just chillllll (and the winds of change).

Hey guys!! How ya doing!? Is anyone still reading out there!? I hope so. I've missed yous!

Last week I took a vacation to Maine (again, (and again) I am in love with that state) and instead of trying to get all my work done and schedule posts before I left, I decided to just chilllllll and left Seek to Be Merry silent. That's kinda been the theme of my summer actually, just chillllll - it's something new for me and it's been wonderful.

That said, I woke up this morning feeling a touch anxious and it was more than just a case of the post-vacation-Mondays (though that certainly did not help!) I feel like I'm living in the movie Mary Poppins... things are really good, but the winds of change are stirring. In the very near future work will pick up again, Dr. H and I will move (where Brooklyn at?... or rather "where the hell in Brooklyn will we be at?!!!?") and I might even be lucky enough to welcome a 4-legged friend into our family (game over, I win). Feel those winds a-blow'in AmIRight!?!! Thankfully I still have this little corner of the internet and plenty of merry musings and random internet goodness to keep me centered. Starting with THIS (#goals) xox!!

On change.

Are you sure!?!

Recently, I've had a lot of change in my life. For the first time in my career I switched jobs and not only that, but I went from a large company in an office to working for myself at a desk in my living room. Everything about my day to day is different and I haven't yet identified what my new "normal" will be. So naturally, when the paperwork (we'd been expecting) about the expiration of our apartment lease arrived, I completely freaked out. I'm talking "should we move somewhere where I can have a home-office?/but I love this apartment/but I want a dog/what about cost/houseguests/babies/neighborhoods?" full on Melt.Down. (Dr. H is a lucky guy huh?) The entire episode was not exactly my finest moment.

For me, change is good, but it is also hard. While I consider myself a fairly adventurous and open-minded person, what I crave is usually variety, not change. Lots of little options and opportunities, but nothing that causes a major upheaval. And the challenge when you're a little "change-averse" like myself, is knowing when to push yourself vs. accept the fact that "I am who I am".  How much change should I be forcing myself to cope with? Maybe if I just started a new job I don't also need to move to a new apartment or maaaaaybe if I muster up a little courage, moving to a bigger apartment will make my new job easier. I don't know!! 

So that's where I'm at. A tiny pit in my stomach and a nagging confused voice in the back of my brain. Change is good, but it is also hard.

96 elephants per day

Elephants live as families and show great emotional bonds for one another.

Did you know that 35,000 elephants, or 96 per day, were killed in Africa in 2012? Sadly that's the truth thanks to demand for ivory and continued illegal poaching across the African continent. And the effects go far beyond just those elephants that are killed... As poachers target the older matriarchs for their large tusks, a generation of young, orphaned African elephants is growing up without guidance. During Tanzania’s drought of 1993, matriarchs that endured a similar event decades earlier knew where to lead their herds for food and water. Groups with matriarchs too young to remember the previous drought lost more than half of their calves that year.

Thankfully there's an easy way for you to lend your voice and help. 96 Elephants is an awesome organization which is using activism, social media, an incredible coalition of zoos across the world and key partnerships with organizations like The Clinton Global Initiative and Walt Disney World to raise awareness and fight for change. 

So what can you do!? Join the growing herd!!!

* Click HERE to sign the petition pledging not to buy or sell anything made of ivory and to support government efforts which declare a moratorium on the sale of ivory. (It's so easy and it's a free way to help make change!!)

* Check out other ways to be an advocate HERE (like calling for an ivory ban law in your state, stopping the glorification of ivory sales on tv and more)

* Raise awareness with your kids (or your class if you're a teacher!) by taking an "Elphie". Learn more about the Elphie movement HERE.

* Follow 96 Elephants on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to raise awareness amongst your friends.

And finally, here are some key facts to share as you encourage others to take a stand:

* Few of today’s poachers hunt elephants for subsistence; most are commercially driven, heavily armed criminals. 

* Illegal poaching and wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest transnational crime. Ivory—sometimes called “the white gold of jihad”—helps fund the military operations of notorious terrorist groups. 

* The tusks are removed in a brutal and cruel fashion, often with an ax while the elephant is still alive.

* The Wildlife Conservation Society working alongside rangers, ecoguards, rural communities, government officials, and even Labrador retrievers to turn the tide for elephants. From radio-collaring elephants on the ground to monitoring their populations overhead, from training and equipping local rangers to deploying ivory-sensitive sniffer dogs at key transit points, WCS is fighting to save elephants every day. 

Sit the F down.

Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable!

Ladies! It is time for a change. After decades (centuries!?) of helicopter hovering above the toilet seats of the world, here and now I am declaring an end to the potty-squat. It's about time that we all sit the F down!! While giving my quads a workout at a gas station commode somewhere in the heart of Alabama this past weekend (so much wrong with that sentence), I realized the absolute absurdity of the fact that we women feel the need to avoid putting our precious tushies on foreign toilets. You know WHY public toilets are so nasty? Because we're all squatting and missing and spraying all over the damn place!!! It's gross, but you KNOW it's true. Even girls with the best aim and upper leg strength are guilty of missing the mark and leaving a bigger mess than what she came into at least once or twice. If we all agreed to sit down, there would be way less mess and those still feeling a bit icky could build a nice TP foundation (or use those handy seat covers) as an added layer of protection. Everybody wins.

I concede one obstacle in my war on squatting, the tornado toilet (whose flush has such velocity that it sends a grotesque spray of the toilet's contents all over the freaking place), but other than that, this is a completely attainable restroom revolution. It is time to take a seat ladies... who's with me?!