family

as much as i complain and bellyache about my family and the life situation that i've been dealt, i still love my family very much. this has been made more so present than recent events.

on thursday, october 14th, my uncle pete unexpectedly died of what we believe was an aortic aneurysm. he went to work and left due to not feeling well, came home and became disoriented and coded on his way to the hospital, never to wake back up. it's still hard, harder than i thought, to fully wrap my head around the notion that he's not coming home or that his car outside doesn't mean that he's inside, waiting. he and i didn't always get along and more often than not, i thought he was a goober. he had lame jokes and always waited for me to give him a high five and would bother me at the most inconvenient times but i loved him dearly. i loved how he would always forget to tuck in his shirt or how he knew random sports and music trivia, i loved how he would be nice to the meanest person and how he would tell me that i looked pretty on days when i felt anything but.

i'm grateful for the time and the memories that i have with and of him. i'm grateful that he went quickly and didn't feel any pain. i'm grateful that friends and family have banded around my core family to help us through it. i'm grateful for every day that i wake up and can tell people that i love them. because in the face of this shit that befell us so suddenly, i'm made more grateful for the friends and family that i have and i never want to neglect telling people that i adore them. the hurt will get better with time, i know, but for right now, i'm so happy that i had my uncle pete.

my aunt

is legit a medical freak. she has these two diseases, wegener's granulomatosis and polyarteritis nodosa, and the combination of the two of them together puts her in a realm that apparently only one other person in the world has been officially diagnosed with. rad fun fact about my aunt: she's been in a shitload of medical journals for it.

my entire life, she's been what i refer to as functionally sick. she's legit on disability because she can't work due to her illnesses but pretty much can do anything else.

however, i'm starting to get really fed up with her. i have to tolerate her shit and shenanigans because she is 'sick' but it's really ridiculous how she milks it and the crap she gets away with because of it. all she ever does is constantly bemoan the fact that she can't drive due to seizures on her record, how she's sicker than everybody else and is worse off and how we need to cater to her whims because of it. you know, a person can only tolerate and accept that kind of stuff for so long.

case in point: her repetition. it's not even noon yet and she's already told me eight times since she's woken up a HALF HOUR AGO that she has a fever. okay? take a damn tylenol, lay down and stfu.

this kind of occurrence is my day to day life. my friends don't believe me until they come over and after are always like wow, wasn't expecting that. i warn people for a reason.

now, i love her and i hate that she's sick but at the same time, her shenanigans are starting to wear me down, wear me thin and drive me up a wall. i do feel better for ranting, though.

time to take her to the doctor.

i was going to write

but then i looked at the lush cosmetics facebook again and saw this hunk of a man again.



ugh, moving to vancouver right now. he is my perfect man. bearded, tattoos and a metallica shirt. dead.

i'm frustrated. i graduate in december and have already plotted out a plan of action. take a year off before grad school to volunteer at the history center here or get an internship with them while i continue to work at lush and (try) to save up enough money for a new car and to get the hell out of here. my mother, however, has different plans for me altogether.

she doesn't seem to grasp the idea that i no longer wish to follow the path that they've laid out for me. i no longer want to live in the isolated little bubble that they seem to have so carefully dictated and constructed for me. i want to be my own person and even if i'm not making much money, i want to do what makes me happy and i don't want to settle for mediocrity.

i can't even discuss any of this with her because once i mention deviation from her plans, she acts like an insolent and sullen teenager and begins to pout and sulk and bitches until i lie and say what she wants to hear.

i need to win the lotto or something. shit.

i'm going to attempt to nurture this blog a little more, make more of a day by day thing. no matter how trivial or inane my day seems.

starting tomorrow.

quick post

update to follow tomorrow. too tired from school work to write anything noteworthy.

one month

and some change. that's legit how long it's been since i've updated this thing. it's not like i can even say that i've been busy. i've just been lazy, haha. let's recap this last month in list form, shall we?

- i started my (last) semester of school. two classes online. it feels weird to be doing school work again. i did not miss formatting papers. blech.
- i've been working more at the store. i love it dearly. i cannot wait for the next few months because of halloween and christmas products, wooooooot.
- i've been helping out the family like always. enough said.
- i started a food blog with my friend alley. ferociousfoodies.blogspot.com

damn. that's really pretty much it. here's my dad singing and cleaning a toilet chair.

weight loss update

so it's actually been about five weeks since i've embarked on my lose weight, look great sort of half ass plan that i've started. i will admit, i've slacked severely on the exercise front. i've only been doing yoga about twice a week but i have been walking around a lot more than usual. i've also been cutting down portion sizes a lot and not snacking/grazing as much as i used to.

that being said, i came out of my room this morning and my younger sister looked at me rather quizzically and asked if i was skinnier. i haven't really been paying much attention the last few weeks so i went and weighed myself and i've officially lost 12 pounds. i can't lie, it felt pretty damn good to see that i've lost that much. my goal now is another 30 and i think it's definitely doable, especially if i step up my game on the exercise front.

my sister also complained that i've been looking cuter than her lately. that part, i'm not as sure about but i think my little sister is gorgeous so it oddly made me feel good. i've suffered with self esteem issues for years and i've gotten to an acceptance level with myself where i think that i'm cute. i'm not model gorgeous but i'm not hideous either and it's taken me a long time to just accept myself. now i'm just trying to improve myself further.

summer time

every summer, a ritual has started to form between myself and two of my friends, amber and lydia. lydia lives in atlanta and amber lives in naples so with me being in orlando, we don't exactly get a chance to see each other often. this year marks the third year of us getting together and going to warped tour.

now, warped tour over the years has seen a decline in bands that the three of us actually like but we still truck through it and spend the day meandering around and seeing new bands, laughing and having all sorts of nutty adventures. the first year was 2008 when we hit up warped in miami. it's how i got introduced to protest the hero (helloooooo, luke hoskin), a warped date on the water with a gorgeous breeze and the longest period of time ever spent by me in miami.


luke hoskin, what a stone cold fox

last year was 2009 warped tour in west palm beach. the venue sucked. there were bands like millionaires and brokencyde that are just a blight upon music. but there was alexisonfire and gallows and chiodos that made everything worth it to me. i also found out that all three of us, embarrasingly enough, like 3Oh!3. Even putting that in print shames me. we got to meet alexisonfire, which was a major highlight to me, and per usual, i took total creeper photos that i am just now gonna post.


steele, the bassist. sweet as pie. what a guy.


jordan hastings, the drummer. also known as ratbeard. i follow him on twitter and i legit find him to be most pleasant.


george pettit, the lead singer. we had run into him earlier and i had given him some cookies. uber friendly.


dallas green. arguably the most known member of the group. his side project is city and colour, which alone is freaking amazing. he seemed really shy but when you have tons of people on your ass all the time, you gotta keep something about yourself for yourself.


wade macneill. my personal favorite member. he held up the line for us so that we could talk to him. sincerely genuine and sweet, he's extremely humble and kind and it's safe to say i'm slightly enamored with him.

this year is 2010 warped tour and year three for our terrible trio to terrorize another city in the state. this year's decided warped tour date is the st petersburg stop. why? because it's a little closer to naples than west palm and st pete in general is a rad ass city. i'm excited for hangouts with my friends and the handful of bands that we're going to see.


especially this one.

it's gonna be a good weekend.

this week has been infinitely better than the last. i feel like shit has shifted in the universe to where i feel like the pile of suck that seemed to hang over my head may not be hovering above me as close as it was. i did bring it upon myself but at least there's definitely been a major improvement.

we've had a few amazing nights downtown with lots of dancing and smiling and laughing. we went to this place called rebounderz, which has tons and tons of indoor trampolines. we bounced on walls and beat little kids and dodgeball. i went bowling with my brother. i took my little sister to lunch. i had a bowling tournament with the girls from work with a lot of ridiculous costumes, lots of bonding time and amaretto sours for me.

it's nice having a social life again after allowing myself to become a quasi-hermit for about two years. it's even better that we've been having good times going out inside of shitty ones. this coming week is going to be full of win, too. kennedy space center, fuddrucker's with my-linh, backbooth for 80's night, ibar for grits and gravy and five year flashback.

i love life.

karma

i generally believe in being a good person. doing the right thing as much as humanly possible and helping out my fellow man whenever i can. i'm not claiming that i'm perfect in it. i'm as shallow and materialistic as the next person but i'm at least trying to become more aware of the impact i'm making and having on other people in the world.

however, this last week has been a really shitty clusterfuck of bad karma both caused by me and doled out to me.i truly do feel that the 'bad' things that are occuring in my life right now are a direct result of what i have caused in karmic damage to others. i know a lot of people don't really believe in karma or the kind of symbiotic balance in the world but i fully do and so i'm just trying to find my balance again before i get the good ol karmic bitch slap again. or an anvil dropped on my head.

random rambling over.

hi. i don't know your name or who you are or what you do but maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, you are fine as hale.

because i was exhausted from work yesterday, i didn't get a chance to update this sucker but i have embarked upon the start of my new healthy body plan.

i've started doing yoga again and plan on getting at least twenty minutes in each day whenever possible. i've started doing stomach crunches and planks to get a flatter belly, which has always been my biggest body concern and because belly fat is the worst to keep on your frame. i'm planning on doing at least 30 minutes of cardio four times a week, walking around my neighborhood whenever i can with my little sister, riding my bike again in the afternoons. i've cut pop out of my diet, started limiting my portions of food and am trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, less sweets and carbs.

i finally decided to stop being compacent. it's not that i think i'm fat or that i have an urge to be rail thin or have a desire to have anybody's body but my own. i just need to stop being lazy. i've gotten so bad about actually getting my ass up to do anything lately that it's nto really a wonder i've put on some weight. my goal is thirty pounds by december to at least get myself into the healthy range of my body mass index. if i can lose more, that'd be great but for once, it's really not so much about losing the weight as it is about developing better life habits for myself. after all, i got one life to live and i want to make the most out of it and i truly feel that being a few pounds lighter would ease my body aches and pains and allow me more mobility and flexibility in doing the things i want to do. i'm monitoring my progress and will post about it here monthly so i can track myself.

father's day

today is the day that was chosen a hundred years ago to celebrate the fact that we have fathers. for some people, they consider the genetic donor of seed to their mother and half of their chromosomal makeup to merely be a sperm donor. for other people, they consider step-fathers, older brothers, grandfathers, uncles, influential male figures in their lives to be the closest things they have to a father. for an even luckier few, they have their biological father who has remained a solid and influential figure in their lives. i am amongst those lucky few.



this is my father. he is honestly one of the best people that i know and i would probably say that, even if he wasn't my dad. he's the kind of person who goes out of his way to help others, would give you the shirt off his back if he saw that you needed it more than he did. he and i have always had a really good relationship because we have a shitload of common interests, find humor in the most inappropriate situations and like to make fun of pretty much everything we can. we have the same eyes, the same sense of humor, the same odd vocabulary that often baffles people who enter into conversation with us.

i have the same sense of socialization as he does where we both have to talk to everybody that we possibly can, find out everything that we can about other people. i'm reminded of this every time i go to visit him at the hospital that he works at and everybody comes up and says hello to him and for the most part, he knows everybody's name from the higher ups down to the janitors. it never ceases to make me proud to have people come up to me and ask me if i'm his daughter.

i will always be proud and happy to answer yes. to tell people that i am my father's daughter. happy father's day, daddy. i love you.

i neglect this thing so much but i've decided to take a bigger undertaking with it and actually use it to write down the ish that has been going on in my life. but tonight, i keep it short, sweet and extremely random.

case in point- i just got home from chicago where i've spent the last eight days. it's hard to go back there because technically, it is home to me and being there makes me want to move back. it's not a feasibly possible thing for me right now because i need to have my degree and a job and oh yeah, that little thing called money. i like orlando. i like chicago. i may even end up somewhere completely random in the long run. i'm keeping my options open but the nomadic itch is starting to push its way through again.

i leave you with me and my rocking side pony before i get my hair did at the end of the month. woooooooord.

summer has officially started for me now. one more semester (going in the fall) to finish and then i have a bachelor's degree. road trips to the beach have started. road trips to ybor have started. florida is hot. my statements are truth.

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

you're supposed to do what makes you happy in life, right? be who you want to be. do what you want to do. go with the flow. enjoy the ride.

not according to my mother.

i went downstairs to get a drink and she called me over to her to ask me a favor. said favor is that i get no more piercings or tattoos. she said that if she wanted to have another son, then she would have had another son and that my tattoos and piercings make me manly and not a girl and that ladies don't do these sorts of things. what is this? the 1950's? no offense but i am no june cleaver. i may dress like her once in a while just because i can and i want to but i'm not going to be some docile housewife who's going to give my husband a martini when he gets home from work. to be blunt, fuck that.

angryface.

dearest blog of mine. how i neglect you. i get caught up in a whirlwind of work and school and the shambled adventures that count as my social life and i forget to show you love. for that, i am sorry.

things have been nutty lately. my job at lush is absolutely amazing and i love getting to work there as much as i get to because i'm constantly learning new things and meeting new people from all over the world. my co-workers are all amazing people and i feel like i gain new life insights from them all. my job definitely makes me feel like actively working towards being a more positive person overall and makes me feel like trying to make a bigger impact on the world.

school's winding down for the semester. one class over summer and i'll officially have my bachelor's degree in history. i'm unsure as to how i feel about it and what i'm planning on doing afterwards. i really like working at lush so i may try to stay there for a good while and work my way upwards if at all possible. i really feel like i'm only getting my degree now to have it as a backup plan. i just refuse to teach in florida now, thanks to charlie crist and his being a dumbass. education in this state and in the nation in general needs some serious help. sigh. rant rant rant.

i also have been delving back into having a bit of a social life. i hang out with more people now, grab lunch with friends, visit others. with my grandpa and my aunt being gone for two weeks, i've had the opportunity to go out a little bit more and now that i've had the taste of freedom again, i'm going to be highly reluctant to let it go.

WARNING: MASSIVE COMPLAINTS COMING ON. with my grandpa and aunt living her, all we do is cater to them. they've forced my parents to sleep on a sofa bed for nearly three years now. we're forced to do their bidding with no gratitude. take them to doctor's. rearrange our schedules to fit about five doctor appointments in a week. listen to them beat a dead horse by complaining about each other constantly and with that, it's the cycle of whine, rinse and repeat. i love them both so dearly and the first year and a half, i was totally fine putting up with this. it meant i got to see them and spend time with them. however, the welcome has worn itself thin. my grandfather treats my mom so badly that it infuriates me to see her get treated like shit. she and i may not get along all the time but she doesn't deserve that crap. my aunt literally just mopes around the house all day. it depresses me constantly because i can be in the best of moods and within five minutes, her glum face and pessimistic views rip that completely to shit. i never talk about this to the full extent with anybody and it gnaws away at me sometimes and i just get so mad but it's life and it's the situation we've been dealt to deal with right now so i have to suck it up and keep chugging along and continue to find the happiness in the little things in life.

like the smell of orange blossoms from the orange grove by my house that are in full bloom right now. i drive by it with my windows down and a a smile on my face. allergies be damned, i'm going to revel in that smell while they're still in bloom. i also treasure h&m's leggings. see? it really is the little things. they fit beautifully and don't pill and are ridiculously soft and i wear my pair as often as humanly possible. murder by death's new album. the smell of fresh lemongrass. my cat licking my nose to show her affection. my friends. my family. my job. chocolate.

life is hard a lot of the times and i still have it fucking good so no matter what, i will always try to be grateful. i will wake up each day and be thankful that i'm still breathing and that i've gotten out of bed. i will find joy in small moments. i will be happy.

i blog in lists. it's what i do.

- harvest of hope rocked. new favorites are mucca pazza for sure. huge ass marching band from chicago with rad people who are down to hang. also met man man. awesome awesome. I ALSO HUGGED KEVIN DREW. it was like my sixteen year old dream come true. so amazing.
- our store's set to reopen soon. totally stoked on it. it's gonna look wicked amazing plus i miss seeing all the girls (and one guy).
- my aunt got some bad health news. it's really like throwing another chip onto the shit pile that is her health but we're all hoping for the best and sending good vibes her way.
- my birthday's in a week. i'm going to be 23. it's weird. i don't care about it BUT i do care about the dillinger escape plan and darkest hour show that's happening the day before. heeeeeeeeell yeaaaaaaaaaaah.

random list time!

- i really have let my room get out of control. tomorrow, i'm cleaning it all up again after my midterm.
- that being said, i'm not horribly worried about my midterms and that worries me. vicious cycle.
- at work, we get our products with stickers that have the faces of people who made said product. there's this one guy with a burly beard and i have fallen for him based on the cartoon sticker of him and his beard. it could work.
- i've been sleeping in nightgowns late;y and wearing more dresses. it's not that i have a particular affinity for them, i just really don't like pants.
- i'm figuring out that while i have fairly girly, i have some really masculine attributes. like forgetting deodorant, forgetting to shave, wearing clothes a few days in a row. it's not because i want to be like a dude, i'm just forgetful and lazy. just saying.
- harvest of hope is coming up soon and freaking BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE is gonna be there! totally worth going for that reason alone. that and it's me and my girls enjoying st. augustine and some liquor. it's going to be epic.
-also, disney trip soon! holla!