More Things I Want… The list is neverending

Every morning this week I have woken up from horrible, scary, anxious dreams.  Every SINGLE morning.  The kind of dreams that affect my mood the entire day, the kind of dreams that are so realistic that I get confused as to if they actually happened, the kind of dreams that bring up ideas and possibilities that I don’t want to even think about.  And so, because I have had heavy thoughts on my brain all week, here is my opposite-of-heavy-thoughts post about trends I WANT for the summer:

1.  Half-Moon Manicure

Photo Courtesy of CND

I saw this last week on Marion Cotillard in Public Enemies and immediately thought “Oooo!!” (my thoughts are so complex, I know).  Apparently Dita Von Teese sports the style regularly.  Then my friend had it done and it looked super cute, and of course I must succumb to peer pressure and copy her in every style move she makes… ha! just kidding…

2.  Super Short Dresses

Photo Courtesy of Forever21.com

It is just TOO hot for me to handle having extra clothing covering my body.  If I could go to work in my bathing suit I would, but somehow I don’t think my coworkers would appreciate that.  I’m all for 1960s mini outfits, just as long as I don’t have to bend over to pick something up off the floor or anything.  Undies hanging out is never a good look, even in the heat.

3.  Black Maxi Dresses

Photo Courtesy of Forever21.com

Ok yeah this one is exactly the opposite of the trend above, BUT even though I don’t think I would actually wear a maxi dress, I think they look insanely cute on other people.  Especially other TALL people, which is definitely something I am not.  

4.  Side French Braid

Ohhh I will stand in front of the mirror until my arms feel like they are going to fall off to perfect this one.  I have never been one for being “good” at hair, or actually “doing” my hair at all.  This is the department I am the laziest in, but I love this look and it is way cuter than simply sweeping my bangs out of my face with a bobby pin.

What do YOU like about this summer’s trends? 

Just as a side note… I was looking up summer trends to see if there was anything I missed and came across this article that stated “Being Pregnant” as a top summer trend… um, WHAT? 

Adventures in House Sitting

As a broke 20-something who lives at home, I will jump at any chance to house sit.  Ah, living “on my own” and getting paid for it!  It is truly the greatest job… until the stress of living in someone else’s house hits.  I don’t mean that it’s oh so difficult to make sure the house doesn’t burn down or anything, I mean that people are crazy and especially crazy when it comes to their house.

For example, last year I house-sat for some friends of my mom’s who went out of town for Fourth of July weekend.  Everything went great, the dogs didn’t escape like they usually do, I left everything sparkly clean, it was all good.  Until I went by to pick up my check after they had returned and the wife asks if she can ask me a question… did I by any chance throw a party while they were gone?  I said no, of course not, but she said that her neighbor told her that there was a “rager of a party” at the house on the Fourth of July.

Now if you know me you are laughing out loud at this because I am definitely NOT the type to host raging parties, at my house and especially at someone else’s house.  I never threw parties when my parents went out of town in high school, I never had a big party at my apartment during college.  It’s just not something I do.  But this woman clearly did not see me for the shy nerd I am and was convinced I hosted the party of the year.  I haven’t heard from her since.

Then there was the Duck House.  This was the worst house-sitting experience I have ever had.  Not only did I have to take care of DUCKS (who stink and live in big puddles of crap), including running around in the mud to chase them down and put them inside each night, for a week, but these people didn’t pay me for over a month, and when they did they made me go through the entire house with them while they pointed out things that I had apparently broken, including an insanely expensive guitar amp.  Again — I am NOT even close to being the type of person who goes around blowing out amps or smashing picture frames.  The kicker was that this house was disgustingly messy when I first arrived AND these people have two young children.  Children, I have heard, are very likely culprits when things are broken. 

So I am wary now when I house-sit, and really there is only one family that I am excited about doing this for.  They are amazing, have a gorgeous house, leave me yummy treats and goodies, and pay me in advance.  Oh, and they actually THANK me each time I take care of their place.  So, needless to say, I am very careful with this house.  Which is why I was so incredibly stressed out yesterday making sure the place was put together before they got home.  And of course, as fate would have it, everything went wrong.

I had friends over for a little Fourth of July BBQ and to watch the fireworks (with the owners’ permission, of course!).  The boys decide to set off some of their own fireworks, which is fine, just DON’T SET THE ROOF ON FIRE!  That, thank God, didn’t happen, but the bits of paper that exploded all over the yard were a bitch to clean up.  As were the scorch marks that I had to scrub out of the driveway with Ajax and a little scrubby brush.  Then the stress level increases: when I start doing the dishes, of COURSE the sink clogs and floods the kitchen.  My poor boyfriend spent a better part of the morning underneath the sink with nasty sink water pouring over him.  We (I say “we” when really Jason was the one elbows deep in black muck) couldn’t fix it despite taking the piping apart and pumping everything out, so we called in reinforcements by the name of Dad.  Because Dad’s are almighty and can fix anything, we finally got the sink back together and could start doing dishes (fun, fun). 

While Jason is outside packing our things I’m scrubbing away, feeling very relieved that we’ll be able to get the kitchen spick and span before the owners get home, when my hand slips I jam my finger on a blender blade. Let me tell you, a little prick on the end of your finger will produce a WHOLE lot of blood.  Jason comes inside to see blood pouring down my arm and dripping on the floor.  Yeesh.  Because that apparently was not enough karmic retribution for some evil thing I did in a past life, once we got the cut all cleaned up, my hand slips AGAIN and I break two bowls.  And of course in the midst of it all, their gigantic dog thought it would be a good afternoon to take a stroll around the neighborhood, forcing us to run around panicking in the heat until we found him.

When we finally managed to avert anymore disaster and the house looked good we took off to celebrate the end of house-sitting.  I always thought it was an easy job, but with all that plumbing work, house cleaning, and dog wrangling I think I really earned the money made.  I guess no money is easily come by these days!

20-something and Broke: Things that go hand in hand

I have been pulling my hair for over an hour now as I go through my online bank statements trying to figure out how EXACTLY I got so broke in such a short period of time.  This happens every few months, I do really well with staying on top of my money and then get a little cocky and then all of a sudden I’m having panicky “How the hell am I going to PAY for everything?!” moments. 

I don’t even know how this round crept up on me, maybe it was that new leather bag I bought (not even designer though!), maybe it was a new top or pair of shoes here and there, maybe it was that dreadful trip to Urgent Care, a.k.a. the waiting room to hell, maybe it was a new set of tires for my car that turned in to a new set of tires and front AND back brakes.  Shoot, these things start adding up.

Most of them are things I can’t even do anything about.  I have to have working brakes.  I have to have antibiotics when I feel like my insides are clawing their way out of my body due to a bladder infection.  Apparently I also have to save my money and have a retirement fund, too.  After all that, where’s the money for fun things?

The thing is, I am good at saving.  I have a bank account that I do not even touch, I just put money in and then it’s like it doesn’t exist to me.  Each paycheck, I have money go out automatically to my retirement fund.  I don’t go out and buy designer bags like several of my friends.  I don’t go out to bars in Beverly Hills for cocktails when I know I have to pay my phone bill.  I bring my lunch to work every day.  And yet, somehow I find myself scratching my head as I go over my checkbook and try to find a way to juggle the things I should be paying this week. 

Right now the only option is to make more money.  The only problem is, when you work for hourly wages, the only way to make more money is to sell more of your time.  There’s only so much time I have in each week, though, so what’s a girl to do? 

For now the only thing I CAN do is watch what I spend.  I’ve started saving my receipts (those things normally used for spitting gum out) and writing down everything I spend in my checkbook (that thing normally used for… well nothing until this point, actually).  It’s no fun hearing about fun bars people are going to, or seeing a new outfit a friend bought, when I can’t do the same.  But, it’s also no fun waking up in the middle of the night with what feels like an elephant sitting on my chest because I have to pay my credit card bill.  This whole priorities thing that comes with being a “grown-up” is yet another thing they don’t tell you about when you’re thirteen and just can’t WAIT to older!

Fire Ants Mess Up Everything

It amazes me that preparing for a three day camping trip takes more effort and preparation than it ever took me to prepare to go back to England each semester.  Really, camping  is not the ideal for the last-minute-packing-kind-of-girl, which is exactly what I am.  I pack about an hour before I need to leave, end up forgetting vital things like a toothbrush or deoderant, and have to buy everything once I get to my destination.  There are no mini-marts in the wilderness, however, which is why it’s a good thing my boyfriend is Mr. Eagle Scout and is P-R-E-P-A-R-E-D for all occasions.

Except for fire ant attacks.  Which is the worst thing to not be prepared for when you are ALLERGIC to fire ant bites, which we found out when Jason’s left foot swelled up and distorted to what I can only imagine an ogre’s foot would look like.  Jason’s not one to complain though, so he was fine to be around while he was suffering in pain from the burning bites.  Well, he was fine to be around until it was time to leave and I realized that without him able to walk around easily it was up to ME to take down our campsite, carry everything up a hill to the truck, and pack our gear in such a way that it would not fly out on the freeway.

I’m pretty sure I sweated off the many hot dogs I ate this weekend as I walked up and down that damn hill loaded down with heavy bags and boxes.  And let me tell you, a shower has never felt so good after having to drive the three hours home all sweaty and dusty from (what I consider) manual labor in the blazing sun.

Oh well, at least I managed to get a great tan while everyone else turned lovely shades of red (aloe vera is my saving grace), AND I managed to jump off a rock ledge 20 feet above the river… a big accomplishment for this wuss.  And, no, I wouldn’t do it again because it hurt.  Water flooding up my nose and bathing suit wedging itself up my, ahem, are not on my list of fun things to do.  Floating down the river on a floaty with a cup holder is much more my speed.

In a Daze

All this week I feel like I’ve been floating around in a dream.  Not even a good dream, just a weird dream that you can’t wake up out of and it feels foggy the whole time.  And instead of something like I’m trying to run and I can’t get my legs to move, in this real-life dream I’m trying to get time to go and it just moves slower and slower each day.

This is the last week that I will be teaching gymnastics to crazy little girls.  I love coaching but I don’t love the time commitment.  I have this brain block to things that I HAVE to do each week, which is why I can never continuouslygo to exercise classes or apparently maintain a second job.  I’m surprised I made it a year and a half actually, the last time I had a second job was my first summer back home after I went to college and I was working at JPL and decided it would be fantastic to work at the Hollywood Bowl at night, too.  It was the least fantastic thing, however, starting with having to drive through endless traffic each day and ending with my creepy manager making me cry because I didn’t know where things were on my first day.  That was an easy job to quit.

Coaching was not an easy one to quit.  I’ve been coaching at the same gym that I used to do gymnastics at, so I know all the people that run the place, and have known them since I was a crazy little Olympic wanna-be myself.  Also, despite how nutty seven year old girls are, I kinda grew to like a few of them and I think I will actually miss them and their bizarre behavior.  I mean, at my real estate office I never get to watch interpretive dances in response to “How’s your day been?”.  At the same time, I don’t have to deal with complete meltdowns because someone bit their tongue when they fell down in the middle of said interpretive dance either.  Pros and cons to every job, eh?

So now that I am not restricted by having to teach a class at a certain time each week, I am feeling much more free and able to run away to Mexico if need be.  Or just go home and take a nap when time seems stop while at the office.  The possibilities are endless…

Good Food for a Good Summer

Yesterday I had some friends over for a BBQ and game filled afternoon and ended up actually being impressed with food that I created (or helped to create, actually). I had decided that Jason and I would provide the meat if everyone else would bring sides and this is how we found ourselves with 7 pounds of pork spare rib and no idea what to do with it… until Google swooped in and helped us out of course!

Apparently making good ribs is a three step process. We boiled, we baked, we grilled. And then we ate. And ate and ate and ate. Jason made a delish BBQ sauce, which I would post except he has a kind of “artistic” approach to cooking and was throwing things in a blender too quickly for me to write it all down.

The afternoon felt so summery (despite the gray skies… let’s get with it SoCal!) and relaxed.  I mean, how could you not feel relaxed after stuffing yourself with ribs and home-made brownies??  And with my new resolution to not eat out so much (gotta pinch those pennies for a hopefully exciting project later this summer), I decided to see what else would be good to make for future get-togethers…

Foil-Baked Feta

Recipe and photo from Apartment Therapy The Kitchn — Cheese combined with olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, fresh oregano, tomatoes, tomato purée, capers, and red onion… and all done in 10 minutes? This sounds like the perfect summer dish to make for my short attention span!

Strawberry-Arugula Salad with Ricotta Topping

Recipe and photo from Apartment Therapy The Kitchn — This looks like another refreshing summer dish… strawberries, raspberries, almonds, arugula, ricotta, and lemon.  And another easy one, clearly I don’t want to work myself too hard in the kitchen anytime soon!

Cherry, Rose and Coconut Ice Cream

Recipe from Tartelette — You HAVE to click the link and check out that yummy ice cream, it sounds heavenly!  A little more complicated than the other two but it looks like this ice cream would be well worth the wait.

Eh who needs butterflies in their stomach anyway…

Ahhh to have loved and lost… is it better to feel the pain of losing a love or to never experience that love in the first place?

I really believe that it is better to have felt love and given love than to never have at all. To love is to experience life, to give to someone or something else, to feel more than day-to-day experiences. To have love is to give yourself over to something completely beyond your control, something terrifying and exciting, something that you question every hour of every day, something that plagues your mind and yet puts you at ease.

To be without love is to not even live life. As much pain as love can cause, it is something worth every minute. Nothing else in life can cause the highs, and the lows, that love does. Despite the anxiety, the wondering, the jealousy, the frustration, I would never give up the loves I have had in life.

Without love, there would be no passion. No waking up in the morning simply excited to BE. No art. No family. No community. No flirtation. No butterflies in the stomach. No dreaming.

Love is scary, but it has shaped me, taught me lessons, changed my life. Where would I be without having loved?

Love is all we need, afterall.

“Hi, my name is Keely and I’m (trying to be) a Writer.”

I just surprised myself in the smallest way. I went to the movies with my boyfriend and instead of insisting we see some corny chick-flick like “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” I agreed to see “Star Trek,” groaning on the inside. And then I really enjoyed it. Like enjoyed it so much that now I want to be a Star Trek fan and dress up as Uhura for Halloween. And watch all the episodes one after the other (although I think that could take up a good majority of my life).

And then I started thinking about how great it would be to be IN Star Trek. Or write for Star Trek. Or do SOMETHING for Star Trek. Weird?

Honestly, I do this every time I like something. When I read the Twilight series I spent a few weeks contemplating MY vampire series that would take the world by storm. When I saw “Coraline” I immediately started thinking how I could create a creepy kid’s tale with an amazingly imaginative other-world. When I got hooked on [insert any Travel Channel show here] I thought about how I could be an adventurous TV host and get paid to travel the world.

These crazy thoughts last a few weeks and then I sink into that overwhelmed “where do I possibly begin??” state. I realize that I can’t just COPY some other successful thing, I have to come up with my own fantastic idea… but how could my idea be as good as any of the things that inspire me? I start brainstorming ideas branching off of my new favorite. I come up with a good list. I decide to bounce a few ideas off some people. “Oh…,” they say, “… that sounds just like this other movie!” “Didn’t that New York best-selling author write something like that already” and on and on.

And then I give up in a fit of “it’s all been done!” until I find the next inspiring book/movie/art/etc. It’s a never-ending cycle of creativity and disappointment. I think a lot of people go through this. Everyone comes up with these ideas that would make best-selling novels, or Oscar-winning films… and then they get made before you get a chance to get it written down on that napkin. The thing is, everyone has jobs or careers that they fall back on. All I freaking want to do is write something. Something that is GOOD and not just random ideas from a 20-something girl who doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does. And instead of keeping at it and writing every day until something sticks, I bury my head in the sand and think about how I could continue down my current path and become a real estate agent, or find an internship and start over in a new career path.

Somehow I think I would be more frustrated and unfulfilled pretending in another career than if I just fought and struggled with getting my words out. It’s not all supposed to come easily, right?

And that is why I don’t delete this thing, even though it sits in the back of my mind taunting me with it’s emptiness and old posts. At least it’s a reminder that I’m not doing what I want to do yet, and that I need to keep working on it until I get there.

Just Say No

I’ve been doing this thing lately… this thing that everyone is taught at a young age, but then the lesson wears off and you start NOT doing this thing… and NOT doing this thing gets you in more trouble and wears you down and ruins your life, etc. etc. etc.  This thing…

Just Saying NO.

For the longest time I could not just say NO.  

“Hey Keely, can you do such and such for me?” 

Oh, why CERTAINLY!  

“Keely, just one more thing… can you do this and that for me too?”

No problem!  I can do that too! 

“Just one last thing, Keely… can you take care of blah blah blah while you’re at it?”

Heck yeah! It’s not like so and so asked me to do such and such for THEM either! I love doing other peoples’ things before my own anyway!

Uh yeah… that wackness is done.  I have officially been saying NO to things right and left.  Clearing out the clutter, as it were.  A few weeks ago I started clearing out the physical clutter (which so far has made it all the way to my closet…).  Now I’m moving on to the clutter in my head.  

And I tell ya, there is really nothing more freeing than saying NO to those things that you know are going to stress you out and stress you out and stress you out and in the end get nothing out of.  

Plus, this leaves much more room in my head for the more important things in life.  Like when to chase the Kogi Taco Truck down, or when to babysit the cutest baby ever so her parents can go out for a birthday dinner, or when to take a drive around town with my favorite people, or when to catch up on the entire season of LOST that I’ve been missing.  Or when to work on this writing thing that I keep telling everyone is so important to me.  You know, all those fulfilling things.

I still get roped into some things, of course, I can’t just stop saying YES cold turkey, after all. But I’m getting better about firing those jobs, like when someone asks me to find rentals for them that will take three pitbulls. In the Valley. All the way across town. Uh yeah… just can’t waste my time when Korean BBQ and cute babies are calling!

Eight Things to Do Before I Drop Dead

Tonight I laid around the living room watching the Travel Channel and moaning every now and then about how much I’d like to GO somewhere and DO something. And yet I just stayed immobile on the couch, eating cookies and trying to get my boyfriend to give me a dang back rub that lasted longer than a second. Not really actions that will get me out the door and experiencing all that life offers, hey? So, since I still don’t want to move from my position on the couch, I decided to write a list of things I want to get out and DO before I am dead and can no longer DO them:

1. Travel throughout Asia, Europe, South America, Mexico… Okay just travel in general, I’m not even really picky about where I go at this point.

2. Become really good at cooking some things. Right now I have this strong desire to master macarons because they are so pretty and can come in so many fascinating flavors, like Violet, Pistachio, and Vanilla with Nutella filling.

3. Learn how to sew. Mostly so I can make cute skirts for myself and not have to deal with the crowds at Forever 21, which is just about the only store I can afford right now.

4. Buy a house. Yes, amazingly enough I would like to leave the safety of my parents’ house and have a little place to call my own.  All I need is a large sum of cash.

5. Become fluent in Spanish. I do live in Los Angeles after all, it would be nice to know if people are talking smack about me in a different language.

6. Finish a writing project. Again, not too picky on this one. Novel, screenplay, song, whatever. I just want something finished already. These scraps of paper are taking over my room.

7. Learn enough about wine that I can say more than “I like this one” or “Yuck.”

8. Get really good at something athletic — dancing, kickboxing, yoga. Anyone who knows me will start laughing at this one. Hey, I did gymnastics for like 10 years, I am somewhat athletic. At the very least I learned how to endure physical pain while holding handstands for minutes at a time or being pushed into splits for more minutes at a time. Well… Maybe I don’t need to get really good at a new sport, maybe just trying new ones will be good enough for me!

That’s all I’ve got for the time being, I think these will keep me busy for awhile though!  What’s on your life to-do list?