Here’s to lots of thanking in 2012!
Thanks to all our viewers that keep coming back to read our archives. Especially people that have searched things like, “high end toilet paper,” “male bubble butt,” and “mennonite weddings” and been routed to us. I hope we didn’t disappoint.
Oddly, we are still getting around 50,000 pages views per month without doing a thing. Either we have a serious stalker or new readers are stumbling upon this…or maybe both.
Cheers!
Stacey
Another year!
Hard to believe it’s been MONTHs since I’ve posted, especially since this was once a daily task. I must say, I haven’t missed saying up until 2am pacing the room and wondering about to whom I should send an crazy ass thank you note scrawled in 10-year-old boy script…BUT, I do miss this blog. I guess old habits die hard though, because every time I encounter a funny situation, I always find myself composing a slightly sarcastic, yet truly sincere (is that possible?!) thank you note in my beady little mind.
It could be the random Christmas decorations at Lowe’s (a sparkly blow-up Santa taking a piss in an outhouse? Didja catch that one? Priceless. Or actually 127 bucks.) or maybe it’s the way little Tab burps like a truck driver or Ollie calls bums “those junky people”, but anyway, I definitely miss taking stock in the daily hilariousness. Which I do, still, of course, but I just don’t write about it online, for the world to read, at 1am after drinking too many glasses of pinot grigio. That’s documentation at its finest, I tell ya.
Missing you, Naked Thanks!
XO
Stacey
How could I not be grateful when I spend my days like this?
Hey all — thought I’d update since I haven’t posted in MONTHS! Though I miss writing Naked Thanks, I must say, little Tabitha Drew has kept me very busy (and of course Wild Ollie). And even with the trials and tribulations of daily life (Grey blew out his knee playing lacrosse and is now my 200 pound baby), I’m happy to report things are going well. Even though I haven’t been posting my thanks, I don’t feel like I’ve fallen out of practice writing notes; having a newborn is synonymous with thank you note writing because of all my generous friends and family sending adorable girl-baby gifts still!
Just wanted to check in and give a little update. Naked Thanks lives!
Stacey
Well, here it is. My 365th entry on Naked Thanks. You, my dear readers, are the recipients of today’s note, and I hope you understand how much I appreciate your reading this blog.
Truth be told, I’ve never done anything every day for a year. Well, except maybe wipe my ass and brush my teeth. And some days, not even that (I mean, brushing my teeth…I always wipe my ass). But in all seriousness, I’ve LOVED doing this gratitude blog. Finding some little (or big) thing every day for which I am appreciative has been something that I’ve throroughly enjoyed. Plus, I think it’s made me grow as a person.
Going forward, I’ll still be posting to Naked Thanks, I’m sure, but definitely not as often. I’m going to try to put up pictures and snippets here and there, and I’m sure I’ll continue my thank-you writing for the rest of my life, but with a new baby, I just don’t think I could manage forming a coherent sentence, let alone writing, scanning, and posting these entries any longer. I mean, geez, I can barely write with any semblance of grammar or readability now, so with a new infant, fat chance! So truly, the timing on this blog couldn’t have worked out better. It ends and just mere hours later I have a baby popped out of my belly. You’d think that was planned, but it wasn’t.
So, I’m me signing off! NAKED THANKS, everyone, for reading my drivel for the last 365 days.
XO
Stacey
This is how I'll remember this year: having a gut and some serious FUN with my wild little boy in tow. BYE!
I’d say for at least four nights per week over the past year, I’ve sat awake in bed, typing away on this blog, lights on, while Grey tries to shield his eyes and pass out next to me. That is pretty darn annoying — for him, I mean, not me. But not only has he been such a good sport about me asking him scanner questions at 1AM on a work-night and hearing me whine the question, “Who should I thank today?” about 200 times, but he’s also been supportive of this blog from day one.
Not to mention the fact that he’s just a great husband in general. There’s no one else I could even fathom seeing at the breakfast table or at night before I lay down in bed, every day, for the rest of my life. Like, until I am 100. That’s a REALLY REALLY long time, and it still doesn’t even scare me, so I know we’re perfect for each other. In fact, I’m looking forward to the next 70 years with my best friend and Captain Sexy.
In all honestly, the only time he really even pisses me off is when we’re driving together and, for some reason, he likes to pretend he’s Mario Andretti. But then again, I suppose I’m a control freak who just morphs into a really obnoxious back seat driver, so I guess I’m no pleasure to be around either when it comes to the car.
Regardless, I owe Grey so much. A full year of uninterrupted sleep (hahaha — with the new baby this phrase is unfortunately laughable), but also my gratitude for all his support.
Thanks, hubby!
Up until I met Grey, my experience with the military was limited. I was once busted, along with a group of other rowdy college kids, for skinny dipping in Lake Erie by the Coast Guard, but that hardly counts as in-depth knowledge of the workings of our military. Little did I know that one day, I’d be a Navy wife and be privy to all the sacrifices the men and women of the Armed Services make for us.
Even just being an observer into the lives of Grey and his other friends that graduated from the Naval Academy has made me have an overflowing amount of respect for every single man and woman who signs him or herself away into the service. Grey completed two tours aboard Navy warships and spent seven months in the Persian Gulf at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but he’s had friends that have been on almost a dozen half-year deployments. There have been friends that have come back wounded, or maybe not at all.
Not to mention, every one of these people have been heroes because they’ve had the courage to put themselves in the line of fire for ME — and you, and everyone else in this country. These are people who have sacrificed time with their babies and wives and husbands to work toward a greater good. Whereas politicians get all the glory — spooning lobster bisque into their oily mouths, jet-setting off to exotic locales, and making oodles of cash — I truly believe it’s the military that has the hardest job in government. Does the President have to miss seeing him family on Thanksgiving? Or is a Senator required to live aboard a floating piece of steel for half a year? Uh, no.
So on this Veterans Day, not only am I so very grateful to all our servicemen and women worldwide, but I’m also so proud of my husband, my favorite veteran of all.
Grey and I before he left on Deployment in 2002 for SEVEN months. What a huge sacrifice these servicemen and women make for our country.
WHOOOOHOOO! I am so proud to announce my best friend’s spin-off blog to Naked Thanks: Naked Fan Mail. Julie (or Julia if you didn’t know her since she was in braces and a back-brace for scoliosis like I have), is baring her soul via a 365-day letter writing campaign (like Karin and me), but as you’ll see, her letters are a little more Hollywood…
ENJOY and check her out! The web address is super catchy: www.nakedfanmail.com (Doesn’t the word NAKED make everything easier to remember?!)
Isn’t it nuts how time really does fly? How is it mid-November already? It seems like just yesterday, Karin and I were chatting over sushi in the summer of ‘09 about how we wanted to start a daily blog together. I wasn’t pregnant, had no plans to move any time soon, and actually, wasn’t even writing at all at the time. Now, just 14 months later, I’m about to have a baby, an official Delawarean, and a magazine columnist. Plus, our year-long blog is mere DAYS from being completed! How did that happen? Isn’t it crazy how much can change in one year?
I am so happy Karin and I decided to partner together for Naked Thanks. Just knowing I’d let her down if I decided to skip writing my note for the day made me motivated to make it to 365 entries. And even though Karin couldn’t publish her final entries due to a conflict with her new job, just seeing her unpublished notes on the back end of this blog made me want to continue with it. Because honestly, sometimes, at 1AM after a long day, taking an hour to come up with a reason to be grateful was kinda hard. At least harder than I initially thought.
Plus, as much as Karin and I are alike, we’re also so different. Whereas I think sometimes I let my nerves get in the way of living my life (uh, my fear of flying, my worry about leaving Ollie with a sitter, my anxiety about meeting a totally irrational premature death), Karin is honestly the master of living in the now. Whereas I’d be about as likely to climb Mount Everest as I would be to eat a piece of candied cow shit, Karin did it of her own accord, under no duress or offer of large amounts of money.
Then there’s the fact that I always have the intention of doing something, but never actually do it. For example, I think I’ve signed up for ten marathons now but never run in one. Karin, on the other hand, is almost ready to complete her fourth real marathon! She’ll get out and run fourteen miles on a rainy day when I’m too lazy to even get up to brush my teeth. That alone has been a lesson in perseverance for me, but add to that the fact that she’s a carreer-driven go-getter and, well, frankly, I’ve found it very inspiring. I think my tendency would have been to settle down, have kids, and almost let my career dreams fly out the window, but seeing her work her way into a dream job at a national newspaper has been a good example for me. It’s made me realize that motherhood doesn’t mean I have to give up my life — or goals.
Going into the next year, I’m sure Karin and I will still talk all the time and continue this blog, though not in the same write-a-daily-thank-you kind of way, but I must say, I’m sad this project is coming to a close!
Good thing we did the photo shoot for the masthead BEFORE I was pregnant!
When I first told my parents about this blog, to be perfectly honest, they were less than thrilled. I think any parent, when they hear their child is starting a website with the word, “naked” in it, probably has some reservations. My parents naturally felt the same way. I remember my mom and dad warning me that this blog would come back to bite me in the ass when applying for future jobs or in my current work situation. They said I could potentially ruin not only my career, but also Grey’s and that it just wasn’t worth the risk.
Then, there was their fear that I would be stalked by crazy Internet junkies. They believed that by me letting the entire world into my life (and my family’s lives), I would be opening myself up to crazy people. I agree with this now — as I did then — however, I figure at this point, EVERYONE is on the Internet. If you’re gonna be stalked, you’re gonna be stalked. And quite frankly, there are way more enticing people to stalk than ME, so I took my chances.
Of course, after their initial pleas that I publish the blog under a pseudonym or bag it altogether, they were my biggest fans. They gave me ideas for my notes, offered constructive criticism, and watched all of our promotional TV appearances dozens of times. But I am genuinely grateful to them for their initial reservations, I’m sure that’s partially why I actually decided to go ahead and see this blog to fruition!
So thanks, Mom and Dad, for your well-intentioned, but also totally ignored, advice. I do appreciate your delayed support for this endeavor!
My truly supportive family! I've always felt free to tell my parents exactly how I felt (like how this mustache of my dad's looked ridiculous) and they've done the same with me (like how launching a blog with naked pictures of myself may be a bad idea).
I think I was spoiled at a young age by being best friends with Julie. She’s hilarious. She’s been in many of my posts — I thank her for things like joining me on a quest to stalk all the hot boys in Erie, PA with a platter of insanely decorated Christmas cookies and entertaining the troops with her filthy jokes overseas. However, she makes cameos in tons of my notes — because it seems like every crazy plan I’ve ever had (like sealing the pores of my armpits shut or curing my wrinkles by consuming massive amounts of flax oil), she’s been in on.
As a child, I don’t even think Julie meant to be funny, but in doing things like wearing gigantic Sally Jesse Raphael red glasses that she was constantly getting bubble gum stuck all over and telling the director of our sailing camp to “go f*ck” himself — she’s always been one of the most hilarious people I know.
In fact, since having her as my best friend, I literally can’t stomach being friends with people who are not funny. If a person doesn’t have a sense of humor, then, um, well, it’s almost like I categorize them with social misfits and serial killers. The chances of me pursuing a friendship with an individual who can’t make me laugh is akin to me attempting to wax my bikini line with just a pair of tweezers: never in a million years. (Again, another reason why I’m so grateful to have met such friendly and FUNNY people here in Delaware! Like the girl who recently left Depends on my door!!)
Anywho. I’m pleased to announce Julie is starting a spin-off blog to Naked Thanks, called Naked Fan Mail. Like Karin and I have done for the past year, Julie will be “baring her soul” but she’ll be doing it through good natured celebrity fanaticism rather than thank you notes (so very fitting for her status as a LA-resident). Plus, as a stand-up comedian, I’m sure she’ll keep us all in stitches with her witty observations on Hollywood and pop culture.
Happy to pass the naked baton to you, Jul!!! Readers: stay tuned for the link on Wednesday!
Julie's been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We bonded as young children over the fact that both our mothers cut our hair with butter knives and dressed us like boys. I'm honored she's doing a spin-off to Naked Thanks!
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