Whoa.

FACT: Competition chili has NO BEANS in it.

Beans qualify as filler, and there must be NO FILLER in competition chili.

I discovered this today, at a chili lunch fundraiser thingy at work. It was weird, because I had never encountered chili without beans before. In fact, when I make chili, I put TWO kinds of beans in it. So, if there are no beans in competition chili, what is in there?

Meat. 7 different kinds of meat. Also, some onions and like, red peppers or something. But mainly meat.

In a related story, I think I'm dying. From too much meat. Ohhhhhhhhhh.

AWWW CRAP.

So I had written a little thing for yesterday and I saved it as a draft and FORGOT TO PUBLISH IT. So I suppose this means that I have officially buggered up NaBloPoMo? SHIT!

I will probably post it later anyways. Using some sort of trickery. MUAHAHAHAHA!

Today I woke up feeling under the weather. Normally when I feel like that, I just push on and go to work anyways. But today I decided to listen to my body and so I stayed home. I'm all achey and headachey and blah. I think I just need to relax and sleep and drink tea. So that is what I will do.

THUG LIFE, BITCHES.

I fell into the trap.

I am not a huge fan of the Christmas thing. I find the whole lead up to the day to be very stressful. Everything is hurried, you rush everywhere, you worry about finding the exact right gifts for everyone, you can't find what you are looking for, there are people everywhere ALL THE TIME. It is not a fun time for nervous girls like me.

I normally try to hold off as long as possible on getting into it. I've always thought that I need to hold off until December 1st. It just seems downright silly to start thinking about it until then. But this year, I caved.

Yesterday, I bought eggnog. I KNOW, RIGHT? But here's the thing. It is ORGANIC. I'd never seen organic eggnog before. I picked it up to look at it, and found myself imagining drinking a homemade eggnog latte at breakfast. That was it. I was SOLD.

I made the latte this morning and OH MY GOD. It was divine. The most delicious coffee ever in time. I don't even care about being sucked into liking this Christmas stuff. It's totally worth it.

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMS.

For crying out loud.

I tend to write and joke a lot about crying. The truth is, I don't actually cry all that often. Sure, I often feel like I want to or am going to cry, but I don't really actually do it. Every so often, though, it does happen. And when it does, boy does it ever happen.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I felt it stirring up inside me right before I left work. It was about something that most people would think to be stupid. A non-issue. But I had been slowly getting worked up over it for two days. I could feel the tears coming as I walked down the street to the train station, but I shoved them back down. I felt them rise up into my throat again as I stood under my umbrella in the pouring rain, waiting for the bus. I managed to fight them off again. As I walked closer to my house, they came back. This time they were stronger. After checking the mail and finding nothing there to lift my spirits, it started to spill out. My eyes welled up and I ran down the steps and around to my door. I barely managed to get the door shut behind me before I was full on SOBBING.

It lasted for about 10 minutes. A good, hard, gasping for air, UGLY cry. Then it just stopped. So I took a picture of my tear-stained face and saved it away for later. It was a weird thing to do. But I just felt like I needed to do it. Not two minutes later, my phone rang. It was my Mom. I swear, the woman has radar. She always knows when to call. I talked to her for awhile, made some dinner and then went to bed. I slept for ages.

I woke up this morning, and pulled up the crying photo. I burst out laughing at the sight of my sad little face. It was so silly and kind of adorable. So I guess it wasn't such a weird thing to do after all.

I've been smiling ever since.

One small thing.

One small thing can turn into a much bigger thing, if you let it.

I let it.

I got really worked up about a grammatical error in an email. It made me so mad. It was completely irrational. Getting so annoyed about this one thing caused me to get annoyed about several other situations, probably just because I had decided to bathe in this negative energy I had been collecting.

So when the other small problems popped up, I was ill equipped to handle them and allowed those to be a bigger deal than they should have been.

And now I'm sitting here, all tensed up, on the verge of a headache and feeling like I might throw up.

I need to learn how to not care so much about the stupid things. It would be so much more pleasant to be able to live like that. *insert smiley face here*

I got the (social) skills to pay the bills.

Okay. So, Facebook. It's kind of annoying, right? And maybe sometimes you're like, "I am so going to quit this shit. YESTERDAY." But you don't, because you sort of feel like you need it to communicate with people. But you keep thinking that it's kind of stupid.

But then, one day someone awesome sends you a friend request. You get really excited. You feel super important. Mostly because you never get friend requests. So you talk about it a little in a public forum. People see it. Then you get more friend requests. And more. And even more. Eleven, to be exact.

Eleven. In one day. And you feel awesome about it, because eleven people think you are cool enough to be their friend.

I think this pretty much makes up for the entire 5 years of high school.

Internet, I love you.

The Internet is a wonderful place. It is full of awesome things made by awesome people. It is also full of crap made by jerks. But mostly awesome stuff.

It is where I have found people that like the same things I like, hate the same things I hate, get excited about the same things I get excited about, get annoyed by the same things I get annoyed by.

It is also where I find recipes and instructions for folding origami creatures. So, you know. Awesome.