on the twelfth day of christmas my true love gave to me:
twelve hours of family christmas fun. then another twelve hours, then another twelve, and finally one more twelve. if you did the math, you know that that makes forty-eight hours of together time. times eleven people, that makes 528 people-hours. together in the same house, our sleeping bags in the same room, eating pistachio salad from the same plastic spoons and drinking martinellis from the same plastic champagne glasses. that is a lot of hours of fun. heaven be with us all.
on the agenda:
gingerbread houses
nativity reenactment
princess and the frog
open presents
sledding
play the new games santa brought
crash
eleven settings at the christmas table.
ten dollar dresses for the christmas eve party.
nine cinnamon pretzel bites for dinner.
eight items on my to-do list that remain unchecked off.
seven times approached by someone in the mall.
six items off the arbys value menu.
five tears nearly shed.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the eleventh day of christmas my true love gave to me:
eleven settings at the christmas table. we sure are multiplying and replenishing quickly. and next year there will surely be twelve, maybe even thirteen if haley gets married and fourteen if haley gets married and pregnant. i am just saying it is possible.
i would be willing to bet a dollar that you just counted how many people are in that picture to see if there really are eleven. there are.
ten dollar dresses for the christmas eve party.
nine cinnamon pretzel bites for dinner.
eight items on my to-do list that remain unchecked off.
seven times approached by someone in the mall.
six items off the arbys value menu.
five tears nearly shed.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the ninth day of christmas my true love gave to me:
nine cinnamon pretzel bites for dinner.
they say hindsight is 20/20 but im pretty sure i knew that having cinnamon pretzel bites for dinner wasnt a good idea even before i made that decision.
if you are thinking about my alleged cinnamon allergy and wondering if i have a headache, the answer is yes. but there is also a lurking variable which is the fact that cinnamon pretzel bites do not a sufficient dinner make and sometimes insufficient dinners can also give you a headache. caffeine overload can also cause headaches so im not admitting to any late night diet coke consumption but that is also a possible cause.
eight items on my to-do list that remain unchecked off.
seven times approached by someone in the mall.
six items off the arbys value menu.
five tears nearly shed.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the eighth day of christmas my true love gave to me:
eight items on my to-do list that remain unchecked off.
for a more positive take on things, i would like to focus on the eight things that didnt make the to-do list that i did accomplish.
1 do the la times crossword puzzle 2 eat a potato 3 read winnie the pooh learns to always tell the truth 4 watch a cheesy albeit touching hallmark film 5 wear the wrong socks to church 6 take an 11 am nap 7 rack up a $754.94 shopping cart on urbanoutfitters.com (none of which i will buy) 8 learn whether the phrase "rack up" is spelled rack or wrack. it is rack up without a w.
seven times approached by someone in the mall.
six items off the arbys value menu.
five tears nearly shed.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the seventh day of christmas my true love gave to me:
seven times approached by someone in the mall who:
a) spoke with a heavy mediterranean accent b) wanted to rub something on my nails, my hands, or my head; and, c) began with "escoose me miss, may i ahs you a queshon?"
no, you cannot ahs me queshon. you cannot ahs me anything. you cannot touch my cuticles, you cannot straighten my hair, and please don't touch me with that claw-like head scratcher.
please try to give somebody else lice for christmas, im not super interested today.
six items off the arbys value menu.
five tears nearly shed.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the sixth day of christmas my true love gave to me:
six items off the arbys value menu for just $6 + tax. 3 jr roast beef sandwiches, 1 jr chicken sandwich, 1 curly fry, and a jamocha shake later, the whole family was fed and went to bed.
this is a true statement.
five tears nearly shed.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the fifth day of christmas my true love gave to me:
five tears nearly shed while watching blind side at the jordan commons. i shed none of the five, but it was a close call. if you havent seen it i wont give anything away, but it is especially sad when he dies at the end. just kidding, that doesnt happen.
four very sore limbs.
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
on the fourth day of christmas my true love gave to me:
four very sore limbs.
i braved the super intense boot camp conditioning class at the gym yesterday. it kicked my trash but ill be back for more next tuesday at 8:45 am sharp. and this time, ill be ready for that weird mermaid-to-rainbow-to-thread-the-needle move that wrenched my abdominals so. YES SIR!
three sale coats from anthropologie.
two housing contracts in the cutest condo ever in the whole world for me and haley.
confession: i recently began a love affair and i think its time i was upfront about it.
my mate? bling. if it glints, glows, or sparkles, i want it bad. diamonds, gold, dont even TALK to me about sequins. shimmer, glimmer, glitter, give it to me baby. and give it to me bedazzled.
if you know my style, you'll know that this is a far cry from the norm. i would usually call my choice in clothing... conservative? wait no. maybe natural. or maybe neutral. a neutral natural kind of earthy. blacks, greys, wolves, feathers, wood stuff. but lately its all rhinestones, sequins, studs, and glitter. i even bookmarked the victoria's secret PINK website (not a lie). i spend every break at work looking at the same $90 pair of sweat pants.
pretty hot, huh? i want to wear them out in public tucked into my uggs with the $90 matching hoodie.
what's happening to me? i have also become a fool for things that have text that an eight-year-old would love on them. if it says love, peace, or something similarly cheesy, im on it.
my dad thinks its my grandma eva gene manifesting itself in a new way. the grandma eva who takes off on the weekend to go to the sand dunes with bob. the grandma eva who wears a full on leather getup to ride on the back of bob's harley. the grandma eva who wore snakeskin jeans with an overlay of shimmer on them to thanksgiving dinner. the grandma eva who, when complimented on the said jeans, told me the story of how she tried them with a glittery top but that was too much.
though constantly tempted to splurge, im trying to keep my buying to a minimum until ive determined whether this is a phase or the early onset of evahood. so far ive limited myself to 2 glittery tanks and 1 wife beater with a sequined front. oh and a velour sweatsuit but that doesnt count. oh and some leathery croc leggings but those dont count either.
so on a different note, if you are looking for christmas ideas for me, i will take anything from this website. also, i could use a new bedazzler.
this one is for the 70-year-old lady in metallic fuchsia stretchy pants on the elliptical at 5:30 this morning.
first of all, thanks for being you. you are the best.
second of all, i just have some questions for you if you dont mind.
1 from whence have they come, those metallic stretchy pants? those leggings the color of a raspberry that collided with the north star?
if we were referring to the crayola box of 120 crayons, we could call your pants razzle dazzle rose or jazzberry jam, those fabulous pants.
2 at what point did you decide those were gym pants? im glad you did, dont get me wrong. i am glad that you did.
3 for what reason did you and your pants need to make your appearance at 5:30 in the am?
you must be at least 70, maybe pushing 80. do you have so much going on in your life that you must awake at 5 to put on those razzle dazzle jazzy pants and hit the gym by 5:30?
do you have some sort of stretchy pant convention to go to? can i come? i would like some razzle dazzle pants too please. and i would like mine to be metallic mermaid teal please. the color of a mermaid who swallowed the titanic necklace please.
thank you for being there today, razzly dazzly stretchy lady. we have been inspired, truly.
also, the word of the day is billingsgate, meaning foul or abusive language. the word billingsgate sounds an awful lot like bill gates, which is why everybody should have a mac. point proven.
im tired and dont have the mental capacity to write well so obviously i wasnt going to blog BUT i couldnt let this special day pass me by. the reason today is special is because the word of the day today is obfuscate, which is a really rad word. when the word of the day is obfuscate you cant let it go unnoticed. someone has to say something about obfuscation. so i will leave you with this use-the-word-in-a-sentence:
today at work i tried to obfuscate my bloodshot eyes so as to hide the fact that i didnt sleep well last night because i was too excited to wake up and eat the new bag of golden grahams we got at wal mart.
so good night. i just ate some golden grahams so we should be ok tonight.
it came to pass that i ate cinnamon three days ago and consequently got a cinnamon headache which pained me and i said i need a seasoned detective. its ironic that i said seasoned because this is about cinnamon, but i am using seasoned in a different context in which it does not refer to cinnamon but rather to experience.
it wasnt the first time the cinnamon headache had occurred. rather it was the one million and third time and frankly, i had had enough. so i employed the seasoned detective in me and put myself on the case.
i first asked google and google gave me few results. wait, no, google gave me 5,330,000 results. what i meant to say is that google gave me few helpful results. i cant say i checked all five million three hundred thirty thousand, but almost. google did suggest that perhaps i am allergic to cinnamon but i think that is wrong.
so i made these two lists:
things that have cinnamon that give me a headache: cinnamon rolls (the most lethal culprit, hands down. i almost start convulsing when i walk past a cinnabon.) cafe rio mints (they put me out of commission for two days and two nights.) big red gum cinnamon bears pumpkin pie blizzards (yeah, so i tried one. and it was kind of good. so what.) cinnamon toast crunch
things that have cinnamon that do not give me a headache: cinnamon sugar on toast cinnamon on yams cinnamon life (thank heavens. i couldnt live without it) cinnamon burst bread from great harvest (another indispensable) kashi heart to heart cinnamon sunrise cereal
so the detective work has proven inconclusive. if i was indeed allergic to cinnamon i wouldnt be able to eat it on toast and yams. so that is not it. the real culprit is still at large, unidentified.
should i avoid cinnamon flavored things this holiday season to avoid the cinnamon headache? i should.
if you have ever seen rat race (and dont pretend you havent rented it 17 times before finally deciding to buy it. oh wait that was me) you will recall the part where cuba gooding jr steals the tour bus full of i love lucys. there is this one part where my favorite asian lucy says
"you wuined ouw whowe wacation!"
and thus in the young santistevan sisterhood, vacations are affectionately referred to as wacations.
i bring this up because i need a wacation. on my quest of self discovery in recent years, i have noticed a trend regarding a need for wacations and it is this: i know that i need a wacation when i start to get hypochondriacal (real word. look it up).
for example:
this week my right hand started to go numb and prickly and get really cold when im on the computer at work. normally i would attribute it to the fact that my arm is in the same bent position in a 60 degree office for 8 hours in a row.
not today. today i think i have carpal tunnel and i need to have surgery before my insurance runs out.
last night i couldnt sleep. i ended up eating toast on french bread and watching the most recent episode of glee at 3 o clock am. normally i would reason that it was because i drank 2 coke zeroes with dinner so that i would be awake for regina spektor (which changed my life. she is absolutely the most talented regina i have ever met.)
but not today. today i think i have a sleep disorder and i need lunesta.
now im pretty tired. my eyes cant hardly stay open so my contacts keep hurting. my face looks like death slapped me on the cheek and then ate me and then spat me out again. my skin and hair are dry and my limbs refuse to move. on any normal day i would suppose that its because i didnt sleep last night because i stayed up eating toast on french bread and watching the latest episode of glee because i drank two coke zeroes so i could stay up for regina.
but today is no normal day. today i have decided that i am iron deficient and i need some slow fe which is a slow release iron pill or i need to go to fuddruckers for dinner.
i could go on but i wont. ill simply deduce that i need a wacation. i proposed taking a cruise next week but my mom said we are not in high school and we have to be responsible adults and show up for work. so ill just schedule my carpal tunnel surgery, drink some caffeine, take my lunesta, and eat my hamburger.
(if anybody is up for NOT being an adult and showing up for work this week, please contact me. i will meet you in aruba.)
during a typical 3 am-i-cant-sleep-so-i-will-online-shop session last week, i stumbled upon some yoga pants. which color would i choose if i were to buy these pants? light heather gray perhaps? maybe carbon or mole? and that is when i found it. the color that made me stop dead in my tracks. not because of its stunning beauty, but rather because of its wholly illogical name:
goodnight nora.
what color, exactly, would one purport goodnight nora to be? i would guess black, since it is black when i say goodnight to nora. or maybe dark purple because nora strikes me as a purple name and the nighttime makes nora dark. i would be wrong since goodnight nora is, in fact, midnight blue.
a few nights later at fhe we had a family talent show (i wanted to do the berries & cream little lad dance but i forgot to sign up).
some darling girls in the fam spouted off all 120 colors in the 120 count crayola crayon box. i was impressed and promptly looked up the list so that i too could add this skill to my skill box. my favorites were these:
neon carrot
manatee
inch worm
mauvelous
scarlet harlot (just kidding its really just scarlet)
upon further inspection of the crayola website, i found that several of my favorite color names have been retired in years past, typically because they are racist or inappropriate (which is probably why they were my favorites). i shall pay tribute to them now. rest in peace dear crayons:
today i checked my bank statement online to make sure wal mart didnt overcharge me for my hannah montana fur vest and as i scanned the record, one charge jumped out at me: a charge for 30 dollars even at an address in bountiful. when did i spend exactly 30 dollars in bountiful? what in the world costs exactly 30 dollars besides 30 kiddie cones at mr biggs frozen yogurt at south towne mall and when was i even in bountiful?
then i remembered this story which took place 2 fortnights ago.
as i trekked the trek from work in kaysville to home in sandy, i noticed that the gas gauge was a little bit past the empty sign and nearing sudden death. so i pulled off the freeway in the land full of bounty to fill up.
when i get gas i play this challenging game with the gas pump where i try to stop it right on the dollar and the gas pump tries to make me go over 5 or 7 cents. i typically lose and by typically i mean always. but today was different.
when i passed the 29 dollar mark, i loosened my grip on the handle ever so slightly to slow the flow of petroleum into my '89 prelude that isnt ghetto. i started counting with the dollar gauge, 10...20...30...40... all the way up to 100 and when i got to 100 i LET GO REALLY FAST!
and alas, there it was. 30 dollars even. shaking slightly, i put the pump back into the pump holder. the pump asked if i wanted a receipt and i said no thanks im trying to be green.
and then the pump had the moxie to tell me thank you, as if it were the one who needest be thanking me. and i said no thank you gas pump, really. its been an honor.
and i got in the 'lude (thats short for prelude) and drove away.
the reasons that i love the people in my family today are these:
dad because he takes me on drives to kearns. mom because she buys me chocolate graham goldfish. justin because he invites me over to watch monsters vs aliens. katt because she visits me after going yard selling. laine because he gives me websites to stream the byu game live. court because she leaves 3 bit o honeys at my house. boston because she likes hannah montana like me. neddie because she always thinks our hair is the same when it is not. brighton because wears a monster suit. haley because she plays along when i think im getting a dog.
but the reasons that i love my family as a collective body today are these:
we celebrate oktober in style with oktoberfest parteis. and we dress accordingly.
just and katt were our gracious hosts, the hostesses with the mostestes (not a word), the hosts with bratwursts on the grill and a bun in the oven.
costume contest: we are all winners, but not really because halesy and i kicked trash.
with oktoberfest officially over, permission has been granted to pull out the christmas music. which reminds me: only 2 months remain to prepare my costume for whobilation. i am hoping to find something like this:
looking like that in it might cost more than $34.99, but im a working woman now.
saturday night i was nervously pacing the front hallway, waiting for my date to come pick me up, when he called to say sorry he was running late. i asked him what his best excuse was and he told me that he didnt believe in excuses and he said that the best thing to do is always just tell the truth.
false.
excuses are always the best option. good excuses work wonders. even bad excuses work wonders if you tell them in the right tone of voice because people dont know if it is true or not. sensitive excuses work the best, like about illnesses and death, because nobody is brave enough to call you on it. another tip is to tell the excuse in a sarcastic voice because it confuses people. the worst case scenario is that people see through you but they let it slide and call you a fool behind your back but at least you got away with it.
so here are my excuses for not blogging since my return to the states. all of them are true:
1. the seasonal transition to fall gave me anemia. there is no time to blog when you are eating iron-rich meats. 2. i felt it necessary to learn the international phonetic alphabet so i did. 3. halloween quickly approacheth and my forest nymph costume isnt going to sew itself. 4. i rediscovered the public library and it sucked me into its ever-deepening chasm. ask me about numerology. ask me about feng shui. ask me how to catch a fairy. i can tell you. 5. speaking of rediscoveries and chasms, lets talk about wal-mart. i never want to leave. i want everything from the newly updated great value brand crystal light packets to the miley cyrus line of clothing. especially the miley cyrus line of clothing. 6. miley cyrus deleted her twitter account. how can i go on. 7. i am trying to simultaneously increase my french, italian, and spanish skills whilst also trying to keep them straight. n'est pas molto bueno. that sentence has irony because it has all three languages mixed together. that is why that sentence is funny.
regardless of these true reasons (note that i said regardless, not irregardless because irregardless is not a word. please remember that the next time you want to say it.) i am pleased to announce that i have returned to the blogosphere. i knocked on blogosphere's door and i said sorry for being a bad friend, blogosphere. and he said it is ok and he let me back in. because blogosphere is kind like that.
i am pretty sure i am the luckiest person in the world right now. my reasons are these:
1. i slept 12.5 hours last night which is a 230% increase from the usual 5.5 hours and it was n-i-c-e.
2. i got a job. a grown-up one. it sufficeth me to say that i am s-t-o-k-e-d.
2.5. in 10 days and 11 hours, i'll board a plane, buckle my seat belt, and fly fly away. to the land of the free. the home i love. the state to which i swore i would never return except for holidays and now it's the only place i want to be. the big u t. that place.
3. i saved this one for last because it alone is enough to convince one of my exceptional fortune. if i had put this one first, you would have stopped reading, certain that the world is sending to me all things good. it will sound made up but i assure you it is not.
yesterday i hit up rue neuve for some shopping, where i was entirely overwhelmed. i found it necessary to create a mantra of sorts. some way to define my style in order to guide my consumption decisions. dr. gary rhoads always said that creativity loves constraints and he was correct.
my mantra had to encompass my lifestyle staples: coral lipstick, wood earrings that almost touch my shoulders, and things that increase my speed without leaving any tracks. the task was challenging. mantra-creating is not for the faint of heart. but i was prepared and finally came up with this: earthy-goes-eighties-with-a-twist-of-athleticism.
this is where it gets good. a mere 7 seconds after i had mantra-cised my style, i stumbled upon this jewel.
is that a navy wide-neck sweatshirt with dolman sleeves and a wolf on it? indeed.
i found my size (which is 34 here. its weird.), stood at the cash register for a couple minutes, stood at the cash register for a couple more minutes (customer service is not key here. in fact it doesn't really exist.) but it was totally worth it. i'll wear it til it has holes in it. i'll sleep in it, spray it with febreeze, and wear it the next day. it will become my friday shirt, my saturday shirt, and my sunday shirt. if monday is a public holiday it will be my monday shirt. my tuesday yoga shirt. my watching-thursday-night-tv shirt. i'll wear it until it grafts to my skin. actually no, that's probably where i'll draw the line.
today i took a little break from work to clean out under my fingernails. all was well until under one fingernail i found a sugar granule. it was the size of a hail stone. or the size of a talent. it was the size of a talent-sized hail stone.
interesting, i thought. when was the last time i was eating sugar granules? and this is really shocking but i couldnt remember the last time i was picking up sugar granules with my fingernails.
i forgot to pack nail clippers and im pretty stingy with my euros, so my nails have gotten uncannily long.
i clack when i type and i drum them on my desk when im thinking. its no wonder that things get stuck. but sugar granule talent stones? so the source of the sugar granules remained, and still does remain even now 10 hours later, a mystery.
but where one mystery opens another closes and this is the mystery that i solved today:
the background story is that we used to sleep over at the castletons when my parents went out of town and we would come home smelling like the castleton house. everything from my esmerelda sleeping bag to my stirrup leggings was laden with castleton smell. it wasnt a bad smell though. it just smelled like the castletons. i never knew what it was. i thought it was because they were so righteous that their whole house had a righteous smell. our house didnt have the righteous smell because we went to ponderosa on sundays.
well i recently did my laundry at the neighbor's house. and by the way the people dont believe in dryers here and the weather doesnt believe in not being humid so this is what my room looks like for the three days after laundry day.
so today i put on a shirt that i had just washed and as i sat at work and the sun beat in the window and baked me, i smelled like the castletons again.
so i have narrowed it down to two options: 1 i have become sufficiently righteous and am now deserving of the righteous smell. 2 the castletons and my neighbor use the same laundry detergent.
now there isnt enough evidence to really sway me one way or the other so ill just have to leave it at that until i receive further proof.
this evening, in an act of rebellion, i logged into the online countdown timer to check if my stay in brussels is over or not.
it isnt. but guess what the number of days was. 28. 28 days. like the sandra bullock movie 28 days. i tried to find a funny or interesting clip from the sandra bullock movie 28 days to post here. all were slightly inappropriate or pointless. kind of like the entire movie.
if people can go to rehab for 28 days i can stay in brussels for 28 days. but i think the food is better in rehab. dont ask me how i know that i just do.
jello and waffle just had a showdown in my head and jello kicked waffle's trash. you know why? jello is resilient. every time waffle threw a punch jello just bounced back. so go jello.
i sound homesick. because i am. but not as bad as i sound. brussels is... whoa i almost said brussels is cool but thats false. cool is not the right word. brussels is... umm... so weird. i thought i was weird until i came here.
you know what is cool is london. they speak english there. the signs are even in english. food labels are in english. its absolutely revolutionary, as in radically new or different.
one thing london does not have going for it is the pound. 1 pound cost me 1 dollar and 76 cents. and then my shirt was 30 pounds, which is 52 dollars and 80 cents, which is kind of an expensive shirt. and i bought it anyway because it says love on it three times. and it is charcoal. which is probably my favorite color right now next to neptune green. which is why i also spent 18 pounds on the neptune green version. whoopsie daisy. they say that in london, you know. hugh told me.
despite the fact that my european evenings are typically too full of european adventures to find the time to write, TWO blog-worthy things happened today so i had no choice.
1 i waterproofed my hair. not exactly a high point for me. i recently made two purchases, aerosol waterproofing spray and aerosol hairspray. in a moment of high intelligence, i placed them next to each other on my vanity. behind my ikea mirror, where i couldn't see them. in another moment of high intelligence, i reached my hand back to grab the hairspray. and then, in moment number three, i sprayed my whole head with waterproofing spray.
its so painful you might want the story to end there. but it doesnt. because in moment numero quattro, when the supposed hairspray didn't do anything for my coiffure, i went at it again. the front, the sides, the back. and thats when i saw it. the can came up around the back of my poor waterproofed head and in my ikea mirror i saw that it wasnt gold with a beautiful woman on it. no, it was black with a nineties-style graphic of enlarged water drops.
i thought about jumping in the shower to see what would happen but i had to be to work in 2.3 minutes. we will save that experiment for another day.
2 i found sprite zero. no need to ask where, as it could only be the carrefour that cares for me. the carrefour express up the street from my house likes to pretend it isn't the bomb (or da bomb, if you are reading this out loud) by overcharging me for just about everything except for baguettes. but then it gives me things like sprite zero and i know that it really is da bomb. perhaps it is even dabomb.com.
sorry carrefour express, but you blew your cover. you keep pulling stunts like this sprite zero one and ill pay double price for my corn flakes any day of the week.
and stephanie said unto her blog, 40 days remain. and the blog saw this amount of days, that it was good. and the blog said, if jesus can go 40 days and 40 nights without food, you can live 40 days and 40 nights in brussels.
the going without food thing is kind of relevant too, seeing as how im down to two eggs and 1/4 of a tomato for the rest of the day. and its only 5:28 PM. or 17:28 if you are in europe, which i am. i tried to clear out all the food i had so i could go on an overhaul of a grocery shopping trip and get everything fresh and begin anew. i would say i was pretty successful.
so yesterday i braved the dam of amster.
and not only did we experience amsterdam on a saturday aftrnoon. no, we took on the saturday of a certain pride parade down the canal. you know the protesters on the first episode of the first season of arrested development? times that by 20 and add spectators in pink boas. legit.
post-parade all of the "floats" gathered in the canal where loud girl bands, excessive alcohol consumption, and wearing a bra as a shirt were all deemed appropriate.
and look who came back from the dead to support his people... DUMBLEDORE!
we hit up some lunch action at my new favorite place ever, the eclectic and organic gartine. being uncharacteristically courageous, i ordered the potted dutch shrimp with cognac and lemon rolls. could be the cognac speaking but im pretty sure the meal was flawless.
we proceeded to the van gogh museum, the catchy albeit touristy I AMSTERDAM letters, and then homeward bound. was it charming, lovely, and full of character? it was. would i spend the night in a hotel there? i wouldnt. no, not ever.
at home in salt lake (affectionately abbreviated sl,ut), inspiration came from accentuating the bizarre in a seemingly ordinary life in a seemingly ordinary place. so what happens when i move to a really bizarre place, where the people are bizarre and it smells bizarre and on every street corner there is a bazaar?
i typically go against the grain by bringing out the weird from the normal. but to go against the grain here in weirdsville, i would have to bring out the normal. like write an entire blog about a grocery store. oh wait i did that. ive been trying to establish some sense of normality (or normalcy if you're a Warren G. Harding fan, and who isn't?)in this freaky, mixed up place, so my life in comparison has become relatively mundane.
HOWEVER. tonight i stumbled upon something so ultimately bizarre that it cannot go undocumented. so here is the documentation.
to celebrate having made it through hump day, my peeps from work and i decided to make it falafel-fun-fair night. we went to the best falafel maker in town, creatively named mr. falafel, then we had fun, and then we went to the fair. where the following events took place:
first we went on this ride. falafel had been down 7 minutes tops. falafel almost didn't stay down but i got it under control. the ride spins and the people on each end flip accordingly. not the kind of ride you would usually risk your life for at a temporary carnival. but sometimes you just try not to think about it because you have no choice because the man summoning people for the ride is so dang convincing:
not joking. and yes, that is a glittery silver plastic top hat atop his greasy ponytail. it was sure nice of him to keep smiling all the time even though he didn't have any teeth.
so we made it out alive. and shaking and nauseated. but it was totally worth it. as we walked around post-deathtrap, i began to realize that this wasnt your ordinary fair with your ordinary rides. take, for example, jetbob:
wow are those pictures of women in bikinis on a childrens ride? oh no not quite. they are nakey. and one day, kids, if you play your cards right, you too can be like jetbob and ride a jet ski in circles around nakey women. yeah. next came the african jungle ride:
fittingly named, get this, negresco. because what else would you call a safari ride through africa. if you get hungry there are plenty of fresh, and by fresh i mean raw, options:
just a little more proof that brusseleirs know how to party.
yesterday i hit my 1 month mark for being in brussels. shocking. im pretty sure i have lived here my whole life. i have forgotten the taste of mexican food and i dont know how to drive. baby carrots and 24-hour convenience stores are distant fantasies a brusselier could only dream of. will i ever see the mav again? do costco samples really exist?
in honor of my one month anniversary, i shall now honor brussels with a comprehensive list of things it has going for it:
1 carrefour. without a doubt, 100%, most definitely the thing i will miss most about brussels. its a grocery store. its the grocery store that the other belgian grocery stores want to be. its trademark C brings joy to my heart and exhilarates my soul. you have three options with the carrefour: the carrefour express (a mini), the carrefour gb (your average-sized grocer), and the HYPER carrefour (c4 on steroids).
every time i say the word carrefour i am reminded that carrefour cares for me. it pains me how great of a slogan that would be if anybody here spoke english. the thing i love the most about the c4 is its store brand, intelligibly named "carrefour brand." it is the western family of belgium, only better. when you buy c4 brand, it says to those around you: yeah, i like to save money, but i still shop at c4, so im still really rad. it doesnt have the negative connotation that comes with western family, or wal-marts great value brand, or kroger. no, carrefour thinks it is the shiz, and it is right.
2 baguettes. it doesnt matter where you go, what you do, or what time of the day or night it is. you will see someone carrying a baguette. they are like the plague of locusts, only crustier and tastier and better for the soul, especially the far from home soul who could use a major carb pick me up. not that i would know.
the plague of baguettes has sparked a number of questions in my wondering heart. where are all these people going with all their baguettes? who is going eat all these baguettes? with what will all these people eat all their baguettes? because i dont know if you know this but baguettes actually have a negative shelf life. you have approximately 74 minutes post-purchase before the baguette is an over-sized crouton. my confusion regarding this issue is not being exaggerated here, rather it is understated. im perplexed. so i just play along and buy a baguette and make it a point to carry it with me.
so there it is. my comprehensive list. there are, however, some honorable mentions that i will honorably mention now:
-paying 50 euro cents to use a public restroom, IF you can find one and there is a good chance that you cannot.
-milk that is sold at room temperature in a carton on a shelf. i call it shelf milk. no rush to get home from the c4, your milk is already warm because it is shelf milk.
-speculoos. mix a graham cracker and a ginger snap and make a rectangle-shaped cookie out of it with a hole in the middle. that is a speculoos. its kind of like magic.
im going to wrap it up here because its getting late. but dont worry the sun is still up. and will be for 3 more hours. because it doesnt get dark here. sometimes i feel like im at the north pole. like buddy the elf.
bye buddy, hope you find your dad. thanks mr. narwhal.
I'm a runner by nature. I get my energy from the sun. I always want an ice cream cone. I belong on the beach. I dawdle frequently. I love fashion and shopping and birkenstocks. I want to change the world.
