My friend passed along this poem (not really a poem, I guess, but still) and I absolutely love it.

Just for today, I will try to live through this day only,
and not tackle my whole life problem
at once. I can do something for twelve hours
that would appall me if I felt that I had to
keep it up for a lifetime.

Just for today, I will be happy. This assumes to
be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that
“most folks are as happy as they make up
their minds to be.”

ust for today, I will try to strengthen my mind.
I will study. I will learn something useful.
I will not be a mental loafer. I will read
something that requires effort, thought and
concentration.

Just for today, I will adjust myself to what is,
and not try to adjust everything to my own
desires. I will take my “luck” as it comes,
and fit myself to it.

Just for today, I will exercise my soul in three
ways: I will do somebody a good turn, and
not get found out. I will do at least two
things I don’t want to–just for exercise.
I will not show anyone that my feelings are
hurt; they may be hurt, but today I will not
show it

Just for today, I will be agreeable. I will look
as well as I can, dress becomingly, talk low,
act courteously, criticize not one bit, not
find fault with anything and not try to improve
or regulate anybody except myself.

Just for today, I will save myself from two pests: hurry and indecision.

Just for today, I will have a quiet half hour all
by myself, and relax. During this half hour,
sometime, I will try to get a better perspective
of my life.

Just for today, I will be unafraid. Especially I
will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful,
and to believe that as I give to the world, so
the world will give to me.

I love it, especially the part I left in bold. I am going to try to do one kind thing each day, anonymously. I am also going to try to do two things each day that I don’t want to do.

I’m open to suggestions of kind things I can do without getting found out. (Apparently if anyone else knows you did this kind thing, it doesn’t count and you have to do another one.) Any thoughts?

Also, things I don’t want to do: I’m thinking, like, my job doesn’t count here, right? Because I would have to do that. So I’m thinking things like doing a load of laundry, cleaning my car, paying a parking ticket, giving someone a ride, apologizing to someone I’ve hurt, etc. But I could def use suggestions on all of these!

I’m going to try doing this every day for a week and see how it works out. Will keep y’all posted!!

I am sooooo fed up with Bank of America. SO FED UP. They put one of my checks “on hold” for FIVE DAYS. The suspicious check in question was written from a tiny bank in rural China Wells Fargo in Arizona. HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY TAKE FIVE DAYS TO VERIFY THOSE FUNDS??? And, while the check I was counting on was “on hold,” all the charges that were pending toward that account cleared … with a $35 fee. Each. I rented an iTunes movie for the low, low price of $39.99. I’d much rather the bank just rejected those charges. I could have survived without my iTunes movie if I’d known it would cost me $40. I’ve called several times to talk to them about it, but because all the charges — including the overdraft fees — were still “pending,” I was informed there was nothing they could do about it.

I went to the bank today to deposit another check IN PERSON, and, when I walked out, there was a news camera crew outside. They asked if they could speak to me. They said they were doing a story on Bank of America’s new policy changes regarding overdraft fees, and if I’d like to weigh in on it. I was like “ARE YOU SERIOUS???” Apparently B of A is changing their policy so that they just reject overdrafts rather than allow them to clear along with the $35 charge. I WISH THAT HAD HAPPENED LAST WEEK. But anyway, I got to rant to the local news about all my bank drama, and it felt so wonderful. I’m not sure if I’ll actually end up being on the news, but if I am I definitely hope I can embed the video here. Fair warning: I didn’t look very pretty. I looked like the kind of person who is stressed the fuck out because her bank is evil.

I’m pretty much done with Bank of America, I think. I want to join a credit union — I’ve been told BECU, a local credit union, is very good. But I wanted to first check in here and get opinions from you guys on the advantages and disadvantages of being with a credit union versus a major bank. If you have thoughts or experiences to share, leave ‘em in the comments or email me (spasulka@gmail.com).

… sometimes it helps to take very grumpy photos of yourself and post them on the Internet.

And then sometimes it does not.

So I’m gonna go to the gym and work out until I puke, and then maybe I will feel better. OR MAYBE I WILL COME BACK AND I WILL POST MORE OF THESE PHOTOS!!!

GRUMPY DAY!!! It’s okay, though. This is how I grow.

I remember having a really tough time after a break-up awhile back (no, I’m not going through a break-up right now). The guy I’d broken up with was still tangentially in my life — we ran in the same circle of friends. Here is what would happen: He would tell me he wasn’t going to make a commitment to me, I would be devastated, I would begin to recover, then I would see him when that group of friends got together, then I would fall back in love with him, then I would do everything I could to get back together with him, then he would date me for a week, then he would dump me (in the kindest way possible) and I would be devastated. I was stuck in this cycle for what felt like forever, and it was brutal.

“I just need to stop ever seeing him,” I told a girlfriend. “I need to call him and tell him we need to touch base over text messages before these events to make sure we are not both going. We need to split up the events. Because I can’t recover from this when I have to see him every other week. But I feel like such a loser telling him that, like he controls my life. I can’t get up the courage to do it. But I can’t move on when it’s like this. I’m stuck.”

She smiled. “You’re so worried about yourself,” she said. “I’m not worried about you at all. As soon as you’re in enough pain about it, you’ll do what you need to do to fix it.”

That last sentence kind of changed my life. I realized she was absolutely right. That is how I operate. I maintain the status quo, even if I don’t like it, until I reach a certain pain threshold where I just can’t take it anymore. Then I make a change. That is how basically any and all progress has ever been made in the history of my life. And so sometimes when I feel grumpy — just overwhelming dissatisfaction and psychological stress — I remember that this is nothing more than the universe nudging me along, telling me there’s something that needs to be fixed.

Her words unstuck something for me. I had that conversation with that ex. He was always kind to me, and he was kind about this too. “We can do that,” he said. “I wish it didn’t have to be like that, but I understand. I don’t want to hurt you.” After that, I was able to heal and move forward. I just needed to be in enough pain to start the process.

I have a boyfriend. Over the past few months, I have been trying very hard to keep the details of my romantic life off the Internet. This was for my own sanity and also because the universe is designed such that if you write even a marginally successful blog and you date a man and that man has an ex who is even the tiniest bit insecure, SHE WILL FIND YOU AND WHEN SHE DOES SHE WILL BE ANGRY. You do not have to mention his name. You do not have to run a photo of him. You do not have to do anything more than provide the most basic details about him to the Internet public, and suddenly, halfway across the world, an alarm begins blaring in this woman’s head, and her vision is colored red, and she doesn’t know why but she finds herself walking, zombie-style, to a computer and typing in this blog’s address and reading, like, all three years of the archives and then sending me an angry message informing me of the all-around horrible nature of the man I am currently dating (because she is always helpful and big-hearted like that) and also of my own fatness (because I am fat, ‘natch). I don’t respond. And then she does it again. And again. And again. Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. I have now been through this process more times than I would like to count. I wanted to keep this one safe.

FAIL.

It worked for awhile and then she found me. I don’t know how. I mean, I can never figure out how. (If you’re reading this, dear, could you please explain in your next vicious diatribe opus exactly how you tracked me down in the first place? I’d like to know, just for future reference.)

But I guess the signs have been there for awhile, and I’ve had enough people email me or post comments like, “Wait, do you a boyfriend?” and so, like, yeah, I have a boyfriend. I was definitely not looking for a boyfriend, and I definitely did not expect it to be him. (I was convinced for awhile that he had absolutely zero romantic interest in me.) But I’m the happiest I’ve been in a really long time. It’s weird — I finally sat down and dealt with a lot of the emotional baggage I carried around from past relationships with men. I had a relationship (one that I didn’t talk about at all on here) end really horribly, and I realized, finally, that I was largely to blame. I didn’t cheat on him or punch him in the nuts or anything, but I’d just really sucked at it. He was great and I totally fucked it up by being an insecure shithead who always finds a way to fuck up relationships because actual healthy romantic commitments terrify me. I lost a lot of sleep over that one, and I decided I was going to do whatever it took to not suck so bad at relationships. I was tired of putting myself through this, and I was tired of putting other people through this.

So I wrote about it and I talked to friends about it and I spent a lot of time looking at my part in why my past relationships had failed so miserably. I stopped blaming everyone else and I looked at what was my fault and I looked for the destructive patterns in my behavior and I made apologies where they were necessary (and I had a delightfully surprising number of men graciously accept — as much as I suck at relationships, I have stumbled across some pretty fantastic and loving men to be in them with me) and I resolved to be very conscious of these patterns and work hard to not repeat them. When I did that, this wonderful man, who had been a valued friend before, suddenly turned into a romantic partner. And I realized that he was kind and honest and loyal and totally capable of being in a healthy adult relationship, and, suddenly, so was I. The universe is a magical teaching tool, and I am grateful to be capable of learning from it. Life is good right now.

I’ve lived in Seattle nearly two years and I’ve never been to the top of the Space Needle, despite living approximately half a mile from its front entrance. This is probably in part due to the fact that no one ever visits the tourist attractions in their own city (with the exception of Pike Place Market, which I love and visit reguarly) and also to the fact that the Space Needle is really high up in the air and I am not a big fan of being high up in the air.

But Will convinced me he needed to take me to dinner there last night. I reluctantly acquiesced. (Kidding! I was psyched.) On the elevator ride up, I was totally prepared to have to hide my head and not look at a single thing lest I cry, but I managed to look out the window for the entire ride. (Luckily, it only takes 41 seconds.)

The restaurant at the top spins slowly so that you can get a 360-degree view of the city during your dinner. The food was really pricey, and we were kind of like, “Ugh, another one of those restaurants that thinks they can charge through the nose for crappy food because they have a great gimmick.” But our meal was quite delicious! We were impressed.

Here’s the problem: By about half an hour in, I was feeling dizzy. Then I had a headache. Then I was nauseous. The constant spinning was making me sick! How does this not happen to EVERYONE who eats there? I was sick for like three hours afterward, but I refused to throw up a dinner we’d paid so damn much for. Ha! It was a nice experience, but I’m not in any big hurry to be in a spinning restaurant any time soon.

One cute thing: People leave little notes on the windowsill, so as you spin around during dinner (ugh) you get to read all these cute little notes:

After the spinning dinner, we went to the observation deck and took a bunch of photos of the city. I am so head-over-heels in love with Seattle. It’s just the most beautiful city in the world to me. Here’s a shot of Lake Union, which is my neighborhood:

And one of downtown:

See? Most beautiful city ever.

This is stolen from Kelly Hays’ blog, which is always jam-packed full of awesome shit. Kelly’s the every-other-weekend writer on Evil Beet, and is one of the most talented and intelligent writers I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. I hired her because I fell in love with her personal blog, but at the time I really had no sense of the enormous literary horsepower behind the girl posting the funny photos. I just thought “This is a girl who gets what is funny.” I just had a hunch. It was right.

And re: this cartoon: SO FUCKING AWESOME.