it's a sad day when...

 i always only ever want doughnuts

clairey clairey quite contrary. she is the dolliest.

 some of my favs on halloween

 striped shirts are so versatile

 liver's got himself a yittle necklace!

more on this shortly>>>

before i start, let me just say that there are only two days left until my favorite holiday OF THE YEAR besides my birthday. until then, i will continue to live off of eggs and water to conserve stomach space/offset the inevitable and truly inconceivable weight gain. i only started today, it's fine.

now the piece de resistance!

IT'S A SAD DAY WHEN:

-every night usually ends with a bath while watching gilmore girls on my phone. yes, i am 23 years old and i still take baths. i am not ashamed!

-you're over at a new friend's house and you see a big painting of a dark-haired bearded man reaching through what looks like a pretty ocean wave and ask if it is jack johnson by chance! nope, it's jesus. you thought jesus was jack johnson. on a sunday. i go to church, i promise.

-you are taken out to sushi probably seven times in the course of two weeks. i swear i had never had so much (many) ***fish at one time in my life. and it is confusing and you are mixing up the fish's cars names everything flavors.

-(this happened while i was in san diego) a foreign lady that i was helping at work says she wants some "dressy shoes that are flat", so i show her a table of nice leather flats. she says in her accent, "yes, but do you have any that are not doll shoes?". my eyes were literally crying keeping the snorting laughing fit from bubbling up.

-you're about to walk into the church building and a man rushes to open the door for you from the inside. "oh, thank you ha ha" "noooo, thank YOU". ummmm, you're welcome ya big weirdo. what am i even supposed to say to you now?

-you go to the most random halloween dance party and SWEAR 100 MILLION PERCENT you see a man that your parents are friends with dancing with a teenager. i swear on my life guys, it was him. i was full-on staring.

***=literal and figurative ;) ;) ;)

itchy feet

i go back and forth between wanting to settle down for real in a fully decorated apartment where i'm not sleeping on an air mattress and wanting to run away to countries whose names i can't pronounce where i don't know what they're saying and i'm lost every two seconds. i don't know whether i want to build off of what i already have or scrap it all and start completely over. i'm plunging in directions that i'm not always confident in. i want to get away but i'm already lonely. NOTHING in my life does not bring me questions. i wonder about the whole idea of "you need to find happiness with where you're at and explore new things" quote (not verbatim, obviously) because i'm not happy with where i'm at. i don't know how everyone else isn't going through this and questioning everything and just sinking more and more into their lives that they hate. i'm not completely satisfied with the girl that i am right now. and maybe i don't need to just settle into my unhappiness and accept it. maybe i can just shake this all off and go somewhere new because why the heck not. 

by the way (john bytheway...my dad always says "by the way" and i call him out on it every time and every time he'll shoots back "yeah, JOHN bytheway"), that's what you get for being the offspring of careful gina and crazy scott. you get all the urges of wanting to research everything and wait wait wait and save up money along with the impulses to spend everything you have on one way tickets and ditching your phone in the ocean and living off of gas station food. 

i don't know how to figure it out and i don't know if i'll ever be completely happy when i make a choice because the other side of me will probably always be screaming.

but i'm gonna start with somewhere in the middle where i'm not doing the traditional stay-in-one-place forever thing. with that, i have to get over my need to report to everyone in my life about why i'm doing what i'm doing so they know where i'm at and they don't think i'm crazy. and yes, i'm aware that even me talking right now is me reporting, just don't say anything and go with it. i'm a silly. 

the fact of the matter is is that i can't please everyone and i need to accept that and move on. 

so from here on out, you've been warned. 

if i'm a crazy, you've been warned. if i'm extra careful, you're been warned.

i'll start small, but i just might be one of those can't-hold-them-to-anything people for awhile.

and that's just gonna have to do for now.

let's fly let's flyyy awaaay

 [don't buy the $16 miniature silo of costco macadamia nuts. if you're me, they'll be gone in two days.]

[this is my worthy costco trip attempt to stop spending $20 at the whole foods salad bar every time. 

we've all been there. i know it can't just be me. there's strength in numbers.] 

so i go to utah for a week to visit some fam and friends for my birthday.

come back, and the first thing i notice about my apartment are that there are flies in it.

i get in the shower and there are like a good five flies partying in there with me.

[read: i was using the shower head as a bazooka to pelt them down and screaming bloody murder.]

the funny thing is that i'm always scolding jit for leaving our shower window open

and like a month ago, she did it and a big fatty fly came in.

i remembered this and assumed it must've been major pregnant or SOMEthing because this just wasn't normal.

i went to work and forgot all about it.
but when i woke up the next morning, all i hear is a choir of buzzing.

that's sayin something coming from a girl that sleeps with ear plugs.

finally i can't take it and i go buy a cheap fly swatter and go to town.

and start making little piles around the house [cue da cringing].

i even had tactics because i realized the live ones liked to go hangout by their dead friends and that's how i'd kill even more.

nobody should have to learn this!

and then i start counting.

FOURTY THREE FREAKING FLIES.

can't even believe the madness. i blame the knocked up fly!

i feel like i could've kept them alive and charged people to come to some sort of flyhouse where you have a cup of nectar and the flies come and land on you or something and you get your picture taken.

crazy town.

anyways, i've killed a good thirty since and i'm just disgusted and amazed that i haven't lost it and haven't broken my cheap swatter yet and is there a nest or something and i can't live in california if it's going to be like this.

i'm missin' you like 糖果

it's been awhile and the last time we spoke was pretty intense, 

so let's just ease into this again, eh?

IT HAS BEEN A SAD DAY WHEN:

-you get emails from LinkedIn saying that "Scott Dastrup has endorsed you for another skill to put on your profile". thanks daddy, but not sure if the recommendation will hold much weight coming from my biased father. maybe make a new profile to endorse me under. first name bill, last name gates? 

-your thumb has been numb for two days now. cool, just slowly dying at the age of 22.

-it turns out so cal is a hotspot for spiders and they are ♪gettin jiggy wit it♫ in your apartment. this is not okay. to the point that i'm staying up til 2 AM googling how to ward them off and seriously considering throwing hazelnuts everywhere and dousing the place in rice vinegar like it tells me to.

-you just ran 13.1 miles straight a few weeks ago, and in the freaking freezing rain at higher altitude than you trained in........and you can't even finish three miles at sea level now. obviously i regress quickly. 

-you accidentally dump a box of shoes on a customer and snort laughing. oh michelle.

-your coworkers go get drunk on friday nights and you just go get doughnuts from your favorite 24-hour doughnut shop. apple fritters all night!

-you have to stifle a british accent with everything in you whenever you get a british customer. i'm not kidding people, the whatever minutes i am helping them is probably the most active my brain ever is, reminding myself to not say "schuow, owl getchu a sawize six" (sure, i'll get you a size six). also, i could be mistaking british for new jersey.

-you thought someone was begging for money and gave them a dollar. they weren't. their gross income is doing fine. you gave a dollar to a perfectly fine stranger. hey, it's california.

back at it!

hey you, how's this for cryptic?

welcome to the late night ramblings and melatonin-induced thoughts of michelle. stuffy nose and all. 

i'm thankful for a daddy that responds to the latest of late night texts coming from a lost girl. 

a daddy that calls me up right then and there at 3:30am to tell me that i'm absolutely wonderful 

and that my gosh, i deserve the best. and then listens to my secret sadness and my deepest hurts that have somehow and suddenly come out of nowhere again, even though they were buried and pushed away only just days before. and then just days before that as well. i can't really explain it, but life lately seems to just repeat itself over and over like a broken record. and yet, it appears i can't simply pick it up, learn it, and move on to the next lesson. 

just tell me this crap is all worth it someday. tell me one day i can stop jumping from one verbal life raft to the next, and i'll be able to walk on some actual solid ground of my own again. because this "fake it til i make it" routine of the last three months is getting so very old. memories around here cannot be rewritten all too easily, and i'd like to feel something other than stagnant and surface leveled because of them. i'd like to shake off all of this unwanted familiarity and start something new. 

i know i know, i'll be okay.

things i'll never understand: sleepless meesh edition.

[why i'm able to trick people into thinking i'm a normal person. in my defense, these were taken extremely late at night.......which isn't normal.]

• why girls with really long and pretty hair will cut their hair short. and like it better that way?? okay, go ahead and have your butch haircut. i'm just gonna be one of those creepy old ladies with the longest white hair and i'm gonna like it.

• why all boys don't wear cologne. honestly, it doesn't matter what you look like or what words come out of your mouth, YOU WILL GET THE GIRL. or you will at least get michelle dastrup (shhh, don't tell daddy).

• why i continue to procrastinate my butt-long papers until the night before they are due. and not only is there a paper to write, but there is a book to be read before in order to write the paper....that also doesn't get started until the night before it is due. oh, oh! and this also happened two weeks ago. i have serious procrastinating problems. submit me to a clinic or something.

• why i even attempt eating healthy. my brain's like what up healthy, toned body?? we got this!! and then my body's like ha ha STOP. just give us the cookies already.

• why my really old comms professor from semesters ago keeps sending me "My Birthday requests" via email. i mean, it is my favorite day of the year and it can be yours too if you really want it that bad....

• why i am writing this blog post instead of writing the aforementioned paper that is due in an hour. you never learn, michelle.

on to the next one.

as of late, 

there's been a turn of events that, sadly and quite honestly, 

i had seen coming for a while.

the deepest part of me was trying my hardest to essentially force a square to fit inside a circle, 

but naturally things just didn't work out.

the facts needed to be faced.

and time seen as lost can also be seen as experience gained.

here's the deal:

from now on, i'm no longer in the business of lying to myself.

from now on, if anything feels off, 

if any freaking part of me has to delay or deny reality in order to make whatever i'm doing fit with what i want, then count me out.

in fact, consider me marathon running in the other direction.

because what's the point of trying to make something work that i know i don't even want?

i didn't even want it.

i'm not tricking my gut feelings anymore.

it's not economically or emotionally worth it.

my motto: anything other than yes is no.

if it's not a yes!, it's a dang no.

[a "haaaiil nooo", if you will]. 

and some may think that's just too extreme.

that there's always a gray area in that black and white world that you can dance around in for months,

wondering if what you're pursuing is what the deepest part of your core longs for.

and delaying the confrontation to just see what happens or if things will change.

but what it really comes down to is that i'm on the path to figuring out what i want to be and where i want to be going.

i don't have time to twiddle my thumbs and hope for change.

hope for some strong resonating reassurance.

i'm no longer not listening to that little voice that, from the beginning of it all, told me NO.

no no, i'm now in the business of progression.