My new coworkers

Aren't they cute?!?!  I absolutely love this little pony in the front of this picture - his name is Cassidy.  And let me tell you, for the little kids who love him, it's hard for them to understand that he is a boy.  Crazy!

It's amazing to me the funny things I hear while working with kids and ponies.  Most people see these cuties and are convinced they are babies.  Well, dear people, allow me to educate you.  These are ponies - not babies.  Actually, some of these ponies are older than me.  They are just short.  It's like walking up to a midget and telling them they're a baby.  Give me a break!

The kids are also quite hilarious.  The lovely little guys are always enthralled that the ponies poop.  Yup.  Haven't you read the book?  We all poop?  Must have missed the page with the pony on it...

Well, to put it mildly I'm excited about a really fun summer working with these cuties, great kids, riding a horse, AND getting paid for it.  Awesome!

Let's Get Naked!

In the past few months since I have started back on the single scene, it has been amazing to me how incredibly fast the dating scene has changed...  And I have only been out of it for about five years.  Holy cow!  My heart goes out to those of you who have been out for longer than that.  It's a whole new world.

The way people used to date was so much more romantic.  Think of the GI's in World War II and the letters they sent back to lovers.  Someone had to sit down, write in their own penmanship on paper for a good 15-30 minutes, and then wait patiently for a response. 

We have certainly come a long way where we can now facebook stalk (need a primer on this?  My girlfriend, Kate, and I are pros - watch out boys!), Google search, and do background checks before a first day.  And that's even before you're dating!

What happens when the dating has started?  Things like texting and emailing make communication something that really is a double edged sword.  We are now able to cram weeks of getting to know the other person into a matter of weeks.  Amazing!

That being said, the most shocking thing that has happened to me in the past few months with the ease of communication is the amount of naked picture requests I have received. Heads up - if you ask for a naked picture of me, this is what you get:

Note to all you guys out there that think I would actually send you a naked picture of myself - I'm not that kind of girl.  And if you think I am, you have another thing coming.  And best of luck to you in finding a classy girl to date.  You're not even close to being ready for a girl like me.  Keep on huntin... 

And ladies, please, please, please don't send guys naked pictures of yourself.  If you need that to get a guy interested, it's obviously not the type of relationship you need.  Call your girlfriend, go have a glass of wine, and realize that you're so much better than that!

More things boys need to know...

So, I'm not going to lie... It's very funny to me that my most-viewed blog posts are those about relationships.  Let me clarify for those of you just joining my blog.  I am NOT an expert at relationships.  In fact, I would give myself a big, fat F in my ability to pick the right guy, hold my own in a relationship, and know when to move on.  That being said, I appreciate everyone reading about what I've learned.  Hopefully my blog can help others make better decisions than I have.

I wrote yesterday's blog about things we girls wish guys knew.  I have had some interesting conversations and emails surrounding the post, so I've decided that another one along the same lines is just fine... and perhaps needed.  Here goes!

• When we work out and lose weight, get a hair cut, or make any kind of change in our physical appearance, it's a big deal.  We work hard to look good (however I'll give you that there's debate on who we look go to impress - men or other women...), and I never expect the guy I'm dating to notice.  However, if I point out that I've got different colored hair, please respond appropriately.  You don't have to over-react, but just confirm that we look great.  That's all we want.
• Beginning a relationship is scary, no matter if you're the guy or the girl.  Most of us girls are pretty easy to impress (society certainly has digressed in what men had to do to get the attention of a girl - can we say slaying a dragon or riding to our house on a lawn mower to play a song under our window?).  But you wearing a muscle shirt won't do it.  Get yourself in a suit and wine and dine us - it's fun!
• That being said, money doesn't make the man.  So you don't have a 401(k).  So you only have $4.01.  We don't care.  Make the most of your personality and humor, and we're set!  There are tons of websites to get ideas on how to date on a budget.  Check them out - most places will list free things to do in your town in the paper.  Check out a local gallery opening, walk the local shops, and make up stories about the people you see...  Tons of fun and doesn't cost a cent!
• Make us laugh.  It'll get you everywhere!  And laugh at me - I'm a big girl and tend to beat you to it, but you should join me!  (Fair warning, not all girls are like this...  Tread carefully at first, but once something happens and she laughs, join her!)
• Take care of us!  Whether you clean my car, fill it with gas, help me move, find a classic movie on DVD I've been looking for forever, or just shoot me a text that lets me know you're thinking about me.  Amazing the power in the 15 seconds it takes to send a short message!
• Be nice (need I explain?),
• and when you're an asshole don't be shocked when we don't get super jazzed to see you!
• Show us you can commit to something longer than a 2 year cell phone plan.  Get a plant, get a dog, or just spend time with your siblings and show us you like each other.  If you can't do that, don't date.  Just go find a hookup - I don't have the time to teach you to be a man.

Well, hopefully these tips will carry over for other girls besides me, and hopefully they will help guys get a clue as to how to find a classy girl.  I'm a catch, and so are all the followers of this blog.  Work at getting a date with one of us and making us your girl, and you will be a happy, happy guy!  Or the next subject for a blog post...

Things we wish boys knew...

Beyonce sure hit on some good points...  But what about other things that aren't included in her song?  Well, here's what I've decided I wish boys (and some girls) knew (unfortunately from experience).

• When you say you're going to call, please do!  When you don't, it's as if we don't matter and whatever else you're doing is way more important.  Calling when you say you're going to is a small thing that we take very seriously and demonstrates how trustworthy you are.
• Flowers, perfume, jewelry, and similar things are all fantastic.  But please, don't shower us with gifts until you know what we like and want...  And don't start out with so many sweet gifts that you go broke when you have to outdo yourself the next holiday.  Sometimes the smallest and sweetest things mean the most - flowers from your yard, a sweet card handwritten, or you stopping by the office to share a homemade lunch mean a lot!
• It's incredibly hard to take a step back!  What do you do when you fall for a guy who turns out to not be as into you as originally proclaimed?  It's hard, and so guys, don't say stuff unless you mean it!
• Breaking up with us may be the hardest thing you have to do all day, but we're big girls.  Say it, do it, and get it over with!  Shutting down, stopping communication and avoiding us just makes things worse.  Every day I have to deal with tough customers, frustrating bosses, and know-it-all's in many different shapes and sizes.  You breaking up with me isn't going to be the end of the world.  Yes, we may cry, but man up, use your words, and move on - save me the time of doing it myself!
• Men should not wear purses.  Unless they are standing by the ladies room holding their woman's bag, and they are incredibly embarrassed about it, men should keep their valuables in their pockets and wallets.  A wallet on a string could not be a bigger turnoff for a girl.  Man up and wear some jeans.
• And while we're on the subject: Wrangler butts make me nuts... But you can't wear your Wranglers everywhere.  Get out, get some different clothes, and be able to be taken somewhere besides the rodeo.  Nothing is hotter than a guy who can pull of a cowboy/western look one day, take a lady to a nice dinner the next, and then go fishing and camping, all without having to go to the store and buy new clothes for each event.
• Be you.  And I'll be me.  One of my favorite quotes is, "If you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best."  I personally have tough seasons in my life, and I try to be as authentic as possible during those times.  We all have rough days, and the one way to get over them is to talk about them, share your frustrations, and then find a way to let it go and laugh again.  Just be authentic and don't put on a fake front because you don't think we can handle your problems in addition to ours.
• I'm going to ask questions about you while we're on a date and getting to know each other.  Reciprocation is great.  Ask me something - I'm an open book (have you been reading this blog?).
• We were raised on girl porn.  What's girl porn?  It's the impossibly high standards girls are given through our Disney Princess movies, the Josh Hartnett movies, and anything from Nicholas Sparks.  This is girl porn - the story that we're all princesses waiting to be whisked off our feet by Prince Charming in hopes of living happily ever after.  Any girl who has lived past the age of 21 understands that this is no longer the truth, but we still hold out.  Make us feel special and you're half way to making our dream come true.
• They are an ex for a reason.  I hate hearing about how people are contemplating going back to a past love.  Don't do it!  Obviously it didn't work the first time, so it's not going to work now - stop kidding yourself, stop settling, and get going looking for the right person, not the one who usedtakindasorta worked out.

So, this is the tip of the iceberg on Katie's List of What Men Should Know...  Have anything to add?  I'm all ears!  And if I've offended anyone I have dated, I'm so not sorry.  Your lessons will go on to help hundreds of others, so thanks for being an example, and please don't repeat anything in your next endeavors.

Marriage - I am not an expert...

And neither are these bears...  but my parents were!  This past Tuesday my parents would have celebrated 30 years of being married.  It's hard to believe, and a little bittersweet.  

Mom and Dad had a really great relationship, and I didn't realize just how great it was until I was out of their house and in college.  I heard about all of the bad things my roommates parents had said and done to my roommates and each other, and it broke my heart.  There were times I would call my parents and just say thank you to them!

One of the best things about my parents was the way they handled conflict.  My dad was a pacifist, to be sure.  Any time there was a conflict my dad would just listen while my mom vented, make her laugh, and it was over.  There was hardly any yelling in our house, and it was a place filled with love, respect, fun, laughter, and a whole lot of peace.

Perhaps growing up in such a great environment was a disservice to my marriage because as soon as there was yelling in my marriage I didn't know what to do.  It was shocking!  What was modeled for me was a rarity, come to find out!

I recently went back to the east coast to visit family, and it turns out the happy marriage my parents had was something passed down from both of their parents.  My mom's parents were local, so I grew up going to their house.  I saw how much my grandpa loved my grandma, and love and service was modeled in their relationship, even as Grandma's health declined.  I wasn't as close to my dad's parents, and so during the trip out east I was able to ask my aunts about them.  One of the favorite things I learned was that my aunt remembered laying awake at night in a 3 bedroom house for an eight member family, and the kids would all lay awake at night and listen to their parents giggle. 

Happy marriages are hard work.  And as a divorcee, I know firsthand the devastation a divorce can cause.  But, that's not to say that I have lost hope that someday, someone out there will want the happy marriage I saw modeled for me and dream of.

An Ode to My Shoes

'Tis nothing so sweet to a girl as her shoes,

No matter how she gains she never will lose,

Her ability to wear them with grace and style,

Even on a date with a lame boy named Kyle.

Poor Kyle - his heart rate still hasn't recovered from these bad girls!

Some shoes are made for a walk or a run,

And to be honest, that's when I have the most fun.

To get away from it all and have time to think,

And when I come back I breathe hard and stink.

These shoes have seen close to 200 miles... Here's to another 300 before I find new friends...  There's nothing like a great pair of running shoes - even the smell of them (brand new, of course) invigorates me to get out and go!

 Shoes like the next ones show my inner cowgirl,

Hoping to find a man who likes Meryl.

They go great with a pair of my favorite jeans,

And let me get more country than I originally seem.

Yeehaw!

 The last pair are great for the coming summer,

However sometimes I feel I need to be dumber,

To wear heels this high out on the town,

Makes my feet cry out for the dawn.

They're hot!  Until you have to walk in them... Then it's more of a limp.  Not so hot...

We find a lot of our identity in what's on our feet,

With lots of options shoes can't be beet.

To go from a rocker to a cowgirl with style,

Shoes are the easiest way to help run a mile.

So, let's hear it for our great shoes that we wear...

And remember, we buy them so people will stare,

And make women jealous - I've seen you glare!

But not to worry; go buy your own pair!

Discipline to Have Freedom

One of the big realizations on this journey has been how much I value my freedom.  Freedom to come and go as I please, eat what I want, read good books that challenge my way of thinking, explore my surroundings and beliefs, and an overall sense of safety to do this.

However, a big boundary can be crossed when we don't find balance between freedoms and discipline.  For example, I love the freedom my body gives me be able to do incredible things.  Things like running half marathons, climbing mountains, and any physical adventure that comes my way.  However, that freedom doesn't come without discipline.  Discipline to train, fuel my body well, and the mental capacity to undertake challenges.

When I first moved out of my house that I shared with my husband, food was a big freedom to regain.  I found that for some people, the way they choose to fuel their bodies is equally as ingrained and a part of them as their religion.  Enter problems in a marriage when those two ways are different...  I kind of took that freedom to an extreme, and over the course of the past few months have packed on a little divorce weight.  Well, time has come to regain harmony between the freedom to eat what I want and the joy I take in pushing my body to new limits physically. 

That brings up another interesting thing - grocery shopping for one.  The adjustment to go from only buying whole foods, organic when possible, and no more than 4 ingredients in pre-packaged meals for two to then go to buying whatever the heck I feel like is intimidating, liberating, and a whole mess of emotions I never thought I would be experiencing.  Here's what I bought this morning:

The food seemed to look fresher when I told it to smile...

So, here I go, back to attempt to find balance between freedom of being able to eat whatever I want, freedom to be able to have my body ready to scale any mountain that comes my way (both physical and emotional) and the discipline to find the harmony in the two...  Here's to happy eating and training!

Why are we here?

Wow!  Big question for a Friday afternoon...  Perhaps I should be more focussed...  Why are we here; me writing about my life, and you tagging along for the journey?

Well, to put it briefly, my life is at a crossroads.  Some people know the whole story, but as things have been changing in my life, people who aren't right in the middle of the madness are watching and beginning to question.  Whelp, here goes - the Reader's Digest version, if you will.

5 years ago on June 1st I lost the best man my life may ever see.  My dad died unexpectedly from a brain aneurism.  He was shoeing a horse when he collapsed.  He was rushed to the hospital, flight for lifed to Denver, and pronounced dead by the next morning. 

My dad with Dirt Cake Daisy, one of his favorite horses.



To put it mildly, it was a nightmare.  To have someone who had been a rock in your life there one moment and gone the next isn't anything you can prepare for.  The pain I still feel on a dailiy basis seems to be less and less, but then as the season leading up to his death, then the anniversary of it, along with Father's Day all bring it back as close as if it happened today. 

I will take full responsibility - I began to try and heal and allowed the man I was dating to fill the void I should have processed and grieved with losing my dad to fill that hole in my life.  I was married 6 short months after Dad died. 

Deep down I knew I was pushing something.  That's something I have done for a lot of my life - striving, perservering, and following the plan I thought everyone wanted me to fulfill.  That all began to create problems in my marriage...  Anger issues began to arise, violent things happened, threats were made, and I decided at September of 2011 that I needed some perspective.  I moved out of the house I shared with my husband, and with the different perspective I was able to see just how unhealthy we both were.  I decided then and there that it was time to regain control of my life and stop living up to what other people wanted me to do.

That's not to say that the process has been easy.  Divorce is never easy.  Especially when people are involved.  Hmmm....  Yup.  Every divorce is difficult.  We had issues, bad things happened, and there were points that it almost didn't happen.  This song on Glee was a great new theme song for me right now. 

The time has come to shake off the Devil from my back.  A big part of allowing myself the time and space to properly heal from the pain of the past few years was quitting my job.  I was stressed, working super hard, and not taking care of myself.  The opportunity arose (basically my lease was up, my mom has a spare room in her barn - yes, I'm going to live in a barn, I don't have a mortgage, no debt, and a super-cool summer job to go to) and I decided to take it.  Welcom my time out on life.

That's not to say that I am quitting life altogether.  I'm just drawing boundaries on my time to give myself some space to breathe, think, and heal.  My faith has been something that has suffered dearly through all of this emotional turmoil.  I'm struggling with things like prayer.  Why should we do it?  If God's going to do what he's going to do whether I pray or not, why bother?  And, did I not pray hard enough if my dad died and my marriage failed?  Don't tell me to pray hard and God will answer - it almost makes me feel responsible for his death.  Another question while I'm sharing - if God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, then why do bad things happen?  Why aren't we just born in heaven?

Well, hopefully my blog will be a space to explore this, allow myself to heal, and begin the next adventure, whatever that may be.  I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have this time and my timeout.  My "plan" currently gets me to the middle of August.  After that, the world is my oyster!

If you had this chance to do anything in the world that you could, what would it be?  Let's all start dreaming a little bit more, and maybe we can all help each other reach that answer together - why are we here?

Allergies - really?

I am not one to complain...  a whole lot... ok, never mind... I've been known to complain.  Right now I am hitting on a full week of coughing like I'm trying to hock up a lung...  And I'm ready to complain.  And also share a funny story of growning up around other things coughing...

Growning up with a horse trainer for a father made certain we grew up with lots of animals around.  One of the more memorable animals from our family was the first dog my family had - a little yipper dog named Jackson. 

(This isn't Jackson...  But he looked similar...  Except if you ask my mom the real treat was smelling him.  Yum!)

Jackson was the dog my dad had, and when my mom came into the picture, he was a little jealous.  He got kicked out of the bed when Mom and Dad got married, but he wouldn't miss an opportunity to get back in.  He was especially zealous when my mom was pregnant with me and had to go the bathroom.  She would come back and Jackson had taken her place...  Growling at her as she tried to regain her space. 

Dad and Jackson had a special bond shared with my uncle, Dad's twin, Mike.  One day my mom came home from work, and the boys (Dad and Mike) were so proud of the trick they taught Jackson.  They taugh Jackson to hock a loogie on command.  Yup - they would say, "Hock one, Jackson!"  And he sure would!  Here's a how to if you don't know how to do it yourself.  It's up to you to figure out how to teach a dog to do it - those Bowers boys sure were talented trainers!

Now, it's my turn.  Discousting, I know, but back to coughing I go.  I just bough allergy medicine and some magical cough drops that should help.  Wish me luck!  And stay back - you never know where some of these things could land.

On a side note, this lady takes it to a whole new level!  Wow!  http://news.yahoo.com/video/oddnews-22772304/chicago-reporter-chris-derose-interrupted-by-spitting-woman-29192880.html#crsl=%252Fvideo%252Foddnews-22772304%252Fchicago-reporter-chris-derose-interrupted-by-spitting-woman-29192880.html

Bikini Season is Here!

After a winter of big sweaters, long sleeves, long skirts, and long pants, it's a rude awakening that bikini season will be here in a little under a month, and I'm going to Mexico three weeks after that. 

My sweet roommate kindly took photos for me to document the start of bikini prep, and to put it in one word - yikes!  Here's the bikini.  No, I'm not going to show you what I look like wearing it until I have had some time to work out. 

So, wish me luck as I start my one month bikini challenge!  I love to run, so I'll be running quite a bit, lifting every Tuesday and Thursday, and doing some additional cardio to help me get ready for this little number.  Once I'm ready, you'll know... because I'll be chilling out here: 

This is the lake behind my mom's house, right next to the farm.  To say I'm excited to have a summer ahead of me filled with hanging with the family, swimming in the lake, training for my next half marathon, and relaxing is an understatement!  Now to just get more comfortable in my own skin...