Happy Birthday Pookie!

This post is dedicated to one of the best sisters in the whole wide world: Camille Marie Bluth. Cami is my big sis. She taught me how to tie my shoes, do backflips, listen to country music, pretty much you name it, I learned it from her. 

I have many good memories of our childhood/teenagehood, including things like making a weekly workout plan (Monday-jog Tuesday-Bike ride Wed.-roller blade) and digging nickels and dimes out of the change jar for our almost-nightly May Fro Yo run (Mesa Frozen yogurt). 

She's a pretty special person, so I thought I would share a few things that you might not know about her (20 to be exact):

1. In high school she did color guard, pole vaulting, diving, orchestra, got straight A's, and shared a wardrobe with me, and let me follow her around.

2. She has an AMAZING singing voice. Her specialties being Les Mis and Charlotte Church.

3. She is an even more amazing mom. 

4. She is bar none the best person to have with you on a road trip. Specifically if that road trip is to Lake Powell and your car goes dead at the Pizza Hut in Page. Or, if you make the wrong turn in Flagstaff and see signs that say "Los Angeles 200 miles". Or, if you are driving through miles and miles of New Mexican wilderness and have only a two sided tape of Journey's Greatest Hits to keep you company.

5. She is hilarious. Carefree. Easy going. I think I saw her get mad only once in our teenage years. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

6. She used to write me letters written in the "creepy" font and sign it "the pookie". 

7. She built the house she lives in now.

8. She and her family make Carlsbad a happening place.

9. She has rheumatoid arthritis but never complains.

10. She had mono her senior year of high school.

11. She went to 3 universities before marrying her cute hubby Marcus: ASU, NMSU, and BYU

12. She likes to be the first to the top of a mountain.

13. When she was younger, it was impossible to have a conversation with her that didn't include her plieing, tour jeteing etc while you were talking to her.

14. I felt like a big girl when she let me share a room with her. I think I was nine or ten.

15. We used to stay up late talking about anything and everything

16. She memorized the Newsies soundtrack. And the titanic song- You know the one they played on the radio with excerpts from the movie?

17. When I was at BYU she once sent me a pear for my birthday (a "Little Women" reference).

18. She spent the first few months of her marriage roughing it (and loving it) on a cattle ranch in NM.

19. She speaks French. Oui.

20. She is really adorable pregnant, and is currently expecting baby # 4.

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime

Saw this last week with a few friends. I was worried it wouldn't go over well because I wasn't sure if they liked foreign film but the LOVED it. and so did I. Candice said, "I had to go to the bathroom the whole time but couldn't leave or I'd miss something."

It stars Kristin Scott Thomas (you know from the Horse Whisperer and Mission Impossible (she dies in the Prague alleyway at the beginning)).

Satire?

I have fun working out to this song. But now that i've seen the video I feel simultaneously offended and...amused.

I run

Its late and I'm about all ready for a long summer's sleep. Not to be confused with 'long winter's nap'. It's summer already here, or so it has felt like it the past few days. 

I like rap. Well, there are only certain times that I listen to it. Like for instance today when I was reminded what it feels like to be the object of girlish gossip- and that is crappy. Which surprised me-haven't I grown out of caring what people think about me? I decided that I had not as I found myself rolling down University with a hot fudge sundae in hand, windows open, blasting this song and feeling vindicated:

hard times got the whole united states stressin  im writin a book, how to survive n a recession  mr oboma, we so tired of sellin crack  if u lookin for me ask the streets where im at 

I run the streets all nite n day (the hood love thug)  cuz i still run the streets all nite n day  yuhh i rep for my city, go hard for the hood still posted on the block, wats good?  cuz i still run, the streets all nite n day,  i cant stay away. 

Lesson learned: life isn't that bad. At least I'm not running crack.

Cleaning up

*warning, this post is not meant to be read while eating, in fact its not meant for the faint of stomach at all* Because I am an unemployed grad student and living with my parents and having recently coughed up dough for a labtop, ridiculously priced school books (seriously, how do they sleep at night?), and tuition, I've depleted my much needed cash flow. So I asked my lovely mom if there were any chores around the house I could do to earn some money. I know. Its like I'm twelve again and trying to earn money for the oceanography trip to San Diego. When you go to my mom with offers of help, you best be ready because she will hand you more than you ever wanted (she does pay well). I spent a whole summer of my youth painting baseboards. I've seen my brothers climb down into the basement window well dressed in snowbibs, gloves and hats to 'de-spider'. So I had to hold my breath. She gave me two words; "fridge" and "pantry". Now, that probably doesn't sound that bad, but it might as well have been the opening chords for a bad American idol audition. I cringed visibly. And I'm pretty sure the words, "anything but that" came out, or atlease I was thinking them. Seriously, you haven't seen our fridge. We could donate some things in there to science. And as I spent a couple of hours on all fours scrubbing, here is what I found: A can of peas, conglomerated into what looked like a honeycomb A jar of pepporoni's that had turned brown A wedge of fuzzy blue cheese Salsa with exp. date 2005 (remember when we cleaned out gramma's pantry and found that syrup from 1999?!) And to my torment: some red 'mystery' sauce dripped all over back wall The pantry wasn't as bad. The only find being a bag of old potatoes that looked like they had sprouts growing out of them. Usually my dad cleans out the fridge. I dunno why but he likes it. He'll find all sorts of crazy stuff and come show us when he finds it. This always grossed me out. But I found myself doing the same thing, even running down the hallway to show meesa the peas.

Old teenage hopes

These never get old:

ps. did you know feist performed in the calgary olympics opening ceremonies?

Firsts

I had a couple of firsts last week. 

Number one- I saw my first patient. For those of you who are unaware I've been an intern for student counseling at NMSU since august, which meant for the first semester I manned phones at the crisis hotline and bothered local agencies by sending them information about our services. But now that I am bona-fide second semester student, I get to see clients! Friday was my first get go, just a student looking for healthcare options, and yes my supervisor was there with me which was a big help because I kept getting nervous and shooting her looks that said "HELP!" and "Whatwasthathealthcareprogramyoutoldmeabout?" Well, we got through it in one piece, and I have a follow up appointment and I've filled out all the paperwork.

The second first was that we had the first speed-dating activity for our ward ever. Mark and I are activities chairs and so we got every one there under the pretense that it was a 'Get-to-Know-you' night. I know...mean right? Well, the thing is a lot of people in our ward are spread out and when they move in they don't get to know each other. So at least people will know each other better now. And total surprise, the ratio was almost perfect the whole night. We had a few too many boys at the beginning but some girls showed up.

My final first was seeing four movies in the theater in one weekend. I saw: Last Chance Harvey, Taken, Revolutionary Road, and New in Town. I only paid for two, and definitely would recommend them all except Revolutionary Road because of content (but come on its Kate and LEO!).