I’m firmly convinced that, somewhere along the way, I lost my girl genes. It’s not that I don’t want to look presentable when I go out in public, I just have no clue how to do it! When we had cable, I watched “What Not to Wear” and “How Do I Look?” and secretly hoped that someone would nominate me, because I feel like my friends are no better equipped for an intervention of this level than a bartender is equipped to diagnose and treat mental illness.

And working from home for the past year and a half certainly hasn’t helped matters any! At one point, I had to get up and leave the house for work and I felt somewhat ready to face the day since I had a friend who gave me her old wardrobe. Now, the tie dye t-shirt and too-big jeans I’m wearing is me getting dressed up for the day!

The Nicest Restaurant I’ve Ever Visited

Last week, I went to what is, without question, the fanciest restaurant I’ve ever been to. My friend, Amee, and her friend said they were wearing “jeans and a nice top” so I followed suit. Apparently, we have different ideas of what this constitutes! The proof is in the pictures. And yes, I refer to this shirt as one of my “fancy t-shirts” because it’s fitted and has a scoop neck!

Okay, so some might say I could use the “I didn’t know we were going there” excuse, but even if I had known, I wouldn’t have had anything close to suitable because most of my wardrobe is jeans and “fancy t-shirts” and cut off shorts (which I must admit, there are now more of.)

Christmas with the Family

Does the shirt look familiar? Yep, it’s my fancy, schmancy scoopneck t-shirt! Notice how the rest of the family is at least somewhat dressed up? Well, at the time, I thought it was completely acceptable to wear this shirt to a family holiday gathering!

Again, it’s not that I don’t know that I shouldn’t wear this shirt for anything remotely worthy of dressing up, it’s just that t-shirts are the only thing that don’t scare the crap out of me! And, until recently, I failed to realize that t-shirts didn’t have to mean tennis shoes on the feet. Told you, missing the girl gene! What girl doesn’t know that you can wear cute shoes with a t-shirt and it makes the whole outfit look just a little better?

I think the worst part is that I know I feel better when I dress better. I also know that shopping has triggered anxiety in the past, so I avoid it like the plague. That’s why I’m writing this post as my entry for the  Microsoft Windows Style Makeover Sweepstakes for a chance to win a head to toe makeover!

Friday morning, I woke up and I could feel the gray cloud hanging over my head. All of my friends were getting ready to head to Chicago for a blog conference, and because I didn’t have anyone to watch my kids, I wasn’t able to go, even though I had a ticket. By 11am, my stepmom told me to get ready to bring the kids to her house and I had five hours to get ready to leave for Chicago. In hindsight, it made things much more enjoyable and (I’m hoping) I still made a good impression.

No Time to Obsess Over Branding

Yes, having a cohesive brand is important. Having everything match 100% of the time, even if it means paying through the nose for it, not so much. I recently re-branded my site and I haven’t received my new business cards yet. I had less than three minutes to design my cards and get the order placed if I wanted to be able to pick them up and make it to the bus station on time.

They took 30 seconds to design, they don’t match my brand at all, and yet I got compliments on them and thanks from brand reps because they had my picture on them. If they matched my site, it would have had my bubble with a coffee cup, but people won’t remember talking to me because of that as much as they will because they have a picture of the person they talked to right in front of them.

No Time to Obsess Over Clothes

I have to be honest, I’ve been stressing about what I’m going to wear to New York for BlogHer. I’m insanely worried that I’m not going to fit in, that I won’t sell myself well and all that if I don’t have the right wardrobe. For Brands and Bloggers, I packed the last clean outfit I had in my dresser. Luckily, I now have more drawers, so it was easy to open the drawer that had shirts which were at least somewhat suitable, otherwise I might have wound up in a tie dye shirt that would have clashed horribly with my hair!

Here’s the thing… no matter what you wear, someone else will be dressed better than you. There will also be someone dressed more casually than you are. Would I have worn a scoop neck t-shirt and jeans if I had more time to prep? Probably not. I like to dress like I’m going to a job interview when I go to a conference, because that’s what it is to me. On the other hand, it was a good lesson in forcing myself to be confident with who I am and what I want to come across on my blog.

Talking to a good friend (who sat near me yesterday), it hit me that I perfectly dressed my brand and my mission. I could have gone to Nordstrom with her on Friday and picked out a nice, professional outfit to wear, but I would have been miserable. Instead, I was comfortable, which allowed me to place all of my attention on interacting with people rather than worrying if my outfit looked okay.

No Time For Hype

When you have months to plan for a conference, you have time to psych yourself out about who’s going to be there, what amazing brands you’re going to meet, etc. When I found out I wasn’t going to be able to go to Chicago, I stopped looking. When I stopped looking, I stopped putting people on pedestals. I stopped trying to figure out how to make a brand want to work with me in the future.

What my table mates got from me yesterday was me. I wasn’t guarded. I uttered the phrase “Get out the butter, bitches” when talking about injecting my personality into recipe directions. I had a great conversation with Jacqueline Wilson about lickable, fuzzy wallpaper. I told everyone that we should check each others’ underwear when Andrea Metcalf asked who was wearing white underwear. We had fun! If I had kept building the hype in my mind, I doubt any of that would have come out.

Now, I’m putting BlogHer out of my mind for the next week. If I think about the trip at all, it will only be about the things I want to do when I’m not at the conference. I’m a small town girl hitting the Big Apple (possibly for the only time in my life) so I want to enjoy it! The truth is, everything else is going to fall together whether I worry or not.

What’s your best tip for enjoying a conference?

When I first heard of Fifty Shades of Grey, I was intrigued by friends talking about how great it was. Eventually, I broke down and read them. Yes, all of them. No, I’m not ashamed to have read 50 Shades of Grey. And honestly, as I’ve branched out to reading other romance novels, I have to say that “50 Shades” wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was at the time.

What I really want to know is when did romance novels lose their niche and become “mommy porn?” I can remember my mom reading romance novels all the time when I was a young girl and she was never criticized for it. I remember the first time I sneaked one of those books off the shelf and read it. It was pretty steamy. But no one ever called it porn.

Is it because of the fact that many of the older romance novels were set in a different era? Does the new crop of romance novels hit too close to home with their contemporary settings? Or has the “mommy porn” bandwagon been flooded by people who haven’t bothered to read one word of the book, simply based on what they’ve heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who read something online?

The funny thing is, many of the people who are screaming “mommy porn” at the mention of “50 Shades” would have much bigger issues with the books if they opened them.

Have you read the books? What are your thoughts on the “mommy porn” label?

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a night owl. Anyone who was online at a stupid hour last night will tell you that I was up really late last night. But, I’m trying something different. Rather than waiting for next Monday to roll around to start making the changes I need to make in my life, I’m starting on a Wednesday! As you can tell, bright eyed and bushy tailed are not words that would describe me today, but I’m hoping that the short sleep I had will make it easier to pull myself away from the computer tonight!

The book I talk about in the video is One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler. I love the little tasks and the fact that I don’t feel like she’s telling me that I have to change everything about my life all at the same time! My plan is to pick a task and work that one until I have it down, then add another one in.

Obviously, the first one I chose is to establish a morning routine. This is a HUGE fete for me because a) I’m used to my mornings starting about the time most people are taking their morning breaks and b) because by that point, the kids are up, everyone needs something and there’s no time for mom. It was a good feeling to get up, shower in peace, drink my coffee and read from A Confident Heart, Learning to Live in the Power of God’s Promises (one of my morning routine items) and listen to the sound of nothing!

Will it stick? Who knows, but I really do like being up in the morning, even if my body isn’t used to it!

I can remember being a young girl and watching “Top Gun” for the first time. It was wonderful! Not only did I get to see jets playing in the sky, I got my first real taste of Tom Cruise. Sure, I was just a girl, but he was cute! Come on, who didn’t think Tom Cruise looked good in that movie?

After “Days of Thunder” (an all-to-often played movie when you have a racing fan dad and twin brothers) he married Nicole Kidman and they were such a cute couple. But, like so many good things in life, it didn’t last. Two adopted kids later, they had a nasty divorce and moved on with their lives.

And apparently, somewhere in there, Tom Cruise lost his mind! Or perhaps he got to the point where he just stopped consciously trying to hide the crazy. Although I knew weird ran deep in his veins, it wasn’t until yesterday that he went from being a bit eccentric to a little slimy and creepy. In an article about why Tom Cruise called the already-ex Mrs. Cruise Kate:

During an interview with All Headline News, he explained, “Katie is a young girl’s name. Her name is Kate now – she’s a child-bearing woman.”

First of all, I’m pretty sure that Katie Couric hasn’t had any issues with her professional life caused by her childish name. Katie Holmes did pretty well for herself with the name she chose to go by. In fact, it seems that very few people picked up on the change to “Kate” and she never changed her name professionally.

Second, who in the hell does he think he is that he can make that decision? She’s a child-bearing woman? WTF is that? Seriously, when I read that line, I shivered just a little bit.

Right or wrong, I got this image of how things may have been in their home.

• “Kate, darling, you need to properly set the table for dinner, you’re not a child.”
• “Honestly Kate, do you think you could turn on some cultured music? A woman of child-bearing age shouldn’t listen to that drivel.”

Was the allure of being Mrs. Tom Cruise so great that she allowed her personal identity to be stripped away from her? Unfortunately, there is a good chance that may have happened. How many girls allow that to happen with a regular joe? I know I did. Now, put a celebrity that I’ve crushed on for decades across the table from me for dinner and I might be willing to accommodate his requests.

Or the me I used to be might have. Now, I tightly guard my individuality, even as a wife and mother. Hubby knows there are certain things I will talk with him about, but he also knows there are certain decisions in life I didn’t give away when I said “I do.” And you can bet that if he told me that a child-bearing woman didn’t (insert whatever stupid demand here), he knows there would be one hell of a fight. I may be his wife, but I will always be ME.

I’ve been there. I’ve felt like I was stripped down to nothing and it took a long time to build myself up again. I hope Katie Holmes will be able to do the same now that she’s on her own. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the good-looking Naval ace has forever been stripped from my memory and replaced by something that could never be attractive again.