
So whats next, I could apply for Minnesota Care I guess. But to be honest I have a really hard time doing this as I feel weird about having a tax payer cover the costs of my own personal health insurance, But what other option is there?
Another issue I have is with the generalization of the middle class. I do understand that the middle class does in fact drive the economy however there are several “levels” in the middle class. The Middle class is very simply defined as “falling between the upper class and the working class” . It’s a really broad area. I’m not sure where I would fall into place but what I can say is this: I would be classified as middle class, however at tax time, after I calculate how much expenses I have to income and the credits I get, it’s a wash.
I recently helped someone with their books for their business. This person had a profit every month but at the end of the year, he had a huge loss, How does this happen? Well when you simply look at the numbers, even though their bottom line showed a profit, the costs of simply running the business were high enough that at the end of year reconciliation was a loss. This is an actual small business.
I know Romney did make mention of the fact that what some (Romney) may consider a small business….what defines a business as small? This is what the Small Business Administration identifies a small business as:
“SBA defines a small business concern as one that is independently owned and operated, is organized for profit, and is not dominant in its field. Depending on the industry, size standard eligibility is based on the average number of employees for the preceding twelve months or on sales volume averaged over a three-year period. Examples of SBA general size standards include the following:
- Manufacturing: Maximum number of employees may range from 500 to 1500, depending on the type of product manufactured;
- Wholesaling: Maximum number of employees may range from 100 to 500 depending on the particular product being provided;
- Services: Annual receipts may not exceed $2.5 to $21.5 million, depending on the particular service being provided;
- Retailing: Annual receipts may not exceed $5.0 to $21.0 million, depending on the particular product being provided;
- General and Heavy Construction: General construction annual receipts may not exceed $13.5 to $17 million, depending on the type of construction;
- Special Trade Construction: Annual receipts may not exceed $7 million; and
- Agriculture: Annual receipts may not exceed $0.5 to $9.0 million, depending on the agricultural product”
When i saw the above, I was shocked….considering the financials I had done for a small business recently…these numbers seemed quite high. Doesn’t this seem weird?
.
Number crunching: Obviously, as a presidential candidate you don’t have to be good at math. Being the math genius that I am, I tried computing the numbers right away…but reastically, neither was accurate. It seemed like there were a lot of “magical” numbers getting thrown around. All I can say, as far as the deficit goes, if I had to take a loss because of the economy, so should every politician. I should not have to pay someone for spending the majority of their time fighting with someone else and not getting anything done. ‘Nuff said!
It wasnt that long ago that I posted on Facebook that still applies to how I feel now.:
“Every political season….I hand a hard time. I watch and pay attention to everything as it happens. Never In my lifetime have I felt like a politician has fought for me. Me as an individual. I come from a long line of politicians and have volunteered on several campaigns. I’m disappointed that everything is about bad mouthing one another and wasting so much of my precious time. I am an individual and while I am a small business owner who has children and I believe certain things, nobody fights for me.This whole climate if bashing one another has got to end. Cause I won’t volunteer or fight for someone who doesn’t take the time to fight for me.”
SOMEONE FIGHT FOR ME! I cant be defined to a class as single mom, student and business owner.
Side Bar: Can we please request that Jim Lehrer never moderate a debate ever again??? I am voting for Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart.
The Decreasing Dating Pool
I could resist writing this after speaking to some friends recently trying to explain why I am single….which I am completely ok with. While I get that its impossible to believe why men wouldn’t jump to find a woman like me 🙂 My dating pool for someone my age is very small.
I am 32, very educated, mother of 2 children. However the biggest issue in my dating world is that I do not want any more children. Which is a deal breaker in most cases.
So if you take the basics above and think about it this way. If you take out of my dating pool the men that do not have children or want more, this literally cuts my dating pool in half. Then if you remove all the men in my age range (which is no more than 10 years older than me) This once again cuts my dating pool in half. This is just my opinion but I am no expert. So I looked to Google for the actual stats.
I was able to find the following statistics from a MSN.com survey from July of 2012
| Number of Americans who use online dating services | 40 million |
| Percent of the adult American population that is single | 44% |
| Ratio of single men to single women in America | 86 to 100 |
| Percent of New York state adults that are unmarried | 50% |
| Percent of Washington D.C. adults that are unmarried | 70% |
| State with the lowest ratio of single people (Idaho) | 40% single |
| Percent of single people surveyed said that flattery is the best way to attract someone | 51% |
| Percent of single people that say touching as a way to flirt and is very effective | 25% |
| Percent of single people that say the best way to let someone know you’re interested in them is by passing word through a friend | 23% |
| Average amount of time to make a first impression on a man | 15 minutes |
| Average amount of time to make a first impression on a woman | 1 hour |
| The number one relationship argument | Money |
| Percent of breakups in online relationships that happen by email | 48% |
| Percent of women who find relationships at a bar | 9 % |
| Percent of men who find relationships at a bar | 2 % |
| Percent of married couples who said they found their mates through a friend | 63% |
| Percent chance after a first date a guy will call if he hasn’t called within 24 hours | 12% |
| The chance that some will like a date set up by a friend | 17% |
| Percent of women who find money to be very important in a relationship | 88% |
| Percent of singles that feel they are too busy to meet other singles | 52% |
| Percent of women that date men that are at least 5 years older than them | 76% |
| Percent of men that date women that are at least 5 years younger than them | 80% |
| Percent of singles that find a great smile the most attractive feature | 53% |
| Percent of singles that have Googled someone on the internet before a first date | 43% |
Take a look at the first highlighted area
“Ratio of single men to single women in America”.
I recently had a conversation with my friend Rob Hahn. He had once told me ” There are 3 college grads female for every 2 males. One in three female college grads have no possibility if pairing up with a college educated male.” While I dont always associate intelligence with a college degree, it’s extremely difficult to relate to someone who is completely uncapable of having a intelligent conversation. Some people just naturally have that “blank stare”.
The next two
“Percent of married couples who said they found their mates through a friend” and The chance that some will like a date set up by a friend”
Simply look at the numbers. One of my close friends tried to set me up with someone and the guy could not have been a poorer match for me. Feel free to ask me the story about the “crier”.
“Average amount of time to make a first impression on a woman”.
I have been on dates where I knew within minutes that they were complete wack jobs. One thing about me is that I am really good at reading people. I think I should call myself the “Mentalist” of the dating world. I watch mannerisms and listen closely what my date is saying. I listen for keywords.
When it comes down to it…chances of women finding someone they truly connect with these days are few and far between.
“Percent of singles that have Googled someone on the internet before a first date”
I honestly never did this until my mother decided to do it for me and pulled up a date”s entire life story. Turns out he had been married 2 times and wasn’t forthcoming about it. Honesty is the best policy and I tend to not judge people if they are open about things. Maybe the whole googling thing is something to consider.
When it comes down to it…women have it rough. I guess I should give credit to all the men out there that happen to be meeting all the wack job women out there. I feel lucky that I am ok with being single and I know that someday I will meet someone who has an IQ over 130 and doesn’t sit in his garage drinking Coors light on the weekends.
Just for fun check out http://www.datingfails.com/
Having a moment
I’m sitting in a class where I should be paying attention, but as usually my ADD kicks in and I am completely distracted. At the same time I am writing a post for another site about all the changes in my industry. For a second, I paused and realized something….I have survived. I have survived one of the hardest years in my life.
I got to thinking about this after a final comment on a Facebook conversation made me feel great. Not only was I speaking up for myself after being quiet for an entire year. But I honestly had no worry about the former friends who I no longer speak to. It was refreshing. I do not feel the need to live in silence anymore. If anyone asks, I will tell the truth about it all. It was probably the biggest mistake I made over the last year to not say something. I was trying to be the bigger person and protect my children from all the town gossip.
While I assumed this process would have been easier, I am very thankful for everything I learned along the way. Some things were very difficult to learn about. I can honestly say I know exactly what I want in life. I can also say that I know more than ever want I want in another person. It feels good to simply know.
There are still hard times ahead but I will make it through. What I can say is that I have some really amazing people in my life helping me along the way. Life is getting back to normal and big things are starting to happen. Looking forward to my new and f’ing awesome life!
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