another summer day has come and gone away...

well not really...we've yet to have any summer weather, but at least it's not snowing. anyway, the point is...i want to go home! (ironically, as i was typing that sentence, the song came on my online radio station. it's a sign!)

don't get me wrong...moving to colorado was the best decision i ever made. for the most part, i've had a wonderful experience. i've made life-long friends. i found myself here, well the beginning of the path that leads to me anyway. i love my boyfriend. i love my roommate (who is also from nc :)). i want them in my life. however, the part of me that wants to be surrounded by the comfort of friends and family that have always been there for me become stronger and stronger everyday.

i hate missing important moments. it breaks my heart every single time and despite what i may have thought in the beginning, it doesn't get any easier. i am heart-broken that i can't go to alicia and brent's wedding this weekend. it absolutely killed me to miss the birth of my three best friend's three beautiful babies. i can't stand spending christmas without my family. i miss those random weekends full of laughter and love. i want to go to birthday parties. i want the kids to recognize me every time they see me. i want to have lake trips and camping trips with the whole crew. i want to go to girls night more than twice a year. i want to take a nap on my mom's couch on a sunday afternoon. i want to sit on the porch on summer nights and see lightening bugs.

of course i've said these things before, but it really does feel different this time. i love the person i'm growing into and i truly believe that moving away played a very important role in making me that person. i also think it's just as important for me to share that person with the people who spent so much time building the foundation and then handing me the pieces to re-build it after each earthquake. it may take a little longer than i expected or wanted, but i'll make it back there eventually. in the meantime, i'll enjoy what i have while i have it. i do live the rockies for now. i'm lucky, i know...but i want to go home!

tacky, trashy tuesday

first of all, i want to admit how incredibly unproductive i've been today. thank you micah.

my first item on the agenda happened last week, but has bothered me so much since, i will bring it up now. i was on my way to work. as i start to accelerate from being stopped at the red light on lincoln avenue, i look over just in time to see what has to be the stupidest man alive. he is on a motorcycle. not even a harley, not that it makes a difference, but one of those dirt-bike looking, yet street legal, annoyingly loud things that seem to be all the rage in steamboat. i hate those! i will also preface this with the fact that colorado does not have a helmet law, which is ridiculous. how can you justify a seatbelt law, but not a helmet law?! i favor both. anyway, stupid, as i will call him, is riding along lincoln in the opposite direction with no helmet. fine, you're an adult. go ahead, STUPID! then i glance down just in time to see, what i assume is his daughter, (i certainly hope nobody would leave stupid alone with their child unless he had a legal right to be there) sitting in front of him on the motorcycle with no helmet on as well. this was a main highway. this girl was 3-4 years old. i feel sure you need no further explanation of my fury. i think he should have been pulled over and taken to jail for sheer stupidity...and trashiness!

the second and final item on my agenda are the happy people in commercials, bicycle commercials to be exact. today was day one of riding my bike to work. i did not feel like those smiling people in the "be green" magazine ad i saw last week. no, i did not feel like that at all. i don't care if i was saving the environment one fuel emission at a time or on my way to losing all the weight i've been wanting to. i wasn't smiling and laughing in a pretty sundress with my hair blowing back perfectly in the wind. i think i will sue the producers of those bicycle ads for false advertisement. as a side note, i will say that my bike isn't like a trashy mexican bike or anything. it's actually a really cute schwinn cruiser. that's just what i wanted to complain about today. in my opinion, pretending to be that happy when you so clearly aren't is tacky!

that is all for today. i have put my work aside long enough. happy tacky, trashy tuesday!

duck, duck, GOOSE...

so it seems i have been "tagged". my "tagger" was, imagine this, Micah, who is my one and only follower and the person who converted me into a blogger. again, i'm still new to all of this, but i guess i just have to list six unimportant things that make me happy. i'm also supposed to tag other people to do it after me, but i'm going to skip that part. as of now, i don't have any blogger friends aside from Micah and i'm not quite sure how the social networking aspect of this whole blog thing works.

soooooooooo for whomever may be interested, these random tidbits make me happy...

1. porches. i loooooooooove porches. my summers involve spending a good majority of my time on porches. porches are my sanctuary. i sit on the porch to relax, to read, to drink coffee, to drink wine, to talk on the phone. it's my favorite place for me time. the condo i just moved out of had the most fabulous porch! the view was amazing! i was really, really sad to leave it. i had to because a retired couple from florida was coming in for the summer. you would think i could get away from those people all the way out here, but noooooooo! one day, like 75 years from now, when i actually have a house, it will most definitely have a wrap-around porch with rocking chairs and a porch swing. i can't wait!

2. speaking of porch swings...swings, in general, make me happy. there is a park near my house where i sometimes stop to swing when i am walking past. it always makes me think of the ginormous swing set at crabtree elementary school. i thought those were the best swings in the world when i was five. my great-grandmother would take me there. it was fantastic! call me silly, but i think swings are the simplest form of liberation that people of all ages can enjoy. i also classify hammocks in the swing category. while they may not be as exhilirating, i still throughly enjoy lying in a hammock with a good book while the breeze blows you gently back and forth. luke has one at his house. he has no idea that's the only reason i am dating him ;)...

3. shopping. there is nothing like a good retail therapy session. i don't like online shopping quite as much as actual shopping, but i have had to adjust since i live in a town that's 3 hours from the closest mall. it's still fun to rip open the package and see it for the first time when you already own it, but the actual shopping process is my favorite, all of it. i'm pretty picky so most people don't like to shop with me, but i'm okay with that. i like to take my time shopping. i want to look at all of my options, try them on and make an educated decision. this is usually a very lengthy process. when i get home, i like to lay everything out on the bed and try it on again with the proper accesssories, etc. that i had pictured when i made the purchase.

4. grilling out. doing this at the lake is my most favorite, but anywhere will do. i like the camaraderie of it all. how could anyone be unhappy chilling in the sun with your best friends, sipping a delicious beverage, playing badminton and catching a whiff of whatever may be cooking over the fire? not to mention, you finish it all off with a typically fabulous (and relatively inexpensive) meal, easy clean-up and sometimes a camp fire. what's not to love?

5. sunny spots. not the actual sunny spot, but the feeling you get when you leave a shady spot and cross into a sunny one. regardless of the temperature, this always warms you up. inside and out. i like taking the time to stop and turn my face directly towards the sun so i can soak it all up.

6. a well-organized closet. i can't even begin to describe all of the things i could do with carrie's closet at the new place in the sex and the city movie. now i'm the worst unpacker ever, i moved last week and still don't have a third of my things unpacked. the thought of taking it all out of those boxes and bags and seeing it strewn across my room is enough to make me stab myself in the eye with one of those scorching hot fire poker thingys. however, the satisfaction of having everything hung neatly in the closet in plain sight and in descending order from darkest to lightest is overwhelming. i like having a lot of shelves and drawers in the closet too. i can't quite afford to have the closet of my dreams just yet (well, that and i have a tendancy to move every 6 months or so at the moment), but one day i will have the kind of closet you open up to hear angels singing and see bright lights shining down from the heavens. again, i can't wait!

i've used all my descriptive time for the above-mentioned tidbits, but i think these deserve an honorable mention...

the silence of a rocky mountain snowfall, then the sound it makes beneath your feet when you walk through it, boats, the sound of thunder, toddlers clapping, laughing 'til it hurts, chips and dip and the ice cream bites that luke feeds me as he's eating the whole pint =)

first time for everything...

this is my first blog. well, i don't really know if what i'm writing now is the blog or the page, as a whole, is the blog. either way, it's a first.

i've had a lot of firsts lately. some good and some bad. overall, i would say i'm a fan of firsts. just last weekend, i saw a moose for the first time. i also went to rocky mountain national park for the first time. obviously, that's where i saw the moose, four of them to be exact. one was a baby moose. he (or maybe she) was unbelieveably cute! he, that's the gender i'm going to go with, was all legs. it looked like he didn't know exactly what to do with them. he was in the river and i imagine that he really wanted to splash around and play, but it looked like he just didn't quite know how yet. as a result of this, i think that my first moose experience was probably better than most, but maybe i'm bias.

what i really like most about firsts is watching someone else experience them, like taking a kid to the zoo for the first time. i've never done that before, but i think it would be fantastic. regardless of age, there's something so innocent and contagiously joyous about watching someone's face light up when they see or do something they never have before. my boyfriend, who is 31 years old, has never seen the ocean. i know, i know! it's an amazing feat to live 31 years without experiencing one of those large bodies of water, a world inside itself. i cut him some slack because he grew up in a landlocked state (wyoming) and moved to another one (colorado), but enough is enough! needless to say, i'm planning a trip to california for the two of us, which will be a first for me too. i've never been to california. i've never seen the pacific ocean. we're planning to go to san francisco. i'm excited to see the city, ride the trolley, cross the golden gate bridge and go whale-watching and wine tasting, but most of all, i'm excited to see his face when he experiences the ocean for the first time. even a manly 31 year old won't be able to hide the look of amazement on his face when he sees the water stretching past the horizon, hears the sound of the waves and smells the sea salt for the first time. the initial shock and awe, watching it take over all of a person's senses, is defintely the best part of a first.

i'm pretty sure my very first blog didn't have any of those effects on you (or me for that matter)! there's probably some sort of blog speak i need to learn to be an inspiring blogger. anyway, it's a first all the same. i suppose i'll catch on one day, or maybe i won't, who knows!

oh and here's the moose. mama and baby.














this is just one of my favorites from the same day.