It · is · a · tale · told · by · an · idiot....

I have seen this floating around the interwebs for a week or so now. "If you could talk to yourself at 16, what would you say?" I will be honest, I saw it first on a few blogs of girls I went to high school with and some of their comments made me mad. One of them mentioned spending more time with, oh we'll call him, M.R. M.R. was my first boyfriend. He was a wonderful, fun, amazing boy/man and I am devestated that I can't email or facebook him or even pick up the phone and call him. The girl who wrote that was never a part of our group and probably never talked to M.R. So for some reason, that really upset me. But I do like this girl and know she meant it in a good way, but it got me to thinking what would be on my list. So here goes. This is probably lame, but hey at least I am posting!!!

1. Sneak out of your house, at least once. You will regret it forever if you don't break the rules at least once. Your parents will understand....after they ground you.
2. Go to prom with M.R. I know you're dating someone else, but all during prom you will keep thinking how you want to be there with someone else.
3. Realize that just because someone is an adult does not make them mature. You will have at least one adult who will try to hurt you. She was immature and could not understand anyone wanting to do anything besides be popular. Do not let her get to you, you made the right choice.
4. You are a few years away from becoming comfortable with yourself. You will meet wonderful people who are more than just smart. They think. They question. They will teach you that it's not necessary to make sure everyone knows that you are smart. Instead it is ok to be that quiet girl in the back who sets the curve on every test. And during your senior year people will ask your advice on classes to take and when you tell them that a class is easy, they will say, "yeah, but you're Niki....you're one of the smartest people here". You will stare at this person like they are crazy.
5. You will have a husband who loves you and who you want to be the perfect wife for. You will want to clean house and cook and garden and everything to make his life that much nicer.
6. There will come a point when your husband saying "You are brilliant" is just as good as him saying "You are beautiful".
7. Don't get mad at Putz. Even the time M.R. brought over flowers late at night because you two had a fight on instant message, and Putz barked loud enough to wake up your parents and had M.R. run away.
8. Never have a fight with anyone over instant message. It's just a bad idea.
9. Wear whatever short skirt you want to. You deserve it and will never be as physically beautiful as you are right now. Embrace it.
10. You will travel beyond anything you can imagine right now. You will stand in locations where our world was formed and influenced. You will see works of art that you will stand in front of for hours and all you can say is "Wow". And you will still miss home the entire time. Those are both wonderful things.
11. It is ok to listen to country music...sometimes.
12. It is ok to obsess and become completely absorbed in things. Passion, whether it is for a baseball team, a children's book series or the desire to be a princess, is what makes life worth it.
13. In a few years you will go crying into Liz's room that you want to be a princess. Remember the next three hours. You will remember that moment and laugh until you cry every single time.
14. After 11 years, you will still remind people that you were the State Debate Champion.

Ok ladies and gentlemen, that's all I have now. Oh, I guess one more.

15. At least three times while writing this list, that cute guy you met in sixth grade will make you laugh by just being himself.

Since Allan is a student at UALR I get to use their gym. Today I went to a class called Piloxing. Pilates + Boxing. It should have just been named Niki is Old, Fat and Out of Shape. I managed to make it out of the building. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Ok so I am typing this on my phone. So please forgive any typos. I was just reading an article about emma Watson transferring from BrownUniversity. Someone apparently leaked that she was being bullied, but she denied it. Supposedly in class whenever she got an answer right people would yell out "3 points for Gryffindor". Is that considered bullying? I kind of think it's the funniest thing ever. Am I a bully?

I know most of you already know, but we had to put Putz down yesterday morning. He had a tumor on his liver that was making it really hard to breathe. The only other option was to take him to Tulsa for chemo treatments that might only give him a few more months at the most. He wouldn't have wanted that. He was 15 1/2 years old and just didn't have the same fight he used to. He was my dad's best friend and the best dog I've ever had. I know it sounds stupid but I never knew it would be this hard. I'm so thankful that I was able to come up to Fort Smith before my parents took him into the vet. We were all there with him. It was so fast and I hope it was painless.
Having said that, my dad and I haven't stopped crying since yesterday.

The best (and maybe only) way to get over a crummy interview that you were really excited about is an absolutely gorgeous day, and convertible top down, and an ipod. Seriously, not a bad way to spend a day.

So I just bought my first thing off ebay. I'm about ten years behing the times but I'm kind of pumped!

It was bound to happen. I just wish it hadn't. They have blocked facebook and livejournal at work. (well, those two and some others, but they don't really impact me).....just on a side note, did you notice how I said "impact" in that last sentence? That's because I'm an educated 28 year woman who avoids the use of "effect" and "affect" like the plague. I even do it in my writing at work. It's mildly pathetic.

I'm pretty much going to break every rule of etiquette and talk about money today. Nobody has to read, but I need to rant for a while. Well, honestly it's probably more that I need to be accountable!
I'll start off with a full acknowledgement that I have a great job. I am not struggling to make ends meet, and I know it could be so much worse. I know that, and I'm so incredibly grateful. BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO HARD! Again, I have a great job, I should be able to go out and buy a pair of awesome shoes if I want. But I can't. I'm on a very carefully designed daily budget program. And around Christmastime, don't even get me started!!!
I guess it just comes down to the fact that I have debt. I don't have credit card debt, I don't even own one...thank goodness. But I have student loans and now a mortgage. I paid off my car a year early and then two weeks later I spin out on the highway and end up spending $1,000 in repairs. Admittedly, half of that was two new tires that I probably needed (hence the spin out). But I'm not sure my savings account can take many more hits like that. I thought after paying the car off early I would have all this extra money each month and that's just not how it's happening.
I have an addiction with getting out of debt. For some reason I really hate being in debt at all. It drives me crazy. I have fairly complex (for me anyway) excel spread sheets on both my Student Loan and the Mortgage. I am making pretty substantial extra payments on both accounts. My goal was to have my student loan paid off in six years from when I had to start paying. I'm coming in a little under that right now, which is awesome, but it's still over two years away. Even if I double my payments at this point, it only brings me down a year. I want the joy of paying this thing off, and I'm not sure I can wait two more years for that high.
And my mortgage seriously keeps me up at night. It's not that I can't make the payments, or that something like that has ever been the issue. It's just the idea of owing so much. I mean if I had to, I could clean out my 401K (which I'm never going to do) and some CD's and with my savings I could pay off my student loan........but I can't do that with my mortgage. If I ate peanut butter and jelly for two years and put every cent I had towards paying it off, I still couldn't do it in the short term. I could force Allan to start selling plasma every month and it still wouldn't make a dent in that sucker. That's terrifying.

Ok I'm sorry that was so long and boring, but I think in the next few days you're going to hear about my 401K account and how much my advisor says I should be saving each year! And then you'll all get to come visit me in the asylum because it is causing me to have a mental breakdown!