falling for the first time

my first love.

{day 3}

you know this one's gotta be good huh?

so i thought that i could try and be witty... and pawn off the whole concept of "love" to a book, or a movie, or some other inanimate object like that. but, i decided i would actually do the unexpected. i'm gonna tell you the truth.

looking back, i realize how silly i was.

you are never really ready for love.

i've always been afraid of falling in love - of having my goals and plans "disrupted" by a guy. i thought that it was a distraction from what i was supposed to be doing (mainly going to school).  

this whole mentality probably stemmed from the simple fact that my dating life in high school was nil. 

zilch-o. 

nada.

zip.

i can't imagine whyyyyy.

who wouldn't love that?

i did wear a ponytail and sweatshirt every single day.

it doesn't exactly scream "take me out"... or maybe it's just me.

anyway.

enough about the high school years...

(i believe that very few of us actually pass through puberty totally unscathed!)

college.

one-track mind to graduation.

boys are not part of the equation.

that was pretty much me in a nutshell.

there were a few guys... don't get me wrong.

but nothing that could distract me from my ultimate goal.

(i feel like there needs to be some theme music to go with that last statement...)

it wasn't until the summer '10 that i finally gave up.

it seems to be the mentality of byu-idaho students that if you are a girl and are not married by the time you are 21, you should either go on a mission or you are doomed to be a menace to society for the rest of your life.

i wasn't 21 yet. but i was getting pretty dang close.

so i just gave up hope of anything happening that summer.

(i usually go home and rarely meet a whole lot of new people...)

the thing i find funny is how life often treats you with the most unexpected curves.

how would i know that i would meet someone at a wedding?

and that, even though it only lasted over the course of the summer, that i would get my first taste of love?

it was brief, to be sure.

but that doesn't make anything less real.

you live. you love. 

and unfortunately there are times when you will get hurt.

but looking back, i wouldn't change that summer for anything.

not even german-chökolätekäke^® at coldstone. (no matter how tempting that sounds right now.)

i don't pretend to be completely heartbroken. i can barely hope to claim any semblance of hurt. but i know what it is like to hope for something, and to watch it disappear before it even begins. 

love is a funny thing.

it is one of the only things that you really must have two people that are willing to cooperate with each other.

you can live with a roommate for a semester. tolerate them.

but loving someone is allowing them to see your best and your worst... i don't know if i want anyone to see that side of me.

love really is a funny thing. 

well that's enough about love.

i love this.

;)

by any other name

{day 2}

i suppose you are wondering what's in a name.

i find myself wondering that a lot too.

like who came up with things like flexor carpi ulnaris?

someone that is trying to ruin my life... that's who.

(no joke. kinesiology is ridiculous at times. unfortunately, it also makes sense too. which makes me even more annoyed.)

where did this wonderful little blog's name arise from you ask?

well, to make a short story quite long...

when i was deciding to start blogging, i realized that i needed a name.

something catchy.

something unique.

something that would be "me" all squashed into a title.

alas, i am neither witty or creative... 

i am an extremely logical and realistic person that likes to try a whole lotta stuff. and for no particular reason most of the time.  

i tried stuff about "starving student" and "health nut", but none of them really seemed to click.

"bookworm" didn't really fit either. (not my fault though! school seems to sap every spare minute of my life away. the last time i read a book for fun is almost too distant to remember anymore. and by that i mean like a month ago. when i didn't have 6 tests in one week. i told you my teachers were evil.)

what else do i doooooo?

hmmmmm... 

i shop.

nah.

i bake.

so does everybody else on the web apparently.

.

.

.

i dabble?

hmmmmmm... 

i say! i think we might have something here...

and voila!

this little baby was born.

don't judge me.

it's the best i got.

:)

and just in case you didn't get the memo:

i love this blog.

i have been feeling really stressed lately.

you know, the usual...

tests.

registration.

grad school.

boys.

(or lack thereof.)

trying to be social.

being healthy.

working out.

real life... 

i don't really think that i am a fan of this whole "growing up" thing. i really liked it when i could just mooch off of mom and dad for everything. (we had this awesome arrangement where i got a car and gas if i just ran errands for them. those were the days.......)

i don't want to lose that sense of adventure. especially in focusing so hard on trying to be successful and completing goals. i think that it is easy to lose sight of why we do things in the first place. is is to succeed or to have the experience? is it to simply pass the class or to gain the knowledge?

i want to take some risks. to get out of my little bubble of security and smooth-sailing, and go paddle my little canoe out into some bigger waters! (it might sound stupid, but it's my metaphor thank you very much!)

{andre gide: man cannot discover new oceans until he has courage to lose sight of the shore.}

now get out there and make some waves.

project me. day 1.

i'm jumping on the "30-day" bandwagon of blogging.
mostly because it sounds fun. but i need an outlet (other than pinterest) and i think that these are going to be fairly entertaining because i can barely keep my eyes open while i'm typing. this could be fun. you might want to grab on to something... because this could be a bit bumpy!

{day 1}

1. i like to dress like a nerd.
2. i know how to do a little bit of a lot of different things. (can i call this one a gift and a curse??? because i know how to do a lot, but i never really acheive mastery of any particular skill... real world = terrifying for this reason.)
3. i graduate with a bachelors in exercise science in april 2011. do i know what i am going to do with this when i do? nope.
4. i name my cars. my "baby beast" doesn't like the cold weather. he is excited to be graduating in april too. 
5. i love shopping at d.i., thrift stores, yard sales... and the word "free" in anything just makes me have heart palpitations.
6. i don't think of the kitchen as another room in the house. "the kitchen" is another name for jessica's laboratory. (you should imagine that said like "dexter's labor-atory"... it sounds cooler that way.) most definitely my favorite room in the entire house. it even beats my bed. 
7. i love mustard.
8. and mustard yellow.
9. i am a list maker to the ^nth power. 
10. i am lds, the oldest child of 5, an idaho gal, and sports fanatic. i find great job in random things. my life is nothin' too extraordinary, except that -
i think that my life is spectacular. 
why?


well that's the question isn't it?
why don't you hang out a while and see?


cheers!

[this seems to describe my life fairly well as of late. hopefully i will be able to calm down here in a few days and get to take a little break. and figure out the rest of my life. oof. is is just me, or does that seem a little daunting?]

brick walls

well. it has been one hay of a crazy week!
6 tests this week? seriously? my teachers really are trying to kill me.
i have so many muscles floating around in my brain right now, i can't even do anything without thinking about that muscle... it's origin and insertion... other movements it performs... nerve innervation... thanks again teacher. 
it almost makes me want to go back to high school. 
i said almost. 


you know those days (or weeks, or months... or states of mind) when even things that you used to enjoy become drudgery and just another thing that you have to check off your "to-do" list? i felt like i was getting that way over the last few weeks. and i didn't like it. not at all. (i mean, i was taking choir as a fun class... not another class to cause me stress!) 
this last week has been one of a fair amount of self-discovery. 
with registration coming up, i have had to decide if i am going to graduate in just one semester, or if i am going to wait and finish up some prereq classes for when i start applying to grad schools next summer. (eeeeeeeeeeek!) 
part of me wants to curl up in a really tiny ball under my covers and never come out. but the other part knows better than to give up. the other part (which for whatever reason doesn't like to speak up as often as it should) never gives up. and it always gives it 100%. it doesn't sit around complaining about how hard it's life is. sure, we all have problems. 
{deal with it.}

now if this doesn't make your day, i don't know what will.

grilled cheese croutons

when i was younger, i remember thinking that we lived in crouton.

why, you ask?

i remember specifically asking my mom what the name of the city that we lived in was called... looking back, she was probably a little distracted, but at the time, as a 4-year-old, the entire world lived only to serve me. hence my mom's response of "crouton" might have been in reference to something other than my inquiry. i can't really be sure about that. but it's a hunch. (not much has changed since then... hehe.)

tonight we made such a nommy dinner!

nom nom nom...

gimme a few seconds, i gotta swallow. 

so grandpa gives us 3 pumpkins and I have no idea how many buttercup squash. and we have to use them all before they start to go bad.. ugh. good thing we loooooove squash! 

this is pretty much the recipe that we used. 

looks pretty tasty too!

i wish mine looked that good...

(here is a variation that uses cous cous instead of rice... it is also a little sweeter than the one that we ate for dinner tonight.) 

happy cooking!
peace out!
  :) 

a ghostly beginning to halloween

you know you are addicted to the internet when it goes down and you have no idea what to do with your spare time...

oh yeah.

i had like a pile of books that i was supposed to be reading.

and a cowl i was crocheting.

and food that needs to be made...

a blog to write!

.

.

.

it was definitely tough.

but we are oh so glad to be back online!

(it's even sadder when you are trying to think of something to make for dinner... 

"oh wait let me check... ah crap! i forgot i can't get on the internet. again. for like the 3rd time."

*

listening to music is one of my favorite things in the whole world.

(sometimes i wonder if it is because i wish i was more creative, so i live vicariously through those who actually have some musical talent...)

but we saw this "rock opera" open in rexburg back in april, and loved it.

so we went back tonight.

they were actually playing in idaho falls, so definitely moving up in the world...

;)

tonight's was definitely better than the first time.

*

i was up late (not doing homework apparently) and was flipping through channels, when i stopped at the history channel. i hadn't watched it in, like years, so i thought i'd see what they had for me. zombies. yeah. the history channel??? yeah, i thought so too. but i did learn several good things about surviving the zombie apocalypse.

now i won't tell you all of my secrets, because if there is a zombie apocalypse, i need to have the heads-up on you to make sure that the zombies eat you first.

just kidding.

find what you need to make your own zombie survival kit here.

the best part was finding out that the CDC actually put out a statement about emergency preparedness in case of a zombie apocalypse. suffice it to say, i was impressed. 

(don't judge, i wrote my senior research paper in high school on monsters. why do some lame research on drugs, sports and energy drinks when you can talk about vampires, werewolves and zombies??? and i wrote this paper before twilight. thank you very much.) the sad thing is that i am finding all of this cool stuff now, after i've already written the paper and done all of the research.

a quote from the CDC's website:

"if zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. this assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). it’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated..."

i can sleep peacefully tonight knowing that the government is watching out for a zombie attack.

it's been keeping me up lately.

cheers!

oh, and i'm going to try this.

it's rubbing off on me...

i have to try this.

amid all of the "other productive stuff" i was doing today... i found this blog. 

me likey.

pretty much everything about the blog. her clothes, style, diy projects. they're going to keep me fairly entertained and busy for the next little while. 

(unfortunately we don't get a newspaper... so i have to go and find me a garfield comic. stat.)

is anyone else excited for halloween?

i know i am.

(i have this problem of getting really excited about the next holiday... and especially about forgetting poor thanksgiving.)

not this year!!!

i saw a christmas commercial yesterday. and my resolve just about wavered.

but i stayed strong!

but my sister and i made a new resolve that it's going to be party central at our apartment.

:)

bubbly toes

do you ever have a day when you don't know why, but you just wake up and feel glum?

i have a solution for you:

(just try it one time and tell me that it doesn't make your whole entire day that much better!)

last night, the sis and i decided that we needed to use the massive amount of food that we had just received from the parents... and grandpa.. and winco...

(i think my roommates hate us. we take up at least half of the refrigerator.)

but we got squash.

buttercup squash.

and a lot of buttercup squash.

and guess who got a box of apples from grandpa's tree yesterday?

it was meant to be.

my version of buttercup squash & apple soup

kind like this one. and this one. but mostly different.

ingredients:

chicken stock (mom got us some rotisserie chickens from costco... so we de-boned them and then used the carcass to make stock)

2 buttercup squashes

3 onions - roughly chopped

2-4 apples cut into large chunks(depends on the size... and how much you want your soup to taste like apples)

cut the squashes in half and throw them, the roughly chopped onions, and chunked apples on a cookie sheet that has a little bit of water on the bottom

bake in oven until you can easily scoop the squash out of the shell (we left ours in about a half hour at 400)

throw the squash, apples and onion in stock, let simmer and cook together for a few minutes (you can season it with salt, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, chicken bouillon... i don't ever really measure when i'm making soup. i go purely by taste)

throw it into a blender - and voila!

yummy soup and a very happy tummy.