Happy {1}

I read somewhere that happiness isn't simply a state of being but rather something that you do. This month I've tried to do things that make me happy :)

I've spent 2 weekends in Vegas.
I've painted my nails.
I've bought 2 new dresses and a kickin' new pair of girly shoes for them.
I've done headstands while cooking dinner.
I've slept in way too late after staying up way too late.
I've ate breakfast.
I've channeled my inner Chad and laid in the shower while watching Scandal.
I've stretched more.
I've taken my vitamins.
I've done a pull up. Yup, one. It was amazing.

Here's to 11 more months of doing all the things that make us happy, whether it's quitting your thesis or making chocolate chip cookies :)

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

I thought the lights were out on my oven. Sadly I was wrong. Some mornings there are as many as three cockroaches in there.

Awkward:

• Attempting to stay awake at work while taking 2 Benadryl every 4 hours. Hardest thing I've ever done. I managed to do it only because I ate constantly until I could go home and pass out.
• The patient who refers to me as sweetie and hun called in to talk to my office manager to complain about me. Apparently I never put his shoes back on one time, "not that I should be fired or anything". Really? Thanks for basically saying I should be fired because you don't feel like putting your shoes back on yourself.
• Kneeling down to take off a lady's shoes (noticing what most of my job consists of?... sigh) at the nursing home only to be assaulted by the smell of urine. Seriously, punched in the face by it. Then I reached down and grabbed her sock....her soaking wet sock.
• A nursing home patient left us with this little nugget as he exited, "They've got a saying in Russia, Adios Amigo!". He's also the one whose favorite phrase is "true story".

Awesome:

• TGI{almost}Friday
• Costco rotisserie Chickens
• Dominos Pizza
• Restocked Candy Drawers
• Chad's Ab Ripper results ;)
• Sparkly Nail Polish
• Benadryl and the ridiculous amount of sleep I've gotten since Monday.

Allergic to Mondays

So I fully intended on posting this yesterday, but as you will find out, as soon as I got out of work I started pounding Benadryl's like it was my job. Which also means I was out by 8. In fact I'm still downing 2 every 4 hours like clockwork so the sleepies have taken over my brain and it's all I can do to stay conscious at work today. So instead of going through and fixing the days and tenses you are getting yesterday's post like it happened today. Laziness for the win.

I woke up this morning to find myself covered in a rash. My stomach, back, neck, arms, hands, ankles, thighs, and knees. Ashley told I just must be allergic to Mondays. Unfortunately I don't think that will get me out of work today. Unless the rash spreads to my face. I think a face rash might get me out of it... I'm counting down until I can go home and chug some Benadryl.

The weekend went a whole lot better, after we tackled Friday, than my morning has though. Friday was a giant suck fest at the DMV. Renewing registration, attempting to renew my drivers license, rain... Good news is I get to go back this Friday with mountains of paperwork and actually renew my license. Stupid name change.

The rest of the weekend we climbed! Climbed and slept and ate pancakes and French toast. We ignored the sink full of dishes and piles of unwashed clothes and ate brownies and watched movies instead.

Taking a little snooze on the climb

I climbed Puppet Strings again. The climb scares me. I don't like the moves and the ending is Hard. Although everything up until the end is pretty easy, I'm really just being a baby. So I had a bit of a breakdown before climbing it on Sunday. I'm up there freaking out because I don't want to do the last big moves and finally decide the sooner I try the sooner I will fall and can just dangle there and pull my ish together. So I go for it. And I stuck the hold! And then I pulled myself up like a freaking champ. I climbed that beast on the first try that night. I've seen countless guys fail or give up on the ending of this climb and somehow it was almost easy for me yesterday. I tricked myself into thinking if I climbed it once I could be done with it, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to climb it a few more times so I can conquer the fear. Of course, I may be singing a different tune when the time comes to climb again...

As a side note there was another climb where if you fell, you swung... FAR. So of course I was swinging around because home girl loves to fall. On my third fall I was swinging around and coming at the wall backwards (which, hello, no biggie, your not going to smash into the wall genius, weren't you some sort of science major Danielle, come on!) so I start screaming... and crying... and laughing... all at the same time. Seriously it was outrageous. Also, I never really knew you could be laughing and crying hysterically at the same time. It's possible folks.

Clearly Chad is not afraid of Puppet Strings.

Luckily the rash was looking so much better this morning. It's gone from angry, screaming red, to a light blushy pink.

Confessions

I wear my sunglasses at night.... whoops, nope that's just Chad.

I wear leggings as pants. There I said it. And I don't even care what any of you legging haters have to say about it. Nor do I care what you legging lovers as-long-as-it-covers-your-crotch have to say about it either.

I've blown through a season and a half of Scandal in 2 days. (2 weekdays)

I've put off getting my new driver's license as long as absolutely possible because I don't want to go take the open book test. For some reason I'm sure I will find a way to fail it.

There were 8 containers of ice cream in our freezer last night. All of them had just a little left. I finally threw them all out and replaced them with a full one :)

Nikki and Matt inspired me to do Insanity again. I did it one time 2 weeks ago and then forgot all about it because, blegh.

Whenever my lips get uber dry (all the time thanks to the desert) they disappear when I smile. Also I feel like lipstick looks ridiculous on me because I'm never used to seeing myself with color in my lips.

Weird lipless smile at the top of my favorite climb.

Thank You Girls of Vegas

Sometimes Vegas is just everything you want it to be.

A drunk girl in uncomfortable shoes and a barely there skirt who sits down in the middle of the hallway outside the club so she can do up her 5 inch heels. Chad and I both got a ridiculous crotch shot. Ri-di-cu-lous.

Another drunk girl (OMG so drunk) who could NOT keep her skirt down and over her buns. Seriously, at least the crotch shot girl was wearing underwear. This girl had a thong on at most, we saw all of her buns. ALL of them. Enough to where I can comment on her underwear. Her boyfriend/husband/"dude she was with" was not thrilled that she couldn't keep it under wraps and kept telling her to pull down her skirt. Bless her drunk heart, she tried a couple times but it was just so hard. And her skirt was just so short.

But really, the best pair in Vegas were 2 girls who left everyone in awe as they walked through the Casino. Girls and Guys alike were laughing, gasping, pointing, and whispering. We were all sharing in the ridiculousness together as we would catch one another's eyes and say, "Did you see that?", "Only in Vegas right?", "Take the picture, we did!" All of a sudden we were all friends thanks to these two. We were lucky enough to get to follow them for a ways, and while they were definitely entertaining it was even more fun to watch everyone react to them.

Thanks for the memories girls!

29 and counting

We headed down to Vegas Friday night for a long weekend/birthday extravaganza!

Val and Bill hooked us up with some free hotel rooms as long as we did the whole go to a Time Share Meeting thingy. 2 free nights in Vegas was well worth 3 hours of a hard sell. It wasn't so much a hard sell as it was three hours. Again, worth it.



After our lovely time share adventure we attempted to buy something off craigslist. It was a loooong drive to the McDonalds on the other side of town only to meet a man who refused to come down in price. At one point he offered us $15 off of the $650 camera. We practically laughed at him and then left.

From here we ventured out to Red Rocks. It's a national park right outside of Vegas that is supposed to have spectacular climbing. We thought we would check it out. As soon as we paid and started down the one way scenic loop we realized our gas light was on. Woopee. We didn't think it was a big deal since the loop was only 3 miles... until we realized it was 13 and we didn't know where the closest gas station was.

Sooooo, we turned around, popped on the hazard lights and started going the wrong way back to the beginning of the lovely one way loop. People were less than thrilled. The police officer who pulled us over was also less than thrilled. Fortunately he let us off with a warning and directions to the nearest gas station. Only after telling us repeatedly how lucky we were. We may not have won any money but we did get lucky in Vegas!

So to sum up Saturday, 3 hour meeting where they tried to sell us a $32,000 time share (LOL), driving all over the place to deal with someone who overpriced their camera by about $200 and then got pulled over after freaking out all the other drivers. We were tired and exhausted. So we splurged for dinner on the grossest $5 pizza from Little Caesars we've ever had and then headed out to reclaim our day/night.

Unbelievably tired.

We dressed up, got some (a lot) of caffeine, and spent the rest of the night soaking up Vegas our way. Basically, desserts, window shopping, lots of wandering and even more people watching. Sunday was filled with more of the same, in the best way possible. We finally tried the Cheesecake factory (OMG so good), took more pictures, and found some great art galleries. We finally made it home and into our bed around 4am Monday morning. We stayed put as long as we could and then proceeded to be as lazy as possible the rest of the day and night. Thank you MLK for the recovery day, it was glorious.

 

One Good Year Left

The best part about having your birthday in the middle of the week? It becomes a birthday week, not just a day.

Wednesday was slightly ridiculous at work. Two nursing homes, both took 45 minutes longer than usual, so we had a quick 20 minute lunch and got out 40 minutes late. Oh well. At least I got a nice surprise from Chad as a lunch time pick me up. These were in addition to the energy drink since I also needed a literal pick me up.

We had already made a chocolate cake on Sunday, foolishly thinking it would last until my birthday. Fortunately for us my visiting teacher dropped off a box of beautiful cupcakes. Also we drove through Swig and got my new favorite sugar cookies.

The real gem was dinner. We were going to go to Buffalo Wild Wings, but we just looked too fancy :) So we tried out a small Italian restaurant downtown. It was delicious. Everything was homemade and wonderful, even their salad dressings were to die for. So excited to have a place for fancier occasions in St. George that isn't Applebees. Ha.

We headed home after that and stuffed ourselves with dessert! It was a wonderful evening spent with my very favorite person!