first date?

Mitch and I were trying to figure out when our official first date was... I might of initiated the conversation, asked & answered all questions and decided it was unknown... so let me rephrase that by saying I was having a conversation with myself out loud while Mitch was in the same room... All that came to my mind involved an entire hockey team ... dinner at Outback... with the team. Beach and boating in Florida.... with the team. Day at the zoo, hiking and afternoons poolside in Phoenix... with at least one other member of the team. Weekend rendezvous in Vegas ... with the team. You get my point. For Christmas, Mitchell surprised me with tickets to John Mayer and I'm declaring our concert tonight our official first date... without the team!

roommate reunion 2010.

When my roommates and I made a pact to have a reunion every year after we graduated college, I couldn't help but to wonder what would be the perfect place for four young, desirable, virtually inseparable bachelor girls who lead and confide in each other in all facets of their womanhood to parade down crowded city streets in Manolos, spend endless hours shopping and galavanting thru art galleries, talk about their love (read: sex) lives over breakfast and become regular glitterati socializing amongst the cultural elite... it was unanimous... only in New York City could the four of us find the Carrie Bradshaw in all of us!!! Here is a photog chronicling of the sexy exploits that took place on our weekend away in Manhattan.

in the candy shop at FAO Schweetz

not the cash cab ...

heading uptown.

Mamma Mia

Times Square

Wall Street

Stock Exchange

love, love, love you girls!!!

carefoot is their name ....

... hockey is their game.

I thought it was absolutely adorbz (that was for you, Car!) that Mitchell, his Dad and 2 older brothers (L-R: Clayton, Mitchell, Tyler and Brad) spent Easter weekend playing in a hockey tournament in Saskatchewan together. What I didn't expect to happen was this:

That's right, folks! They are the (insert name of hockey tourney... which is probably some sort of conference or division... here) Champions!!

Mitchell was quite the stud getting 2 hat tricks (That's 3 goals in a game, Car!) Next year, I will be cheering Mitchell on live in the crowd clad in a t-shirt that reads: I have a FOOT fetish! When I mentioned to my love that I wanted to be there next year, his

exact words were (and I quote) "Not a chance. The guys wouldn't go if you all came." Psssh. What happened to the days when I was "your good luck charm" releasing endorphins before games?!

Take advice from your Cornell message board four years ago ... I, the blonde girl from Florida, should be donning your jersey and representing your team at away games! ...

... He didn't mean it. I know he'll change his mind and my sweet t-shirt will be seen on the jumbotron at next year's (what the eff's the name of the tourney??) Championship Game! As someone who once thought frosting and icing were interchangeable terms in hockey (just like in baking), he better optimize every chance I get to understand the game before I enroll all my futch children in sporting events that don't involve scoring, contact, pucks or rules ... like ballet.

meet the neighbors.

While I am currently lazing around the cabin, I'd like to introduce you to my grandma's neighbors - cleverly disguised as Bret Michaels, Michael Jackson herself and Angus Young. People always ask me what in the world brought me all the way to Winnipeg, MB from LA of all places - and much to my initial feminist, independent denial, the truth is these crazy Carefoots (especially the one on the far left) had a huge influence on my decision! =) They have lived across the gravel road from Grams for like thirty years and when I would get shipped to Grams for the summer growing up, I would run around the lake with Kara, my cousin Kevin and Mitch playing kick the can and catching ice cream pails full of frogs. Mitch doesn't actually remember me being a part of his childhood stating "You were a girl. Girls had germs." not even so much as remembering one of my fondest memories of 'Mitch as a kid with a bowl cut' when our parents sent us to Dauphin Bible Camp for the week- canoe races, 6-foot banana splits, swimming at midnight, archery, capture the flag!! I came back and much to Grams' dismay the only thing I learned that week was "It was great; I'm going to marry Mitch one day!" Typical 1o-year-old me. We kept in touch over the years coming home for Country Fest every summer looking forward to chasing the boy-next-door but it wasn't until my senior year of high school and (as fate would have it as I like to think) Mitch's hockey team started coming to Estero, FL (my neighborhood!) for a college showcase every Christmas for the next four years and that was when things really started to kindle (or at least that's how it plays back in my head; Mitch may not even remember me attending his college games). Hockey brought Mitchell to Phoenix after college and with him on the West coast and me on the East, I quickly made a habit out of catching flights to visit him on a monthly basis. We spent the summer after I graduated university as next-door-neighbors, him at his parents and me at Grams. That's when I really fell in love with the entire Carefoot family, you know - M.J. and Angus. At the end of the summer, it was an exciting change in geography to not have to return to our respective coasts when we were practically neighbors again with only a five-hour drive between us with his return to Phoenix and my relocation to LA ... Then one hasty decision led to the next and now I am here ... in Winnipeg, MB! ... where we have now substituted the word neighbor with roommate for the first time in our three year-ish rollercoaster ride. So that is the abbrev'ed version of how I ended up in Winnipeg... but as I sit here at the lake I wonder if I'm going to have to eat my words in four years and extend this story into how I ended up in Dauphin from LA...

satisfaction in simplicity.

I've always like the month of April. There's always something exciting to look forward to. It has a day entirely dedicated to acting foolish and that's always exciting ... except in Grade 6 when Carly told me her dad got a new job and she was moving away; that was just devastating ... and mean. It's two of the most important people in my life's birthday on the twelfth ... and I always loved celebrating them simultaneously since Kara & Megalina went to university in the same city (read: joint birthday party!!)! As a student, it always marked the end of another year of college and more importantly, the beginning of summer! As life in LA would have it, my April of '09 brought me to Vegas twice - once for Thunder from Down Under and once for the B. Spears concert!! It brought me to the Ellen Show and to a hilarious spoof on Point Break! It brought me to D.C. to spend quality time with the Gallos and to experience Meg and Danny's life in the district; the highlight being teaching in Ms. Meg's first grade classroom! Life is much more simpler(?) this year and I am hoping I can find the same amount of satisfaction in simplicity as I did last year in bedlam... and ultimately, I'm hoping I find inspiration to blog about it. =)

aaahh, diversity.

To think ....2 Fridays ago, I was drinking a fruity cocktail out of the sculpture of a chiseled body in Vegas while male strippers shaped much like my cup pranced around me in boxer briefs lit up by all the neon lights and this Friday, I'll be drinking tea while playing Scrabble in the small town of Dauphin with Grams where there is only one stop light... aaahh, diversity.

made of honor.

hold the phone.

Hold the phone!! Kickin' off my (temporary) return home in true 'so-LA' fashion, Carly and I will be in the LIVE audience of American Idol tonight!!

faith & fancy.

She requires a steady diet of faith and fancy with a little mischief here and there for good measure.

M.V.B.

Back in September (about the time I accidently stopped blogging), Kara, Auntie L., Grams and Jenn came to visit me in LA for my birthday weekend. Here we are enjoying wine in Santa Barbara for the day. It was going to be a surprise until I told Grams I was flying home for my bestie's bridal shower and bachelorette that weekend... My trip to Florida was shortened (so I could be in two places at once) and I took a red-eye out Friday night and a super early flight home Sunday morning (we had just finished our last dance to "Single Ladies" when Mr. Rick came to bring me back to the airport) so that really, I was only gone Saturday where I handed Kara Garmin and the keys to my car and she only had to attempt to navigate around LA for one day. I landed in Fort Myers at 10 where we headed straight to La Playa in Naples for a tea party honoring the bride-to-be. Megan's (now) sister-in-law embroidered tea towels for everyone in attendance and Carly had these adorable and yummy tea infusers favors made. It was a fabulous tea party in which Megan revealed just how much she knows about Danny (and why they are perfect for each other!) From the shower, we headed down to 5th Avenue where we donned our baseball-themed shirts (Megan has always had a love for the Yankees... well mostly just the way Derek Jeter looks in his uniform... and her brother-in-law is a profesh bball player so it was only appropriate to celebrate in true 3/4-sleeved fashion) where Megan opened all the gifts a little too risque to be opened in front of Danny's mother, her futch mother-in-law. We had lots of champagne (and even a nap I think) before putting on our high heels for a night of fun! We had 9 innings (roughly) starting at a Mexican restaurant and ending approximately 8 more bars and 5 hours laters (just like a baseball game) at a club with a killer DJ! Meg was pulled on stage numerous places and really lived up to her title Most Valuable Bride! =)

happy birthday, Kim!!

I received this hott picture of my mum and cousin, Kim for my Ukranian Christmas prezzie! Hope you had a fabulous celebration with my two favorite ladies!!

baptized by ice.

I'm not sure how I've managed to let another few months go by without blogging. I vowed on New Years to keep my blog consistently updated since there is hardly any documentation of the last six months (really, half a year has gone by?!) of my post-LA, ante-the-real-world life but when I found myself patio-furniture-stricken in the Phoenix sun with a wicked case of strept throat on 01-01-10, my feeble attempts to blog were lost amongst the basking in the (no longer familiar but deeply missed) UV rays and more fittingingly replaced with an attempt to reobtain an (almost indistinguishable) tan line instead! It has been quite the change for someone who had spent the vast majority of the past year squeezing in any spare minute (and by spare, I'm referring to the time people usually reserve for sleeping!) to lay out in the sun on every beach down the West Coast of Cali to go to being cruelly "baptized by ice" as my cousin referred to my hasty relocation to the freezing cold city of Winnipeg, synonymous with "the arctic tundra." They don't call Winterpeg "The Great White North" for nothing. Enduring frigid temperatures that must first be defined as plus or minus along with an almost daily snow shower the past several months, my bikini-clad days are long over... and long overdue. The locals tell me I won't see anyone don a tankini (as those fashion faux pas along with clear bra straps and socks with sandals are still popular up here) until mid-June only for these hardly flattering fads to be packed away and replaced with "The North Face" jackets soon after, maybe mid-September. Do the math: thats 3 short months of summer and straight up frigid winter the other 9 months of the year. I suddenly find it a completely acceptable daily routine to wake up and turn on the heat, (much to Mitch's protest) the thermostat always set to 72 degrees (the only thermometer in all of Canada to still be in farenheit!) which is the average daily temperature in LA (feels just like home in the confines of my apartment!) and then I proceed to bundle up on the couch in my snuggie where I usually remain for the duration of the day. I don't even think twice about idling in snow-covered parking lots until someone parked close to the door leaves and I now enjoy sun through a window; you can imagine my devastation on a recent trip to Sephora when I had to go down a shade in Lorac foundation. It's official- I am as pale as the rest of them.

on the fence.

merry christmas eve's eve!!!

fingertips.

There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingertips.

I wish that there was an extremely swirly reason why I have not blogged in the past two+ months. I would like to post pictures of some fantastic 8-week Eurotrip I've just returned from but unfortunately, the only border I've crossed is 45 minutes South of here on a road that leads directly into the Target parking lot in North Dakota, in which my monthly trip for Folger's hazelnut coffee has put me on a first-name basis (well, not quite. More like a career-name basis in which I assume he is a border patrol man based on the shiny, toy gun strapped to his ridiculously hideous polyester outfit and he remembers that I am nurse because when he threatened to not let me in to my country back in October when I had a leased car full of my belongings and no address to take it to, I threatened lives would die without me and apparently, it made a lasting impression...) with the men that work at the border. I would love to be able to write a life-altering, intellectual piece reflective of the soul searching I've been doing during this hiatus but frankly, the only strength I've discovered inside me is the ability to fend off hypothermia when handing the barista my looney and two tooneys (translation: $5.00) in exchange for a Venti Cinnamon Dolce Chai Latte (full pumps of each) at the drive thru window of Starbucks; I don't dare get out and go inside in this -40 degree weather (not even joking.)
I love my blog. to blog. blogging. It is here that I find fabulousness in (and overuse the word "fabulous" describing...) the many elements that make my world go round (eff earth, wind and fire. I'm talking PEOPLE magazine, Coffee Bean hazelnut Ice blended(s) and Virgin America.) It is here where I document how lucky my life is (and give credit to those who are in my life that make it that incredible in the form of a picnik-edited photog shout-out!) It is here where I am able to apply meaning (and share it with everyone ... even creepy stalkers who write me anonymous letters! Please reveal yourself, it drives me bonkers to not know if you're still alive and not hanging from a ceiling fan somewhere.... eeeek... too far?) to all the significant moments in my life. It is here where I am reminded of all the fabulous things I manage to do in a day, a month and a year (or at least this is how the lay-out I have selected chooses to organize my blog for me) and I hope that this mini leave of absence hasn't forced people to nix checking suburbs from the morning routines (so far, I only know my two grandmothers did this on a regular basis but I would like to think that the number of blog hits in a day was people actually checking in and not just me hitting the refresh button to see a cool new place to visit.)
Really, all I can chalk this negligent writer's block up to (that has led some people to inquire whether or not I'm still alive, you know who you are.) is simply the fact that the real world has finally caught up to me... and inadvertently interfered with my ability to dream, which in my vernacular is synonymous with blogging.

Well like some important person who came up when I put the keywords "fingertips, quotes" into Google search said, There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingertips and with the vastly approaching new year, I plan embrace this (somewhat scary, mostly just inconvenient) real world with two arm-warmer clad hands and while my fingertips are currently frostbitten and bleeding, I am not going to let that stop me from blogging about all the things that happen to me in my unique story! Expect pictures, insights, even a vlog or two.... So get excited because 2010 is going to be a spectacular blear (blog year, its kind of like dog year but instead of multiplying by seven divide by the number of days in a month and that's how many posts next year's blog archive will generate!)

life passes you by.

Similar feelings to standing on a platform in the metro station, I feel like my life is passing by too fast ... I obvi cannot keep up with the blogging... it's been another two weeks and I have not a post of photog to show for all the insanity that has taken place. Brief life update and a promise to post pictures to add vivid detail to my new (chapter of my) life soon...

Spent a fabulous ten days (one of those days (yup, only one!) in Naples, FL for Megalina's bridal shower/bachelorette party that I do intend to post photos of before the wedding... which is only a month away! MALYTAB) with Jenn, Auntie L, Grams and Kara in LA before packing up my stuff and hopping in the car for an incredibly scenic 4 day drive (imagine the pix that could be accompanying this post if I could just find my camera cord) through the Grand Canyon, up through the Rockies then into my old/new country... Canada!

Handwrote my boards (with a HB pencil... whatever that is) for an entire seven hours without a calculator only 2 days after I got here ... not sure if I passed but at least with the out-of-date system I won't have to worry about it til December to get my results... which I'm assuming are hand graded.

Spent the next day touring my new unit at the Childrens Hospital in the Health Sciences Centre and trying to unpack... my new unit looks very exciting!! About half the size of my last one and not nearly as critical .... aka unethical ... so looking forward to the change but a little nervous to draw up all my own meds! I love our apartment (and any time I can make use of the words ours/us/we) but could hardly get settled before heading home (to Dauphin) for the weekend for the Canadian Thanksgiving ....

We (and by we, I mean I drove for approximately 20 minutes before having a quasi-anxiety attack and Mitchell being able to read my nonverbal ques of get-me-out-of-drivers-seat! drove the rest of the way) in the snow!! Yes, it snowed on October 9th... a meer 3 days after I arrived! We had a great weekend (in which you will never see pictures because I didn't take any!) with the families (eeek... there's 2 now! =) ... before heading back Monday.

Due to complications with importing a Japanese car from America into Canada (violating some laws of NAFTA, some laws of Mazda American Credit and some laws of Canadian Safety!) I had to give Maggie back to Mazda on Wednesday ... I did take pictures of our traumatic goodbye that I can post but the sadness was lessened when I was able to stop at TARGET!!!! on our way home!! I will be making monthly trips to the Super Target in Grand Forks, ND as so far, besides my favorite people, Target is the only thing Winnipeg is lacking! The bright side is I get to pick out an SUV so I feel a little safer driving in the winter weather ... =)

While incredibly thankful for my (almost) month off, I am beginning to feel somewhat like a desperate apartmentgirlf this past week (I don't even know how to organize and I have organized every inch (or should I say centimeter as they do up here!) of this apartment!) and I am extremely looking forward to starting work on Monday. Orientation for the first 2 weeks and then I'll start day/night shifts...

nothing to dream.

It'll cost nothing to dream and everything not to.

Tonight is the last night I'll lie awake in LA dreaming of being in a place that bears any semblance of home. Dream of being surrounded by people I love. Dream of hibernating up North for the winter because come Monday, all my dreams will come true. After a grueling 2 month application process, I was deemed eligible to write my Canadian boards yesterday (which was unexpected!) and tomorrow morning I will set out on a four day road trip with Grams and Auntie L studying the entire way up to Winnipeg to write them on Wednesday. Tonight I'll be dreaming of settling in to my new place to call home, writing/passing the boards, starting my new job and celebrating the Canadian Thanksgiving! It's an exciting new track I'm looking down...

laughter & noise.

There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.