First World Problems

So I have a lot to blog about, but HERE'S THE THING. I haven't because right now, I am trying to:

1. move schools (we're moving tomorrow for the last 3 weeks so my school can get central air conditioning)

2. get engagement pictures taken (check!)

3. get a job for next year (which involves scheduling interviews, writing emails to principals, calling on other contacts for help in getting a job, finding substitutes so I can go to interviews during the school day, etc.)

4. unpack all my stuff at my summer apartment (not trying too hard to do that one, I'll be honest)

5. pack all my stuff at school

6. plan a wedding (oh, mine)

7. figure out where I'm living next year (actually this is Stephen's job but sometimes when I'm stressed about a few things then I start looking for other things to stress about too)

8. get a dress to get married in (finally done with that one)

9. plan my summer

10. plan my fall

11. save money (and the only way I can think of to do that is to just not eat....)

Blablabla boring. All I'm saying is, I'm excited for the day when I can do the following with some degree of consistency without it turning into a freaking panty-tangling process and event:

- sleep

- make and eat dinner (yesterday's dinner was a string cheese and today's was half an apple because it just takes SO MUCH EFFORT to make food and my milk just expired so cereal is no longer an option)

- brush my teeth

- go running (I know. Who am I?? I don’t even know, but I actually really like going running now and I think about it and want to do it and I try to plan it in, and then I get home and the sun sets and the world gets dark and I get scared of getting raped, so I end up just turning on the music video for “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida and running in place in my room while that plays, and friends, that is not even the same thing as running outside, let me tell ya.)

- lay out (if the sun could set at 9:30, I'd be happy. I mean, really happy. I could get home from school at 7 and lay out until the sun set. But no, it sets at 7:10.

- see my friends. I miss them really bad. And I'm turning into a bad friend, like, I know I am. It's depressing that the only time I can ever see them is Monday nights for the Bachelorette. Speaking of which...

- watch the Bachelorette. I usually am so painstakingly devoted to this show, and I take notes and I know the men by name, and I look forward to it every week. And I just can't invest in it this season. It's way too much effort. And it's such a dumb thing and such a first-world problem, but it's my blog and I'll first-world-problem it up if I want to.

Twihards

Jacob and I are not Twihards.

But we tried to be satirical and clever and hot all at once for Halloween this year when, at the suggestion of Kelly, we dressed up like Jacob Black and a Jacob Black fan.

Please notice the detail in my costume. The teeny-bopper pink boots. The floofy headband. The lopsided pigtails. And you can't see it, but my shirt says "Team Jacob!" and has hearts all over it. There are also other phrases, such as "I run with wolves," "Mrs. Jacob Black," and "I wanna bake cookies on your stomach."

Jacob also got really into his role and even went tanning. But unfortunately, instead of coming back all sunkissed and pleasantly bronzed, he came back with a bad sunburn. To accommodate his bright pink pigmentation, we threw together sunburned tourist costumes for the first night of Halloween.

What? Vitamins?

Summer is the best thing ever invented. I love so much about this summer!


Working in the Writing Center is great because no one comes in (I've done like 8 tutorials total in the past 3 weeks) and because every day there is delicious food.


Working at ColdStone is great because I love ice cream. And I love when people come in and visit me. Especially my favorite customers aka Kelly and Dahl and Julie the P.


Taking French is great because now I can parler francais a little bit. Un petit.


Living with Rachel is great because she brings happiness to our apartment in the form of pet dogs and chocolate-covered strawberries sent to her by faraway suitors. Approval ratings for said suitor have reached a record high.


Living with Caitlin is great because she tells me what to wear and lays out at the pool with me practically every day. And we are going to get tan no matter what.


Laying out at the pool is great because they feed me there.


Laying out at the pool is not great because they sometimes enforce rules that make me get weird tanlines. Oh well....


Lagoon is great because you can go on the Rattlesnake River Rapids and there are no seatbelts, so you can jump all over the raft and even if you almost fall out it's not a big deal, because at least you avoided the waterfall that fell instead on Stan, because you pushed him under it and he is too good-natured to push anyone back.


YogurtLand is great because it is delicious and you can try a billion samples and no one will even look at you funny. Which I would ignore if they did, but it's still nice to not have to deal with that kind of snarkiness.


Being a BYU student is great because I love this campus sofreakingmuch.


Being Nicole's sister is great because she introduced me to the Party Rock Anthem which I now listen to at least 8 times a day. This is not an exaggeration. And I'm a little embarrassed by it. But just a little. Un petit.


Listening to the Party Rock Anthem so often is great because it inspires me to learn how to shuffle. And then it turns out it's kinda easy if you don't get too crazy and just stick to the basic steps, and then I feel really accomplished and want to go dancing real bad.

Also, while we're on the subject of the Party Rock Anthem, that would be great if 5 to 100 guys want to participate in a Halloween costume with me where I am Lauren Bennett and I wear a silver leotard and put a pink heart on my throat and then all the boys dress up like all the guys in the music video.

If you are interested I will be very thrilled.

Inner Turmoil

is so fun.

You know what else is so fun? (And by that I mean, you know what actually is fun...)

-Pong Night

-learning French

-working at Coldstone again

-laying out at the pool with Caitlin

-Temple Tuesdays with Rachel

-getting my toes done by Bana

-free food

-indecent news

-gojane.com

-trampolines

-Baachi

-rodeos

In conclusion, SUMMER is fun. I'm just a summer girl :)

(Side note: if you make that song into a pandora station, and you are anything like me, you will be a happy person.)

A Perfect Summer Day

must include at least 5 of the following:

1. sunshine

2. laying out at the pool

3. a good book

(someone give me the second one NOW)

(......please)

4. good friends

(real live friends, too....)

5. free food

6. 10 cent ice cream cones at buy low

7. cute boys

(J.P. especially!)

In conclusion, I have had at least 4 perfect days since arriving back here in Utah :)

It doesn't matter. Put your shirt down.

Things I love about being home:

1. sitting next to Dad when the primary kids sing in church

2. talking and playing and studying and laughing with Julie...she is so funny!

3. snuggling with Sarah

4. borrowing the brothers hoodies

5. making dinner with real ingredients

6. Mommy taking care of me when I'm sick

7. going to nursery and primary instead of Sunday School

8. being tanner than everybody else.....this has never ever ever happened!

9. getting paid $50 for the inconvenience of showing up at NIH only to be sent home because of a mishap with the scheduling

10. having this happen twice in three days, whatttt?? :)

I love Utah, and I am excited to go back in a few weeks. I LOVE Florida, and I miss it like crazy. Whenever I go back to school, I feel like I'm going home, and if I went to visit my friends in Florida, I would know how to get places and I wouldn't feel like a total tourist. But even though I don't necessarily want to settle down here, Maryland will always be my home home. I mean, I was born and raised here, so it seems only natural.

I love that first glimpse I get of Baltimore when I'm flying home at night, that glow of city lights. I love the trees along the highway and I love the racecar exit off of 29 on the way to the mall. I love JoJo and Reagan, and Cane, and even Delilah and Bob Delmont. I love Rita's.....is it bad that I've already gone three times? I love NIH. I love the valet parkers and the OP4 nurses and the MRI technicians.

Home is just so....homey. I'm a pretty adaptable person, so I can be happy and comfortable pretty much anywhere. Besides, I love new places and I get a little restless when I'm home for too long, but I'm so grateful that I have such a place as this where I can stop in every 4 months and recharge.

I'm in Love.

With Florida.

I am in love with palm trees. I love their rustly palm leaves and their jaggedy trunks. I love that they are everywhere here.

I am in love with the sunshine. I love that it follows me. I love that it tans me. I love that I can feel it on my bare skin in the middle of winter. I love how it dries my hair in just a few minutes.

I am in love with the ocean. I love the stripes of color, the green that fades to blue that suddenly becomes light sandy brown. I love the shells that get tossed around all day by the foamy waves. I love how the salty water tastes.

I am in love with the sand. I love how it is so soft, but so easy to pack. I love how it feels on my feet. I love pushing my hands into the sand and feeling how cool it is where the sun isn't touching it. I love drawing in it. I love doing cartwheels on the sand.

I am in love with my job. I love that I can do hair. I love that I can make people believe that I am magical. I love that I can talk to little girls from everywhere, from Mexico, or Brazil, or France, or the United States. I love that I can feel these little girls' spirits as I talk to them about whatever while I do their makeover. I love that I work with people who are so fun and nice.

I am in love with flipflops. I love the way they slide on my feet without any hassle. I love when I get a flipflop tanline. I love seeing my toes and wiggling them around.

I am in love with motorcycles. I have said it a million times, but I just think they're the hottest thing ever. I love wearing heels and a dress and climbing on the back of a motorcycle. I love holding on tight and shooting down the road. I love putting my hands up and feeling like I'm flying. I love the way the wind pulls on my hair.

I am in love with Cici's Pizza. I love how nice the workers are. I love the macaroni pizza. I love how small the slices are. I love the desserts. I love paying hardly anything for a whole meal. I love not being hungry for a whole day after eating there.

I can't ever leave this place. Why did I think I could be here for 4 months and then leave? I'm so in love with everything about Florida.

Shoes. omg, SHOES.

Today I wore a really stupid outfit to my classes.

No really. It was so stupid that I was a little bit embarrassed to be myself.

Here's what it consisted of: my bangs back in a poof, a tealish-blue polo, blue and red and teal plaid bermuda shorts, and baby blue flipflops. Maybe this doesn't sound so bad to you....or maybe it sounds inexcusably horrendous to you. In any case, I feel the need to offer some sort of explanation. Starting with yesterday.

Yesterday I was mad productive. I finished unpacking (I know, a little late. Whatever.), did all my homework, laid out at the pool with Kelly, reading for our Marriage and Family class, went to my ward's FHE, shaved my legs, hung up all my freshly done laundry, went to Kelly's ward's FHE, and assembled stuff for the best package a missionary could ask for. This morning when I woke up, the first thing I did was carefully examine my new tan. I love tanlines. Most people hate them. I like them a lot. They remind me of how far I've come. Anyway, I was a little sad to discover that half of my forehead was pleasantly sunkissed, and the other half was pleasantly untouched. I guess my bangs were covering it up when I was tanning yesterday. I figured this was ok, since I could just keep my bangs there until it went away.

So that's a really nice plan, but it's not exactly helpful when you promptly forget about it as you're getting dressed for the day. Especially when your thoughts are occupied by other things, like, how am I going to dress my feet today? And then as you try to figure that one out, and you decide you might as well do your hair while your brain works on the shoe problem. And the next thing you know, you're running over to your sister's apartment, barefoot, with 6 minutes before the bus arrives, hoping that she will have a pair of flipflops that matches your color scheme a little better than your hot pink and black flipflops would, and you've completely forgotten to even think about your two-toned forehead. Any thoughts of your forehead that may have survived are pushed even further to the back of your mind as you discover that your sister had the same problem yesterday, and the flipflops she ended up wearing match your outfit about as well as shiny black dress shoes would match with a pair of basketball shorts.

But the bus is coming. And you ran to your sister's apartment barefoot, trusting that she would save the day with her enviable collection of footwear. So you have no choice but to wear the baby blue flipflops.

Really. Who honnnnestly thinks about their hair at a time like this?

So all day, as I was walking around, I imagined up things in my head that people were thinking about my flipflops. No one even really looking that hard at them. But I knew. All day, I knew that my flipflops clashed horrendously with my outfit. And it bothered me to no end.

Immediately after getting off the bus with Kali, who is lovely btw, we marched into the BYU bookstore, I filled with an impressive determination to buy the first pair of shoes I could find that would match acceptably. But alas, this determination faltered under the greedy eyes of the BYU bookstore, and my baby blue flipflops slapped the floor dejectedly on my march out of the bookstore, deterred by the $20 price tag on the white flip flops I left behind me, mocking my resolve. For the rest of the day, I avoided standing up and walking anywhere as much as possible because I was so disgusted by my flipflops.

And to those of you who think this is ridiculous, that my shoes affected my day to such an extent, I would just like to challenge you to walk a mile in these shoes.

PS I am back in Utah. NYC was great. I love my new roommates. I haven't taken any pictures since I've been here and it makes me sad. I wish my friends would get nice boyfriends. I'm kinda sad I missed Blue Knob this year. I like my classes so far. I'm going country dancing tomorrow. I love seeing random people I know around campus. Aside from the shoes, life is pretty good, all things considered. :)