My Life

Welcome to it:

No but seriously, this is what I do all the time.  Since our filter is broken on the real pool and it is yucks, I've been making this kiddie pool work for me.  Here is my recipe for tanning without feeling like you are being cooked in an oven (it works very well in a kiddie pool)(and if you're hardcore like me and you don't believe in sunscreen or skin cancer) (both are urban legends):

Lay on either your back or your stomach
Read until you feel uncomfortably hot.
Flip.
Repeat.

Because you see, while the rest of the country was worrying about a hurricane and power outages and mortal safety, it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit over here.  And on one of those days my little brother decided we should do an eagle scout project in the sunny park.  Tangents.

The real point is that I am serious about getting my southern cali on.  Which includes driving through rush hour traffic in LA county:

Can I get a ticket for taking this picture?  That is besides the point.  The point is, do you like my photography style?  I call it first-person photography.  Do you feel like you are me tanning and driving?  Because that is the point.  I'm not sure if there is a real name for this or not, but I am calling it good.

Also, I probably made too many points for one blog post.  So here is one more: The life of luxury in here in the sunshine is being good to me, and like a sponge, I am soaking it all up.

Who needs an apartment to live in?  I'll tell you who - NOOBS!

Dude.

A lot of people in my family have a recent fascination with this word.  But we use it when we are frustrated with something.  It's weird.  Maybe just saying dude is weird.  It's the surfer guy inside of all of us.....

Sometimes (like now) I really want to blog, but I have nothing particularly blog-worthy in my arsenal.  It's weird though.  Like I have this urge to just divulge to the internets for no particular reason.  Like if someone finds out some flaw I have I can be like, "I told the internets, and you use the internets, so you should have known the whole time."

Like this flaw:  I don't much like being told what to do.  I'm pretty bad at that.  Not that I have trouble with authority figures too much, but I don't like when things are laid out for me like they are the best thing for me to do, when really, they might not be the best thing for me to do.  Like my school choice.  A very high percentage of Mormons who go to college go to some form of Brigham Young University (Very scientific, I know).  I didn't apply there.  And it worked out for me. (I'm a rebel like that.)

Or in high school there was this big dance festival thing where the youth from my church spent months learning this elaborate waltz that we performed to Disney songs.  And in an especially dramatic part of the song, all the boys would pick up their partners sort of on their side and the girls had flow-y dresses that they would hold out while being spun in a circle.  Except that I absolutely HATE to be picked up.  And my partner definitely could have managed it, but why should I do something that I am physically uncomfortable with, especially at a church activity where they teach us that you should say no to those sorts of things.
And all the adults teaching us the dance were like, "Gigi, you are the only one not being picked up, you stick out.  Everyone else is doing it, can't you just join everyone else?"  And it still makes me a little heated because these are the sort of peer pressure attitudes that I was taught to stay strong against.  Which I did.
You can't tell me what to do.

Which is exactly what I literally said out loud when my mom's car said this:

I most certainly will not change the oil now, thank you very much.  What nerve!  Demanding that I do it now.  As if I wasn't busy driving somewhere when I got this message.  Right now?  You want me to drop everything else right now and change your oil?  Get my clothes dirty and everything?  Without so much as a please?

No thank you.


And that my friends, is how you turn one picture into an entire blog post.

You know what's the worst?

When people who I know and whose opinion matters to me tell me that they read my blog.  Or really just anyone reads it.  Except anyone in a country I will probably never visit.  Armenia?  But maybe I'm not really proud of the image of myself that I put out in blog-form, but then, why do I keep putting it out there?

I've seriously been thinking about the answer to this question for days, if not maybe a week here, and I still don't have an answer that I like.

So maybe let's look at the way I sound via blog:
I am obsessed with my hair.
I like to take pictures of myself.
I'm obsessed with the idea of family and/or babies.
I loooove puns, cheese (like the food and the bad sort of jokes), and Disney.
I sound like a scatter-brain.

Guys, I promise I am less of all of these things in real life.  Except [insert any of the items from the list, because really?].

I am maybe more exciting in my blog form.  Not afraid to look stupid or conceited or whatever.  Because I picture you (and I mean you as in the audience here) to be one faceless internet mass who will not judge me or if they will judge me they will be like you're too adjective to take seriously, so I will just enjoy you instead.

Blogging is just a weird little thing.  It's like I share all my weird eccentricities and anecdotes and expect you to take me as normal.  Because compared to a man who gets married to a pillow in Japan (or James Franco in that one episode of 30 rock), I am sooo normal.  But then, anything on the internet can pass for normal.

The point is, what if you only read my blog and then you meet me and expect me to be like this blog-person in real life and I can't measure up because I can spend several drafts becoming worse and worse in a better and better way in blog-form, but in real life I probably only get one draft at a conversation.  But then - I've just hit it, haven't I?  Writers are sometimes very awkward in real life, even if their characters are really suave and la sexi.  I mean, could I really say the last two sentences aloud without sounding like a complete weirdo?

Somehow, hiding behind this, makes me think that the words are less real:

Or somehow like my blog-person is allowed to be a more dramatic version of me.

I guess just DISCLAIMER.  Just so you all know.  And this is before my blog becomes the most interesting thing on the internet and I gain billions of fans that follow my every word.

A Little Summer Picnic

Tomorrow my little brothers start school and thus today is their last day of summer, so we tried to make lemonade for them and we spent the afternoon on a picnic on the gorgeous property that some friends have about 10 minutes away up the mountain a little bit.

Don't believe me that it's gorgeous?  Take a look (warning: I played with photo filters a lot a lot a lot).

Yeah, there's a stream right outside their house.  So here's my family after we ate the food and started exploring (Trust me, you don't want pictures of us eating, we eat like Gamboa's).

Here's the "little" boys being studly:

I wish Luc were wearing overalls with no shirt in this one.  He'd make a good farm boy.
And George got a few good shots with the bridge:

His beard goes very well with nature.  

Also, isn't that bridge the awesomest?  I wish I could just go over that bridge every time I was in a bad mood and have all the badness be sucked away.  

My Mom was busy, busy, busy picking blackberries, which were EVERYWHERE:

But we enjoyed the fruits of her labor (pun intended) later:

My Dad was being a good husband in between trying to splash his children:

I was taking photos of everyone and then being weird:

Photo heavy and a little lame, I know.  But I noticed that on other blogs I read, people post pictures of themselves doing cool things with people that always make me jealous, so this is me attempting to do that.  The difference is I am not a photographer.  What, wah.  

Ugh A Bug A Boo.

Sometimes the title of my post has almost nothing to do with the content of the post except that when I think about the feel that I want for the post, a random something pops in my head and most of the time I just type that in.
The thing that popped into my head first was the ugh (you will see why in a minute, gosh have some patience, internet reader!), but then I didn't want it to be a whiny post so I added the rest so it sounds more whimsical (Did it have the desired effect?).

All stupidness aside, I am saying ugh because I am apartment hunting!  And I have never done that before.  It goes a little something like this:

Landlords:  Who are your references?

Me: Ummm.... My parents?  Please take pity on me because I am a starving college student.... please?

And I start school in a month and a week.  So hopefully I find somewhere to live.  .... please?


But speaking of me moving soon, I am trying to get my Southern California on before I leave.  Which means eating fresh fruit:

Watching the Project Runway with family:

That blurry woman on the television is Nina Garcia.  In my opinion, the toughest judge of the show.  Although her personal style is a little boring.  Where's the color?  Where's the prints?  Where's the jewelry that is larger than a human ear?

I'm also planing a beach trip, going to the taping of a Hollywood show, and I'm doing lots of tanning and reading in the near future.  Like LOTS of it.  Did you know you can do a lot of tanning and reading in Southern California?

Summertime and the living is easy.... for now.

Give me an apartment please?

Just an Everyday Occurence

As I laid in bed flossing the other night around one in the morning, I started to try and imagine what the everyday will be like for me once I settle into my own life.

This guy!

And then I thought that that is a very odd way to be thinking about my life. Once I settle into it?  What does that make me now?  Unsettled? That's a little bit disgusting.  What is wrong with my life now?  Why settle into a routine ever?  Why have just one career, one mate, one day over and over?

I've come up with a couple of explanations for this line of thinking.
First, I'm not big on uncertainty. For me, unless there are some other circumstances, I wouldn't like to take a job that would be only for a few months even if it paid quite well, if I knew I could have another job for a lot longer.  I just like to have a plan, a direction, a goal to aspire to.
Second, growing up as a Mormon girl (if you haven't had this experience, take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt) you're sort of, how do I say, brainwashed into thinking that the most important thing you can do in your twenties is get married.  I'm kidding, but Mormons do take family very, very seriously.  And starting your own is definitely part of that.  So for me a secure future always includes having a trusty husband at my side.  Thus, yeah, I'm not settled down in that sense.
And third, I keep thinking about this idea of all of life as an adventure.  Now before you're all, "Wow, way to get all inspirational cheese on me," let me persuade (or have some oogly attempt at persuading) you to my inspirational cheesey line of thinking.

I've spent a lot of time this summer being bored.  Sitting on my fat behind, watching the television and the likes.  I don't really have a car, I kind of have two jobs, but both of them only kind of.  Anyways, I keep thinking over and over about that thing your mom told you when you were little and you couldn't think of anything to do and kept bugging her: "Only boring people get bored."

What an insult!  I am not boring. How dare you, me. So I've really been thinking about how I can add adventure to my life.  Like my boring, car-less, job-less life right now.  And for me I guess that just means deciding that the things that are around me to do are terribly fun.  All of them except putting the silverware away.  That could never be fun.  But taking a nap?  Sure, I'll have crazy dreams.  Cleaning my house?  Just an opportunity for a one girl dance/cleaning party.  Ordering 200 cookies from a nice bakery?  Just an opportunity to talk to someone I have never met and try and picture what they look like.  (About 5'4", blonde, very smiley, always wears her hair in a pony tail - and you thought I was kidding).

So I hereby declare everything ever is not boring.  Never again will I be boring.

......And back from the cheesiness and back to the picturing of my everyday life as an older version of me.  I like to think that I will figure out a way to keep myself entertained for the rest of my life.  That I will teach my children that they don't need television or video games or the coolest toys to find a way to have a good time.  And that I will keep my husband on his toes.

And I don't see any reason why I shouldn't look forward to settling in for a good time.

Lame

I've been trying to blog allll day today, but everything keeps coming out lame.
Maybe it's because my life is a little bit lame lately.  But let's try a little social experiment where I embrace the lame (because that is so totally different from what I normally do on this blog).  But I feel good about this time around because DJ Cell Phone keeps playing the songs that I like to hear.  Anyways...

I cleaned my room today:

See all that carpet space?  It's like carpet without stuff on it does something magic to my brain.  It sends messages like, "You will one day rule the world." and, "Everything that comes from your head is pure genius." Isn't that weird?

But what you, the reader, are really thinking at this moment is, "I think you accidentally posted the before picture of your room-cleaning-experience."  But you are wrong my friend.  Because all of the clothes that are sitting on top of my dresser are clean and simply need to be folded.  And while we're at it, probably all of the clothes in the drawers need to be folded too.  And there are NO dirty clothes on the floor.  And did I not mention that this summer I fit everything I own plus some stuff that is not mine into a room that was already full of other people's stuff. (Side note: That last sentence besides being grammatically a run-on is one that is technically a question but the tone at the end of the sentence doesn't feel question-y so I left it with a period instead of a question mark.  That was a long side note) (Another side note: Obviously the rules of grammar do not apply on this blog because I am trying to write in a conversational tone.  As in, the tone that I use when I have conversations with myself.  But that's normal, dontcha know?)

So what I'm saying is, if you want to get any good ideas out of me, you should probably ask them of me as soon as possible, because I've already put a chair in my room so that I have something to type in and the square footage of blank carpet is now reduced to roughly six? But then again, I'm doing some spring cleaning tomorrow in the wardrobe area so it could be either way cleaner or way messier in here tomorrow.

And as promised, this post has now lived up to its title.

Good night errrbody.

Oh, the Blogging

Talk about Bloggers block.

It turns out when you leave your house only for maybe 20 minutes a day, you find topics to blog about hard to come by.  So here is another installment of ......

"Make my Mundane Life Seem like Every Little Detail is Interesting."

This is where I (you guessed it!) try and make my boring life seem like a collection of cool little things.

And let me tell you, I'm not about to shy away from the story-within-a-story thing even though it is pretty much bad story-telling.  

Anyways, I have sensitive teeth.  Like when I poke fun at them they take it personally and give me the cold shoulder for a week (sorry, but I couldn't resiiiiiiist).  And when I mentioned this to my mom, she said she had some hippie toothpaste that I could use.  And by hippie toothpaste, I mean this:

I mean all natural ingredients?  I am not a pioneer walking across the nation here.  I have the technology.  I think my actual response to my mom was, "I'm no hippie!  I throw six-pack rings in gutters that drain to the ocean!"  Which is a lie, but also wait a minute, I am kind of a hippie with these things. Because (and I'm switching to story number two here)......

I haven't used shampoo in about two months.  Since I was at the Stan-ford.  There, I said it.  And you can't even judge me because my hair looks like this:

Make fun of me all you want for being all 13-year-old-myspace photo, but my hair looks goooood, darnit.  And also, didn't instagram make that cool again? Just sit there and let that one soak in.  Weird mirror and over-abundant conceit sold separately.  

I just use baking soda plus water to wash my hair and apple cider vinegar plus water for a finish.  It doesn't quite have a conditioning effect, but it helps smooth things a little.  And while we're on the subject of my hair and all it's fabulousity, did I mention my hair is magic?  I throw it in a bun for a few hours and it comes out looking like I curled it with a huge curling iron.  

The point of this tidbit is that I walk around the house looking like this:

Just about all day errr day I am sporting this look.  Muy sexi, I know.  

Which is why this look + makeup that is leftover from the day before + this van (parked all by its lone-some because there is no way in narcissism that I can park this sucker in a way that is within lines)

Should not equal me getting hit on, am I right?  But yet that is what happens when you drive your little brother to work at 330 pm still in your pajamas and looking like you got run over by the ugly van.  Isn't it always that way? 

I was all of my guard when they guy in the truck next to me wolf-whistled and then said, "Heeeeey" in that way that is flirting.  Not that he was cute or anything, but can you take these things seriously when not even your Mom would tell you you look good?  Which is just a figure of speech, because my Mom is very supportive.  She told me I looked good today.  

So did you get your fill of poor story-telling, typos, and hair-cissism yet?