Advice is not always advice

cocktail napkin humorI’m always flattered when people ask me for advice. Personally, I don’t know much. Well, I know what my family has taught me, learned from the mistakes I’ve made and feel what my gut tells me. That works for me most of the time.

Regardless, sometimes people ask for advice, but what they really want is reassurance that they aren’t crazy.  Sometimes they just need to vent to an sympathetic ear. Sometimes they just need to hear a voice that isn’t coming from their head. Sometimes they just need a hug. Sometimes they just need a glass of wine or a cookie. Wait, that might just be me.

Sometimes they do want advice.  I tread lightly when asked what to do in any given situation.  I try not to judge.  I try to give them the help that I would want if our roles were reversed. I try to listen to my gut and remind them to do the same.  Unless their life is in danger, I try not to tell them what to do, but help them look at their problem from a different perspective.  Like a great person once said (Einstein maybe), you can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.

So, if you are out there struggling with something that keeps you up at night, makes you antsy, or just generally concerns you, share it with a friend. As the saying goes, a burden shared is a burden halved.

 

What I Miss: Tacos

Street tacosCan someone recommend a place in the Twin Cities with good street tacos? I’m picky about my Mexican food. Most places in California just had OK Mexican food. There was a lot of lard, too much most of the time and that made the food tasteless.

My favorite tacos are simple. Soft tortillas, preferably corn, meat, onions and a light smattering of cilantro. That’s it. No guacamole, no beans, no sour cream, no lettuce. By the way, if you add beans and rice to the inside of a taco, it becomes a burrito.

The rice and beans on the side were almost always eschewed. Not because I don’t like them but because they just weren’t tasty. There was one place in Sacramento that had pretty good cilantro rice, but I never found decent beans. Although, I like the ones from a can at home because I can doctor them up as needed and make sure they are fat free.

So, back to my original question, can I find good street tacos here or will I have to wait until I visit California again?

Beauty Product Storage: How do you organize it?

Since I’mbeauty products, storage, organization still settling into my new place, one of the challenges I face has to do with my beauty products.  About a year and a half ago, I bought this organizer at Target.  It was great for splitting up my numerous products. Plus it was easy to carry from one room to another since I wasn’t living in my own place.  I had to figure out a way to consolidate and still have access to the stuff that made me pretty…or at least feel pretty.

foundation, eye serum, sunblock

The first layer is moisturizer and foundation. Yes, I love Olay products.  My mom uses them, which is why I tried them.  They always smelled so good.  Now, I use them because they work and don’t irritate my skin.  I’ve tried other products, but always end up going back to Olay.

The 2nd layer is supposed to be my everyday makeup, but as you can probably see (or not) a few fun/night on the town type make up items have made their way up a layer.

fun makeup

The 3rd layer is supposed to be the glittery, glam makeup that I only wear on special occasions or because it’s Friday night. Sephora and NARS are my favorite brands.  NARS because the color in the container is true to what ends up on my face and Sephora for the same reasons, but mostly because it’s significantly cheaper than NARS.

As I was taking these pictures, I realize that I need to purge this stuff…as well as just generally clean the silly thing.  While I do like this method of organization, the snaps on this plastic tackle box are starting to wear, so I’m going to have to start looking for an alternative soon.

Total Bunk: An Open Letter to Susan A. Patton

heart with words in it

Love has no expiration date.

Flabbergasted. At first, when I heard about what you wrote in the Princetonean, I thought, “That has to be a joke. No woman with half of a brain and any sense of self-esteem would say those stupid things.”

Seeing no reference to The Onion, I grew angry.

There are so many things wrong with what you wrote. I’m not even sure where to begin since I’m overwhelmed with the stupidity of it all, but I’ll take a stab at pointing it out.

Regarding finding a man:

Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

You can meet interesting people anywhere in the world at any point in time. To say that you really will only meet eligible men in college is completely ridiculous. And what one woman considers to be eligible, another considers to be a total jerk. A salary and education do not a good man make. It’s the content of his character, how he treats other people, that makes a man good. How many Ivy League educated men have gone to jail, cheat on their wives, or are otherwise not ethical or moral? Enough to make your theory ridiculous.

Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty.

Men want women who are dumber than they are? They forgive the stupidity if you are pretty?? Are you insane? Men who marry bimbos don’t make quality husbands. They are fools.

Another thing, men who go to college, Ivy League or not, are not necessarily smart. They are able to fill out Scantrons and pass classes, but that doesn’t make them intelligent. Some full blown idiots have graduated from universities and that includes the Ivy League, in fact one of them was President of the United States for a time.

My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless.

Anyone can marry anyone! OK, I take that back, if you are gay you can’t marry anyone, but you see my point.

Here is another truth that you know, but nobody is talking about. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?

Why are you pitting women against each other like getting married is some sort of competition? You are perpetuating the myth that if a woman isn’t married by a certain age, she’s shit out of luck and might as well give up. Also, your message is basically telling young women if you aren’t married at all you are a lesser person. Would you seriously tell your daughters that if you had any? That’s fucked up. No, I’m not pardoning my French on that sentiment.

Do you really want to feed into the fears of women who are already struggling with their identity in a sexist world? I know this may come as a shock to you, but there are millions of women who are single, past the age of 25, and completely happy. There are also women over the age of 35 who date and marry younger men.

What advice you should be giving Princeton women is none. Relationship advice is total bunk. What works for you doesn’t work for everyone and that’s the honest truth.

Wait, you know what you should be telling women?  There is someone out there for everyone.  Funny how you never went there.

Easter: A time for new beginnings

So, other holidays seem to have a grateful theme to them. Easter seems like more of a time to be hopeful, a time to start over. OK, Easter has always been about candy for me. Those Cadbury mini-eggs and cream eggs are addictive! But, seriously, I know most of us have totally forgotten any New Year’s resolutions we made, the beginning of spring feels like a good time to renew, revamp or restart.

Of course, I’ll be restarting my life in Minnesota in a few weeks. I mean, there’s a Peeps store there! If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is…

Pun intended

Pun intended

I am very hopeful about my future. It’s time for me to take some risks in my career and stop selling myself short. One thing about getting older is that you gain confidence. Or maybe it’s just that you stop giving a shit about the stupid little things you used to worry about as a kid.

Either way, I’m going to revamp my professional self-image. If I change the way I think about my abilities and who I am in the workplace, I can become even more awesome than I am right now. What I really want is to look forward to work each day. It’s not that I dread my current job, but I want to feel passionate about my new job. I want to make lots of money. That probably goes without saying…

This Easter, I’ll try to find some time to quietly meditate on how I want my future to look…while stuffing my face full of chocolate and jelly beans.