I'm driving....... oh crap I'm in a guardrail!:(

         If you've ever been in a wreck you will know exactly how fast it can happen and how completely terrifying it really is. This happened to me. The day before our big 20 hr drive to North Dakota I decided I would go have lunch with Adam in Gallatin on his lunch break, ya know because I'm a good wife like that and I missed his sweet face. Anyway, it was raining cats and dogs and I was on my way home and all of the sudden I hydroplaned and the back end of my car was fishtailing. I could feel that I was losing control. This is the point when I'm pretty sure I started getting that sick to my stomach feeling... I tried pumping my brakes to gain control back but that didn't work. A few seconds later I completely lost control. This is the point where I'm pretty sure I was screaming, "FUCK, FUCK FUCK, NO, NO, NO FUCK," (pardon my language but when you feel like you are about to die you apparently turn into somewhat of a sailor, or maybe that's just me). I hit the left guardrail first, which bounced my car back onto the highway where I hit another car and then proceeded to hit the right guardrail where I finally came to a stop.

    

               I was feeling so many emotions. I was scared that the person in the car I hit was hurt or worse, I was happy I was still alive, I was confused on what I should to do next, I was letting the what ifs roll through my head as I looked out the windshield and saw the 2-3 story drop I would have taken if the guardrail wasn't there, so mainly I was just plain freaked out. I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car and 2 or 3 cars had stopped to make sure that I was okay but no one was checking to see if the other car was okay. I immediately ran to the other car that was about 20 yards ahead of me and checked on them. Luckily it was a middle aged man by himself who was completely fine. I was so relieved.  I headed back to the car to call Adam. Once I got in the car the tears started. I can't explain why I was crying I just was. I was exploding with emotions and calling my husband just made life seem that much more precious. I couldn't help but think, what if he was getting a call from someone else right now saying that I was not okay... what a freaky thought.

       Once everything was sorted out with the police and insurance we headed home where I finally started realizing that my head was throbbing and my knees hurt really bad. After a few ibuprofen and some lounging on the couch I felt better. My knees continued to hurt for about a week but they were just bruised from hitting the dashboard.. no serious damage. Thank goodness.

        My car has been totaled and although I LOVED my Nissan, it has actually been somewhat of a blessing that it was totaled. My insurance paid for the rest of what we owed on the car with a couple thousand to spare for the purchase of my new car. Since we are on Dave Ramsey's plan we decided to get a cheaper car so that we wouldn't have another car payment. Although we did have to finance a small part of the new car it will be paid of in a couple of months and we will never have a car payment again! What a relief. The new car is a 2003 Ford Taurus, which has been named Myrtle.


                           

New Job!

Hey folks,

    So as most of you know already I quit my job at Germantown Cafe to work for Marche Artisan Foods. This was a huge decision for me.  I have and will always have loyalty to Germantown Cafe. It's still hard for me to believe that I don't work there. However I don't and my new home is with Marche.

       VS    
     I started looking for a new job when the money at Germantown became inconsistent. With the opening of Germantown Cafe East and all the new hires I was starting to see a major cash flow problem when doing my finances.  With Adam and I on the Dave Ramsey plan and being bound and determined to get out of debt in December 2012, I had to look around at all my options. When I called a good friend of mine up I discovered that there was an opening at Marche. Marche and Germantown attract a lot of the same clientele, but Marche runs with longer shifts and fewer servers, which in the end means a bigger payout for you know who... ME! I decided to apply with little hope that I would actually get it (Not the most experienced server with only 4yrs under my belt). However, when I went in to apply I talked to one of the owners and by the end of the day I was offered a following shift the next day just to see if the fit would be right. By the end of that shift I was offered a job and have been working there ever since.
    When I found out I got the job it was super bittersweet. I was excited to know that I was going to be able to make more money for Adam and I, but I was super stressed over leaving Germantown. I know this may sound stupid but I loved the people there. I got along really well with the owners Chris and Jay, all the managers, and of course all the servers I had been working side by side with for so long. Germantown was my comfort zone and my home away from home family.  I even cried giving my two weeks. SUPER LAME I KNOW!
      Now I feel like I have the best of both worlds. I'm making more money and have made some great new friends as well as keeping all the great friends I had at Germantown. I still love to go and eat at Germantown because I miss the food almost as much as I miss the people, but I can definitely say I'm happy to be where I am. Marche is a great place to work with great people and fantastic fresh food and I'm happy to be a part of another great restaurant.

Dave Ramsey is the man with the plan!

        So I have never been that great with money. I mean I have always paid my bills on time but as for saving money... nope never! The thing is, I'm stubborn, I get it from my mom. If I want something I will get it and I will work hard for it too, but I should be saving the money instead of buying so many clothes, shoes,wine, etc. There was a time in my life where I was always in the negatives by the time it got around to being paid again, and this lasted for several months! I even had a picture taken of me with my thumbs up to my bank account that was pulled up online when my account finally got into the postives! 


Now, if I look around at my life I'm pretty blessed. I don't know a lot of 24 year olds who are married and have a nice car, and a nice house filled with pretty nice furniture. However, to get there we have dug ourselves into a little bit of debt. Since I'm trying to get into a program to become an x-ray tech that will pretty much leave me working only a few hours a week, we have decided to buckle down and get out of debt to lower our monthly expenses. Dave Ramsey's plan is what's helping us get there! 


                                                                    




His plan involves saving $1000.00 emergency fund first. Then you create a budget using his only program and stick with it. When you budget you use the envelope system. For instance, if you give yourself $200 for groceries a month, then you put $200 cash into an envelope marked groceries and when the money is gone you are done. You can't put anymore money in or take from other envelopes. This helps you stay on track and paying with cash as much as possible instead of a debit card helps you realize how much you are actually spending. Then there is the snowball effect. When you start paying on your debt you start with the smallest item first. Then once it's paid off you put however much you were paying on that card and pay that much more on the second card. All while just paying minimums on everything else. He has this little debt calculator online that shows you exactly what to pay first and it shows you if you stick with the plan what month you will become debt free! So far Adam and I have paid off 4 cards and we have 5 more items to go.... including my car, and we have only been on this plan for a little over a month.The debt calculator says that if we stick with it we could be debt free by December of next year! I'm so stoked! Adam and I have never been more excited to do finances and doing them together is new for us since it used to be only me! It's a great feeling knowing that you have a plan and we push each other to do even more. 


Since we are now on a budget we each only get $50 a month to spend on whatever we want and that includes, drinks, going out to eat, clothes, music stuff etc. So don't be surprised when I say that I can't go out with you because I'm probably just broke. I will be watching more movies at home and buying my wine at the liquor store instead of at a cool  bar where I have to tip and pay $7-12 a glass. So feel free to invite yourself over to my house and if you know of any cool free stuff to do in Nashville let me know!! And if you would like to start The Dave Ramsey plan yourself let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to talk about it with you or check out his website! 

All Natural.... with a little mousse!

          So I'm not even going to make excuses for not posting in forever because the truth is I just didn't care. I mean honestly it's not like any of you were just chomping at the bit to read my next post... lets be serious.... I'm not that interesting! But sometimes I just like to post on here the things that I'm thinking, things I've been up to or just post something silly to fill up some time in my day. I actually have a bunch of things I would like to post about right now so there should be more frequent postings for a little while anyway. 


           Anyway, today's post is about hair. I need help. I hate my hair so much and I always have. In high school my hair was a disaster!!! I honestly can't believe I actually had boyfriends. It was always so fluffy and feathery looking. I didn't even learn what a straightener was until my junior year in high school and then it became my best friend. 









I actually have naturally wavy/curly hair and its fine hair but there is a lot of it! I never know what to do with it so I just straighten it all the time... not healthy! I always have these little flyaways on the top of my head that look ridiculous! 


                                                         

It kinda looks like the top of this dogs head, except I don't make it look that cute. So I've decided if I'm 

going to get my hair healthy I'm going to have to were is natural more frequently... be prepared to be 

  

scared! Here is a quick photo shoot of my first attempt to go with my curly hair in quite sometime! 

Seriously!!!?!?!

I'm going to scare people! I'm even scaring myself! 

Well whatever... I guess this is what I got to do...  

Just own it girl! lol

Back to School, Back to School .... sing it with me now!

Okay so I haven't been posting and there is a major reason why... I'm back in school FULL TIME! The semester only has about 5 1/2 weeks left and boy is it crunch time. I am really liking it so far and the lowest grade I have gotten in any of my classes is an 82. I feel like I have time for nothing though and nobody for that matter. So, if we are friends but I haven't been around lately I'm sorry I'm really wish there were more hours in the day. Soon summer will be upon us and I can go back to having so what of a life for a little while.

My first day of school photo:)

I know I'm a nerd.....

The reason I went back to school was in part because of this blog. I started this blog because I wanted to stop living life on the sidelines. I had gotten in the habit of always doing the same things and it was a boring rut that went on for too long. My thinking was that if I had a blog it would hold me somewhat accountable for getting out there and trying new things. Which I have and some things have just piled up and I haven't even been able to write about them yet. Anyway, it made me think about everything in my life. What else what I sitting on the sidelines for? This was HUGE! I had been wanting to go back to school for so long but there were so many things deterring me from doing it. For example, I didn't know what to go back for exactly, cost, afraid of failing and plain laziness. This had to end. The next step in Adam and I's life is children and I really want to have school behind me when that happens. That in itself was enough motivation for me to get my act together and get on with it. I now attend Volunteer State Community College in hopes of getting into their Radiology Technologist program! Wish me luck!

SLAMBERLY!!!

Hey all,

So, I completely forgot that I didn't post about my adventure with the Roller Derby Girls. Let me tell you... it was an experience. I loved it! For clarification, I was not trying out for the roller derby team. I just went to a roller derby practice with girls who were wanting to try out for this season. Every year if you are interested in joining the roller derby you simply attend these practices that are held 2-3 times a week and they go over some of the basic moves and help you with form. Once you've gone to multiple of these practices there is a Skills Test, in which you have to preform the basic skills in front of leaders on the team and you they decide if you get to be on the team or not or if you need more practice.

Anyway, so I went to one of these practices out of curiosity and ended up really enjoying myself. When I first walked in I was super nervous, but one of the girls kindly took me under her wing and helped me get dressed with the gear and I was off. We did drills to learn different ways to fall and different ways to stop. Both of which are very important and its very important that you can do both very quickly. I felt like I was one of the best of the new girls which really got my adrenaline up. I am lucky in that usually when I learn a sport I catch on quickly and I'm usually pretty good. This was one of those things. I signed up for the email list to learn more information because I had such a blast. However, I did walk funny for about a week afterward because I was so sore. It may be fun but it's def. a lot of work!

One of my favorite rituals of being a roller derby girl though is your name that comes along with it. One of my co-workers came up with the perfect name for me.... Slambery! I love it! Unfortunately, once I learned more about the time and money I would have to put in to be on the team it just didn't fit. I hope that at some point during my life it ends up working out where I could be on the team but just not right now. I am so thankful for the experience though. It is one that I will never forget!

Yazoo Beer at Tribe!

First off I would like to say that until I met Courtney, I had never been to a gay club in my life and now... I LOVE IT! It's perfect. Tribe is a gay bar in Nashville and it's amazing. It's not overly packed, the drinks are delicious, the music is amazing, and you never have to worry about a guy hitting on you or trying to rub on you if you are a single straight lady. Not to mention that they hosted Yazoo Beer Night!

Yazoo Beer Night was only $5 to get in and it was unlimited tastes of 8 different beers brewed by Nashville's own Yazoo. Not only were they delicious, but ONLY $5!!! Included in the $5 admission was access to the free snacks that were provided by Suzy Wong's House of Yum, and boy were they YUMMY! Speaking of snacks, Adam came with us and loved it! If you know Adam, then you know how much he loves snacks! It was Adam's first time to Tribe and he was a little nervous I think at first, but once we got there he really liked it too. He likes the fact that you don't get all the losers you can run into downtown, and by losers I mean tourists with an attitude problem or boys who feel like they need to compensate for something.

All in all it was a great night with great friends! I hope to do it again soon!