the office

I am completely obsessing over The Office right now. Not The Office now, but the good old Office, season 1-3 1/2 Office. You know, before Michael left? That man has left the biggest TV hole in my heart.

 Back when Pam and Jim were so in love and the perfect couple and just the longing looks they gave each other made your heart swoon? What the heck happened there?! I cannot even say. But I am seriously considering hiring a writer to go back and rewrite their story because it's an atrocity.

When Dwight was actually hilarious? And he and Jim had the best love hate relationship of all time. 

 You know the office where Kelly and Ryan are just completely nuts? And they're so ridiculous, you can't take them seriously at all, but when you think about it after it totally makes you smile and happy.

 Yeah...I miss it. Sometimes I seriously get emotional over it. Don't ask why, it's weird. Something about loving it so much and watching it change to the point of being unrecognizable. I guess it reminds me that's how life can be. The older I get, the more I have to look back on, the more grateful I am to have been where I've been, and be where I am today.

san francisco part 1

Matt and I have a saying and it goes like this: we're/I'm breaking out of zoo camp.

It stems back from Matt's childhood. His Dad tried several times to put Matt in ski camp, zoo camp, surfing camp, you name it, and he's been in it "camp." And every time His Dad would get a call from the leaders saying that Matt had escaped and they didn't know where he was. You can imagine the fear he felt...the first time. But when it became a pattern...it showed a lot about Matt's personality.

Breaking out of the norm and confinements of others is what he does best. He broke out of college, even though he had a full ride scholarship, to start his own business. Even when it comes to meals! One time I tried making a meal calendar, the man broke out of that too. 

Anyway, the point wasn't to convince you all that my Husband has the worst bout of confinement issue in the world, or that he can't commit, both of which aren't true in the slightest. It was to say that his habit of breaking out has been really good for me. I was never taught that I could break out of something if I didn't like it. I was always too afraid of getting in trouble. 

So for the last couple months I've been beating my brains out over school. Taking every opportunity I could to do the extra credit, meet with study groups, over prepare and it was getting kind of ridiculous. I have this obsession with getting a 4.0. If it's not an A, I don't want it. And I've proven that in the past. A few years ago I took a course and I found out I'd be getting an B+, even if I got an A on the final exam, and guess what? I didn't take it. I gave up and retook the class a year or so later where I, can you guess, got an A. 

So lately I've had this huge weight on me that if I miss 1 assignment, do bad on 1 test, if I miss 1 day of class my A wont be an A anymore. And even as I write this I know it's so ridiculous! I know a A- or B+ or even a C+ should be good enough for me. But trust me when I say I've been working on it. And that's where "breaking out of zoo camp" comes in.

This last week I had my annual doctors appointments up at Stanford Hospital. I already had to miss 2 days of school and Matt and I decided, what the heck! We need to break out of zoo camp and go to San Francisco afterward my appointments. So we did! I took an entire week off of school and guess what? It was awesome! And my teachers totally let me take a test early, and a quiz late, and it's not the end of the world. So yeah, I'm definitely a fan of this breaking out business. I think I'm going to join in on it a lot more.

 ^^Getting ready to do the CPX test. 

Essentially they stick you on a treadmill, put it at a steep incline, at a fast speed and wait until your breathing so hard your not getting the amount of oxygen you need to sustain. Then they lay you down and do a sonogram of your heart to see how thick it becomes during exertion. It's lots of fun. Especially since I didn't know I'd be doing it until 5 min before and therefore didn't have appropriate shoes or clothing.

 ^^Afterward, Matt insisted I get some Sprinkles for a job well done. It's best not to argue and just do what the mans says ;)

 ^^After our 2nd day at Stanford we head on over to San Francisco!

 ^^Hey, look Utah friends and family!!

 ^^We stayed at The Westin St Francis, right on Union Square. It was so much fun to be right in the heart of everything.

 ^^Most of my pictures will be of the amazing buildings and architecture. Everything killed me dead, I loved it so much!

 ^^Both nights we ate dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (it was amazing!) and what else is there to do at The Cheesecake Factory while waiting to be seated but take pictures of you and your sexy Hubby?

I have this bad habit of living in the moment. Which means the first day of vacations I rarely get a lot of (if any) pictures. It isn't until the 2nd day, and I've already seen and experienced the place, that I'm like, "That's so (insert adjective here)! I should get a picture of it!" Sometimes I regret it because when I get home I feel like I didn't capture a lot of special, fun, funny, awesome, etc. moments on camera; but Matt always reminds me that all of those moments were so special because we weren't worried about capturing them, we were living them. And I really liked that.

unseen

Lately I've had unseen illnesses on my mind.

I don't like to focus on my heart disease. In fact, Matt often teases me because he says I "play it down" too much. I'm pretty sure for the first 5 months we were dating, he thought I had heart burn, until the night I passed out and he had to give me chest compressions to keep my heart beating... I couldn't really hide it after that.

 Can you blame me though? There are so many preconceived notions about heart disease. Like, you must be unhealthy, or fat, or don't exercise enough. Also, there's the risk of running into those very special people that consider it nothing but a nuisance. You're heart disease gets in their way and takes up their time and mental capacity. To those, I say, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that my heart disease is a burden...to you." *face-palm* And let's not forget the people that believe because they can't see your illness, it must not be real. The people that say, "It must be nice to just relax and do nothing..." when I can't make it to something because my heart is tweaking, and I can't breath, and every 5 minutes I'm evaluating whether I can make it another 5 minutes, or whether I need to go to the hospital. Yes, it's so nice and relaxing fighting for air. And no, I didn't miss the hint in your voice suggesting I'm making it up and really at the movies with friends. *face-palm #2* If you think I'm kidding, I wish. All of these people are real and I have the pleasure of having a few of them in my life.

The other day I made the mistake of venting to someone about my exercise predicament. The predicament being that I love to exercise, I feel good when I exercise, I know it's good for my body to exercise and I notice I don't like my body or how my clothes fit as much when I don't exercise. However, my body has the smallest and finest line when it comes to "this is a good amount of exercise" and "are you freaking kidding?! you have a heart disease you idiot!" I can work out 5 days a week for 2 months and feel amazing and then one day my body stops and says, "no more." And I'm basically out of commission for who knows how long. I'm still recovering from exercising over Christmas break. For instance, today I was shaking my yogurt before I opened it, and that simple movement, sent my heart into palpitating, pounding, squeezing hurtyness. From shaking yogurt, people. Anyway, after venting to said person, the advice given was, "Then walk! You can always go on walks." And although I know it was meant out of love, I can't help but feel chastised. Like I was blaming any recent weight gain on my heart when in reality I was probably eating pizza and ice cream every night. I haven't eaten pizza in months and months! I have ice cream even less often than that. I do like my candy...but even that is not a lot, and when I don't exercise I try to cut back as much as my sanity will allow. My meals consist of salads, healthy vegetables, good protein, etc. The point being, I try. I try really hard. And it doesn't make me feel very good when people assume if I'm gaining some weight it's because I'm just lazy and fat. It actually makes me feel like crap. Obviously, if I could, don't you think I'd love to take my puppy on a stroll by the beach? By the bird refuge, by any of the number of parks in my area? Can't I get more credit than assuming I'm sitting on my butt all day watching TV, eating potato chips and boxes of doughnuts? 

I would never wish the heart disease that me and some of my siblings have on anyone, but I would wish that they could really see and experience what it's like to be someone with a heart disease. Or any other unseen illness for that matter. So if you see someone, who's maybe got some junk in the trunk, walking and you wanna tell her to just give up because it's going to take a lot more than walking (if you know what I mean)...  just cut her some slack. Because maybe that's just the best she can do with her given circumstances.

catalina day 4

Our last day in Catalina was one of my favorites.

^1920's spanish charm is the main theme in Catalina.

^Killing time before ziplinging.

^Husband, being a boss and showing everyone how it's done.

^Backwards and 1 handed. If you could only zoom in and see the terror on my face. 

^Posing for the camera

^My pose for the camera. Hahaha! 

^The next series of pictures are Matt being a photographer. To say he was sad to leave is an understatement. He wanted to get as many last minute pictures in as he could.

After we checked out of our hotel we did all the last minute things we'd had our eye on. Like go to the museum. And explore some hidden alleys and shops. Take a picture with the buffalo (since they're all over the island and the locals use to live off of them.) And other things like that.

This was also the day we did the zipline. Up until this day I was so excited for this activity. It wasn't until I realized I would actually be jumping off a platform into mid-air that I started getting nervous. Nervous to the point where, when they were strapping me into my harness I told myself I was going to bail. Nervous to the point where my heart started pounding. Where no one was going to make me do it and I might actually break into tears if I so much as saw the valley we were suppose to go soaring through. Like, seconds away from a full blown anxiety attack and the fight or flight would make me do something irrational.

So don't ask what gave me the strength when after only 2 people went, I looked over the ledge and took the biggest step of faith in my life. Literally.

It's funny because on our first day, 10 minutes off the boat, we were up in the air, parasailing, and I didn't skip a beat. Matt was much more nervous than me, clinging to his harness for life or death. He took his hands off for 10 seconds and then returned his death grip, where as I was looking around, raising my arms, leaning into the wind. Not afraid, at all. 

But, then if you put me in that same harness and ask me to jump off a cliff into a canyon, forget about it. Matt on the other hand, was a pro when it came to ziplining. The man was so sure and confident. Not an ounce of hesitation in him. Funny how that works.

Anyway, the first 2 runs I had to remind myself to keep breathing, haha. I was so scared I was holding my breath and didn't realize until half way through that I might actually pass out, but by the 3rd run I was jumping off that platform like I was jumping into a pool, and doing all sorts of cool tricks (like going backwards! Which, if I hadn't been screaming, I'm sure I would have passed out.) 

It was so much fun! The adrenaline was incredible!

After all 5 runs we were so exhausted from the crazy amounts of excitement and thrill. Which made it perfect that right afterwards we had to hurry and catch our fairy back to LA. It was just the right way to end our trip, sitting and watching the sun go down as we sipped our hot coco. It definitely wont be long before we plan our next escape to Catalina.