Don't Call it a Comeback

About this time last year I was copycatting my sister and doing a cleanse from the book Quantum Wellness.

You can go back and read the post yourself so I won't rehash how great I felt afterwards or how committed I was to staying that healthy.

And then whatever. Life. Winter. Mild depression. Things just went nuts and so did my self-control.

So when a close friend said she was looking for a way to jumpstart her eating habits, we decided to do the cleanse again together. It makes me crazy that I am so lazy about the way I eat. I know I'm happier when I'm eating fresh stuff and more fruits and veggies then anything else and then I realize it's Friday and I've been eating out twice a day all week.

So see you later l-a-z-y kate.

Journey

I had an insane marriage dream last night. I think I have mentioned before that I have fairly regular recurring dreams about getting married.

As usual, it was my wedding day and I had absolutely NO clue how I had gotten there. I'm always totally surprised that I'm getting married that day and I never like the decorations or the dress and it always feels like the whole thing was rushed. Last night the groom was a guy I've been friends with for many years but we've certainly never dated-I'll wager neither of us have even thought about it. So I was fairly surprised that we were getting married.

I pulled my mother aside to ask her if she really thought this was a good idea and she told me he was a good guy and really cute so it probably couldn't hurt. I texted a bunch of my friends with the same question and got pretty much the same response from all of them. So I went right to Mr. Fiance to see if maybe he was having any of the same misgivings about you know, GETTING MARRIED WHEN IT DIDN'T SEEM LIKE WE HAD EVEN DATED and he was super nonchalant about it. Just shrugged and said, "I think it could be cool, we might as well give it a shot." Truly what every girl wants to hear from the man she's just about to pledge her life to right?

All through the dream I kept thinking, "how did I let this happen? It's just like in all of my stupid dreams, how did it happen in real life??" and hoping that I would wake up.

I finally did wake up and I'm still feeling so relieved. I spent some time googling "marriage dreams" to see if there were any explanations of such a dream and this was pretty much my favorite:

For a young woman to dream that she is a bride, and unhappy or indifferent, foretells disappointments in love, and probably her own sickness. She should be careful of her conduct, as enemies are near her.

So there you go guys, my enemies are near. Awesome.

1000 words

My mom posted this photo from her mission on her Facebook page today (The parents are so in the treehouse you guys.) and I thought it was so cute. I still don't know why none of us could get that great red hair...

Junkie

OMG! This weekend was an exclamation point! We rode roller coasters! Then I taught Relief Society which I love but also gets me almost as worked up! Then a near diseaster at work surfaced as I was walking out of church that took four frantic hours to fix! It was CRAZY!

The day ended on Spencer's 19th floor roof deck with a looooong delightful chat as the sun went down over Boston...and now I am going to sleep so hard that rocks will be jealous.

This is what I've been listening to on repeat since Thursday. You'll like it I promise.

Lazy Days

I went to see a screening of the movie "500 Days of Summer" tonight. They say in the previews that it's a story about love but not a love story and I can agree with that. But I will say this, it just helped cement how much of a complete and over the top romantic I am. As much as I have tried in the last few years to downplay it and be practical about ever finding it-I am wildly, passionately, whole-soulishly devoted to the concept of true love.

I was talking to someone this week about gratuitous PDA and she said, "you know at our age, we are just not going to be in love with the same intensity as we would have ten years ago." I had to disagree. I believe in crazy romance and finding a soul mate and that falling in love changes everything. And I know it sounds kind of naive, and maybe even a little bit unrealistic, but over the years I've had enough glimpses at what it CAN feel like to keep my little dream alive.

That's not to say I'm expecting perfection, or that I don't understand that love is not always fun or easy. In lots of ways I'm just as excited about getting through the crappy stuff as I am the good stuff. I was trying to explain this one night to a couple of my married friends who thought I was diminishing my own life by saying that I think people are better off in pairs. But after 32 years on my own, I believe it more then ever. It's good to be on a team. It's even better to be on a team with someone you can fight with just as comfortably as you can sleep with. I also happen to believe that people should do their own thing for as long as their own life schedule requires. I'm a person who just never would have been happy getting married young. I've had lots of things I wanted to do and gone through lots of things I think I have absolutely needed to do alone. Being single is really great and I feel lucky to have had the time to figure myself out in ways I personally probably wouldn't have had I been married.

But.

I only have to see the way my grandfather still looks at my grandma after like a million years together and how much they just genuinely like to be together and well, that's what I'm holding out for. And I'll totally wait.

Anyway, see the movie. It's sweet.

Hello You

One year ago today, Mr. Morgan William came along and turned me from a plain old spinster into an auntie.

If we were a good mormon family, we would have had a whole bunch of kidlets running around ages and ages ago but I started an alarming non-reproductive trend that carried through the siblings and well, my mother ended up being the oldest recorded member of the Relief Society who wasn't yet a grandmother. Sorry Jayne.

I, for one, would not trade our timeline for anything. It's funny how the addition of babies has managed to change everything and yet nothing. When I was home in June, we sat in the kitchen all together, talking too loud and too late and teasing each other to death like we have since we were kids ourselves. The only big difference is that now we get to do it with three amazing sisters-in-law and two little monsters that we can spoil rotten with things like tiny PUMA shoes that they will only wear once. Watching my brothers become dads has been one of the sweetest experiences of my oldest sisterhood and just can't wait to see it roll out with the other three (who will all be doing it before me I guarantee!!!).

We managed to get a three generations photo of the boys while I was home and it's crazy to see the difference in almost one year old Morgan and not quite two month old Garrett. I hope someday they are as tight with their own siblings as I've gotten to be with mine.



Happy birthday Morgan! I miss you the MOST!

True Companion

If anyone is wondering what kind of boy I would like to marry, it is this one.



And if you want to know what kind of songs I wish I could write, this is one.



And if you want to know a song I could listen to every day for the rest of my life, here it is.



And if you want to hear a song that I put on repeat for two full hours, this is it



And if you want to know why I keep John Mayer on my guilty pleasures list, it's this



And lastly, here is a song I have posted before, but still just makes me so happy I have to do it again.

Happy Monday.

Just Dance

My friend Natalie and I have recently returned to one of my favorite weekend activities-dancing. Maybe it's because I watch four hours of So You Think You Can Dance a week, or that I've been listening to Michael Jackson non-stop for two weeks, but even my natural tendency to get moving anytime there is a beat has been on overdrive lately.

Friday night as we were walking into our favorite spot we had one of those "our teenage selves would be so stoked" moments. It was a perfect warm night, we'd just been out with a couple of cute boys for dinner and ice cream and now here we were in the heart of the major city where by the way we also live and have cool jobs, going to dance until the wee hours because we could totally sleep until noon the next day (and did). Gosh I love summer so much. I also love a good mashup...here is one that I can't get enough of right now.

My my my

Sometimes you are just goofing around on YouTube looking for something to love and you find a song that makes you really wish you had someONE to love. If you want a girl to fall in love with you, maybe you learn this on the ukulele. I think it might work on me.




well you might be a bit confused
and you might be a little bit bruised
but baby how we spoon like no one else
so I will help you read those books
if you will soothe my worried looks
and we will put the lonesome on the shelf

Shakes

My friend Dave, who is both funny and talented, played in an event my company put on a few weeks ago and made this little video for us. It has had me chuckling for days.



Funny boys are one of my favorite things on earth.

Remember the Time

Well the skies appear to have heard the collective pleas of Bostonians anxious for a break in the rain and we woke up Friday morning to glorious sun that has yet to leave us.

Thursday night however, I drove home from work in such heavy fog my brain was having trouble processing the fact that it was indeed the July 4th weekend. We had planned to hit the drive-in that night for a Ryan Reynold's abs-athon but the rain forced us inside. My friend Natalie promised she would come up with epic plans and I'll just tell you what-this girl knows how to keep a promise. We ended up having a rice krispie treat sculpture making contest that morphed into a Michael Jackson memorial dance festival in which we danced straight through 15 of MJ's greatest hits.

Friday we did a little shopping and then spent the afternoon and evening at the Hatch Shell watching the dress rehearsal of the big fireworks show that some of you might have watched on television the next night. And about that I will just say-Neil Diamond + a crowd of Red Sox fans + Sweet Caroline live=ability to die with life mostly complete.

Saturday was lunch that lasted four hours and fireworks until the wee hours. I had my friends Linda and Chloe in town from San Francisco and New York so there was plenty of late night giggling and good eating and memory lane walking wedged into the last few days. All in all it was a pretty A+ weekend.

Another I did this weekend was remember how crappy I've been lately at finding new music to get excited about. I've been spending a lot of time on old favorites lately and haven't really been on the lookout like I used to be. But here is a band that formed right here in Boston and I'm pretty well in love with them. They make the kind of music that just makes me want to never stop dancing. They are called Passion Pit and this is their song The Reeling. I think you'll like it.



And just for good measure, here's a song I was obsessed with last summer and has jumped back into heavy rotation

On the Radio

I could not be more sad about the weather situation in Boston. It's been raining since May. Since May. Now please understand that we get about 12 weeks of really great warm weather in this town and now four of them have been swallowed up by Noah's Ark-like conditions. So today I quit my "just fine for running on the treadmill, no frills, at least they have towels in the locker room" gym and splurged on the "whirlpool and sauna and a million classes plus yoga studio and smoothie bar" gym because if I'm going to be forced to have Season Affective Disorder in the summer, at least there will be coconut scented soap in the showers after spin class.

A bunch of girls from the office joined too so tonight we all worked out together. I was walking out tonight and this Radiohead song came on my iPod as I walked to my car. It was a grey night and I'm tired of those but we had a good work out and it's almost a three day weekend...so it felt plenty appropriate.