PUPPIES

Yup. This is a blog post about everyone's favorite subject - DOGS.

If this is not your favorite subject, please remove my blog from your reader immediately. Dogs are the greatest.

This weekend, Crapface and I went to Meet the Breeds, which needs no elegant explanation other than the fact that you get to walk up and down the aisles of the Jacob Javits Center and pet all different types of dogs.

Like American Eskimos

Or an awesome Bull Terrier!

Or this Chow Chow puppy, who is literally THE BEST DOG I HAVE EVER SEEN IN PERSON.

I mean, I can't even. Do you guys know how much I love dogs that look like bears? A WHOLE LOT. A few months ago I devoted an entire blog post to my love of Genghis Khan, Martha Stewart's Chow Chow. Genghis Khan is probably (definitely) my favorite dog that I've never met.

I've also been particularly fond of Chow Chow puppies ever since I started watching Youtube videos of DoyDoy the Chow Chow years ago. Here is my favorite. YOU'RE WELCOME.


It was a good day.

This is not a toy

A year ago, I wrote this post about going to a shooting range in Manhattan. Learning to shoot a rifle was pretty fun, even if we were required to sit through nearly 2 hours of education before doing it.

This past weekend, though, my friend and I upped the ante. And by that I mean we went to Pennsylvania, where all the restrictions we faced in New York around what guns you can shoot without a license are apparently nonexistent.

Each party is assigned an instructor, and they take you around and do everything for you - so while at the rifle range in NYC I had to load my own gun, here we had a guy set it up and pretty much hand it over. Which frankly is fine with me because I never plan on owning a gun.

So instructor man starts out by saying, "Do you guys want to try pistols, rifles, or shotguns?" at which point I got too excited and yelled "PISTOLS" because seriously, all I've wanted to do since shooting a rifle is shoot a handgun.

My wish was granted.

I was shooting a nine millimeter in this second picture, which my friend Lauren and I were pretty excited about because rap songs always talk about "ninas" and now we feel all sorts of gangster and shit. Also gangster - the fact that as I looked through all these pictures that Lauren took of me, I couldn't help but think about how good my hair looks. I mean, LOOK AT IT. So pretty. For once.

The last gun we shot - the "grand finale," as our instructor called it, was this bad boy.

This is some badass assault rifle that, I have to be honest, was a little intense for me because the gun kicks back straight into your cheekbone. But it looks cool.

I don't know when I'll ever shoot a gun again (unless we go back to this place in the future, which...we very well may), but this was an entertaining way to spend an afternoon, for sure. And, just throwing it out there, my paper target guy had a ton of holes through his head and heart. POW.

Forgiveness

I have the very last Joy Juice journal prompt sitting in my inbox. It's been over a year, 119 introspective journal entries, and a whole lot of...well, everything. Goals, thoughts, realizations, criticisms. As a way of making sure I'm fully prepared to write my response to entry #120, I'm rereading my entire Joy Juice journal, month by month. As I go, I'm pulling out quotes, to-dos, and other things I want to take with me as I head into a life slightly less Stratejoy-ful.

As I reviewed month 3, the Authenticity month, I came across the following and I wanted to post it here for 2 reasons. First, because I need the reminder. And second, because I was going to skip Stratejoy Monday today but HAHA now I don't have to. High five.

I wrote this on December 7, 2011. It is completely unedited. The prompt was:

Write a letter to yourself. Accept, forgive and give value to the lessons you learned from something you consider a "wrong choice" or a "bad decision."

I couldn't think of any specific examples, so I went the general route instead, which I think works better for me as far as self-improvement purposes are concerned.

Dear Arielle,

I forgive you for not standing up for yourself more often. For being timid and sitting idly by when things happen that are unfair to you, or people screw you over and instead of giving them a piece of your mind, you swallow it and move on.

I know how hard it can be to do this, sometimes. Standing up for yourself involves becoming vulnerable in a way, in showing that you are upset with something, and we both know how vulnerability isn't your strong suit.

You're not a pushover. I know it. Just think about the small victories - when you defended your right to bring a girl and not a guy to a formal in college, or when you went into your boss's office and told her how you deserved the promotion that she had neglected to give you. If you keep these in mind more - how you stepped outside your comfort zone and put your true thoughts and feelings out there EVEN if it didn't work out the way you wanted it to - I know it will inspire you to have more and more of these moments of self-assuredness. Until one day, standing up for your true, real, honest self will be the rule, not the exception.

Until then, we must accept the losses with the victories. You can't change yourself immediately, but you have to slowly chip away at the bad habits until only the good remains. So from each moment where you say to yourself, "I could have said more on my behalf," let's learn from it, accept our mistakes, and move on, more powerful than before.

You are amazing. The world needs to hear your voice.

Onward and upward, and always on your side even when no one else is,

Arielle

**This is my new series called Stratejoy Monday. To learn more about all this goodness, see the first 5 months of my Stratejoy journey here.