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Stephanie



Last Updated: 11/20/2009

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Gender: Female
Status: In a Relationship
Age: 39
City: Nashville
State: Tennessee
Country: US

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November 20, 2009 - Friday 

Category: MySpace
Just popping in to say "hi" to some old friends.

I stopped blogging here in July and I see things have changed quite a bit over here. You never really quite get MySpace out of your heart...even though you realize it's time for the next step.

Some of you got why I was leaving. It went far deeper than anything I could explain. Blogger just fit my life more and I understood that once I made the leap.

I was a lost soul when I first began blogging on MySpace. I was single for the first time in my adult life and feeling very alone and unsure of where to turn next. I think MySpace became my security blanket. It was a place I could log in at any hour of the day or night and I'd have friends. Plus...people liked my writing. Okay, SOME people liked my writing! Actually, in all the chaos that happened here, not many people ever trashed my writing...just me as a human being.

Which is fine. That's part of it.

In the year leading up to my "exit" from here, I began a very serious live-in relationship. We are still together and these days my life involves minivans and semi-parenthood. It involves cooking dinner and housekeeping and laundry. Most Blogger bloggers live in that world. Parenthood, recipe swaps, craft ideas, etc. I think my life now fits there...I just reached a point where I didn't feel I had anything to offer in this primarily single world.

But that doesn't mean I don't miss you guys!

Yes, I have an agent now. One of the best literary agencies in the country, actually. I'm thrilled about this. They are currently shopping around my book series Ghost Patrol to publishers, so fingers crossed. I am just finishing up the second book and preparing to start on the third. My life is immersed in episodes of Ghost Hunters, book and Internet research, and maybe even signing up for a ghost hunting class this spring.

I've found in life, sometimes you reach a point where you need a change. Not something better or worse, just a change. Jumping to Blogger just re-energized my writing. It renewed my love for it. It was SO nice to be able to write without imagining what hateful things would be said about me. It's freeing.

Four months, zero drama. That's nice. I've made $34 from my blog over there...which is about $34 more than I made in the three years I blogged here. But the best part is, my blog shows up very prominently in Google searches. Okay, that's not the best part. The best part is the freedom thing. As I've said many times since leaving, though, the majority of people here are wonderful...and those are the people I think about. Those are the people I miss.

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11:05 PM 
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July 29, 2009 - Wednesday 

Category: MySpace
I am now blogging on a different site. My new audience is a different one...comprised mostly of moms, wives, and writers. If you'd like to follow me, below are the instructions...or just Google Stephanie Faris. It comes right up.
Follow me on Twitter (all new blog posts will be linked here):


My Blogger page:

6:26 PM 
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July 28, 2009 - Tuesday 

Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
When I was a teenager, you couldn't walk a block in my neighborhood without seeing this:



For those of you born within the last three decades, that's a teenager mowing a lawn. I know it's a bit of a shock, but for those of us who were around in the 80s, it was a fairly common thing. Back then teenagers...

WORKED.

I'm not talking about a 16-year-old working to buy a new car, either. No, back then you hit 13 or 14 and you did little things to earn money. Maybe it was just helping out around the house but more often than not, if you were a boy, you were mowing yards. If you were a girl, you were babysitting.



Okay, even back then babysitting meant an hour or two with the kids and the rest of the evening, we'd be chatting on the phone with friends or searching the pantry for junk food. I didn't say we had a STRONG work ethic. Our parents were, after all, making us work. They also made us do chores if we expected our $20 a week allowance, which we were urged to save rather than spend on junk.

We, of course, didn't listen. We spent it on junk. Then we'd see something we really wanted and our parents would say, "Save your money." We'd realize that if we hadn't bought $80 in clothes we didn't need last month, we might have been able to afford that ugly yellow cassette player Walkman that was all the rage at the time.



When I turned 16, I was given a car. It was six years old and plain white. The agreement was, if they bought my car I'd get a job to pay for insurance, gas, and my other miscellaneous expenses. I even had to pay for my own hair spray and makeup by that time. My first job was at Burger King -- getting up at 5 a.m. to make biscuits every Saturday and Sunday. I was absolutely miserable, but my parents wouldn't let me quit. Not until I had another job lined up.

"You never quit one job without having another," my mom told me at the time. It was the most important job-related lesson I ever learned. To this day, I have NEVER quit a job without another one lined up. Even the job that had me in tears every day as I drove into downtown Nashville. Misery just made me search more aggressively.

After seven months at Burger King, my friend got me a job working in the concessions stand at the movie theater. BEST job I ever had. My boyfriend waxes nostalgic about his days as a lifeguard...my sweet memories are all of my days shoveling popcorn. Why?

Because of the friendships I made. The fun we had. I could see all the movies I wanted free of charge. We'd stand around talking, eating popcorn straight out of the bin. (Moviegoers beware -- we had our hands all over that stuff.) In between all that socializing, I learned important things -- work ethics sort of things that have carried me into the present day.

"I don't want my kids to work," I hear parents say all the time. "They should enjoy their childhood. There's plenty of time to work later."

I can appreciate that mentality. I just can't help but wonder if there's a connection between working from a young age and success later in life. Does one HAVE to bag groceries at sixteen to learn a work ethic? What DOES a 16-year-old do with his or her summers if not work?

Don't get me wrong. Even back in the 80s, there were plenty of spoiled rotten kids who were handed BMWs for their 16th birthday and never required to work. Maybe some of them even made successes of themselves despite not working until the day they left college. I don't know. I do know that THOSE were the kids who spent all summer partying. They slept all day to recover from last night's hangover. They would then go to the car wash to spend four hours detailing that car so they could cruise the park that night, looking to "pick up chicks."

It all goes back to the fact that I see not ONE teenager mowing yards in my neighborhood. After an endless search, someone finally found someone to come around and mow the seven or eight yards on our street that belong to people who can't or won't mow their own. He's in his 50s and owns a landscaping company, probably charging twice as much as a teenage boy. The one person I DO know who hired a teenager briefly said he did such a lousy job, he had to hire someone else to fix it.

Where are 13-year-olds? Sitting at home playing Wii or X Box or whatever today's latest popular game is. They're texting or Instant Messaging all day and watching movies on cable all night. They don't have to work -- if they want to learn how to mow a yard, there's probably a video game that will simulate it. After all, why would you want to actually DO something outside when you can play Wii basketball inside your parents' air conditioned house?

I can't help but wonder what these kids are learning. Even more importantly, these are our future LEADERS. If parents don't instill a work ethic from a young age, who will be leading our corporations in the future? Will there be a video game that will do it all for them? If not, we're all going to be in trouble.
3:55 PM 
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July 27, 2009 - Monday 

Category: Romance and Relationships
Last week, I had dinner with a friend who had just turned thirty. I asked if she ever thought she'd get married and settle down and she said no. "Boys are stupid," she said -- her standard comment whenever you mention dealings with the opposite sex.



"Oh, believe me," I said, "it only gets worse the older you get. By the time you're in your mid-30s, all that are left are the crazies."

Even as I said it, I questioned myself. Was that really how I felt? But then I remembered what dating was like and, yes, it was really how I felt. My boyfriend is that one rare gem in the pile of crap I sorted through. We're talking foot fetishists, shouters, spitters and nose-pickers, guys who spoke incessantly about exes...

Mostly we're talking about the guys who spoke incessantly about exes.

It's something you don't seem to notice so much in your 20s. Nor do you notice all that many guys who have been hurt so many times they've erected a wall to keep the world out. What you notice in your 20s, primarily, is fear of commitment.



In your 20s, you could linger in a dead-end relationship for seven years before you realize it's going nowhere. You're young, innocent, and he thinks you're having fun. On your side, you figure there's plenty of time to settle down. Maybe you fear commitment yourself. Whatever the case, what you don't realize once you and Mr. Seven Year Itch part ways, is that you are headed for the worst imaginable horror...

DATING IN YOUR THIRTIES.

Okay, so I don't know what it's like to date at 32 or 33. It may be more of the same you experienced in your 20s. I do know that by the time you reach your mid to late 30s it can get ugly. Here's where you find the men who have been cheated on, lied to, dumped. The men who are broken. Some handle it well while some wallow. The ones who handle it well get snatched up fairly quickly which leaves the others to fall to the bottom of the pile.

And, guess what? Lucky YOU gets to date them.

I once listed out all of the horrible dates I experienced. Here's a recap for those who didn't know me when I was single. My worst all-time dates included, in no particular order:

    The karaoke DJ who absolutely refused to speak to me by telephone ever because he once had a girlfriend who called him numerous times throughout the day and he didn't "want to start a pattern."
    The electrician who spent all of dinner staring at my feet then said he'd like to buy me some Tiramisu at a shop next door so he could watch me step on it and let it slide through my toes.
    The businessman who began his very first phone conversation with me by yelling, "I hate the f-ing water company!!!" and continued yelling, and complaining, for the duration of the call.
    The retail manager who text-messaged right before our first date to ask if we could go back to his place afterward. I said no, so he tried to lure me back there during the date by saying he'd baked cookies.
    The I.T. guy who asked for my e-mail address, finally worked up the courage to send me a message, and chose to use these words: "Sorry I took so long to e-mail you...I've just been really busy lately. Too busy even to pick my nose."
    The reclusive court clerk who kept canceling dates, then finally just stopped bothering to cancel and stood me up.
    The engineer who canceled the date ten hours prior because he knew in advance he'd be sick that night.

I'm not making this up. I swear, I couldn't. There's crazy and then there's CRAZY and there's a reason every single one of the men listed above were still single in their late 30s/early 40s because, as much as we women try to deny it, there is DEFINITELY a shortage of single men compared to single women at this age. Definitely. And as we get older it only gets worse.

That's not to say the married men at this age are perfect but actually, most of the ones I meet are, very honestly, much more sane and "normal" than the men I met dating. Maybe marriage stabilized them, who knows? And, yes, I've heard PLENTY of complaints about crazy women in the dating world but the biggest complaint I hear from men, over and over again, is that most of the women they meet at this age "aren't hot." This from men who long ago passed the "aren't hot" stage and went straight into "looks like crap."

So, to my thirty-year-old friend and all the women out there who are still young enough to do something about it, trust me. It only gets worse. Not that I'm saying you should settle because certainly you shouldn't. But rest assured if you're putting off finding a man until you have achieved every career goal you've ever set for yourself, by the time you decide you're ready, you'll be trying to pick the least crazy of the bunch.

But...hey...at least it makes for interesting blogging, right?
3:12 PM 
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July 24, 2009 - Friday 

Category: Life
A couple of years ago, I had the not-so-brilliant idea to get one of these:



It enabled me to get online anywhere, without having to worry about finding a wireless connection. I was traveling quite a bit at the time, so it came in handy. The problem? I obtained the card through my cell phone provider.



I was paying a rate of $59 a month. Within six months I realized I didn't want the card anymore, but I was pretty much stuck with it for the two years of my contract.

A year after obtaining that card, I bought a new cell phone. I signed up for Sprint's Simply Everything plan, which costs $99 a month. $99 plus $59 + all the assorted fees and taxes they tack on equals a whole lot of money. So you can bet, within MINUTES of my contract on that air card expiring, I was calling Sprint to cancel.

They gave me the usual interrogation. Why was I leaving? What could they do to make me stay? Then she said something that startled me:

"I see you have the Simply Everything plan, ma'am. Because of that, we can lower the monthly rate on your wireless card to $42 a month."

Say WHAAAAAAT?

After I hung up, I thought about this for a while. For a year, I'd been paying $17 more than necessary for my card? That didn't sound right. So I contacted Sprint. Their response? The discounted rate is something the retention team offers. It's not offered to customers who plan to stick around.

You see, in order to get the deal, I had to actually DROP the service. AHHHH, I didn't realize that. So being a customer for more than five years means less than actually threatening to leave?

I was telling a friend this story and she said, "Yep. That's how they operate." Apparently her contract was up for renewal recently and she was trying to decide which phone to buy. A friend of hers said, "You can get the Instinct for $30. Here's what you do." She proceeded to tell my friend that if you call up and say you're dissatisfied with the service and leaving, they'll give you their iPhone imitation for just $30.

So there's the secret. Does anyone else know of a company that only gives bargains to customers who threaten to leave? Let's put it out in the open here and help our fellow bloggers save some bucks.

Does anyone know of a cell phone company that actually values its customers WHILE it has them? Because my contract is up next summer and I'm thinking about giving that retention team a little something to do. Only what Sprint needs to realize is, by the time I'm out the door it's too late to start appreciating me.

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK


♥Shelly♥, a married mom, writes insightful blogs on a variety of topics, almost always teaching me something I didn't know. Lately she's had sex on the brain. Read her latest, Vaginal Massages and Intellect, and if you like what you see subscribe!
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July 22, 2009 - Wednesday 

Category: Writing and Poetry
A while ago, somebody linked me to this site:



What amazed me most is how different each writer's environment was. The guy in the above picture is surrounded by stuff. There's no way I could work with such clutter all around me but some people work better in such environments. Then there are the writers who write in front of a window, overlooking a view:



I've often thought THAT would be the ideal, provided the view was of a beach or the mountains, but let's face it...who needs distraction?

Currently my writing space is a little closer to this guy's:



Without the beautiful floors, of course.

What's the point in writing at a desk if you have a laptop? In fact, I have a much harder time writing at a desk, since I spend all day sitting at a desk. I'd rather kick back on my reclining sofa with my laptop and write.

While I can write much more quickly on the computer, there's something liberating about writing the old-fashioned way -- on a notepad with an ink pen. I'm not quite as antiquated as this guy:



A best-selling author I once met at a romance writing workshop described her writing style. She spent eight to ten hours a day in a recliner, in sweats, writing her books. She felt like she had the life. This guy seems to have discovered the same thing:



There are people who set up shop at Starbucks...often touted as douchebags. They were even hilariously parodied in this scene from Family Guy:



But are they douchebags? Maybe some people just produce better if they are out and around people. After all, that house can get pretty lonely when it's just you, your computer, and the dog curled up on the sofa next to you.

Where do YOU write?

To check out more writer's spaces, go to www.whereiwrite.org.
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July 21, 2009 - Tuesday 

Category: Romance and Relationships
Travis wakes up to the sound of Aidan letting out a loud, sudden shriek. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to fall back asleep, but it's useless. By then the coffee is brewing and he knows his alarm will be going off any second anyway.

Time to get up and get ready.

These days it doesn't feel like he gets any sleep at all. He drags through his day at work, forcing himself to stay awake through important meetings and phone conferences. Maggie is completely unsympathetic to all this, however. She obviously thinks he leaves the house every day for nine hours of play time.

His resentment just keeps building. He's always been a patient man, but lately she's been trying that patience. Why can't she just keep the kids quiet until his alarm goes off? Why does he have to be the sole breadwinner and help out around the house? It certainly didn't seem like a fair trade to him.

Shoving that thought aside, he gets up and gets ready. His suits still aren't back from the dry cleaner even though he'd asked her three days ago to get them. He'd have to stop and pick them up on the way home that night, since he had an important meeting the next morning and he needed his nicest one. Grumbling to himself, he pulls out the one workable suit he has and finished getting ready.

Getting out of the house is almost a relief. He loves his kids but sometimes their constant misbehavior gives him a headache. He does all he can to discipline them but Maggie is a softy. Because of that, the kids have learned they can get away with anything as long as Mom is around.

Work is exhausting. Meeting after endless meeting and after lunch, he gets chewed out by his boss for falling behind on one of his projects. Before kids, he would have counted the hours until five o'clock, knowing peace, quiet, and relaxation were within reach. Now he dreads walking through that door, knowing it will be an evening filled with one demand after another.

Sure enough, he's barely sat down when Maggie is calling him to help set the table. Even at dinner, he has no peace. He just wants to talk about his day to somebody who will listen, but Maggie's eyes glaze over whenever he even mentions work. What happened to the woman he married -- the one who was his best friend and companion?

After dinner, he helps clean up while Maggie gets Aidan up from his nap. He's just settled into his recliner to watch the evening news when Maggie asks him to take Ashley Nicole a towel. Then there's the task of telling her a couple of stories from his childhood, as well as answering forty or so questions about lightning bugs, birds, God, and peppermint candy. Finally he gets her settled onto the bed while he dries her hair and by then, it's time for bed. He tucks her in, tells her a few more stories, and heads downstairs to his wife.

By then she's put Aidan to bed and is sitting alone on the sofa, looking exhausted. This should be their time but she's usually too tired to even look at him. He long ago stopped asking for sex. She'd do her "wifely duty" occasionally, but even though she never said those actual words he knew that was what it felt like for her...a duty. Lately he feels like nothing more than a source of financial support to the people he calls his family. He just wishes, for once, everyone would stop taking him for granted.

Most of all, he wishes his wife could see things from his perspective for a change.
3:40 PM 
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July 20, 2009 - Monday 

Category: Romance and Relationships
She wakes up at 5 a.m.

Not by choice, mind you. Generally her wake-up call comes in the form of a squalling four-month-old. She gets up, feeds little Aidan, then prepares to get her husband out of the house. His wake-up call comes in the form of the sweet aroma of coffee wafting into the upstairs bedroom.

By the time her husband, Travis, is out of the shower, it's time to get Ashley Nicole up. With Aidan in one arm and Ashley Nicole's school clothes in the other, she attempts to coax the six-year-old out of bed. She can't seem to take her eyes off of Phineas and Ferb, playing on the tiny TV on her dresser. Finally she slowly pulls herself out of bed and, still staring at the TV, puts her underwear and socks on at a snail's pace.

There's no time to stay on her case. Travis is running out of time to get to work and if she runs behind, she'll be late getting Ashley Nicole to school. She pours Travis's cereal and makes Ashley Nicole's lunch, trying her best to keep Aidan from getting bored as he plays in his bouncy seat.

Finally she gets Travis out the door and the kids packed up in the car. Once Ashley Nicole is at school, one would think she'd get a breather, but she has to rush home for Aidan's seven o'clock feeding. Then there's laundry and dishes to do, as well as making sure he's entertained until time for his mid-morning nap. The day is a whirlwind of feedings, cleaning, and a brief trip out to run some errands. She has absolutely nothing to make for dinner, so she stops by the grocery store just in time for Aidan to wet his diaper.

Once he's changed she manages to make it halfway through the grocery store before he's fussy again. She's gone past his nap time and it's time to let her know about it. She rushes through the rest of the process and to Ashley Nicole's school to pick her up. Aidan sleeps all the way home, thankfully, but by the time he's home, he's rested up and ready to play.

She makes an after-school snack for Ashley Nicole while listening to her talk about her day. By that time, Total Drama Action is on and Ashley Nicole is once again absorbed in TV. She gets a brief break to feed Aidan and clean up a little before she has to pull Ashley Nicole away from the TV to help her with her homework.

Dinner is late, as usual, but Travis doesn't mind. She just wishes he'd pitch in a little when he comes in, rather than heading straight to the couch to watch the news. Over dinner he talks about his day, oblivious to what is going on in her life. Maybe he thinks she has nothing notable to report, since she's just home with the kids all day.

After dinner, he retires to the living room to leave her to clean up and bathe the kids. Getting Ashley Nicole into the bathtub is always an ordeal, but finally she manages to get through to her. She feeds Aidan while her daughter showers, but when Ashley Nicole calls out for a towel, she has to ask Travis to do it. He acts as though it's a huge inconvenience, but finally he drags his lazy ass off the couch and heads off to help with his daughter.

Day after day, her resentment builds. She asks him to help out and he always does it. He just acts like she's asking the world of him. Sometimes she dreams of escaping from all of this, but then she immediately banishes the thought. She wouldn't trade her children for anything. She just wishes it didn't have to be so hard.

She wishes he could see things from her perspective for a change.

Come back to hear the dad's perspective tomorrow.

P.S.: I had nothing to do with the 10,000 kudos. It's MySpace. People are 12. Many of us are upset about it but there's nothing we can do but wait and hope MySpace will do something about it.
3:33 PM 
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July 19, 2009 - Sunday 

Category: Life
This blog was originally posted in July 2007.

He was lost. Beyond lost. He didn't even know where to begin to try to find his way out of this mess. But up ahead, he saw hope:

On the front porch of this old gas station sat four old men. The traveler pulled in and got out of his car. These men would help him find his way.

"You lost?" one of the men asked as he approached.

"I'm trying to get to the highway."

"Oh. You're way off track."

One of the men began giving directions and our young traveler tried to listen. But a sound distracted him. A barely perceptible high-pitched noise. He looked around and saw a sad dog lying next to one of the men.



"Here buddy," the traveler said and the dog rose and laboriously made his way over to him. As he petted the animal, he noticed the dog no longer whimpered. Eventually the dog grew bored with the stranger's gentle touch and returned to his original spot. After walking in circles for a half a minute or so, he plopped down in the exact same place he'd occupied before. And promptly resumed whimpering.

Finally, the traveler had to know. "What's the matter with your dog?" he asked the man who was sitting in the rocker closest to the dog.

The man looked down as if just noticing the dog for the first time. "Oh, that's Buster. He's lying on an old rusty nail."

The man was confused. If the dog was in pain, why did he continue to stay on the nail? And why had he gotten up, only to return to the same spot which was hurting him?

"Why doesn't he move?" the traveler finally asked the old guy.

The old guy shrugged. "Guess it doesn't hurt bad enough yet."

Someone told me this old story last year, when I was going through a difficult time. I heard her message loud and clear but I still chose to stay in my situation. I stayed until I could take no more. But it was long past the point when the whimpering had begun. Long past knowing that even though I hated to lose someone that meant that much to me, it was better to cut ties than to keep hurting. But I chose to keep hurting...

Just how badly does it have to hurt before you finally get off that old rusty nail?
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July 17, 2009 - Friday 

Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
She's gorgeous.

She's rich and successful.

She's every man's DREAM.

Or is she?

I'm talking about this woman:



Adam Duritz



Tate Donovan.



Brad Pitt.



Vince Vaughn.



John Mayer



Bradley Cooper.



And now, just days after it was rumored that Bradley had dumped her, she reportedly has a new man -- Scottish actor Gerard Butler:



I can't help but ask...

What the heck is going ON?

I mean, she's a beautiful woman. She's always got a man at her side so it's not that she has trouble getting a man. And she's had several long-term relationships, so she can certainly keep a man...for a while. Of course, Angelina Jolie took one of her men:



And that wasn't even the first time Angelina broke up a relationship. In 2000, Laura Dern went off on location to shoot a movie thinking all was well in her world. When she left, she was engaged to actor Billy Bob Thornton:



While she was gone, news broke that her fiance had married Angelina Jolie.



You always hear karma's a bitch, but karma has yet to find the lovely Miss Jolie. She now has Brad, a houseful of children, and a very successful career. While Jennifer struggles to get it right.

Kinda seems unfair, doesn't it?

Of course, none of us have any idea what goes on behind the scenes. We can speculate. I just can't help but finally speak out on the question that just keeps coming to me, every time I hear Jen has been dumped yet again.

What is going ON?

Is she clingy and insecure due to being cheated on?

Is her success just too much for the men in her lives to handle?

Does she pick the wrong men?

Is it any of our business? No. But that doesn't mean it doesn't bug me all the same.

BLOGGER OF THE WEEK



Jessica, 26, isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Her blogs are fun and filled with spunk. Check out her latest, It's Too Late, and if you like it, subscribe!
2:01 PM 
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