Ever since having Munchkin, I've struggled with clothing. This has to do with my post-preggo body which still has all the baby weight plus more fluff in the front than before. I wore a mix of leggings, maxi skirts, oversized shirts, and maternity clothes for the first nine months post-partum. Even now seventeen months after giving birth, I still have at least four maternity tops in rotation* and will wear leggings and a hoodie any chance I get. One of the normal post-partum styles for me Despite my post-partum outfits being comfortable, I felt frumpy. A lot of my clothes didn't fit the same exact way they did pre-Munchkin since the fluff shifted to different areas which made wearing my old clothes pretty much awful. If I went clothes shopping, I'd come home with more leggings and oversized shirts. I needed to change my style to something a little more in line with how I used to dress and find things that defined me. Enter Stitch Fix . What you should know: Stitch...

Lately I've been in sort of a rut. And what do you do when you're in a rut? You want to shake things up, of course. Now, I'm not the type who likes to shake things up or do anything impulsive* so I thought this through. I kept going back to my hair. I wanted to do something drastic to my hair. Ready to plunge in But what could I do? My day job is in a corporate environment so whatever I did had to work there. This really limited what I could do. I could do an edgy, professional cut but I'm someone who considers a messy bun as the height of hairstyle and the less product, the better. And I hate having short hair so that also limited what could be done. So a hair cut was out. That led me to color. I've been coloring my hair for years in the auburn and red zone for the most part but I wanted a funky color. Without bleaching my hair. I did some research and found the Splat Midnight series. It's technicolor hair dye for brunettes who just don't want to ...

Happy Monday, Lurkdom! It's been almost a year since I last wrote and a lot has happened. Some of it great, some of it not so much. Regardless of what it was, I've been BUSY. Well, what the heck have you been doing? Parenting. A lot, a lot of parenting. Munchkin demands takes up a lot of time. But you know what? That's okay because she is the funniest, craziest, cutest Munchkin around. She loves the movies Trolls and Sing so much I can most definitely do monologues from both. She tells me to shush if I want to sing her to sleep and insists on eating apples in their natural, uncut, unpeeled form. With all of my time being consumed by my daughter I'm learning how to crunch in writing in different ways and that is an ongoing process. I'm trying to do more writing in the morning so I can spend my evenings doing things like watching movies with Hubby or crocheting or staring at the cat but I got to say this is a hard transition. I've taken up bullet journal...

If you live in the Northeast, congratulations on surviving the coldest weekend we've had in a long, long time. According to one report, Boston had the coldest Valentine's Day since the 50s. But! Despite the arctic temperatures there's minimal snow, so I'm pretty happy. Especially since the day job changed their snow day policy to read as "we don't do snow days," the lack of snow is a blessing. Winter though has done a number on me. I can't get enough sleep. This makes doing things like anything outside of the 9-5 super hard. Unless you count re-binge watching Veronica Mars that is. How I Did Last Week Well, last week I had no goals because I forgot to do that. But I can tell you I did nothing.  Biggest Challenge I Faced This Week Exhaustion. There are no words for how tired I've been. This weekend alone I slept 21 of 48 hours. That's almost an entire day of sleeping. My Goals For This Week Bite the bullet and start the re...

Staying committed to your dreams is hard, especially when nothing is happening the way you think it should. Your process is too long. Feedback is mixed. LIFE constantly throws crap in your face. How the hell can you end up on top? Yes, I'm speaking from experience. Hair-pulling, head-slamming experience. In case you missed it, I've been at this writing thing for a long time. I've been with you, Lurkdom, for already six and a half years. In that time, I've trunked a novel, witnessed Nemesis self-publish his epic fail, and met tons of fantastic, committed writers who have pushed their way through the doldrums I'm stuck in. I've also watched a few of them pack it in, not able to deal with the heartache and frustration anymore. Even though the temptation to say "fuck it" and give in is so delicious, I haven't folded. Seeing my works in print is my dream. I work on keeping that in the forefront while I continue to query, research, write, revise...

Yep, that is a horrible pun for the fact we're approaching March* and I don't care. The last several months for yours truly has epically been made of suck and I'm looking forward to all the things that happen once March 1 arrives. I just need to make it through one extra day of February**. Since blogging at The Pie has been spastic and not terribly brilliant as of late, I want to share with you what I'm looking forward to. Movies Even though there's more hype about the Hunger Games movie, the one I'm more than ready to see comes out in a week and a half. John Carter stars Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins to most of you) which means a lot of ogling. I have no shame and am proud to admit it. Don't think I'm not looking forward to seeing Hunger Games because I am. There's talk about a movie date with Bestie Danielle and that alone is a good reason. Editing and Revision For something different, I'll be revising in March. This time it will be a...

As a kid, I didn't have an imaginary friend. I had an imaginary GIRAFFE. This unnamed giraffe would be my scapegoat whenever I did something I shouldn't. (Which honestly, wasn't that often. I was a well-behaved rugrat.) The giraffe got stuck in the back seat of my dad's boat of a car whenever we schlepped to Connecticut to visit the grandparents. Though I don't remember ever talking or playing with the giraffe, I'm sure that happened too. It shouldn't surprise you then when I say that giraffes are one of my favorite animals to watch at the zoo. They're pretty and seem so peaceful*. They have little horns on their heads and I like the pattern of their coat. Because of my giraffe love, Chez Gregoire has several giraffa camelopardalis items: the magnet, the keychain, the cat toy, the figurine. Yes, even the stuffed animal(s). The best giraffe acquisition of late, though, was found in the Target dollar section. Hubby was kind enough to add it to our...

It’s pretty safe to say that at some point in our life, we would give our baby toes to glimpse into our future or hop into the DeLorean to change some instance in our past. Hell, Bestie Danielle and I usually play the “I should’ve” game once a season. So when I read the premise of THE FUTURE OF US by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, it definitely made me go “hm.” Blurb from Goodreads : “It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long - at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn't been invented yet. And they're looking at themselves fifteen years in the future. By refreshing their pages, the...

If you’ve lurked here long enough, you would know that I’m not big on the resolution thing. You’d also know that I kinda sorta suck at the goal thing. This happens because I usually aim too high* and then get discouraged and kick the whole process out the door. (There’s a reason why the New Year’s resolution to stop resolving is so popular.) There is something to be said about setting goals and stuff at the start of the new year. It is a fresh start of sorts. And after The Year of Epic Suck, yours truly has decided to give resolutions one more try. My resolution for 2012** is broad and simple, yet complex. I resolve to stay on top of things . Without the routine of a 9 to 5 gig right now, this is crucial. It is so easy to fall into the trap of sleeping until four and do nothing but watch reality TV. Not that I’m really doing that, but it is easy to forgo certain things that should happen like finalizing my summary statement on my resume or actually clean out the basement. So like T...

Six weeks ago, I was laid off from the day job. The same day job that should've only lasted three weeks in 2007. This fact hasn't softened the blow and I've been staving off a major bout of emo-ness for weeks. This totally explains why I still haven't cleaned the basement. Unless you've been laid off or are very close (read: married or related) to someone who has been laid off, you might not realize what a slap in the face the situation is. You've been rejected. The company that you've worked for has essentially left you for someone else. Yeah, I know there's circumstances like budget cuts or reorganizations, but it doesn't matter at this point. You feel worthless. It's very easy to fall in to the trap of doing nothing while on unemployment. At first, it's like you've taken a few days off from the day job. You sleep in, stay up late, wear a crazy amount of lounge pants. Then, a month has gone by. The dishes pile up and you're work...

Making himself comfy at VESCONE. It's been officially a month since kitty drama has began and I'm happy to say that it's now over. Without getting into the realm of TMI, The White One couldn't keep food down. After several rounds with the vet and the nice people at VESCONE , everyone was confused. He acted fine, just couldn't keep food down.  They confirmed that cats don't have eating disorders and it was determined that he needed surgery to find out what was wrong*. Now would be the time to mention that I thought myself to be the type of person who would never opt for surgery on a cat. Turns out that was me being delusional because there was no doubt in my mind that we were having the cat operated on. The White One, of course, had other plans. Trying to hide from surgery**. So they operated on him and found nothing in his GI tract. They biopsied him and thankfully that came back fine as well. The verdict was he swallowed something too big and by...

My apologies for the radio silence this week. I'm taking a temporary blog writing and reading hiatus until mid-next week. The White One had surgery Monday, which equals a lot of stress at Chez Gregoire. I encourage you to poke around the archives while Hubs and I get our life back on track. Hopefully the hiatus will jump start my brain and I'll be able to give you all in The Lurkdom some fantastic posts full of (deep) thoughts.

Over the last few weeks, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, email, and even blogging. No matter how hard I try, I end up missing something and then feel guilty. Let's not even get into the fact that with my phone, I'm plugged in to social networking 24/7. After over seven years, I've finally got social media fatigue. What Is Social Media Fatigue? According to Technopedia , social media fatigue is when people grow overwhelmed with the time and energy spent maintaining and initiating all of these connections. (Yes, this can include people you know IRL that you only now communicate with through Facebook.) Writers are more prone to suffer this than the average bear. We constantly hear that we need to build our platform, interact with our writing community, and make ourselves visible. (That's on top of constantly honing our craft, reading, researching, and the million other things that make writers awesome.) Many of us are online late ...