Tuesday, September 29, 2009

skeleton tee!

I just got myself one of these super cute glow in the dark skeleton shirts from RVA :) I am really excited to get it to wear to work and school on Halloween. It's like a grown-up "professional" costume for the work day =P

I was rewarding myself for doing such a good job saving my money so far. Yeah, yeah, I know. Rewarding myself by spending the money. Whatever. I'm happy at least!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

sleep in on sunday



So, this has been a very unproductive weekend. But I think I needed it. I didn't really do much of anything. It felt nice.

Friday I had my appointment with the podiatrist. My co-pay went up to $75, which was a shock to me. Then I found out that the orthotics the doctor wanted to make for my shoes aren't covered by my insurance company. Guess how much those cost? $385. That's right, $385. Sigh. I hope that they work. My rheumatologist seems to think that they will help me, so I will try them. The only sucky part is that, if they don't work, I don't get a refund. My mom paid for them, but I broke down in hysterical tears at the doctor's office when she told me how much they were. I feel so much guilt because of how much money my parents have had to spend on me because of all of this stupid stuff over the course of my life. I wish I knew how to pay them back.




On a lighter note, yesterday I got my hair cut :)

My usual hairdresser wasn't in, but I gave someone else a chance. Last time I did that it turned out horribly, but I actually really like what the girl did this time.



I'm really excited for Halloween :) It's my favorite holiday ever. I think maybe I'm going to dress up as Pocahontas this year, or Little Red Riding Hood. What are you guys going to be?

I wish Halloween lasted a whole week!!




This is a few of the bottles of perfume I have. Does anyone else just loooove perfume? I love the bottles so much, I like collecting them :) These are my favorite:
  • Lolita Lempicka - smells like lavender, licorice, pixie dust and magic!
  • Vera Wang Princess - smells like cotton candy, sugar and love.
  • Daisy by Marc Jacobs - smells like windy summer fields and sophistication.
  • G by Gwen Stefani - smells like tropical coconut and island breezes.

What are your favorite perfumes?






Tuesday, September 22, 2009

scrubs

I am currently half way through school for dental assisting, and it is becoming more and more clear to me that I will be living in scrubs almost every single day. At first, the thought of this depressed me, but the more I look at scrubs, I've realized that you actually can find super cute and stylish ones that are not as boring as you'd think.

For example:









So, I guess there is hope after all :) And, if you can't tell, I love brown and aqua together!


Happy first day of autumn!!!!!!!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

mi plan


Nelly Furtado's new CD, Mi Plan, came out today. As expected, I really love it. Some of her newer fans, from the Loose album are slightly confused and disappointed with the direction she took with this music. Loose was mostly a pop/r&b dance record, but that was a stretch from her former style. I think Mi Plan is going back to her roots, for sure, but taking an entirely new style on at the same time. Nelly embraces her Latin roots by making and entirely Spanish album this time, which is right up my alley. The songs are really beautiful, and the collaborations she does on the CD are all great. She sings with some other amazing Latin artists, such as Julieta Venegas (!) and Juan Luis Guerra.


If you are only going to get one song from this CD, I would definitely recommend the first single, "Manos al Aire". I love the message from this song.

"No tengo armas para enfrentarte
pongo mis manos, manos al aire
solo me importa amarte en cuerpo y alma,
como era ayer."

"I have no weapons to defend from you
I put my hands, my hands in the air
all that matters to me is loving you, body and soul
like I did yesterday."


Even if you don't understand a word of Spanish, give this a try. I promise you won't be disappointed!!


Let's face it: I have a HUGE music collection. As a poor college student, I can't exactly afford to take the legal road with my music downloads. Nelly Furtado, however, is one of those artists whom I faithfully love, and I will most certainly always, always pay for her tunes :)

Sunday, September 13, 2009

love



I wanted to introduce you all to Cade. Let me go back a few years, to a few old xanga entries I wrote when I was 17.



Saturday June 30th, 2007

If I had known, the moment Cade asked me out, how hard this relationship was going to be, I would have told him no. I would have turned my back and never been able to experience all of the good times we've had together. Lately all the bad things and regrets have been piling up and blinding me to just how lucky I really am. I have someone who loves me for who I am, no matter what. He accepts my flaws, is there when I need him, tries his hardest to make me happy and gives me everything he can. I am realizing that I am thankful for the fact that I didn't think before deciding to go out with him. I just knew that I liked him and that it sounded like a good idea. After a year and a half with him, I can't imagine what I used to do before he was in my life. I am glad I didn't know what negative things would be part of our relationship, because although they may be hard and painful, we are willing to go through them with the hope that we can stay together. Things can only get better. When we are older we will really be able to be happy. Now we are just proving to each other what we're really capable of. If we can make it through this, we can make it through anything.







Another xanga entry:
Today in history class Mr. Wills was talking about all of the inventions we have in our generation that were completely unheard of when he was a kid. Like, the internet, and cell phones for instance. And then the topic of how people fall in love with other people who are so... I don't know... like unpredicted for them. Kind of like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. They're the last people you'd expect, you know? Anyhow, this got me thinking about Cade and I. If it weren't for the internet, I'd never have met him. Well, I could have, but it probably wouldn't have happened until after college. And even then, I probably still wouldn't have. Louisiana wasn't exactly on the top of my "Places to Visit" list. It's too humid. So basically, what I'm getting at is that I am really thankful for the internet.




The real way we met went a little bit like this (okay, completely like this): I had no friends the summer before 8th grade, pretty much. I was hanging out with 6th graders because they're the only people that actually wanted to hang out with me. One of them became pretty good friends with me, and his name was Ryan. He played this game called Runescape, which is an online role-playing game where you pretty much are kind of like a knight or warrior of some sort and you kill things and learn skills and whatnot. He was bored one day because his friends weren't online playing with him, so he told me to make a character on it and start playing. At first I didn't really want to because the game seemed so lame and boring, but I did anyway because I had nothing better to do. I got into the game a little more and then Ryan had to log off, but I kept playing for a while.



There's one area of the game where other players can attack you, and I didn't know it, but I kept dying and I was getting really frustrated. This kid, who seemed really nice, was trying to help me, but he turned out to be a perv and I blocked him. He kept on sending me messages, but I was ignoring them. He went around to find someone that could come and find me and ask me why I was being so mean to him. He eventually found Cade. Cade comes over to me and says that the other kid had sent him, and I want no parts of it and try to get him to go away. He asked me why I was so upset by the other kid and when I told him he yelled at him to leave me alone and stop being so disgusting.

To make up for the first kid, Cade decided to help me out, since I was new at the game and everything. I didn't trust him much at first, but he was so easy to talk to and helpful. We played the game for a little while every day and we ended up doing more talking than actually playing, so I told him to give me his AIM screen name so we could just talk there. We talked pretty frequently from that day and got to know each other pretty well.






I didn't realize how much I liked him until Hurricane Katrina happened. I knew that Cade lived in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but I didn't know if that area was affected. He didn't come online for a few weeks and I was so afraid that something bad happened to him, like he had been hurt or killed. Finally one day out of nowhere this random person IMs me and says, "Hey it's Cade, I'm on my aunt's screen name. I just wanted to let you know I didn't forget about you!" I was so relieved to know that he was okay. I think that was the point when I realized that I really liked him. I had been so worried. After that we started talking even more, and I began to like him more and more. I tried to ignore the fact that I liked him, though, because I had a boyfriend already at the time.



In January of 2006, right before our 6 month anniversary (and my birthday!!), my boyfriend broke up with me and I was completely heartbroken. Cade knew how much I was hurting, and he wasn't sure what to do. He told me he had a surprise. He had just gotten a cell phone, and I had never heard his voice before, so he said we could talk that night. He listened to me cry like a big baby about how sad I was, and didn't tell me I was stupid. He was really nice and sympathetic and said all the right things. I spent the night of my 16th birthday on the phone with him until the crack of dawn, even though we both had school the next day. After that, we talked on the phone every night for hours and hours and ask each other questions about every single tiny detail of our lives.



One night when we were talking he told me that he had another call on the line and he'd be right back. He was gone for almost 20 minutes, so I was afraid that something had happened (of course, because I worry too much). He came back and his voice had changed. It was quiet and filled with sadness. I asked him who had called and he told me that it was his best friend Zach's sister. Zach had been beaten up really badly in school about a month before this day. He had been in a coma, and on life support. She'd called Cade to tell him that Zach had died. After telling me this he broke down into tears and asked me if I could stay with him for a little longer. I promised him that I wasn't going to hang up until he wanted me to. I'd never had a friend of mine die, but imagining how much it would hurt me made me feel so bad for Cade. I couldn't think of the pain it would cause. I told him I wished I know what would make him feel better and he told me that just being there to keep him company was making him feel much better. All of a sudden I found myself telling him I loved him. I don't know where it came from, and I didn't know what he was going to say back, but I knew that I meant it. And he told me he loved me, too. We fell asleep on the phone, and we've done that every night since then.




A week or two after Zach died, Cade and I decided to play the game for a while. We hadn't been on in months, completely forgetting that it existed. All of a sudden he was saying, "I know this might be really stupid, and probably impossible... but would you be my girlfriend? I understand if you say no... we live so far away." I laughed and told him that I would love to. People told me that I was getting into another relationship too soon, after only a month off from the other one, but I had known Cade for two years and I knew him well enough to think it was okay. I wasn't counting on it lasting forever, anyway, in my state of mind then. I figured I was completely dumpable and he'd get sick of me soon enough like the other two boys had before him. But I was wrong.



Cade has been the best thing that ever happened to me. We've been through a lot together, and I think that being with him through his friend's death brought us really close, too. I know that he really does love me. He's given up a lot of things for me, and he does everything he can to make me happy. Living so far apart is hard much of the time, but we know that it will be all worth it when we can be together every day. If we can get through this, we can get through anything. A love has to be really strong to stretch all the way across a country and two time zones. It has to be. I know we met in a very strange way, and it makes no sense to a lot of people, but it makes sense to us. It has for years now... and I wouldn't have it any other way.



Back to present times...


Last summer I broke up with Cade at the end of August to pursue a relationship with another guy. I couldn't handle the distance, the stress, and our fighting any longer. Without going into too much detail (as if I haven't done that already!!), we got back together in February of this year. We had been waiting and waiting for him to graduate from high school, when he would move up here to Pennsylvania to live with me and go to school. He finally moved here in May, and we were the happiest we had ever been.

While he was here, we were looking for loans for him to go to school, but we were having very little luck. When Cade's father became terminally ill with cancer, he decided it would be the best thing for him to go home. While it broke my heart completely, there was nothing I could do to change his mind. Because of this, we are more determined to be together than ever. He is starting school in January, and I will be finished my classes in February. As soon as I finish school, I am moving to Louisiana to be with him.



Our relationship seems like it is doomed to continue this way, sometimes, but I know that we both truly love each other and we want to be together. This is the reason we keep going, despite all of the setbacks. We love each other.

mi obsesiĆ³n


If you know me at all, you know that I am completely, irrevocably obsessed with anything Latin. I love the Spanish language, and anything involving Latin culture. My best friend Miguel is the reason for this. I met him in my senior year of high school, where he was an exchange student from Venezuela. He taught me Spanish, I taught him English. We bonded over so many things. He truly is one of the most important people in the entire world to me. He is the one that started my obsession! I haven't seen him since last August, when I left Venezuela to come home. I miss him so much, but he is going to come visit me this Christmas, and I can't wait!




Here are a few photos that I took on my trip to Venezuela last summer...

This is the view from Miguel's neighborhood.
Wouldn't you love to have a view like that every day?





This is Miguel, his brother Gerardo, and I.
Gerardo is also a very special person to me, he is like my little brother.



This is the view from the teleferico, a cable car
that goes over the city of Caracas. It was the most beautiful
thing I have ever seen in my life.


These pictures were taken on la isla Margarita, an island off the coast off Venezuela. It's bordered by the Caribbean.






I saved up my money for a year to take this trip. The plane ticket was over $1000, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was the most amazing trip I have ever taken, and I wish that I could go back every week. I definitely recommend going here if you ever have the opportunity.

baked cauliflower


I forgot to mention that I made this recipe yesterday, and it turned out really really good! The picture is before it was cooked, so all of the cheese and butter isn't melted yet. If you can't tell, I didn't exactly follow the recipe-- I added a lot more cheese, and different types of it, too. I used mozzarella, parmesan and cheddar. It was delicious :)

Saturday, September 12, 2009

little baby animals!

This week I can't get enough of looking at little baby woodland creatures (especially fawns!). They just make me smile sooo much!















(all photos found in Google image search)

Tonight I think I'm going out to dinner with my friend Sarah, and her boyfriend. I really don't want to go because I am trying to save money, but I am afraid they will get mad and stop being friends with me if I don't go! They've been asking me out for weeks now, and I've declined every time. I just don't want to spend anything!! I have such a great anxiety about spending money now, it's ridiculous. Gahh!!



Also, I need some advice: Sarah's birthday is next week, and our group of friends was planning to go out for dinner. I will be away the night of the dinner, so I told her that I would take her out the night I come home, and I would let her choose the restaurant. She knows I am trying to save money, so I assumed (shame on me) that she would choose a moderately priced restaurant. However, she chose a very expensive (but delicious) Thai restaurant that we both like. Is there a nice way of asking her to help me pay for the meal without sounding like a cheap-ass? I don't
know what to do! It's driving me insane.


I also wanted to say thank you to all of the people who commented on my blog this week :) It makes me really happy to know that someone is reading this!! I promise I'll keep trying to write interesting things :P

Friday, September 11, 2009

cute!!







This is too cute :) From Wee Green Spot.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

if only...


I'm not going to lie-- I always have my wedding in the back of my mind. I really love thinking about it. The dress, the pictures, the words I'll say (the word's he'll say). All of it. If only he would just ask me alreadyyyy ;)

(Photo by Braedon Photography)















(Photo by Kyle Hale)