I am so NOT a yuppy.

I would have to say that for much of my life I had things pretty darn easy. I grew up having everything I needed and a good portion of the stuff I wanted. I got good grades in school with little effort, got into college, had wonderful friends and ended up in good jobs. I now have a great husband and a great kid and I still have wonderful friends and a good job.

I was not raised to be one of those people that is very motivated by money and belongings. I think that owning a house bigger than you need is ridiculous. I think spending $50k on a car is completely stupid. Fancy label clothes and fancy jewelry? What a waste! I have always felt like the point of life is to LIVE and all the fancy crap is nothing more than ego. People buy fancy stuff and huge houses for no reason other than to prove to everyone else how much money they have and how fabulous they think they are. There is no real value to it at all - it's just yuppy bullshit.

I suppose you are thinking that is just something us poor folk say so we feel better about being poor...WELL, my financial goals are pretty darn simple: DON'T THINK ABOUT MONEY. That's it. I want a roof and food and a little fun and I don't want to have to think about how to pay for it. If that makes me poor then so be it. I'd rather be poor than a jackass. I'm just sayin'.

What I have learned over the last six months or so is how much we, as a society, obsess over things that don't really matter at all. I am guilty of it. I worry about bills and house payments and cars. I worry about this project or that project at work. I worry about my weight and my hair and wrinkles. What have a gained from all that worrying? NOTHING. NADA. NOT A THING. Unless more wrinkles could be considered a gain. Oh, and let's not forget the gray hair.

Instead of all the worrying I should be kicking back and counting how lucky I am that my marriage is incredibly solid, my husband and my son are both healthy, I am healthy. I have a very caring and supportive group of friends in my life. Eric and I have jobs when so many others don't and we get to tuck our son into bed every night and hear him say "I love you."

Why do I tell you all this? Well...Eric and I just made some decisions that will change life as we know it. And you know what? I feel more relaxed and content than I have in months even though I know our decisions aren't the ones we would ever have expected to make.

I have watched friends lose their jobs and lose their homes. I have watched friends literally have their lives yanked right out from under their feet. Having just decided to turn my life upside down I have said NO to all the stress and fear and frustration so many of us have invited into our lives as we have become adults. I have just given the world a big giant "FUCK YOU." And you know what? IT FEELS GREAT!!!

My laziness DOES make me smarter!

Drew, Eric and I have become completely obsessed with the TV show How It's Made on the Science channel. The last 48 hours or so they have been showing a marathon and I now know how they make everything from fur pelts to halogen headlights for cars. The upside of all this TV watching is I now feel slightly smarter for my effort. The downside of all this TV watching is I have accomplished absolutely nothing of value today. I'll muster some concern as soon as this next episode is over.

Brawl in McCall

Every year the league Eric co-directs holds a hockey tournament in McCall, ID, a small resort town about two hours north of here. Eric was tasked with doing league director stuff and I got asked to be scorekeeper. We stayed in a rental house with the main league director, three refs and one of the players. I, as usual, was the only girl.

Here are a few of the things I learned during my weekend adventure at the Brawl in McCall:

1. In order to become "one of the guys" when you are the only wife in a house full of guys who really don't want there to be any wives/girlfriends/whatevers -- you have to blend. My chosen method of blending is to be as loud and obnoxious as they are and to drink as much, if not more, beer than they do. The lesson? When one consumes a half rack of Miller Light and only sleeps for two hours it results in waking up still drunk.

2. When you wake up still drunk from the night before the best cure is to begin drinking again sometime around 10:30 a.m. Since I was the scorekeeper this resulted in lots of entertaining commentary and beer thievery by players in the penalty box. The lesson? When surrounded by hockey players, keep one eye on your beer at all times.

3. A wild coyote will chase a drunk hockey player down a dark, snowy street until the hockey player yells obscenities at it.

4. When you are dead ass tired on the second night of a three night tournament and at 3:30 a.m. the rest of your housemates are still partying, and you have to get up in 2 1/2 hours -- do not, I REPEAT, DO NOT open your bedroom door to yell at them. I now have, forever seared into my brain, the sight of our league director in his underwear.

5. When you are yelling at your housemates at 3:30 in the morning because they are still partying, the most effective choice of words is as follows, "It is 3:30 in the morning. I have to get up at 6:00. SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Then slam the door.

6. When you yell "shut the fuck up" at your drunk housemates at 3:30 in the morning they will, in fact, repeat said phrase to you at every possible opportunity for every imaginable reason for the remainder of the weekend.

7. A Laborador Retriever can run faster than a Honda Accord on a snow packed street.

8. At 7:00 in the morning, on too little sleep, with a hang-over, the funniest thing you could possibly ever hear is, "Dude! You just got passed by a dog!"

9. When you are staying in a house filled with guys and you are standing in front of a window naked after a shower, it is important to always, ALWAYS, be sure the blinds on the window are not completely see-through.

10. An all-wheel drive Volvo will slide down a steep driveway, hit the side of a house and get stuck. Four drunk hockey players are not capable of pushing a stuck Volvo out of an ice rut. Four drunk hockey players will try, repeatedly, to push a stuck Volvo out of an ice rut.

And lastly,

11. Keeping score for 22 hockey games in 2 1/2 days in a freezing cold ice rink with too little sleep and too much beer results in a sinus infection.

I guess it's good I don't have implants.

Over the summer I decided to start taking a Tae-kwon-do class. Drew has been going for over a year and has really been doing great. I spent an inordinate amount of time over the weeks watching his class and got to know his instructors pretty well. Seeing as how I was a regular in the gym I suppose that made me fair game for harrassment. SO...when I say I "decided" to take TKD what that really means is I finally caved in to the constant prodding and elected for physical torture as an alternative.

I am not what one would call "in shape." I am A shape, but one normally found in beer brewing companies and not so much in nature. A long, long time ago in what I am beginning to suspect was, in fact, a galaxy far, far away I was a dancer and was in pretty darn good shape. Now I find myself winded from running 5 measly laps around the inside of the gym. Not the big fancy gym you are probably thinking...NO...think closer to 3-car garage outfitted for no purpose other than to make you cry.

Anyway, these classes turned out to be the Most. Awesome. Thing. Ever. and I can't even begin to say thank you to Matt and Shirley quite enough to fully express my gratefulness for having had them browbeat me into finally agreeing to regular beatings and ritualistic humblings. Actually, I am not sure thank you is quite the sentiment I was hoping to express, but it'll do.

So tonight in class after the TKD version of waterboarding, otherwise known as Burpees, we got to spar. I'm not very good with sparring. The only thing I have going for me is really long legs with which, in theory, I can kick my sparring partner from about 3-feet away. However, in my focused attempts to kick them I tend to forget to consider what they might be attempting to do to me. That results in my getting my ass kicked.

Tonight I got punched in the stomach. I got punched repeatedly in the face. AND...yes...that's right...I got punched in the boob.

The BOOB people. And yet...I shall return. And probably get punched in the boob again.