A Memorable Memorial Weekend

The rest of the surprise birthday weekend went something like this...

Surprise! Dancing and drinking on a boat....

Surprise! Dancing and drinking in a limo....

Dancing and drinking in a bar...

Dancing and drinking on the beach...

Reenacting Vomitous Christmas scene:

Reenacting engaygement photos:

Reading Old First Communion books:

Dunkin Donuts on the beach..

Exhaustion:

Fly home.

My Presence is Your Present

My oldest sister turned 30 over the weekend. She lives in NJ. I wasn't going to go to the party what with just having gotten home from Denmark and having exhausted my bank account there... But some good friends of mine and hers got together and split the price of the flight. The next thing I knew I found myself again flying across the country solo. I was just shy of being back in California for 2 full weeks.

Now I am back in New Jersey driving down the Turnpike trying to figure out how to properly surprise my unsuspecting sister, who I call "angel child." The girl can do no wrong in her dear mother's eyes. My mom really wants to "scare" her this time though. Her idea of scary is putting me in a box, wrapping it with "happy birthday" wrapping paper, putting the box in the living room, and telling Bridget that this package arrived for her and she doesn't know what it is or who it's from.... Scary? No.

After going over a few other options we decide that I will hang out in one of the upstairs bedrooms and mom will tell Bridget to go upstairs and check out the new bedroom doors she just installed. When she opens the door, I'll pop out and scream at her her. Deal. We get pretty excited about the idea, until we get home and realize Bridget was just over the house this morning and has already seen the doors....

We go over some other ideas and finally agree that I will hide out in the garage...no, the car inside the garage...better yet, a bag inside the car in the garage...

Mom cuts some holes in a huge birthday bag, pins a big gold bow in my hair and stuffs me in the front seat of the car in the dark, hot garage. She hands me a beer with a straw in it to pass the time. The sisters are on their way home. Bored.. hot... dark....have to pee... Mom comes back in the garage...The girls were on their way, but they had to go back to my sister's house because she forgot something... Get out of the bag, run to the bathroom..mom insists on french braiding my hair....Little sister calls, they're 3 minutes away... Get back in the bag, back in the car...dark and hot in a stuffy birthday bag again... I can hear the sisters coming through the door and instantly have to pee again.

Wait for it...wait for it...

Bridget opens the garage door and I lay on the horn, flash the high beams, and shake around in my bag.

Her reaction:
"MOOOOOM!! the car alarm is going....Huh?
"What the?!"
"Who's in there?!"

Her train of thought:
1) the car alarm is going off
2) wait, mom doesn't have a car alarm
3) hey, someone is in a birthday bag in the car
4) why did mom dress up her boyfriend in a birthday bag?
5) wait, Mom wouldn't do that
6) Is it Julie?!

Happy Birthday Briggles!

I'd Laugh, But It Hurts

I woke up this morning like any other normal day....I pressed snooze at least 5 times until I realized I was now running late. I jumped out of bed and headed for the shower. My chest felt a little funny but I didn't notice anything was seriously wrong until I tried to shampoo my hair... lifting my arms above my head (in particular my right arm) resulted in excruciating pain in my chest that felt like a knife was being jammed in between my front ribs to my back ribs. Worst chest/back pain I have ever felt in my life! What the heck is this? I didn't really believe I was in pain at first because A) I just woke up and B) I hadn't done anything physical that would result in injury. Why would I be in pain? I didn't know why, but I was. Just to calm all you worry warts.... it was definitely not any chest pain related to my heart. The pain was up on the right side and it definitely only hurt when I moved in a certain direction. Leaning my head back to try to rinse the little amount of shampoo I was able to reach in my hair was equally as excruciatingly painful. I got out of the shower and laid down immediately. Something was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I couldn't even get up out of bed on my own, Trevor had to pretty much pick me up and set me straight.

I called my chiropractor doctor friend and described my pain to see what her immediate reaction was... Should I be concerned? She took a look at my back, and sternum, and ribs and came up with a pretty accurate diagnosis...slipping rib syndrome or the good ol' rib-out-of-place phenomenon. Sounds pretty awful, huh? Well, let me assure you it is as uncomfortable as it sounds.

The worst part is I saw it coming. I didn't know it would come today or that it would be this painful...but for the past year or so I have been carrying around an enormous purse stuff full of junk that I rarely need but for some reason feel the need to bring everywhere! My shoulder and back have hurt before because of carrying around such baggage but Trevor was always there to ease the load. For the past 3 months though my poor right side has been lopsidedly toting around an extra 15 pounds by itself. I knew I was doing my right side a disservice....and my ribs finally slipped....

I'm sure the last straw was dragging my 200lbs of clothes and souvenirs home from Denmark, but I am fairly certain this injury has been a long time coming.

As a warning to all the big-bag fans out there...beware!...pack lite...

BRING BACK THE FANNY PACK

Nervous Pervous

I was asked on Monday if I wanted to do a 15 minute presentation at a meeting on Wednesday. It wasn't a real question in that I couldn't say I didn't want to if I wanted to even though I did want to say I didn't want to. (You follow that one?) It was more of an assignment and the question was only asking me if there was any reason why I would not be able present on Wednesday, and unfortunately there wasn't.

Public speaking is something I always wanted to be better at but never EVER wanted to practice. I know I would never try it on my own so I was slightly happy that I was given the opportunity to test it out with only a 15 minute presentation. 15 minutes is nothing! baby steps! I was still pretty worried about how it would all play out.... I knew I was going to be nervous, but I didn't realize how crazy it would make me.

On Tuesday, all I did at work was work on this presentation....adding slides...removing slides...rearranging slides....re-phrasing sentences... deleting words. I spent a ridiculous amount of time OCD-ing over this presentation. I thought about it the whole drive home from work...I missed my exit because I was so concerned about it and I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. If you told me something Tuesday night, I probably wasn't listening because this presentation was the ONLY thing I could focus on. This morning I missed a meeting because I thought it was at 8:30am east coast time or 11:30am CA time, but no it was really at 8:30am my time and I didn't get to work until 8:50! Can I still use the excuse I'm not used to the time zone? jet lag? I've been home or a week and a half! No way! My only excuse is that I'm a complete spazoid and the threat of this impending presentation is destroying my normal train of thought. This was a bad start to my day. A day filled of...guess what? Re-arranging and re-wording this dang presentation up until meeting time (3pm)!


This presentation was really not a big deal and I kept telling myself that, but the sole word "presentation" just completely messes with my mind. If I went to the meeting with no prior mention of the word "presentation" and someone asked during the meeting if I could summarize my results in 15 minutes, I would be totally fine and happy to do so. I know I can communicate, I know how to think and talk and form complete sentences....But knowing that at this certain time 8-10 people will be silent, and look at me, and listen to the words that I say,and read these slides I put together, and will expect to learn something from it, and form questions that I may or may not be able to answer... Holy Anxiety Attack!

So it's meeting time. Someone else gave a presentation before me...on what? I have no clue because all I was thinking about was what I will say and kept going through possible questions people might ask me and how I'd respond... Then it was my turn. My heart was beating so loud I seriously thought it was going to make me throw up, and for a few seconds I really had to focus on keeping my composure to avoid getting sick... I nearly passed out. Once I got past the first couple slides and a couple of cracks in my voice, I felt fine and a decent amount more confident. I hope no one noticed how badly I was shaking when I clicked for the next slide...

Does anyone else get this awful feeling? How do you get passed it? It's terrible.

I am just glad it's over with!

Soap Dyslexian, Pale Complexion, Pepper Selection, & The Chicken Connection

Ever put the conditioner on first instead of the shampoo? That always confuses me. Like when you go to wash your hands in a new bathroom and you mistake the lotion for the soap. It feels so wrong.

I am so pale! How pale am I, you might ask?
I am so pale I have no tan lines. No bathing suit tan lines. No farmer tan lines. Nothing!
I am so pale you cannot see a difference between the outside of my arm versus the inside of arm.
I am so pale that Trevor is tanner than me.
I am completely one color, WHITE!
I let my skin see the sun for the first time in a long time this weekend, under the lather of SPF70.

I also made my Danish friend's watermelon salad again this weekend. But something went horribly wrong... It was way too spicy. Everyone was huffing and coughing while eating it even though they still assured me that they liked it through teary eyes. I don't know what went wrong, but I'm going to blame it on the jalapeno.

This time I used:
1 small watermelon, cubed
1 package of cherry tomatoes cut in half
1/2 a red onion, chopped
1 cucumber diced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
basil
& a dash of balsamic vinegar and oil

I'll try again..... You should try it too, it is refreshingly delicious!!! But keep the jalepeno content under control!


I saw this chicken at a fair and it reminded me of Trevor: