1/31/15

pinboard

bather

heels

look

unicorn

space

Fitz

A few of my favorite pins to start the weekend. Today we are going bike hunting for my birthday. I can't wait and I already have a name picked out, because you always have to name your bicycle! 

Hope you are up to some fun and maybe a little trouble!

xo, C

p.s. follow me in Pinterest here.


1/29/15

dreamy dresses





I love fashion and this is seriously some of the best fashion I have ever seen. These dresses are absolutely dreamy! The rainbow one is my favorite but they are all amazing. I'm swooning like crazy over here! Where is my fainting couch?!?!?!

I never thought I would be a fashion lover, but good lord do I love it! I'm hoping to get some books on fashion through the decades and also one on couture. 

I love dressing up and I think fashion is about dressing the way you want, not following trends. I mean that's what fashion designers do, they try to make something new and unique, something not seen before. It's funny that we all then go out and try to copy the look. So I say dress the way you want, whether it's on trend of not, just wear what you like and enjoy it.

I want to be braver in my style but I'm sometimes a shy girl. I have a petticoat and puffy 50s dresses to wear, amazing oxblood boots with faux fur, and red lipstick to try, but I need to get my bravery up to wear them. This year I'm doing it! I also want to share pictures on here one day, but first things first. Wish me luck!

xo, C

1/27/15

bored girl










Hi Dolls!

Here are too many pictures of my post-nap face. My hair is all frizzed out but I'm bored as fuck so selfies seem sort of interesting.

Ronald is out of town. He left Sunday and comes back Thursday. It's been a long one so far and I sleep like shit when he is gone. It's quite lonely over here...

I've been binge watching The Good Wife, eating junk food, and drinking lots of coffee and the occasional green smoothie.

My birthday is Friday and I am so excited to bake my cake. I'm using a chocolate cake recipe from the 1920s, and making strawberry buttercream for the center layer, and chocolate frosting for the top. I hope it tastes like heaven and I hope it doesn't look like shit so I can get some good pictures. I also have little Paris cake toppers...so much fun!

The one thing I love about my birthday is that it is close to Valentine's day. Other than Christmas Valentine's day is my favorite holiday mainly because it's all red and pink and hearts and flowers. There is a string of heart paper lanterns on the mantle, sparkly heart garlands, daffodils, tulips, and carnations. So things look pretty celebratory around here.

For my last few days as a 30 year old I'm planning on doing homework, making some collars for the dogs, going thrifting, and trying to keep my chin up until Ronald gets back.

xo, C


1/21/15

the loneliness of illness


I love my new desk set up in the corner of our living room. It is under a window and even though I can see our neighbor's driveway of trucks, I can also look up and see the power lines (which I strangely adore--good bird perches), and all the trees. It's foggy out and the sky looks like white tissue. My nose tickles. My sides hurt. I haven't showered in two days. But here I am sitting at my desk, and that's something good.

I wish I felt good enough to have a career. I kind of want to be a teacher, or a designer, or a florist. Mainly I want to not be sick all the time. I also want to be a mom but that is another story for another day. Maybe one day. For now I'll muddy through and try to make my own way. 

I really wish there was a book for people who are chronically and or mentally ill...not going-to-die ill, but ill enough that they can't build an average type life and it just gave advice and thoughts on how to plan and live day to day in a fulfilling way that made sense to them. I feel so weird and seriously like the only person who doesn't look sick but is sick, who isn't going to die, but sometimes is. It's such a weird mess of stuff, it's so hard to wrap my head around. I feel so alone and different in it.

I don't know, I just always thought sick people knew what they were doing. That sounds horrible, but I just thought that doctors told them what to do and it was all planned out. Like this is your treatment plan, and this is what you need to do to get better...1, 2, 3. But it's not like that. My doctors don't know how to make me better, there is no cure for this shit so far, and really they don't even know what's wrong entirely. I feel so lost and thats horrifying because each day that goes by is a day of my life, a day I could be better, could be doing something other than going to doctors appointments or sobbing my eyes out.

Then dealing with depression is a whole other mess. My doctor has plans for making me better and I am getting better in a lot of ways. But then there are boxes of pills twice a day and therapy twice a week and my life revolves around dealing with all this crazy childhood crap and weird thinking I have, and it is just an exhausting mess because all I'm saying is I don't feel happy or good inside. And then I basically have to feel worse by going to those dark places and working through them for years in order to feel better. And don't get me wrong, I am getting better, but I'm still sad so much of the time. I still don't know if life is worth living. It fucking sucks.

--Maybe I need to be the one writing this book? Might be a good idea.

xo, C

1/20/15

sickie-doo


So I'm sick. I am so physically tired and weak that I can't function. I don't have a cold or virus, it is just something that I deal with a few times a year and so far doctors can't figure out why. It sucks not knowing what is wrong. It also sucks having to stop my life for months at a time.

We think it could be an autoimmune thing but in the past my blood tests seemed pretty normal. I'm making an appointment with another rheumatologist to run tests again. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime I am watching lots of Gilmore Girls, Seinfeld, and Hitchcock movies. I'm also drinking green smoothies, and taking really long naps. I started school today (luckily it's online), and I have been doing some little crafts. Oh, and playing Sims Build It on my iPad which I am totally addicted to!

I miss doing things. I want to cook and jump around and take showers without crying due to how weak I feel. This sucks. It's super hard not to get depressed at times like these. So I'm wishing for luck and strength and guts to get through. All positive vibes welcome.

xo, C

1/16/15

nightmare girl


So things have been a bit crazed around here. Our travels are over for now and we are trying to get back to normal life. With this settling, I've been feeling pretty depressed and unmotivated. I'm also having some killer fatigue which makes doing anything seem impossible.

Last nights sleep was horrible, like really bad. About three weeks ago R and I watched a scary movie (I love scary movies so much...), the one we saw was subtle and brilliant and totally fucked me up. I dream about that movie every night and even during the day I am scared from it. R is going out of town in a little over a week and I am so scared to have him gone now that the movie is haunting me. It's awful.

One day I want to get a tattoo that says "nightmare fighter", as that is so me. If the pictured fortune is true, I am totally fucked! To any nerds out there, "nightmare fighter" also references the poem The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell. Ok. Nerd out complete.

I've been having green smoothies for breakfast the last few days. I followed this tutorial on making single serve smoothie bags and it is such a brilliant idea. I can whip a smoothie up in the same time it takes me to get cereal together. This is awesome for before-coffee-me (which is a nightmare in itself).

It's so shitty to be up from a nightmare with the looming decision of going back to sleep which for me means back to the nightmare, or waking up. Oh lord is it hard. This morning the stay-awake won. No wonder I love naps so much. I am so lucky my bad dreams usually don't come up during naps. There is restorative sleep in the world...amen.

One more thing on sleep and bad dreams. Having dogs is the hugest help. Our giant black lab Amelia sleeps between R and I most nights. I fall asleep spooning her. She wakes whenever I do and watches me with her dark doe eyes and is always ready for a belly rub even at three a.m. it's the best.

In closing I would like to tell you what I say almost every morning, "sleep is for suckers".

xo, C

1/8/15

Disneyland part 1





















So here is the first batch of photos. I used my iPhone 6 (Christmas present from R!) rather than lugging around my DSLR and I have to say I'm super happy with how the photos turned out. I also used a disposable camera, but still have to get the film developed. 

I will share more photos soon and also some more realizations...can't wait to tell you about all the things in the works!

xo, C

1/7/15

more than we thought


Hi Loves!

We are back from Disneyland. It was an amazing trip! Ronald and I haven't had a proper vacation in almost a year so it was so nice to be on an adventure that was purely for fun! I will post pictures soon.

I had some moments of clarity while being away and I learned some things about myself. It was so refreshing to not only have fun but to also figure some deeper things out. One of the things I learned about myself was how physically strong I am.

We kept track of our steps on our iPhones and on our top day we walked over 7 miles! It was pretty amazing to go from a horrible fibro flare just a few days earlier, to walking such a distance! I still had pain, but I honestly thought my body couldn't handle walking that far.

In a bath later that night I decided rather than judging my appearance with that mean little inner voice that I keep just for me, that I would instead be proud of how strong my body is. It was hard to do, but it felt great.

Now that we are home all the usuals come back. The tendency towards stress, and getting bogged down in the day to day. But I'm trying to hold onto the knowledge that I'm not only internally strong, but also physically strong. I want to challenge myself to go for longer walks, and I am more excited than ever to get a bike!

I think we so often box ourselves up out of fear. We say we can't do something, but in reality we can if we just push a bit further. Whether its doing that extra workout, sharing your story, reaching out to someone, or starting a new venture in life, it's so important to remind ourselves that we can do more than we believe we can. So much more than we ever thought and there's comfort in that.

I will share more of our trip and my realizations soon. Glad to be back!

xo, C