Havin a heat wave

I want to post but I have nothing to write about because the heat has sucked away all thoughts in my head other than "Dude, the air conditioning has been broken at work for THREE DAYS NOW!!! HELP! I'M STEWIN IN MY OWN JUICES!"

And now, with that lovely image firmly implanted in your mind's eye, I'll skip off into the sunset.

I suck at coming up with titles for this stuff

On Monday morning I woke up with tonsils the size of Texas and could hardly swallow. This has continued all week which caused me to actually schedule an appointment with the Dr. (which I never do) but it was more because I need my anti-anxiety/depression pills refilled than the whole pesky can't hardly swallow thing (see I know what's important!). So, hey, lucky me, I have strep throat. I can only hope I passed it on to that absolute dill-weed I went on a date with a couple weeks ago because that would be the bright spot of my week.

So what is so depressing? In my effort to share more, the main thing referred to here was the fact that I was dating an utterly wonderful guy (J), things were going brilliantly. It was unlike any relationship I had shared with someone before, nothing was forced or awkward, there was no tension we just "were". It was relaxed and refreshing and peaceful and wonderful all at once. When I was with him I felt complete and like I was at home (and trust me there is nothing I love more than my home so that is saying A LOT). Everything was great for months and months and then I had to go and jinx myself and write the post (which I have sinced removed) about life's unexpected moments and the next day POOF! everything sucks. He had to go home (he is from India originally) for 6 months to be with his family. We have been trying to contact one another but we keep missing. I swear everytime I listen to his voicemail it rips my heart out because half of me loves him and misses him and the other half of me wants to punch him in the gut. Anyways that's the long end short of it so I am half waiting to see what happens with him and half dating but the more dates I go on the more I miss him so we'll see...

Edited to add: You know what on second though I will repost the post about lifes little moments because I don't want to forget or ignore the wonderful moments in life. So please read it, it's a good one, its from sometime at the end of May/beginning of June or hey, I'll stop being lazy and link to it.

I'm baaaack

Okay so thank you for being patient with me while I sorted my shit out. I am feeling much, much, better and even have a hint of optimism. So, with that being said lets move on.

My computer has officially totally died and therefore the vacation pictures must wait a little bit longer.

Maggie is now attending doggie daycare three mornings a week (I never thought I would be one of "those people" but heck it sure beats coming home to see that your big loving beast got bored and decided to CHEW THE MOTHER F'ING WALL (true story))

My summer class starts next month already! :(

I met my best friend S's new b.f. while I was in Virginia and he is amazing and I just know he will be her husband some day, so excited for her! Finally, one that is worthy of her!

Oh and my cousin might be moving her wedding up, like waaay up and that means I have significantly less time to lose weight than I had originally planned. GAHHH!

And thats about all the updates I have for now because as they say: It's summer time and the livin's easy

List

So I've decided to start a list of things that I want to do, just little things that will push me to be a better person, or are something fun that I've always wanted to do. So far I only have five but I will keep updating the list and let you all know how I am progressing.

The list thus far:

1) Read the entire Bible in one year-(in progress, Just bought the one year Bible for women: am already roughly 11 days behind lol)

2) Send a secret to PostSecret

3) Pay the person behind me's toll "just because"

4) Raise money for a shelter animal-DONE this weekend my team and I walked at the Humane Societies Bark in the Park and raised $300 for a shelter dog named Houston who only has three legs and also needs adopted!

5) Stay in a suite at a nice hotel just for fun-DONE last weekend my friend C. and I went to the Sheraton Inn on the river and got a two-story river-view room with a full kitchen, living room one and a half baths and a king size suite. It was soo nice we had big screen plasma tvs all over the place and we relaxed in the huge pool. It was tons of fun and pictures are forthcoming just as soon as I upload all the pictures from my camera.

So there ya have it, 2 out of 5 ain't bad! (yuck! I can't believe I typed the word ain't)

ramble, ramble

Yeah so it's been awhile. The last few weeks have been a million different kinds of stressful with classes wrapping up and final projects being due and exams to study for. Suffice it to say my anxiety levels have reached some crayzee ass levels and I have not been fun to live with. Nothing much else to report except a couple weeks ago I got my hair cut kind of like Katarzyna on ANTM (my apologies, I couldn't find a pic to link to) and now when I look in the mirror I want to make out with myself cause I like it so much (yuck, even I gagged a little bit writing that).

p.s. I have met yet another guy and things are going pretty well, we're taking it slowly and I will not talk about it for a very long time lest I jinx myself.

1 year old!

Happy blog-iversary to you
Happy blog-iversary to you
Happy blog-iversary to nicole-thedaysofmylife.blogspot.commmmm
Happy blog-iversary to youuuuuuu

And many more....

Welcome baby Abby!!!

In all my drunken story telling I forgot to mention that my awesome friend C's niece just had a baby on Saturday morning at 3:08 a.m. She was 9 lbs 3oz 21 inches long and she is absolutely adorably perfect in every way. So cute, in fact, that my uterus is aching as we speak. Congrats!

"Random" maybe this is one for the blog of uneccessary quotation marks

Just a quick post before I go to class to say that I am still alive and also over half of my posts are labeled "random" so does the fact that they are the majority of my posts negate the randomness?

Mai drawin skillz, let mi show u dem

What's that you ask? Well since its not such a good depiction of events I suppose I'll write the abbreviated story to go along with the above drawing. It goes a little something like this: Maggie got loose, rolled in something (presumably shit by the smell of her), and needed a bath. I called the place that rhymes with SmetSmart and made an appointment and in she went. 2 hours later I get the call that she's done and arrive to find a dog that smells like sunshine, rainbows, flowers, puppies, kittens, basically all things good in this world. I am happily ready to take my dog and leave until the groomer informs me that that black eye that she's sporting??? "THAT TERRIBLE DOG DID IT". I look around and unfortunately we are the only ones in there...oh crap. Next there was some babble babble about how Maggie is terrified of water and never in her 25 years of grooming has she seen a dog so terrified of water but then I'm forced to burst her bubble and tell her that this sparkly clean dog right here???? She goes to the lake and swims almost daily in the summer, she rides on our boat, she jumped off a boardwalk into water, and she has had several baths at this particular place before without incident thus diminishing any credibility that mean dog groomer had. Furthermore why the fuck was your face so close to my damn dog lady??? HUH? Were you trying to stare her in the eye?? So anyways I just kinda nodded my head and acted like I cared and then crept out. This combined with past questionable service has convinced me that I will not be returning to their establishment for bathing/grooming purposes but damn almighty will I miss the scent of that awesome shampoo!

Oh and in case you need a photo to remind you of what Maggie actually looks like in real life your wish is my command:

Very similar to the drawing no?

How fitting is this?

At the exact moment my first loves wife was giving birth to his child I was starting my period.

p.s. another post will be forthcoming later today although I can't promise it will be any better :)

I'm on the beach (the south beach that is)

Oh man where did the holiday break go??? It's back to classes for me on Monday :( On a brighter note I have been doing phase one of the South Beach Diet (yes it now deserves proper capitalization) for 9 and a half days and upon last check (yesterday) have lost 11 lbs!!!! It was sooo hard at first but right as my fourteen days are drawing to a close I have started to get used to it. Hopefully this will lay a good foundation for a more balanced and healthy diet when phase one is over! Okay enough boring diet talk on to other stuff like ummmmmmmmmmm............. how my family was out to dinner on Sunday night and V said she didn't feel good and got up to go to the bathroom and halfway there vomited and passed out. I don't mean fell gracefully to the floor I mean face first straight down sprawled on the floor. She is absolutely never sick so this was an emergency. The people at the restaurant called 911 and they came; V was kinda in and out of consciousness but breathing and after an agonizing assessment the paramedics said that all her stats checked out and it was probably just sudden onset flu and that's "just how it hits these days." Well my mom has taken classes in the medical field and decided to take V to the brand new 24 hour emergency center/hospital that they had just built right behind the restaurant which coincidentally happens to also be the hospital that my mom works for(what luck huh?) Turns out they couldn't get blood because she was dehydrated so they're treating it like the flu but gave her some stuff for the stomach pain she said she'd been having and told her to make an appointment at the doctor. She made said appointment and guess what? It was not, in fact, sudden onset flu but more than likely her gall bladder (we'll find out for sure today or Monday) so now I can stop incessantly scrubbing everything that she has ever touched. I do not do well with anything medical (I am deathly afraid of hospitals, doctors offices, and anything to do with unwellness) but somehow I managed to not pass out right there with her and instead sit with my grandpa while my mom helped V and then drive her puke soaked pathetic looking self to the hospital. I am proud of me and uber (I once promised myself that I would never use that expression cause I hate it so much) glad that V is okay aside from some indigestion and a possible surgery looming in her future.

Oh yeah and that reminds me (though I'm not entirely sure why) I had the weirdest dreams last night, I dreamt that me and my cousins went to Sea World and got to feed snow peas to Shamu and friends and they went crazy and loved us and let us pet them and waved to us and did all their cute little whale-y tricks. Then my cousins ditched me and my mom and v came and I wanted to show them the wondrous snow pea tricks except there was a huge crowd and we couldn't break through. Then finally some employee thought that my mom was a zoologist and took me to the front of the line but not my mom so it was pointless. Weird huh?

Also I've had two dreams in the past month about someone trying to take my dog Maggie away from me. In the first one my mom is prying her from my death grip trying to take her to the pound and my face is buried in her hair and shes all tear and snot soaked because I'm crying and yelling hysterically and then in the next one some guy has Maggie lined up and he tells me that if he shoots her I can get a brand new dog and I feel a surge of excitement about the new dog but then I realize that he's going to fucking shoot Maggie so I run and push her out of the way and we leave; a girl and her dog. Then last night as I was talking to my mom she told me "Nicole, if something ever happens to V I will have to find a home for Maggie."

WHAT???? My family is not the type that ever part with pets (until they're dead of course) we're not the type to get a dog and decide hmmm she's just not working out lets find her a new home oh no no no we work through the problems and give all our adopted babies a forever home regardless of how disobedient they may be at times. So with that in mind my jaw hit the floor. I mean I know my mom doesn't have the time or the energy to exercise her the way she needs to be exercised (oh cheese and rice does she need to be exercised) but dude! no. never happening. So if my moms partner V kicks it I will be set to inherit one high-strung but amazing white german shepherd huskie mix. And thus, I believe, the reason for the dreams.

Sorry for the long mish-mash post and God bless you if you made it all the way through. And coming up in the next post: Why my dad uttered the words "Inter-racial dating will result in the utter destruction of society." (smacks forehead)

A New Year = New Ramblings

So it's been like a million years since my last post. Not much to report, the holidays were lovely I got to spend time with my best friend and her family while they were visiting from Virginia and I got to spend lots of quality time with my family as well. For Christmas I got a few gift cards (I got the rest when I went shopping the day after Thanksgiving) and a new i-pod nano from the guy I've been seeing (is it too soon for that???? or do we just like to give good gifts because I totally got him a cell phone) But the greatest gift of all was from my bestest; it's called "Henry the talking gnome" and you press it's foot to record a saying and then press it's hand and it repeats it in a high-pitched gnome voice. There have been hours of entertainment had already. An added bonus is that it's really hard for someone to be mad at you when your voice is coming out of a stuffed gnome. And she also bought me a hardcover copy of the book Frog and Toad Together with an inscription about how much like them we are (tear) and she even read me the story where they bake the cookies and try really hard not to eat them all (so totally us) Oh how I love that girl! Also, I saw pictures of our vacation house online (I go on vacation with her and her family every summer to the Outer Banks) and all I can say is WOW!!! It sleeps 26, has a pool and hot tub, a game room, an elevator, an exercise room, annnnnd wait for it.......a theatre room with theatre seating and a movie projector; yesssssssss. I think it also said something about a poolside bar but I'm not sure so needless to say I am crazy excited for June to roll around. And because June will be rolling around so soon I have also started the South Beach Diet. For anyone out there who thinks it's a good idea, it's not. I mean yes the weight is coming off but for the first two weeks you cannot have carbs, fruit, alcohol (duh), or basically anything sweet and you are also limited on your dairy choices so suffice it to say I AM SOOO HUNGRY since I have no carbs to give me that full feeling and also as a side note I HATE VEGETABLES. Every time I think of the make-shift stir-fry my mom made for me last night a little bit of throw-up comes up. Anyways enough about that I can officially eat healthy carbs again in 7 days!!!! Whooo Hooo. That's about it for now but hopefully I'll upload some pictures in the near future.

No more free handouts

One of my mom's all time favorite quotes is "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent" from Eleanor Roosevelt. I was just talking with a friend and thinking about it and that is so very very true. No one has the power to make you feel bad unless you give it to them. At what point did handing over that power become virtually unconscious and how can I take it back? Then I thought even deeper about how the majority of the world's problems are due to us projecting our insecurities onto others either intentionally or unintentionally. I'll give an example from my life that I have tried to side-step and deny but I know its true and hopefully by acknowledging it I will be able to work at correcting it. The theme of my life, if you will, is being lonely. I am terrified of it and will do almost anything to make sure that it does not happen. Sometimes that involves being a major jackass and latching onto someone only until I find someone better. Please don't judge me I know its wrong and makes me sound like a cold hearted bitch but I'm being honest and doing soul searching here okay? So I will no longer be handing out to people the power to make me feel bad and furthermore I will look deep inside myself and overcome my insecurities so that even if the whole world can't be a better place at least my little corner of it can be.

Why I am still recovering from "the day of rest" aka Sunday

That would be a pool table covered with paper with a sample of our homemade cookies on top




More cookies




Each year my family gets together and we bake and decorate homemade sugar cookies. This year we baked about 50 dozen. Picture all of the cookies above plus about three other tables in the other room. Its a lot of work but also a lot of fun and each family gets to take home about 4 dozen. So that is why I'm being lazy as hell (or it could just be an excuse, guess you'll never know).

Oh yeah and remember when I mentioned the calendar we were making of Roxie (I'm too lazy to link to that entry right now) for my grandpa? We sent the pictures off today so we should have it before Christmas yea! Glad that headache is over with, it took us almost 2 hours at CVS getting everything sorted out.

I promise to get back to writing more substantial and meaningful posts soon but for right now can I interest you in my favorite distraction: adorable dog photos (taken with the camera I stood in line for for 2 freezing hours which I heart very very much)!!!!

p.s. please excuse Maggies lady parts in the last photo, we're working on teaching her modesty lol

What the hell are they smoking when they make the fortunes for the fortune cookies?

My friend C's fortune cookie fortune:

"You'll meet your big cheese today"

We both know that I could think myself dizzy, right now I'm spinning around

So usually I try and keep things pretty upbeat on here. I don't get into too many personal stories and such but tonight I'm feeling sad so I'm gonna let it all hang out, please bear with me.
I feel so lonely, I have a boyfriend who I haven't seen in a month and who never has time for me, I have a mother who has been increasingly rude to me, I have a million family members that live in the area who I haven't seen in probably 10 years, what the hell? I feel like everyone just isolates themselves and pretty soon we're all gonna be living alone. And the people I do hang out with regularly seem to always be checking their watch and making up reasons why they have to go (I'll admit I'm guilty of that one too). People don't understand, they really don't, all the hangups only children have. When I say I'm alone I'm alone. As in I genuinely feel alone in this world (though I know I'm not). Everyone seems to have their "someone" and I feel like all my "someones" have taken a leave of absence. It's such a double edged sword, I crave my alone time if I don't get enough but when I have too much I get in a funk. I hate this feeling more than anything in the world; that feeling that no one in the entire world is thinking about me, it's so depressing. I know it's not true but we all have our moments of feeling this way I suppose. I just feel like what the fuck I'm 21 what am I doing sitting at home on a Saturday night blogging? Why am I not out with friends, and furthermore why do I not really want to be sometimes? I just wish I had my rock, the one person that would make me feel un-lonely but not smother me. Now I'm just rambling and this is a big muddled mess so just let me keep feeling sorry for myself for just a few more minutes and then I'll suck it up k?
I had dinner with my cousins (they're sisters) tonight and I was really looking forward to going; we could be really close but we rarely see each other though I don't know why. It actually sucked. Not the dinner itself that part was great and we had a lot of laughs, but just the fact that I got a little taste of having people care and as soon as the food was gone BAM back to just me again.
Fuck everyone for always being on my back and fuck all the false friends that are out there. I have weeded you out and now I'm basically left with my closest family members and a few select friends. I am fucking lonely and sad. I want to be the person who can take life by the horns and have adventures, the one who can go out and talk to anyone and is always making new friends, I want to be optimistic and not so lazy and scared of meaningful relationships. Most of all I want to not be any of those things, I want to be me and still have support.

And yes the title of this post was shamelessly stolen from the song 5:19 by Matt Wertz

Could I interest you in a reading? Then again how about not

I'm cuttin it close again, I almost missed another day. What can I say my life is extremely boring. I made a video of my dog being shy in front of the camera perhaps I will post it tomorrow since I'll have some time. Other than that not much to report. I made some kick ass apple dumplings today. Oh yeah and in a previous post I talked about my intuition and how sometimes I just have feelings; while the one mentioned in that particular entry did not come true I has one the other day that unfortunately did. I called my mom, my boyfriend, and my friend and told them not to freak out but I felt like something was going to happen in one of their lives, either to them or their family or they were going to witness something and seriously I was a wreck over it, I just felt so nervous and weird. I got a call from my friend a couple hours later and she told me that her aunt had gone into cardiac arrest and was pretty much brain dead. YIKES! I don't believe that I'm psychic or anything like that but I think that it's possible to tap into energy of that sort. Of course it doesn't seem to be anything consistent but it's pretty cool that it happens occassionally, maybe next time it will be something good!

Get those degrees people!

Once again not much time to post so I'll make a list of annoying and incorrect things that people say and call it a post:

1) It mystifies me that there are college students that still call the library the "libary" (pronounced "lie-berry")

2) College students using math terms such as plus instead of add, minus instead of subtract and my personal favorite "times it by" instead of multiply by. As in "To solve the equation you plus two, minus three, and times the answer by six"

3) Honors students calling an angioplasty and "angioplasm"

I could go on but I'm drawing a blank and there are so many blogs to catch up on reading thanks to NaBloPoMo!

Signed "The college student/blogger"

Whew I'm cuttin it close tonight but this will be posted before midnight! I'm in the midst of studying for a French "causerie" aka a forced conversation between you and a partner about a pre-selected topic on which you are graded by your instructor (I pretty much failed the last time as noted here) and basically things aren't lookin much better for this time. So since I have to get back to the grind I'll make this short yet poignant k?

As I was driving home from dinner tonight I was at a stoplight where a homeless man usually stands. I glanced to my left and he wasn't there but instead was a tattered pizza box, folded over onto itself and standing up with a message written on it, it said "Whoever stole my bag I forgive you, I hope you needed my dirty clothes and blankets" and was signed "the homeless guy" For some reason this really touched me, it was just one of those things that you see at the right time and it strikes a chord. I called my mom to tell her about just that but her response was to say that it was just a ploy. I am not naive and I don't usually fall for stuff like that but for some reason I just felt that this was true. Why would it be a ploy to get money if he wasn't even standing there with the box? At any rate it made me think of all the homeless people I have ever passed, people who were asking for nothing from anyone just huddled in a doorway (or sprawled on a sidewalk) to sleep, how we generalize and put all of these people into one category "the homeless people". This man has a name, a story, a life and something about seeing it signed "the homeless man" just hit me like a ton of bricks. Also not to be overlooked is the fact that this man who has nothing to his name other than what he can carry around with him can forgive someone for being such an ass and stealing his last earthly possessions that he wasn't physically wearing. Somehow it makes me feel more than a little ignorant for instantly hating someone just because they cut me off in traffic.

Does this mean I believe everyone who is on the street claiming to need money is legitimate? No. Does this mean I'm going to give money to every less fortunate person I pass? No. It just means that for a second I really thought about the individual I pass everyday as opposed to defining him by nothing more than the labels I ascribe to him and it made me want to be a little more forgiving of others. So if it was a ploy it was a damn good one. Thank you.

Hmm turns out it wasn't so short after all!

Now if she only had opposable thumbs the world would be her oyster

Not much to report here, just checking in as is my duty for the entire month of November. I promise to have more interesting posts in the future but right now I'm tired and don't have much to say so I'll leave you with this awe inspiring factoid from my life: my dog learned how to open our french doors that lead to our sun porch, not nudge open with her nose but stand up on hind legs and push the handle down until it opens....awesome!