Just Call Me Annie

Saturday was a big day for the Cupcake List! The Major & I spent the day with some friends at the outdoor gun range at Tenoroc Shooting Range in Lakeland. Our friends had a veritable arsenal of guns to try out: a .38 Special Smith & Wesson snub-nose revolver, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, a 9mm Glock, a .22 Ruger, and what I will refer to as the Wild-West revolver (caliber unknown). We spent several hours shooting outdoors in perfect weather, surrounded by the romantic smell of gunsmoke and the crack of pistol shots.

I have wanted to learn to shoot for a long time now, and even though, in my green sweater & pink Life Is Good hat, I definitely did not blend in with all the camo gear on the firing line, I had a great time!

Over the last year the Major & I have visited a few gun shops to look at different types of weapons while we thought about buying. He wanted to find a gun that I felt comfortable handling (ha). This was something of a problem to overcome, as A) I had never really handled a pistol before, and B) I have very short fingers and no great hand strength, which meant I felt like a right idiot trying to pull back the slide and manipulate the assorted little levers on anything bigger than a squirt gun. This is a little embarassing in a gun shop surrounded by police riot gear, a zillion different guns and either big tough looking men or scruffy hunting types. It was definitely intimidating, which is why I had not persued this particular Cupcake item previously. Having the chance to handle our friend's weapons before we got to the range in the comfort of our own house (unloaded, obviously) really helped me feel more confident. After shooting the different guns on the range, it was obvious that if we kept looking and handling different styles we could find one with I could learn to handle comfortably.

Spending time at the range also gave us an idea of what amount of firepower to look at when we decided to buy. The .357 Magnum was just painful for me to fire. It had so much power when it was fired that I couldn't keep the shot straight, and the recoil made my hands hurt. I managed the other guns alright, but the .22 Ruger was the most fun to shoot. I could make the shot go where I wanted, and its particular cocking mechanism was different than the other manufactuers and easier for me to work. Of course, a .22 is a light-weight gun...you aren't going to stop anyone with a .22 unless you can shoot them directly in the eye.

So after we finished up at the range and had lunch, the Major & I stopped at Shoot Straight in Tampa....and they were having a BIG sale! We spent about 2 hours weaving around all kinds...bikers, hunters, grandparents, mommies, (I stood and chatted with a little baby while we waited to look at Berettas)...you name it, and they were there. It was amazing. The store is huge, and the staff was SO friendly. I (almost) didn't feel like a complete idiot while we were looking at Beretta's, Glocks, Rugers, and Sig Sauers. We decided that the Major needed one type of gun, and I needed another. So in a moment of excitement...we bought two: a .22 Walther for me and him a .40 Beretta. We pick them up on Thursday. The best part was that the girl that checked us out had a headband with a big flower on it. AND she asked why I wasn't buying the pink Walther. I think I'm really going to like being a gunslinger.

Visiting Mansfield Park by-way-of my Blog!

So when I started this blog, everyone told me I could cross off #1. on my Cupcake List immediately...but what I have discovered is that Starting My Own Blog is going to be more ongoing than #21 (Make flossing a daily habit)!! I confess to often being frustrated with blogging overall...trying to make the different elements of the blog work has had me banging my head against the desk more than once. "It's never as easy as it looks" has become my motto about blogging in general.

HOWEVER...last night my spectacular fantabulous husband (who, btw, is appalled that I told anyone that he watches Family Guy) helped me add a Library Thing list, a Flickr badge, and a link for Operation Nice AND The Happiness Project! He gets all the praise and my eternal devotion. And now I have a clue how to do these things and hold out hope that perhaps I can figure out how to add a RSS feed all on my own.

Not only have I now made this amazing progress in keeping my blog layout interesting, I received my very first non-friend/family comment! Emily Bouchard at Blended-Families.com left me such a nice sentiment! So she gets my eternal thanks for visiting as well. And suddenly I am inspired to continue once again.

As part of the book I mentioned previously, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (see Happiness Project badge to the left! Ta-Da!), I realized that sometimes the "process" towards increasing our happiness (or completing our Cupcake List) isn't exactly warm & fuzzy.

For example, preparing to run a marathon would be very exhausting, but the actual running of the race and the satisfaction upon its completion would bring a great deal of happiness! An example of my own that is much closer to my heart (since I have no plans to run a marathon---ever) would be #2. Catch up on my reading. Since I have been mickey-mousing around in the months since October, I now have to read SIX books per month from my list to get the first 40 completed by October 8th of this year. So. In an effort to get my behind in gear, I picked up Mansfield Park by Jane Austen on Sunday. After plowing through half of the 430 pages, I can say definitively that this is not going to be my favorite of Jane's novels.

The first problem is that I own the movie version of the novel, which I have loved for years. I (erroneously) assumed that since the movie versions of Persuasion and Sense & Sensibility tracked the novels quite closely, that the other stories would be the same. Not so!!! Which has me all thrown off. But I am enjoying comparing the two versions, and know that even if the reading of it is a bit of work, I will be very pleased when I can check it off of my list and talk intelligently about the storyline.

Perhaps I will have to join the Jane Austen Society so I can debate the merits with like-minded readers! It is honestly amazing that a woman who authored only six books in her lifetime has been the inspiration behind so many spin-off stories. All 6 movies are wonderful and make the novels accessible to the masses, which I fully condone. And then there are the fun movies and novels: The Jane Austen Book Club, Becoming Jane, Lost in Austen, and a few more that I haven't even seen! I'm waiting on someone to make Pride and Prejudice and Zombies into a movie and then my life will officially be complete. (hee hee!) Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Old Books and Old Friends

This week I finished reading Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret? by Judy Blume. I had never read this book as a child, although I had read many other by this author. One of my loveliest and oldest friends offered to read it with me, and we met on Wednesday to chat about it, which made the experience even nicer!

Margaret is about 12, and is struggling with all matters that pre-adolecent girls do, which strikes a cord with me since my step-daughter just turned 12 herself. Margaret's parents are not religious or spiritual in any way, and have left it up to Margaret (supposedly when she gets old enough) to decide which, if any, spiritual path she will choose to follow. Unbeknownst to her parents, however, Margaret does talk with God regularly, about all the things in her life that matter to her. It is a very sweet, and very poignant, example of being able to approach God as a child does...most children don't overcomplicate the issue the way we adults tend to do.

My friend and I both laughed a bit about the drama that befalls a 12 year old girl, thanking God we don't ever have to be 12 again! But the book is all about the innocence of a child, and that IS something that is precious and easily lost with the passage of time.

I undertook another task this week, a simple one, but one that I had forgotten! I printed out my Cupcake List and my Reading List...go figure. It is very helpful to have this information in front of my nose, so as to remember what it is that I'm doing. Seems obvious, yes? I guess not.

Lastly, for the wonderful ones who are reading my bits and thoughts, there is a way at the top of the blog to "FOLLOW", which will (I think) email you my new blog posts as they appear. It would be great if you were interested in doing this!

Off to try to tear my husband away from Family Guy (sigh) and to get ready for bed! What book shall I start next...hummmmm....

Continuing a Blog

It's funny, when I started this Countdown, I knew that it was going to be challenging, but I expected to enjoy every moment, or every other moment, anyway. Instead I am finding that it is bringing out a lot of interesting emotions that wouldn't necessarily be described as enjoyable! For example, I have already mentioned how it has been difficult for me to focus on my reading list. That has been frustrating to me. And I have not actually posted nearly as often as I had originally planned, even though now I am not working full-time, which bothers me a lot. Why haven't I? I had to give that some thought.

I am reading a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (also NOT on the book list), and I think that I may have gained a small insight into why my enthusiasm has waned a little bit. A) I don't feel like I am doing ENOUGH (whatever enough might be) towards my Countdown...therefore B) I don't have ENOUGH to write about on a regular basis; and C) What if it all sounds dumb anyway?! I really hate to fail...or even have a "perceived" failure.

What a bunch of hooey.

The irony is that I DO have things to write about, (I'll try not to write about them ALL right here)...and even if I'm not the most eloquent of writers, my posts are heartfelt. It is hard to embrace the process, and not focus just on the outcome, but that really is what this whole experiment is about. Not JUST about checking things off a list, but about the challenge of growing as a person. And part of growth is to stop fearing what may or may not be considered "failure", and to simply take something away with me from every experience. I've had some practice at that. And THAT is something I can write about every single day.