The Life of an Introvert

A small fact about me: I am a slight introvert. I mean, I'm not one of those crazies who can't handle social situations, but I seriously prefer spending a Saturday night by myself than with people. It sounds mean, I know, but there is nothing better than the simplicity of not having to talk to anyone or please anyone or do what everyone else is doing. It is perfect for me to throw on my favorite, bulky fleece sweatshirt and read a good book or stalk people on facebook for endless hours from the comfort of my bed. And while I get a lot of crap about it, I simply don't care :) This being said, I do love a night out with friends, getting all dressed up and all that jazz and I guess I can call myself lucky that I don't suffer from major introversion. You really have a problem if you get stressed out over getting dinner with your daughter, DAD! I could tell he was getting a little awkward and nervous when he realized that he ran out of conversation topics and we were left staring at each other before our savior of a waitress finally delivered our dinner. My father is one of those people who will call you on the phone, ask you how you're doing, ask what you're doing and then end with a "Ok, I better let you go now" after like 3 minutes of talking. Great bonding time right there haha! After a night out, I can almost guarantee that he has to crawl in bed and recover after so much social interaction. Poor guy :). But, despite his ridiculously antisocial characteristics, I love him all the same. I'm actually pretty lucky to have a dad who can't stand people. It gets you out of spending hours making small talk with relatives you don't really even want to talk to. Once he's asked his two questions, he's had about enough talking and we can usually leave far earlier than everyone else. Thank goodness for social awkwardness.

Alright, now here's the real kicker: One of my favorite things to do is going shopping alone. At this point, I can imagine everyone thinking, she must not be a real girl, who all love to go shopping in huge groups for the satisfaction of walking out the dressing room and hearing an audience full of ooohhs and aahs at the stunning shirt they're wearing. Most people would say half the fun of buying new clothes is getting to buy them with people just so they can tell you  how cute you look in them. I would beg to differ. I like being able to walk around the whole store at a slow pace and not having to feel bad about making other people bored. I also have a problem with spending money; you could say I'm a bit of a tight wad. I get really stressed out about making any purchases, so it takes me awhile to commit to buying a $20 shirt. You have to consider lots of things when your making such life changing decisions haha!

Seriously?? I'm drooling all over myself...

Anyway, getting to the point of this post. Last weekend, I was feeling very introvert and decided to throw on a cute outfit and take a bus up to the nearest mall. The real reason I was going was to watch "The Lucky One", only the newest movie from Nicholas Sparks, including only the hottest actor on the face of the planet, Zac Efron. Being the fan that I am, I just had to see the movie. Being the introvert that I am, I decided just to go by myself and watch it, for pete's sake. Feeling on top of the world, I got their with plenty of time before the showtime, so I stopped to get some starbucks and a snack for the movie. I headed into that theater, got the best seat, right smack dab in the middle, and proceeded to enjoy a great drink and some spectacular cinema. Honestly, half of me went just to see Zac take his shirt off, but it turned out to be a really good movie!! I laughed, I cried, I was moved, and that's not just because I saw some sexy washboard abs. This was almost as good as the Notebook, which is quite the statement seeing as I am overly obsessed with that movie. Zac took on this very somber and quiet character and it was refreshing to see him in a different personality than he usually is. He suffers from post traumatic stress because of his time in the war and he develops a sort of shyness and inability to communicate with others. Anyway, he ends up walking all the way from Colorado to Illinois trying to find this girl who saved his life with her picture while he was in the service. I don't wanna ruin it for anyone who is going to go watch it )and everyone should) but there were some really funny moments and some really intense scenes. Overall, I loved it and I definitely recommend it!!

That was the first time I had ever gone to the movies by myself, but I actually quite enjoyed it. I was just lounging, my hair up in a messy bun, feet up on the seat in front of me, slurping down a vanilla bean frap and sporting my glasses so I could thoroughly enjoy Zac Efron's hot bod ;). I'm not going to lie, I felt a little out of place, seeing all these groups of people walking into the theater, but I didn't care once the movie started. After the movie was over, I walked around for awhile, dreaming about buying mac makeup and bloomingdale's shoes, then I caught a bus and went home, where I immediately got into my pajamas and retreated to my lonesome bedroom. Best Saturday ever. Just sayin :).

So there you have it! Being an introvert is very satisfying, especially when it involves starbucks and a great chick flick. It's even better when you have loads of money to blow on expensive clothes and top notch cosmetics, but that hasn't happened to me yet. Here's hoping one day it will, though!!

Senior Prom :)

I can't believe how fast the time flies. Not only am I referring to the past three weeks, which have been blog-less, but also my whole life. As you can tell from the title, this post is devoted to my senior prom. It's crazy that I am going to be graduating high school in the next month or so. Although, I secretly wish that my graduation would come sooner. 5 weeks left feels like an eternity when you are trying to finish up your last semester of high school and dancing all day long. Sometimes, I wish it was just over already and I could go home. But, obviously that just isn't the case, so I guess I'll just have to suffer through the final stretch. I'm coming on the last few miles of that marathon!! It feels good to know I'm almost done, but I have alot of cramming to do in the next month or so. haha :) whoops! online school sucks. . . and, honestly, watching tv is alot more interesting than taking pages and pages of notes and typing essays for 3 hours. Therefore, in the pure logic of this situation, I usually just end up watching that week old episode of How I Met Your Mother, only to realize that I have wasted my entire morning and it is time for me to go to dance. Miraculously, I think I can somehow manage to finish English and Calc on time, but. . . physics?? BAHA! Let's just say there are 16 weeks of work to do and I've only done 4 of them. . . .so basically, I have 5 weeks to do 12 weeks of work. Kill me now. And that doesn't even mean that I get any of the 4 weeks of work I have done. After almost 2 semesters of this torturous course, I still don't get it. Everyone keeps telling me its simple and its just math and plugging in numbers into equations, but when your teacher is an idiot and you have to teach the material to yourself, it's just not that easy. This may seem like typical senior talk, but I'm thinking about just doing 70% of the work and calling it a day. haha! Then I'll at least have a C and I can say that I passed the most impossible course I have ever taken, and, seriously, I am ok with that. And thats coming from the girl who has never gotten a B in a regular class. :) Senioritis is real, my friends, and it has overtaken me in the greatest capacity possible. I'll be good with just a diploma at this point haha. Don't tell my mom ;)

Well, seeing as I haven't posted anything in three weeks, I must inform all of my readers about my incredible experience at prom. It's a little sad to admit, but this was my first real school dance, and my last! I'm just glad I got to spend it with some really great friends and an amazing guy. Just for good measure, I'm going to begin this story from the very begging. It all began when my incredibly gracious mother told me that she would fly me home for my senior prom if I wanted to. Being the completely ignorant-about-money daughter that I am, I took her up on the offer and subtly told this guy I may or may not like that I "happened" to be home the weekend of prom. A week or so later, I opened my facebook to find the a little something from this guy. An adorable poem, which he wrote himself, might I add, and it went a little something like this...

It's the way you calm me down
It's the way you hold my hand
It's the way you make me smile
It's the way you understand

It's the car rides to everywhere
It's our every awkward moment,
It's the connection between us both
That's created this relationship like component

It's all those butterflies, fluttering in my belly
Girl, you light up my night sky
So, would you go to prom with me?
Back here in the mile HI!!
Ya, i know right?!? Dang cute. So, I said yes, DUH!, all the while smiling to myself and possibly blushing a little bit. No one has ever written poetry for me haha! I would even call it a little old fashioned, but it was a great way to ask a girl to prom who lives all the way across the nation, even if it was just over facebook haha! I spent the next 3 weeks looking at what seemed like every online prom dress website searching desperately for a dress with sleeves, and boy, let me tell you what a nightmare that was. I had no idea there were so many websites selling prom dresses, and I was unaware of how many friggin dresses that are in existence. The one thing I learned from this is that ym mother is Very Very set on modesty, and I mean shorts at the knee, sleeves covering the shoulders, and you could say that she would prefer me to wear a turtleneck over any other shirt. But, we will get to the irony of that later. After an eternity of scrolling through millions of pictures of dresses, and days of haggling with my mom about what modest means, we finally found one with sleeves and one that I actually liked. I wasn't going to be one of those cliche mormon girls who wear the poofy dresses and the little jacket to make the dress modest. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that look, it's really cute actually, but I just am not into that little jacket cover-up, princess dress look for my senior prom. Anyway, my mom snatched that floor-length, chiffon, pale pink and a sequin and diamond bodice dress, and we had accomplished the greatest task of the entire trip. We booked a few plane tickets, and i was home before I knew it. Since I was away from home when all the plans were made, I was quite oblivious to what was going on when I got home. Thank goodness for my date, Landon, for making all the arrangements, even if I wasn't happy with a few of them ;), but I'll get to that later. 

Saturday came before I knew it and it was time to start getting ready. We started at about 9:30 am, when I got my nails done at a cute little nail salon down the street from my house. It's run and worked by all these adorable Korean ladies who hardly speak any English, but do an amazing job at nails. I just got a simple french manicure, but I loved it. After getting a little pampered, we headed home where I got a headstart on my makeup and get all my things together. We had quite a bit of work to do on the dress, ironically. When I put it on, it was very low cut, and I mean, even my brother in law was distracted haha! So, lesson to learn: just because a dress has sleeves does not mean it is modest. Honestly, we probably would have been better off buying a less modest dress that actually covered my cleavage. But, because I have a wonderful seamstress of a mother, we fixed the issue with a little strip of fabric in the front and just a few safety pins. We headed over to my hair appointment at 3:30 and we were hoping to be back by 4:30 so I could be all ready to go by 5, but let's just say there were some complications. The hair stylist spent quite awhile curling all my hair, only to find out that it had all fallen flat again by the time she was done. So, we came up with another plane and she devised this really pretty chignon with lots of pinned curls and it turned out fabulous, and it stayed in the whole night, amazingly enough! The bad part was that we didn't finish my hair until 4:30, so we had to speed home, throw my dress on, make some last minute adjustments, throw my stuff together, and all while my date was waiting in the foyer :) I'm always making him wait for me, but he'll get over it someday haha! Anyway, we did pictures with the big group and then our small group of 4 mormon couples ate dinner at one of our houses. A few of our moms made a lovely meal and set up a fancy table setting. Even though I was disappointed that I wasn't eating dinner with my friends and riding in a sweet limo, I had a really great time. The dessert was fantastic and the twice baked potatoes were to die for, plus Landon kept rubbing it in my face that we probably all ate for less money that one person at that fancy restaurant. Stupid Landon :) haha. All of the boys basically quoted Hot Rod the entire time and we all laughed our butts off. So, even though I hate to admit it, I had a lot of fun, eating steak and enjoying some lovely company with a bunch of comedians. We had a little time to kill before going up to Red Rocks, which is where prom was, so we stopped by Walmart so the boys could pick up some energy drinks. Honestly, I was really disapointed that all those kids were drinking that crap. It was just kinda wrong to me seeing all these goody two shoes mormons, chugging down voltages in the back seat. I am proud to tell you that I didn't consume any caffeine that night, and as it turned out, I was the least tired after all was said and done.  

Then, it was off to the dance, which was pretty lame. We pretty much just stood in the back in our little circle while everyone else was getting their grind on. Yep. awkward. What made it worse was that they were trying to make it all mormon dance, busting out weird and stupid dance moves, and i was like. . .uh no. haha! so i basically just stood there for 2 hours and all the mormons made fools of themselves :). At least there were a few slow dances. oh! I forgot to say, we drove up and it was POURING rain!! When you got out of the car, the teachers were leading you down this really long downhill path that lead to the visitors center, which is where the dance was. I was wearing 4 and a half inch heels so you can just imagine me walking DOWNHILL and in the RAIN!! I thought i was going to die and fall on my face and rip my dress, which was just a little too long, so I was tripping all over myself. Since my date was parking the car, I was clinging to another guy for dear life while we made the long walk to the dance. After the dance was over, we walked outside and it was SNOWING!!!! What the heck! So again, I had to make the long, now uphill, walk to the car. At least this time, I was walking with Landon, who is a little more sturdy than Jacob and I didn't feel so bad grabbing onto his arm the whole time, seeing as he was my date haha! He kept offering me his jacket when we went outside, but I turned him down every time, and now I'm thinking i probably shoulda taken it. I was freezing when we walked back to the car, and maybe it would have made him feel a little more needed if I was wearing it haha. I don't understand men. They don't want to let us girls pay for anything or open our own doors or freeze in the snow just so we can maintain a little pride. It's a little sexist if you ask me, but I do like feeling pampered haha. But if your a tight wad, like Landon, you should let us pay for dinner so that we can freaking eat dinner with out friends for heavens sakes!!! I just had to say that. Alright moving on.
We went back to one of our houses to change and holy cow, let me just say how good it feels to take off an uncomfortable dress and 4 inch heels after wearing them from way too many hours. It's like taking a breath of fresh air after having your face in someone's armpit for 3 hours.. . .or something like that :) haha. I think i just stood there for a few seconds soaking in the gloriousness of not wearing a dress and uncomfortable heels, smiling to myself, and possibly even belting out a few opera notes. HALLELUIAH!!!
Then, we went back to the school for after prom, which was super awesome!! We basically spent the entire time in the poker room. Landon played and dominated at blackjack, and I got sick of if after like half an hour. There really is no strategy in blackjack; it's all luck, and I am more of a texas hold em kinda girl, so I ditched him to go play with my guy friend, Nick at the texas table. Me and nick played for like 2 hours and we pretty much cleared out everyone. He is really good at betting and so we kinda teamed up and told each other our cards every time and helped the other out if they had the better cards. It was really fun, and I wish I got to play with him longer. The rest of my group found this dealer who was pretty much giving away from points and one of the guys made like a million dollars in points!! After all was said and done, we all pooled together our points and cleared out the entire prize table, and I am saying that very literally. Jacob bought all the candy, about 20 gift cards, 6 yoga mats and like 10 water bottles, a few board games, baseball gloves, and a bunch of other pointless crap that he bought just for fun. I got a yoga mat and a water bottle that match so I was pretty happy with my winnings haha. We headed out at 4 in the morning and went over to one of the girl's house for breakfast. Her dad made a HUGE plate of bacon and some really good waffles. It was a terrific breakfast after the longest night of my life.  After stuffing myself full, we all crashed for about an hour and then got up and all went to church. Jacob was out in the first 20 minutes and the rest of us were fighting to keep our eyes open. I went home afterwards and literally collapsed on the couch, still in my dress, and didn't wake up until like 6 o clock. I'm pretty sure my brother tried to wake me up a few times, but I just can't remember. I just died haha!! What a night :) It was such a blast and it was totally worth the trip. I had an amazing time.
So, there you have it. If you have successfully read that entire story, I congratulate you. Thanks for listening to my rambling, as always. Will write again soon.
Until the next time,
Your dancer to be. . .