Losing My Mind

I thought I would be cool. 

As a relatively passive person on a daily basis, not to mention somebody who goes over these unlikely scenarios again and again in my head, I thought that I would be able to maintain my composure should I ever accidentally run into a notable someone.

I did not anticipate, however, completely losing my shit. 

I spent yesterday at Universal Studios in Orlando with my best friend. I hadn't seen her in ages and thus decided to take a trip to the sunshine state for a little catch-up. It just so happens that the first weekend I'm in Florida is the first weekend of PlaylistLive, a YouTube convention which brings together content creators, consumers, and advertisers. It's like VidCon, but on a smaller scale and with more fan girls. 

Anyway, we were strolling around the Wizarding World of Harry Potter when a set of neatly knotted dreadlocks appeared about twenty feet from me. I'd recognize these locks anywhere; they belong to somebody with whom I have developed a serious relationship, albeit one he is not aware of. 

When I say I lost my shit, I don't mean lost like I occasionally lose my phone for five minutes. I mean my common sense and reason and relative passivity all dropped from my head onto the ground and rolled into the gutter, never to be found again. 

I rushed up to Louis Cole, a semi-famous YouTube creator who documents his nomadic travels via daily vlogs, and somehow stammered a sentence that I'm not entirely sure he understood. But my phone was on picture mode, so he reached out for me, and we posed for this photo.

Photo credit to my bestie who managed to suppress her laughter long enough to snap the shot. Because that's what friends are for.

Fortunately, I ran in to him again today and was able to maintain my composure and, hopefully, redeem myself.

If you have a free moment, make sure to check out Louis Cole's YouTube channel, Fun For Louis.

http://m.youtube.com/user/FunForLouis

Louis recently collaborated with several people on a trek across India, one of those people being Mr. Ben Brown, whom I also had the pleasure of meeting. Ben's passion lies in film and photography, something that is evident in his absolutely incredible Instagram account, so give that a follow as well.

http://instagram.com/mrbenbrown1

Who inspires you? Drop a comment or a link in the space below!

Safe travels!

XOXO 

Why is my fire alarm going off?

Hi Friends,

I’m back!

Back from Boston, back in Boise, and back on that don’t-eat-don’t-sleep-study-my-life-away grind. And, let’s be honest, the only reason I don’t eat is NOT because I don’t like food.

I love food.

My oven, however, hates food. It insists on spewing smoke and setting off the fire alarm every time I try to use it.

Every. Single. Time.

After I got the fire alarm to stop screaming at me yesterday, I had to remind myself that there are things much more challenging than cooking.

Here’s the list I came up with:

Driving

Athletic tape fixes everything, and yes, that is Taylor (my boss's daughter) in the back seat. 

I may have accidentally driven my boss’s car into a parking garage this summer. But to be fair, that wall was a lot closer than it seemed. They should have put a warning sticker on it.

Nannying

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Massachusetts family, and I miss them dearly. However, nannying is freaking hard. Not only do temper tantrums that make you want to run away to Canada, but there are also all these the little habits that kids have that just get under your skin.

Like breathing. Why do you have to breathe so loud? I’m trying to do something, but I can’t focus because your breathing is at a whole new decibel.

Going to the gym

So I have this philosophy: the gym is where happiness goes to die.

Those who tell you that they enjoy going to the gym are either liars or the people that participate in the meat market that is the campus rec.

Also, evidently there is a gym dress code memo that I didn’t receive.

Hi, yea, aren’t those compression shorts uncomfortable? Like do they keep riding up your butt? I just don’t understand.

Going to bed early

Every morning, when I drag myself from my castle of sheets and pillows, I can’t help but think, “Self, tonight you have to go to bed early.” Unfortunately, somewhere between the morning and and the night, I find myself aimlessly wandering through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix. I eventually fall asleep from sheer inability to keep my eyes open, and drag myself out of bed the same way every morning.

It’s becoming a problem.

Blogging

I really enjoy writing and posting, but obviously I’ve been on the struggle bus for quite some time. However, there are some pretty nifty experiences occurring in the next little while, and I’d love to share them with you lovely Internet folk.

Thanks for sticking with me, and I’ll talk to you soon.

What do you all find challenging? Let me know in the comment section below!

XOXO

Safe Travels!

P.S. It’s October 3^rd.

Happy Mean Girls Appreciation Day

Tragic Departures, Alleged Murders, and the Most Upsetting Missed Connection

Happy end of June, my lovely Internet friends!

   For those of us who love Boston (and all the teams therein) and have a minor obsession with a certain British-Irish boy band, the torturously long month of June has finally, thankfully, come to a close.

   Things were getting pretty gnarly.

   Not sure what I’m talking about? That’s all right. I’ve got your back.

   Here’s what you missed:

  

1)   Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce are leaving the Boston Celtics to continue their professional basketball careers with the Brooklyn Nets. This trade also includes a transfer of ex-Kardashian Kris Humphries from the Nets to Boston.  

   Perhaps his time with the Celtics will last longer than his 72-day marriage to Kim.

  

 2)  After nine years with the Celtics, Head Coach Doc Rivers is moving to Los Angeles to coach the Clippers. While he did play for the Clippers in his younger years – so his transition appears to have sentimental origins – Coach Rivers departing at the same time as KG and Paul Pierce is, at the very least, upsetting.

   As in throw your cell phone at the wall in order to rid yourself of the ESPN update kind of upsetting.

 

 3)  The Bruins lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in the 6^th Game of the Stanley Cup Finals. More specifically, the Bruins lost the game in about 17 seconds.

 4)  Former Patriots’ tight end Aaron Hernandez was arrested at his home and charged with murder of a semi-pro football player.

   At least Tim Tebow is here to pray for him.

5)   One Direction was 20 minutes away from my house singing their beautifully foreign hearts out to a sold out Comcast Center occupied almost exclusively by ten year old girls while I laid on my bed watching reruns of NCIS.

    Life is so unfair.

    I neither saw them in concert nor met them in person, meaning I didn’t get to share the numerous and slightly sexual innuendos that my roommates and I came up with over the course of our freshman year at university.

   I even painted a sign that reads “Irish You Were Na…”

   Nevermind.

Hopefully, July will be better.

XOXO,

Safe Travels!

Brad Pitt’s Legacy: Airplane Seat Belts

Today is a day of great discovery, comparable to Darwin’s Galapagos finches and Magellan’s global trek across the globe.

   Today, I learned, via Brad Pitt’s new flick World War Z, the intended purpose of airplane seat belts.

   I’d like to preface this post with a big thank you to Mr. Pitt for helping me understand this previously unsolved mystery and giving meaning to an aspect of my life that prior to today had none.

   Just so you lovely Internet folk know, the “Z” in the title stands for "zombies" even though everybody is infected with what is essentially rabies, as opposed to Undead Syndrome. For accuracy’s sake, it should be entitled World War R, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue as sweetly, now does it? 

   Pitt, however, does roll off the tongue very sweetly, even with his shirt on for the duration of the film.

   Jeez, Brad, do you even age at all?

   Okay. Here’s the scene:

   Hint: It helps to picture yourself as Brad Pitt. Just trust me.

   You are aboard the last flight out of a city being overrun by rabid, rabies-infected undead. You’re sitting in the front of the plane when a scream from the back echoes through the thick blue curtains that separates business class from economy seating. You and your companion, a badass female Israeli soldier, exchange panicked glances before the infection starts to spread to everybody aboard the flight.

   It’s very Snakes on a Plane.

   You, being the only one who remains calm – naturally – take the hand grenade from your Israeli companion and blow up the back half of the aircraft, creating a hole the size of a mini van that sucks all of the undead out into the air, where they fall to their deaths … meaning they become more dead than they already are.

   What a perplexing thought. Do the undead die? Can you take the life from something that is lifeless? How to you define something that is neither dead nor alive.

   I digress.

   Anyway, you manage to survive the grenade explosion and fight against the pull of this gaping monstrosity in order to buckle yourself and your companion into one of the few remaining seats while the plane plummets toward the earth.

   The plane crashes, there’s an explosion (because these things are always accompanied by an explosion), and you pass out.

   You awaken, still in your seat, suspended in the air with a large piece of shrapnel cutting transversely through your abdomen. However, you are not dead. Your Israeli companion is not dead. And the only other zombie-slash-rabies-infected individual who happened to be fastened into a seat belt is not dead…. Not more dead than before, anyway.

   The lesson is this: if the world is overrun by zombies, you manage to get onto a plane to escape the madness, the plane is overrun by zombies, and you have a hand grenade readily available, make sure you can securely fasten your seat belt low and tight across your lap so that you can survive and save the human race.

Unfortunately, I did not take this photo. It was posted by the UK's The Telegraph and can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9717405/Brad-Pitt-in-plane-crash-film-scene.html
The Telegraph credits the photo to Splash News.  

   Also, congratulations on being Brad Pitt because that is an accomplishment in itself.

XOXO,

Safe Travels!

Check out the trailer here. It's pretty nifty.

Forgive the Massholes, They Have Accents

   I know, I know. It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog. However, it would have been incredibly deceitful of me to write a post for The Wild and The Free when I have been neither wild nor free. But, on the up side, I am back now, and I won’t disappear again…hopefully.

   My life has not been as silent as my presence on the Internet, though. In fact, it has been a whirlwind of activity since my life-changing adventure to the city of my people (Boston, for those of you who have been living under a rock).

   I even became a parent!

   …just kidding.

   But I am a nanny in Massachusetts. I moved to Walpole (40 minutes southwest of Boston) about a week ago to take care of this little munchkin for the summer.  

   The job is challenging to say the least, but I have a plethora of stories to tell and pending adventures on which to embark that I get to share with you all.

   None of this could have happened without the suggestion from a good friend of mine, so thank you so much Brooke. You're the best.

   Although I made the decision to move cross country at the drop of a hat (not the wisest), I am happy that I did. My advice of the day? 

   Seize all opportunities, even when you're scared. Something good will almost always come from a moment of bravery-slash-stupidity. 

    In my case, the "good" is all around me. The Atlantic Ocean is 45 minutes away from my house. All the trees stretch gracefully into the sky, as if they are racing toward the rays of sunlight from directly overhead. When the wind blows, the leaves rustle and create a soft whisper that echoes for miles.

   When this is the view in my neighborhood, it isn’t even hard to convince myself to go for a run. Maybe I'll even make a habit of it. 

   The only downside is humidity; by the time I get back to the house post-workout, I look like I went for a swim in a pool of sweat. Cute look, right?

   It’s how I get all my boyfriends.

   But really, the houses here…

   Conjuring up my rudimentary knowledge of architecture and its history, I can say with certainty that these houses are…old.

   Really old.

   Like pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock old.

   …Give or take a few decades.

   For the most part, all of the homes are constructed in a classic colonial style without regard toward modernism or postmodernism. They have large porches and hardwood floors and breakfast nooks that look out into the surrounding vegetation.

   The home in which I live has the charm of Robert Frost’s New England, the comfort of a log cabin in the winter, and several reading chairs that Rory Gilmore would kill for.

   It’s nothing short of magical.

   Speaking of magical, the regional accent is hypnotic to those of us unaccustomed to it's irresistible allure.

   I find myself at Stop&Shop (the east coast version of Fred Meyer) or Dunkin’ Donuts completely and sometimes embarrassingly engaged in other people’s conversations without their knowledge or consent.

   I couldn’t care less that Charles and Martha are getting a divorce or that Michael, Robert’s 16-year-old son, crashed the family’s Lexus. Who are these people? I don’t know. But I like the way they talk.

   I am much more interested in the fact that Charles sounds like Chawles and Martha is Mawtha. Would it be wrong to name my child Chawles just because it sounds like the upgraded version of Charles?

   I have spent my free time tirelessly working on perfecting my accent (in order to talk the talk while I walk the walk), although yesterday I was slightly chastised for saying “pawk the caw in the Hawvawd Yawd.”

   Evidently, that’s what all the annoying tourists say.

   Perhaps it was these annoying tourists that brought the infamous Utah driving to Massachusetts because, on the real, this is a group of terrible drivers. 

   This is coming from Yours Truly, who happens to have managed to crash into a car that was completely parallel and right next to mine while I was backing out.

   How? I don't know. It just happened. 

   The point is that I do not label a group of individuals “bad drivers” unless they deserve it, and I was quickly vindicated in my observations.  

   I was informed upon my arrival that the generalization I have made is not the first time it has been asserted. 

   In fact, Massachusetts drivers have earned themselves a nickname in the New England area:

   Massholes.

   See what they did there? So clever.

   However, we must forgive them their faults because the aforementioned accent happens to be so charming that it may just knock your socks off. At the very least, the fact that they barely passed driver's education slips your mind. 

   While I could comment on this regional dialect for days, Taylor (the munchkin in the photo) and I have eight chapters of The Tale of Despereaux to read, followed by a very intense third game of the Stanley Cup Finals.

  

Go Bruins!

XOXO,

Safe Travels!

           

P.S. While searching for a Subway, Taylor and I accidentally wandered on to the campus of Wellesley College, an all-girls collegiate institution with a stellar academic reputation. It also happens to be one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever laid eyes on. My sudden interest in graduate school prompted me to schedule a tour while Taylor is in camp on Thursday. I’ll let you know what I find. Also, updates on Fenway, Harvard, and George’s Island are all on their way, I promise!

P.P.S. Oh my goodness a hummingbird just flew right in front of my face! Is this real life??