Trilogy

I am an avid reader. My favorite is young adult fiction. It's an easy read but it still has a good story. I went to Barnes and Noble a while ago and saw this trilogy that is clearly a love story (Perfect Chemisty, Rules of Attraction, and Chain Reaction). I am ashamed to admit it, but I love romances. I get sucked into the story line and it almost always has a happy ending. I thought the cover looked like it was decent, so I bought all three books.

I read the first one, shed some tears, and enjoyed the ending. The story goes like this: A punk Latino boy is in a gang and lives on the bad side of town. Through some random events, he associates with a rich girl and they immediately don't like each other. They keep running into one another and eventually their hatred turns into love. They are inseparable. She hates that he is in a gang, so he has to risk his life by getting jumped to break out of the gang during the scuffle a supporting character gets shot. Then they live happily ever after.

 I eagerly started the second book anticipating a roller coaster of emotions and a developing story of the characters in the first book. The story starts of with a punk Latino boy who is in a gang and lives on the bad side of town. Through some random events . . . Wait a minute. "This is exactly the same" I thought. I kept reading just to be optimistic. No luck. 

"Well", I thought, "maybe the third book will be really good. I bought it so I might as well read it." Literally, it was exactly the same as the first two, but the characters in each book have different names. Is that even legal? There must be some type of copyright infringement policy on your own work, right? 

On the bright side, at least I'll never forget the story line, since I read it three times.

Pinterest Picture

So I was on Pinterest the other day and I saw this picture:

I usually think I am pretty flexible, so I decided David and I needed to get a shot like this. We needed someone to take the picture, so we waited until SuperBowl Sunday and had my sister Natalie take it. This blog is about the process of getting a picture as perfect as the one above.

So it starts by Natalie taking my camera, and the second Gage sees that she has it, he runs across the room and lays down right in front of the camera and poses for her. He obviously knows what to do when a camera is brought out.

So once we tell Gage it is our turn to take pictures, the following madness ensues.

This looks pretty cool, but if you look back at the original the man's legs are straight. I was determined to get this perfect, so I made us keep trying and told David to keep his legs straight as an arrow.

Oh trust me, this happened more than a few times. I started to think we could never get it perfect. I thought maybe I could do it better than David, so we switched roles.

Turns out I wasn't that great at straight legs and he definitely wasn't as graceful. Just look at his legs in that second picture. I still wasn't giving up. I thought maybe David was really the reason why we couldn't get a good shot, so I tried it with my sister Stefanie.

Turns out Stef was actually really good at it. My vigor was instantly renewed. I thought, "If Stef can do it, I know David can do it!" So we tried again.

I became a perfectionist, so I was too straight in this one. My back wasn't bendy enough.

We fell probably fifty times in the process.

And THEN we got a good one. So let me remind you what the original looked like:

And what our copy-cat looks like:

So what did I learn from this experience? That it takes about an hour, a lot of fumbles, a lot of sweating, and a willing husband to get a cool picture like the ones you see on Pinterest. It is never as easy as it looks.

Feed a Man a Fish

Feed a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Feed a man a glass of milk, he'll pass gas 20 times under the blankets when you are going to bed. Some of the stench is inevitably going to leak out and singe your nostril hairs.

This picture is demonstrating his excellent camouflage skills in the apartment as he tries to hide from me and the wrath that is sure to come.

Survival Bracelets

David's brother got a survival bracelet as one of his Christmas presents this year. They look like this:

It is called a survival bracelet because it is made of one long strand of paracord and you can take it apart in an emergency and use it to survive. Like, say, if you get deserted on an island. I'm sure it would save you there. Somehow. Anyways, I got jealous because I think they are a cute fashion statement, so I decided to make my own. This is the process of how to make a survival bracelet.

-go to a fabric store to buy fabric for curtains

-wonder if they have paracord at the store 

-ask husband to ask sales associate if they have paracord

-spend five minutes trying to get husband to ask sales associate

-husband gives in

-learn that the store has paracord

-find paracord and pick a color

-notice that clasps are conveniently placed right next to paracord

-start making bracelet the moment you get home because you are so excited

-look up youtube video tutorial

-realize that tutorial doesn't tell you how to start the bracelet

-look up another tutorial

-start making the bracelet

-realize the tutorial has a different clasp than you

-find another youtube tutorial

-make the bracelet

-realize bracelet got smaller after tying all the knots and is now too small

-untie bracelet

-re-make bracelet slightly bigger

-realize tutorial doesn't show how to finish bracelet

-find another video tutorial on how to finish

-burn your finger on a match while melting the ends of the paracord to finish it

-start making husband's bracelet with the extra clasps and paracord (TWINSIES! YAYYY!!)

-finish bracelet

-make it much too big because of overcompensating for yours being too small

-make husband untie it because your fingers are sore and burnt

-make it again

-still too big

-make husband untie it again

-make it again

-listen to husband try to decide if he likes the size or not for five minutes

-he does

-done.

Learn from me and do it right the first time. 

Christmas

In my family we pick names for Christmas. This year I got my sister Stefanie. I had about a hundred ideas of what I could get her, but she told me all she wanted was clothes. Clothes are not conducive to a $100 dollar budget. I could maybe buy one outfit. So of course, I did the only logical thing: I bought a bunch of clothes from a thrift store and refashioned them. I looked at enough refashion blogs that you would think I could do this stuff in my sleep. Trust me, it is not as easy as it looks. After many hours and a few tears, here are some of the things I was able to put together.

I bought her a few things, and forgot to take before and after pictures of a couple items, but the present was quite a hit. Best of all, I stayed under budget. BOOM!

'Stache Attack

Men don't like mustaches on women.

 How did I learn this? David graciously told me so. In a not so gracious manner. I always thought my lip hair was blonde. Until he told me one time that I had a bit of a 'stache. I was flabbergasted. WHAT? I HAVE A MUSTACHE ! So that led me to one conclusion. I had to bleach it. That was about a year ago. This week I had a dream that I was taking a video of myself and I had coarse dark hairs on my cheek. But when the camera panned down to my mouth I had an unruly, very thick, dark, manly mustache. I woke in a panic. It was time to re-bleach.

I don't like the fact that I have a 'stache. I don't like the thick cream on my face. And I don't like the way it stings my skin. So here I am.

Misshapen

Reading is really good for you, but there are bad consequences if you read a lot. 

"That makes no sense!" is probably what you are thinking right now. But let me tell you, it does. So this little mishap happened just yesterday to me. It all started with a zombie 5K that I ran with my friend Kayleen and her sister Kerrisa. 

This run was so fun! There were zombies scaring us and running us off the path and there were a bunch of obstacles that we had to get through. We all really enjoyed it. Afterward I was telling David, my husband, about all the obstacles that were on the course.

 Note: Being the avid reader I am, I have a fairly large vocabulary. Most of it comes from reading books and seeing the words over and over in context. Sometimes I can even use words in the right context and not know what they mean, so I have to check with David because he has a larger vocabulary than me.

 I started to describe an obstacle that had a huge pile of overturned tires strewn all over the place that we had to climb over. This place was just asking for a sprained ankle. The word I used to describe the tires was "misshapen". David heard me and asked, "what did you just say?" to which I replied "they were misshapen." This probably makes sense to the readers, but the way I pronounced the word was mis-happen. It seemed logical. They use that word in books all the time. David responded "I think you mean misshapen (pronounced mis-shapen)." We went back and forth for a while arguing our own points when he burst out laughing. He said, "you are talking about the word spelled m-i-s-s-h-a-p-e-n right?" and then it dawned on me. We were talking about the same word. Of course I had heard the word misshapen before, but every time I encountered it in a book I pronounced it wrong in my head. I thought they were two totally different words! 

The worst part? This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Once he pointed out that we were talking about the same word I remembered a couple years ago when I came across the word "perused" in a couple of books. I read it as per-yused with a y sound in the middle. The first time I didn't think much of it. It was just a word I didn't know. The second time I thought, "really? Perused again? How has this come up twice and I don't know what it means?" but once again, I left it and moved on. It was the third time I read "perused" in a book that it finally dawned on me. PERUSED!! I had been reading it wrong! I know that word! It means to skim over, or to lightly read through. So silly.

Now I am wondering how many other words are there that I know but  pronounce wrong in my head?