missoura

This trip to Missouri was much more family-oriented than I had imagined. I had planned on being at my house for meals but spending a lot of my time with friends I hadn't seen since June. But instead, I only hung out with people twice and for very short amounts of time. 

Monday: Landed in Kansas City around 2:30pm, bought a new coat and gloves, ate at the Golden Corral. Rose came over and we watched The Lion King with Nick. Admittedly, I was so exhausted that I slept through most of it and left Rose to hang out with Nick.

Tuesday: My grandma and I made vegetable soup for lunch and after dinner Scott, Rose and I went to Walmart cause everything in Trenton closes at 10pm and we needed something to do.

Wednesday: We had a roast with the works for lunch and then mom and I made caramel macchiato cookies. I spent a couple of hours trying to find Tangled on dvd in town since the internet connection at my parents' house sucks balls and netflix wouldn't work.

Thursday: The whole family came over for Thanksgiving. Mom and I went to Walmart for Black Friday shopping. We bought a 51" TV for one of her friends in Iraq, a Wii for me, and some other random shit. This lady had SIX crockpots, two vacuums and a lot of Wiis in her two carts... Black Friday shoppers are crazy.

We took Wayne (my mom's friend in Iraq)'s truck down since the TV wouldn't fit in mom's trailblazer... but we were afraid of it falling over in the bed without being tied down... so I had to sit in the backseat with my arm out the window holding onto the TV the whole time. lol.

Friday: Spent the morning chilling with the family before I had to fly back to Salt Lake. Just look at how adorable my brother is. Holy cute.

And that's about it. Extremely unexciting. I watched the Shrek series and The Lion King so many times that I lost count. My mom turns Shrek on in her room and The Lion King on in his room and he goes back and forth. It's cute. :)

Halloween weekend...

So last Friday night, Chelsi threw an impromptu Halloween party. I dressed up as Kanye, the cat version.

We had a huge Halloween party at work on Monday. Here's a picture of me as a not-so-cute cat with the most adorable girls in the world, Fatima and Tamara.

Aaaaaand here's a picture of all of the projects my kids and I did last week. A toilet paper roll mummy, a spider ring made from pipe cleaners and a pom-pom, and a paper plate black cat. 

Speaking of crafts, I found this dry-erase calendar on Pinterest. I didn't feel like buying a picture frame, so here's my version of the craft for the months of November and December. I actually like it a lot.

I also found this recipe for homemade mozzarella sticks using string cheese and panko crumbs. Absolutely delicious!

Corinne and I have been trying to find new restaurants to go to lately. I recently discovered Diva's Cupcakes over on 1560 E 3300 S. They had really delicious sandwiches and coffee at a reasonable price and a greenhouse area that you could sit in while you ate. It'd be a really nice place to study too if it wasn't so far out of the way. I didn't try any of their cupcakes but the gluten-free chocolate lemon one Corinne bought was gone before we got to EmilieJayne, so I'm guessing it was good. ;)

On a related note, the red cups are back at Starbucks. It's officially winter. I'm so excited!

pizza and vodka and pizza and vodka...

 New wheatpasting on a Smith's dumpster.

 A lovely set-up at Barnes and Noble.

 Paul and I went to Chipotle where we became friends with this dog tied up next to us.

 My first ever Chiptole burrito. I didn't even eat half of it, it was so filling.

 Paul bought a 3DS so now all he does is play Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.

 I cleaned out Paul's car on the way to Sandy to watch X-Men: First Class. He had multiple hotdog boxes that only had tiny chunks of bun left that I mistook for breadsticks. lawl.

 Mustaches we got from Best Buy. Paul refused to buy one for me but two came out.

 We made fried chicken for dinner one night and it looked SO perfect.

 Then Paul burnt 4 pieces and it turned out that all of the chicken we made was undercooked. So we went to IHOP for dinner. hah.

 Yesterday we had Wingers for lunch...

 They put popcorn on our table and it was mostly what we ate cause it took an hour to get our food out and it was cold and gross.

 Chelsi and Merv.. so freaking cute.

Boring captions, oh well. Listing out what I've done since my arrival in SLC was even worse. 

Last night, I hung out with Mitch, his sister Chelsi and her husband Michael. After Chelsi started getting drunk, she was saying the funniest things, such as:

"With hip cat's clothes on.. He was the dick's tits."

"That's why we have to keep him inside, literally a butterfly could beat him up."

"Guys, a fucking teepee. I don't think anyone gets it!"

"Please have available a smile upon arrival."

"Please have available one chief from any tribe of Idaho."

"Teepees unite. Teepees, not peepees."

"We just reserved a teepee for 4 nights and we can't afford a wedding gift."

We reserved a teepee in Idaho for the end of July... lolyaydrunkendecisions. Now, please enjoy this video of the honey badger:

sedalia

I can sum up my trip to Sedalia to get a tattoo in four pictures:

Starbucks, pre-tattoo. I look like a crazy person.

Post-tattoo, before it got wrapped up.

The most delicious cupcakes in the world, courtesy of Evan's smokin-hot mom.

My first ever Papa Murphy's pizza.

It was probably one of the best days I've had this summer, except for the part where I got a speeding ticket in Chillicothe.. 

2 weeks to go.

I've been putting off blogging because I've done nothing but work 5-close this week. You'd think I'd be making a lot of money since I've basically lived at Royal Inn the last three weeks.. No. I'm not making shit. I got my first check on Friday and it was barely over $200. I worked 5 days both weeks and stayed every night but only made $200 because of the stupid $7.25 minimum wage here. Grr.

In my frustration, I asked Beckie (my slc boss) when the summer program ended and if I could get in on that. She basically begged me to come back at the beginning of July and said she could get me hired again. SO I'm moving back to Salt Lake on June 25th now, not August 18th or whatever. That's only 2 weeks away. Yeah. I'm so freaking excited. Except, I have to bum housing off of 2-3 different people for the next month and a half because I can't live at the dorms with withdrawn classes. Boo. I'll be staying with Paul Kim for the first couple of weeks I'm back and then with Amanda for the rest of the time.. or until she gets sick of me.

I'm so pumped to get back to the people and places that I love, but at the same time I feel like an ass leaving my family so soon. When I told my mom my plans she acted like she was sad and told me she would've liked to have me around when she's on vacation for the last two weeks in July. Also, my mom's been really down lately about all the drama going on with my youngest brother and his dad. Last weekend was the first one where Nick had to stay with his dad for the entire weekend. In a few weeks he'll be staying with his dad every other week. It's breaking my mom down because she's never had to be away from Nick for such a long time and his dad is a super huge dick. He thinks he knows how to raise a child and tells my mom she's doing everything wrong and his ways of raising Nick are the right ways. So I feel bad that I won't be here to comfort her while Nick is gone.

A few days ago I made lemon butter green beans and idaho sunrise (baked eggs and bacon in potato bowls).

The potatoes look terrible but they were delicious. We only had smallish sized potatoes so even though I hollowed them out all the way, the egg whites kept falling out and ending up cooking on the pan.

I have Monday and Tuesday off and then work the rest of the week. Tomorrow morning, Scott, Rose and I are heading to Sedalia to a place called Stay True Tattoo where I'm getting the om symbol tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. Rose's boyfriend Evan lives in Sedalia so he's going to take us out for lunch at a place called Kehde's Barbecue. It's supposed to be like an Applebee's... I'm not a fan of Applebee's or barbecue, but I'm not going to complain. Rose is already freaking out that she only has two weeks left with me.

I'll blog again tomorrow. I'm gonna look sooo cute, wearing a new dress and sporting a little om symbol.

cody the coyote, he's a roadie, he's our roadie...

This week has been miserable. High 90s and humid and straight-up unbearable.

I've spent the majority of my free time inside baking and cooking. We got a new oven on Monday and its amazing. So far I've made double chocolate muffins, naan, porkchops for my grandma (I don't eat pork), and chipotle peach salsa that I later made into peach quesadillas. 

Everything turned out perfectly. My parents weren't very large fans of the salsa/quesadillas but Rose and I thought they tasted fine. They said that the inch of ginger I shredded into the salsa was about an inch too much. lol. I agree that it would have tasted better without but it was still okay.

Last night Scott and I went to Christian's house, where he showed us these awesome balls he picked up at Coachella. They light up in sync with bass beats.

Then we headed out to the lake. Scott has been hammering me to go swimming with him but I refuse because that lake is soooo disgusting. There are man-eating turtles in there and I'm pretty sure that Megan took a shit off the main dock once. So instead of swimming, the three of us laid out on the dock and watched the stars and made up some pretty ridiculous constellations. It made me really excited for the astronomy class I'm taking in the fall.

c'est juin!

Dear friends, if you want to comment the button is at the top of each post, not at the bottom. Some of you posted on the previous post instead of yesterday's. Just letting you know. :)

It's June! Rose, her boyfriend Evan and I made those pesto stuffed shells I mentioned yesterday for lunch. As I predicted, I wasn't the biggest fan since there was so much ricotta. I had plenty of salad and garlic bread though, so I suppose its okay. :)

Rose made muffins this morning and got me in the mood for them.. I'm about to run downstairs and hope our oven will cooperate so I can make cinnamon and sugar donut muffins. I'll edit and update y'all when they're done.

Promised edit:

The first picture is of the cinnamon and sugar donut muffins and the second has them on the right and banana-orange-chocolate chip muffins on the left. The cinnamon ones are extremely delicious but the others are way too orangey. They have an entire orange squeezed plus the zest in them. It's hard to taste the banana or chocolate.. They're still tasty but not my favorite.

Also, you should check out this link about Nick Offerman not shaving his beard to help conserve water for World Environment Day. How awesome is this man!? Good lord.

new layout, new missouri-hate

Yesterday was a very productive day. Rose and I completely cleaned my room, rearranged a bit, and moved a bunch of things out to my car. We also took about a thousand magazines to the recycling center and put all of my clothes to donate into trashbags.

The things in the corner under the mirror are things that do not belong in my room but my parents refuse to put them anywhere else or let me donate them. That TV is a piece of shit and we already have a newer TV in every room in the house, so what's the point of keeping it? Idk. My parents are packrats and it drives me nuts.

For dinner Rose and I made lemon ricotta pasta from Budget Bytes. If you haven't heard of Budget Bytes yet, it's basically the best recipe website I've found for poor college students. It has quick, simple recipes that require very little money. Tomorrow Rose's boyfriend is coming in to town and we are going to make pesto stuffed shells and garlic bread. We're all really excited to see how the shells come out. I discovered last night that I'm really not a fan of ricotta and the shells' stuffing is made out of ricotta.. so it should be interesting. 

After I dropped Rose off last night, I walked my dog Simon around the walking trail in town until I ran into Scott and Christian. We went over to Sonic, where Christian fed Simon a bunch of cheesy tots and Simon licked the bottom of my straw and grossed everyone out. ha.

As you can tell, I changed the layout and I really dig it. When I was uploading it and changing the coding around I wasn't a fan at all. But now that I've spent a good amount of time messing with everything, I think it looks good. How do you guys feel about it? The only thing that bothers me is in my profile on the sidebar, when I lowered the font size of the description, it also changed the size of all of my name and city.. and I can't figure out how to get them back to their original size. But it still looks okay with them small, so whatever. I'll deal.

As for the Missouri-hate in the title... My parents are driving me nuts. Every day I have been loading and unloading the dishwasher, washing dishes that can't go in it, doing laundry, and cleaning anything that happens to be dirty (floors, cabinets, toilet, etc). But any time my parents come home, all they can do is complain. If the dishwasher isn't unloaded yet, they start yelling at me to unload it so they can reload it... If my clothes are still in the dryer or I just put a load in to wash, I'm instantly yelled at because now my grandma can't wash her work clothes... If I accidentally leave the soap on the sink after I use it, I'm yelled at... I'm getting so pissed off. I do all of this work around the house and no one even cares, all they can do is yell at me and make me feel in the wrong. 

Last night I straight up lost it and started screaming back about how I'm the only one doing any work, how I clean up after everyone's messes, and how my parents refuse to do anything I ask of them. For example, a basket of clothes to donate has been sitting in the living room since the day I moved back. My mom wouldn't let me take them to the thrift store because she wanted to go through to see if she wanted to keep anything and make sure I'm not throwing out anything that doesn't need be. The basket was still sitting there yesterday when I came downstairs with the 3 bags full of clothes to donate. Both of my parents started in on how I don't need to throw out that much, how they always buy me clothes and I never wear them, etc. etc. I simply told them that if all of the bags need to be gone through by Wednesday morning because I'm taking them to the donation center then, no matter what they say.

I'm just sick of not being appreciated for all of this work I do. At the dorms at least Corinne would acknowledge if I cleaned the bathroom up or our dishes. No one cares here and it hurts. I would stop doing anything but then I know the house would turn into a sty and my parents would complain even more.