Keeping your name after the I Do's

Newly engaged women, and those ebbing closer to their wedding day, seem to be torn between keeping their maiden name and taking their husband's. Now this phenomenon, although modern, is not new.

On the one side of the fence, it seems that a lot of women are embracing the big change - and the accompanying administration.  In 2011, TheKnot.com surveyed 19,000 newlywed women and found that only 8 percent kept their last names; 86 percent took their husbands' names, with the remaining 6 percent presumably modifying or hyphenating. This figure might have changed to even less in the past two years.

A friend of mine has sworn that he wouldn't marry his girlfriend if she didn't take his name, and even Flip has uttered this notion. It must be a pride thing. Some women opt for the double barrel name, but I don't think that mixing an English and Dutch surname would go down so well, besides, it would be far tooo long. Wait-Van Wyngaardt. Could you imagine?

Now, I am going to take my fiance's name when we marry, but I am considering keeping my surname for professional reasons, and to avoid pure frustration. A lot of people struggle to spell my surname at the moment, and it's just a simple W-A-I-T. Even if I explain it as, yes my surname is Wait, as in wait a minute, people still struggle to comprehend and, when I was still going to events- before deskjob editor came along -  I would find beauties on my name tags - Weight, White, Waite.

How frustrating would it be if I have to explain and spell out Van Wyngaardt a million times?

I also feel like it allows me to keep a bit of my maiden identity, if I keep my maiden name for business only. 

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picture via here

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How do you feel about the name keeping thing? Chuck it, or keep it?

I had to give up

Today I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I just couldn't go on with it anymore, the relationship was too addictive and not good for my health, and it had to be done. Even though this will be a trialling time and I will have moodswings, I know that giving up coffee is for the best.

Whoa! I got you there didn't I? Got a bit serious. But today, after months of trying to convince myself and half assed motivations from Flip {do you really want to lose weight? Then give up coffee}, I decided to take the plunge. No pun intended.

{Yeah, just had to add a picture in there, to show myself what I'm missing}

Now, to understand the significance of this feat, you need to understand that as a journalist, I cannot function without my morning cuppa java. It might be cliche, but its in a journalist's clockwork to want to have coffee. Want proof? Come to my office on the day the coffee machine is broken, or there isn't a hot pot of tar brewing. It's worse than an old age home, filled with headachy and grumpy people who deem pens as a worthy murder accessory.

Now, along with coffee, I also decided to give up two other vices - dairy and sugar. It already proved difficult, as one of my journalists brought me a lollipop in the twee hours of the morning - to thank me for my patience. But I returned it. With a polite thanks, but no thanks.

So far, I have survived okay, I did have a cup of tea this morning {which I suppose has caffeine in it}. It was apple apricot flavoured. No milk, no sugar, just a teaspoon of lemon juice. I think I'll stick to it, the lemon juice - and if I really am craving coffee, I'll have a warm glass of water and lemon juice.

Also, I haven't had any headaches thus far. This is a good thing, right? 

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Coffee picture from here
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Happiness is to enjoy the things you have

 

Before you read what I am about to tell you below, you must first play this song and let it play throughout. 

It will all make sense, don't worry. 

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Lately, I have been thinking about the things that make me happy, and I realised that it really is the little things in life. The fact that I have two pups who cannot wait for me to arrive home in the afternoon and that it takes almost half an hour to calm them down. Or that they love to jump in my car and take a ride with me while I drive into the garage.

It's the fact that I am still healthy, despite everyone around me being sick.

Take that winter. Mothersucker!

And no, I'm not jinxing myself, because I got a flu shot. 

Moving swiftly along, I made a little list of things that made me really happy yesterday, in order from little happiness to most happiness. I hope you understood that.

Things that make me slightly happy:

Taking the piss at Amanda Bynes and then having her favourite the the tweet I wrote about her, le so:

Yeah, I have to admit, I'm not so sure about my grammar there. But now you have reason to follow me on twitter. 

Everyone has been talking about her crazy antics, especially yesterday when she lashed out in racist tweets at Rihanna. But do you thin her twitter account is real? It's not certified. I wonder.

Things that make me really happy:

There is roughly four months left until the day I say I do. Side note: I am a bit sad about changing my surname. I'm thinking about keeping it for my professional life.

Things that make me so freaking happy that I am lyrically ecstatic:

The fact that I didn't gym last week, and that I ate like a pig - especially in my traumatic stupor at the Frankfurt Airport (read here if you want to know more about that). I mean, there were real German pretzels and nutella covered wafers in the slow lounge and I didn't hold back, I probably ate those wafers by the hundreds. I was an emotional wreck. I have also now come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, an emotional eater.

Anyway, getting back to my point, despite my sloth and glutton, I managed to maintain my weight loss. This only brings me to the conclusion that I lost more weight and then picked it up again, because I acted like a fool. This makes me so happy, because it means I don't have more weight to lose, although I still have weight to lose to look great on my wedding day. 

Did this make sense? Only in my mind? Okay.

And then, the reason for the song - the other thing that makes me so happy at the moment, and almost every day of my life is music - in particular anything by Jonsi or Sigur Ros.

What makes you happy? Leave me a comment.

My thoughts on this movie...

This weekend I watched Moonrise Kingdom for the first time, and while I am left a little more than confused, I still loved it. Wes Anderson is definitely one of my favourite directors, and I will definitely watch his movies over and over again. I cannot count the number of times I have watched The Royal Tennenbaums, one of my all time favourite movies, or Fantastic Mr Fox. 

This guys is nothing short of genius - this movie too. Although I think these kids are a bit crazy; I loved the young love that blossomed, the random gnome-like narrator, the director's trademarks and the dysfunctional family. Best!

What this movie did to me though, is give me the sudden urge to escape to a 16-mile island, with an old battery-operated record player, and camp. {Honeymoon hint Flip. And it should be a luxury tent.} Or, it could be fort in my own house.

I found some inspiration on Pinterest for my urge. Perhaps I will build a fort in my living room tonight. Flip and I usually love building a Christmas bed in front of the tv, especially if its too hot in our bedroom, as their is aircon in the living room. 

My two cents on Breaking Dawn

This post is way overdue, but I have been a bit busy. I also just wrote this whole post and then the computer busted out. SO I'm going to write the quicker version.

Wow! What a terrific movie! It was really worth the long wait. No, I am not a Twihard, I haven't even read the books. However, my friends who read it, was quite dissapointed with the differences between the two.

I thought it was awesome! And gruesome! There were scenes that had me near vomiting, scenes that made me yell out loud with the rest of the movie goers and scenes that really had me rolling my eyes. At one stage I was so queasy that I grabbed my popcorn box closer in case I couldn't hold it in anymore.

But I would definitely recommend it! Even if you haven't seen the first movies in the series/saga. Yes, there will be a few gaps as to who fits in where and yes, you will miss the 'inside' jokes, but it still provides great entertainment value.

I am going for seconds some time. A friend of mine could not make the first screening and I promised her that I would be her date. She watched it with her other friends in the meantime, but a promise is a promise! Besides, I think I missed quite a few things the first time, a result of running commentary between my friends and I through out the film.

(I still think Edward is hot as heck! Screw all you haters!)

PS - I made some changes to my bucket list, had a few things to tick off, a cousin told me so. Go check it out!

PPS - Also, feel free to go and like my facebook page - you'll find it here.

PPSS - Posts that are still coming up include my birthday celebrations post and a whole lotta stuff about Christmas. Coming soon to a Second Floor Living blog near you.

Instead of Travel Tuesday I want...

A little bit of a blog discussion. Unfortunately, I am not able to bring you Travel Tuesday today, but I would like to give my two cents.


Last night I watched an HBO special: Lady Gaga's Monster Ball at Madison Square Garden. No doubt this woman is a powerhouse, packed with an incredible voice, amazing dancing skills and great onstage personality, except for the parts where she kept on wailing about how uncool she was in school and how everyone said she'll never make it. Yeah we know your sob story by now, get over it.

But something was just not right. I found it very disturbing.
Yes, she is supposed to have the shock factor and leave you with a few moments with your mouth hanging open, that's part of her stage persona, but I felt uneasy. I felt guilty watching it.

The opening scene of the show saw her wearing goat-like shoes. Disturbance number one.
Further, she said that she has no religion, but that she believes in Jesus Christ, which with later revelation, is her guitarist. That is blasphemous in my eyes.

Now, don't think that I'm a closed minded gimp that believes the rumours that she is the Antichrist and that she is a satanist or something like that. I don't believe it. When she got off the stage you could see a different side to her, and she greeted her dad who was backstage as 'daddy'. She's a good person.

What I do think, is that she is trying to shock the world so much, that she is misleading it entirely. And I don't like this. Maybe she should give the shock factor a rest for now. She is at the peak of her music career, and people love her. I am not saying she should give up on the brilliantly crazy outfits, but maybe just quit bringing religion into her shows or even songs.

What do you think?

Wow, that was quite a heavy post. So on another note, I watched Grey's Anatomy: The Musical last night. At first I cringed. I thought ugh, this sucks. But then I started to appreciate the talent of the actors, all being able to sing and dance and the raw emotion that some of them portrayed and I started enjoying it. And Owen's voice completely bowled me over. That man can sing.

My two cents on the Oscars

I didn't watch the Live on the Red Carpet insert, I fell asleep halfway through the show and I absolutely cringed at James Franco and Anne Hathaway's attempt at making the 83 Annual Academy Awards into something it should not be - a joke. In words, I absolutely hated the Oscars this year.

Except for this:

 

Mila Kunis, what an absolute babe in Elie Saab! I love her dress, her hair, her everything!

My two cents on the Grammy's

I watched the Grammy's last night on M-net and am regretting it today as I can barely keep my eyes open. I am an early to bed, early to rise person, so it is very difficult for me to concentrate today!

My absolute favourite for the evening was when Mumford & Sons  were belting out their beautiful ballad 'The Cave.' To me, they absolutely stole the show, especially with their keyboardist playing the piano like a modern day Animal from the Muppets. (I love the Animal almost as much as I love this band.)

I have been listening to them almost a year now and fell in love with the first banjo note! Last night's performance just re-established my band crush. Especially when gorgeous Marcus Mumford appeared. That man is devilishly beautiful!

PS: to the love of my life, happy nine monthiversary! I love you forever :)