Two Days After Drinking

It happens pretty much every time that I drink, two days later I feel hollow. It is a very sad feeling but still quite different from depression. On this post-drinking hollow day I can still easily laugh at things I find funny, I am excited about life and events in the future, and while I often feel tired on days like this it isn't a debilitating exhaustion. Depression is so different, which is why I don't worry when I feel a little sad after drinking. 

I didn't even finish writing this post, but I am publishing it anyway. 

Top Posts For 2016 - Views

After seeing Steph's Top 5 Posts, I wanted to do my own for 2016 on Always Standing. I think I would be able to use Google Analytics to quickly figure it out but it isn't working right now so I did it manually. Scrolling through the 220 posts from last year I can see the number of comments left on each and how many times that post was viewed. Some posts do much better than others and it is very difficult to understand why. It might be what gets visited through a search or something I post on Facebook that gets more traffic than usual - but my theories don't show to be consistent so I am not totally sure.

Honourable Mentions

These two posts did well but didn't break 100 views, however I still wanted to include them because I think they are great!
- Peru Overview, With Help From Mom - As it sounds, a quick diary about my January trip hiking the Inca Trail. The post is mainly used to send people over to Vicarious Travelling to view Mom's photos.
- Flat Surface? - A cute photo of Two sitting on our mantel at Casa Verde.

FIVE

So Many Milestones

Post about picking up my wedding ring, getting keys to our new house, and eating french fries. Pretty sure that I posted a link to this one on Facebook and it covers some pretty big life events, I understand why this shows up.

FOUR

Xmas List 2016

The cute photo above taking by Mom of Maya in a Santa hat isn't included in the original post. It was just a list of what I wanted for Christmas this year, something I do on Always Standing every year. The traffic is probably from relatives and friends coming back to reference the items.

THREE

Talk Consent

I like this post a lot. It references a big campaign but I spoke in my own words as to why it was important to me. I hope it inspired some of the 141 viewers who saw it to talk about the issue of consent - a discussion that can be had at any age.

TWO

Addictive Television

An interesting post to follow up the last one, a quick reflection how that fact that Jon Taffer can be a bit of a bully on the show Bar Rescue.

ONE

Two Speeds

A post that features two pictures of Avery from Jason and my wedding. I am glad to see it showed up as number one, Steph's photos are beautiful and Aves is adorable subject matter.

Quote Of The Day

"I love therapy! 

Paying someone to listen 

to me talk about my problems 

- it is like a hooker for your feelings."  

-- blackish (one of the best shows on TV right now)

Caturday Over On Vicarious Travelling

Mom posted about taking care of me during my surgery back in December. Her post actually doesn't have anything to do with my surgery but it contains a couple of great pictures of Two, and some creepy pictures of Rasta's weird paws. See it HERE.

Shepherd's Wedding Cake

Pulled out a tupperware of what I thought was Shepherd's Pie from the freezer this morning so that it would be thawed to eat for dinner. I haven't really made shepherd's pie in a very very long time so I don't know why we would have it, but I thought it might have been put there by my mom.

Got home this evening ready to split it between Jason and I and warm in the microwave. When I opened the container I noticed that the 'mashed potatoes' at the top was in a beautiful rose pattern and realized that we had defrosted the top portion of our wedding cake eight months early. Oops!

I cut off a small part and put it in a labelled container to keep until our one year wedding anniversary in September - we will eat the rest for dessert tonight.

Note: Meg, Jason's sister, made our beautiful cake. Rich carrot cake with delicious cream cheese icing. Photo by Stephanie Beach Photography.

How Does A Rebel Get Anything Done?

I love classifying things, including people. (Remember THIS joke?) Lately I have been thinking about the four personality types presented by Gretchen Rubin in her latest book: Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, and Rebel. I particularly like that there is a corresponding Venn diagram and that the types exist on a simple x-y axis.

The classification is in regards to how someone responds to rules, both those set by others and those set internally. Rubin starts to outline her theory in THIS blog post. Her definition of rules or expectations is very broad: Looking at people's response to outer rules, like laws, traffic signs, work deadlines, requests from friends, doctors' advice, and their response to inner rules, like personal resolutions, goals for self-improvement, or working on a self-generated project. Luckily she put together a QUIZ to help determine which type you might be - I didn't even have to take it to know that I am a Questioner. (I have to understand the reasoning behind an expectation, and agree with it, before I follow along.)

What confuses me though is how does the Rebel type get anything done? Basically as soon as something is a rule or expectation they become repulsed by it. Rubin does suggest that it is the smallest category. What are you?

Christmas Kitty

Spending the weekend at the cottage and having Christmas. I got Rasta a new cat blanket with sailboats on it. Here he is sitting pretty.

Rasta - Photo by me, on my phone

TB - Toddler Jason

Throwback Thursday with a twist! I thought I would post a picture of Jason that I found recently. Normally young pictures of Jason remind me of his current little nephews but not this one, because his face is quite round.

So cute!

He guesses that he was 3 or 4 and doesn't recognize the house. I remember when that type of wall paper and tile style were everywhere, definitely 80s!

History In A Dot

I was shown a really cool website at work. It has won a lot of design awards and I can see why! Pulling articles from wikipedia the designer has created an interactive timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history. It is a beautiful way to represent data and allows you to scroll though based on time or subject.

View the website here: Histography.

It was made by a designer/developer Matan Stauber.

Happy Birthday Aves

I have been an aunt for two years now. I love this little rascal so much and I hope he has had an amazing birthday! I also hope that the coming year of 'terrible twos' doesn't drive his poor mother crazy. 

Avery Reading His Baby Sister A Story

Christmas 2016 - Edmonton 

Photo by me, with my phone 

B.R.A.T. Diet

So I fell a bit by the wayside with my big plans for lots of posting in 2017. But, in my defense, I got really sick. Like really really sick. I won't get into the graphic details but from midnight Saturday, all through Sunday and Monday and then still today, I have been unwell.

But, I love learning medical acronyms and have a new one to share!

The B.R.A.T. Diet

This is what to eat when having stomach issues because it is very bland. It gives your digestive system a chance to rest and recover. So here is what it is that I am eating:
B - Bananas
R - Rice
A - Applesauce
T - Toast
Except not really rice, since I don't like it. I have been having the occasional small bit of plan pasta instead of rice. Jason picked me up some Gatorade as well and got me his favourite 'flavour' which is 'red' and decent.

Cats From Bitmoji

No, Thank You

Just before writing about her Top 5, Steph did a thank you post on her blog reflecting on her biggest year yet with Stephanie Beach Photography. I am so excited about the future of her company. You can read about the many things that has made this past year such a highlight, but for me it will selfishly be her participation at my wedding (which she also mentioned). Here is her sweet message:

I had such a hard time writing the original blog post for these two. This wasn’t because their day wasn’t interesting, on the contrary, Chris + Jason’s wedding was the most unique we have ever been a part of (and this will likely be a true statement for a long, long time, if not the rest of time). It was difficult to write because nothing was ever enough to express just how much they mean to us. When the bride is your very best friend, who has (and continues to) given you so much and always been there for you, expressing all of that in a matter befitting her, such a charismatic and well-spoken person, can be troublesome. Writing down the words that truly show how genuinely happy I am that two people as caring, thoughtful and utterly wonderful as them, have found each other took me longer than usual and to be honest, I still don’t think the words did the entire situation justice. I love them to pieces and getting to document their wedding days was without a doubt, a highlight of my photographic career and I can’t think of any other way I would have wanted to spend these days with them.

Check out the full 2016 Thank You post, HERE. You can also see her post about our wedding, which I love and frequently reread, HERE, the pictures are so beautiful.

Internet Famous

Taylor posted an amazing video of her kids on Facebook and Instagram over the holidays. The little girl is basically teasing her older brother by repeatedly swearing, it was so hilarious that I told so many people about it and showed it a whole bunch of times. Well, shortly after posting it on private social media, Taylor went a bit bigger and added it to YouTube. So, now I can share it here!

She has also signed with a distribution/media company since it was getting so much traffic and starting to make some decent advertising revenue. The plan is that any money made will go into the kids' education funds, and I hope these two consider going to university for media and get into making more viral videos as they get older!!

Fall Wedding Handicap

Steph has reported on her blog the TOP 5 POSTSs for the year, Jason and My Wedding did make it. (Though we did get a nice little shoot out at the bottom, and included one of my favorite pictures of us hugging.)

I am a bit competitive and like to achieve really high digital and social media stats, so I was careful to link to Jason and my wedding post on her blog as often as I could. I also love the pictures and want to share them with everyone.

I think that we had a small disadvantage since the wedding was at the end of September and the main post went up at the start of November, so only two months of traffic! However, there was a wedding listed that only had a month up on the blog, very impressive, they must have a large network of friends and family.

Steph uses Wordpress, I think, for her blog so I won't be able to ask her how she figured out the top posts because Always Standing is on Blogger. I want to look into it though and maybe post mine later.

New Year's Resolutions

2017

- Eat Better (Less carbs, more vegetables!)
- Cook More (Cut done on eating out)
- Save/Make More Money (Going to need to read Gail again)
- Post Daily (Always Standing)

What are yours?

Bitmoji Me

I made a Bitmoji version of myself... very pointless, very addictive... more coming soon, here is a sneak peek:

Ramp Up In January

Looking to 2017, I am again hoping to post more on Always Standing. I realize that December has the trend of being a slow month for me writing over the last few years, historically this is how many posts I have done each December:

2016 - 4
2015 - 3
2014 - 7
2013 - 16
2012 - 15
2011 - 14
2010 - 30
2009 - 16
2008 - 15
2007 - 24
2006 - 22

However, I am going to ramp up for January and plan to get a lot of posts lined up. So, no backdating posts, I actually am going to try to write in advance and schedule them. Stay tuned.