maybe the goat is right.

Sorry, I've been MIA recently. Life has nuts-oo. I've been babysitting a ton and also working at the seminary during the day to help them get ready for the academy. Can I just say how excited I am for the academy? But anyways, my sister came in this weekend so we could pick out her wedding gown. Yes, it is absolutely stunning, gorgeous, breath-taking, I want her to get married next weekend, kind of amazing. It is making this whole planning a wedding experience seem so real. We also officially decided on the bridesmaid dresses and I am super excited. The whole wedding is taking this whole vintage-y theme and I love it. It is SO Robyn and Joe.

Anyways, the joke around their wedding is the fact that I am not going to get married, ever. I usually say it when I see the price of everything. My parents say it when they ask me once a day about my dating status.(They really do...) And last night, we were all jokingly reading our horoscopes. Our sign ones were pretty lame so we ventured to our year ones. For example, my birth year is the year of the goat..which is pretty funny if you know me well enough..hah. Anyways, my year horoscope said something along the lines of when it comes to relationships I need to put my guard down and that I am having trouble letting people come into my life. 

Uh...WHAT?! I actually realized what it said after I read it out loud and my mom made some comment about how true it was and I need to let all of the fences down that I have built up down. (She also did some funny arm motions with it while she described fences...I really do love my momma, I promise.)

I know how true it is. I lay in bed thinking about it almost every night. I am so stuck in the past that I cannot get the what if's outta my head. I also put fences up when I've been hurt and it takes a gazillion years for me to get over them. Right now, when anyone of the male race attempts to smirk, smile, flirt or wink(kidding) at me(whether they are serious or not), I pretend I didn't see it...except when it is an older man, then I really do ignore it on purpose. I have noticed that men in their 30's make googly eyes towards me. I have no idea why, it kinda freaks me out and now I try to avoid the Giant by myself...hah. 

My friend Tyler actually called me out on it one time. He told me when he watches people "flirt" (I hate that word by the way), I am either rude back to them or I ignore it. It was one of those much needed slap in the faces. 

I am also a point in my life where I am okay with where I am at. I am so comfortable. I am focusing on my education, my friends and myself. And, I have been so successful in doing so. Why would I want to change that? Just because I am not ready for one now, doesn't mean I don't desire one. Ideally, I need to figure a few more things out and make them stable enough for a relationship. However, I also need to knock a few fences down in the mean time. Because apparently, love comes at unexpected times...quote whatever movie you would like and enter gag noises now.

Next July, my sister will look absolutely gorgeous walking down the aisle. She will marry a man I am so excited to call my brother in-law. And some day, I will too be doing the same. In the mean time, I should probably start listening to the goat.

When you wanna make lemonade but life gives you oranges.

For the record, I am not a fan of orange juice. I am not really sure why I don't like it, but it definitely falls in my top five things I would be fine if I never had to eat or drink again. My number one is syrup...even the word makes me cringe.

Now that I got off on a tangent(that has pretty much been my day), today I was at the eye doctor today for an hour and a half. Yes, that is a very long time to be at the eye doctor. It was slightly annoying but I really saw that doctor for all but twenty minutes of that. My annual eye exam was just very intense and invasive. I was starting to get anxious because of how long it was taking. I also had a friend in the waiting room because we were planning on hitting up the mall afterwards and getting some lunch together. I mean my appointment was at 10:45, I thought I for sure was going to be out of there by 11:45 at the latest. The plans that I had in my head were not matching up with how the day was going. I also forgot about the whole let's dilate and numb your pupils thing which also threw me for a loop.

We did finally get to the mall and filled our tummies and emptied our wallets. The eye doctor was also a success even though it took a million years. The plan of the day was just not what I expected because of the time. I had an idea in my head of when we would be leaving the doctor and that just didn't happen. It was out of my control and it was starting to drive me bonkers.

This also happened more recently but in a more dramatic(I tend to make situations really dramatic when I am stressed) fashion. I was driving home to Pennsylvania from my college in North Carolina(I'll give you more details on my life there lataa). I had class until 2:45 and was already stressing about having to leave so late, but being the goody-two shoes that I am, I could not bring myself to skip. (I also think it is extremely rude to skip a class right before a break.) I should of arrived in PA around 10:00...it made sense in my head. That time was exactly  7 hours after I hit the road and it always takes me 7 hours to get home. No if's, and's, or but's about it.

Two hour's into my drive, I came to a halting, pound your foot on the brake stop. I was in the far left lane on a three-lane highway(the right two lanes for tractor trailers) on the side of a mountain. At first, I was like okay, maybe there is construction, no big deal. Ten minutes later, people are turning off cars and getting out of them. I started to frantically search for the AM radio station that always tells you what is wrong. When I first called my parents, I was being my sarcastic self about it. Then, people started talking and making camp outside of their cars. It was like they knew something that I didn't know, AND my little social butterfly self was scared to get out and ask the five tractor-trailer drivers around me what was going on.

A few minutes later, two girls walk by. They tell me that they heard it is going to be about six hours. SIX HOURS. I was supposed to be home in 5 hours. I couldn't sit there for six hours. I had no food, and a car full of half the stuff I was moving home from my college dorm room. I of course thought of the worst, someone robbing me, me passing out from lack of fuel, running out of gas...yea, it was bad. I was going back and forth between my parents and my best friend Addie on the phone hysterically crying.(Also, the couple in front of me quickly got back into their car after realizing that I was crying...hah.)

And finally, about two hours after I had turned off my car, we started moving again. I started singing Hallelujah's and praising Jesus. I ended up getting home a little before midnight and pledged that I would never, ever leave that late in the afternoon again.

What I thought I knew: Things always go the way you plan it. Traffic like this never happened to me so I figured it never would-extremely shallow I know.

I learned a lot from this experience: 1. Life doesn't always go like the plan you have your head. Obviously my biggest issue here was that I had a set time to get home and when it didn't happen I freaked. All sorts of anxiety that I never knew I had started to come out. 2. This also happened at a time in the semester where I was super stressed out and running around like a crazy person. Being in a car for two hours by myself gave me a chance to unwind a little. Once I finally calmed down, I started breathing and realizing that I do need to slow my life down a tad or else I really cannot physically handle situations like this one where I am forced to stop.

What I am working on: HANDLING SITUATIONS LIKE THIS BETTER. But, there is no better way to live your life than to learn from situations like these ones.

Nighty-night bloggies!

psss-sorry there are no pictures in this post...i didn't take any with my friend today(we were toooo busy catching up) and i obviously was more focused on freaking out than taking pictures of three lanes of standstill traffic. 

size two don't matter no more.

My senior year of high school I was starting to get sick...like really really sick.  Let's start from here. Ever since I was three years old, I did some sort of dance. By my senior year of high school, I was pretty active in my studio. I took classes on Monday and Wednesday and taught on Thursday nights. 

(We were also crazy.)

 The whole week before this show in October(picture above) I was getting extremely sick and my stomach would bloat out to the size of an pregnant women. It was ridiculous. To make a long story short, I had pulled an umbilical hernia that was strangulated(I also danced in that show with it...woops!). I went to the surgeon on Monday afternoon and was in surgery Tuesday morning.

Fast forward to the day after Christmas. I was wheeled off to the hospital in an ambulance because I could barely breath. They blamed it on bronchitis and for the first time in my 17 years of an active lifestyle, I was diagnosed with asthma. Fast forward a few more months...I started burping. I know, gross. But I was literally burping all day every day regardless of how much/how little food I ate. I would even wake up in the middle of the night to burp. I was also experiencing a ton of other stomach issues, but I'll save you from them. Fast forward to May, and I looked like this.

Yes, I was skinny. If you look at the picture close enough, you can count my ribs and see my gutting hip bones. I was down about 10 pounds, which doesn't seem like much. But when you are 5'7" and weighing in at barely 120 pounds, something ain't right. At first, it was uncomfortable being that skinny. But then I realized how much attention I was getting. Our society portrays this top of body as being hot and attractive. I made some stupid decisions because of that and was flaunting my size-two butt around like I was hott stuff. 

Almost two years later, I am almost back to being healthy. I see a doctor at Jefferson University Hospital in Philly. I had many issues going on with the two main ones being the fact that I had a severe bacterial infection in my smaller intestine which was spreading all over my digestive tract and barely allowing my body to digest food(with the bacteria getting into my system during the hernia surgery when they removed a part of my intestine that was dead). I was also mentally starting down the path of an eating disorder. I loved the attention I was getting and I loved the way my body looking and how clothes fit my body. I almost did not want to get healthy for the fear of getting fat. Sounds terrible doesn't it?

(Happy and Healthy!)

I blame part of how out of control the situation got on myself. However, I also blame the media. I am striving to maintain a healthy lifestyle daily while realizing that being a girl who is 5'7' and wanting to fit into a size two is somewhat unrealistic for me. Yes, it is entirely possible. If I worked out twice a day and monitored my caloric intake to the decimal I could probably do it. However, I am a college student. A busy college student who has more to worry about that how many grams of fat is in the delicious ice cream I just ate.  The stress is not just not worth it, trust me.

What I learned-Being healthy is more important than being a size two. The number on the scales only mattered in my life when I was down to a low weight-that is how we knew something was wrong. To a healthy person, there are more things that matter than the scale. 

What I am learning- Now, don't get me wrong. I am still super, super, super self-conscious. I am still a young woman. I look and judge my body constantly like everyone else. I ask people constantly for confirmation. I am working on that as I put on my bigger than size two clothes every morning. This quote has helped me and continues to every day.

"I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself."

Birthdays and New Beginnings

This past Sunday, I turned twenty.

(This is actually not from my birthday, but from my dear friend Addie's.)

 I know, holy bananas. It feels like yesterday I was becoming a teenager, learning how to drive, and graduating from high school(all of which were semi-traumatic incidences in my life). Now here I sit-halfway done with my undergrad education and halfway to forty. So, I decided that while I have my no-longer-a-teenager crisis, I am going to write about it. I am going to tell you the tales of what I have learned about life, what I thought I knew about life and what I am continuing to learn everyday as life comes my way. So here is to life, love and a whole lotta ice cream to get me through it.