double-dating with Spiderman

Weekends are such a joke. You have to wait for five whole days for one, and before you know it you're passing out way too late on Sunday night, cursing a world where you only get to sleep past 5:30 two days a week. At least, that's how I see it.

For some reason, I suck at remembering to take pictures when I'm at A's house. I guess I'm trying to focus on being "in the moment" more, which is great while I'm there, but sucks when it comes to not having photographic proof that we like each other most of the time.

We were big homebodies this weekend. Watched a lot of Lost with his parents (we're trying to get them hooked too), went to the driving range again, argued over which Drake song is best, got Qdoba for dinner, hung out in the pool. There was this funny Mexican guy who was hitting on me at Qdoba while I was waiting for my food - you know, the long eye contact, creepy smile deal. After I got my food he went up to A and said, "Yo man, is that your girl?" A said, "Yeah, she is." Creepy Mexican guy said, "No disrespect man, but she's really cute. You're lucky, man." And I didn't let A forget it all weekend.

In other news, I also got to see The Amazing Spiderman on Friday night! It should be called The Amazing Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone because duh, hello ...

... theyaresofantastic. And Andrew doesn't have creepy bug eyes like previous Spidermans that will not be named. And I'm convinced Emma and I would be BFFLs, if only she knew I existed. She could teach me how to pull off hair of any color, and I could tell her that her boyfriend is incredible, and we could probably go on awesome bowling double dates and stuff. And maybe we could go to Qdoba too?

Is there a way to actually make this happen? Double dates with Spiderman?

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE.

big storms coming

via

So I was supposed to hiking with my hiking friend Chels yesterday, but then one of the kids that she works with had a temper tantrum and pulled a chair down on her foot, and she had to go for an x-ray instead.

Which sucked, but it was okay because then I had time to go to the store and make myself food that didn't come out of a box because I've been so healthy like that lately.

And then when I was driving home, the sky was getting kind of dark so I texted A: "Big storms coming!" (at a stop sign, yes I know not to text and drive)

And about 30 seconds after that, the sky went black. And there was wind and lightning and rain coming in my windows before I had time to put them up, and about 30 seconds later it was like I was driving into a wall of water. What should have been a 15 minute ride home took over half an hour, with lightning crashing and tree branches falling around me.

But I didn't mind. It was just me and the car and the storm. And despite the loudness ... peace.

I like storms. I like the power of them and the perspective they bring, and that they take me out of myself enough to realize how very very small we are ... and how that's the way God intended it to be.

there's a lot of swearing in this one

A finally finished watching Lost last night, all seven seasons of it, after almost a whole year of trying. I'm so proud.

Needless to say, when I woke up this morning, I had about 20 hilarious texts waiting for me. In the interest of time, I've picked out the best ones to share.


Sidenote 1: this will really only be funny if you've seen Lost in its entirety. Also if you know that A is generally a pretty manly dude, except in weird instances where he cries over dolphins, which is another story.
Sidenote 2: A swears a lot. I won't post the actual words, but if you're offended by placemarks for f bombs, read no further.

A: I'm watching the last episode of Lost!

Me: Gah!! I cried during that one. Let me know what you think!!

A: They are all getting back together?!??

Lmao they are finding the ones they love.

Wow I don't like this, I've never cried so much for a f---ing show!

Me: Haha, go eat some chocolate or something!

A: How can you not cry after you’ve seen the whole show??? 

    Night night babe. I wanna hug, these emotions are killing me

    It’s like the world is falling into place!

   It's so f---ing good! My face hurts!

    Hugo gets to take over!?!!

   This show was so well written. It ends with him closing his eye! It started with him opening them!

   Jack gets eaten by the yellow light :/

"My face hurts" - probably one of the best responses to Lost ever.

[end transmission]

if you really knew me ...

I've been seeing this all over my blog roll for about two weeks now. It's an awesome idea. I'm a bangwagoner, and yes, I'm okay with it.

If you really knew me, you would know that I always have to have the last word in a text conversation. Even if it's just "okay" or "yes." I'm aware that it's insane and annoying.

You would know that I have a very love / hate relationship with my butt.

A loves it, I hate it.

If you really knew me, you would understand that my anal-retentive grammar fixing isn’t personal. It’s just a thing.

You would laugh at the $200 shopping sprees I have on F21’s website. But I’ve never actually bought anything.

You would know that A and I have our own language, and a song we made up about the penguin pillow pet he bought me for Christmas.

"It's Puddle! Cute and fluffy, it's Puddle!"

composers, we are not.

If you really knew me, you would know that I am terrified of public speaking, to the point that I get nauseas and stutter. Also that I can spell nauseas without thinking twice.

If you really knew me, you would know that my temper gets the best of me too often. And that when I stop speaking and start lacing up my sneakers, you probably shouldn’t talk to me for at least an hour.

You would know that I tend to leave dirty clothes on the floor for at least a week, that I hate touching wet food, and that I can never keep still long enough to let my nails fully dry.

You would know that I want desperately to succeed, but at what I’m not yet sure.

You would know that although I don't really talk about him much, A is my world and I'm his, and we're planning on keeping it that way.

And you would know that I'm nowhere near this open in real life.

baby shower, and a weekend with A

One of my oldest friends, sister to the girl I'm moving in with, is having her first baby in September! It's so odd to think that we're at the age where people are getting married and having babies. We had her baby shower on Saturday afternoon, and although it was the first that we've ever planned, I think it went pretty well.


Then in the evening I drove down to Maryland to see A. One of the best things about him is that no matter how long it's been since we've seen each other, we always fall right back into our routines. We spent the evening sharing our new music with each other (he hates Andy Grammer, which goes straight to my heart, but we found some Kid Cudi that we both agree on) and catching up with his parents. He made his amazing breakfast on Sunday morning - eggs with cheese, Morning Star veggie sausages, OJ, and english muffins with Nutella - and then we went to the driving range.

He was off his game and I had a hard time getting balls past the 75 marker, but neither of us minded. We both agreed that when we're older we'll live by a driving range and go often enough to be decent, at the very least.  The rest of the day consisted of lunch, the pool, the Tour de France, ping pong and darts (which I lost at admirably), Chipotle for dinner, and Happy Gilmore afterwards.

This past week was stressful to say the least, between planning the baby shower and finding out that my car needs over $200 dollars of work to pass inspection, and apartment issues. Adult stuff, that is. It sounds silly but one of my favorite things about A is that he babies me like no other. He knows when I'm stressed and does little things to make it go away.

Sometimes I wish I had an iPhone to whip out and take pictures of every little thing that makes me smile. I would need the world's largest memory card for this past weekend.

Friday's Letters

Dear hiking / photoshooting friend o'mine (aka Chels),
Thanks for dragging my sorry ass hiking last night, and for the Starbucks, and for finding sweet abandoned places for future photoshoots. I promise henceforth that I will start eating better and running more so that I can actually keep up with you.

Dear brother,
I love you. But the Klondike Krunch Klub for late night snackers must be disbanded, for the sake of my renewed healthy eating habits. It was fun while it lasted though.

Dear L,
I know that we have been close friends since 9th grade. I know that you know my embarrassing stories and that you will always share them with people, and that's okay. Because I do the same to you. But this picture was not supposed to make it to Facebook. Ever.

Dear A,
One more day :) I love you, you weird, weird person.

Dear shooter at the Dark Knight premier,
I will never understand why you chose to do what you did. The people at that movie theatre weren't bad people, they weren't your enemies, they weren't anything to you. And most importantly, they were people. The Batman trilogy is about the complacency of the masses; about the good and bad in people. I get that. But it is not about what you chose to do. There were babies in there, and children who will never be able to go to a movie theatre again. Nothing you can say or do will ever make this okay.

Dear baby shower tomorrow,
I am so looking forward to you being over. Cake pops are not my forte, and super preggo people kind of freak me out. Even if that preggo person is one of my best friends.

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great weekend!

Thursday Thoughts

If there's anything I've learned lately, it's that life is going to be okay.

You just have to let it be sometimes.

glimpses

My parents always taught me that time is precious. That it should not be wasted. Now that I'm a grown-up in all the legal ways of the word, it's finally hitting me how right they are. Working from 730 to 5 every day doesn't leave much time for doing things that are for me, like being with my family, spending time with friends, or cooking, or photography or reading or painting my toe nails, whatever. It's like, sometimes you know your parents are right but it takes something to actually make it sink in, you know?

Since working full-time I feel like my actual life happens in glimpses, in those precious few hours that are all mine. I got to spend a few hours back at UC with some of my sisters the other night, picnicking on the lawn in front of the library and slapping at mosquitos in the dusk. I haven't been back there since graduation but those few hours made me realize that I will always feel at home there.

And okay, so a good deal of our conversation was about weird stuff, like Ari's new personal trainer and how he looks like the most attractive man ever times a million, and how Eva and I don't like feet (does anyone else call sweat "feet juice?" no? didn't think so), or how Rachel is starting acupunture, which freaked the rest of us out a lot. But that's what sisters are like, really. Telling your weirdest stories and laughing at everyone else's, and for taking weird statue pictures and stuff like that.

I don't get to see my friends nearly as much as I'd like to. I don't get to be around my family much, either. Part of adulthood is realizing that, I guess, and finding ways to appreciate the little times you have with the people who make your world go round. Cause, you know, that's the important stuff.

it's only baseball (small courage)

Friday night, my entire office and their families went to a Reading Phillies game. One of the really nice things about my job is that management hosts a lot of social events throughout the year to keep good relationships going, something that I doubt larger companies emphasize. It was a really fun night. I got to hang out with some great co-workers, play with their kids, and relax. But ...

I'm not a baseball person at all. A long ago ex from the worst relationship of my life loved baseball, was obsessed with it, and the hours of baseball I sat through with him made me like it even less.

A has started watching it recently, and even though I know it's not the same at all, that he asks me to watch with him because he genuinely enjoys it and wants to spend time with me, I still get those old gut reactions.

That I'm being punished for something, like a little kid.
That I will have to sit there for hours in silence because I don't have the backbone to stand up for myself and leave.
That I'm still young and foolish and broken.

I always have to talk myself through it, to realize that this is not the same, it's not a punishment from a cruel person, that A is not him, that baseball is that - just baseball. It's been three years since I got out, and yet the past still has the capacity to scare me to the extent of immobility. A has been amazing at helping get me rid of the ghosts from three years ago, and I'm immensely thankful for that.

I think it's funny how those little triggers can bring out the worst times of your life. Chipping away at them is one of the hardest things to do. It would be far easier to hide and ignore a situation when that trigger feeling starts crawling up your spine. Making yourself face them, that's another thing altogether.

Sometimes the small courages mean the most.

do not Google: what makes you beautiful



note: I did not make this. But I really wish I had. via some other crazy stalker girl somewhere.



I just had to stop my burst of morning productivity to tell you guys this. Seriously, it’s that funny.

I was Googling “what makes an effective advertisement,” [being all businesslike and whatnot] but all I had typed out was “what makes.” And Google did that thing where it tries to guess what you’re thinking, which I always find completely hilarious. Today was no exception.



This was the text that A got 30 seconds later: Googling “what makes an effective ad” … Google tried to guess what I was searching … “what makes you beautiful lyrics” … HOW DID THEY KNOW

And this was the text I got back: Haha they know your search habits!



Which is of course ridiculous because why would I google that, I already know all the lyrics duh.

Justsaying. I love my boys.

All of them.



Luray Caverns, VA. I love this so much. Look how excited he is!





okay, ayn rand. you win.

Have you guys heard of Ayn Rand? No? Maybe? If you're a more prolific reader than I am, than yes, you probably have. And if you like her, you should probably stop reading.

My love/hate/hate relationship with Ayn Rand began about, oh, two summers ago when I was still a sad little intern. I like to go to this park and read during lunch, being the social butterfly that I am not. So I found a bunch of books that looked decently good and started with The Fountainhead.

We should back up. Ms. Rand is a fantastic author. I mean, read for hours on end and forget to eat, that kind of good. Not in the "I can't wait to hear all about Edward eating the baby out of Bella's body" teenage way, but a soul-searching "this is something I can believe in" kind of way. She writes about the power of the human mind and the human spirit and productivity and progress and lots of terrible things that happen when those are ignored or trampled. She invented this philosophy called Objectivism back in the 1930's that people around the globe think is the next grilled cheese and all that, and wrote books about that too.

So I'm currently devouring reading Atlas Shrugged and let me tell you ... it is making me rethink my entire life. I know. Shit just got real.

So if I start going on and on about what is the meaning of life and where am I going and what am I doing, etc ... well, whatever. It's going to happen. A little over 400 pages to go, you can bet it's going to happen. So much for some light lunchtime reading.
It's really too bad she's not alive so I could write her a strongly worded letter about how I don't really have the time to be questioning my existence right now, doesn't she know I'm trying to get an apartment and work and plan a baby shower and all that? It's rude is what she is.

If you're one of those Edward and Bella kind of people, you might want to stay away from this one. However ... if you're into staying up questioning your existence late at night and trying to figure out something magnificent to do with your life, it might be time for you to meet Ayn.

[I'd send you my copy but the pages are dog-eared and the back cover's falling off and I'm pretty sure that's spaghetti sauce right around the 700's]

today is a big day. HUGE.

Okay, so maybe it's not as big a day as Saturday will be, but still. HUGE.
[awkwardly constructed Pretty Woman reference]

WE ARE FINALLY LOOKING AT AN APARTMENT.
Yes.
Let me say that again: We are FINALLY looking at an apartment!

I am ten different kinds of ecstatic. Obviously websites can lie and pictures can be decieving but if it's even half as good as it looks I'll probably kiss the landlord on the spot. The price is perfect, the location is great (halfway between work and where A will be during school, and only 20 minutes from home), the policies are pretty lenient. Googling the management company brings up only good things, which is a big difference from the last place we looked at.

It's safe to say that our hopes are maybe a tid bit higher than they ought to be, but hey. This whole adulthood thing takes practice. But seriously, I'm currently accepting any and all advice from adults and recently-become adults, so pass that shiz on - please and thank you.

a little more personal

LBI, summer 2012



I don’t tend to post about personal things, but this is something that’s been on my mind frequently for the past week or so.

See, there is this little problem I have sometimes.

This little temper of mine. And it comes out more than I want it to, and mostly at the worst times.

Yesterday A and I were talking about the trouble I’ve been having at home lately. I really, really, really didn’t want to leave him and his wonderful parents and his house that is starting to feel very home-like to me, and naturally I did the logical thing … and started crying. Not the full blown ugly cry, but, you know, chin wobbling and eyes welling and your voice gets so tiny you can’t recognize it anymore crying. And in that tiny voice I said, “please don’t make me go home.”

Here’s where the temper part comes in. I knew the second I said it that it was unrealistic. Of course I had to go home. But I wanted him to tell me that no, I didn’t have to, that I could stay and he would make everything bad go away. Because in a perfect world that’s what would happen. Logically, I knew that. And he knew it too, but there wasn’t anything he could do. And I forgot that.

And I got mad. The whole way home I cried; frustrated, angry tears because I couldn’t change what was going on at home, and I couldn’t help that I had to go there, and because even though it was unrealistic, I wanted A to fix it. He was patient, he was incredibly kind and sweet … and I was mean. He would ask if I wanted to call him, if I wanted to stay and leave early in the morning for work, if there was anything he could do … and I would say “It’s fine.” “It’s okay.” I shut him out.

And now, today, I feel stupid.

I feel stupid for letting my emotions get the best of me.

I feel stupid for taking them out on the person who was trying to help me;

The person I care about more than most anyone else on the planet.

I feel stupid for having unrealistic expectations of him.

It’s hard to sum all that up in an “I’m sorry.”

the best thing about air conditioning

the sink cat herself, before her spot was ruined

So last night before I went to bed, I was all "I'm going to set my alarm early and get up and run and eat breakfast at home and go into work early and maybe even shave my legs and take a picture of my outfit!" And I went to sleep happily thinking about how productive I was going to be.

And then this morning when my alarm went off at 5:30 my body was all "you crazy, bish! go back to sleep!" So I did. And then I was late to work, without shaved legs or an outfit post.

Which makes for a pretty good start to Friday, if you ask me. It's supposed to be over 100 tomorrow, so I'm going to A's for the weekend to live in his pool. I'm also making him take me to see a movie. A) movie theatres are air conditioned. B) we have never gone on a movie date. Ever. Which is mostly because we're cheap, but whatever.

Oh! And in the category of "really exciting news!" ... we got an air conditioner!! And okay, so it is only a window unit and it's in the kitchen so my mom actually cooks dinner (note to self: withholding dinner is a perfectly acceptable way to coerce your husband into buying you things). But it is the coolest part of the house now ... and get this. The stupid cat - until now - had this habit of sitting in the sink and throwing herself against the screen to get at birds at the feeder outside. Now that the AC is there instead, she just sits in the sink and glares at it.

It is so perfect.

the thing about picnics

... is that sometimes they can be super, super awkward.

Yesterday A drove up from Maryland so we could go to a Fourth of July picnic that a college friend of ours was having. I was pretty excited, since I hadn't seen him in 5 whole days. Which sounds lame, but after spending pretty much the entire summer with him until last Friday, it's been weird.

So anyway, we went to this party. And it was strange.

Our friend also had a bunch of his friends from home there, which was cool, but we didn't really have much to talk about with them.

So yeah, obviously we weren't going to be bffs with any othese people. The commonality factor, not so much there. But I did feel kind of bad that we didn't make any new friends.

Plus all the burgers (both the veggie kind and the "real" kind) all tasted like lighter fluid.

Also I forgot to take any pictures during the day, other than this one, because I was bored waiting in the toll booth.
Which sucked but at least I'm not the last person on earth to not have an EZPass, like A is convinced I am.

Hope all your fourths were excellent, and that no one was throwing firecrackers into the pool next to the autistic kid at your parties, because that's what was happening at ours.

it's only been forever

So, I’m back. It is my first official day of full-time work as a real grown-up adult person, which is pretty intimidating to think about, but not so hard to do since I am back exactly where I’ve been for the past two years, give or take 6 months for my Scotland adventure.

And I have tons of work to do and emails to sort through, so I’ve been getting a lot of work done. And by that, I mean catching up on blog readings. Because I haven’t been on the internet much at all in the past two months, other than Facebook and to ignore emails. Vacation is for vacationing, no?

Anyway, things are back to normal, more or less. There have been a lot of adventures in the past two months, which I’ll slowly be re-capping (mostly for my own enjoyment, but whatever). And the past weekend I spent shopping and eating and scrubbing the front porch, which made me realize several very important things.

1. Phones are so much bigger than they used to be! First they started out as those huge bricks that you had to clamp right against your ear. Then everyone hopped on the cell trend and they got reallyyy small – like tiny flip phone small, like Motorola Razor thin small. And holy cow, all of a sudden these new ones make the iPhone look like a stunted child.

2. It is probably not socially acceptable to clean the outside of your home in a sports bra and short shorts, but when the heat index hits 90, all bets are off regarding modesty. At least in my book.

3. My stomach capacity is HUGE. Gargantuan, even.

4. Best friends are bad influences on your credit card. But new shoes are totally worth it. (Sidenote: I can’t find a picture of them, but Ross has a really beautiful pair of tan BCBGgeneration pumps for 40 dollars. And they are so perfect in every way.)

5. New hair. For the first time in like, 5 or 6 years.

TDLR: It’s been the best mini summer vacation ever and I can’t wait to write it all down, and new shoes are always worth it. Also, I’m now blonde. Kind of.