don't die on me, and also the gift of life.

based on aggressive internet research, it looks like i am not the only wildcat that gave 2011 two thumbs down and thought at multiple times events of 2011 would be the death of me, so it's nice to see that people are already rallying for a stellar 2012. however, further internet research revealed (I KNOW. I'M PRACTICALLY LISBETH FUCKING SALANDER OVER HERE.) that everyone on the planet that i know or even six degrees kind of know is effing with child. i only wish i were kidding dot com. this probably includes you or is about to include you, so gird your loins and maybe hoist a 'no trespassing' sign outside your ladyflower unless you are in the mood for a case of the babies, in which case i proclaim THIS IS TOTALLY YOUR YEAR. also if you tell me you are not pregnant i will assume we both know you are lying and i will go about my business as normal.

also i need to clarify, because sometimes pregnant people can be emotional and may or may not be tired/hungry/achy/sad/happy/grumpy--i genuinely believe that it is super awesome you are all pregnant. i'm totally coming to your shower and-slash-or getting you something awesome from your registry, or at least a fierce gift card, because i love you and your unborn baby or twin babies!!!!! IT IS JUST A LITTLE WEIRD FOR ME THAT I KNOW LIKE SIXTY PREGNANT PEOPLE, is all i'm saying. i am truly very happy and excited for all of you.

even though this is totally like village of the damned.

{image via pinterest.}
click here to subscribe to wonders will never cease by email.

attainable vs. obtainable.

i mentioned yesterday that from now on, i'm setting realistic and attainable goals (part of the S.M.A.R.T. plan, duh) and almost immediately i worried that i meant obtainable? so let's all learn something, or re-learn it, because surely this was covered in our nation's great education program?

obtainable speaks of truth that some thing exists and one can get. attainable speaks use of intelligence to get it.

"A prostitute is obtainable, but true love is not attainable so easily."

obtainable- that may be procured or gained.
adjective 1. available, to be had, procurable.
adjective 2. accessible, achievable, at your fingertips, at your disposal, reachable, realizable, gettable, accomplishable.

attainable-possible to achieve
able to be achieved, accomplished or obtained. possible to achieve, reach, or get.

a very talented wildcat.

jeff rogers is a graphic designer and illustrator, and just so happens to have been an acu wildcat university classmate of mine*. he's always been extremely talented (which is why i pretend that we were/are super best friends, instead of people with lots of classes together that kind of stayed in touch thanks to the facebook) and his recent paintings for the ace hotel are getting a ton of (much deserved) attention and praise. jeff uses a great deal of typography and letterforms in his work, which i'm very drawn to (pun fully intended) and i have spent the better part of my saturday morning rifling through every bit of his website, which you should check out. jeff said he's got plans to open an etsy shop at some point (the sooner, the better, dude. hustle.) so if i catch wind of that, i'll post the news right here. you know, because millions of people read this blog and i am very cutting edge and on the pulse of everything that happens news-wise.

jeff's website here.
*there are a ton of talented people that were part of the graphic design program while i was in college, like jeff. or these guys. or this guy, to name a few. not everyone turned out to be a graphic designer, but i was surrounded by incredible creative minds and immeasurable talent. i like to think that someday, the bauhaus movement of abilene will have better recognition.

switcheroo.

i have changed the background of my blog. i'm not sure i love it. however, it is making my brain hurt to think that if i monkey around with it much more, i might lose everything. and that, ladies and gents, would be a national tragedy. which reminds me:

{via april and may.}

2K11: the big read.

read more. blog less. get things done around the casa that have been in slow- to non-moving progress for three years. how is your 2K11 to do list working out on this sixth day of new-ness?

below, i've outlined a plan that will likely be pushed to the side in mid-february, reunited with briefly in late april, and pick up strength throughtout the summer only to crash and burn circa-halloween times. fortunately i'm a fast reader. this list and idea came from my imaginary blogger friend persephone of what possessed me, who seems so much smarter and cooler than me. hear that, p? i stalk you from a safe distance, but if you lived in space city, i'd totally hit you up for a book club of revolutionary proportions. anyhow...

The Big Read, part of the national endowment for the arts, claims that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. surely you are above average, right? so why don't you

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or for whatever reason loathe.
5) Reprint this list (preferrably in your own blog) so we can have a collective gasp about whether or not you've ever been caught up the romatic escapades of Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery BEST. BOOK. EVER.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

clearly, my reading level and material choices are on par with a 16-year old girl. a 16-year old girl THAT READS A LOT. so here you have it (or i have it)-my reading list for 2011. unless they come out with more twilight books. i figured out how to do the kindle on our ipad, but b-rad prolly has most of these tomes.

i would tag the lovely and beautiful leah, but let's face it-you've read all 100 of these, right leah? and i tag the blogless: audrey, sarah and shannon.

{image via this gal.}

things to work on in 2010, number 4.

when i was a wee lass (meaning gangly, awkward mess, ages 3-19), i loved reading. often, i would get into trouble for having my 'nose in a book' (cheryl's words, not mine) because i would be so wrapped up in the adventures of the bobbsey twins that i'd forget to do my chores. book-it feared me. they couldn't make personal pan pizzas fast enough. anyone else ever been in trouble for reading too much? i guess childhood in kansas was harsh. to my disappointment, i have fallen off the reading rainbow, and hardly ever crack a book these days. BOO. so this one is easy.4. read more, drink less. by the way, i'm stopping at four. if i've learned anything, it's that you have to set realistic and attainable goals.

i guess i'll start with the picture of dorian gray, by oscar wilde, shown in the bottom right. i got it for christmas, and plan to collect all the rest of these lovelies, designed for penguin by the brills coralie bickford-smith. after that, my books should be ready to pick up at the LIBRARY. yeah, that's right. i said library. guess who just registered for her new library card online? in space city (aka houston) you can get your own library power card here. you can reserve books and have them sent to the location of your choice, AND they have books on tape. who wants to go on a road trip?

things to work on in 2010, number 3.

thank god the holidays are over, right? i've sent the last of the holiday cookies and candy up to brad's office, which is TWO steps in the right direction: 1. get that sugary shit out of my house and 2. deliver it into the hands of the women brad works with, in an effort to fatten them up. everyone loves a chubby secretary, especially when she works in your common-law husband's office.

in my mind, there was absolutely no reason to try and work out during repeated bouts of gluttony over the holidays, but now that we've entered into the bleak, pale months of pre-spring, it is GYM TIME.3a. exercise, meaning yoga classes, running the three-mile loop at memorial and maybe an occasional crossfit class.
3b. eat healthier and make serious attempts to kick the bacon and sodas habit.

in case you be-hotches hadn't noticed, your body center (formerly located in a horrible, hard-to-find montrose spot) has moved to i-10, specifically, heights and i-10. check out their class schedule here. i'm going to start hitting that up, STAT. feel free to join me. i'm also considering doing the 21-day program at my fit foods. women typically lose 8-12 pounds on the program, and it shakes down to about $7 per meal, most of which are relatively tasty.

hey fatties...

this is certainly a lead-in to things to work on in 2010: number 3 (which is about how skinny i'm going to get on my coffee, iceberg lettuce, hot yoga and bulimia diet, not yet posted). Thanks Target.

Food fail: eyeballing portion sizes. Start the year off with an easy win: a set of porcelain Measure Up Bowls premarked to take the guesswork out of portion control.as an added bonus, you can save 25% by entering code DCANDY10 at check-out. offer good through january 30th, but i'll bet you a wooden nickel they sell out.

{via daily candy}

things to work on in 2010, number 2.

Elderly couple Fran and Marlo walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano. They've been married for a whopping 62 years, and Marlo turned 90 this year.

man. if brad and i are this awesome when we're 90, someone better invite us to be on conan. or at least Great Day HOUSTON. so brad, make some time.

2. take lessons with brad. not sure if these will be piano, dance or other (or all three).

{via a cup of jo}

things to work on in 2010, number 1.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - maya angelou

damn, maya.

1. do my best to make the people i love feel appreciated, important and respected.

{photo by liz ham}