Liebster Award

I have had several friends from different parts of the country tell me that they are finding pictures of me, my husband, and our fiesta-themed wedding on Pinterest!

So happy to see that this picture is making the rounds...

My last post hopefully gave you an indication of just how thankful I am to everyone who has been reading Avoiding Atrophy, but to be honest I also have been feeling a little daunted. I mean, what on earth am I supposed to write next?

Thankfully, I don't even have to worry about conjuring up the next great American blog post because I have been given a prompt!

Let me explain.

Ashley, the author of the blog Horseshoes and Pearls, stumbled across Avoiding Atrophy recently and graciously decided to nominate me for the Liebster Award.

Now, I'm pretty new to the world of blog awards, but according to Ashley, the Liebster Award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers (that's me, for now...until you follow me!) in order to promote growing blogs and connect with other bloggers. "Liebster" in German means "dearest", "beloved", "favorite", and, as a quick Google search informed me, "boyfriend".  

As we all know, in the world of blogging, nothing is free (that's not true. Blogging is inherently free, but just go with it). This Boyfriend Award comes with a set of rules. Thankfully, none of them involve selling organs or anything even that complicated at all.

The Rules

1. Link back to the person who nominated you (check)

2. Write 11 facts about yourself

3. Answer the 11 questions from the person who nominated you

4. Nominate 11 blogs with 200 or less followers. Notify them.

5. Create 11 questions for those bloggers you've nominated to answer.

Let's do this.

The Facts

1. I have stress dreams wherein I am elected President of the United States through a Facebook election. I then have to make a speech that goes something like...Thanks, y'all...but I'm, like, really busy.
2. I have a cat named Frasier, named after Dr. Frasier Crane of the sitcoms Frasier and Cheers. 
3. I am an expressive introvert. 
4. Diet Dr. Pepper has left me with a caffeine addiction that I fear I will never overcome.
5. I often brush my teeth in the shower.
6. I have never met anyone from Wyoming, and I'm not sure I want to.
7. I go to Dunkin Donuts at least 8 times a week.
8. I once auditioned to be a bilingual puppeteer, and I was rejected. Their loss. 
9. I met my husband when I was fifteen-years-old...at summer camp.
10. I regret not taking dance classes growing up. I am naturally a pretty sick dancer. I imagine I could be Beyonce's back up dancer by now if I'd had just a little bit of training. 
11. Many people say I bear a striking resemblance to Josh Groban.

I like to think that this does not mean that I look like a man but rather that he looks like a girl,
but really, I think we are both working it. 

Ashley's Questions

1. What was your most embarrassing moment growing up?

Let's go through my rolodex of humiliation real quick...

Ah, yes. Well, I recently wrote about a time where I was cast as Cher in a 5th grade variety show. I wore my thirty-year-old music teacher's dress which fit like a glove, and I basically got laughed off stage (long version here). That's a little subjectively embarrassing though...

Oh, here's a good one. Once, when I was seven I entered a beauty pageant called Little Miss Helotes (for some ungodly reason) wherein I did my beauty walk with my dress tucked into my pantyhose. In the interview portion of the competition, when I was asked what I liked to do, I cryptically responded, "I can't say..."

I think in my head "I can't say" meant "I don't know, but I'm going to say 'I can't say' because that sounds like something a grownup would say" but really, it just sounded like, "I can't say because I like to do really creepy things like burn my Barbies and collect bellybutton lint in jars."Again, everyone in the audience laughed uncontrollably.

2. If you could pack up and move anywhere you want, where would it be?

I did that! I moved to New York City -- a city that had me at Muppets Take Manhattan.

3. If you could swap lives with someone for a week, who would you swap with?

I make it a habit to be pretty happy with who I was created to be, but let's be for real -- for one week, I'd love to be somebody who has got it all figured out.

Via

For those of you who don't recognize the above creature, that's Gary Busey. He's fresh on my mind because I've been watching him on this season of Celebrity Apprentice: All-Stars. 

Gary Busey is pure Id. What this man wants, he gets. If he wants to tickle a stranger, he doesn't even hesitate. If he wants to spout incoherent nonsense for minutes at a time, no one's going to stop him. If he wants to turn a word into an acronym for pretty much no reason, he gets after it. 

There is a lot about Gary Busey's life that I would not want to imitate, but for a week, I would take his unabashed freedom to do or say whatever I felt like. 

Via

4. Did you play any sports growing up?

I played softball for seven years out of my life. The sport gave me muscular legs and a hatred for itchy socks. Fun fact: I was terrible at it.

5. What was your first vehicle?

It was a green '96 Toyota Camry - the exact make and model that my older sister had. There was nothing even weird about it. It was just an awesome first car.

I miss it sometimes.

6. If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would be the first thing you buy and/or do?

My husband asked me this once and I said that I would get a personal trainer. I then asked him the same question and he said he would buy us a house, and that's when I realized I am incredibly selfish.

At this point in my life though, I would go on vacation IMMEDIATELY. I don't care where. There just better be sangria, so I guess Spain?

7. What's your favorite meal? (Share the recipe if you can/want to)

I think all of the love I got with this Liebster award is quickly going to dissipate after this next sentence. I don't really cook much at all. My husband cooks a lot for me, and we have a lot of staples. We make this Cheesy Chicken and Rice Bake sometimes that makes me pretty happy. 

I'll get back to this one...

8. Do you have any fears/phobias? If so, what are they?

I have a lot of the normal fears like the fear of not being good enough and fear of the dark. I also have some stranger fears like the fear of people wearing animal costumes and the fear of falling asleep on the subway and ending up in the Bronx (no offense Bronx...love your zoo).

I think I've said this before.

9. If you were to sing karaoke, what would you sing?

When I go to karaoke, I have a few go-tos.

1. Call Your Girlfriend - Robyn
2. Proud Mary - Ike and Tina Turner
3. Goodbye Earl - Dixie Chicks (I do not espouse the sentiment of this song, but it just makes for good karaoke) 

10. Name one thing on your bucket list and why it's important to you.

I'd like to somehow come into a lot of money and be able to buy something awesome for my parents like a house or a nice truck or something. This gesture would be meaningful to me for two reasons. 

1) My parents have provided for me in incredible ways over the years. They helped send me to an amazing university (Sic 'em, Mom and Dad!) and they dedicated so much time to helping me grow into a decent person. They deserve to get something back. 

2) Being able to do this probably means I'm famous, which sounds pretty great right about now. 

11. If you could give any advice to new bloggers, what would it be?

Just a few short weeks ago, I would have had no way to answer this question, but now that I have some pretty regular viewers, I've got a little bit of insight. First off, write something good that a select group of people want to read (brides, food-lovers, golf enthusiasts, economists, etc.) and then PIN THAT JUNK ON PINTEREST. Without Pinterest, my only follower would be my mom. Truth. 

I NOMINATE...

(drumroll) 

Emily at Of Seeds and Thorns
Alex at The Shellhammer
Tara at Girlish Blunders
Ericka at Creative Liar
Meredith at Church Avenue Chomp

My Questions for the Nominees

1. Describe your best birthday ever.

2. If you had all of the talent and ability in the world, what career would you pursue?

3. What is your spirit animal?

4. What is something that irritates you and why?

5. Which is better: ants or aliens? Please provide an educated response. 

6. Where is your "second home"?

7. What is your favorite blog post you've ever written?

8. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

9. What are some products that you love?

10. What is your least favorite sound? (I borrowed this one from James Lipton)

11. Do you have a favorite quote or saying? If not, make one up. I'm not going to fault you. 

What the WHAT?!

It's kind of like when you eat a cashew, and then you look down and notice that your skin is slightly irritated. You think to yourself, meh...maybe it's a mosquito bite. I'm just going to keep loving on these cashews.

But then you wake up in the morning and you are covered, head to toe, in hives. Your entire body is practically a hive. You realize you are allergic to cashews, and you mourn that thought for a minute...and then you go to the hospital.

THAT is what it was like to write a blog post, think nothing of it, and then all of a sudden realize that it's been read 60,000 times and counting!

Only it's not at all like getting hives and going to the hospital. It's too wonderful for that kind of comparison, but I just love the visual too much to let it go.

Anyway, I am floored by the overwhelmingly positive response to my last post, If I Had it Do All Over: Wedding Planning. Thanks to everyone who read it and said such kind things about it! 

When I saw that so many folks from all over were reading it and repinning it, I started to get a little nervous. I mean, the internet can be a cruel place. I thought it was only a matter of time before people were going to start condemning me via the comments-section. 

You could have been like...

or

or even

(It seriously took me like 30 seconds to find those comments on the first Youtube video I clicked on)

But you weren't like that at all! You were all like...

and

and for those of you who are about to get married, you were like

because you're about to get married, and my mistakes will not be repeated at your wedding!

Anyway, thanks to you all! Keep reading. I promise to be self-depracating, helpful, and not post too many instagrams of my cat.

Except for this one...

Handling the Pressure

When I was in 5th grade, Helotes Elementary celebrated its 100th anniversary. To commemorate this centennial, it was decided that the students would put on a variety show that showcased every decade in American history since the school began.  Each grade was assigned two decades and we were tasked with representing these periods of time through song and dance. My class was responsible for depicting the 1960s and The Future.

Obviously, most everyone was very consumed with how to best represent what the future would be like. We all had so many questions.

What kind of music and dancing will be popular in the future? Will Lindsay Lohan win an oscar? Will gel pens still be cool? What percentage of our population will be robots? Will robots be able to breed with humans? How? How popular will cloning be? Will it be a simple process by then where you just step into some sort of booth at the mall and you walk out with a clone? Will we be friends, me and the clone? Will we clone anyone famous? Will we clone AJ McLean from the Backstreet Boys? Should we clone AJ McLean from the Backstreet Boys? Will my Tamagotchi still be alive? Will I ever get married?

Do we need more than one of these?

These were the sorts of questions flying around our 5th grade class. So obsessed was everyone with questioning the future, that most of us forgot about the fact that we also had to portray the 1960s - everyone, that is, except me and a brave boy named Travis.

Travis and I were cast as Sonny and Cher to lip sync to the song "I Got You, Babe". I'm not sure Travis knew what he was signing up for but I, on the other hand, pleaded for this role with my life. From the earliest days of my youth, Cher has been my hero. Below is a prime example of why.

The hair flips. The rhinestones. The incredible dresses. That deep bow-wow voice. That part in every song where she starts to break it down and takes off her ridiculous robe as though she can't be tamed. That moment when the announcer says, "Ladies and gentlemen...Cher". 

At ten-years-old, this is basically all I wanted out of my life. With gladness, I took on this role. This meant that I couldn't be in the segment about the future, which was fine because they had decided to do a rendition of Stomp which I was pretty sure we would not be doing in the future (it was around this time that I also predicted the invention of the iPhone).

Travis and I would rehearse with our music teacher every day, and I proudly bragged from Day 1 that I already knew all of the words. So enthused by my spirit was my music teacher that she actually lent me one of her dresses to wear for the performance. It fit like a glove (remember that I was ten and she was thirty, so you can imagine how kind puberty was already being to me at this age).

On the day of the performance, I was beaming with confidence. They had given me a beehive wig which I felt was decidedly not Cher-like, but I was fine with that. Travis had a wig and beard combo that covered his entire face, making him look somewhat like a wookie. He had been struggling to remember the lyrics in rehearsals, and I was certain that I would have to carry this guy through the entire performance.

Despite my frustration with my Sonny, I was chomping at the bit to go on. When I envisioned that moment onstage, I thought that the curtain would open on a breathless audience. After watching my mistake-free performance and my effortless hair flips, the crowd would erupt in applause, many in tears. It did not occur to me for even one second that this could be construed as funny -- that children doing an impersonation of Sonny and Cher was anything less than a brilliant portrayal of, and homage to, pop culture icons.

This is why when the curtain raised and every parent in the audience was laughing hysterically, I did not know what to think. It's Travis, isn't it?  He's forgetting all of his words. No wait, he's actually doing fine. It's got to be this wig then. Ugh, this wig. Cher would never wear this wig.

It eventually donned on me that it wasn't my wig and it wasn't even my incompetent partner. I was a kid in a dress doing a weak impersonation. I was a fifth grader -- I wasn't Cher.

I remember that instead of mouthing the lyrics to my favorite song, I ended up freezing up there with a beehive wig on my head and a boy half my size on my arm. I wanted everyone to just stop laughing and listen. If they would just listen, maybe they would appreciate how soulful a woman I truly was, but that didn't happen.

At the end, I ran offstage humiliated and listened to the muffled sounds of the rest of my class stomping to the music of the future. I wondered about my future and whether an announcer would ever say "Ladies and gentlemen...Christy".