Warning: this post contains TWO country songs. Do not complain, you have been warned.
Do you ever hear a song and at first it’s just a pretty
melody... Then you hear the lyrics. And all of a sudden it is YOUR song. This is
YOUR life in a song, with (usually) a much better vocalist. Well that feeling
happens to me a lot. Like there are at least ten songs out there that I claim
are “my” songs. But this one has been on my mind lately, especially considering
some pretty personal events that have... transpired lately.
First off, I talk way too much for comfort. Unless it’s
awkward silence… then I like to bask in it… and add lots of … … …
sooooo yeahhhhh… [insert your favorite awkward animal motion here]. I’m sure
you’ve realized this from the outrageous length of my posts, as well as my
super annoying tangents.
OK! SO! “My” song of the moment is… Unapologize by Carrie
Underwood. My life is a series of events of word vomit. In high school, I confronted
my crush and laid it all on the line. It went something like “Um, I like you. I
thought you liked me? How come you never asked me out?” Ahaha, oh yeah, I am
dead serious. That’s attractive, right? Nothing has really changed, and the result? I speak without thinking. LOTS of ... Awkward turtle. The first time I said “I love
you” was followed by total and
complete stutters, a long awkward stare, and feelings of “oh
shoot! What?? I mean, uh I take it back?”
My biggest fear is that I’m going to look back on life and
be filled with regret. Of the things I didn’t do when I had the chance, but
more so… the things I never said. My high school story has a point. It’s easy
(well easier) to tell someone that
you like them… but how do you tell a friend something that you don’t
like about them? Whether it is an action, something they said, or maybe a girlfriend or boyfriend? Well if it’s a
wedding you aim to break up, my bff Taylor Swift has the perfect words to SPEAK NOW :) And yes that tangent was
done specifically to include TS into
my blog. That, and I think it is the perfect follow up song to Carrie’s.
Until next time minions. Have a great day, love you all!
Well at least one thing can be said… I sure am getting use
out of my gym. I tried to go for a work out that was more my speed… a spin
class. My dad got me into mountain biking early on, and my childhood memories
are full of weekend mornings spent on the trails, biking through the canyons of
Orange County. However, my biking experience since childhood has been racing to class on the very flat terrain of
Davis and the daily six mile ride through Paolo Valley to get to my Dolphin
Quest internship. Nothing outrageous or too intense. Whatever, no excuse NOT to
be healthy right? I boldly went to my first spin class last week. And yes, I
remembered water this time.
I showed up to class fifteen
minutes early (because yeah, I’m that girl. I’m going to go ahead and blame
my mother and Matthew Goldberg for this overwhelming mentality of “early is on time, and on time is LATE” that I still cling to). I played
around with my stationary bike, which is nothing like those digitalized bikes
you see next to the treadmills at normal gyms. There are about six more nobs
and things to adjust. What. The heck. It’s just a bike, right?!
As the bike screeched and screamed while I tried to lower
the seat to an acceptable level, the instructor came over, introduced herself,
and then began to quiz me on my biking experience and purpose of my attendance.
I stuttered out something like “uhh… I hear it’s a great work out??” Way to be
assertive Jaquielyn!
Her piece of advice for the bike? “Oh, it should just feel right”. I don’t really know what “right”
is… but ok.
Ten minutes into the class and I could have sworn I was
dying. My body released sweat from every pore and I felt like I was in a
polyester cheer uniform melting in the Irvine heat. I think my hearing went
out, and white spots came in and out of my vision. That’s normal, right? Now, the
worst part was that my bike no longer felt “right”. My butt was in this awful
position on the seat, and every push of the petal made me cringe in pain. I don’t
know if you’ve ever been on a stationary spin bike, but it is NOTHING like a mountain bike. On a
mountain bike, you can stand up, stop pedaling, and the gears will keep turning
while the pedals stay glued to your feet. On a stationary bike, you stop
pedaling? You better say goodbye to your knees because those pedals are going
with or without your consent. I’m kind of stupid sometimes, so I tried at least
six times to stand up and adjust my seating, only to be shocked with the bike’s
nasty reminder “Pedal fatty!!”
Forty five minutes later, my knee felt like it was on fire,
my bum was in serious pain, and my lungs seemed to be half their size. And I loved
it. Minus the instructor’s terrible music choice (songs from the 70’s like… nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbyeeee.
Great for football games, not so much for a workout). The instructor decided to
end by announcing to the entire class that this was my first spin class. Everyone
applauded, and the whole gym turned around to see who the noob was. I awkwardly
waved and made the awkward turtle motion. So awkward.
End result: SUCCESS! I loved it! I will be back for more,
with a different instructor and hopefully a better music selection. I loved the
intensity… even if I died a little.
This would not have been a blimp in my mind if it weren’t
for my good friend Jenny Lofaro. Jenny is a beast. A triathlete, fish kitchen speedster, and one of my rocks and
sounding board during our six month stint for the Dolphin Quest Internship. When Haru and I would drive home (which
involved going over Diamond Head), Jenny opted to BIKE home... and would beat
us there. She is unstoppable. I just had to give a shout out, showcase her
kick-ass-ness, and thank her for inspiring me to give spin class a try.
Have a great Monday guys. Thanks for reading, feel free to
leave some comments J
In high school, coaches, teachers
and friends all told me that I desperately needed yoga in my life. Something
that would force me to calm down for an hour. I was (and still am) an
extreme stress case. Full speed is the ONLY speed, yaknow?!??
So when “Health and Wellness Week”
in college offered a free yoga class, I took it. Let me tell you: it was a
joke. As a cheerleader for ten years, I am more flexible than most… so while the
girls (and guy) next to me grunted and moaned through the stretches, I was
bored. On top of that, the instructor had us line our mats in a circle (“like
the never ending beautiful circle of life”, she emphasized). During the
more challenging stretches, someone’s face was always awkwardly close to my
body. No thank you.
Combine that with the instructor’s way-too-hippie
instructions, such as “Lower your body to mother earth and really inhale the
exquisite smells of nature. Allow yourself to be one with the dirt”. Woman,
we are in a carpeted conference room with florescent lights. I cynically
thought. The closest thing to nature we have is the wood conference table.
It was NOT an event that I wanted to “re-experience”
**(credit to Michelle Claudio, for the best saying ever).
BUT I am a believer in second chances and redemption… so I gave
yoga another shot. I dutifully give pay $65 bucks/month to the best
climbing gym ever, and I wanted to take advantage of my very expensive
membership. I’m back into the “I’m-going-to work-out-EVERY DAY… except
maybe the days I don’t feel like it” swing of things, and yoga was a good
excuse for NOT running.
Mistake #1: If yoga was anything like my first class, I wasn’t
going to need a water bottle.” Psh, this is going to be CAKEEEE”, one of
my most arrogant thoughts EVER. Boy, was I wrong. Please note: water is needed
for yoga. Or for any other class offered at a GYM. Duh.
Mistake #2: Not bringing a partner. The instructor paired us up for
massages. The husband and wife, the two best friends…and me. This left me with
the instructor. He massaged me (and by massage, I mean shoved his skull into
my lower back and tried a new form of physical torture: deep tissue massage),
and then I had to return the favor and massage his 65-year old body. Uhhhh
yeah….
Mistake #3: Not bringing ANYONE. Everyone left the class and the
instructor sat down with me to have a deep talk for half an hour regarding my
career and not being afraid and happiness and stars aligning and my Leo sun by
my Venus moon and my detail-oriented nature and putting myself first and how
God doesn’t exist, but we should all subscribe to astrology. And by “talk” I
mean… lecture. I said nothing and tried to politely smile as my body cried for
water.
I don’t want to be misleading… the
class didn’t start bad. It was fine; the instructor looked like Doc
Brown’s clone, and I enjoyed the deep breathing and forced relaxation. The room
was warm (thank you Sacramento for the Africa heat and Pipeworks for not
believing in air conditioning), but not unbearable. The exercises were more
like deep stretches that I haven’t enjoyed since high school.
And then the head stand… We were in
our head stands, breathing deeply, and focusing on our thyroid gland or
something, but all I could think about was the blood rushing to my head. It
didn’t help that it got 100 degrees HOTTER in the room and I was sweating from
all pores. We were given the instructions to very very slowly, slowly
SLOWLY lower our hips back onto the ground, concentrating on one vertebrae
at a time. I was focusing, but before I knew it… WHAM!!!!! Dust
fell from the ceiling and the walls shook as my hips defiantly came back down
to mother earth. Since there were only five of us in class, it was pretty easy
to figure out who had caused the earth shake. Talk about embarrassing.
The last part of class had us in
dead corpse pose. Which would totally be a dead corpse, except I had to focus
extra hard to make my heels touch. And if I were a dead corpse, my
position of choice would be on my stomach, with arms and legs flailed to the
side. With drool coming out. Yeah. Take that, yoga!
ANYWAYS, he had us focus on relaxing
by giving us imaginative descriptions of our bodies… “Picture your feet just
melttinngggg awayyyyy….” While he did this, all I could see was a cartoon
version of myself slowly being erased, from the bottom up. Eventually our whole
body became erased and I envisioned myself as just a floating head. What
a creepy way to end class, Doc.
So that's my yoga story. As a treat for making it through my rant, here is a prank video (because I love being on the other side of a good prank). If you haven't seen the New York Grand Central Freeze, here it is :) Enjoy... oh, and Happy Monday!!!
No joke. I
believe in meet-cute(s), friendships that never end, true love… and
selfless good deeds (well, as selfless as they can be. As Joey Tribbiani* says,
no good deed is ever selfless because it makes YOU feel good).
*uh, YES this
blog is going to be filled with references to “Friends”, “How I Met Your
Mother”, and every chick flick under the sun. Except “The Back-Up Plan”. That
movie suckssss. That rant is for another post…
SO anyways, a
couple weeks ago I was back in the WASP bubble of Roseville (it’s pretty much
the next Orange County). At the mall and I overhear “Oh no, someone
should stop that”. I brush it off, and turn the corner… and there is a HUGE
crowd. A silent crowd. I follow the crowd’s stare to a pimply teenage boy
beating the crap out of another boy on the floor. He has
the boy pinned to the ground and the thump, thump, THUMP of every single
punch to this guy’s chest was deafening. It was awful, to say the least.
Now, since I live
life like a movie… someone, anyone, a faceless hero from the crowd was bound to
step forward and stop this. But no one did, everyone just continued to stand
there SILENTLY. I was shocked. Half
furious, half not-thinking-at-ALL, I dropped my bags and ran towards the boys.
“Psh, these are teenage BOYS,” I thought to myself “I am totally stronger than
them.” Now, I know some of you may be laughing at this point, but hey now! I
used to be a cheerleader. We lift people, not weights. I’m stronger (and
mightier) than I look.
… As it turns
out, angry teenage boys full of testosterone are a wee bit stronger than I
expected. What I thought would be an easy YANK! was just a sad attempt to slow
down the boy’s punching arm. Thank GOD two burly dads stepped forward and had
the bully off the kid and in some sort of choke hold with one swift motion. “CALM
DOWN!!!!” screamed burly dad “STOP THIS AND CALM! DOWN!”
The security
guards (super useless, and not to mention about five minutes too late) came
rushing forward, no doubt feeling super important with their shiny badges and
radio (that’s the extent of their equipment. Really?). Now comes my favorite part… The security guard asked the
dad “sir, what happened with your son?” The burly dad steps away and says “I
don’t know who this kid is. I’m not his dad or related to him in any way.”
Thank goodness for both dads… and for their wives, urging them to
do SOMETHING.
OK. So in my quest to find a picture for today’s post, I typed in “bully”.
Apparently it is some sort of video game, because that’s what all the pictures
came up as. Okkkayyy. Two of my least favorite things then: video games and bullying.
And to leave on a good note, today Ben and Jerry's is releasing a new ice cream flavor... "Schweddy Balls". Which I find hilarious. For those of you not yet familiar with this nod to SNL... enjoy.
Alright, I'm a noob and can't figure out how to put a video from hulu on here. So click here to watch Alec Baldwin and his schweddy balls :)
Around once a day, I am startled by the sound of a football hitting the windows. Usually, I look up just in time to see some confused bird flying away.
When it used to be the little sparrows and tiny birds, I would feel bad. They would chirp around on the ground and take a 15 minute recovery period. But lately, it has been the big scary looking crows from those Windex commercials. And they do not just lightly tap the window... it always sounds as though Peyton Manning* is throwing a 50 yard pass... to me. Through the window. I'm pretty sure one of these days a bird is ACTUALLY going to come through the window and it is going to be my worst day of work.
*Football reference?? Wooo, look at me go!
I used to think that maybe the windows here are just extra clean, but maybe the birds here are just extra stupid?
Anyways, I just wanted to thank you all for showing me such gracious support as I start this blog. I watched the little "overview" feed yesterday (because let's face it, I'm the most impatient person ever and wanted to see who would comment and I could not waitanothersecond!!!), and my blog got 95 views! That is more than I ever expected and I am blown away by everyone's support. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Pleasseee feel free to leave comments, and any suggestions you may have for WHAT the heck I should write about. Someone told me that I need to blog every day if I ever want any kind of following or whatever, and that I also need pictures. However, writing every day gives the allusion that I have some sort of exciting life... And while writing about birds flying into the windows at work may be entertaining for one day, I don't know how much more exciting it is going to get. Is that sad? Don't answer that.
So. Comments. Suggestions. Love.
And so much gratitude towards you all. Until tomorrow minions.
Ps. If you haven't figured it out, I have dubbed you all "minions". Because a) it is taken from one of my favorite writers and b) it reminds me of "Despicable Me". That's the movie with the minions, right? I guess I should understand my own reference first.
Three years ago, a not-so- random
song prompted me to research some blonde country singer. I had heard of this
“Taylor Swift” before, but I had thought of her as a beautiful teenager who
would have a brief 15 minutes of fame before dying out like many country-pop
tweens. I secretly played and re-played “Love Story”, humming it under my
breath and singing full out in the shower until I knew every line of the song. From
then on, I was hooked.
One month later, on a first date
with a handsome man, he asked me what kind of music I liked. Bashfully, I
admitted that I had just started to get into Taylor Swift and I was a sucker
for her Romeo and Juliette re-write. On our next date, he showed up 20 minutes
late (don’t worry, there is a good reason).
Instead of apologizing, he slyly smiled as he pushed “play” on his CD
player and Taylor’s voice filled the car. “A CD,” he said “so we can listen to
her together”.
As I fell in love for the first
time, Taylor’s songs were more than just some blonde girl’s claim to fame…
there were words from my diary, from my own personal story. Every perfect date,
every heart wrenching moment of doubt, every twist and turn of my love life was
right there on the radio.
I know it seems ridiculous that a
24 year old woman shares the same music interest as someone half my age, but I
can’t help it. Taylor has been so involved in the most important relationship
of my life- if her success is indicative of my romantic success; than I hope
she NEVER stops singing.
Finally, at the concert this
weekend (eight months of anticipation and excitement building towards ONE night)
- I cried through the first two songs. I’m slightly more than embarrassed to
admit this (but c’mon, you guys are all my closest family and friends). It was
all too much- watching her LIVE singing about falling in love and the wondrous
joy of being with someone who just gets
you, with the man who made it all possible standing right next to me… I lost
it. I’m a sap, what can I say.
The Deets.
So,
like a friend once said (shout-out to Cece, possibly the only other friend who
rivals my level of dedication as a “Swiftie”), “it was clearly one of those
nights you’ll remember forever”. The show was AMAZING. Totally above and beyond the clichéd Avril concert I went
to (yeah, I liked to pretend I was an angst-ridden teen too)- it was more than
a concert, it was a SHOW.
She opened with "Sparks Fly" (which I
dragged John in a full out SPRINT to our seats), complete with sparks flying
from two acrobats that were spinning, twisting and turning twenty feet over the
stage. Ballerinas took the stage as Taylor sang in the background for
“Enchanted” (probably my favorite entertainment of the night- the choreography
was breathtaking). She played the ukulele for an acoustic version of “Fearless”
on a rotating stage away from the rest of her band. Fireworks lit the stage as
she sang “Dear John” (“I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town") - I
jumped and screamed with everyone.
For the last song, she played “Long
Live”- she brought out just her band and I felt like I knew them all. I screamed and screamed, and when she
said “Sacramento, I want to see you jump!!” The only question was “HOW HIGH,
TAYLOR?!?” and I jumped up and down with the fourteen year olds next to me.
John of course, just tried to survive the concert.
She finished with an encore
performance of “Love Story”, which I sang full out and screamed my heart out. Taylor
stepped onto a balcony which floated over the audience, and blew kisses to her
“Swifties”. The curtains closed and the concert was over. It was without a doubt, an unforgettable
night. While John apologized and apologized for such “awful” seats, I just
smiled ear-to-ear. I felt like the luckiest girl ever (who else can say their
boyfriend took them to a Taylor Swift concert? Not many). We could have had the
worst seats in the world (which we didn’t) and I would still feel like I was on
cloud 9.
Of course I would be regretful if I
did not thank Patty and Dave Raney for the extra ticket… and for raising such a
wonderful son that I am so madly in love with.
And last but not least, thank you
to my awesome boyfriend. Thank you for standing in an hour long line so I could
get my concert t-shirt, holding my purse when I had to pee, for not getting mad
when we wandered the parking lot for 45 minutes after I (incorrectly) made
navigation decisions, for taking videos and pictures during the concert so I
could soak in the moment, and for making so many of my dreams come true
(T-Swift concert included). You totally earned 47,309,875 bonus points.
Alright.
After much support and badgering from my friends (hey there Ashley Eure), I am starting a blog. The ups and downs of life through the eyes of moi.
I have NO idea how this is going to go or the lifespan of this little blog... but ya gotta try, right? So in the words of one of my favorite writers...
Until next time, my little minions
And apparently no blog is any good without pictures. So here's a random one of me... after John tried to kill me by hiking up a mountain in the most difficult way possible. Needless to say, I'm a little more than difficult to get rid of.
