Enjoy Garlic Joy!

I love garlic. I love it so much. I am like The Grinch because I might just have garlic in my soul.  Not in a bad way though. It is just so freaking delicious.  Garlic is so good for you and wards off the vampires. I love it in all forms. I am not too big on garlic powders or garlic salts but will use them in a pinch.  Garlic powder is good in pitas though.  When I was in Florida, in September visiting my mom before we went on the cruise, we went to Gecko Fest.  Of course it only made sense that Geico sponsored it. We stumbled on a booth for this garlic product. I of course had to try it.  I am after all the Garlic Queen. I tried it and fell in love.  It is called Garlic Joy. The name is extremely fitting because it brought me joy.  I wasn’t able to buy any at the time, but I thought about it for months.  We went to the farmers market, last week knowing they were going to be there. They go to all the events down here.  The woman asked me if I like garlic. I said I love garlic. I tried another sample and I bought a jar of the Original Garlic Joy Spread.  It comes in four flavors. I am the kind of woman that says don’t mess with my garlic. They also make spaghetti sauce and other gourmet foods. I am in love. There isn’t any dairy in it and it contains 12 cloves of garlic in each jar. I love that it is all natural and it makes me feel like I am in garlic heaven.

I love that I am able to take a short walk every week and buy some more anytime I want. It is so creamy and so good. If you love garlic as much as I do, you should order some Garlic Joy. You won’t be disappointed. I promise it is amazing.

No one asked me to write this, and or tweet about it. I gladly gave my $8.95 to them in exchange for a jar of Garlic Joy. Thank you to Garlic Joy though for making such a delicious product for me to enjoy.

My Neighborhood Directory

I was thinking about the neighborhood garage sale that my neighborhood has twice a year. I know they normally do it in May or June. I thought about possibly doing one myself.  I searched online and found my neighborhood’s website.  I had been there before and it was totally different. I tried to click on different things and a log in page popped up. I was thinking well how do I get a login? I clicked Register and started looking at the form.  One of the first things I noticed was Pet Information, at first I thought, I wonder why that is important. Then I saw it said description and emergency number.  Then it clicked.  I think that is brilliant. I have seen lost pets in our neighborhood, most of the time it was my old neighbor’s dogs, so I knew who they belonged to, but a person a street over might not know.  Pets get out on occasion, they are not just pets, and they are members of someone’s family.  I think it is awesome that my neighborhood is going the extra mile to include that in the online directory.  I would love to see that become a standard in a neighborhood directory all over the US and Canada too.

Of course there are basic information items in the directory too. They have the typical names and ages of your children. That would great for finding kids Noah’s age, and for those friends he meets on the bus.  He starts Kindergarten in August.  He knows his phone number but maybe some other kids won’t.  I will eventually teach him our home phone number too, so my cell phone isn’t the hub of Noah’s social network. 

What kinds of things are in your neighborhood directory?

Learning from the Past

I believe that every relationship and friendship is a learning experience.  No matter if you were friends when you were young or if it only lasted a brief time.  Single serving friends can also be a learning experience.  You not only learn about someone else but you also learn about yourself.  I don’t believe in chance meetings, I believe that you are meant to meet the people you do.  I have had a few experiences where there were times I was in the same place many times with a person and hadn’t met them until it was the right time.  I thought about how many times our paths crossed in life and it was only by weird circumstances we actually met and became friends.

I want to share with you guys some things I have learned recently.  I was in a relationship with this guy; his name is changed for privacy reasons, in case he reads this. I will call him Rupert, because I always make Fight Club references in my posts and I already made one in the first paragraph.  Rupert is a nice guy. We had an odd but interesting relationship. He made me laugh so hard, I probably was snorting most of the time. We sang together. I could be a total dork and be myself with him. I was a total airhead sometimes. I would send him chip pictures that looked like animals. I was completely comfortable with him.  I just felt like he was so amazing and I did my normal thing by pushing him away. I did the whole jealous thing once.  I told him about my issues but at the same time, I failed at stopping doing it.  I finally realized that my problem was that I love whole heartedly but at the same time I didn’t know how to be loved.  I didn’t know how to relinquish control and just let myself be loved. I guess my heart had been guarded for so long that I wasn’t able to let go enough. That moment was a total epiphany.  I learned how to let a guy love me. I know that sounds completely ridiculous but at the same time, it made sense.  I feel like guys have loved me before, but not completely.  From that moment I stopped pushing him away.  I just was drunk in his love and it was amazing.

I also learned from Rupert was that it is ok to be a total complete dork and that they will love you anyways. I am prone to airhead moments. I wish I could remember what they were because they were so funny.  From the beginning I wasn’t afraid to be total self. Everyone in the beginning of a relationship wears a mask or hides something it seems like. I threw all my cards on the table. I had never done that before. I just felt a connection to him.  He was a dork like me and it worked. I could talk to him about the silliest things for hours and never have one of those moments of I want to stop talking and do something else.  It was weird but amazing. I couldn’t wait to talk to him every day.  Just felt so good and so right.

I learned that it was ok to trust someone and that not everyone is out there to hurt someone.  I learned that nice guys exist and not just in my family.  They are out there but they are rare.  I felt like a queen with him. I remember we were going to dinner and he remembered that my favorite food is Japanese. So, he looked in his GPS for a Japanese restaurant. We got lost and ended up at a Chinese place and I suggested we go to Panera since it was right there, he wouldn’t have it.  So, we kept driving to a Japanese restaurant.  I also learned I was a bad fibber. He always knew what was wrong even when I said nothing.  I know that I can’t lie if my life depended on it, but he could read me like a book. We finished each other’s sentences.   We definitely had a great time together. He was so kind and caring.  I had a really nasty cold and he is an RT and so he offered to listen to my breathing and see if I needed a breathing treatment.  Either he wanted to make sure I was ok or wanted to torture me by jamming a breathing tube down my 

throat, kidding of course.

We had our share of arguments too though. I think they came from misunderstandings and issues we both had. We were always able to forgive each other. It wasn’t serious stuff. Most of them were ridiculous things.  Both of us being divorced and heartbroken before caused extra things that were not really worth an argument for, usually my insecurities were the blame.  I learned to be more secure in who I am and that it is perfectly fine to be a dork.  I am not saying I am totally comfortable in my skin but I am a lot more comfortable than I was 6 or 7 months ago.  Life is always a work in progress. I am continuing to work on breaking out of my shell and not worrying so much. I am a worrier by nature, I always have been. I have spent a lot of time worrying about ridiculous things.  You can spend all day thinking about what if’s and miss out on moments in life.

I also learned that I am not a morning person. I already knew that though.  I am one of those people when I wake up I will probably wave at you instead of saying good morning until I am able to wake up some. I don’t like to be teased in the morning, and I was rude and I felt so bad about it and it was not ok. I am working on becoming a morning person.  I will never be perky in the morning but I am working on my decorum and learning to accept light morning teasing and my morning sarcasm.

I am listening to music and I will Remember You by Sarah McLaughlin came on, I love this song. It was my sister’s graduation song so I have been listening to this song for a long time.  One of the lyrics is, “So afraid to love you more afraid to lose clinging to a past that doesn’t let me choose. Once there was darkness deep in this night you gave me everything you had oh you gave me light”.  I feel like this song explains it.  I feel like the things I have learned from Rupert, totally changed my life and how I think and feel.  I thank him for these important lessons I have learned.  Even though we are no longer together, I am very grateful that we were at some point and I was able to learn some of the most important life lessons from him.