One Year Older

Yesterday, I turned 19 years old. It was a wonderful occasion :) Here is what I did for my birthday.

1. Went to class. On Friday I only have two classes, my stats lecture in the morning and then my stats lab after an hour break. I am randomly in this class with a girl who was in my ice-skating class winter semester and it is so fun!

2. Went out to Tucanos for lunch! When my lab was over, Kelly and I took the bus back to Raintree and then Christine, Winnie, Kelly, Kelsey and I went to Tucanos. I've never been before and it was amazing! The waiters just kept coming with more meats and grilled pineapple and it was all sooo good! The only thing I didn't like was this wasabi? maybe? It's in the Princess Diaires II movie and it is nottt, in fact, guacamole. So don't be deceived. It's actually this really strong something that cleanses your pallet. Other than that, the food was all delicious and I was glad we went.

3. Gave blood! After Tucanos, Winnie dropped Kelsey and me off at the Wilk and Kelly, Winnie and Christine went to run some errands. While Kelsey went off to be productive and do homework or something, I went up to my favorite bathroom on the 3rd floor, turned the lights off, and made myself comfortable on the couch, ready for a nice, pulse-slowing nap. (I tried to give blood on Wednesday (which also happened to be the worst day of my life) but then my heart rate was randomly too high. Still not really sure why, but the guy who took it was really cute so I'm going to blame him. Anyway I was determined to not let a little thing like heart rate ruin my blood-giving experience and cost three people their lives, so I was taking a nap to try and slow down my heart rate.) Over the next hour, I answered four phone calls and turned the lights back off twice after someone came in to actually use the bathroom and turned them one. So my nap wasn't everything I had hoped for and more, but I went down to the East Lounge an hour later to try to give blood again.

For those who don't understand the significance of me giving blood, I'm going to try to explain it now. I first was inspired to give blood by a poster in the hallways of my high school, encouraging people to sign up for the NHS blood drive that would be coming in December. The poster gave three cases in which your blood might be used to save a life. I was amazed! I was thrilled! If I gave blood, I could save three lives! My blood would be in someone else's body and they would be alive because of me! I was fascinated by the idea that I could be standing next to someone on the metro, or behind someone in line at the grocery store, who had my blood flowing through their veins. (Not to mention I would get out of class, eat lots of snacks, and maybe even get a free t-shirt.) This was the best idea anyone had ever had! Then I discovered that there is also a weight limit. I'm sorry, whattt? Yes. You have to weigh 110 lbs to donate blood, as it turns out. I was crushed. I resigned myself to the fact that I would never reach 110 by the December blood drive. Instead, I signed up to help with refreshments. All day, I ran water bottles, pretzels, sodas, granola bars, and juice boxes to the fainting donors and harried phlebotomists and wistfully thought about the day that I would finally be eligible to donate.

That day came last February, when I went to my first-ever blood drive in the Wyview central building. I prepared for this blood drive for months and then, finally, I felt ready. The week before the blood drive I dedicated to eating food with lots of iron and protein. The day of the blood drive, I made sure I ate a very substantial breakfast and lunch. I convinced Jake to give blood, too, and we signed in and completed all the paperwork and the interview. I sat in the chair, chatted with the phlebotomists, and then watched as my blood trickled into the blood bag. 5 minutes and 31 seconds later, my bag was filled and I was standing up, feeling a huge sense of accomplishment and not an ounce of dizziness. I ate my snacks, drank my drink, and waltzed out of the central building, proudly bearing my hot pink bandage about my arm. It was a wonderful experience, so I was excited to be doing it again on my birthday!

Anyway, giving blood today wasn't quite as positive of an experience. When I got my pulse taken the first time, my heart rate was the exact same that it had been before. A little bit frustrated, I asked if I could try one more time in ten minutes. The girl said that would be fine and I sat down and tried to think calming thoughts. I imagined my heart pulsing. In my head, I watched it move. I imagined a knob next to my heart that controlled the speed of my heart. I imagined myself turning it down. I breathed deep, long breaths. Ten minutes later, my heart rate had gone down 9 points. Just from me thinking about it :) I was eligible to give blood! I was once again fine when I sat in the chair and watched the blood drip into the bag. This time it took 8 minutes. Which was kind of annoying, since I had wanted to beat my time from February, but it didn't happen.

Today when I got up out of the chair, I got three different kinds of cookies, two juices, and one extra-large shirt. (It was all they had left.) I felt a little bit dizzy and very thirsty, which I hadn't been expecting, so I was a little annoyed. About five minutes after I was done giving blood, Kelly and I were running across the street to catch the 832 back to Raintree and I was feeling very dizzy. Regardless, I was still happy to have given blood.

4. Did homework. I sometimes don't like college as much as I say I do at other times.

5. Went to the Haunted Forest! It was great. It was just a big group of girls and boys. Waiting in line was even fun because they had an awesomeee actor performing a skit as Jack Sparrow and I was totally enraptured. The Haunted Forest itself was okay but I think I built it up so much so I wasn't really scared as I went through it, maybe because there were so many people?

6. Watched the Proposal. I had to leave the Haunted Forest before everyone else because I had to turn in some homework and I walked into my apartment to find Crystal and her friends Alex and Connor, getting ready to go to the Dollar Theater. They invited me to join them and we went off to watch The Proposal for my third time.

All in all, it was a wonderful birthday!

A Productive Weekend?

This day was probably my most successful Saturday since I've been in Utah.

First, I went on a field trip to Rock Canyon with my Physical Science 111a lab. This class is one I need to take to be in the ElEd major and it is wonderful. It's twice a week for an hour at a time and we can get a possible 10 points each class period. 6 of these points are for attendance. The other 4 are for attitude. It's classes like these that remind me that I picked the right major :) Anyway the field trip was at 10 and I woke up at 9:36 when Audrey, the girl who gave me a ride, called to say she was on her way over. I got ready in a record 5 minutes and then we drove up to Rock Canyon. The field trip was very fun. There are two boys in my class and neither of them showed up, so I felt a little bit like I was walking around in a girl scout troop or something. The weather was perfect for hiking; the sky was clear, there was a nice breeze, and it wasn't too hot. We walked a little ways up the canyon, stopping at various points to learn about the kinds of rocks we were passing.

After the field trip, Audrey dropped me off at my apartment and Kelly and I went down to campus to study with Scott. Scott is in one of Kelly's classes and they always study together. Today, we were studying in the Tanner Building. I brought my stats notes, since I have a test next week, but I didn't get very much done. I think I just need a study buddy, too!

The game this weekend was at home and it was against Colorado state. After last week's disappointing loss, I was excited to be going to a game that we were "supposed" to win. It was amazing! Here are three things that went right in this game:

1. We won! so of course I would have enjoyed it no matter where I was.

2. I caught a t-shirt! Shade was throwing out these really cute gray t-shirts with the word "Cougs" on the front and I caught one! (I think I caught one last year, too, but it wasn't nearly as cute. Plus, the one I caught this year happened to be a small, which nevvver happens with free shirts, so I was pumpeddd.)

3. We sat in the 5th row! We got rotating tickets this year and we were just put there this time, right in the endzone.

There was just one thing wrong with the game. One of the guys in our section is soooo obNOXious. He is always yelling, whether at the players (on both teams), at the refs, or at the other fans. Seriously everyone in our section hates him. At one point there was a timeout and he started yelling at everyone to stand back up and saying that if we lose it's because of the people who are sitting down. I sat down and turned around to glare at him. Towards the end of the game, people just started talking loudly about him, saying things like, "Ohhhmygosh, seriously so annoying." "I wish some people would shut up!" etc. I'm pretty sure the whole section can't stand him.

When the game was almost over, my roommate Crystal txted me and asked if I wanted to go on a triple date tonight. We got home from the game at 7:30ish, and we were supposed to leave at 8 but that didn't happen. (Thank goodness.)

Pause for a little story about yesterday.

Winnie and Christine wanted to see The Proposal, and even though we had already seen it (and loved it), Kelly and I agreed to go with them. Winnie was at work so the rest of us went to the dollar theater to get tickets and to watch Ice Age before Winnie got off work. Ice Age was sold out so we got our tickets for The Proposal and went to the mall. (Really, what else were we supposed to do?) As we walked in, I swore to myself that I wouldn't buy anything. I didn't need it. I left the mall with two new shirts and my first pair of skinny jeans. Cool. I now love and hate Papaya. Mostly love.

Back to today. So luckily because of this impromptu mini-shopping spree, I had new clothes that I could wear to the date tonight. Crystal didn't know the guy who was my date but he was really nice and it was a lot of fun. We went to Fat Cats and then to Coldstone. I used to go to Fat Cats like twice a week when Jake worked there so it was great to see all the workers again! Kiersten, Kelsee, Jesse and the other manager were all there. The bowling itself was super-fun. I thought since I hadn't bowled in so long, I would be terrible at it, but I actually ended up winning! I got 123 points! I had Kiersten print it out for me because I was so proud. After bowling we went to Coldstone (which was of course delicious) and then to the boy's apartment. We hung out there for a little bit and then they dropped Crystal and I back off at our apartment. It was only about 12 so we decided to go to another party. Kelly came with us to this one. It was a little crazier and I started to get tired, so we didn't stay for too long.

All in all, I think it was a prettyy productive day :)

Kelly............yap :) this one's for you!

I just got home from a most fabulous girls' night with my favorite girls in the whole world: my sisters! We went to see The Proposal and then did a little shopping at the mall. I lovvved. The Proposal. It was so funny and even though I didn't think Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds had super-good chemistry, it's actually like one of my new favorite movies now. I also love my new purchases! We saw one little sign for a sale at 5.7.9. and we walked in to check it out, and all of a sudden, it was like an explosion of sales! So of course I had to buy two necklaces, a dress, and two shirts. Actually, we all spent an admirable amount in our excitement.

I would just like to take this moment to blog about Kelly. She was reading my blog the other day and noted, a little bit distressed, that she wasn't mentioned at all in my blog about things that make me happy. So I told her I would write a blog all for her :)

I don't think it's any secret that Kelly and I are really close. In fact, she is my best friend in the whole world. I think we are very complementary together! For example, I love driving. Kelly hates driving. So whenever we go anywhere together, it's pretty much a given that I will be the driver.

But besides just driving, our personalities mesh really well together. We genuinely enjoy one another's company, so we always have fun when we're together. We have so many inside jokes and since we've known each other our whole lives, we have so many stories and little things we can laugh about. I always think it's so much fun to go on double dates with Kelly because that way I know I will have fun, no matter what.

Kelly is the nicest older sister a girl could ask for. Or a boy, for that matter, in my brothers' case. Sometimes, I kinddd of feel like I am the older sister, just because Kelly is so easy-going and she's willing to let me make decisions on things like, where we should live next year, how we should spend the weekend, things like that. I mean she'll totally plan things when she sees something she really wants to do, but for the most part she will just happily go along with whatever I want. So sometimes it feels like I'm older. But at the end of the day, it is obvious to me that Kelly is the oldest.

All throughout my life, Kelly has been a great example for me to follow. I watched her go to kindergarten first, then go to middle school, go to girl's camp, go to dances, start high school, graduate high school, and then move out and go to a college 2,000 miles away. We're only 16 months apart, so I've been close behind her all along, but this situation has always suited me. I love knowing that whatever I'm about to do, Kelly has already done it. I have been watching her for nearly 19 years, and having someone one step ahead of me at all times has made a huge difference. Just knowing what is about to happen, from the point of view of the one person who knows me best of anyone else in the whole world, is something I am immensely grateful for.

I remember one year when we were at Girl's Camp together and for one of the activities with the young women in our ward, we passed around this rock, and then everyone said what they liked about the person holding the rock. When I was holding the rock, Kelly said something like this: "Well I love Heather because I think she's really nice, she's like the nicest sister, and I like talking to her.....and that's all I'm going to say because I don't want to start crying." Which I thought was a joke at the time. But it actually wasn't, because then when I started saying what I loved about Kelly, I started crying. We had always been best friends, but I guess actually trying to put into words how much I appreciated her made me realize how much I really did.

I can remember only a handful of times that Kelly and I have fought in my life. Looking back, one of them was actually really humorous. We were little, probably like 10 and 11, and it was bedtime. "Bedtime" meaning "bonding time!" We used to talk for literally hours when we should have been sleeping, about absolutely everything. We got in trouble countless times for talking too long and laughing too loudly hours after we had been put in bed. For some reason, tonight, we got in some little argument, and one of us....probably me.....got mad at the other and poured water on them and then stormed back across the room and into their own bed. Of course this escalated and got a little out of hand. What started out as a little sprinkling of water turned into chunks of ice being thrown on beds, then whole glasses of water, and finally I found myself marching determinedly into our room with a huge pitcher of water, past the bathroom where I could hear Kelly filling up her newest container with water from the faucet in there, and dumped the whole pitcher of water on her bed. Feeling some sort of sick satisfaction at myself for this horrendously bratty act, I stood by my bed, wringing water out of my night shirt and waiting to defend my own bed against Kelly, the obvious villain. Before Kelly could extact her revenge on me, Mom intervened. I heard the water in the bathroom snap off in a distinctly un-Kelly like fashion. I can remember how my heart jumped to my throat as I crashed down on my bed and scrambled to get under my covers. I frantically squeezed my eyes shut just as I heard Kelly come skittering into the room and dive into her own bed. I heard a small gasp of surprise and the squish of her soaking-wet matress, and then I heard my mom say, in her meanest, hoarsest voice, "It is bedtime. I am trying to sleep. If I hear another word out of either of you, if I hear a trickle of water for the rest of the night, I'm going to come in, and I'm gonna make you take a cold shower. Go to sleep." Then she left. When we finally worked up the courage to talk again, it was in our quietest voices possible, and I was standing next to Kelly, helping her flip her matress over so she could sleep on a dry bed. I think we probably ended up going to sleep that night pretty quickly after Mom's terrifying threat, but I have no doubt that the next night we were back to our old tricks again. Although it was a few months before we had water in the bedroom again.

I have always been able to talk to Kelly about absolutely everything. At BYU this year, I remember her calling me one night at like 11 so we could figure out what time we would have lunch together the next day, or something like that, and we ended up talking on the phone for about 2 hours. We see each other every day at college, but somehow we still had so much to say to each other.

Another time, we met up for lunch and both of us had so much to talk about. We had about 15 minutes before Kelly had to go to her class. In that time we had to eat and discuss everything that had happened over the weekend and everything that was coming up. It was a very difficult task we had ahead of us, but we were determined to rise to the challenge! So for 15 minutes, we talked back and forth as fast as we possibly could. We had made up a list of things we needed to discuss, and we would yell out one of the items on our list, babble about it for about 2 minutes, and then yell out the next item. While one person was talking, the other person was frantically eating and trying to process everything the other person was saying. It was a little draining, admittedly, but we talked about everything we needed to and Kelly was on time to her class.

One of my favorite games to play with Kelly is the "What if I smiled like this?" game. Origin: unknown. It's very simple: one person just says, "What if I smiled like this?" and then twists their face into the most grotesque, ridiculous smile they can muster. Then the other person tries to match it. The smiles evolve, and the game would not be complete without head rolls and shoulder shrugs in all the appropriate places. It isn't a competition. No one is the winner or the loser. Showing one's teeth is optional.

I am fiercely protective of Kelly, and she of me. One time at the beginning of my freshman year at BYU, I went to a sports event and met up with some friends I hadn't seen in awhile. The company and the game turned out to be devastatingly less than I had expected them to be, and I left in the middle of it, fuming. Kelly had been planning to meet up with me there with some of her friends, and we ran into each other just outside the stadium. I guess I was just feeling stressed by the newness and disappointment of everything, and when I saw Kelly and started to tell her what had happened, I almost started crying, I was so upset. Kelly listened to my pitiful little tale, gauged my level of distress, and asked me if I would go back in the game with her, promising that she would take care of everything. I told her I didn't want to go and that I would just see her later. She made sure I got to my ride and then walked resolutely into the stadium where she found my friends and told them exactly what she thought of their behavior.

I think one of the things that makes me more mad than anything else is when I find out that someone has been talking about Kelly, or being mean to her. Furthermore, when people mistreat her, specifically boys, I will fondly nurture a personal vendetta against that person. I will think of the stories Kelly told me about things they said, or did, and I will spend time considering what I could say to them. It seriously makes me so mad. I think I spend more time thinking about how mad I feel at the people who are mean to Kelly than I spend thinking about the people who are mean to me. When people are mean to me, I typically will just want to talk about it and then get it out of my system that way. When people are mean to Kelly, I mull over the situation and work up this indignation until I am more upset about the whole thing than she is. I wonder if, maybe, this is because Kelly doesn't really get mad, so I feel like I need to compensate for her apathy with however much annoyance I think the situation warrants.

When I see people who aren't really friends with their sisters, I honestly feel sorry for them. I used to wish that I had an older brother, one who could be protective of me and have hot friends and tell me what guys were thinking when I got confused. But ohmygosh! I adore Kelly and I wouldn't trade her for anyyything!

We have way too much fun.

We laugh way too hard.

We have way too many good memories.

We share way too many clothes.

and I love her way too much.

Olive juice <3>