Full of Surprises.

This past year has been a complete 180 from where I thought I might be at this point. Everything has changed for the better in every way, I have completed my Master's, I have a full time job that fell into my lap, I have the opportunity to save up my money before leaving my wonderful roommate to live on my own, I am continuing to live near my friends, and best of all I have dated my boyfriend Blake for almost an entire year now.

From this:

To this:

A whole year of going back and forth from Oregon to Arizona to Colorado and soon to Vegas. A lot of traveling to keep up this long distance relationship but it has been one of the most exciting years of my short little life. A lot of surprises that I never saw coming. 

Blake and I have actually known each other since the summer of July 2004. Our families were both new to Utah and we were expected to be neighbors. I met him out at the pool and thought he was the cutest guy I'd ever seen. We became really close friends and had feelings for each other that we couldn't place. Or at least I couldn't and wasn't necessarily ready for. I didn't want to lose his friendship if something went wrong and things usually went wrong with my relationships ( if you could even call them that). 

Here is when he came to my highschool Christmas Formal:

Eventually my family moved to Arizona and I began college. We tried to keep in touch but it was hard, especially when we had our own lives going on. After I graduated and my parents moved to Alaska, I was staying up there for the summer and Blake and I reconnected. We would Skype all the time and I started to realize that I wanted to be more than just his 'best friend'. We had decided that when he and his father were going to be in Arizona for a fraternity conference, that they should come down for the night so we could see each other. 

That night changed our friendship into something more when Blake told me he wanted to be with me and had wanted to for a long time. When I told him that I felt the same way there was a new issue to deal with, the distance. We decide to be in a hypothetical relationship because it would be too hard to maintain anything across the country. But when he came down for a week in August, things were finally made official on the 30th. The reality of the situation was starting to set in but became increasingly worse through this past year through trying to see each other as much as possible.

As hard as the distance is, though, I believe it will only makes us better in the end. I lost some of my independency in college and the distance was helping me to learn to stand on my own two feet, even when I have someone to carry me sometimes. It has been a crazy year but I don't think I could have done it with anyone else. 

That's pretty much the story of how we met and why we are together now (maybe plus or minus a few details...). BUT its pretty close :)

The distance is obviously hard day-to-day but even more so when special occasions such as birthdays and holidays are missed. This year my birthday was on a Tuesday this ast month and since I had already started working full time and Blake was in summer school, I knew having him come visit just wasn't going to work out. This summer has been the longest time we were going to go without seeing each other, a whole 3 months.

Well my birthday comes and goes and I never got so much as a card from Blake, so of course I'm thinking "whadaheck"? Well he insists that there is a package in the mail that should have been there by now so he is sorry it didn't make it in time. Okay, I can wait for it. He also said that since our weeks were so busy we should set up a time to have a Skype date for a couple hours where we have enough to time to maybe eat dinner together (oh yeah, this is what our lives in long distance have come to) and maybe watch a movie. So that was decided to happen after I got home for work on Friday.

The work day was long and miserable and when I walk in the door I am hustling around because I don't want him to be waiting around for me. When I walk past the kitchen, the roommate yells "Your package is here!" So I am excited but still trying to hurry. I walk out of my room and into the living room to see Coco going nuts and she scratches my leg, this is what happened next:

Biggest surprise of my life. I had no idea, none whatsoever. Also I sound like the biggest whiner when I am yelling at the poor dog who is only freaking out because of the strange man in her house.

Isn't my boyfriend just the best in the whole world? The funniest thing was that even though Blake was standing right in front of me, I was still feeling like I needed to rush to get onto the computer for our date!

Total shock. Best weekend ever.

Boom. Posted.

A Day In the Life.

This whole summer I have been begging for routine. I just wanted to be able to have a day-to-day schedule where I could feel accomplished and tired by the end of the day. But really with my maybe 3 hours a week of working at the golf course, finishing up my online courses and sometimes seeing my friends...my life was taking a nosedive into extraordinarily boring.

I would sleep in until about 10am.. 11am.. who am I kidding, I was sleeping in until NOON. I would force myself out of bed and then go park it on the couch for a good couple hours. Then I might eat some lunch, just look at the pool in my backyard, sometimes go to the golf course to either work or hit balls for 10 minutes. Then I would lounge around some more, maybe run one or two errands, eat dinner, Skype with Blake for an hour or so, and then not be able to fall asleep until around 1am which of course called for the freakiest dreams of my adult life.

That's how the summer started off. It is now ending with me forcing my self awake at 6:40am... just to lay in bed for another 20mins. Finally getting up and rushing to get ready before I have to leave at 7:30am. Then I get to work and sit in my cubicle

Its a nice little area, but it can get a little cramped. I do have a beautiful view of the mountains though:

At work I usually do busywork things that the ladies give me because they have way too many other things to work on (which is promising for my future) and I sit in front of the computer all day. Before when I didn't have anything to do, I would look up the news on every website, check out every little thing on pinterest.com, and I even was so bored that I went to the Einstein Bagels website and wrote to them saying they should consider opening one the east side of the city because I would eat there everyday. Oh yeah, it happened. I also got a lot of split end trimming in. Now I have no time for games, just data input.

Then, on my way home, I have been seeing a chiropractor (which is awesome) so I get aligned in about 5 minutes and continue on my merry way. I am just doing it for this month of August so I am trying to get my money's worth by stopping in everyday.

When I get home I notice the roommate usually has nothing for dinner so I have to scrounge for food. Then I sit on the couch and watch my shows until about 9pm when I start getting ready for bed. I am now asleep (completely out) by 10:30pm. And I asked for routine??

On the weekends I get laundry done, go to the range and sometimes go out with the girls. I feel as though I have finally reached adulthood... and now I'm over it! I just want to learn how to play golf...

Boom. Posted.

Bugging Out.

I am 'bugging out' for a number of reasons.

This first beings with a picture my mother sent me a few days ago where she photoshopped my head onto a girl in her pajamas with a shadow of Peter Pan on the wall with the script "You know that place between sleep and awake? That place where you can still remember dreaming. That's where I'll always love. THAT'S WHERE I WILL BE WAITING!"

Can you picture it? I cannot post it. Probably for the better, since it is so terrifying.

I am also 'bugging out' because my house is filled with creepy crawlers. They are on the wall, the floor, in my bed, on me... its disgusting and turning me into a paranoid freak. These bugs are like drawn to me. One time I was grabbing my towel after a shower and as I puled it off the rack this nickel-size spider crawls right out... BAAAAH! Jeeblie jeeblie the worst feeling ever. Also today I was walking out of the gym and something flew right into my neck. I think it was aiming for my jugular.

But all of that pales in comparison to this one particular bug that has reared its ugly face in my house a little over several times. It all started when my brother was home alone for a few weeks and I was still in college. I get a phone call from him and he is asking me to look up on google an 'ant with antlers'. What?

He said there was a humungous ant that had antlers in the house earlier and he wanted to know what it was. Obviously I couldn't find anything and eventually forgot about the situation.

Until one day I was eating something at the dinner table and went to reach for a napkin out of our center utensil/napkin holder and while I pull the napkin out of the slot, this thing comes flying out along with it. It was an ANT WITH ANTLERS! Oh I almost died, almost. It makes my knees weak just thinking about it.

Ugh I just tried to find a picture of the horrid thing and now I feel like I have ants all over me. They have a name but of course I cannot remember it. Something like Spawnus satanus.

Boom. Squished.