Tales of a Human Lobster

Once upon a time I went swimming.

It was fun.

The next day was not fun.

If you can't tell, that is one killer sunburn.

Or the day after. or the day after that.

Now hear me out. I usually allow myself one good sunburn at the beginning of summer just to get my tan going, then I am careful for the rest of the summer. So far in my life that has worked for me. Until now. This sunburn is so bad that it even blistered on top of my shoulder. That has never happened before. Do you know the excruciating pain of having your bra straps rub a second-degree burn all day? I do. It's painful. Very painful. So painful, in fact, that I want to scream every time I move.

Not fun.

It reminds me of the time that I went to Florida, and like a fool thought that as long as I rotated my body often enough I wouldn't get too sunburned. Wrong.

As John Wayne would say "Life is hard. It's harder if you're stupid." I was stupid. I looked like a sun-dried tomato. And it hurt to even wear a shirt. That made for the most uncomfortable plane ride ever.

Moral of the story: wear sunscreen. Being sunburned is possibly the least fun thing ever.

Adventures of a wannabe runner

As many of you know, my best friend Kirsten is a crazy runner and I think she is awesome. Basically my whole goal in life is to be just like her. Ok, not really. But I do think she is pretty awesome. And she does inspire me to run. Therefore I set a goal to run three 5k races this summer. First one is next week. But have I been training? Not really.

 So last week my three friends invited me to go for a 4 mile run with them. At first I thought, "oi. That's a long run. But...maybe it's not THAT long. Ok I'll go." I figured it would probly be a good idea to run once or twice before my race. That was my first mistake. 4 miles is a long run for someone who hasn't ran in like 6 months. My next mistake was thinking that I could keep up with my friends. I was able to keep up with them for the first mile (although we did stop halfway through to stretch). After the first mile I was dying. So I backed off and went my own pace the rest of the way. But I didn't know where the turn-around spot was, and they got so far ahead of me that I couldn't see where they went. So I took a wrong turn and ran 2 blocks before I realized I was going the wrong way. So I turned around and headed home. They all finished 15 minutes before me. It was kinda embarrassing.

The worst part though was the next two days. My legs hurt so bad I didn't even want to walk. They hurt especially bad when I walked down stairs. With every step I would say "ouch. Ouch." and my niece would say "Kewsey what's the matter?" if it didn't hurt so bad, it would've been cute.

The best part was Saturday morning when my legs stopped hurting. I went for another run, but this time only 3 miles and at my own pace. This time I ran 2 whole miles before I had to walk. And even then I only had to walk about 2.5 blocks total off and on. I was so happy and proud of myself. Now I know I can at least make it 5k. Now just to improve my time.

You can just call me Usain Bolt.

                        

Smelly cat...

Today I met a demon cat. Legitimately. I was babysitting my niece and she saw their new neighbor's kitten, so we went out to play with it. It came running right over to us. At first I thought it was cute how it would try to pounce on our toes. Then I realized that it really wanted to eat them or something. Then it started trying to claw its way up our legs. My poor niece was terrified. When we would try to pet it, it would claw and bite at us. It was a mean little sucker. It got to where if it even moved in our general direction, we would both squeal and run away. When my sister got home, she thought it was really amusing, and when I left she scolded me for not running it over. But even though I am not fond of cats, and I think this one in particular is the spawn or Satan, I can't quite bring myself to intentionally kill such a fuzzy little creature. But! Remember the moral of the story: cats are evil.

I mean look at it. Doesn't it just look evil?

Two bare feet on the dashboard

Hello friends! I am so sorry that I haven't written in so long. I just haven't gotten around to it. I've just been all over the place. Let me give you an update on the last month and a half of my life.

 I have a job working for a company similar to LSR in Star Valley. I work in one house with the same 3 guys all the time. I love them. They are so fun to spend time with. And while working with them, I have become rather good at playing Monopoly. I have also learned that there are a million different versions of monopoly. Evening shifts are fun because I get to hang out with the guys. Graveyard shifts are meh. Good b/c you don't have to do anything, but bad b/c you have to come up with someway to stay awake all night (which for someone with my gift of sleep, is quite the challenge.)

When I'm not working, I'm babysitting my niece. She is 2 years old and stinking adorable. She's got so much personality I don't even know how it all fits in her little body. We watch movies,feed the ducks, go for walks, take naps, run errands, and play with all the neighbor kids. As a result of playing with the neighbor kids so much, I am getting a rather nice tan this summer. And I have officially claimed the title of favorite aunt for good.

I also get to spend lots of time with my neighbors. I like to visit Janalie and Shannon. I like to play games with Spencer, Clayton, and Mike. I am working on my Just Dance skills. And also, I have converted to being a fan of Dominion. Dominion is one of the nerdiest card games ever, but I love it. I finally won a game, and was so proud. Then I found out that there is a Dominion iPad app. HELLO!!! Now I am just really addicted and play it all the time. It's great!!! That about sums up my life in Logan, so how about now I tell you about some specific things I've done?

A few weeks ago I went home for Cortney's graduation. That was the first time I've been somewhere so public in SV since I graduated. I was a little nervous, but it wasn't too bad. But then I went to the SV YSA ward, and that was the most nerve racking thing of my life. I usually runs and hide to avoid running into people I went to school with. But here I was walking into a whole church of them. Not my idea of fun. But that also wasn't as bad as I expected, but I definitely won't be going back anytime soon. The highlight of the weekend was going camping up Grover park. It was so fun. I got to ride my 4-wheelers around, roast marshmallows up the wazoo, see old family friends, and watch some teenagers dig their truck out of a huge mud puddle. My parents invited the Allreds and Cooks to join us, and it was so fun to visit with them. I always love seeing my old young women leaders. We went on some great trails with the machines. The kids learned how to shoot a BB gun, and a .22. Man they loved that. Nathan even choose to shoot the gun rather than ride the 4-wheeler, and that is really saying something. It was so much fun. Definitely what I would consider my own kind of paradise.

 A few weeks ago for home evening, we had a Texas snowball fight. So they filled nylon socks up with flour, then we played dodgeball with them. That became just a free-for-all that was so fun. It was totally a blast, and I would totally recommend it to anyone looking for a mutual or FHE activity.

 That is all I can think of for now that has been going on in my life. So maybe now I will just close with a few random thoughts that I have had recently. 1) I am in love with this new country singer named Hunter Hayes. I love him. Period. 2) I am wanting to read some CS Lewis books this summer, I'm working on his autobiography right now and it is really interesting. 3) the other day one of my friends left Logan for good. I was really sad to see him go. He was a great guy and a great friend. I will really miss him a lot. 4) my best friend Jade is leaving for Korea in like 3 weeks. I might die without her. 5) I have really been missing my other best friend Elysha. I keep wishing she was her in Logan instead of serving a mission in Taiwan. But it know it's for the better cause. Now my next goal in life is to convince her to come back here for grad school so we can be roommates again. 6) I need to start running. I have to run three 5K races this summer, and I haven't run ten feet since last November. That's a problem. 7) my missionary friends all come home soon. Holy freak!!! That is so crazy but i cannot wait to see all them! 8) I LOVE SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!! Ok that really is all for this post. I will try to be better about posting more often. But until then. Peace out. Adios mis amigos. Farewell. God be with you til we meet again. Take luck! Goodbye. :)

Sweet Summertime

Hello! School has ended and summer has begun! Bring it on!!! I made it through finals alive. My final grades are slightly disappointing. I wanted good grades so well and worked so hard this semester, but I fell just short. I got one A, two B+'s, one B, and one C. But I can't complain; I know I got the grades I deserved. I started out the semester so strong, spending all day every day at the library. Then I got my internship, which claimed my afternoons so I had to start waking up early to study before classes and stay late after work to study. Then I got a boyfriend, which claimed my evenings. Therefore, my plan to spend all day everyday doing homework this semester, went down the drain. This semester has just about killed me. Trying to spread myself so thing and balance so many more aspects of life than I ever have before. Seriously it's been so the last couple weeks of school, I could barely drag myself out of bed, and when I would get to the library I would fall asleep while studying. It was just bad b/c my self discipline was completely beaten out of me.

But now I am looking ahead to summer and the fun that it will hold. I have a job that will hopefully be enjoyable. I am planning on several trips to Bear Lake, several camping trips, a Real Salt Lake game, lots of trips to Star Valley, and lots and lots of fun. I am going to make this summer the best ever. I'm going to make every day count. It's time for me to start enjoying life again instead of just trudging through it. Watch out world, here I come!!!

I see the light at the end of the tunnel...

The end of the semester is so close, I can feel it...literally. My body is screaming for me to give up and just get some decent rest. It's a good thing that the end is near b/c I really don't think I could keep this up much longer. This week has been education suicide. I've been working on 3 group projects lately, and they were all due this week. I had a formal presentation on Disney Co. and Hong Kong on Wednesday, and I think that one went really well. I actually enjoyed working with the kids in that group. They were a fun, but hard-working group. Then I had another presentation in my small-group communication class. That presentation went fairly well, but I am ready to be done with that group. There is one girl in the group who is absolutely adorable, and I love. But there was also one boy who we all wanted to strangle. He fought tooth and tail on every little detail on the project, even when every other member of the group agreed that we felt differently about the matter. So we spent a lot of time arguing aimlessly about petty details. I also had two tests this week. It has definitely been a rough week. And it's definitely not helping that I'm running on an average of 6-6.5 hours of sleep per night.

On a different note, remember that last post that I made with the story of the girl and the boy? Well I'm going to add to that story. Well after the girl and the boy started liking each other and spending time together, they started really dating. Now the girl has a boyfriend. This is a new adventure for her, and so far she says that she has really enjoyed it. It took a while for her to get used to, but now she is very happy with the arrangement. The boy is very nice and courteous to her. He always acts like a perfect gentleman. They still get along really well, and things are great.

Now another story time...The other day I came home from hanging out with my friend Jeff, and my roommates started having a Disney sing-along. It was great. Then Sophie tried to steal my phone to txt Jeff. She went prancing through the apartment like a horse, and I went chasing after her to get my phone back. She went into my closet so I had her cornered. Then we started watching youtube videos of Disney clips put to sappy love songs. After an hour or so of that, we started making a list, ranking all of the attractive animated men. We ranked them from 1-20. Prince Eric was #1 of course. Other guys on the list were John Smith, Cornelius (Thumbelina), Dimitri, Prince Phillip. And of course, just to seal the deal, I had to publish it on facebook to make it official. It was the funniest, most random night ever. Janalie and Sophie were so hyper and goofy, it was hilarious.

I figure my blog is pretty secure, and I don't know if anyone reads it anyway. So I am going to tell a story.

Once upon a time there was a girl, and she went to institute where she met a boy. They hit it off pretty quickly. The next week, they happened to run into each other on their way home from school. The boy offered her a ride home, and then he did the same thing almost every other day that week. During their daily walks to his car, they got to know each other and each decided that they would like to spend some time getting to know the other. Then the girl's sister called and offered her tickets to a big event happening in the near by city. So the girl invited the boy to go with her. It turned into a date, (and a rather good date at that). They talked a lot in the car and realized that they had a whole lot in common. In the next few days, they communicated a lot, and saw each other every day. One day they went to get frozen yogurt for the boy's birthday. Another day they played Frisbee for a little while. One day he tricked her by telling her that he knew one of her most embarrassing stories (her friend had told him the story). And one day they decorated Easter eggs with all of the girl's friends. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. :)