Roughing It

This weekend A and I were able to sneak off and have a mini-vacation. He was able to request time off for an entire weekend (gasp!) so we booked a campsite a couple hours away near Idyllwild. We both love to camp but also have very little experience doing so and as it was our first trip just the two of us, we had some minor difficulties. For instance, due to work schedules, we arrived after dark and struggled to erect our tent (a grad gift) for the first time, especially because our lantern (also a grad gift) would not light because we couldn't figure out how to make it work in the dark. Luckily a military family camping next to us took pity on us and lent us their lantern so that we could set everything up (after which we figured out the lantern... go figure).
We love camping. It is nice to just get away from the city, breathe some clean air, roast some weenies, and get away from technology. Plus it is cheap so long as you have the supplies (most of which was gifted to us for graduation) so that works perfectly into our tight "justgraduatedandhavetonsofloansandbillsandnewfoundresponsibilities" budget. It was a fantastically lazy weekend. We literally sat around, ate food, talked, enjoyed each other's company, snoozed, took a walk, and had a water fight. It was completely perfect. I even only got sunburned a little! A is far too brown to burn... Lucky guy!
One of the things that the trip made me realize is how much I need would like a nice camera. I want to be able to look back and say, "wow we were super underprepared", or "look how I totally won that water fight... sucker!"when we are old and wrinkly. Or show our kids how young and dumb we were and how much fun we had anyways and how much we love each other. I'm considering just getting an ipod touch or something since those now have cameras and then I could just upload my pictures to instagram but it seems like kind of an unnecessary purchase since I already have a really old version of the ipod touch. And an ipad. And a laptop. I fully endorse simple, uncomplicated living and having that many technological gadgets seems unnecessary to me. Any thoughts? I have a digital camera that I should probably just use instead but that makes it such a process to upload to anywhere except for here.
Wow. I sound like such a little spoiled brat right now. Never mind. I will just find my old camera, and I will make it work. I am lucky to even have it.
Anyways, hopefully the next post will have some pictures. I adore me some pictures!!
I hope everyone had an amazingly relaxing weekend <3

Stress

People told me that when I graduated my life would not get easier. If anything, I was told that it would become more difficult. While it is true that my life has changed dramatically in the last few months, I don't think that it has gotten harder.

When I was in school, I had fun but my life mostly consisted of stress. I was stressed about school deadlines, work deadlines, upcoming dance performances, tests, homework, bills, family. You name it. Even when I was doing something fun to de-stress I couldn't fully enjoy it because the back of my head was constantly nagging and reminding me about the homework I should have been doing. I wasn't getting nearly enough sleep and as a result I was eating constantly to stay awake. My body revolted in a variety of forms; I was sick most of the time, I was physically in pain, and I was gaining a lot of weight.  None of this was okay with me but I couldn't seem to find any other way around it, even with my impeccable time management planning skills. Graduation seemed like a light at the end of the tunnel. If I could only just get there, everything would be okay...

I don't often create expectations in my mind for how things are going to be, maybe because I am afraid of being let down, or maybe because I just don't think about it. But Graduation was different. I was excited. I literally could not wait any longer. Being done with school could not come a minute too soon.

All of the sudden I was done, and guess what? I was right about one thing... It is easier happier.

Yes bills are stressful, yes moving is stressful, yes work can be stressful. Yes. BUT my downtime is my own now; there is nothing in the back of my mind nagging me to do homework. BUT I always have enough money to make it through and then some. BUT my deadlines are much more manageable now.

And then, one night, I made a promise to myself. I decided that from now on, my life is going to be as stress free and happy as possible. Life is just too short. If I don't get something done today, I will get it done tomorrow. If something goes wrong, calmly find a solution. There is absolutely no reason for stress, when life can be lived without. It just isn't worth it to live in that kind of environment all the time.  Obviously it is impossible to do without it entirely, but by taking steps to prevent it I feel that I am much happier now. I've lost weight. I sleep better. I make better choices. It can only be a good thing in my life.

Some things that help me to de-stress are as follows:
- Eating healthy --> This has been huge for me. Becoming a mostly vegetarian/vegan has made me feel so much better. My body seems to function so much better and I don't feel nearly as sluggish or icky. I literally feel clean.
- Exercising --> Everyone knows that exercise gives you endorphins which makes you happy. But honestly, feeling overweight is just such a downer. As I am getting healthier and finally losing some of the weight I put on while I was in school my mood just keeps going up and up! Not because I am getting skinnier, but because I feel more confident in my strength and health. Looking better is really just an added perk to the emotional boost that I get because I am pushing and challenging myself.
- Crocheting --> I love to crochet. No I'm not a granny. I love crocheting because it is mindless and repetitive, and sometimes that is exactly what I need to get my mind to turn off from my day. I happen to do really basic stuff when I crochet, like scarves and blankets. Nothing fancy, no frills. I also crochet to donate. Currently I am creating a collection of them so that I can bring a bunch all at once to a woman's shelter or something.
- Indulging --> This is so important to me. If I want Starbucks, I will get Starbucks. If I want an ice cream, that's okay. If I want to sit around and just read my book for an hour instead of doing something productive, I will. Now, obviously this can't happen every day or it wouldn't be an indulgence it would be a hinderance BUT the more I allow myself to indulge, the less I actually feel like I need to. The second I tell myself I cannot do something, I want to. By allowing myself to partake in these kinds of things, I feel less of a need to actually do them.
- Visiting friends --> Not many people live in my hometown anymore but I really enjoy going an seeing them anyways. It is always fun to get out and go somewhere else to hang out with people in their territory. It always feels like a mini vacation, even if it only lasts for a couple hours.
- Writing letters --> My best friend and I have been writing letters to each other since high school and its a practice that we still continue. I adore writing letters. With so much technological interference we sometimes forget how therapeutic hand writing things are. I could easily shoot her a text (and often do) but there is something that is just so thrilling about receiving something in the mailbox that is not a bill.
- Having a clean room --> This is huge for me. Organization and cleanliness are by far one of the easiest ways for my to head off stress.
- Looking nice --> It might sound superficial but I don't care. When I feel like I look good, I instantly feel more confident and happier. I carry myself differently because of how I feel.
- Playing with Beckham --> Let's face it, cats/kittens are hilarious. It always makes me laugh to see him doing crazy acrobatics while chasing something so mundane like a straw or piece of balled up paper. I mean seriously, who needs to buy "real" toys? :]

Long Overdue

It's clearly been a while. Several months in fact.
Pretty much as soon as I graduated, I decided that I didn't really need to do this, and so I started a journal (that I've actually been keeping, much to my surprise), started working full time, and created an instagram account (elainammarie). Between those things I feel like I've been documenting my life fairly effectively.
But then I realized (not for the first time) that the point of this blog was never necessarily to just document my life... It's because I feel like I have things to say. My journal is nice, and I hope that someone reads it someday, but it is definitely not public, and not necessarily something that I want read while I'm still in that present.I understand that basically no one reads this blog, but maybe one day that will change. At least I am putting myself out there. People can take whatever they want from this but if there is nothing given there can be nothing taken.
With that being said, I thought that I should just give a few quick updates about what's been going on in my life these past few months.
Pictures are worth a thousand words right?

I GRADUATED

My Parents

My Grama and Bopa

A

A's Parents

A's Mom made the cool money leis! 

My Grad Party

Cousins

I GOT A KITTEN

Beckham at 1 week old

Beckham a few days ago

MY HORSE DIED

Noel a few years after I got her

I BECAME VEGETARIAN/MOSTLY VEGAN

ALSO I MOVED HOME
There are no pictures for that but it is extremely important right now. I was planning on moving to Long Beach with a friend but decided that it wasn't the best decision for either of us and we just had to suck it up and do what was right. It's hard but I'm making it work. I am currently commuting approximately 145miles a day during my work week.

I know that none of that information was very in depth but it's been a hard month and I am looking forward to just moving on and living my life.

Pantry Makeover

So I have been getting really restless and can't focus on anything that is school related. I only have a week and a half left and its a good thing because I literally cannot take it anymore. I can't focus, I just can't seem to find the willpower. So today, after several failed attempts at studying, I decided to take on something that was driving me nuts... My Pantry.

I currently live in a small 3 bed 2 bath house with three other people: A married couple (T&G) and my former roommate (V). Because we have all lived on our own before living with each other, we have way too much stuff and have had to downsize, especially in the kitchen. Even after 6 months of living all together, we still have a lot of stuff and it tends to lead to heavy disorganization in the kitchen dept.
As for our pantry, it is just shy of being a walk in and we have divided the shelves according to:
1- Large storage, community storage, and animal food storage
2- V
3- T&G
4- Me
5- Tupperware
Floor- Alcohol
So with that being the layout I have exactly one shelf to house all of my pantry needs. We do not generally share our food with each other because everyone is very individual in their needs and wants and the logistics of trying to share would be a nightmare. Usually my shelf is pretty organized but lately I haven't been very careful and it is very easy for such a small amount of space to become out of hand. Plus it makes it hard to find anything so I never really know what I have or what I want to eat.

I apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality of all of the pictures in this post.  There isn't a light in our pantry.

So last week I needed to run some errands at Target and I decided to look into some super cute organizational baskets I had found via one of my favorite BLOGS and lo and behold, they were on sale! Hurray! Sales totally work in my broke college student budget! And what else? They just happen to come in my favorite color. You can't beat that!
At any rate I bought four and decided to leave them in my car until school was over buuuuut that was a fail. At least I waited a week right?
So I laid them out on my counter and started filling them with like things:

Snack Basket

Pasta/Lentils/Stuffing/Pasta Basket

Spices Basket

Cereal Basket

And then I put everything back into the pantry.

And now I feel so much better about my life and I can actually see everything that is in there. It is much more inspiring than before and it only took me about 10 minutes total. It's the little things that just make such a huge difference.

The Necessity of Work Out Buddies

When I was in high school, I was very very active. I was dancing around 30 hours a week between dance team at my school and studio classes and rehearsals. I ate constantly and not always the most healthily but it was okay because I was so active. In my sophomore year I had several adults in my life take me aside and ask me if I was struggling with eating disorders because I was 5'8" and weighed somewhere around 125lbs. I was teeny tiny. None of my friends bothered to ask me because they saw the absurd amount of food that I brought to school and ate throughout the day. I really miss that environment of not having a choice of whether to go to dance or not and getting pushed when I got there. I was strong and in fantastic shape and its because I had teachers yelling at me all day. I couldn't get away with not doing it.

I'm on the right. Look how skinny I was!

When I got to college, I was accepted onto the dance team here, so for a while I was able to be pushed and forced to exercise. But time went on and I kept getting injured and eventually couldn't be on the team anymore and I was just gaining and gaining weight. I'm not sure when I hit my highest weight but it was somewhere around 170. I was horrified. My dad had always told me that the day I stopped dancing I would get fat because I always just ate so much. And the thing is, when my dancing got to a minimum, my eating habits stayed the same as what I was used to doing with a 30 hour dance week. It's a common misconception that dancers don't eat. Wrong. Dancers eat more than any other group I have yet come into contact with. We love eating. It's our second favorite thing outside of dance. And I kept eating. And my dad was right.
I tried to go to the gym off and on throughout college. I would get really motivated and then the second I had to get out of bed early I would fail. Especially with my schedule, giving up even one hour of sleep seemed like too much of a sacrifice. If I decided to go after school I was  always hungry, or I had homework, or I hadn't seen my friends all week and wanted to see them now. Excuses. Logical and fairly legitimate excuses. But excuses nonetheless. And I was able to put it off until tomorrow, and tomorrow I was able to put it off until the next day. And so on. Clearly I wasn't making any progress.
(I will say that I have mostly changed my eating habits, and I'm proud of myself for that. Health is like 80% food and so far I am learning a lot and making huge progress.)
So with my motivation clearly not there, I decided that Lent would be the perfect time for me to start running. Clearly making the commitment to myself was not good enough motivation so I would make it to God. I decided that I would run three times a week. I never decided how much I was allowed to or needed to run, because I figured if I could just get myself out there I would do my best. It makes me sad to say that I have mostly followed through. So far I have gone twice a week. Or all the times that I have gone running though, only three times has been without a partner.

My Work-out Buddy

G lives in my house with me. His wife T and I were hallmates our freshman year of college while G was overseas serving our military. Now we all live together along with our other friend V. G and I started running together in the mornings. It's great because he is this huge Mexican man who is an army vet and is trained as a medic. He is literally the perfect person to run with, especially in my neighborhood, where young women really shouldn't go running alone unless its in the middle of the day. We got up this morning and I seriously didn't want to. It sounded like a good idea last night but as soon as my alarm went off I was praying that I wouldn't hear him get up so I could just go back to sleep. Well the jerk got up and I am so glad that he did. We went for our run, which is slowly getting faster and longer, and when we got back I was so grateful. This is why I never succeeded before. I needed someone to keep me accountable and make me run when I say I'm going to. He has even brought new ideas into our workout. Usually we do interval training and it is so much more effective that running and you can do more of it. It's a blessing to have someone in my life that will make sure I do this. I have already noticed myself getting stronger. V feels left out because she is a runner too, but she is far more experienced and I haven't told her that it is my goal to be able to run with her and not feel like a giant LOSER.
Anyways, the morale of the story is that if you don't have a work out buddy, you need to get one. The only times I have ever really been truly successful at working out consistently is when I've had a running partner or work out buddy that I meet at the gym. People are lazy, but we don't want to let our friends down.
Just do it :]

Almost Done

That has seriously been my mantra this entire quarter and now it really is true. Only 3 more weeks until I am officially a college graduate!!!

Can I get some applause here?

I am completely beyond excited. I have a whole list of things that I can't wait to be able to do and accomplish.
1. I have a whole bunch of books on my list to read.
2. I really want to get more into blogging. I follow a lot of blogs and have gotten a ton of great ideas that I would like to put into practice in my own life and then share that experience.
3. Cooking. I recently discovered Whole Foods. Oh my.
4. Organizing. Words can't express my excitement for this one.
5. Riding. Oh my. I can't wait for this. I have literally been dreaming about riding almost every night for the last month. I am so ready to be in the horse world again. My grandparents even brought me my chaps, boots, and helmet back from their house out of state so that I could have something to ride with next month. So so so so so excited.
6. I have started running. It is what I decided to do for Lent. Rather than give up something I decided to add something. Its still a sacrifice and takes will power and commitment so I have decided that it's acceptable. I usually become a pescatarian (sp?) for Lent but since I am trying to not eat a lot of meat anyways, I thought that would be a waste. I haven't been as good about running as I hoped to be but at least its a start.

My housemate G and I have been running together. This was from our 5am run this week.

7. Working. Call me crazy but I am so excited to take on the rest of my bills from my parents and just work, save, and be completely financially independent. Yahoo man. I love paying for myself, and creating budgets, the whole nine yards.
There are more things, but I'm in a rush right now so that's all for today.

Updates:
A finished up his training for his new job and was transfered from his local training location to a location near his home town. He is now about an hour away from me and it sucks. I miss him terribly and even though I have already visited him once, I know that I won't be able to do it all the time because it is a lot of gas and time to see him. It has been a little hard to cope since I'm used to having him around all the time but honestly the hardest part is (predictably) at night. I don't feel as safe (or as warm... he's seriously my heat blanket) when I'm falling asleep and therefore fall asleep later and don't get as much sleep, leading to me missing or turning off my alarms without waking up. Its been bad, and I want to adjust but then again I don't because then its like I'm used to not being with him :[

This is from 2 1/2 years ago in Tahoe. Can you believe how time flies?!

I got a 100% on my African history midterm :]

I got to perform with my dance company PPDC at a Guardian Scholars event. This is particularly near and dear to my heart because the Guardian Scholars is a group that helps emancipated foster kids go through college, and I want to work with foster kids. Plus it was just a really great day to bond with the group and get to know everyone a little better.

This is most of PPDC <3

I think that's mostly it except to say that there are a lot more posts coming in March and then onward. I am so excited for the next few months. Big changes are coming in my life and I can't wait to share!

RIP Jezabell

I woke up to my poor baby dead yesterday morning. I miss you already. I hope you are happy and safe and running on a magical wheel in hamster heaven.

It's all about who you know...

People always told me that when I got older it would be "all about who you know". At first this used to upset me because I was (and still am) an exceptionally hard worker. I just figured that if people could just see what I could offer then I would always have work and people would always hire me... And on and on with the naive thoughts. When I got to college I slowly started learning that, as usual, my assumptions were going to make an ass out of me if I didn't check them.
At this point, as I am gearing up to graduate in March, I realize that this could not be more true. Every single job that I have at this moment, I got because I knew someone who told me of the opportunity, or someone knows someone else who knows someone. It is mindboggling to think of what my life would be like if I had made different friends or if the people around me weren't so generous.
With that being said, it is also imperative to take advantage of the opportunities presented to you. To not be lazy. To have faith. Being independent is hard but worth it.

And for no particular reason except that I'm feeling nostalgic (and I'm also super thankful that I know them)... Some really really old pictures.

Best Friend Therapy

Most people know this about me, although I'm not sure that I've said it on here, but I was home schooled until high school. I loved everything about being home schooled, but that is for another post. What I am most thankful for about home schooling right now is for this girl:

I have known L since we were in first grade. We lost touch for about two years in middle school but reconnected in high school. Well she lives about an hour away from me, where she goes to school but we always try to get together at least a couple times a quarter. In the midst of my life recently I really just needed a day with my best friend. So I went. And it was just what I needed.

I am so thankful that I have people in my life that pick me up when I'm down.

This picture is highly motivational for me. I look like a cow. A cow in a very cute outfit.