ode to my sissy

well, i promised that i would get around to dedicating a post to each of the faithful readers of this blog (well, the ones i know about). and today....its my sissy, dana. cuz she has been an IMMENSE help to me in the last months as ive been deciding about the move and a multitude of other things. doug and marie, if you read this blog, im sorry to dissapoint you if you thought i was gonna write about your cat. i love her too. but she didnt drive me all around and let me use her car to find an apt in salt lake. but shes a funny cat. ok, im getting off track. my sissy. where do i begin. i was reminiscing the other day, as i looked at the mound of clothes on my bed that needed to be put away, on the days when i shared a room with dana. and when mom forced us to clean it, it was an alllll day endeavor. and rarely was totally done. and it reminded me of dana reading from her journal back in the day (when she was like 6 or something), when every other entry started or ended with "i hate natalie! she is so annoying!" or something along those lines. im pretty sure we never would have guessed we would be roommates in college and bff's. seriously, we have spent so much time together talking and analyzing and discussing, she pretty much knows whats going through my head in any situation. and she then uses that information to help me. usually to keep me from doing something totally ridiculous. (and then when i do those ridiculous things cuz i didnt consult her first, i can hear her voice...."oh natalie. ohhhh natalie. sweetie. ") most of my dating behavior she is somehow able to understand and summarize very succinctly so that somehow even i can see whats really happening and it just makes everything ok. i love her for her last motivational words to me as i nervously talked to her the night before i ran my marathon. "Natalie, even big fat Ron finished." (referring to the big dad on the biggest loser that walked a marathon). ya. she can always make me laugh about anything, mostly cuz she knows what i would think about things and she knows that i think im funny, so she just says what she knows i would think. ok, and she is ridiculously funny herself and says things that would only come out of her mouth. my co-workers get to hear all kinds of dana/nat chat cuz i call her about every day at lunch and chat with her just cuz its nice. and again, with the laughter. i need it. i cant tell you how many times shes listened to the same stories/scenarios with different and sometimes the same boys over and over, in minute detail (seriously people, when i tell a story to her, i give every little detail and then i realize that what im saying has nothing to do with anything. i remind myself of that part of win a date with tad hamilton when petey says "i cannot remember a time.....before you started telling that story), and she never acts bored or annoyed (well, but its always productive annoyance), she actually seems to enjoy it. i love that she took care of me when we were roomies and made me burritos when i would come home (with my pants leg ripped up cuz i forgot to peg them before riding my bike) and act all helpless and silly. she still takes care of me, even when i, the big sister, come to visit her and she has an 18 month old and is pregnant. i love that she is excited to get her hands on my money (ha ha ha) when i move so i can be smart and budget as good as she and her hubby. (im dead serious about weekly budget meetings you guys, so dont think im just saying that). she is wise beyond her years and works so hard to make sure her little family is happy and healthy (see her hubbys blog post for more on this. its adorable) i love honk-shoo, wa-ee, and moist coins. she always says she wishes she could spend money on cute clothes and dress nice like me, but then when i come to visit, she always looks absolutely adorable and makes the most out of her very cute wardrobe (ok, that sounded a little condescending. thats not what i meant. what i mean is...im always a little jealous of at least a few of her new clothes items). i love that she toughed it out living in the houseboat with me and the mice for a bit just so we could be together (remember that awesome pic of us on the front porch and you are looking off all artsy like into the distance but you look TICKED! ha ha). i know that was pretty rough. she notices things that people are good at and things they are trying to be good at and she tells them. and she helps me not be annoyed at everybody all the time. haha. its pretty sweet to have 3 amazing sisters, especially when one of them is crazy just like you. sorta.

simple

ive been sitting here for at least a good 2 or so minutes deciding exactly how to describe the couple of weeks since my last post. wow. ill just say i wish id saved my ridonculous post idea cuz i would have had a WHOLE LOTTA ridonculous to add. except, its not really blog appropriate or explanable (perhaps explicable is a better word choice, seeing as how its a real word, but i like explanable better. yes i know, this is hypocritical coming from me, the grammar/pronunciation/word nazi, but its my blog. so i dont care.) but these weeks have truly been an interesting study in humans. and behavior. and motivations. and me. and what i like. and what i cant stand. and how i respond to things. and i dont know how or if this is even related, but im gonna say, i feel like im pretty simple. im made happy by very simple things. my friend once told me that i live a decadent (and yes i absolutely just looked up that spelling on an online dictionary ) lifestyle. i disagree somewhat. some things are important enough to me to spend money on, yes. but they differ from where he spends his cash, so it seems decadent to him. cuz when it comes to food and stuff like that, as you can see from previous posts, im not impressed by gourmet. there are lots of seriously cheap, simple, delicious things. trying out fancy or highly rated new restaurants really doesnt interest me at all. too many flavors at once annoy me (i love eating with you guys dana and dan, but i fear you think i dont appreciate your amazing combos. its not that they arent amazing, im just a simple girl) too many toppings on pizza totally grosses me out (especially a whole lotta meat. ick. plain cheese is just fine with me. or bbq chicken). yes, its nice to have some nice things. some pricey jeans. a real tiffany bracelet. high thread count sheets. those things have been worth every penny to me. but i also once lived in teeny tiny room in a "houseboat" (not really a houseboat. it was a house, but the kitchen had wood paneling everywhere and creaked and felt exactly like a houseboat). i paid $75 a month for the "hotbox" as it was nicknamed. seriously, you walked in and pretty much hit your shins on the bed. well, you would have if i didnt have the bed up on about 6 cinder blocks to fit my stuff underneath. and i had a pole against the wall on which to hang my clothes. i paid less to live there for an entire semester of school than i paid for my first month of rent in my apt when i moved to vancouver. but it was college. thats what you do. anywho, my point is.....um. crap... i think my point was that sometimes i feel like gettin by in a crap house paying next to nothing, and sometimes i feel like shellin out a bit more cash to live alone in a way nice place. sometimes i feel like buying the best running tights that exist with all kinds of science and technology behind them, and sometimes i feel like buying cheap shorts. and as i type this it seems to contradict my feeling that i am overall pretty simple. but it doesnt. cuz i said so. and as previously mentioned, this is my blog so what i say goes. but, as i think on this idea of simplicity, maybe thats why honesty is such a big deal to me. its straightforward, its simple, and you dont have to worry about keeping different stories straight for what you have told different people and whatnot. im sure there are many that would argue that honesty is anything but simple because what if that honesty hurts peoples feelings and yada yada yada. but for me, its pretty simple.

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.