Attention All: I've Changed My Sheets!

That's right! I am back on the productive train and the first stop was changing my sheets! We will not go into how overdue that was, but will skip to the fact that having new, soft, wonderful sheets have brought me to a very happy place. Also, given the fact that I am mostly in my apartment JUST to sleep, it's very important that I am in love with my sheets, which I am:)

I should be ashamed about the mood it put me in and the inspiration it gave me to keep checking things off my list, but... it worked! I FINALLY moved the cats litter to a different closet, cleaned out two other closets, put my clothes away, cleaned the fridge out, went grocery shopping, re-filed and shredded my papers and ran some errands. It was a great weekend.

I should go back to the now catS thing. Yup. It's plural. I am one cat and one ugly dress away from being labeled "crazy cat lady". (Charlotte already holds this wonderful title. Just the sheer number of pictures she has of them is enough to add her to a very sad, unfortunate club of cat ladies). ANYWAYYY, her name is Lily and she is extremely cuddly and adorable. I inherited her from my Nana, which Charlotte and I were happy to do. She's a little heavier than Jacoby, but a lot more friendly. She is also very high maintenance. She can only eat a certain type of food (which I am inclined to search for since my carpet is not supposed to be the color it now is), she tends to leave her mouth open and drool at random times and talks constantly. I'm also pretty sure she's the one who ruined my brand new, fabulous bath mat. But Jacoby has been really testing Lily's limits. We are sure to referee the disagreements, but Jacoby really pushes her around and since she can run faster, tends to always get the best of Lily. I'm sure they'll be on the same page soon. (Thank goodness neither of them have front claws). Their attitudes with each other come and go. So we are now a 2-cat household.

School this semester has been on another level of difficulty. My days of breezing by and half-assing my way through... pretty much everything, is over. It's taken a lot to get by thus far and the semester is only halfway through. Working full time and going to school full time is not ideal. Which is probably the reason SO FEW people do it! I love learning things the hard way.

In other news:

Traffic report:

Car: Red JAG - top down. Driver: Older man. Balding. Adding to the humor: he's blaring Journey and it's foggy and cool out.

Incident: See above. Enough said. 

Mom and I had a chance to spend some time together which always leads to some sort of strangeness. We were busy! We made friends at a Jiffy-Lube, watched the fate of a seagull we were waiting to be eaten by the "shark" we saw, shopped so much the card company called (*mucho sarcasm), watched a strange alien cartoon movie (which I'm blaming mom for), ate snacks for meals and pretended to be able to handle an endless pasta bowl.

The first weekend of October marked the first annual girls-getaway weekend in Maine. Hayley and I left Friday night for Kennebunkport, ME. Even though we were both dreading spending THAT much time together and were thinking of ways to prevent the awkwardness of being stuck together for that long, we managed to have a FANTASTIC time. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard or had such a good time in the rain.

Tips we took away from that weekend:

Just because a store is called "The Best of Everything" does NOT mean that "everything" is in the store OR that it is the "best".

Free wine ALWAYS tastes better than wine you have to pay for.

One can have MUCH MORE fun in a place that is club-sized, more so than if you went to a normal-sized venue for dinner.

Kennebunk, is in fact, NOT close enough to Kennebunkport to prevent a $20 cab ride that lasts 90 seconds.

When a resort posts quiet hours on their walls, that is really a threat that they will send a Grampa-looking man up to your room should you be laughing past those hours.

Foxy-moxy's are NOT appropriate attire to go out for drinks in.

Onine degrees from fake online colleges will ALWAYS lead to a singing career.

(Thanks Hayl for my bday present. Best. Time. Ever.)

I also spent a great weekend at home with the family a few weeks ago. Blane's putting together longer sentences and remembering and understanding so much! It's amazing to watch him and listen to him. He cracks me up. I even shared a couple popsicles with him, which is a pretty big deal... since, I'm not a big sharer. Caitlin came up too, which was fun! We decorated pumpkins, made homemade cupcakes together (well, mostly me... she knows extremely little about baking, I had to be patient with her :p) and we also... oh yeah, chased pigs. It was a great weekend.

Charlotte, Tyler, Hayley and I are planning on carving pumpkins tonight and making soup, which I'm sure will turn into some sort of story, so... to be continued.

xoxo-

 

I laughed out loud...

So even though not much has changed with my demeanor and I have nothing very positive to report in the area of my productivity (although I DID read on my porch for a couple hours this weekend!) I have quite a few random incidents/thoughts that I would like to share, because 1) I can't keep anything in 2) I would like to waste your time reading this, since my life was wasted experiencing these things and 3) my last post was a bit deep and I would like to return to my shallow world of laughter.

*Side note: every time I ever write laughed out loud (or LOL for you cooler folks)... I am literally laughing out loud. I'm not that person who is like really actually sitting somewhere un-enthused writing LOL. I'm actually doing it.

My wandering thought-process (I apologize for taking you to the scary place in my head):
I was walking to my car after class the other night and could see my shadow in front of me because of the way the outdoor lights were and I saw my ponytail swinging rapidly from side to side and was immediately annoyed by myself and grabbed it to stop the swaying. But then I laughed out loud thinking back to when I was little and WANTED my ponytail to do that! I used to see other girls walk by with their pony tails swinging and I just really wanted my ponytail to swing. So I used to tilt my head from side to side while I was walking to get it to swing until my sister caught me and told me how annoying and uncool it was. She would be so proud that I stopped it the other day.

A site to see:
There is a man that works here that I do NOT like. He is ALWAYS cranky, NEVER willing to help, dislikes students even more than I do but CANNOT hide it (the way I can), and was always trying to put roadblocks up to prevent progress when we were FORCED to work together. (Joyce can attest to the anger this man created in me). Well the other day on my way to class I was walking behind him and all of a sudden noticed HOW MUCH OF HIS LEGS I could see! I mean, he was wearing light blue (khaki material) colored shorts and they were probably 6 inches ABOVE his knee. Not only that but they were probably 1-2 sizes too small for him! AND he had on leather high top shoes. I WISH I was making this up folks. True story. I laughed out loud again and ran (as fast as I could behind a REALLY tall man who took up a strangely large amount of the catwalk) to Joyce's office to tell her that God was throwing us a little bone by letting us witness the fact that NO ONE exists in that man's life to prevent the catastrophe that was his outfit.

My regret of the past week:
Watching Save the Last Dance 2. I know what you're thinking... they made a SECOND one? Yup they did. And as much as I hated watching those less-than-attractive people act and then bring down the only other decent actor in the movie... I couldn't/didn't turn it off. Yes, that's about 2 hours of my life wasted because I could not turn away from the train wreck that is that movie. Hopefully this can serve as a cautionary tale to people to not watch sequels to movies that were perfectly good the first time. Honestly, I'm annoyed just thinking about this. I was NOT laughing this time.

I would also like to start a new segment entitled: Traffic Report. Too often I encounter entertaining things in traffic, which, lets be honest, makes it more tolerable to be sitting there. To look over to the car next to you, know that that person thinks they're invisible and doing something embarrassing is... well... worth writing about and passing on!

Traffic report:

Car: Black Lexus. Driver: Girl. Accessories: Blackberry covered in pink glittery stones. Adding to the humor: Her long nails painted red.

Incident: So I'm at a red light with this girl to my right in her car... I keep seeing her holding out her phone and it's almost touching her windshield. First I think "Is she trying to squash a bug or something with her phone?" Lol... NOPE. I drive forward a little so I can see her face and she's trying to take a picture of herself. Does she take just one? NOPE. She takes like 6 and all in different poses. I was literally staring at her the whole time and she's all: pouty face, tilted head, kissy face, looking cool... lol. I really wanted to get out of the car and offer to take it for her. She looked ridiculous holding her phone out in front of her and then examining each picture. I hope whoever received the picture appreciated how many attempts it took to get there.

Car: Gross pick up truck. Driver: Young guy. Adding to the humor: Tons of tattoos.

Incident: I was just looking in my rearview mirror, seeing who was back there and just making sure they were stopping behind me at the light. (I have OCD about watching people behind me stop once I put on my breaks. My worst fear is someone not paying attention and rear-ending me). So I'm looking back and he seems like a scrawny tough-guy. You know the type. Little guy, but overcompensating with tattoos... and while I'm looking he yawns. I know what you're thinking... "so what?" Well his yawn lasted like 35 seconds! That is a LONG time for a yawn. (if you dont believe me, count to yourself right now!) Plus it looked like he unhinged his jaw to yawn. His mouth was so big and it lasted forever. Of course I laughed out loud. That was the biggest/longest yawn EVER. It's the little things....

Last thought for the day:

I REALLY wish my phone would STOP auto-correcting. Everytime I try to write "yeah" it spells out "utah". I have literally NEVER typed Utah. I don't know anyone in Utah and I couldn't even point to it on a map. So if any of you have received a text from me saying Utah... it is the equivalent of yeah.

xo

I Hate Secrets!

… so I’m SO glad I don’t need to keep one anymore! The anniversary party of the century is complete and I can NOW release all I’ve been keeping in and keeping busy with since February! You have no idea how much of a blabbermouth you are until you have to keep something from your Mommy! This has consumed me… so I’m so happy that it was a huge success and (hopefully) everyone had a great time. They were so shocked! It was the first time I’ve seen them that shocked and VERY proud that we pulled one over on dad. Sorry mom, but it’s usually pretty easy to pull things on herJ

I will be uploading pictures shortly once I have compiled more.

First day of school was yesterday. How ironic is it that I hate crowds, kids and lazy people and I work at an over-crowded university with 16,000 students who aren’t responsible for anything and staff/faculty that realized the lazier they are, the more they’ll get paid and the more secure their job is here? If you cannot tell already, my grouchy pants are on and in full effect. My classes actually start tonight, which will be really interesting. Considering my energy level is currently around negative 100%  so, I’m not quite sure how these classes will fit into my busy schedule of sitting and avoiding things.

I swear I’m in a funk. I’ve never not been able to pull myself out of it until now. Of course because I’m neurotic, I made a list of things that would make me feel better that I am simply not doing and have no energy/desire/drive to do. Smart, huh?

Things I could do that would make me feel better, but I’m avoiding like the plague:

- Cancelling my Planet Fitness and joining Curves

- Actually going to Curves

- Cleaning the bathroom… thoroughly

- Renting a carpet cleaner/cleaning the rug

- Buying new clothes

- Changing the oil in the car (yup, still haven’t done it mom)

- Replacing the battery in the car (yup, still haven’t done it dad)

- Saving money for Christmas/joining the Christmas save program at a bank (obviously for next year since I missed the boat)

- Find outfits that I would like to buy

- Preparing my lunches/outfits the night before

- Buying new mascara that doesn’t sting my eyes

- Using my coupon at the kickboxing class

- Cleaning the stand under the tv

- Finding/installing something to hold wine glasses

- Updating my ipod

- Dying/cutting my hair

- Putting my pictures online and linking them to my blog

-Updating my blog more regularly

- Taking more pictures in general

- Actually doing the readings for my classes

- Finding/killing the smell in my house

- Use my balcony more before it starts snowing

Although, as a VERY wise friend once told me: I should just be in whatever mood I’m in and stop judging myself and making it harder. One day I will wake up and WANT to clean the bathroom and can go from there. There is no point sitting around judging myself and being harsh and it is certainly NOT motivating. (Thanks Ana). So THAT is my new plan. To just be and keep this list for a time that I actually just end up doing these things.

Moving on… one of my favorite people in the world is having her birthday tomorrow and I’m so happy that we can celebrate it this year! She hid it last year until it was too late. This year, she isn’t getting by so easilyJ

I probably should attempt to do work or at least get up to go to the bathroom now.

xo

We Don't Have Enough Family Photographs...

Well Melissa is now a married woman! She looked BEAUTIFUL and it was a perfect day. Getting there had its ups and downs though.

On the way there we drove through Vermont where I saw the Von Trapp family! It was awesome- They were riding their bikes in white shirts and khaki bottoms. Just like the movie! Vermont was beautiful. THENNN we got to the ferry where we had to cross Lake Champlain to get into New York. NOT beautiful.

Not only was I stuck hyperventilating in my car, but it was POURING and that was the most stressful 12 minutes of my life. I really should have done more research before going on that. However, it DID prepare me more for the way back and I learned my lesson.

SO MUCH ANXIETY on the wedding  day! I woke up and just wanted to throw up. I was SO nervous. I’m not sure if Melissa was, but I was enough for the both of us. Everything was perfect and it was SO nice outside! Plus- the food and entire reception was wonderful. It was so nice to see her so happy and actually have a day devoted to her, even though she tried to serve people… honestly. We also had plenty of time to bond as a group at the hotel over cheese and crackers (which I just yesterday could stand to eat again… holy dairy!!) On the way back it was actually good weather and Joyce rode with me so I would calm down. But because it was so nice we got to leave our cars, which actually helped a lot!

Hmmm what else significant happened that weekend? OH YEAH I FORGOT JOYCE’S FREAKIN BIRTHDAY! I could’ve just died right then and there. The ONE person who is sure to remember everyone else’s birthday got NOTHING on hers. Literally nothing. I even spoke to her on the day! Had it on my calendar! I’m going to just start believing that someone else inhabited my body for the day and it wasn’t me who forgot. So… Ana and I enacted an emergency birthday plan and threw her a little get together in their office early the next week. Honestly. Worst-friend-of-the-year award… right HERE people. I’ve totally gotten over it (as you can tell).

The next weekend after that I made a trip to PA to see those strange people I like to spend time with. The drive actually went a lot quicker than it normally does.

Shauna and I had a sleepover like the old days… except for right now she takes up A LOT more of the bed than she used to. It’s always nice to catch up, considering no amount of my prodding her to participate in this decade’s technology actually gets her to return a phone call or email.

Saturday was dad’s work get-together at Knoebel’s (amusement park). We brought two kids that help mom and dad around the farm – which after a long debate, we all decided was a VERY nice thing to do… (insert sarcastic laugh here).  They were really nice and grateful to be there. It was cute.

The food was good, the company was good, we bought stock in anti-bacterial gel, but… IT POURED THE ENTIRE TIME DAD WAS OUTSIDE.

We finally sent dad to the car to take a nap so we could all go on rides. We started with the water rides since we were inevitably going to get wet again when dad decided to leave the car. Blane enjoyed the beginning and endings of the water rides but DID NOT appreciate the water part in the middle. He also rode the STUPID yellow antique car a trillion times before I was about to assault someone to get him a different colored car. Blane just ended up thinking it was HIS car. Anywayyyy good times.

Sunday morning came fast. Or so I thought. Evidently while I was trying to catch up on sleep my LOVING family was downstairs plotting a very RUDE awakening for me. Dad came up and pulled my out of bed by my feet and harassed me for like 15 minutes until I got up. It seems having not been there for a while they ALL forgot I am NOT a morning person. Mom had the bright idea to video tape my torture, like any loving mother would. THANKFULLY I can count on Shauna for not doing it right and there turned out to be no video. As I woke up and got around my mechanic lectured me about the upkeep of my car, Blane went down for a nap and Mom tried to poison dad via a runny sandwich.

All in all it was a great weekend, but was SO short. Shauna ended up escaping out of the car despite my best efforts to lock her in and take her with me, but hopefully they will be visiting soon.

I will leave you all with some of my favorite quotes of the weekend:

 “What’s that other word for a mule?”

 “Thank you. Can I have my tractor now??”

“It’s raining… I bet Rick got out of the car.”

“Is that mayonnaise or cheese?” … “I don’t know. I’M not tasting it.”

“Beautiful boiled ham.”