Like A Kid Who Snorted A Pixie Stick

Hurrah!  BIG day!  BIG news!  I've done it!  I've closed my first sale!  I started my job 7 months ago and have been training up to this moment, learning about the industry I'm in, gaining technical knowledge, creating presentations, and now the title on my business card actually means something.

The sale was closed within my first ten minutes in the office today and as a result, the rest of the day's been a whirlwind.  This isn't just my first sale in my current position, this is my first sale ever (apart from 2 years working in retail while in college).  It's shown me that I am capable and professional, and I feel genuinely appreciated by my colleagues.  My boss (semi-jokingly) dubbed me "star of the day" and (seriously) told that I handled the client and sale very well, and I even got a congratulatory email from the CEO in Oslo.  I know I work for a small company so there aren't as many steps between me and the CEO, but I'm going to let myself feel proud of that email.

It's amazing what one achievement will do for your confidence.  I've had to stop myself from practically skipping on my way to the water cooler or colleagues offices.  Zak asked me how I felt after I told him and I blurted out "like a kid who's snorted a pixie stick!"  It was the only thing that came to mind that described how excited and buzzed I felt.  Suddenly I feel like I can achieve anything.  My mind is running a mile a minute of all the things I've been wanting to learn or get back into but haven't allowed myself the confidence to actually do it.  But now I don't feel that there's anything to hold me back.  So watch this space, big things are coming....

You Get What You Ask For

A couple of days ago I wrote a gloomy post about some gloomy weather.  All I wanted was something in the weather to change, regardless of what it may be.  Well, careful what you ask for.  Today my part of Texas has seven weather warnings:  a tornado watch, strong wind advisory, flash flood warning, two flood warnings, and two severe storm warnings.  The rain is so hard you can barely see anything, the sky is as black as night, and the roar of the wind is chilling.  The storms are coming from the west and cities that experienced this weather a few hours before us are at a stand still with flooded motorways and blown down trees and power lines.  We had a power outage for a couple of hours in the middle of the night and I woke up with a start at the sound of the wind.  But now the real storms have hit, the kind that show up as deep purple on the weather radar.

Now we've had worse weather here before, but we went through this just 16 days ago, and once in January is unusual for us.  Twice is almost hard to believe.  But the weather has caused the change on my mood that I was hoping for.  No, I'm not happily skipping about that there could be houses and buildings damaged, people hurt.  But this weather snapped me out of my winter blues funk as soon as I woke up at 2.30 this morning.  This weather makes you alert; everybody's a little more cautious and almost compassionate.  I've had a call from my mum asking me to let her know when I got to work safely and Zak is keeping in touch more than usual.

I have a vivid imagination, and so when something dark happens my mind can't help flickering over the idea of the worst.  I've spent the morning worried about my mum if she tries to go out to any shops, and if our dogs Pandora and Sheila are okay at home alone (Pandora doesn't like storms very much.  She looks around nervously from window to window.  I'm trying to tell myself that she's curling up to big sister Sheila for support).  Hell, I'm even wondering if the squirrels that live in our backgarden and constantly torment the dogs are okay.

On the flip side, this type of weather does make me a little happy.  When not contemplating the potential dangers of this weather, I excitedly think about how when I get home I'm going to sit in front of the fireplace with a massive cup of tea and a good book, or have a long relaxing bath while the rain beats down on the window next to me, or watch one of my guilty pleasure films with a glass of good wine and a thick blanket.  Knowing my luck, by the time I'm home from work today the sun will be back out.  But until then, it's nice being out of the funk and having something else to think about.

Winter Blues

The weather's been miserable for the last few days.  Predominantly overcast, gusty winds, dark nights, and warm temperatures.  Yep, it's winter in Texas.  On the whole, Texan winters are wonderful.  They're a healthy mix of cold days (some bordering on the freezing temps) and warm sunny days.  Both are wonderful.  You can remember how much you loved wearing your coat and your flip flops in the same week.  It's a blessing, really.

But that doesn't stop Texas residents from feeling the "winter blues."  This week I've seen more sullen looking faces than I have in the last month, from the woman at subway who looked at me as if I'd asked her to rob a bank when all I wanted was more lettuce to the tellers at the bank.  People in general just seem a bit downcast.  Maybe that's because the holidays are officially over, New Year's resolutions are starting to fail, or just the last few glum days we've been having that are giving people the "winter blues."  And unfortunately, I am one of the sufferers. 

I'm ready for something to change and I don't really care what for.  Winter Blues can be brought on by any number of things.  For me, it's been our warm and cloudy weather.  I like the two extremes of a Texan winter.  This blended weather doesn't suit me.  My requests are quite simple.  I'd like to be in a) shorts and a tank top sunbathing or working in the garden or b) in 50,000 layers of jumpers, socks, and all things cosy.  And although it's trivial, the sluggish air is just enough to make everything else about my days feel slow.  The forecast tells me the sun will come back out in a few days, so I just have to pull through the next 72 hours.  Bring on the sunshine!

A Bit of Fun

As my last post stated, a lot has changed in a very short amount of time in my life.  I feel very fortunate that things have panned out this way, but I also know that I worked very hard for these accomplishments.  I have a pretty solid routine wearing many hats:  wife, mother (although it's just to the two dogs, one of them is only a year old and takes up a LOT of my time), homeowner, professional, etc...  This is a part of life, we are never just one person playing a single role.  Some of the time these roles we're given aren't through choice.  Fortunately, I have chosen each of my roles, but that doesn't mean that I don't get overwhelmed every now and again. 

The beginning of this week was one of those overwhelming moments, where everything seemed to get too much for me.  Work was busy as usual, there was garden work piling up after having a drain installed last week, my little angel of a one year old Dachshund/Beagle decided on Monday to rip open two throw cushions and Tuesday to feast on the front end of an arm chair, bills were due, and with my usual duties, I felt that I was trapped in the movie "Groundhog Day."

But now, I have clarity and light at the end of the tunnel.  Routine was broken yesterday.  I got home a little earlier than usual, my soft furnishing-hungry mutt hadn't destroyed a thing, the Texas winter sunshine was still high enough in the sky so that our garden wasn't totally in the shade, and I did some gardening and played fetch with the dogs while blasting some guilty pleasure Kylie Minogue.  I could feel my shoulders relax every time I threw the tennis ball, my chest loosen every time I sang to a song.  Also with a friend coming over for dinner last minute, where I got to try a very delicious (and healthy!) chicken recipe, it didn't feel like your average Wednesday.  Sometimes all it takes is doing something different to make the week feel more exciting or to escape your current stresses. 

However, my excitement continues as tonight I'm doing something I haven't done since I was in college - I'm going out on a Thursday night.  Now Zak and I have regular Thursday nights out where every other week we meet up with a bunch of friends at a pub or restaurant, but they're more of a happy hour social meeting.  Tonight is to see Avicii, and I get the opportunity to get dressed up as if it were a Saturday, and the night won't end until 2.00 in the morning.  I know it will hurt tomorrow as I drag into the office at 8 a.m., but it will be my badge of honour.  I know a lot of people go out regularly on a Thursday and stay out this late, but I'm not one of those people.  Come 9 a.m. tomorrow I'll be asking my coworkers if they want to go on a Starbucks run with me as I look for a severe jolt of caffeine.  But that's tomorrow.  For now, I can't wait to do the hair and make-up, slip into my party dress, and dance in the car all the way to the club.  :)

It was taken last October, shortly after we moved into the house, but here's a picture of me with my two babies (the small one is the baby that's enjoying all the furniture.  The other one just sleeps on it).

Moving On

So it's been a while since I've shared anything....a long while.....nearly a year.  Oops!  Well to pick up where I left off, I stopped writing because for a long time there weren't things worth sharing.  But over the last 7 months, I can say that things have been getting increasingly better.

Major developments are that I am in a new job working for a Norwegian company in the oil industry, I get to travel again (one of my favourite things in the world), I managed to get 2 holidays last year (more travelling - yay!), Zak and I adopted a second dog, we celebrated our first anniversary, and we became homeowners!  Not bad, huh?

Here's a picture I took while in Oslo last August for work:

So now that the ice is broken, albeit rather bluntly, I plan on developing a few things in 2012.  No, I didn't make an New Year's Resolutions.  The main reason being that by 31 December I can never remember what I promised myself 365 days ago, so I never know if I've kept or broken my resolutions.  Instead I just want to keep evolving.  I want to keep up what I'm doing that's good and improve on what I'm doing that's....well, not as good (this blog is one of those "improve upon" items).  And I want more time for my hobbies, which as a homeowner I can now add "gardening" to that list.

So there are the basics.  I'll leave you all with that and hopefully be able to write much more in the future.

Things always happen in 3s

The last week has been tough.  I know life's always meant to throw these curveballs at you, but the last week felt like I was trapped in a batting cage with the pitching machine cranking out fast balls and me without a helmet and a bat.  (That's my American-ism for the day) 

I was brought up with the notion of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and the concept that you just had to take the bad things in your stride.  But when it's one thing after another, you do start to wonder...."when is this going to stop?"  I believe that all things come in sets of three.  Well believe me, I had my three last week.  And they were all totally out of character for me.  First, I dropped the ball at work.  I knew it was meant to happen at some point, but the way it all came about made me feel sick and left thinking that my reprimand wasn't entirely professional.  Then later that evening, as I dropped a 17-inch widescreen laptop on my toe, splitting the nail in half, and creating lots of blood and bruising.  I'm not a clumsy person and I'm not prone to injurying myself.  I took it as a sign that I was just exhausted after the bad day at work and opted for vodka on the rocks over Ibuprofen. 

The third bad thing was a bit of a shock.  It was two days later over the weekend.  The day before had been Zak's birthday and we had a great time going out, and then that day we'd had a very successful barbeque.  I was in the kitchen doing dishes from the party and had just poured myself a glass of wine to go in the living room and finally put my feet up.  What I didn't know was that the universe had other plans.  For some reason I had no idea that our 65 pound dog, Sheila, had laid down right beside my feet.  I turned full force ready to start walking and went flying.  I came crashing down on the tile floor, with my knee taking most of the shock.  My head also hit the floor (no concussion, but minor whip lash) and the crystal glass shattered, slitting my finger open.  I've never fallen like that before in my life, not even as a kid.  So now I'm still hobbling around with a knee twice the size of the other.

So I've had my three bad things.  Time for the cosmos to send something good my way.

Getting Together

This week has been a big week for my family.  Yesterday my baby brother turned 16.  He's the youngest in the family and the only boy.  We all got together Sunday evening for a family dinner, Zak and my sister's boyfriend included, and were fully prepared to have an enjoyable evening.

Of course, things didn't turn out that way, and the boys all had to run out on a last minute errand that would take a couple of hours.  This left my mum, dad, sister, and myself having dinner together for the first time since my brother was born.  There have been plenty of times when my brother's been out, but there was always a boyfriend thrown into the mix, or maybe just one of us girls were at home.  We all noticed that it was the first time in 16 years that we'd had dinner as just the four of us, and ended up talking about life before the baby.  Only instead of us talking about things before he was ever a thought, we (mainly my sister and I) ended up talking about the excitement of him being born:  what we wanted him to be named, what we were doing the day of him being born, etc.

Zak can't get over how close we are as a family.  I never really noticed growing up how we were a much closer family than the average.  We all spend time together because we want to and like to, not because we feel it's an obligation.  I don't dread the holidays with my family or having to go to a dinner party with them.  Hell, the best parties I've been to have been with them.  We all make time for each other as a group and also separately as well.  I like having one-on-one time with my mum or my sister, just as much as I like talking with my dad or listening to my brother play music. 

I think our closeness stems to the fact that we live so far away from the rest of our family.  It's forced us to rely on each other in a way that you wouldn't have to if your aunt or grandparents were just down the road or in another city, where you had the ability to see them more than once every two or three years.  We know that we'll always be there for each other.  Now that my sister and I are out of the house, and I'm married, we all have our own lives.  But it's nice that we still find ourselves wanting to get back together every once in a while.