ridonculous

so my friend told me the other day that ridonculous is a real word. its like when ridiculousness is boundless. more emphatic. im a big fan of that cuz i like precise words that really emphasize my meaning and i use the word ridiculous a lot so its nice to have options when things really really blow my mind. like today. when i heard something from someone that i hardly knew, that he had heard from someone that i knew even less than him. and that something that i heard was about me and decisions in my life. and it was off. wayyyyyyy off. and im just thinking to myself "wow. seriously!? people really sit around making up things about other people's lives?" ya. apparantely so. and ill just say, im not gonna whine about "i hate all the silly gossip in the singles ward. you hang out with someone once, and everyone thinks you are engaged " (very nasaly whiny voice is necessary when reading that, so if you didnt do that in your head the first time you read it, well go back and read it again, the right way darn it!!) yes, people, that gossip is gonna happen. it just is. i get it. cuz we are all trying to figure out who is dating/who is into who so we know who not to flirt with and whatnot. it effects us in a way. not that its right to do that. but i get it. but this, out of nowhere, purely about me and my life and personal relationships!? wow. its rather ridonculous. here are some other ridonculous things:

• the semi truck that i saw crumpled and bent and stuck in a little tunnel. wow. really dude? you dont know where your truck will fit and where it will not? huh.
  
• swine flu coverage
• ok the media in general.
  
• people thinking the media is reliable
• me. im ridonculous a lot of the time. and im not afraid to admit it. i eat one of 3 meals for lunch every single day, almost without exception (my turkey/pepperjack/spinach wrap, carrots, grapefruit, or chicken noodle soup, carrots, grapefruit, (maybe wheat thins too), or white albacore tuna with cranberries stuffed in the halves of a bell pepper, carrots, grapefruit, and wheat thins. ok, and now and again, if i feel i simply must go out, i get the steak salad from chipotle.
• im gonna write more ridonculous things later. im tired now. feel free to add your own. i didnt even go into the ridonculous things that some crappy drivers do, cuz that will get me worked up and annoyed. and i want to sleep happy.
  

the trainer

k. so you are all asking yourselves "why the crap did natalie post pictures of a hot shirtless guy on her blog. shouldnt she be through that whole "posting pictures of hot guys" phase by now?". well, yes. i should be. but as i said, i am endeavoring to capture the absurdity and awkwardness that IS me working out with my personal trainer, Taylor. (ever since i mentioned it in my last post, ive been laughing to myself about it so i need to just do it already. plus, since i will only be working with him for like 2 more months (ack! it makes me wanna puke just thinking about that, cuz he is the best trainer ever, gonna be very hard to replace), i gotta get some of this down in print, lest i forget about it when i leave...) so anywho, thats him. and yes, when i saw him i thought the same thing you all did.. "what the?! thats gonna suck to do really ridiculous things and be sweaty and gross all the time with this guy watching my every move. " so ill just go ahead and say, to put your minds at ease, its really not so bad. k, taylor happens to be really good at what he does, and from the first second we started training, he has been amazing and totally professional and for some reason, he just makes you feel pretty ok and not dumb about what he is making you do. but man, i can only imagine what its like watching me sometimes, and im truly impressed he doesnt burst out laughing on a regular basis. i guess those are the kinds of things they teach you at trainer school. and im gonna go ahead and say it, im pretty dang impressed with myself that i still, to this day, have never farted in front of him. i mean, thats got to be a record, right? maybe im way off on this, but training seems to be the "perfect storm" when it comes to potential for that particular humiliating moment: the flexing, moving, holding, pushing, sometimes early in the morning with weirdness in my stomach. ya ive been waiting for the day when it just happened. so far so good. ya, ill have to ask him about his percentage of clients that can claim that distinction. anywho, i can remember so vividly one of our first sessions when i was doing a "plank" on the mat (you hold yourself parallel to the ground, on your toes and forearms, trying to hold yourself steady and pretend like you dont know that everyone on the cardio equipment behind you is pretending to look at the tv but they are really watching your clinching/quivering glutes and arms as you try to hold yourself in this wholey unnatural position). taylor was sitting next to me, calm as a warm summer morning, no cares in the world, counting down ever so slowly. ok, let me pause here to say people, i am a major sweater. seriously. i literally ring out my ponytail in the sink when i get done working out. my roommate has witnessed it many times. so im there clinching and sweating and i feel a huge drop of sweat...sliding....ever so quietly and annoyingly down my forehead...to my nose, and off the end. (a lot like that scene in mission impossible, when tom cruise is suspended above the computer and the drop of sweat rolls off and he catches it in his hand. only it somehow wasnt as awesome when it happened to me) it splashed down on the mat, i swear it was so freakin loud and i felt like it was going to splash onto the person next to me. and i was there, clinching, flexing and helpless. taylor continued to count down....ever...so slowly. all he said, was "it happens" when i glanced up at him, with a horrified look on my face. and thus it began.

so we went through several months of training much like this, him pushing me and helping me do things that i had never in my life conceived of, let alone imagined myself being able to do. but when you've got someone there watching you, and you know they arent going ANYWHERE until you do what they say, well, its pretty motivating. at some points, you forget that you are actually paying this person to stare at you and not leave you for one second, but stay with you and make you do all the most uncomfortable and annoying positions/movements imagineable. it really wasnt so bad at first, cuz i couldnt do much, and we mostly just worked out on machines and stuff. and then, as i started to get fitter, well that brought a whole new awesome world of humiliation. a world of plyometrics and swiss balls. wow. ok so swiss balls are awesome and ya, great for "core" work. cuz whatever you do on it, you have to work harder to stabilize and whatnot. but, being a ball, it does have a tendency to move around, and yes, to roll. and combined with my lack of coordination and strength, well, hilarity ensues. so i dont know what made taylor think that i could do a push up on a swiss ball (maybe the fact that all his old lady clients can do it. i dont know. ) but at first he held it and i tried, gosh i tried my little heart out to go down but i just kept losing my balance and flopping around. so finally, hes just like "just go down and bounce off it and come up". ya. ok, i want you all to stop now. and picture this people. picture yourself. or me, either way. in push up position, hands on a big huge ball. so i try to go down and bounce off it, and sure enough i managed to flop down and bounce some body part off of some part of the ball, and then it all just happened so fast and i lost control and, well, i didnt come back up. i am fairly certain i ended up in a pile on the sweaty mat with the ball rolling away. it may or may not have hit some innocent people warming up next to me.

so time went on, and i learned and got stronger, and didnt hit myself in the face or head with the weights/bars as often. wait, i still do that pretty regularly. anywho, i think it was when i started running and training for a half marathon when plyometrics were introduced. so, plyometrics are "fast twitch" muscle exercises. they include lots of "exploding" (when taylor says that, it means, like being powerful and strong when i jump, not the gastrointenstinal type of exploding that one might associate with this type of exercise. although.....:)), jumping, quick movements, obstacles, steps, etc. IE: things that look super awesome and cool when athletic people like Taylor do them, and incredibly ridiculous awkward and sympathy-inducing when folks such as myself attempt them. it just feels so funny when you jump with no real purpose in it, like, you are not jumping over a log or a puddle. you are just jumping. up and down and over and across. your hands and arms sometimes get confused about what they should do and where they should go. (ok, mine do anyway). so taylor had me bounding through the gym, and squat leaping and what not. and it wasnt toooo bad. then, came the day. the day for which the girls were so ill prepared. k i will not go into details here, for the sake of the male readers of this blog. but ill just say, not all jumping is created equal. there are certain ways to jump that make it, ummm shall we say, a little more annoying when you are a girl. a girl...with not small at all sized girls. (as my sweet niece Lexi has always called them "chesties"). to make matters worse, i happened to be wearing stretchier pants with a not super secure wasteband, and as i did these intense, fast twitch, explosive jumps, well, my plants kept slipping down (just enough to be annoying cuz, due to the type of jump, i couldnt use my hands to pull them up. luckily they never slipped down quite enough to make this experience extra horrifying) even taylor's professional calmness could not overcome the awkwardness of this one.

however, it turns out personal training is super good for your health, and CLOSE TO as ridiculously entertaining as my dating life. im super glad i discovered this. really though, in the end, i absolutely recommend the personal training thing, in case you are wondering. it adds a whole new dimension to working out, and its amazing what you can actually do when someone else tells you that you can. plus its good to have someone guaranteed to be there to witness the funny awkward ridiculousness that is bound to happen. cuz i hate it when i have a really good fall or something and theres no one around to laugh about how funny it looked. its a total waste.

computer clock

so ever since i moved here to the couv, my clock on my laptop has been wrong. its on utah/idaho time. and i went in and corrected it lots of times. but it never stays. it always goes back to utah idaho time (mountain standard time, as it were?). so i just stopped trying to fix it and i just know when i check it to subtract an hour. its like my laptop has been fighting me living in washington or somethine. so it wins. my clock will be right again. ya, its lookin like ill be moving to good ol SLC in late july-ish. im working out the details to transfer for work cuz that would be freaking rad. so things are gettin worked out. but ya, its time. and im super excited. i hope you utah dwellers werent really offended at the grass post. you guys arent brown grass. you are the pretty beautiful flowers in the grass. and, in my defense, i did say that it just LOOKS brown from over here, but i know itll be green and beautiful when i get there. im super stoked to be closer to family and friends i havent seen much lately. so thats the dealio folks. im not gonna go into how/why i made the decision or all the things im going to miss cuz i just dont wanna go into that yet. but its happenin. and heres some other noteworthy happenings from my weekend:

• i went to a crazy interesting hip/hop show which actually didnt feel at all like a hip hop show cuz there was a definite lack of afroes and lots of white people, there was a tuba, and a full band, and there was def more of a "jam band" feel to it. they are called "roots". but i did have a fascinating conversation with a very attractive black guy outside the venue as i waited for my buddy. first time ive heard a sorta hick-ish accent from a black guy. hes from LA but went to school in montana. good times.
• i got super crappy plantar fasciitis ouchiness on my long run saturday morning and it has me really really worried, what with my marathon a mere 7 weeks away. curses.
• i watched a totally freakin awesome cover of a great bob dylan tune at our ward variety show (joel feik rocked the harmonica like nobodys business and alyssa held it steady with the piano)
• i leg wrestled a bunch of girls
• i got a pie right in my face for the first time ever. im glad i dont have to go my whole life wondering what thatd be like. turns out, its pretty difficult to see immediately after receiving the pie in the face.
  
• i had it confirmed by two different girls with awesome hair that i really need to master the wrapping the hair AROUND the curling iron thing to have really great curls. the ends are the key. dont curl the ends, thats what makes it modern. thanks jessica.
• i had a fabulous easter sunday, basket, bunny, jelly beans included (thanks roommate!!!) and a wonderfully delicioius easter dinner with good ol friends and cute chubby babies that i couldnt stop pinching the cheeks of.
• i reconfirmed my complete and absolute love/obsession with my new perfume Chloe. wow. i cant stop smelling myself. so delicious. and doesnt give me a headache. which is pretty amazing.
  
• ok and this wasnt on the weekend, it was today, but i did master...well....got closer to being able to do the wrapping the hair around the curling iron curl thing. it was fun. and looked part awesome, part bizarre. but i dug it. makes me able to keep growing my hair.
• ok, and also today, i reminisced with my trainer about all the awkward things he has made me/seen me do in the last year and a half. mostly when he made me do a pushup on the swiss ball. ....ok and most of the plyometrics we do. k i need to dedicate a whole post to him and our experiences soon.

k i gotta go night night now.

grass

the grass isnt always greener on the other side of the fence. sometimes its pretty brown actually. maybe your grass is really actually a very awesome shade of green. and you are content and happy with it. but you have to go over to the brown grass anyway. not because of the grass, but for other reasons. but then when you get there, maybe you will find that the grass that looked pretty brown from far away is really actually greener than you thought. and then you love it. and you might miss your other green grass, but guess what? all you gotta do is water that browner grass and it gets nice and green. and then maybe you might find a husband hidden in it. haha. jk. gosh i didnt set out to be all metaphorical and cryptic tonight, but i havent the time to be anything else. and i dont feel like spewing the actual thoughts in my head right now. cuz my head is throbbing cuz i laid out in the sun a bit today and sweat a lot and am probably dehydrated. so when im dehydrated, i want to talk about grass. i adore the smell of fresh cut grass.

inner monologue

is it just me, or does anyone else find the concept of our inner monologue fascinating? dont you ever wish you could listen in on other peoples inner monologues and see how closely it matches your own? what if you are WAY off and have an inner monologue that is way weirder than anyone else. ok, given the fact that we are all human here on the same planet, thats probably quite an unlikely scenario. i dont want to read minds. not at all. i think it would drive me nuts and frighten me im pretty sure. but it would just be interesting to get a snippet. does your inner monologue ever make you laugh? not because you remembered something funny, but because of the way your brain worded something that you thought? or just the fact that you had a certain thought out of nowhere? i sometimes work with people that have little to zero language ability. theyve had strokes, and they either cant express anything, or it comes out completely wrong, or they cant understand anything, or only very simple things, or any combination of those scenarios. and i often wonder what is going on with their inner monologue. cuz science tells me one thing... but, really? i just dont know.

a fine line... need your thoughts, people...

k folks, there are only a few loyal readers to this blog, but the majority of you are happily married people that i respect and i admire your relationships. yes, it appears ive departed from my originally intended "superficial blog"-ness. but whatever. its on my mind. and ya, sometimes its pointless and silly to talk and discuss too much about relationships and dating and "right-ness", and im sure when i meet "the right one" as everyone calls him, this will all be a moo point (yes thats right, it will be a cow's opinion :), but i just wanna throw this out and see what ya'll think. so, my recent dating intrigues have caused me to think. and i had a few epiphanies on my saturday morning run. ill share one. so it seems that very often, there is a very fine line between completely right for you and totally wrong for you. sounds absurd, but think about it. and, as my wise sis said (i think? didnt you say this part dana, or was it me? well, whatever) someone said that this rightness or wrongness can largely depend on what you choose to put up with or ignore. i have been interested in guys and trying to get to know them and overlooking some things that i wasnt too keen on cuz thats what we are supposed to do, right? cuz no one is perfect. so i focused on the good. but then as soon as its not working out or we break it off or just, whatever, well...suddenly those negative things combine and assault me with all their force and i get really and truly completely annoyed and disgusted with these guys. i know i know, sounds like bitterness because the relationship didnt work out. no. its not like an "i hate you cuz im all scorned and whatnot" kind of thing. i definitely dont hate them. i just am very aggrivated and have no desire to spend time with them. and just a few days ago i was totally into getting to know them and enjoying every moment with them. when considering them and some aspects of their personalities, id think, well thats very opposite of me, but that could be just what i need to even me out or make me better or whatever. like i said, i know yall are gonna say im overthinking this and when i find the guy, i wont have to consider all this crap. but i really dont know about that. im 29 people. ive dated a lot of different guys. and i just dont know if itll fall into place easily for me. anywho, so if you feel like giving me some help or your thoughts on this one, id love to hear/read it. i feel like this is a downer blog. this isnt a downer people, i just find it a fascinating concept. nothing really fun or blog worthy has happened lately other than dating haps/mishaps, so this is all i got folks. oh, and i bought an amazing state of the art GPS watch thing to track my pace and distance and all kinds of crap while running. and then i did a run with it and, well, it was just overkill for what i needed. and the one function i really needed to be accurate (pace) was not really. so it didnt do me a ton of good. so i took it back. which is not a very natalie thing to do. but i feel much better since i did. ill stick with my awesome, cheaper sports watch/heart rate moniter. its served me very well. sometimes, we really dont need new things that we really want to need. that goes for the google phone too. i want it bad. but im stickin with my dash. it loves me and i love it. the new down alternative pillows i bought at costco, however, have been a 100% awesome buy that i am grateful for every time i lay my head down.

why i love stina and shawn

i love old friends. friends that can pop in whenever they are in town and its awesome from the first second you see their faces until you hug them goodbye. you enjoy every catching up moment and it feels like they never left. i love it. stina and shawn are two such friends. and maybe now that im dedicating a whole post to them, they will have the guts to comment on here and not be blog stalkers :). heres why i love these people. i know i can count on shawn to wear flip flops, cargo shorts, and his sweatshirt , regardless of the weather. and i can count on stina to wear something cute and stylish and to have rad, unique hair that i would not like on ANYONE else but her. i know i can count on them to be non traditional, but not in a "look at how not traditional we are" kind of way, but just in a regular, this is who we are and what we do, cuz its what we want to do, take it or leave it kind of way. i love that they didnt stand up in the clark ward when their engagement was announced, even under pressure from the pulpit. i love that stina is amazing and made me feel like maybe i actually could give birth to my kids with no epidural (yes, all my sisters and sisters in law, i know you are laughing hard right now). i love that they make delicious food from natural ingredients and that stina uses not one, not two, but MULTIPLE cookbooks already. i still think about the amazing pizza you made me on a regular basis, stina. i love the memories of when they were here and how i was third wheeling it with them on their first sorta date thingy. i also love thinking about how delicious those amazing cupcakes were at their reception. i love people that are easy to hang out with and love. they are chill, relaxed, but extremely entertaining. shawn is the most mellow human ever born and stina definitely has the sass and energy to balance him out perfectly. its so easy to laugh and have fun with shawn and stina. its a given. and their 2 month old adorable baby boy, ira, is definitely a way cuter than average 2 month old. i wasnt just saying that you guys. he really is adorable. which is a relief because we all hate lying to the parents of ugly babies. so keep the cute ones coming, you two, cuz i dont ever want to have to lie to you! ok, well i have to go now. oh and to anyone other dear friends who read this, i love you too, and your day will come, with your very own blog post. today is just a very thankful for stina and shawn day.