June Obsessions

Typically I do Monthly Favorites posts but since I'm struggling with blogging lately I'm keeping this incredible short. However I may change it so all my Monthly Favorites are like this, more of a list rather than a lengthy explanation for things. Anyways here are my latest obsessions:

-Cinema Sins
-YouTube in general
-Wholly Guacamole
-Bejeweled Blitz (you guys, it's a literal addiction)
-Pokemon
-Not being sick, because currently I am
-Really Don't Care by Demi Lovato
-Demi Lovato in general
-I finished the Divergent series and I can't decide what to say about it... but I want to see the move again
-Catching Fire, just want to see it again!!!
-Taking baths or showers in the middle of the day
-Doing nothing the rest of the day
-Writing in my book
-Family Guy, sigh, I have a problem
-Lying out by my apartment pool
-Eating dried fruits
-Target
-Putting my hair in a bun... every day.
-Bumblebee from Transformers (honestly I have a crush on him, it's totally not weird...)
-But not the new Transformers movie
-Texas thunderstorms (seriously, they are awesome and frequent)
-Getting too excited for the Forth of July even though I have to work (See below)
-Getting even more excited my family is coming to visit me in Texas!!!!
-Chris and I are now primary workers?
-Making money (which sounds petty but honestly we were really struggling before this)
-Sunshine and summertime!!
-Working on my beach body... and failing and eating donuts
-CHOCOLATE!!!


*About working on the Forth of July: I think it's wrong for things to be open on our Independence Day. We close everything for Christmas but we can't do it for the Forth of July? Jesus's birthday, yes, that's totally understandable. But America's birthday, where we gained independence to become a wonderful country that gives us so many opportunities... who cares leave everything open, make it seem like a normal day that isn't actually important in any way. I think everything should be closed on Independence Day, except of course the necessities. Just have fairs and celebrations, make it one big party!! Exploiting Independence Day for sales is awful. I know I'm being kind of weird but I just generally hate the fact that America doesn't respect itself enough to make Independence Day more important. It seems to me like it should be much more important.

Changes Are Coming...

Hello blogging and internet world! You are probably all wondering where I have run off to for the past month. I've pretty much vanished from the blogging and social media world and have been pretty much non-existent for a while.

You're probably thinking that working more hours is keeping me away. Or perhaps that my husband's laptop broke for a few days, and now magically works again. Or that my horrible immune system got me sick again, which it did. Or maybe you think I'm having so much fun living in Texas that I'm too busy to blog.

Well you're pretty much wrong. There is no real reason behind my absence. I just haven't wanted to blog. I feel horrible saying that! Ugh!

While I have been working more, the laptop did break, I am currently sick, and living in Texas is fun, the majority of my time I have been spending on our laptop writing, a book, not blogging. Since I was about nine years old I've been writing stories and while the answer to what I want to be when I grow up has changed a million times and I still haven't decided (even though many people may already consider me "grown up") I have never once strayed from the idea that I want, no, am going to get one of my books published someday. So that has been one of my focuses lately.

I honestly do feel bad about my absence from this blog, because I genuinely love writing and love this blog. I just can't find the motivation. I can't get into it lately. I started writing a post last week and gave up. I don't really know what's wrong.

I really hope I get get my blogging vibe/motivation back, and while I'm at it I may be giving my blog a makeover. I think one of the biggest things lately that's bringing me down about blogging is that my blog is almost two years old yet I have significantly less followers than my friend's blog who has only been around a few months longer than mine. It's discouraging. But at the same time how can I get more followers if I stop blogging? I can't!

Anyways, the point of this post is to tell you that I haven't forgotten about you and the blogging world. But there is so much personally I've been going through that I've had other priorities.

I've been struggling a lot these past few months trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. College makes me depressed. I don't even know if I want to be a teacher anymore. I've lost my direction. I don't know what to do anymore. I've been feeling incredibly lost.

However I think I've decided to make a change, and I will talk about it it greater length in a later post (hopefully) but ultimately I'm going live my life doing things that make me happy. I've struggled too long with my depression and while I know it can never fully go away, I'm tired of forcing myself to do stuff that makes me upset and feel more depressed just because the world expects me to do it. I'm going to do the things that make me happy rather than what's expected of me.

Somethings are still uncertain, but I'm figuring out how to reshape myself to be happy, be proactive, more positive, and ultimately never let my depression control my life ever again. I'm twenty-three years old and I'm ready to start living the way I want to.

Because I am working on reshaping my life, there will also be many changes on this blog. It may have a new focus in the near future. I'm still trying to figure it all out. I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I do know I'm not abandoning this blog. It just may take me some time to get back into the swing of things.

I truly love all my blogging/internet followers/friends!! You are all so incredible and you inspire me! You make this so fun for me and I'm continually amazed that you enjoy reading my random thoughts. I'm not giving up on you and I hope you haven't given up on me yet.

Being Successful

Have you ever just been in the moment and you start getting deep in conversation and end up saying something wonderful? Well that doesn't happen to me much, but it did last night! I don't want to get into the full story because it's personal between me and my husband, but we made up a new definition for success that I would like to share with you all.


I think our society is incredibly competitive. With sports all over TV, celebrities pressuring us to look a certain way, Facebook and other social media showcasing all our friend's triumphs and how wonderful their lives may seem, and basically any work or educational environment is filled with competition and all these things can really just bring us down! It's hard to stay positive when you are constantly comparing yourself to other people and in this world it's so hard not to make these comparisons!

BUT STOP!!

Take a breath. Breathe it out and relax. Now listen:

You are an incredible person! More than that, you are successful! 

Now I may not know you personally, but I know that if you're reading this then you've already had tons of accomplishments in your life! When we're babies and toddlers our parents make such a big deal over our first successes: learning to roll over, learning to crawl, learning to walk, learning to speak, even learning to sleep through the whole night is considered a huge success to them! But as we grow older all those little successes we had as children because normal and mundane because they are things we do everyday.

But what if we took that idea, how learning to roll over is considered a huge success and apply it to what we do now. As an adult it's hard to see anything you do as being successful especially in such a competitive world. But we are successful, everyday! And I think it's important to celebrate the small successes in life!

Maybe you made mashed potatoes for the first time (that was my success today), or maybe you got the courage to speak to your crush, or maybe you ate healthy today and avoided that brownie, or maybe your only success was pulling yourself out of bed and making sure you got to work on time! Those are all successes!

In this competitive world it's easy to belittle the small success we make everyday. I made mashed potatoes today, wa hoo, on Facebook I learned my friend is building a house. How does my success compare with that?

That's the point, we can't compare our successes to other people!

Success should not be measure by beating other people and comparing yourself to other people. You can be successful only by beating yourself everyday. You are successful by doing something that you like and that makes you happy. Who cares what other people are doing? Who cares what they think? If you think that making mashed potatoes is a small success in your life, than it is!!

It has been really difficult lately to watch all my friends graduate college. I feel like my college experience has led me nowhere. It is so hard to not compare myself to all my friends as I see them graduate and get good jobs. But I need to stop comparing myself to others. I need to only compare myself to my past self. Am I better off than I was yesterday? If yes, than I am being successful in my own life.

The richest man in the world may not actually be successful if he isn't happy with his life. So many of us may worship him and wish we were like him, but we can't compare ourselves to him. We can only compare our level of success to ourselves.

It doesn't matter if I haven't graduated college yet, I am successful in my own life because I feel like I'm going down the right path and I'm doing what makes me happy. That is the definition of success. It's not comparing yourself to others, it's doing what makes you happy and makes you feel good and proud of yourself, no matter how little those accomplishments may be... like making mashed potatoes.

The Not So Greatest Fishing Story

Last Sunday Chris and I decided to go fishing. Here is our story: 

So we ventured out on the confusing Texas roads to find a specific lake to fish at (which I don't remember the name of). We reached the lake but our GPS led us to this crazy giant factory thing which is located almost inside of the lake. We had to go around the whole thing and we went around like twice before we finally figured out how to get into the lake area to actually fish.

We had to pay a small fee to get into the "park" area where it was completely crowded. There were tons of boats on the water but all the shores were surrounded by people are cooking and fishing. Chris was super upset about there being so many people and we didn't get in a good spot but we got one, Chris hooked up his pole and let it out into the water.

Then he worked on my new pole, we got it set up and he put a worm on it and cast it out... but it got snagged. So he worked really hard to reel it back in (I'm totally helpful while fishing huh?). We ended up losing the hook and he was all grouchy and upset. He was getting super annoyed with this zip-tie on my pole, because it's new. So he, very smartly, decided to take his fillet knife and cut it off.

But, as luck would have it, the knife slipped cutting the back of his hand. I didn't see it cut him. I just looked up as he shouted and angrily threw the knife at the ground and then rushed to the water to wash his hands, and that's when I noticed to large amount of blood spilling from him.

My adrenaline was pumping, I didn't even think about how blood sometimes freaks me out, I just knew I had to help my husband right away! So I kind of stripped in front of all the people and took off my under tank top that I was wearing and gave it to him to soak up the blood and keep pressure on it, and then I put my shirt back on. I then reeled in his fishing pole, he took the worm off because I hate worms and I cleaned up all our stuff and packed it away. Again, this was like 10 minutes into our actual fishing trip.

So we rushed to the car and drove to the front of the "park" thing where we had paid. We went inside to see if they had a first aid kit and if they could help us find the nearest hospital, because even though I hadn't seen the cut yet, both of us were pretty sure he would need stitches.

Okay, this is the part that irritates me, the people in that office/gift shop MADE US BUY A CRAPPY LITTLE FIRST AID KIT!!! They didn't have one to just help us???? They didn't even offer to help!! They made us buy this little one, and I handed her my debit card and she was all "no cards for purchases under $4". Seriously???? This woman could see that both of Chris's hands were covered in blood and my tank top around his injured hand was soaked in blood! And she seriously expected us to be fine with a tiny little first aid kit???? And not even offer to help??? They were basically "park rangers", aren't they supposed to be prepared to help with first aid problems, or is that seriously not a thing? Shouldn't park rangers know basic first aid and have a first aid kit available for emergencies? Is that not a thing? I worked at a gym and they made everyone learn CPR and basic first aid! This is a lake! People are fishing and boating and very likely to get injured and they don't have the necessary equipment to help someone who cut his hand open????

Yeah....  I was really ticked off about that.

So we purchased the stupid kit and went to the bathroom (I went in the men's bathroom!) and Chris run his hand under water, tried to clean himself up, it was still bleeding but not quite as much. The first aid kit had these antiseptic wipes that were incredibly tiny they were probably made for like paper cuts, and we used like three of them to try and disinfect the area. After it was cleaned up we could see the cut wasn't nearly as bad as I had dramatized in my mind. I was thinking he had cut the whole back of his hand! However, it was about an inch long but it was deep so we decided to still go to the hospital to play it safe. And it was still bleeding so that was probably a good idea.

So I had to drive on the Texas highways which is something I absolutely hate (we've been here a month and I hate them so much already!!). The whole time I'm still in adrenaline pumping/freaking out mode because even though it was a smaller cut, this was still my husband and I love him and never want to see him hurt or sick or injured in any way so it was difficult for me. Chris said that it didn't hurt though so I was able to relax a bit more.

We reached the nearest hospital and it was like a baptist church hospital or something and honestly Chris and I were the only white people in that building. No lies. All the paperwork was also in Spanish and everyone around us were speaking in Spanish. It was clear we were no longer in Utah.

So the first male nurse guy helped clean Chris up and wrapped up his hand. He was really nice. When he asked Chris on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad his hand hurt Chris replied with a 1, so we really were doing fine.

Then we went in to the actual hospital area and Chris got to sit on a hospital bed and watch TV. The doctor's came in and joked "are you ready for surgery?" So they looked over Chris's hand and decided instead of stitches they would just use skin glue. So the woman took care of his hand, showed him how to apply the glue and sent us home with some extras.

And that's our fishing story where we never actually did any fishing. And now Chris has to wear a bandage on his hand. But the other day we had to replace the glue and it really does look like it's healing and we really did get lucky, it could have been a lot worse.