It's official! The business that Paul and J started is finally off the ground. Today actually marks 2 weeks since they started working. I am so proud of them! We named the company August Chapman Group after many days of discussing. We made a list of our top 20 names and then we narrowed them down 1 on 1 like a sports bracket. When it came to the final 3, we decided to combine 2 of them. What do you think of the name?

TV Wall Mount

Paul has been working on getting our TV mounted to the wall. First he installed surround sound and added the higher outlets. He has mad electrician skills for a layman.

He figured out the cheapest way to mount it. It still cost about $50 for all the brackets and hardware. First he went to Home Depot...they don't have a good hardware selection so he had to go to Lowe's instead.

He bought 4 metal brackets and attached 2 to the television (it had the holes already in place) and then we measured EXACTLY to put the other 2 on the wall. The ones of the TV just rested on the ones on the wall and we put little bolts to hold them together.

The hardest part was getting everything plugged in properly while holding the heavy TV.

We also repurposed my dining buffet into a TV stand. We pulled the fronts of the drawers off and reattached them with hinges. I lined it with some pretty japanese paper and VOILA! Isn't it pretty?

I inherited this from my parents and love how it's now a focal piece in my living room! Isn't my hubby handy?

humor and heartbreak

No matter what other people might think, I believe that I was once funny. My peers used to think so, long ago when I lived in my "life will end up as a fairy-tale" bubble. Mine was the sharp-witted, sarcastic kind of funny. Lately, however, that humor just falls flat with me. Perhaps it is age, perhaps the recession, perhaps my divorces, or my inferility, but whichever of these caused it, it comes down to being broken-hearted. Not like the 16-year-old girl who is dumped by her boyfriend kind, but the soul-wrenching, "how-is-this-my-life??" kind. This broken-heartedness has created a rift between myself and someone that I REALLY, REALLY loved. My old self. I just don't like that girl that I used to be very much anymore. And she would NEVER get me. We are barely on speaking terms these days. I rarely can read my old journals and am so IRRITATED with the banality of my old self when I do. And not just my 7th grade self either. My self. My husband has a phrase he uses whenever I start talking like this. He simply says "you are a Cosgriff" and lets it go at that. He is referring to what he has labelled "an inferiority complex". This is his way of getting out of a conversation like this:

Me: "Honey, I have no friends."
Paul: "ugh...here we go again!"
Me: "I am serious, no one likes me."
Paul: "...says the girl who just got invited to dinner with friends last week."
Me: "They were just being nice. They don't really like me"
Paul: "You are SUCH a Cosgriff."

He will then roll his eyes and play with Walter, our psychologically-perfect puppy.

But, I really do regularly feel this way. And my husband is right. (A very common and annoying habit of his). It isn't that people don't like me, it's that I can't imagine them liking me. And I am getting on my own nerves with it. So I am breaking up with my past self. No more journal-reading and introspective trips down memory lane!! I am done with psychoanalyzing my life.

Bad things have happened. I have some empathy now. I feel bad for people and I know they are most likely doing the best they can. I don't want to make them feel stupid anymore. And thus, I don't know how to be funny anymore. I really wasn't that funny to begin with.

Has your sense of humor or lack thereof changed with age like mine?