a barefaced approach

Note to Self

Sarah — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:00:48 +0000

Dearest Self,

I am writing to tell you that I am very proud of you. You are about to embark on a horrific journey of self exploration and thus far you seem very motivated and are maintaining a positive outlook. Bravo!

However, I want you to know that things are going to get so much more difficult before there is an ounce of hope that they will become easier. The challenges you will face are enormous and are meant to break your spirit. They will try to take you apart, piece by piece. But keep your head up and your eyes on the prize. Don’t let bad habits, peer pressure, or laziness get the best of you. Those bastards don’t know what you’re made of at all. They will come on strong and try to win you over with their charm. Trust me, I know they can be appealing. But do not fall for their garbage! You are better than that and they have no idea what you are capable of accomplishing. Show them who is truly in control now!

I know you have a fear of failure. But hey kid – who doesn’t? This is one of the few things you struggle with but luckily it’s entirely fixable. It’s okay to start taking baby steps in the right direction and work you’re way up to a full sprint. Totally fine. And it’s okay to be human and make mistakes along the way. It’s going to take some getting used to, no doubt. Define yourself and your goals. Don’t let this depression defeat you.

You deserve happiness and good health and you are capable of achieving both. Please know that I am with you through this trying and difficult time. It’s going to be one hell of a learning process but I’ve got your back 100% covered. You are a strong woman and I know you can do this.

Yours truly,

Sarah

Making changes

Sarah — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:30:39 +0000

Life is full of craziness and I am always full of excuses to why this didn’t get done, that didn’t happen, blah blah blah. I’m done with that. In fact, I’m done with a lot of things. It’s time to make some changes.

I’ve realized in the midst of a morning tea that I haven’t been doing myself any favors avoiding the things in my life that need to get done. Granted, I am avoiding them to write this blog but that’s besides the point. I have so much I need to finish! Hell, I have things I need to start! Everything from the mundane doing of the laundry to daunting task of losing weight and all the things in between. I’ve been causally neglecting and turning a blind eye to the things in my life that need accomplished because I’ve been too depressed about the person I have let myself become. There is no one to point the finger to or put the blame on but me. And worst of all, I let my Debbie-Downer-self get the best of me. But not anymore.

I have finally gotten my ass off the couch (figuratively, because I am still literally sitting on the couch) and am putting a plan into action. Change is going to happen all over the place; life, health, professional, personal, etc. I enjoy being productive, seeing results and the fruits of my labor. I like achieving my goals and then surpassing them. It’s incredibly satisfying and for some beyond stupid reason I haven’t been doing anything noteworthy. I will no longer tolerate such laziness and the pitiful excuses. This is not the Sarah I want to be. Nor is this the Sarah I want people to remember. I am so much better than that. Life is full of craziness…but so am I! I know I can do this. And it’s time I start.

Creepy Cube Girl’s Superior Intelligence

Sarah — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:00:16 +0000

I imagine there is at least one of these people in every office in the world. It’s the creepy, make you uncomfortable, quirky (in a bad way), has no concept of cleanliness or personal hygiene, obnoxious person in your office. I have one. I call her Creepy Cube Girl (CCG).

I have never encountered this kind of person before. It’s like meeting someone (or something) from outer space. I’m entirely creeped out and being around her makes me want to run home, bathe and make sure I’m current with my vaccinations. She calls herself a type 4 personality and astrologist. Yup, if you are willing to risk getting hepatitis B then CCG will give you a reading. Hopefully the moons are aligned in your favor.

But the real reason I am writing is because CCG apparently has superior intelligence. She claims her IQ is so above normal that people with average intelligence don’t understand her because she’s just so above them. No joke. She is so incredibly smart that she not only sees colors, but hears them. CCG also has the ability to smell sounds. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like side effects as a result of exposure to toxic waste or bad drugs from the 60′s. Seeing as she is not old enough to have lived through the hippie era, I would say maybe she’s just high all the time. Clearly, there is an explanation for this and I definitely don’t think the answer lies in a high IQ. Just saying.

I love the holidays, but….

Sarah — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:01:10 +0000

It’s true. I absolutely adore the holiday season. It is the most wonderful time of the year! I am the crazy who counts down till the day after Thanksgiving and gets everything out the next morning to decorate the house for Christmas. If it were socially acceptable to have my decorations up on November 1st, I would so do it. So yeah, I love the holidays, but….

There are things that happen around this time of year that annoy the crap out of me, make me want to punch someone in the face and/or confirm that I do not do well with morons.

Inflatables in your front yard. This is unacceptable at all times however I find it particularly offensive during the holidays. Really? You have a giant Santa blown up in your front yard?! How tacky can you get? Or a teddy bear with a Santa hat on. Why? Just put up lights and hang a wreath like sane people. What is so appealing about a giant, glowing, full of hot air (literally) character in your front yard? I don’t get the mentality behind it. It doesn’t bring me happiness at all – quite the opposite actually. I am ashamed to admit that I have friends who have these hideous things in their yards. They claim it’s for the kids. Listen, I have a kid and you don’t see me with a stupid blown up snowman in my yard. This is not okay. Take that crap down!
Continuing with outdoor decor….I cannot stand the people who put 47 different kinds of lights in their yard. They have big colors bulbs, small white twinkling lights, LED blue lights, light up snow flakes…. you get the idea. It looks like someone just vomited Christmas lights in their front yard. It’s hard to look out, may cause seizures and is stupid. Pick one kind and go with it! And they say the more lights on the outside, the more problems on the inside. Don’t try to overcompensate. We know what’s really going on…
Holiday humming. I love Christmas music and embrace the opportunity to listen to my holiday favorites as often as possible. However, I will not tolerate you ruining my *NSYNC or Mariah Carey with your off-key humming. No, no, no, NO! I only get a month and some change of this music bliss so I will call you out, embarrass you in front of people and tell you the shut the hell up if I hear you tone-deaf humming.
Ugly holiday sweaters. Don’t misconstrue, I am all for the ugly sweater parties. I’m talking about the people who wear the ugly sweaters for real because they think they aren’t ugly. Yeah, you know who you are. This is just not fair. You’re too easy of a target for mocking and you brought it upon yourself. People are no longer judging you… we are blatantly making fun of you both behind your back and directly to your face. Do yourself a favor… don’t wear those special sweaters in public. EVER.
Car decorations. It is by no means cute to have reindeer antlers, Rudolph’s red nose, a wreath or Christmas lights on your vehicle at any given time. It’s not festive, it’s stupid. And you look stupid in the car that’s decorated.
Mall traffic. This makes me violent. I can’t handle people who lack the ability to drive as it is, much less when they are all in the same place – the mall! It’s insane. Traffic is constantly at a crawl to the point where I could probably walk faster. People don’t use their brains and drive either like driving Ms. Daisy or bats out of hell. Neither of which help the already shitty situation. I loath this entire experience and do my best to avoid it at all costs. Thank goodness for online shopping.
Annoying family. Everyone has that one person in their family that they want to run over with their car. For some reason you never hear from them all year-long and then they come out of the woodwork for the holidays to mooch, annoy and ruin everything that is good. This is what causes domestic violence. If you are this person, do yourself a favor and go visit another family. Spare yourself heartache and the rest of us from hearing your stupid stories and bad jokes. No one cares. And your “everything bad always happens to me” bull shit is getting old. I don’t have sympathy for you. Now get the hell out of my face.
Santas with fake beards. Children aren’t as stupid as we think they are. My daughter saw a Santa with polyester facial hair and knew that he wasn’t real. She said to me, “That’s not the real Santa, mommy.” I couldn’t tell her she was wrong because it was too obvious. Hire an old, fat guy with REAL facial hair. I’m sick of making up stories to my little girl.

I’m not a bad person or an angry person for that matter. I just don’t want to deal with stupid people or stupid shit during my favorite time of year. That’s all.

Annoying Cube Girl

Sarah — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:14:58 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter, you are already very familiar with Annoying Cube Girl (ACG). However, if you are not fortunate enough to read my ramblings let me paint you a picture. Annoying Cube Girl is an almost 50 year old woman who works in my office. She an over-sharing, skin tight wearing, stampede walking, stupid question asking, loosey goosey, well endowed woman who infects everyone she is around. She has no filter, no concept of personal space, nor an ounce of common sense. She is constantly late, can’t follow directions and on roughly a three hour delay regarding any office email or announcement. Everything must be explained to her at least four times before she kind of, sort of gets it and she will ask and/or say the most random shit…all the time. Oh and every shirt she owns is painted on her and cut waaaay too deep to be office or age appropriate, for that matter. This is Annoying Cube Girl.

I work with her everyday. No I have not become an alcoholic, though she has the ability to make me want to drink heavily at 9:01AM. If I attempted to recount every event over that last five months regarding ACG, I would be well into my New York Times Best Seller. But I will not. There is no need to go over her OB-GYN visit, her bodily functions, the men she’s sleeping with or dating from Match.com or her most recent ailment. I’ll spare you. However, please note that they are stories to come.

Converted

Sarah — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:30:14 +0000

I’m a geek so of course I am smart phone user. And naturally I transitioned from Blackberry (who should just quit now) to Android as soon as I could. Blackberry was stone-age in comparison. The next obvious move would be from Android to Apple and one would think since I am an Apple-whore that this would be a no brainer. But I hesitated for a while. I am in love with Apple and everything I’ve ever owned by them has been nothing but incredible. I write to you today from my faithful black MacBook (aka baby black). But I loved Android with it’s customization, 7-screen options and widgets. How could I give all that up?

Well…. after my Android crashed about a bazillion times, my provider sent me 4 or 5 replacement phones and I had to factory recent my phone twice and start Angry Birds ALL OVER again I decided it was time to go Apple. I am a recent iPhone 4S user and I can officially say I’ve been converted. It’s been less than a week! Hell, I’ve even converted two people on my team at work! I will never go back to the unfaithful, unreliable world of Android. It reminds me too much of my Dell PC days and I refuse to deal with that again. I should have converted long ago and now I can honestly say I understand why so many iPhone users are in love with their phones. My best friend, Lu, has always adored her iPhone and I never really got where she was coming from…till now.

My name is Sarah. I am an Apple addict ( geek) and I love my iPhone. Judge me all you want but once you go iPhone, you’ll never go back.

My First Business Trip

Sarah — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:32:43 +0000

As some of you may know, I recently graduated and immediately started my first big girl job. Though it’s only been a handful of months, I could easily write a book about the people and encounters I have had in the corporate world thus far. This week, I took my first ever business trip. Needless to say, I’ve learned many things…. and I’m not talking about sales pros, marketing tools, etc. I’m talking about all the information I’ve gathered from the people watching I’ve done in less the 72 hour trip I embarked on.

People don’t go on these trips to learn about new applications and tools in their field of sales. Nope. They are here to drink heavily, stay up till all hours in the night and cross HR boundaries.
If you aren’t sleeping with a manager or hooking up with other members of your team then you have no intentions of success. Duh! Clearly it’s not who or what you know… it’s who you’re doing!
People will try to expense everything!
Career Ending Decisions (CEDs) are a common occurrences on these kinds of trips. Just hope that 1) everyone else is drunk enough not to remember how you made an ass of yourself and 2) that no one has documented the event with a snap shot or video of your stupidity. The last thing you need is an email, tweet, Facebook post, or YouTube video of you circulating the office come Monday morning.
Open bar translates to everyone drink till you shit out your liver.
Business casual dress means wear the tightest most revealing outfit your own. I appreciate human anatomy but this is no time for a lesson.
If you choose to scream throughout the airport people with either assume you’re in danger or you’re the cause of the danger. If it turns out that neither apply to you, you better run like hell cause people will want to kick your ass.
Flight attendants used to be beautiful women who helped and served you while in flight. Hell they made a show about them. But now they are heartless, ugly women, who shove past you, prevent you from using the lavatory and suck all the warmth and happiness out of the air like dementors from Harry Potter. Do not piss them off!

Needless to say, I did more people watching than I ever thought possible for such a short trip. I’ve learned to appreciate the confines of my small purple cubicle and proceed with caution around those in the office who might have a STD or the tendency to cheat on their spouses with anything that moves. Overall, this was one learning experience I will never forget.

Cutting

Sarah — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 21:23:33 +0000

This morning I went to pick up my nephew’s birthday balloons from the party store. Naturally like any adult, I walked around and entered the checkout line the appropriate way (at the ENTER HERE sign, duh). Well the woman who walked in after me apparently thought it was totally reasonable to cut me in line. Then has the audacity to cross her arms and tap her foot like she’d been waiting an extremely long time for service ~~or was RUDELY cut in front of~~. For some brilliant reason there was only one register open and she walks up there but has NO IDEA what she wants to purchase. None. Meanwhile, I am there to just pick up an order that was paid for a week ago. The whole time I’m thinking, This bitch did not just cut me in line and then waste my time by not knowing what the hell she wants in the first place. I waited almost 20 minutes because of her! If it was soooo important for you to be the first in line that you had to rudely cut in front of my daughter and me, you better have your shit together when it is your turn. Don’t you dare go up there and lolly gag trying to figure out what you want to get. If you wanted to do that, either get the eff out of way or get in line behind me like you should have done from the get go. The only reason I remained civilized was because my 5-year-old was with me. And she even said, “We don’t cut people in line, mommy. That’s not polite.” Yes, my kindergartener has more sense and knows her manners better than that stupid woman. I was beyond annoyed.

Rule of thumb people – don’t be an ass hat and cut people in line. That shit is rude. Cutting is unacceptable, especially if you are old enough to know better.

Halloween costumes gone trashy

Sarah — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:30:24 +0000

I would like to know when Halloween become a time for little girls to dress up like little hussies? And since when is “trashy” a costume? Did I miss some type of nation wide memo?

For the past week, I’ve been online browsing costumes for my Sophia. I found it rather shocking at the number of lace, corset, and/or mini skirt costumes there are for my modest 5-year-old. I thought I was looking for costumes but I found things that too closely mirrored lingerie . Oh and I love the mother/daughter combos. Yes, you can justify dressing up like a hooker and your own daughter can match (but don’t stand on the corner for too long… we don’t want the neighbors to talk). What boggles my mind is that there are mothers out there that are stupid enough to buy these costumes (which segues into why not everyone should be allowed to procreate – but that’s a different post for a different time). Unless your life long dream is for your little to girl to dance on tables or live in a brothel, I don’t see the point in dressing her like she belongs in either place at this age. It’s disgusting.

When I was younger, Halloween was about dressing up in spooky costumes, your favorite action figure/hero, a character from the movies, or an animal. Not to mention it didn’t matter what costume you had because your mom always made you wear your winter coat right over it, but that’s besides the point. Then you’d run from house to house as fast as you could so that you could fill your pillow case with as much candy as possible. For whatever reason, there are now 15-year-olds in masks trick-or-treating ~~who need smacked~~, little girls in trashy costumes and the parents dumb enough to let these things happen.

So I’m letting you know in advance, when I see you on trick-or-treat night and your little girl is dressed like a little hussy, I’m not judging her. I am, in fact, judging you.

Reborn

Sarah — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:47:45 +0000

I was on one hell of a blogging sabbatical. No doubt, I was lacking motivation and interest there for a while. You could just chalk it up to low blogger self esteem. I was in a blogging depression, if you will. Dare you look in the archives, you’ll find I had a good thing going on for a while… then I hit a brick wall. It got ugly. So I took a break, did some blogging rehab and am now reconstructing my blogging self.

What you’ll find here? Well it should be an array of bitching, gripping, comedic stories of the new and crazy parts of my life, occasionally a serious post or two and just your run of the mill kind of stuff.

Why bother? Because you are going to experience a barefaced approach you have never experienced before. More raw, naked truth than you can bare! Bottom line is…

Barefaced is reborn.