Little Victories

Guys, let's talk about small victories. I am all about celebrating the little joys (us pious folk sometimes even call them "tender mercies") because there are significantly more of them then the massive wins.

1. I worked out. For the first time since I've been here in Jerusalem. I know objectively that I love working out and it makes me feel/sleep/think/act better and I could go on and on about how I brought the wrong type of shorts or how much it really wrecks my hair washing schedule but I've just plain been LAZYYYY. There I said it. But. BUT. Finally a two nights ago I ran laps outside on the huge patio then biked in the Center gym while studying for final #1 of 5 this week. Here's an amused-with-myself/hoping-nobody-walks-in selfie to document.

2. I dropped my phone flat on it's screen a few days before I came and the front cam has been so janky ever since. For the first two moths there was a huge shard of glass obstructing the camera but it finally got jostled (all the jogging, probably. lol jokes, jokes) enough to clear enough space for me to send pictures of my face to my loved ones. Oh, what an age we live in. 2016, here's to you!

If you're waiting for the tiny victories, those were the two victories. I exercised 1x in the last two months and my front camera is usable. Lol. That's it. Nothing to see here, folks.

snapchat of my october

Sometimes snapchat is an eerily accurate representation of your life- as shown below.

 

 

Aside from school, my hobbies lately have been eating, snacking, temple attending, spending time with syd & my argentina-bound brotha, and general schlubbing. It's been really nice. Happy November! 

Rationalizing

I've always been a "glass half-full" kind of girl, to a fault actually. I think it's a great thing, to be a positive person! However, when reflecting upon actions, I think I've crossed the "happy medium" territory into the extremes. It's like, anything I do, no matter how mediocre it is, I celebrate it. Or when I make a mistake, I can easily tell myself why it's t o t a l l y fine that whatever happened happened. 

Take yesterday. I donated blood. You  better believe I walked around the rest of the day with my elbow wrapped up and feigned innocence with "oh this sticker?! ho ho ho forgot I was even wearing it." But like, why? I took a fifteen nap and got free snacks. But I felt great about myself. I made a difference!!!

I also keeeeeep accidentally buying peanut butter when I clearly am not out. No biggie! It doesn't expire anytime soon! Better too much than not enough! Right? WRONG.

I just internally verbalized "wow i've been really productive today-- painted my nails, blogged, journaled, walking home from school basically counts as working out..." You see?? Someone stop me. So many things wrong with above statement. 

Gas Cans- a Necessity

So back in the glory days of Texas Summer 2012, Sydney and I met up for dinner with some girlfriends from BYU who live about forty five minutes away from us. As we parked I noted the need to fill up the gas tank- but  (this is important!!) the empty light was not on yet. After an hour or two of free refills and giggling and just general girl talk, we said our goodbyes and went on our merry, respective ways. But, I suuupose my car was parked at such an angle where it was reading the gas tank as empty and subsequently the car wouldn't start. 

Like any rational girls would do in our situation, we hitch hiked with the sanest, most normal people we could see-- a handful of some newly licensed teenage girls. Of course upon arriving at the gas station, we realized we didn't have a gas can. Or whatever those thingys are called. Syd and I scampered across the parking lot to the grocery store (with our new besties in the car waiting for us) but lo and behold, Kroger is also lacking in the gas can department. Luckily the manager overhears our desperate pleas and invites us to follow him around to the back parking lot (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) where has a gas can in the trunk of his car (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW WE WEREN'T KIDNAPPED but we were high on anxiety and stress and followed him and were rewarded with a sticky and dusty but gloriously real, gas can. We ventured back to the front parking lot where our new besties were anxiously awaiting our arrival ("we were two minutes away from calling the police!!!") and we headed back to my car. 

Ten minutes after being dropped off we realized I left my cell phone in the car of those nice kind wonderful teenage girls. Also on my drive home I got t-boned by a non-english speaker. The fact that he doesn't speak English is fine I just hope you really get the picture of us both getting out of our cars and not being able to communicate. At all.

Moral of the story is... I don't know. I will never know if by having the weirdest night of my life I delayed myself long enough to avoid a future car accident closer to my house, or maybe my tires would have blown the next day. Or maybe I was just supposed to learn a lesson about being prepared? Life is so weird. This entire blog post is because a) i love reminiscing-- especially about myself b) this is my vague, round about way of saying my life is confusing me right now.

Studying = Student + Dying

Because I'm suuuuuch a dedicated student sometimes I find myself doing homework in the wee hours of the morning (read: I procrastinate). 

Sometimes I get the late night munchies. Sometimes its chips and guacamole, sometimes its an apple w/peanut butter, and sometimes its maraschino cherries. I'm not particularly picky. Tonight it was a mere turkey and cheese sandwich. 

There are lots of things that are totally productive and worthwhile that you can do on your laptop when you are putting off studying. Like clearing your recycle bin. Or working on your ongoing 2012 montage video. Or making running playlists (don't let that trick you into thinking I go on runs). Or reorganizing your "School" folders into year, semester, class, and assignment. Or facebook stalking a boy you went on a date with clear back to the summer of 2009. Or taking selfies. Because sometimes you just want to remember what you looked like that one night you hokey pokeyed around all day and all night and just couldn't seem to finish your homework. 

And sometimes, you write an entire blog post while not really saying anything of value. It's fine.

Awktober

I like to think of myself as sufficiently socially savvy. But lately?! Y'all I'm full on seventh grade boy awkward. I've been having these out of body experiences where I'm sitting in my brain but I have zero control over my words and body movements. I can't even articulate these on the internet because I'm still cringing about some of them. What is wrong with me? Am I becoming a sister missionary already? Help?

But this video made me laugh until tears came. So did this.

The Stairs from H***

Excuse the curse word implication in the title but there's simply no other way to describe my morning commute.

Even once I stagger up all of the stairs I still have to go up another hill!!

THIS IS WHY EVERYONE IN PROVO IS SKINNY.

To say that I'm concerned about gaining weight would be quite the overstatement.

Snails & All-Nighters

With every week that goes by I think wow that was the most stressful, busiest week of my whole life! And then the next week comes and somehow tops it. This week...

Sydney and I went to the cannon with our cute freshman boy space friends and I literally gained two pounds. That is not an exaggeration, that is a fact. It was fun to go and reminisce and two freshman boys asked for my number LOL it was like wait why didn't this happen to me last year? But in all honesty it was a good reminder how nice it is to be able to eat what I want when I want to eat it. Yay apartment life.

I LOVE MY JOB. Kind of want to redo my whole life plan and become a librarian? Well actually not really but I like being one right now. My boss is really sweet and the hours are flexible and it's a lot of independent work which is nice. 

School really gets in the way of college, ya know?? I really like all my classes but they're also really hard. And require emotional eating and also "i need to stay awake until i finish this" eating. Hence the above picture. 

Hahaha I hope this picture accurately represents the desperation that I felt at 5:30am when I took it. Still awake doing homework. So ugly but so funny.

I saw this snail when I was walking into work and it really made miss Washington. Also I don't think I ever really told anyone this but this summer I accidentally sat on a snail and crushed the shell and it's bodily innards got all over my pants. So for the rest of my life I'll feel this weird bond with snails. 

Also in other "me doing weird things" news, one time last fall in class I hit my funny bone weirdly on the desk and I fainted. HAHAHAHAHAHA

Not sure if I actually like this song, or if I just like someone singing my name. I think both.

I H8 RATZ

I had no idea I was so incredibly whiny when under stress! Hahah oh this video is so candid, so real though.

I was house sitting for a fam who shall remain anonymous to protect their identity but let me just say: it was not a walk in the park. One of the days I found a rat (or actually in retrospect it might have been a bunny rabbit) in the skimmer basket. 

Ugh I severely loathe rats. I think part of that is rooted in the book 1984 when in the end (spoiler alert) he is tortured by rats. 

Anyways. It was one of those times where I realized that if I didn't do it, no one else would. UGH I feel sick when I even think about it. Anyways I was literally praying to my Father above for strength. Legitimately on my list of top five hardest things I've ever done. Also on that list is when I accidentally left a bottle of chocolate milk in my fridge over Christmas break and I came back to see that it had exploded, and then molded ALL FREAKING OVER the entire inside of the fridge. Yes I did throw up but then I got over it and cleaned it and haven't had chocolate milk since. Yikes sorry friendly readers if that just grossed you out to the point where you're never coming back to this blog again. 

But perhaps if you're that fickle/weak stomached I don't want you reading my blog anyways. Oh ho ho.

The grim satisfaction of a job well done. 

Rat or bunny? You decide.