We like sportz and we don't care who knows.

I tried to look up a video clip to post here that would help me apologize for the long blogging-hiatus I have taken. 

Instead, I ended up watching a 10 minute clip from Plato's Apology at 12:49 in the morning. 

This proves 3 things:  

1. I am still an English nerd

2. I still stay up way too late doing stupid things

3. This is a great excuse for not blogging as clearly nothing in my life has changed.

This last things is fairly close to reality. I have done nothing but school and work for so long. 

Until recently, when something awful happened. 

Something I swore I would never do. 

Something that is painful for me to admit to the blogging world, particularly to those who remember this post.

I'm not going to actually say what I'm talking about, but I will say that once a week someone who lives in my apartment puts on cleats and goes to play a sport that nobody on the field can actually play...and she loves it. SO much.
Said person says every night to her boyfriend "Is today my football game??"
And he says "No, it's next Tuesday."
Said person lays in bed every night and says to her roommates "I just...love football...I just....love it."
Said person also retains the right to still make fun of women's flag football as it is still as ridiculous as ever.

Example from a recent game: 
Ref: "Illegal blocking on the offense." 
Girl: "Wait...us?" 
Ref: "Yes...you are on offense right now." 
Girl: "Oh....Wait, no, no, no. We didn't do that." 
Ref: "Yes you did."
Girl: "Oh, uh....no we didn't." 
Ref: "Uh...yes you did."
Girl: "No. This isn't fair! I was just standing here trying to stop her!" 
Ref: "Yeah...and you did it illegally. While you were on offense. An illegal block on the offense." 
Girl: "That doesn't make any sense."

Said person also recently received a tip that there was going to be one extra game offered to whoever called it first after receiving the e-mail. And said person may or may not have spent upwards of three hours hitting refresh on her browser just to make sure she didn't miss the e-mail that was going out to 40 other teams as well. 

Guess who got the extra game? 

And speaking of sports (all I ever want to do these days,) my MFA program put together a Women's volleyball team this semester.

Yes. Creative Writers. Playing Volleyball. 

(I capitalized every word in those last three phrases because as a creative writer I can make these kinds of decisions and nobody can argue with me.) 

Anyways, long story short we ended up in the championship game of D3. 

It was a lot like the Mighty Ducks D3 where they no longer have Gordon Bombay* as their coach and they feel lost and alone without him.

Except for us it wasn't a lack of a coach.

More that we remembered at the last minute that we were a bunch of nerdy English master's students and the whole "sports" thing became too much for us.

We lost by 3 in the fifth game. 

Thanks for bringing it up. 

Sportz4Life.

Love, 

Katie

* One time I was Emilio Estevez's waitress. It was all I could do to resist saying "quack...quack...quack.quack.quack.quack!!"

This is just to say...

This isn't my standard blog post. 

It won't be long, 

or profound,

and it won't contain a funny story. 

I just want to say that I am really happy. 

And life is really good. 

Boring? 

Maybe. 

The best? 

Yes. 

It has been a long time since life has been this good. 

I accept. 

Love, 

Katie

BLAHHHH!!! IKNOWITHASBEENFOREVER!!! GRADSCHOOLRUNSMYLIFE!!!

According to Picasa, I have taken 1,088 pictures this summer.

That is a decent amount of photographable moments. 

If there is one thing I hate it is long blog posts that give details and photographs of a huge chunk of a persons life. 

Not only are they annoying but I get sucked into reading a 25 photo account of that girl who is dating the kid from the house across the street.....and enjoying it.

What I am trying to say is, I don't plan on posting very many pictures about the end of my summer,
but I DO want to tell you about the time I accidentally signed into MSN a few days ago for the first time since graduating from the 8th grade.

LIST OF INCREDIBLE OBSERVATIONS AND DISCOVERIES:

1. After being signed in for around 4 seconds I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to tell my crush that I "liked" him using subtle hints and sly questions.  I reveled in the fact that I could tell the world anything from the safety of my computer screen and there was virtually no consequences unless you and that person had the same lunch period or lockers next to each other.
Those conversations usually went like this:
Me: "So...are you uh...likin' anyone these days?"
Crush: "Uh...............kinda"
Me: "Me too........But I'm not telling you who.....Don't ask.........Okay it's you...."
Crush: *your crush is now offline*

2. My sign in name was still "Katie" except it was spelled in rotating capital and lower-case letters.
Ex: kAtIe
I think all those times in the last 8 years I have felt incredible awkward or lacking in self confidence it was because I was being subconsciously haunted by the fact that somewhere floating around the internet was my name written in a font that modern scholars can only now label as "Myspace Bold."

3. My birthday was listed as May 9th. This wouldn't seem weird to you unless you knew that May 9th isn't my real birthday. This still might not seem weird as you might have thought I was taking an extra safety precaution against internet predators. I would agree with you if I wasn't busy slapping my middle-school self upside the head for only being creative enough to put my fake birthday as four days after my actual birthday (May 5th) and leaving the year on there so it didn't matter anyways.
I don't think I quite grasped the whole "internet safety" concept.

4. This was my "about me" section:
"I wish i could say I'm a chill person but i'm not really, i'm stressed a lot but i love to laugh and do crazy, random things aton! I have a hard time being mad at people and i hate it when people are mad at me!"

 

Welp. 

There it is. 

8th grade Katie in a nutshell = I was super hyperactive and I thought "aton" was a word.

Starting grad school has, at times, made me long for the days when my English classes involved me pretending how much I hated "Great Expectations" just like the rest of my class even though I secretly went home every night and read it for hours. 

Then I saw that my favorite quote in 8th grade was "Live. Laugh. Love." and I threw up in my mouth and felt better about where I am.

Growing up has it's perks. 

Love, 

Katie

True Life: shaving your legs is the worst.

Moms are always right. 

It's frustrating.

About ten years ago my mom said something to me that I thought I would never listen to or agree with.

She said,

"You have to learn to make decisions because they are the responsible thing to do, not because they are the fun thing to do."

Sounds like a normal mom thing to say, but the context is actually hilarious. 

It was sixth grade and I had been begging my mom for weeks to let me start shaving my legs. 

I don't think I really had any hair on them to speak of, but I had already blown my chances at hanging out with the cool girls by telling Cassidy Jorgensen about the time I got stuck in my cousin's plastic stroller and had to use butter to get my legs out of the holes, and I was really looking for a good topic of conversation to help move past that.

My mom was (and still is) a very logical woman, and her reason for saying no was simply this: 

shaving your legs is annoying, and the longer you can wait to start the better.

We obviously didn't see eye to eye on the subject as my plastic stroller nightmares were getting worse and the fact that I was still wearing overalls to school when everyone else had graduated to capris wasn't really helping,

but eventually I let the subject go and resigned myself to hairy-butter-legs.

In the mean time, my best friend, Sara Ferguson, came to school one day with a surprise. 

She had reversed her shoelaces so they tied at the bottom instead of at the top. 

This was a real hit amongst the 6th grade, 

and me, being the attention-monger that I was, decided to jump on board and spent all of lunch re-lacing my shoes so they looked the same. 

It was a disaster.

I tripped three times over the long loops hanging off of the bottom of my shoes during cone-dodgeball alone.

But the way those bunny ears flapped around my toes was so eye-catching that a few scraped knees were worth all the stares and questions I was getting. 

I arrived home that evening walking tall and feeling good, 

until my mother found me in the entryway where I had just spent the last twenty minutes trying to untie shoes that were laced the wrong way. 

She saw the scrapes on my knees.

She saw the hole in my overalls. (Not actually from this. I think I just tore that hole so she'd finally let me stop wearing them.) 

She disappeared into her room and came back a few minutes later with a shiny new razor and a lecture about how dangerous it is to run around with shoelaces under your feet to trip on. 

"But it's fun!" I said. "It's fun to run around with shoelaces under my feet!" 

Then came the line: 

"You have to learn to make decisions because they are the responsible thing to do, not because they are the fun thing to do."

And so, so I would stop doing silly things like tie my shoes backwards, I...got to start shaving my legs. 

I'll never understand the correlation. 

All I know is that today in the shower as I was shaving my legs I thought: 

"Shaving my legs is annoying. I never should have started."

And then I said "Noooooooooo!!!" 

Because sooner or later everything your mom says comes true.

Which makes me really nervous about the time she said,

"You'll be the death of me." 

Love, 

Katie

Obsessions.

I've found it. 

Inspiration to blog I mean. 

I have had the hardest time in the world having the motivation to blog ever since I found myself with no job, no school, and all the time in the world. 

Backwards right? 

Today I am attempting to get some work done that my Dad is paying me to do for him so that I can pay the bills and buy things like ten packs of pasta for five dollars (I dream big) and triple chunk brownie mix to replace the one I accidentally ate of Bj's when he left his at my house. (his fault) 

Anyways, nothing makes me want to blog more than actually having something better to do, so here I am, writing away for an audience that will not pay me rather than for a father who will. 

(Unless everyone wants to chip in. Am I right? I mean...right?) 

This has been a summer of obsessions. 

If you know me, you know that this has also been a lifetime problem, me obsessing over things, but we are just going to focus on the past three months and leave out the time I was obsessed with the footlong meatball from Subway or that whole "Improv Club" phase.

Obsession #1: Bees. 

This is real. 

Me: "Oh hey my friend Mindy from work. Thanks for having me over for lunch. I'm expecting a normal day here at your house." 

Mindy: "Only if a normal day is putting on my professional bee-keeping equipment and standing between two beehives, calling the little creatures into your arms like a bee-goddess from the wild."

Yeah, I wanted to do that.

So we did.

It was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life. Bees are such incredible animals. 

Ever since then, every time I see a bee, I feel like cuddling it into my little hands and promising it chocolate and flowers every Valentine's Day and that I will do the dishes every other night and most Sundays if we can just spend some time together and be in love.

It's really serious.

Obsession #2: Fireworks
I have always loved fireworks. Everyone does right?
But this summer I have had the chance to see 6 or 7 really good firework shows and I have become addicted.
The trick is to live in Northern Utah.
Here's how it goes: 
Sometime in March every year all the churro companies around here get together and sneak caffeine into all the small-town mayors drinks and then convince them to rotate holding festivals every weekend for the whole summer.
Seeing as how this is their yearly dose of anything stronger than pink grapefruit flavored Airborne, they all get really tipsy and somehow see this conglomeration of festivals as necessary.
The exception is the Spanish Fork mayor who is obviously given something a little stronger than caffeine and takes things well over the line from fruit-themed carnivals (Strawberry Days, Peach Days, Etc.) and holds Llama Fest at a Krishna Temple.

Truth be told, they can hold a festival in honor of Kim Jong Il and I'm still going to attend, as long as there is fireworks.
 Here is a picture from the St. George 4th of July fireworks. That bright ball of flames at the bottom is the waterfall of fireworks they have shot off the red hill every year since I can remember.
Every year everything catches on fire.
Every year there are plenty of firetrucks nearby and the burn is incredibly controlled.
And every year there is a woman on the sidewalk next to me on the phone with some city official who is calmly explaining to her that the city is, in fact, aware that fire burns things.

Obsession #3: Baby Carlos
I know I've talked a lot about my best friend Jenna who was pregnant and then who gave birth and then, as a direct result of the previous two conditions, now has a child.
But that doesn't mean I don't push "publish post" and then proceed to drool for the next hour over pictures of him and his soft head of gorgeous hair and his little hands and feet and how darling he is when he yawns.
I have a serious baby crush.
When I was at home a few weeks ago I would try my hardest to go do things with other friends.
I would be on my way to Durangos or Iceberg to meet up with people and somehow I would be suddenly pulling into Jenna's driveway and holding her baby before I knew what hit me.
That kid is a magnet and I am...an opposing magnet.
I almost said refrigerator but I didn't feel good about comparing myself to a large, food-filled item on my own blog. 

Because there isn't much to say after those darling pictures of the most perfect baby I will have to leave it at that and get back to "work" or as I like to call it "Pinterest."

I'll be in California for the next week but when I'm back I should have more work so expect more posts. 

Naturally. 

Love, 

Katie

For: Denise/Ron (for whining about not being in my blog)

GOD BLESS AMERICA. 

My 4th of July was the best ever. (there I go again with superlatives, and now I'm going to make some sort of claim about how I mean it this time.) 

I do! It's true! It was! 

We kicked things off at Grandma Wade's. For those of you who are new to my blog, new to my life, new to Grandma Wade, or all of the above, let me fill you in. 

In the world of Grandma Wade every day is a holiday and every holiday is the most important day in the existence of this whole world. 

Costumes. 

Themed name cards. 

Programs  on every table with hour by hour schedules. 

Actual programs. (I'm talking sit in a circle, share your talents particular to the holiday, hold hands, stop giving wet-willie's to your little brother...)

The works. 

It's the best. (See picture below) 

 Seeing as how I love America more than I love giving wet-willie's to my little brother (so gross, but so funny, I'm 22 years old), I really enjoyed the program.

 I even recited "The New Colossus," which is the poem found on the statue of liberty that I memorized in 9th grade. (okay, so our family forgot to plan our part of the program.) 

However, seeing as how all good things must come to an end, it was eventually time to leave the family festivities and head to the friend festivities. 

After convincing a few people to be my friend, and then paying them an extra $5 to hold festivities, I had my parents thoroughly convinced that they could head on home and skip tucking me in that night. 

Of the bunch, Chad and I were the most obviously patriotic. 

(I am obviously wearing a heart-shaped American flag ring. Ten dollars to anyone who can spot the flag Chad is wearing.*) 

 (*I gave my last ten dollars to Chad to be in this picture with me.) 

Pictured below is my friends watching the fireworks and being really patriotic. 

 This is the truck that was parked next to us, also watching the fireworks. 

Despite our best efforts, there is no way we could have beat this man, his truck, or the handcuffs hanging from his mirror, in displaying small-town American pride. 

You win. You always do. 

 Day 1 of 4th of July just wasn't enough for us, so we pulled a Groundhog Day, woke up the next morning, and started the festivities all over again. 

I'm being serious

We really did that. 

Day 2 started off with a giant Slip n' Slide at the park. 

Though it may look like I am "tumbling" down, instead of sliding, the picture is deceiving, I am actually just sliding down on my toes, and...I'm blurry. 

 After a few rounds of human bowling and Devin throwing out his back, we called it a day and went over to Tyler Carlson's for a barbecue and fireworks. 

I spent a while sitting in his living room until someone asked me why I was "shimmying" in the recliner. (It was a massage chair, but not everyone knew that. Jokes on me.)  

Then, we went out front to practice our spells. 

I killed Voldemort, or whatever. 

They actually made a movie about it. 

It's coming out July 15th if you want to go see it. 

Oh and roman candle wars are really fun. 

This country really knows how to celebrate. 

Dare I say it again? 

God Bless America. 

Love, 

Katie 

Broc: "I just heard someone use the word "shindig" in an actual sentence"

Last night Erin, Broc and I went to the Gunlock Rodeo.

Gunlock is a really small town about fifteen minutes away from Santa Clara. 

 Small town rodeos always bring back memories for me of being fourteen and going with my friends to the rodeo to meet hot fourteen-year-old cowboys by using sweet pick-up-lines like "oh. uh. is this the line for snow cones?" 

 As we were parking and walking in we heard the announcer say, 

"This rodeo funds our entire town for the next year." 

That is real. 

On Gunlock's wikipedia page, under "Events" it says: 

"Gunlock, Utah is the site of the Annual Gunlock Rodeo."

And that is it. 

The only real point for this next picture is to show you what the children of Gunlock look like and to say that children in boots and belt  buckles are incredibly darling. 

Erin. Me. Rodeo. 

Pictured next is the Chicken Chase, the second funniest event of the Gunlock Rodeo. 

My camera died before I could get pictures of the first funniest even, which was the donkey-watermelon race. 

It's hard to describe how hilarious it is to watch fifteen donkeys, each with two riders, run into each other and throw off their riders who are trying to pick up a watermelon and ride them back across the finish line. Only one donkey actually made it back and it was with a boy wrapped around the front of his neck and one laying stomach down over his rear end, watermelon held above his head. 

I guess I described it anyways. 

But trust me, seeing that event in person is bucket-list worthy. 

The picture above is the 0-6 year old children lined up for the chicken chase, and below is them taking off. 

Essentially all they have to do is catch one of the ten or so chickens with their incredibly uncoordinated hands. 

Once they have caught one, the announcer walking around the arena will bring the microphone to them and ask them their name. 

Announcer: "What is your name son?" 

4 year old: "Chicken!" 

Announcer: "But what is your NAME?"

4 year old: "Chicken!!" 

Announcer: "I see that. You've caught a chicken. Great job. But what is your name??"

4 year old: "CHICKEN!!!!" 

You never know, in a place like Gunlock, the kid's name might have actually been Chicken. 

The suckiest part about a rodeo is how as soon as you throw your rope and you miss, it's all over. 

It's sad to see the kids who you know have been practicing for months just to throw this rope at a little cow that is running away from them. 

And when you put it that way, the concept of a rodeo is actually super bizarre. 

I pointed this out to Erin who enlightened me on the subject. 

"I bet there was this guy with some rope, a cow, and a horse and he thought 'I bet I could put all of these together and do somethin' with em'." 

And I thought, if that's how this goes then I want to meet the guy who came up with the donkey-watermelon race.

The good news is, my cousin Mitch, who was roping in his first rodeo, threw his rope, from his horse, and caught that cow. 

We were so proud. 

Happy 4th everyone. 

God Bless America. 

And God Bless Gunlock. 

Love, 

Katie