Hawaii, 30 Days, and Feminism

Hawaii, you guys, is totally awesome. 

In case you didn't know, BF and I got to take a little vacation with his family to the island of Oahu for a week.  Apparently it was a great week to be there because here in the Pacific Northwest it may or may not have rained and kind of turned into Fall a little early (by most accounts, it totally did).  We flew out last Tuesday, which I was pretty nervous about because, little factoid, I am not so great on airplanes and it was an almost 6 hour flight from Portland to Honolulu.  I should probably clarify that I may be prone to getting a little panicky when I am not in control of a vehicle.  This is not limited to airplanes, and is something that mostly rears is ugly head when I am in cars.  Strangely I'm ok on boats.  I have gotten better at managing my panicky moments (sometimes much better than others) but flights generally make me a bit jumpy.  Because I have traveled a lot the last 2 years for work I have gotten 200% better than I used to be, but it's still not that fun and I almost always get stressed out before a flight, even if it ends at a tropical island.  

So moving on, BF decided that before we got on the flight what I really needed was a good lunch and a few beers.  You know what?  BF is a smart man.  We ate at Gustav's at the airport and filled ourselves with fondue and bread and some delicious cold beer.  Don't even worry, I only had 2 hefeweizens and in combination with the cheese and bread I was feeling relaxed and a little sleepy.  We boarded our flight and I was in such a good state that I didn't hardly notice that we had taken off - also, the pilot was awesome.  You can always tell by the take off and landing if the pilot is super experienced or not.  This take off was crazy smooth and the whole ride there was easy going.

We arrived in Honolulu and picked up the rental car (which was not awesome... not a big fan of Jeep vehicles) and drove to our rental home in Kailua.  Boy am I glad we stayed in a small town instead of downtown Honolulu or Waikiki.  It was so relaxed and homey feeling and we were a block away from the beach!  The beach was amazing with white sand, the clearest turquoise waters and was barely populated each day so we had plenty of space to lay out.  Kailua is a great little town as well that we explored a bit for restaurants and shops when we didn't have things planned.

Instead of going day by day I mostly want to hit the important things we did, which means I mostly want to tell you what we ate so I'll start there!  We went out for breakfast to a little place in Kailua called Cinnamon's which served Red Velvet Pancakes with white chocolate drizzle.  If I can basically eat cake for breakfast with a side of bacon I am one happy girl, so that's what I did.  You guys, those were some amazing pancakes!  They were light and fluffy and wonderful and I would eat them every day if it weren't for the massive amount of weight I would gain doing so.  BF chose differently and got some weird omelette which he sort of regretted because it had some strange unidentifiable green stuff in it.  We also stopped by Rainbow Drive In one of the afternoons, which I guess is famous, but mostly we wanted a good plate lunch and that is exactly what we got!  BF got the mixed plate and I got the Shoyu chicken plate lunch and I can honestly say I've never had better plate lunch in my life. Ever.  The chicken was out of this world and the mac salad... well, I can see why they sell it in buckets.  

I had shrimp multiple times because, duh, I was in Hawaii, where shrimp is plentiful and delicious and I love me some shrimp!  We also, of course, had to stop by Matsumoto's Shave Ice for a famous shave ice on a hot day and then while at the Dole Plantation we got the World Famous Dole Whip after a quick trip on the Pineapple Express.  One of the days I also had a burrito that was bigger than my head which I did not even come close to finishing (not even a little bit, I maybe ate 1/4 of it).  Also, Mexican food in Hawaii is sort of adorable because it's not quite what we know as Mexican food, but it's close.  Case in point:  my mexican rice had green peas in it and more closely resembled fried rice, but it was still delicious.  

So pretty much everything we ate was good!  Which now leaves me room to describe what we actually did besides eat all week.  We visited the Valley of the Temples and went to the Biyodo- In Temple, a buddhist temple with an awesomely large bell we got to ring for luck.  It was beautiful and peaceful and I am so glad we got to go.  We also visited the Dole Plantation, because how can you go to Oahu and not?  I was baffled at how a pineapple plant grows.  Basically it looks like a pokey ground plant and the pineapple come up out of the middle on a stalk, almost like the plant is presenting you with this strange little fruit.  BF, myself and his family hiked up to the top of Diamond Head one afternoon which was an amazing view, but I forgot to bring my inhaler and felt kind of crappy as we ascended struggling for breath.  It's crazy how a little heat and humidity can impact your breathing.  We also got to see the show at the Polynesian Cultural Center which was pretty neat and we got a canoe ride around it as well.

One thing that we did that we will probably never attempt again is Scuba Diving.  I have no idea what possessed BF and I to try it, but we both like boats and thought seeing things underwater would be a cool experience.  I will tell you this right now- if you are not good in the deep end of the pool you probably shouldn't scuba dive (I'm referring to BF on this one).  Also, if you get panic attacks, you also probably should not scuba dive (this one's all me).  Here's what happened:  a friend of ours in Portland has family in Oahu, one of which is a dive instructor so he offered to set us up with scuba diving.  We thought it was a great idea and agreed to do it.  We arrived at the docks and got fitted with wetsuits and fins as we waited for the boat to arrive.  The instructors explained the rules of scuba diving and how to use the equipment and then we loaded a boat that had other dive instructors and other divers heading out with us.  As we were heading out to our first dive spot the instructors helped us put weight belts, masks, vests and air tanks on, which weighed about 2 million pounds (ok, maybe 50, but trying to move around with it all on and flippers on your feet makes it feel like a lot more weight).  I was starting to feel sick, but not seasick.  It was hard to describe, but I was feeling weak and light headed, not nauseous.  I think it was from the heat of being in the sun with a full wetsuit and 50 lbs of gear on.  We got to our dive location and one by one dropped into the water.  BF dropped into the water and wasn't super comfortable, but tried to get there.  I dropped into the water and was fine until they started trying to take us down.  I went down a few feet but then started to panic because the water pressure on my lungs made me feel like I was having a heart attack and the regulator in my mouth was such and uncomfortable feeling that I couldn't get over it.  I went back to the surface to start over, but just couldn't get passed the awful feeling in my lungs.  Then I noticed that BF was nowhere to be found.  I surfaced again and found BF on another line floating at the surface with another instructor and BF looked how I felt.  We looked at each other and wordlessly decided that we were DONE.  We kindly asked to get back on the boat and quickly took off the gear and unzipped our suits and felt immediately better.  

I felt a little bad for not doing better, but you know what- I just cannot stay calm when I cannot breathe properly because breathing techniques are usually what get me through my panic attacks.  Also, there was no freaking way I was going scuba diving without BF . So there.  So BF and I got a lovely boat ride while other people dove, but we were perfectly fine with it because it was a lovely day and when we anchored for the next dive I just swam around the boat at the surface and looked at the turtles and fish.  We also learned on this boat excursion that some people get crazy seasick, even though the water was relatively calm that day.  I felt so bad for this one girl who was sick to begin with, then dove and was fine and then, as soon as she got back up from her dive and got on the boat began puking pretty immediately until we reached the next dive spot.  Actually, the majority of the people on our boat got seasick.  I asked one of the instructors if that was normal and he said, "No!  We hardly ever have multiple people get sick.  Usually it's just one every few times out".  We were so glad it wasn't either of us.

We also did a ton of shopping in Waikiki, Honolulu, Kailua and at the Aloha Stadium swap meet.  One of my favorite finds was my wedding band!  I picked out a white gold band that has a wave and Maile leaf pattern on it.  I was hoping BF would find a similar one, but the patterned rings looked a little girly so he ended up finding a great titanium band as well.

And speaking of weddings... 30 days.  Oh. My. Gosh. I may have thrown up in my mouth a little as I typed that.  Here's what I'm working on now:

1.  Finding garters.  I forgot this was a thing!  Like, you know, towards the end of the night when I throw my bouquet and BF is supposed to throw a garter?  Well, that means that I actually have to have one or two which I realized the other day.  I've looked around online and haven't found anything amazing yet.  Any suggestions?

2.  Underwear.  I need to find some comfortable underwear to wear underneath my dress.  I haven't really started looking so I probably should.  Gah.  Again, Suggestions!!!

3.  Meeting with our DJ.  One of my old friends also DJ's on the side and has agreed to be our DJ so I just need to get together all of our music and give our song selection to him.  

4.  Get a facial.  Sometimes my skin is great and sometimes, like when I'm stressed, it explodes.  Right now it's mostly contained, but I need to make sure it stays that way.

5.  Even out my tan.  Oh the TAN LINES!  If there is one thing I should have done better in Hawaii it would be to have completely gone topless (LOL!) or worn a tube top because I have a million different tan lines of varying degrees that aren't going to look great in my strapless dress.  

6.  Figure out the final head count.  I have a spreadsheet that I'm using to track this, but it's really down to the fact that people don't send RSVP's in a timely manner which is so frustrating.  BF and I are trying to track down the stragglers and get straight answers.  So. Much. Fun.  

7.  Not stress over the little things.  Up to about a month ago things were peachy and then BAM!  One day I started getting stressed out over this wedding so I'm making a conscious effort to NOT STRESS over the things that I cannot control or that I shouldn't even bother with.  


So that is just the top few items on my list, but mostly I feel like it's all under control for the most part.


I was going to tell you about this book I read on the flight and my new thoughts about Feminism, but I am thinking I should save that for it's own separate post, but I will leave you with a recommended read: How to Become a Woman by Caitlin Moran.  Read it.

What's new with you all?

Oh, THIS is What Everyone Was Talking About

Holy Shit, I'm having a meltdown today for whatever reason.  Well, for like a million reasons, really.  Everyone's been asking how wedding plans are coming along and how things were going and up to yesterday they were GREAT!  I feel like we have been so far ahead of things in the planning department that all there was really left to do was wait for the wedding.  I mean, there are always a few little details to figure out, but for the most part all of the big stuff is taken care of and I don't have any (knock on wood) last minute issues to figure out.

Despite all of my organization and planning I am having a full on freak out about this wedding and the fact that it is only 46 days away.  I can't even really pinpoint what my issue or issues may be.  Everything I can control is taken care of.  I cannot control other people or affect the outcome of things unplanned.  So what's my deal?  This must be what other brides have told me about- the total stress that sneak-attacks and takes over.  Doesn't even make sense.

Also, I'm freaking out about the bridal shower this week.  My MOH invited around 40, but we've only heard back from 4.  So now I'm thinking, "Am I completely unlikable?  Why aren't people RSVP'ing?  Is it because it's on a Friday afternoon?  Because that's the only day and time most people said they were available!!! OMG!!!!!  Let's have a heart attack about it!  I've already ordered cupcakes!".  I know I'm being a total idiot, but I don't want to have her plan this thing and spend time and money on it if no one is going to come.  

Tomorrow we are supposed to meet with our officiator so that's one more thing I can cross off of my list of to do's.  I'm not sure if I want to write my own vows or what, but I guess after tomorrow's conversation I should have a better idea.  

We leave for Hawaii in a week, and I'm super excited and I think I'll be able to relax for that.  I'm a little nervous about having someone new stay at the house with them, but I think they'll be ok for the most part.

Someone give me a sedative.

My Little Problem Resurfaces

I've discussed this before with you all, but sometimes I have an issue I like to call the "Eeeee's".  The Eeeee's are characterized by a high pitched "eeee" sound, followed by uncontrollable giggles pretty much any time I see something insanely cute (like micro mini pigs) or sometimes even when I think of something really really cute (like 5 minutes ago at my desk when I thought about our dogs at home and how Rudy makes this cute scrunched up face and ducks his head when running up to us when we get home in the afternoons and it's so cute I started hysterically giggling by myself in my cube at work).  So yeah, it's a problem sometimes.

I don't know why this happens.  I'm not a crazy emotional person (anymore, good riddance teenage hormones) for the most part so it makes no sense to me to have such a crazy strong reaction to cute things.  It's like I see something so adorable my brain short circuits and my body doesn't know how to handle it so it makes a warning noise (the "eee") and then in a fit of confusion I giggle.  Logical?  Not at all.

I bring this up because a couple nights ago I had a raging case of the "Eeee's" while surfing Facebook to see what was new with the folks I haven't seen in a while.  It seemed to me to be the day when everyone on Facebook was required to post a cute animal picture and I pretty  much sat on the couch "Eeee"-ing for 30 minutes until BF looked frustrated and I was purple from giggling so much.

Then, today, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, I was at my desk minding my own business when I thought about our dogs.  Yeah, even THINKING about cute or adorable things is making me hysterical.  

There has to be an actual name or medical/scientific term for this.  Also, someone save me from myself.  Poor BF is pretty much committing eternity to me and this is only part of what he has to put up with.  God bless that man.  

Someone else has to have a similar problem.  

An Open Letter to the Olympics

Dear Olympics,

It has come to my attention that there are some events within you that do not make any sense.  Seriously.  Last night BF and I hunkered down to watch Olympic Events as we do each night, ready for some awesomeness and do you know what was on?  The indoor cycling races also known as Velodrome racing.  Do you know how confused I was at first?  Very.  Those guys start pedaling SO. SLOWLY and keep looking back at each other like "whose gonna make the first move?  Are you?" and I'm like "What the hell?! This is supposed to be a RACE!  You should just go fast!".  Also, it's the best out of 3.  I feel like this is a race my sister and I made up when we were in elementary school.  I'm sure those guys train hard, but seriously, let's give them a more competitive and serious race to compete in.  In the end I was just mad and starting watching tv reruns.  Lame.

Also, dressage.  Really?  And the weirdest part of it all is that the horses do all of the physical work and the person riding them gets the medal?  Let's just have an equestrian olympics or something because the people aren't athletes, they are horse trainers.  This is silly.  In no other "sport" is the athlete not given a medal for placing, and since the athletes are animals and not people I say that doesn't change anything and the horses should get the medal.

I feel a little underwhelmed this year and it is disappointing.   Maybe for the next ones lets make some changes.

Thanks!

Heather

The Day I Thought I was Going To Completely Lose It... Also Known as Thursday

I'm not even exaggerating when I say that, either.  Do you ever have a day when you are so angry over the littlest things and by the end of the day other people's breathing even gets to you?  That was my Thursday last week.  


Driving to work it seemed like no one really knew how to drive or what they were doing.  I got cut off multiple times, I got stuck behind a guy going 25 miles an hour on TV Highway (where it is supposed to be 45) but couldn't get around him because of a city bus, and someone stopped IN AN INTERSECTION and then got stuck there when the light changed so the whole line of cars I was in didn't get to go during our green light.  Awesome.  And the best part was when I was sitting at a red light and I noticed the guy in the car in front of me was moving around in a weird way.  I didn't think anything of it until he opened his door and puked. everywhere.  Oh my gosh, you guys, even typing that it makes me feel sick!  I hate hate hate vomit almost more than anything in the entire world.  Not only does it make me feel sick to see it but it makes me angry- it has ever since I was a little kid.


When I got to work things seemed to settle down for a bit until I started getting the dumb questions like, "Where is the tape?" and "Do we have staples?  I'm out".  For the eleventy-billionth time, I AM NOT THE SUPPLY CABINET, YOU KNOW WHERE THE DAMN CABINET IS... WALK OVER TO IT AND LOOK BEFORE YOU ASK ME FOR SOMETHING.  Not that hard.  It's akin to being at home and sitting in your living room and asking aloud , "Do we have cereal? I could totally eat some right now" and expecting someone to appear and magically pull it out of their ass and hand it to you. Does that happen in your home?  NO?  Huh, because that is pretty much what you are expecting to happen at work.


The dumb questions kept coming all day and it was a mad rush to get some of my projects semi- completed which stressed the hell out of me.  I ran some errands after work and it felt like everywhere I turned someone was doing something stupid.  I finally got home and was grump beyond belief so I decided it was high time for some Facebook surfing to relax and see what was going on with everyone else.  Worst idea ever.  Pretty much every post I saw was about how someone's baby had slept  more than 2 hours at a time or how another baby took their first solid poop, and even better how this other baby rolled over and he's only 2 months old!  Holy crap, you guys... I want to see cute pictures of your baby, I do not need a minute by minute recap of what he did in his day.  If you want to capture the moment he took his first solid poop, Facebook is not the place to be posting.  Please put that in a scrapbook and write about it.  I want to see cute babies and cute baby animals and witty posts from my friends about politics and entertainment,  not posts about freakin' baby poop and babies rolling over.


So BF and I decided that we were going to counter attack all the damn baby posts with our own "baby" posts.  Each day going forward one of us will post a picture of the other person doing something normal and then we will  caption that picture explaining what we are doing and HOW AWESOME it is and how PROUD we are that the other person is doing that.  We've already started this and you may have noticed my "Rian eats solid food" post on Saturday.  I don't care if people don't like it, it makes me feel better by barraging  their newsfeed with stupid updates when I'm assaulted by theirs.


Anyway, so instead of cooking dinner BF and I decided we needed to eat at our favorite place, Pho Tango, because we didn't have the energy to cook anything nor the energy to clean up after cooking.  After dinner I was in a much better mood and then realized that other than my oatmeal at breakfast I had not eaten carbs AT ALL that day and was thusly causing my foul mood.  It's amazing what some noodles can do.


The evening quickly turned around (go figure) and the weekend was much better.  Tomorrow I will tell you all about how I made up for my lack of carbs last week over the weekend and also how I met BF's family from Oklahoma.  

SIXTY. SIX. DAYS.

You. Guys.


Life is so busy, but also so good.  I don't even know where to start.  I always think I'm going to update and post more often and then I forget about it and 3 weeks have gone by and I realized I haven't even touched an update!  So back to what is happening.


BF and I finally finished our backyard patio.  That took way longer than we expected, but mostly because re reused the paving stones that already existed so we had to clean each one.  by. hand.  UGH. I don't ever want to scrub stones again.  I have also neglected to take pictures.  We now have to clean up the yard debris created by this project and de-weed the yard so we can lay down new grass seed and finish up the yard.  It sounds easy, but I don't think it will actually be finished until September.


In wedding news we have T-minus 66 days.  That's right. Sixty. Six. Days.  Less than three months and I will no longer be a "single" lady.  This is motivating and exhausting at the same time.  I'm motivated to keep working out and eating healthy so I look awesome on our wedding day, but I'm also thinking, "two more months of working out hard and eating right and working a lot of hours at the office before I get to rest... how will I make it?"


Our Hawaii trip is at the end of August so I'm really looking forward to that, and it's the perfect excuse to buy a few new summery things! I cannot enjoy a luau properly if not  in a cute cotton dress.  That's just the way things are.


Oh yeah, and I got to meet a lot of BF's mother's side of the family two weekends ago at their family reunion.  It's a pretty large side of the family and I know I won't remember everyone's names, but I'm sure they won't mind.  This coming weekend BF's grandma is throwing us a party to celebrate our wedding because a lot of his father's side of the family won't be able to make it out in September.  So it's sort of a family reunion/ wedding shower BBQ all rolled into one.  It should be fun, and pretty entertaining if I believe the descriptions of family members from BF and his dad.  


So much more is going on, but I don't even have the mind space to sort it all out and put it into words right now so this update will have to do.  But I promise I won't forget to keep up with the updates!

Holy Updates

It's been FOREVER since I updated this dear old blog, and not for lack of post material.


We've been busier than ever so I'll start from the beginning.  When I last updated we had just attending our Garden Themed wedding shower thrown by BF's amazing coworkers and it was a blast.  A few days after that BF and I headed downtown with our photographer to get our official engagement photos done.  It was fun, but also super awkward for a multitude of reasons.  Reason #1- it was the same day as the Portland Pride Parade so while our photographer was trying to get us to be serious and look at each other, we were busy trying not to crack up looking at the crazy outfits as they passed us by.  Reason #2- I don't naturally smile all day long, so smiling for an hour was tough work!  I had to take a few "face breaks" and stretch my cheeks and face out the other way because I was starting to cramp up!  Reason #3- posing is hard because you don't naturally just hold a position for very long so holding a pose and smiling and trying not to laugh was interesting.  But the pictures turned out great!  Some to come shortly.


A few days after the engagement photo session I drove to Utah to visit my best friend, D, who is also my Maid (Matron) of Honor.  It was so awesome once I actually got to Utah (driving through Idaho is not my favorite thing to do) because it was hot and sunny- basically the total opposite of Oregon during that week.  I even got a tan!  We shopped for a MOH dress for D (and found a great one!) and then mostly hung out and talked about houses and marriage and babies and bachelorette parties (because all of those things are happening to us at this stage in life... except the babies for me, we will wait on that for now).  It was so great to see her and spend time with her and her husband, M, I'm just sad that BF had to miss it.


Oh yeah, and BF got a cool summer job teaching some of the camps this summer at OMSI!  One of them is a Science School of Wizardry class reminiscent of Harry Potter but based around actual science experiments the kids can do. I have to admit that I am slightly jealous.


We have also completely removed all of the sod from our backyard so it is now the unending dirt pit in which the dogs get completely filthy and then come inside and dirty up my clean house.  Ugh.  But now we can move on to actually planning and putting together our patio with paving stones and then reseeding the yard so by the end of summer it will be a beautiful backyard oasis of awesome where we can sit and make s'mores and hang out until it gets cold and rainy again.  We are thinking about throwing a work party this coming Saturday so we can get the last of the prep work done and actually start laying the pavers!  Free pizza and beverages, and possibly popcicles if you are interested!


I'm also in "Holy Crap, we are going to Hawaii in a month and a half and we are going to get married in just under 3" mode so I am refocusing my exercise efforts so I feel comfortable in a bathing suit again.  I got started but I have a lot more work to do in the next 45-60 days!  Lunges and squats are now my life.  Also, planks.  Gah, I hate ab stuff but it is totally necessary!


So there is the quick version update!  I am so happy that it finally feels like summer.  What are your plans?