Hey Peaches,
Got some bad news today. Can’t share now but I will fill you in later on. Thanks for understanding.
Green chipping paint. The flakes scattered across the worn quilted bedspread I had draped over me. The paint had always chipped, since the day i moved to this god forsaken hell hole. The white iron bedstead squeaked as I rolled over Continue reading “Green Chipped Paint (Part I)”
Decorating When Broke: Charlie Brown Christmas DIY
Young or old, decorating for the holidays when you are B-R-O-K-E can be a daunting task. But be of good cheer and read on! I have a way you can have a beautifully decorated home without blowing the bank. Continue reading “Decorating When Broke: Charlie Brown Christmas DIY”
We are having our very first giveaway over at The Happy Peach Facebook page! The grand winner gets tickets to the GA State Fair! Head on over if you like what you read here at The Happy Peach and give us a like! Read about our giveaway, get involved, and tell us your favorite memory of fall!
Today is Just Not My Day: Day 347
Ever have a day where you just really struggled. Or a week? Or a month? Or longer? That’s been me for the last few months. I’ve been struggling with the momentous thought, “Is this what I really want to do for the rest of my life?” I don’t just mean career. I mean routine. Get up, go to work at a desk for 8 hours a day to turn around and go back home. Pay bills. Feel continually exhausted. Work harder then you ever thought possible but still feel as if the dreams you are trying to pursue just don’t get the attention they need. Or deserve. It’s beyond frustrating, and I know many people feel the same way I do. So how do we cope? How do we change our situation? What if we can’t? What do we do then?
I’ve been mulling over these questions and how to address them for some time now. I still don’t have the answers. But I do know a few things that have helped me in this time of struggle, and I thought I would pass them along. Maybe they’ll help. And if they do, share them with someone else you know is struggling too.
1. Give.
I know this seems contradictory. When you are going through a time of struggle you want to be helped, not the other way around. But trust me, even if it doesn’t lift your mood/stress level at all (even though I guarantee it will) you will be benefitting someone else’s life while you struggle, whose struggles are possibly far different or greater then yours. Whether it’s money, love, or time, giving is a great commodity to help in tough times.
2. Go Outside and Move
Again, probably not something you want to do when times are hard. The fetal position in bed sounds much more accommodating, but trust when I say just moving – a walk in the park or just down the driveway can do wonders to help lighten your spirit.
3. Vent
Talk with love ones. Your partner, the dog walker, the barista at Starbucks. Go home and visit grandma. (Totally doing this one this weekend FYI). Vent to those that you know and that care. Talk it out. A lot of times a good vent session can get you to the route of your struggle, and more times then not…. Your struggle is not even routed where you think it is. Have a chat, a good cup of coffee, and brainstorm solutions.
4. Give Yourself A Break. Seriously.
Hubs had to have a come to Jesus this week with me about the above statement. You are not perfect. You never will be. And that’s okay. We all deserve a dose of self love and that reminder every now and then. You are good enough. Forgive and love yourself. The struggle bus will come and go, but you are you faults and all. Love yourself. Be okay with you. You will gets through this.
In honor of our Share to the Fair Giveaway, I thought I would post my fondest memory of fall. Or maybe i should say my spookiest.
Fall when I was young was months worth of preparation and anticipation for Halloween. Costumes had to be carefully chosen, my parents usually threw some kind of party, and there was food for days as we anxiously waited for trick or treating to begin. One year when I was about six I went as a genie while my next store neighbors (we’ll call them Big and Little as one was a year older and the other a year younger then myself) both dressed up as Spider-Man with realistic silly string spider web wrist guns.
5 minutes into our jaunt down the street with our respective sets of parents, my hair was assaulted with silly string by Little and I spent the rest of the night in angst pulling it from my hair and swearing 7 year old vengeance on a little boy. Not to be daunted, we continued to go from house to house to get our candy fix. We were pros at it by now, we knew which house to avoid that gave out “healthy” candy and which ones had the mother load.
This year we were deemed big enough to walk down the driveway to each house by ourselves, our parents chatting and watching us from the edge of the street. Which was all fine and dandy until we reached “the house.”
New people had moved in since last Halloween, but we had scoped them out as a retired couple that had a fluffy dog with a squished in face. Certainly they had good candy. Now this particular house had a front porch that sat up off the ground about four feet, a big brick porch that was open with no railing going around it. Bushes lined around the edges of the porch, about four feet high themselves and were perfectly sculpted little squares. We made the long walk down the driveway and climbed the porch steps, waiting patiently as the doorbell announced our arrival.
A little older woman came to the door with a big bowl of candy. REESES! We had hit the jackpot. As we chose our selections and thanked her for the candy, we failed to notice the rustling of the bushes by the side of the house. All of the sudden, the roar of chainsaw split the air by the side of the porch and a half naked old man in pajama bottoms appeared, wielding a chainsaw and a pronounced beer gut. The poor old woman, who I later realized was married to this sap, screamed and the precious contents of her bowl went flying across the porch. As unfortunate as the flying candy was, Big and I were closest to the maniac, and we jumped straight off the porch over the bushes and hit the ground running. Little however was not so lucky. He was a stocky little fellow to begin with, and he was the only one who let the draw of more candy delay his flight response a few moments. As the man came around the porch Little tried to make a run for and jumped …. Only to get stuck in a bush.
I to this day do not know why a grown man would scare a 5,6, and 7 year old with a chainsaw, but watching four grown adults untangling Little from the bush while a certain older woman whacked her husband in the head with a candy bowl showed my childhood self that karma certainly has a sense of humor.
If you enjoyed today’s story click the star to let others know it’s worth a read, and check out our Share to the Fair Giveaway post to win a pair of free tickets to the GA State Fair opening this weekend! All you have to do to win is: Go over to the Happy Peach Facebook page and give us a like, then post on our timeline your favorite fall memory. I will choose at random one of the posted stories at midnight Thursday, and post the winner on the Facebook page!
As a young child, my maternal grandmother kept me every day while my parents were at work. I was the first grandbaby, and my heaven consisted of Grandmama’s house. My daily routine of homemade pancakes at the breakfast counter, make believe renditions of being locked in the castle of whatever Disney movie we had watched that day, and hours of exploration throughout their 17 acres of land made me very tired come naptime, much to my grandmother’s thanks. I will always cherish those memories of a time gone by, as well as the life lessons that were exchanged between the two of us.
One of these great lessons involved a cow, a 1990’s model Ford Expedition, and a small stuffed Barney chair. It was a hot summer morning and I was probably about four. My grandmother was waging a war with the overgrown bushes in her front garden, who had decided to grow threefold their typical size throughout the muggy spring that had drenched the Georgia red clay several weeks before. As she attempted her first volley into enemy territory, armed with her clipping shears, I stood guard while trying to climb a small sapling a few yards away. This tree was literally three feet tall, but that’s beside the point. It was my Mount Everest, and I was tickled to death to climb it. Both of us were so entranced in our respected activities neither of us noticed what had lumbered out of the woods and into my grandparent’s front yard.
I completed my ascent, and as I looked up to see if my grandmother had yet noticed how high I’d climbed, I saw it. It being a giant cow standing in the middle of the front lawn, pooping. I have never seen a cow this big since, however its size now in retrospect was even more gargantuan given my little proportions. I froze. I had not realized I was afraid of cows, but at that moment I realized it scared me more than spiders, bumble bees, and bath time combined. I glanced at my grandmother. She was still butchering wave after wave of bush combatants and was unaware of the greater fear in our midst. I whispered to her, but she did not hear. I dare not move from my perch so I said a little louder, “Grandmama, there’s a cow in the yard.” Wiping the sweat from her brow and dusting the mutilated remains from her foe off her forearms, she looked up at me and cocked her head. “What?” she said. Incredulously wondering I’m sure where I would get an idea like that from. “There’s a cow in the yard Grandmama.” That’s when the stern face of Grandmama came out. The one where she knew you were lying, even though you were certain a mole was living under your bed and that in turn was a valid reason for not having nap time. “Now Honey, don’t lie to Grandmama. We live in the middle of the woods. There isn’t a farmer around for ten miles.” We would have continued our conversation I’m certain, but at that point the cow decided to give me brownie points for trying and snorted.
My grandmother is the bravest woman I know. She has swatted bumble bees off of my flowery knitted shirts that otherwise would of equated to certain death, made swift work of snakes with a garden hoe, and taught me in no uncertain terms that homemade biscuits prove there is a God. However, on this day I learned my grandmother also had a fear of cows. A fear I came to realize far surpassed my own. In a span of about two seconds, the war of the bushes had come to an end. I was snatched like a rag doll from my place on high, and rushed like a football to the nearest indoor structure, their garage. I, along with my grandmother then took the new car, a tan Ford Expedition, and proceed to use it in a special ops endeavor entitled: Remove the Cow.
Remove the Cow had a simple tactical plan. Drive as close as possible to the cow. Honk the horn. Surely it was foolproof and had no possibility of failure. Upon its attack however, the cow succeeded in out maneuvering us, mostly because it refused to move at all. It just stood there, mocking us. Pooping, it pooped a lot. We were forced to retreat and reevaluate our foe, this formidable cow. Plan two according to the General that was my grandmother was to try and find the owner of the cow. By the curse of the universe my booster seat was not left for me, so instead I was sat in a small foam Barney chair that was a lovely shade of purple, placed as copilot in the Expedition and buckled in. This was serious business after all.
We drove to probably 10 farms that day. No one had yet to report or realize a cow was missing, but each farmer thanked my grandmother for alerting her and sent out the SOS to those around them. The cow stayed a day or so longer before it missed its barn, and eventually wandered its wayward pooping behind home. Moral of the story, watch out for phantom cows. Real moral of the story, cherish the memories. Even the crazy ones. Especially those.
The Happy Peach 
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