Skinny people have feelings too!

To those who think they can make remarks about a skinny person’s weight without hurting their feelings, let me assure you it’s not true.

I’ve had women, on occasion, make remarks about my weight.  Most remarks are about how I could stand to put on a few pounds and others have been in response to my own thoughts of wanting to eat better and exercise.  In addition to being hurt, I was shocked to realize how narrow minded and ignorant these women must be.  It’s as if they can’t fathom the idea of a skinny person having cellulite or loose skin?  It makes me feel like I have to convince them I am not anorexic or have distorted thoughts about my body image. In fact, I’m very realistic in relevance to my own appearance.  I’ve never had an eating disorder and never thought I was overweight when I wasn’t.  In fact, at this very moment, I am too skinny.  And this is not my first time.  I’ve been underweight a handful of times throughout my life due to illness.  My weight has always fluctuated between 90 - 98 lbs. To put things in perspective, I am only 4’11 and 3/4.  Occasionally, maybe twice, it’s been below 90 and above 100 lbs.  Right now I’m only 88 lbs., and I’m trying my hardest to pack on the weight.  I feel healthiest anywhere between 95-97 lbs.  With that said, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Leave of Absence

Sorry for the abrupt notice but, due to personal reasons, I will be taking a leave of absence from February 3rd through May 2014.  Unfortunately, I’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue The PINcentive Blog Hop as well.

As a precautionary measure, I intend to update my email settings to generate an automated response to all inquiries.  My hopes, however, are to be able to check emails a few times a week and to remain somewhat active on social media, so feel free to stay in touch! 

A big thanks to everyone who has been following, reading, sponsoring, and linking up with Cropped Stories!  Your dedication and support has been greatly appreciated!

In the meantime, happy blogging, happy Valentine’s Day, and I look forward to returning in the near future!

A funny thing happened on the way to the doctor’s

This post is part of a writing prompt blog hop some lovely ladies host called FTSF (Finish the Sentence Friday).  If you haven’t heard of it, I highly recommend checking it out!   This week’s prompt was to finish this sentence:

A funny thing happened on the way to…

So, here it goes:

Well, it wasn't so much a "ha ha" type of funny, than it was a "I have to find the humor in this" funny before I rip my hair out and lose my mind!

I’d say I need a vacation if my kid weren’t such a trip

Being a stay-at-home mommy to a 3 year old, while rewarding, is more challenging than anything else.  Luckily for me I’ve always had a lot of patience.  Or at least I thought I did, until Alivia turned 3 and started to prove me wrong.  And while there are days I’d like to curl up in a ball, suck my thumb, and cry myself to sleep, most days I try to see the humor in things.  I try to step out of my body as if I were an outsider watching us on TV.  I try to imagine the genre we’d fit it into on each particular day.  For instance, one day on my way upstairs to see what Alivia was doing, I found Vaseline all over her face, neck, clothes and, yep, in her hair.  It was awesome having to scurry to clean her up as we had plans to go out.  Yes, I’m being facetious.  On that day, I’d say we were a comedy; the two of us!  See, I can be easy going.  While “the episode” was rather inconvenient, who wouldn’t have laughed at the sight of their toddler all greased up with that “deer in headlights” expression on their face while mommy repeatedly asked “why would you do this?” as if it could be rationalized.  Seriously?  Of course, I’d take those days over serious ones any time.  In fact, days like those are a break from what seems to be the norm these days.  The norm being Livi doing something she’s not supposed to and mommy having to put her in her room.  If you read, Crying, and whining, and tantrums, oh my, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s been a struggle for the both of us lately. 

The PINcentive Blog Hop will resume next week!

The Google Alert for Post Ideas

What is the most challenging part of blogging for you?  For me, it's finding content that will stand out from the other one billion posts published on on the same subject.  If you can relate, let me introduce you to Google Alerts.  It's a great tool that allows you to receive notifications on a particular search query providing you with the most current and relevant search results on Google.  In other words, if you'd like to receive notifications on social media, you would type social media in the search query box, choose your result type, how often you'd like to receive these notifications, and how many results you'd like to receive.  Google Alerts gives you two ways to receive this information. One is to your email address, the other is to your feed.  For a great tutorial on how to use Google Alerts, I recommend this article on wikiHow.

How to make a post gallery for your sidebar!

Hello readers of Cropped Stories! I'm Alicia and I blog over at A Sweet Fragrance. My family and I are American-born but live as expats over in SE Asia. I blog about our life overseas, recipes I attempt to make while substituting lots of ingredients, projects I do around the house, "tot school" lessons I teach to my toddler, and lessons I learn through parenting and walking with the Lord. I hope you'll stop by my blog for a visit!

Just before the year 2013 came to an end, I decided I wanted to redesign my blog. I had a picture of what I wanted for the new design in my head but getting that design to appear on my blog required turning my thoughts into HTML coding.