It's easy to say, oh I'm working out more and watching what I eat. The hard part is actually following through with it. Well have no fear, for I have found the most wonderful healthy-lifestyle buddy in the biz. His name is Mr. www.Livestrong.com. I AM IN LOVE, with this website. It has the most wonderful application called MyPlate. You create an account and enter you height/weight stats and your weight loss/gain/maintain goal. Then every day for every meal you look up the foods you ate and record them. MyPlate gives you a daily calorie intake and a recommendation for how many grams of each type of food you should eat for the day.But, it doesn't stop there. This website is chock-full of dares, that dare you to change your life for the better. It ranges from quitting smoking to spending more time with family, recording food every day, to
running a marathon.
What I LOVE about this site is that I spend so much time on my computer anyways, it's incredibly convenient to use. And it doesn't expect every member to accept a dare to run a marathon. It's main purpose is to challenge people to live better, healthier, happier lives. And recently, my life has been just that.
In the midst of all this healthiness and positivity, I have been battling a NASTY cold. We're talking waking up several times a night to blow my nose and adjust my pillows just so I can breathe. Because oh, sometimes breathing is necessary to stay alive. I've been pushing through the nastiness and resisting the urge to plop into my comfy bed every day and not return 'till morning. I make myself get up and go to the gym, and not delude myself into thinking junk food will make it go away.
It's been working so far. But today on the treadmill, I jsut about cried because that cold fast air screaming towards my lungs made my already raw throat feel like it was splitting to the size of the Grand Canyon. ouch.
Apparently garlic is good for a sore throat. weird.
Anyone who knows me very well knows that I love to cook. And they also know that I am dating a man who was raised in a tiny town by a wonderful momma who cooked him un-Godly delicious food. And now everyone knows that for the past 8 months, I've been desperately trying to impress this farm-bread corn-fed man with my cooking. This evening's attempt was no different.
I LOVE potato soup. I love it with a strange culinary passion. Tonight I proudly concocted a mouth water, calorie crammed creamy delicious heaven called loaded baked potato soup. The following pictures are the from scratch to scrumptious process of birthing this concoction. It will be accompanied by a huge caesar salad and an entire loaf of sweet bread. So enjoy my pictures, and let's all cross our fingers that my loping lineman will drool over my delicacy.
chop chop chopping potatoes
Ryan HATES onions. I not so secretly included an ENTIRE onion by way of pureeing it.
GARLIC NOM NOM NOM
The smell of simmering butter and onions is enough to give me palpitations, and yes that's two stick of BUTTER, not margarine. An ENTIRE CUP of butter.
Potatoes cooking.
Milk and flour, creamy deliciousness and a great action shot if I may say so myself.
The finished product, a bubbling steaming creamy pot of heaven.
It is incredible to me how fast time passes. How one day you dream about being a cool high school kid and the next day you're dreaming about having your own kids...what?!
This phase of life is so strange and wonderful. Being young and ambitious and in love means that nearly every day a new idea for the future invades my mind. It's a great sign that at this point, plans are so useless. Whatever happened to the ability to just squeeze every ounce of fun out of every day? Now sometimes all I want to do is squeeze every moment of sleep out of my days.
My kids at the daycare always go a million miles an hour. From the moment they walk in the door, they're ready to play. And they play ALL DAY LONG. How I wish I had that energy and that passion for just playing, just imagining and creating and running, jumping, dancing, singing.
It's great to be young. It's a blessing to be able to recognize what you have and to not take it for granted.
I heard a quote once that went "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Ugh. I hate this quote. For me, loving means that as much as a tiny little worm as it makes me feel, I have to suck it up and apologize all the time. I notice this with the kids at daycare. It is SO EASY TO BE MEAN. The hard part of love, and of life, is being the person willing to step outside of their comfort zone so that those we care about feel loved.
When we get older we forget how precious apologies are. When I see my 4 year olds cry and then hug and apologize and run off holding hands it reminds me just how simple it is to fix what's broken. The problem when we get older is that our pride gets in the way of that simple fix.
Tell those you love that you love them. Remind them how much they mean to you. Even when they do little things, give them lots and lots of thanks and hugs and warm wishes. For you never know how far those words will sink into their hearts.
Today I am very thankful for one person in particular. Maybe because it's his birthday.
Maybe it's true that you never know what you have until you lose it, but I also believe that you never know what you've been missing until it comes along.
I love you Ryan Taylor Louia. Happy Birthday stud!
Well, I'm leaning more towards just using my blog as a place to post my writing. I've recently decided to minor in creative writing along with getting my BSE, so my output of pieces is only due to increase. Here are a couple pieces I've written recently. We've been doing a unit on the "short short story". This makes the pieces very concise, yet very difficult to write. The challenge is finding the right details and getting rid of the "fluff." Enjoy!
A Change in Appetite
I didn’t eat lasagna for ten years. The very site of it used to make my stomach toss. I had just gotten off work and was sitting in the living room enjoying my first Bud of the night. Carly was making dinner. The smell of garlic wafted through the air. I started to doze off through her intermittent chirps of all the things women waste their breath on. I was doing my best to ignore the shortcomings she was pointing out. Then silence.
I jerked awake in my chair with her screeching at me. Something about flowers. Sleep still hazy in my eyes, I couldn’t tune in. Something else about affection, a brief monologue about emotion. I stared, mouth still slicked with drool. Then it hit me, literally, in the eye. The unmistakable fling of a 1 carat princess cut diamond ring collided with my eyeball with incredible accuracy. It was the first time I’d ever seen her actually hit something she was aiming at. But this wasn’t a hit that was supposed to miss. Something else about falling out of love, and a guy named Brogan. Brogan’s a funny name. I still picture some beefy oiled up bouncer with bleached hair. Then a warm gooey mush as she dumped the entire pan of lasagna in my lap. A couple of slammed doors, a fleeting pink duffle bag.
Years later I saw her at the grocery store. Fake tits and three chubby kids with white-blonde hair. I called my wife on the phone and asked if we could have lasagna.
“You hate lasagna.” She replied.
“No, not anymore. I think Lasagna just hates me.”
When the Glitter's Gone
After sundown, the fireflies flicker in the side yard. Brother and I would ride bikes around the block. Calling out to our friends, we were met with the hollers of after dinner excitement. Dodge ball games, capture the flag, sardines; we would hide from the moon. Every game was prematurely ended by the kid that lost, complaining it wasn’t fair, and proclaiming the next game was due to begin. Friday nights no longer mattered, in the summer, every night meant no bedtime, no homework, no cares. Grandma’s house became a place of refuge, the porch a breezy sanctuary from the sweltering midday sun. Happy to be rid of parents during the days, we filled every waking hour with the dreams we had spent the school year conjuring. I became a pirate, a teacher, a postman, a soldier, every bike-ride was life or death, and every playground a treacherous sea. Justice would be carried to every corner of the globe. Kids became warriors, doctors, heroes. Late summer afternoons could turn into the last battle to win World War II.
Mother left us every morning with a warning,” you boys have fun today and don’t you grow up too fast,” words that meant nothing to us then ring harsh in my ears now, pounding, reminding me that those dusky summers have long since passed, now only filled by piles of paperwork ever glaring, lists of to-dos, ever staring, and the taunt of my own children now yelping in the yard, resounding the same proclamations that I had once uttered with my own brother, trespass and die,and now the ground is lava, and now we both can fly, you just went blind, I win, I’m the hero, this spaceship can takes us anywhere we want to go.
Now I only wish I could say these things, with a sliver of the belief that I had then. Only cynicisms, complaints, curses, now fill my ears and erupt from my mouth. Plowing away at my computer, day in day out, the floor becoming lava sounds nice now.Questions from my kids bring tiny sparks of imagination back to life, but nothing ever sets aflame. “Really Dad, is that really how you can become a Jedi Knight?” Some days I wonder what it would be like to grab my wife and call our friends for a game of capture the flag. They’d probably block our calls after that.
Unfortunately those summer nights don’t have their magic anymore, the glitter of fireflies goes unnoticed as the mosquitoes bite and the sleep tank whines for refilling. Very seldom, I’ll join my boys in their play games, only to find myself annoyed at the impossibility of their imaginative scenarios. “Why won’t you place with us Dad?” “Xenos the warrior God doesn’t really exist boys, and you don’t have a chance of beating him even if he did.” You can’t really say that to a six year old. Zero days this year, not a single one, that mother’s words don’t haunt me.
It's been awhile since I've sat down and really penned something out. My life has been a whirlwind lately; work, school, family, love, and all the little things in between. If I'm learning anything from all the haze, all the business, it's that we must be active participants in our lives. Sometimes it's far too easy to just float along and react when life changes. But how much more exhilarating (and exhausting) it is when you start acting out your life instead of just reacting to it.
In the mess of everything, in the stress of this very formidable time of my life, I have found someone who I get to share it with. The one thing I have learned above all else from our relationship is that great loves do not just happen. You don't just slap on a ring somewhere and then travel down the road for thirty or forty years and hop out at a rest stop thinking, whew, that was a breeze. Love is not that way. Just as in life, in love you must participate, you must catalyze, you must choose to grow, or else your love will wither and ultimately die. If you cannot choose to grow, to learn and to find the joy amongst the bickering, you will never see a great love.
Being a lover isn't about expecting rainbows every day. Being a lover is about learning to rely on someone, to let them in and to mold your life around theirs. Sometimes (and I'm sure in ten years that word will be "all the time") being a lover means compromising. It means giving up something you are used to or comfortable so that your behaviors honor your lover. It's not about denying ourselves the pleasures of living a full life, yet it's the understanding that sharing your heart and your life with someone means sharing EVERY aspect of it. It starts with dinners and movies, then grows to toothpaste and family gatherings, and eventually it means sharing a bed, a home and the responsibility of caring for children.
Sometimes compromise can be difficult and sometimes it can be as easy as taking one second longer to consider a decision, because you take the other persons feelings into consideration.
Love is not rocket science, it's not chemistry either. And as much as the poets and writers will tell you, it ain't always a work of art, honey. But it is spectacular if you put forth the effort to make it so. It's recognizing that the small, everyday triumphs are what will eventually bring on the larger ones, (those daunting anniversaries of 25, 50, even 75). It may be a bumpy ride, but if you take out the map, listen to your passenger and take plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, you tiny little road trip could turn into an incredible journey.
These are two pieces I've written from prompts in my fiction writing class. The first was a character at work prompt. The second was a prompt to write a scene from 3rd person then to rewrite it in first person, enjoy.
The seconds thumped their molasses feet through her ears as they ticked by. She checked again, only 11:32. Why had she always loved giving in-class essays? Today would have been a great day for a class discussion, anything to get her talking, to take her mind off Phoenix. The rhythmic swish and scratch of pencils continued, the air sent the sleep-deprived groans and the smell of pubescent sweat swirling around her. She stood up to pace the classroom, methodically glancing at papers here and there.Jenny Thomas clearly had been checked out for the last two weeks; her essay told how the main theme of Pride and Prejudice was racism after the civil war. It was large and sprawling, the words stretching as far across the required two pages as possible. Another glance, 11:35. Lunch would never come, the news would never come. Carmen convinced herself that she would perish amidst a flurry of poorly composed literary criticism papers before she ever heard word of her husband’s pending promotion.
A click at the door and she whirled around to see an incoming student, an office assistant. She darted towards him so quickly that the worn nub of her mary-janes caught the leg of Kristen Farlow’s desk and she suddenly found her face smashed into the salmon-tinted linoleum that she glared at every chance she got. Before she had realized what had happened, a cold runny sensation was spreading itself across her hidden face. The unmistakable smell of salt. This cannot be happening she kept repeating over and over again. Then the chatter came; stifled laughs, a few gasps and some courteous, “Are you okay Mrs. Bradley’s?” Terror gripped her. The only thing more terrifying than teaching high-school, was lying on the floor of your classroom bleeding, only able to imagine the talk that was about to spread across the school like a brushfire.
As soon as the shock lifted enough to allow her to raise up off the floor, a senior, Jake Thomas was helping her to her knees. Kristen had gone for some Kleenexes and she shoved them into her nose as quickly as possible. Pain seared through her whole face. Broken, her nose was most certainly broken. Hannah, always a sensible student, had rushed out for the nurses office and the office assistant that she now recognized as Kalvin Grier only stared at her, mouth agape, eyes glossy.
I’m ssssss….oooo sorrrrrrry,” he muttered.
“Iths sokay Kaaabiiin,” she managed through the tissues.
“Mmmmmmissses BBBBBBradleeyyy…”,
“Yesthhh?”
He gulped hard, “This is for you…” he handed her the long-awaited for yellow slip of scrap paper that she thought would never come. She jerked it from his hands before they were fully extended, glancing down at the words she was prepared to read. But they weren’t there:
You have a delivery waiting in the office from your husband.
Read the neatly curled script of Miss Mona the secretary.
Just then the nurse rushed through the door with Hannah and the in-school substitute Mrs. Rose tailing behind her. She came to Carmens side and lifted her gingerly to her feet.
“Mrs. Rose is prepared to take your classes for the rest of the day. We need to get you to a doctor. I’m afraid it’s as bad as it must feel dear.”
Then the tears came. Not the tears she expected to cry that day. Not the tears that would foretell her leaving her town, her life that she had loved for all these years. Not the tears that promised more money, a fresh start, leaving family and friends behind. They were not as painful as those tears, but they welled up to twice their normal capacity due to the emotion trapped inside of her.
Three weeks, they’d been stuck in limbo. She started to feel queasy. For two years they’d talked of having a child. She recognized the lunch room they were walking through but the colors were faded, blended, blurry. For eight years they’d dreamed of an easier life. Her knees gave out and everything faded.
The harsh smell was what finally woke her. She felt herself sliding around the vinyl covered infirmary bed in the cramped office. She looked up to see Nurse Waddell huddling over her, a flashlight beaming in her eyes. When she turned to the side, something that she wasn’t expecting caught her eye, a massive, bouquet ,a rainbow of flowers spilling out of a tall vase. It was something fit for teen-love, surely this was for a student that had recently occupied the bed. Then she uncurled her hand and glanced down at the crumpled yellow paper she was still holding. Sure enough, the card propped up next to the flowers read
Dearest
She had only ever heard one man in the world say that sweet, stinging word. She heard it often, to the point of annoyance. With hesitation, she reached for the card. Before opening it she closed her eyes and privately wished Colorado Springs a bitter farewell.
Carmen, I got the promotion. I turned it down. I found the pregnancy test. I love you.
Everything blurred again, this time for the tears that were fixing themselves on the inside of her swollen eyes.
This song, is currently my favorite and brings tears to my eyes almost every time...and then I found this video. It compiled some great stuff along with an incredible song and I was cry-ying. Please please watch this and then I'll tell you why it means so much to me...
I have a "boy of fall" and behind his massive line-backer exterior is a man I never knew I needed, a man I admire more every day. I never truly understood the heart of a game, or the heart of a man until I met him. I'll admit at first, he scared the crap out of me, in every way. He was huge, physically; 6 foot 3 with a presence that turns heads. He was everything I wasn't and apparently, everything I needed.
I've never met a stronger man, except for my Daddy, and they both have something (among the hundreds of things) in common that makes me admire them so much. They've both lost their Dads. For my Dad it came later in life, but for my Ryan it was very very young. And with that loss, they gained two things, the unavoidable ache and the inhuman ability to carry on.
I'm flabbergasted at Ryan's ability to carry on. At his work-ethic, his heart, his passion, and the way he faces the world with his head high. He doesn't hang his head, ask why, and wait for the world to pick him up; every day, he carries on. And some days, he carries me. Some days when the world is too big for me to carry, he shoulders it for me, holds me up and promises that I'll make it, that we'll make it.
Ryan and I have been given a unique challenge as a couple, one that would tear most apart. But it has only brought us closer. It was a shocking change in our lives and it happened in the infantile stages of our relationship. It was one of those twists that knocks the air clean out of you. For the first time in my life, I saw someone struggle for me. Someone who loved me for me, unconditionally and chose to rise above the hand we'd been dealt. Someone who took my pain away, willingly and suffered as I suffered. This is the unique gift that he and my Dad share as they've lost their fathers.
They carry the world, and all it's problems with them. They feel responsible, unnecessarily so, to save everyone from everything. They feel the primal urge to provide, multiply a hundred-fold, and they listen to it. They triumph, and they silently struggle.
Ryan is not the kind of man that would ever tell you he's upset, his way of dealing is set in stone. He deals by ignoring himself and putting every ounce of heart and sweat and blood into his work, and his play. I never understood this until I met him. I never understood how a lifetime of pain and heartache could all be left on the field. I didn't understand what smashing guys brains in had anything to do with life, until I realized it had everything to do with life.
It's not the smashing of the heads that does it, it's the transfer of the pain to the physical, the transfer of hurt to passion. It's about turning the good to the bad, the sad to the happy and learning from the past to live in the moment.
Well, I've finally given into to the frenzy and I've decided to start reading the Twilight Saga. I started reading the first book my freshman year of college, became bored and quickly gave it up. However, I've decided to pick it up again, all preconceived notions aside and give it another go. I'm pleasantly surprised. Maybe being in love makes it easier to read love stories, or maybe the heavy dose of classics, Shakespeare and literary analysis I've been smothered with over the last two years makes it much easier to read trash novels. More affectionately dubbed "fluff" novels.
I take no stock in vampires and I must remind myself it is in fact young adult literature. And as long as I can keep the images of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson out of my head, I'm satisfied, actually quite engaged. For once, I've actually seen the movies before I've read the books and I like the books way better than the movies, as is the trend of course. I'm just annoyed by the fact that I can't imagine my own versions of characters for once. Boohoo, right?
Okay, back to real life. I'm anticipating a hair change soon. I'm thinking a perm and darker. A, la, Khloe...?I'm ready for another change and I'm missing the dark hair.
Vacation update: Carova Island is a whole 'nother world. It's remote and living here with locals makes you unnaturally angry towards tourist. Even though we are visitors ourselves, being here with locals and knowing the in's and out's makes you readily pretentious.
A little taste...
One of the beach-front mansions. Sunrise on the ocean. Transportation. Bob pulling crab-pots at sunset on the pointe.
My old blog, for you dedicated followers of The Sassy Lass, has unfortunately run it's course. I was having some trouble reading old posts and I just wanted a fresh start. I attempted to use the same name but some rude meanie already had it :( Oh, well.
It's been a crazy few months. I've moved into a new house, I'm about to turn twenty and I'm getting a big dose of the real world.
At my old apartment all my bills were wrapped up in one singular payment. Now bills show up at my house every week and they can't be ignored. They just stare at me with their beady little eyes, mocking my adolescence. Truly, they are the number one sign that that period of my life is OVER, gone-zo, buh bye... and it's kinda hard.
But on the other hand, I have a new job at The Buckle which I'm really enjoying. I've never done retail before and it's a nice change of pace. I'm also hoping to get a morning job on campus. This semester/year promises to be a busy one. Hopefully I can continually get better at stress management because I've really been slacking in that area lately.
The sun is on my side, and takes me for a ride. I smile up to the sky, I know I'll be alright.
