All in the personality...

I've taken the Briggs-Myers Test before and I know that I'm an introvert. Of course anyone who has spent time with me would also know that. I can't for the life of me tell you what I scored the last time that I took the test but I do know that my husband and I scored about 7 points apart when we took the test after getting married.

I am an ISTJ. Instorverted, sensing, thinking, judging.

I'm not sure what I scored the last time that I took the test though it has been in the last year. Most people don't change their personality types but it has been known to happen. Of course I also know that you  shouldn't sit down all at once to take this kind of test because obviously there is a pattern. After you figure that pattern out you are more easily able to manipulate your scores. When I took the PBT I didn't notice if there were any kinds of patterns to the test. I guess if there were they were much more subtle than ones that I've seen in the past. I know that the love languages test is easy to manipulate because they aren't as much yes or no questions like this online exam as they were actual responses.

I am a person who watches what is going on, not so that I know who will be easily maniuplated but so that I have a better understanding of the people around me, which in turn means that I learn how to manipulate them. Each person is manipulated differently which is also where learning the different kinds of love languages applies. Oh crap do I feel like a terrible person talking about manipulating people. This is probably part of why I'm so introverted. I don't want people to know how to read me. I will go into yes/no mode in a heart beat if I feel threatened.

When you watch people you learn what to expect from people and to me that does make a difference in what happens. I want to know what I can come to expect from the people that I work and interact with. I want to know which people will want to hear about what I did over the weekend and which people just want me to leave them alone until after they've had their coffee. I'm the second I want you to leave me alone until I've had my coffee even though I don't drink coffee. I have a routine and until I've gotten to a certain point in that routine you shouldn't speak to me. So it really screws my whole day over to come to work and have someone waiting to talk to me. I haven't gotten the air on in my office, my computer isn't up and running, there's no money in drawer and I do not like making change unless I have a chance to count all of it first. I need to go in my office and talk to her and let her know that I'm there and that things are going to be okay.

I know I'm one of those creepers that talks to their inanimate objects like it makes a difference and you better believe that it does. Never in the history of electronics has it done any good to fuss at them and tell them that you're going to throw them in the trash or kick them. Show that printer a little love and talk nice to it and it will work ten times better than if you start smacking it around. Unless it is the copier in my office. I can go to the bathroom before that dinosaur will get warmed up to make a copy and if you fill the paper tray more than half full it won't work. It completely freaks out and starts panicking and saying that it is jammed and you be damned to find one piece of paper stuck in that thing.

love ya!

Have some advice...

So a little bit of advice to pass along. I don't really have a lot of good advice that I've heard but I'll throw what I do have out there and see what sticks.

I have no right to pass this one on having no kids of my own but it is a great idea. I have been the victim at 28 of cutting my own nails too short and man it hurts like something else. So imagine someone who can't tell you that it was too far and that it hurt.

Instead of clipping your newborns nails file them. This eliminates the chances of clipping too far.

Everyone has experience with this next one.

Don't tell lies, because no one is good enough to remember everything that they've said.

Personally my thoughts on lying are that I never have anything to gain by lying to someone. Even when I do I tell them that I can't gain anything and tell the truth. Which will blow a professor right out of the water if you tell them what you think of their class, bonus points for a straight face when you say it.

I don't really care for lying because it realy never benefits me. It always makes me look foolish.

I'm not really sure if I don't retain advice or if it just isn't something that is doled out too often in the places I stay. The real reason is probably that there are too many articles of bad advice that I don't want to share because you shouldn't share bad advice.

Pie makes everything better...actually gravy does but I don't have a picture of gravy but I do have a picture of a mock strawberry pie.

love ya!

Three months off..

If I could take three months off from this life I would spend it in Europe.

I know how cliche it sounds to say that I want to go to Europe but that is what I'd do. Spend three months riding trains around Europe enjoying the beautiful countryside and touring museums. I'd spend a week or two with my cousins in Macedonia because I haven't seen them in over a year and it will be atleast another year and a half before they are back stateside for awhile.

I want to look at the works of the masters. See Venice and the canals even though I have a complete fear of water. See the tulips in bloom in Holland because those have to be some of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen.

I just want the chance to see where history happened. Where religions were divided. Where peoples were divided and cultures disappeared. To walk where history happened. For me there is only so much that reading about a place can do for me, what I need to do is witness it for myself, to feel that pain in the pit of my stomach that movies like Schindler's List and Captain Corelli's Mandolin give me while I'm there becoming a witness to the atrocities of war. I feel that going to these places makes it real for me, reminds me that there are so many worse things than the pities of my own life. I will never forget the feeling of seeing all those shoes at the National Holocaust Museum. To see the places where those shoes came from. I hate that all those people died but I would hate it even more if those people are lost to history as we sugarcoat what happened.

That to me is one of the saddest things that we can do to history, to whitewash what makes us feel uncomforatble and uneasy. We have to face what we have done and what we have taken part in so that we can pass these mistakes on to generations to come. The responsibility of the people is to know where they came from, even the horrors so that one day they will not be witnesses to the same atrocious acts of violence and ignorance. We must stop and take our fair share of the blame for what happened, and then we must move on. We have to stop dwelling in the past, for if we don't we will never move on and create a world where those things are less likely to happen.

Just spend a couple of months riding on a train around Europe would float my boat perfectly.

love ya!

Where I come from...

Where I come from seems like such an easier topic to put in music than to put into words however I will take the challenge and end it with a music vid if I find a good one.

I'm from a small town in Texas. It has never hurt my feelings when someone hands me a dirty old chainsaw, there is something ever so familiar and magical about the way a greasy grimy chain smells or the exhuast off of a two cycle engine.

I love the smell of hay and I don't mind sittin' on a haybale or in front of a good ole' bonfire. The smell of burning leaves on fall nights.

I still remember spending Saturday mornings walking on the catwalks at the auction barn and watching them move cattle from one pen to another, the smells, the sounds all of that is part of who I am. I love to spend time picking peas in the garden. I would rather sit on the ground with my hands in the dirt to plant flowers and pull weeds than do just about anything else.

My mimi was a library in an elementary school so just be prepared for there to be tons of books in my home. And trust me no matter how damaged they are they aren't going anywhere. I can promise that I've only thrown away two books in my entire life and that was because they had significant water damaged from an overflowed toilet. There was no way to salvage them and I lost a good coffee table book.

Books to me are precious an each one opens up a different world and a different set of emotions. One day I will finish writing a book and try to publish it. (I will let y'all know when that happens.)

I am messy by nature and my house will never make it into the pages of any magazine simply because I can't keep it clean. I try and try and usually just end up cleaning the same things over and over again and never moving onto anything else.

A walk in the pasture is good enough for me. Sitting on the banks of the tank feeding catfish inside a square of pvc pipe. I really am just a small town girl.

I'm not ever going to be a Jimmy Choo wearing city girl. That isn't for me. It never has been and I'm pretty sure that it never will be.

Those are the things that remind me of where I come from.

love ya!