Guest Q&A - Nikki

You've already met Nikki over at Life of Ikkins (fka "To Walk In My Shoes") and I wanted to know her answers to my guest Q&A questions.

Please help me welcome...Nikki!


1. What was the spark that generated the idea that drove you to start your blog?

I started my blog to keep me sane. Seriously. My blog was born because of my decision to move from Virginia to Kentucky with my son. Just the two of us in a semi-big new city (Louisville). Pretty scary! I was getting spammed with emails from friends and family once I made the announcement. Replying to 100 emails just wasn't working when trying to arrange the move, so I blogged updates instead.Voila, 100 email replies condensed to just one blog post! After I was settled in Kentucky I got a little blog-happy so one day I could be blogging about motherhood, another day would be a random rant, and then the next week i'd blog about a new experience. Now-a-days I'm going through another (international) move though, so the blog has gone back to being used for it's original purpose. How's that for perfect! Ha!

2. What do you feel is your strength as a blogger?

Oh no, not that question. You know, the one that every interviewer asks when you're sitting in the hot seat across from them. "I dont know" isn't acceptable, and you have to answer in a way that doesn't make you look pompus. I guess my greatest strength is keeping readers away from my blog. Really, I'm amazing at it ( see question #5)! Or maybe it's the dull way I write, keeping commenters away. Or maybe-- hey, wait a second.....

Seriously though, I truly enjoy blogging. Writing is my stress relief and I think my strength is that I can keep up with it juggling school, working full time, and being a single mommy. Blogging is my guilty pleasure- I can never get enough!

3. What bloggers make you shake your head in admiration? What bloggers make you shake your head in shame or disgust?

More like stealing-hours-of-my-life-everyday-enjoying-her-site in admiration, Jill from Scary Mommy takes the cake. She is a wife and mother of three and is one of the most down to earth, hilarious writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Warning: don't go to her site if you don't have a few hours to kill. You'll get lost in post after post or in page after page of confessions. Seriously. Don't go. Not yet, anyway.

I would have to say I'm the lucky blog winner for most shame. Why? I've had my blog for one year and I just (like literally last week) started using the blogger templates to customize my blog design. What kind of blogger has a blog for that long without learning that kind of stuff? One that should have lots of shame, thats who.

4. How would you like to be remembered as a blogger? What is the legacy you’ll leave behind?

Wow, that's a toughie. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd like to leave a legacy, but I would be happy if during the life of my blog, even just one person read it and was able to do one of the following; laugh, relate, or learn something from my shared experiences. I'm not aiming to get super successful, but in my perfect world of skittles and rainbows, I'd really like for my blog to not suck either. But hey, feel free to follow me, tell your friends about me, and put my blog link out there, I'll take success any day. Can't I have my cake and eat it too? :-)

(You may only have cake if you share with the rest of us.)

5. Do you ever worry that your blog posts may be misinterpreted? Ever ball up your fists, shoot steam from your ears and yell, “But you just don’t get it!” while reading a comment to a post? Even if they don’t get it, is that opinion still wrong?

Honestly, no. I hardly get comments on my posts. Infact, you (Ken) are probably my only regular commenter. A bit depressing now that I think about it. Somehow I found myself in the fetal position and I think I'll just stay here, in my dark corner, and cry... thanks.

On a serious note, I write how I talk and I'm pretty straight forward. I think, though (in my hypothetical future of getting comments on my blog) that situations like this will be pretty easily delt with. It takes a lot to get me upset and things like misinterpretation shouldn't be too hard to deal with. Right?

(As long as you're in that corner...dust it would ya?)

Thank you so much for participating Nikki! For everyone else, I've known of Nikki for a while through Seasoned Gamers. I hadn't really 'met' her until participating in the Fitness Challenges she put together. If there was one feature I could commend her on it's that she's a very good sport. The jerks at SG have actually coined a phrase describing a thread as being ikkins'd. It's not an endearing term, but they're just being dumb funny. Nikki is incredibly tolerant of it and doesn't seem to take it personally. She's also a lot of fun to play video games with.

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Saturday Scavenger Shots - Plant

Birds eat PLANTs.



Umm......whut?



Birds sit on fences near PLANTs.... Yep

Wrapped lumber in the background used to be a PLANT. Or is it still.....?

Hmmm...how can I bend them to my will?

Who woulda thunk it! Already a prime opportunity to use my new found skillz for winning friends and influencing people!

It's about the dog.


No, I'm not trying to influence the dog.

Here's the deal: The original owner would like her back. The original owner is D, the already-ex-brother-in-law. He was the one to choose Sadie (the dog) as a puppy, pay an obscene amount of money for a dog (but I think any money for a pet is obscene,) and spend a lot of time training her. Because of all that, I have no problem calling him the owner.

There are a couple of problems though. Namely the stbx and the stbx-sister-in-law. Both of them think the dog is theirs. Not individually, but 'theirs' as in, "not anyone elses."

The stbxsil and D had a horribly nasty divorce. One that's lasted 5 years now, and is still going on. Somewhere along the line, it seems the stbxsil got 'custody' of Sadie. I have no idea if it was a legal precedent or just something that happened that way. At another point, further up the line, the stbxsil couldn't keep Sadie. If I remember correctly, it had to do with her housing situation. "No dogs allowed" kind of a thing. So we took her in. I'm taking care of Sadie now because my stbx can't feasibly have big dogs. I think she's allowed to, but it's quite a bit more rent, not just a larger deposit. Besides, it's a little 2 bedroom apartment; not exactly ideal for a full grown golden retriever. So I'm housing and feeding her.

I don't want a dog.

Sadie's a great dog. Loveable as can be. Great with the kids. But I don't want a dog.

D wants her back. Now's my chance to send her home. But those 2 obstacles need to be overcome. Right now, my thought is to try and convince the stbxsil to 'approve' it. If she does, that totally removes the stbx obstacle. In fact, the stbx would only be an obstacle if I went to her first.

I haven't spoken to the stbxsil in 3 or 4 years. We left on ok terms, so I'm hopeful that I can come up a with a convincing argument. I think I'll talk about how their daughters will be getting Sadie, not just D. D has custody of at least 1 of their 2 daughters right now. The other is in a therapeutic group home but will probably end up going to D.

So I think if I use that tactic, that Sadie will be going to their daughters, there might be a better chance of it happening without hurt feelings or repercussions for me. We'll see.

Dale Carnegie wrap up

This past Monday night we finished up the 8 week Dale Carnegie: Effective Communications and Human Relations class. It was good. I'm not going to get into particulars, but one of major purposes is to stretch the boundaries of your comfort zone. It did that and I think it did that for everyone to a healthy extent. It's a goal of mine to take that and translate it into more dynamic communication with my coworkers.

The instructor was good. His name was Skip Patience. An older gentlemen who was very energetic. The area leader hinted at how nationally popular he was as a motivational speaker. We were very privileged to have him. During the after class beers, a few of us talked about how there was nothing even remotely negative said by anyone during any of the classes.

Maybe it's not fair, but I can't help but compare him to the previous instructor I had, when I attempted to attend the class at a town that was an hour and a half away. The class was different. And not a good different. The other instructor was quite pushy. Always telling how to do something different, but it didn't seem like we ever got it right.

It was very cool to hear the talks given by the other classmates. We all had to give talks and stories were part of every one. We learned a lot about each other. There was a lot of variety in careers too. A teacher, an engineer, a HR manager, fuel salesman, HVAC salesman, and a few guys from a local greenhouse/hydroponics company. I got to carpool with the fuel salesman which was nice, even just to make the drive seem quicker. I think that will be a continued friendship.

After the talks for each session, we voted for a couple of awards, one for the Outstanding Performance and one for the Breakthrough Performance. I suppose I'm proud to say I won 2 of those awards. Not everyone won something and only a few of us won more than one award. For one big award, after the very last talks, we all voted on who we thought did the best at living the 'Dale Carnegie Principles'. The HVAC salesman was the big winner. He deserved it.

This is the book & pen I got.

So would I recommend it? Certainly...especially if someone else was paying for it. It ain't cheap.

"Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action." Benjamin Disraeli

Whurly Ghurly update....urly

A long time ago, in a comment far far away, someone asked me how my girlies were doing. (Tara...maybe?)

They're doing good, but they've been fighting the typical seasonal illnesses. I have to confess, I got a little pissed and loud when every one of them either coughed or spit on one of the others, or sucked a finger and rubbed an eye. I had been harping about being clean all winter. I think my new tactic will be to send them to wash hands & face every time I catch them doing something gross.

Please don't ask me why G is wearing a coat when A is in short sleeves.

My new camera has a small view screen on the front of it, for easy self-shots. I thought it would be cool for the girlies to play with that.





It's interesting to see that A seems to have a little bit better eye for photography. Even in the random shots she takes. She's pretty conscientious about what she's shooting. And she's a goof.

I suppose I shouldn't leave out the shot of me:

Emotionally, I think they're doing ok. The stbx still can't stop herself from complaining at me when the girls are there, so I've made a concentrated effort to minimize that sort of contact. We haven't seen any blatant button pushing, so I guess that's good. Haven't had any trips to the principals office this year either. So all in all they're good. They'll be changing schools next year. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks for reading!

Saturday Scavenger Shots - Run

Forgive me if my interpretation is a bit of a stretch. As I was RUNning some errands, I picked up a new camera. It's a Samsung PL120. Just came out this month. It's just a P&S, but seems to record decent movies too.

Back in November, when my parents were in Montana for my grampas funeral, the cousins were divvying up grampas cowboy hats. My parents were nice enough to grab one for me. The only crummy thing is that my exceptionally large and powerful brain (or at least the brain holder) is too big for it.

I'm such a sap. Almost everything seen in that
photo has some sort of sentimental value.

On the front of the hat is a brass pin. It's a commemorative pin of the signing of the Constitution. In other words...a picture of the guys that used to RUN this country as they were establishing the rules for RUNning this country. Awesome. I need to ask gramma where the pin came from.

I took this photo with my new camera. I have never had a P&S take such good pictures at such a close range without having to fiddle with the settings. This was auto.

GUN rhymes with RUN. The other thing I got from grampa was his Ruger .22 rifle.

I haven't shot a gun in about 5 years. There's a short range near work, primarily for truckers to practice pistols I think, but it's close enough that I plan on stopping by during a lunch hour to fire this thing a couple of times. It's got a nice Bushnell scope. I was taught years ago how to clean a rifle, but I've forgotten most of it. Gotta do that too. Then maybe I can find a rancher than needs some gophers rubbed out.


I missed a couple of weeks of SSS, so I hope I'm not doubling up on the cycle, but I pick LAURA B! to pick next weeks word.

Fridays Mental Meander

A warning: The following contains my blatant, uninhibited opinion. It is not directed at any individual. What I speak of comes from personal experience. If it offends you, that was not my intention, but I would encourage you to consider why it offended you.


A couple of times over the last few days, the subject of pornography has cropped up in an indirect manner. I've been thinking a bit more about my post concerning affairs and with that idea, I see a direct correlation with porn.

Comparing affairs and porn to fantasy is like comparing Wile E. Coyote to The Lord of the Rings.

Pornography and it's usage is pure fantasy. There is absolutely nothing real about it. It may be pictures of real people, but being just a snapshot of time, they are entirely removed from reality. With an affair, there is another real person involved, which inherently induces some sort of reality into the mix, no matter if the participants choose to acknowledge it or not.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it on this blog before, but I have a problem with porn. I would like to say that I had a problem (or never had, really) but no matter how many successes God gives me in refusing the temptation, it eventually crops up again. I believe it's because I'm a very fallible human. And a male one at that. Not that I'm using that as an excuse, but I'm guessing that it probably will not go away entirely until I find someone with whom I can develop a real relationship and replace those desires with that. A relationship as God intended it.

What I really want to talk about is how it seems to me that a lot of people have a hard time separating fantasy from reality, when it comes to pornography. I believe this because of the time or two I've run across blogs that are obviously of a pornographic nature, or even just mention the casual use of porn in one post, and then talk about a dissatisfaction of their sex life in the next.

Again, I'm not talking about any one individual. There are more than a few of these out there.

Now, I'm not saying that I was the exception. I'd like to think I didn't transfer unrealistic expectations from porn into my marriage bed, but it probably happened. There isn't anything specific I can point to, but I don't think it's possible to not transfer something. To what extent porn had on the dissolution of my marriage, I don't know. I know it wasn't punishment from God. He just doesn't work that way. But if I had to choose something, I would say that I expected my ex to feel the same way that the girls in the pictures seemed to feel.

Thinking about it now, it just seems silly. Thinking about it some more, it breaks my heart that marriages are failing because one or both parties bring the fantasy of pornography into the bedroom. At the least, it can let the participants separate themselves from their mate, even in just a mental sense, and at the worst, it creates unrealistic expectations.

I guess my point is....well, if you don't think pornography is a bad thing, just check yourself. Maybe you have a relationship that comfortably includes porn. If that's the case, would you be just as comfortable without it? Try removing it and see what happens. If you feel like you're missing something important, you probably are...but it ain't porn.

Again...all in my humble opinion.