disclaimer: this post is going to mysteriously make us look like this is our first christmas "together." no no no. it just works out that my family lives here, and A and I both got a littttle excited about decorating a tree - any tree! - and could use any excuse we could get to go to a tree farm. lot? yes. tree lot.

^ so much deliberation between these two. i think i liked the first tree i saw when i walked in. so oops, decision making skills are either my best or worst suit. 

when your name is kitty cocktail...

despite being raised by chris smith, i love parties. also, i love getting dressed up. both of which i got to do for the murder mystery dinner party A and i went to.

so, i introduce to you:

cy ramsey & kitty cocktail. 

yes. my name was kitty cocktail. i was a cocktail waitress (obviously), dating the up-and-coming chicago gangster cy, who was the bouncer at the club i probably stripped in. 

things i learned about my character throughout the night:

:: my dress probably covered me wayyy more than kitty would have preferred. and by kitty, i mean the customers. 

:: the only role i played was distracting people so cy could actually get work done.

:: i probably was abused by cy (note the bat? yikes)

:: kitty was not southern, but that's the only accent i could muster up. so. i made kitty southern. 

:: she illicits the most inappropriate jokes without having to do anything except breathe. i mean, what is that name.   

:: i love kitty cocktail. 

hair-do's and [half] nudes.

let me set the scene:

i am currently under my giant down comforter with 324 pillows surrounding me, a bowl of stuffing and cranberries balanced on my chest (balance isn't really an issue when your chest is quite flat), getting candle-drunk off of frosty pine, 17 tabs open in hopes of finding the perfect christmas outfit + gifts for A, and gilmore girls on in the background.

so, if you were me, would you do homework?

oh i forgot, christmas music is playing upstairs. so yeah, bye, productivity!

here's what's up [lately]:

A is learning how to do my hair. so then at least one of us can do hair. don't let that picture be the basis on which you judge his hair-styling. i was very impressed with his first fish tail (or, as A called it, a beaver tail. two very different things.)

^lol. before we went to light the riverwoods, we went to a good (?) pizza place called...oops. i don't remember. so maybe that question mark really was merited. all i know is we got free cheese bread, then i accidentally left my leftovers at A's and i never saw them again.

light the riverwoods! a night that we spent 25 minutes trying to park and 3 minutes looking at lights! wahoo!

i feel like such an adult making lunch plans to go to cheesecake factory. it was a big jump in life going from "hey let's go to zupa's in 10" to "dear michelle, you are cordially invited to join me for lunch at the cheesecake factory promptly at 1 pm."

what the hell, who am i kidding. i'll be 37 and still making lunch plans to go to mcdonald's.

two words: butt massage. everyone needs one! just to clarify: i got a full body massage, but MY GOODNESS did you guys know how tense our butts get?? how much stress builds up? i'm not really sure why, i haven't quite figured out what it is our butts do when we get stressed. but they do it! and my butt deserved all the attention it got on wednesday and i think i was a different person after those 50 minutes. does the internet really need to know all these things about me? no! probably not!

all these things really added up to create the perfect thanksgiving break. and now, on to christmas!

ox/C

words: i [usually] never run out of them.

there are simply too many things i want to talk about and yet my brain juice is at an all time low right now.

//my partner for practicum just texted me and said 'hey, i totally forgot to tell you, you're taking my reading groups tomorrow. but it's super fun! my groups are really funny, they'll make you laugh." me and my eye bags, we're all just laughing our heads off over here. but. my belly is full of chicken tikki masala + pazookies and i get kissed goodnight every night by A. so, WHO IN THE WORLD CARES. 

//here's the thing about waking up early. no. 

//i've spent the majority of my nights the last couple weeks in the library pretending to have lots to do but really using it as an excuse to hang out with A. cuz he lives there, didn't you hear? it works out great for both of us - every five minutes when i think of 174 more things to say to him i get to rip his earplugs out until all my words are gone, and he gets to study in between those times. 

+pam bought me a new lip stain earlier this week so i debuted it at the library tonight. yeah. we'll just chalk these photos up to vanity. 

ANDREW MADE ME TAKE THEM. 

ok no. 

alright, so, because i have run out of [energy to say all the] words, i'm actually going to go to bed. after i show you pictures of me and mimi dancing. i had video footage of it, and i just spent 20 minutes googling "how to make a gif." 

truthfully, i spent about one minute googling that and then 19 minutes watching this cat gif.

aaaaaand goodnight. 

you are a murderer of love.

- - - - - - -

don't let that post title scare you...things are as happy as ever with this dude.  in fact, last week, we decided on nostalgia - mostly because the restaurant we planned on going to was packed and we were starving, so we walked across the street to banana leaf, where we had our first date. 

it gets better - we sat at the same table we sat at over a year and a half ago. cuuuuute.  and we got to enjoy the conversation of the painfully awkward first date seated at the table next to us. 

and we were all like "LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME B*TCHES" with our middle fingers in the air, or something like that. 

then we ended that glorious weekend by:

+puzzling with good friends (including a skyped-in kailey - so much joy and love!)
+indulging in dan in real life after which i decided i need teenage girls that think my motherly actions merit comments like "you are a murderer of LOVE!"
+cuddles on the couch with A talking about life and love and murderers of love.

life is so happy.

ox/C

is this even legal??

just promise not to tell on me because i'm actually confident that my future career would be in jeopardy if parents were made aware that their children's faces were featured on this super popular blog that definitely a lot of people read. so i'm counting on you. alllllll of you. 

mom. 

ok but srsly HOW CUTE ARE THEY.  i LOVE the hours i've spent in mrs. w's first grade class these past few weeks - more specifically, the things i've heard in mrs. w's first grade class. 

:: walking up to two little boys, one with his hands placed firmly on the others' shoulders, and saying through gritted teeth, "just. swallow. the blood." i don't even want to know. 

:: "everyone is going to cut out the boots for the witch-" "the witch has BOOBS? gross!"

:: "your name is CHRISTINA?! no no no. your name is miss. ok?"

:: "the principal told me it was ok to eat your chocolate cookie. so...yeah."

::"corbin, why did you cut zoey's hair?" *shrugs* "she was annoying." *walks away*

:: "thank you for helping me with math I LOVE YOU bye!"

that last one is my favorite :) 

and don't even get me started on which kids i would gladly adopt into my own family. and which ones i would put up for adoption. to satan. 

we spend a good portion of our morning here, going over the calendar. 

dc + picture books = a happy miss.  

hallo[week] 2014.

along with sizzler and movies over 90 minutes, camping gives me anxiety. 

don't get me wrong, i LOVE camping. at night, no one can see your imperfections, your messy hair looks good by the light of the fire, whatever makeup you put on has yet to melt mysteriously off your face, and you still [hopefully] have fresh breath. or at least smore's breath. but when you wake up...

like, we've all been there, with the whole morning breath thing. when other people have it, it's refreshing (in the least refreshing way possible) because it's a simple reminder that they're a human too just trying to figure out the ways of this world. and i remind myself that even miranda kerr has got to have bad breath sometimes and that's the only encouragement necessary to wear 'vampire blood' lipstick out of the house. i don't know when this post became a thank-you to miranda kerr, because that is definitely not what i intended. aside from the bad breath, though, camping is pretty great. especially with the coolest tent crew, and a boyfriend that calms you down and puts up with your "shut your mouths dammit" 's when campfire bonding is still going strong at 3 am. 

honestly, i don't know why we are all posed so...platonically. 

but this camping trip was the perfect kick-off to a great halloween week in which mimz and i threw a monster mash party, and spent halloween night grinning and grinding (and sweating and laughing and losing shoes and parts of costumes and et cetera) at a dance party! this may have been our proudest costume year for both mimz and myself - sewing, painting, gluing - and all for under twenty bucks!!
commercial = over.

frankenstina & ... mimi. honestly. you just can't combine mimi and werewolf. try, i dare ya!

fruit are friends, NOT food. 

p.s. nah i take it back she's perfect. 

hi sorry it's me.

this picture has nothing to do with anything, but i just felt like it had to go somewhere, so here it is! you're welcome. 

I keep trying to think of funny things to write about, but I just keep having these really boring, serious thoughts that really no one - myself included - wants to go back and read.  Bleh. I keep checking the room around me for some sort of inspiration, but all I see is 4,334 pairs of shoes all piled under the chair by my door. Because an otherwise tidy life (which I can say after last night - I stayed up late cleaning because somehow my room has not cleaned itself for the last two months) should always remain a little bit unkempt.  Making metaphors out of objects in my room.  Been alone too long. SOS please help this is serious.

So anyways. Boring thoughts. Which I should have just put down in the first place, because otherwise you get paragraphs like the one above that have not in fact inspired any sort of thinking or feeling in any way.

Let me just say that yes - even though things in my life are going great and I could NOT ask for anything better, I still get in slumps sometimes. Seems weird, I know. But Andrew has talked me through this a lot this past week.

Sometimes I'm selfish.  

Last week was one of those times that I was selfish.  I don't mean to be! Here's what it comes down to.  My schedule changed in a little bit of a drastic way, which led to me coming home exhausted and smelling like a mixture of hand sanitizer and glue, oddly.  So naturally, I would find comfort in my bed. For two hours. 

But also, relationships.  I'm still trying to find the balance between being a good girlfriend that's not too clingy (which, if you know me, clingy is the only word that makes sense) yet also still be a good friend, sister, daughter, ward member, person, human, etc. And also, while yes, I've waited a longgg time to be with A and my relationship with him is sometimes too much of a fairytale, the closer we get, the more vulnerable I seem to become.  Meaning, I know my true colors are coming out more and more and that's a good but also terrifying place to be.  Let it be known that my biggest fear yet what I definitely am most capable of at anytime is letting him down - because hi. I AM a human, and that's what humans do, unfortunately.  

So back to selfishness.  I look back at last week and can't think of anything good that I did for anyone.  Now, knowing that I'm a fairly decent person, I'm sure I did something good at least once, but far be it from me to remember!  So like honestly hi. This was I have got to be better because I'm really starting to get annoyed with just thinking about myself all the time. I'm hard to be with 24/7, let me tell ya.  

Ah. So many words, I hope you stopped reading long ago.