Brush Yo Teeth!!

(me showing my fabulous set of teeth)

For the past month I have been having so much anxiety of this day. About three weeks ago I went to the dentist after not really going for 5 years. The majority of those years I didn't have insurance and didn't make going to the dentist any kind of priority...Until NOW. Three weeks ago when I went to the dentist, it wasn't a good time. I felt as though I had failed some kind of test, because he kept reading off tooth after tooth that needed to be filled or possibly root canaled. So needless to say, I didn't want this day to ever come. I guess in a way I did want it to come too so that I could start getting some of these things taken care of.
Fast forward to today, basically he did three fillings for me. I was excited that they were not the old scary mercury fillings and instead were ones that are the same color as your teeth. So the only people that will know that I have a filling are in the dental industry. Anyway, I brought along my ipod because the thing that makes me the most nervous about going to the dentist is hearing all of the equipment. Let me tell you there were some crazy sounds that were happening in my mouth today so I was oh so thankful for that ipod. He gave me 2 shots of anesthetic to completely numb my right hand side. I'm not a big fan of the feeling you get from numbing, as it leaves me feeling crazy and like i'm talking as a drunken fool. Anyway, I have a feeling it felt better than feeling what he was actually doing. He filled 3 fillings for me today and it wasn't really as scary as I thought. After having a root canal done last summer nothing has really topped that one...except maybe getting a tooth pulled (which I hope NEVER happens). All in all I kinda broke the bank with how much all of this is gonna cost me, but at least I won't have to feel like my mouth is a scary mess of decay. Gotta go back for round two in a few weeks but now that I know what to expect i'm not too afraid of it. So everyone, make sure that you and your children learn how important it is to floss and brush everyday too. Listerine is also a wonderful thing to have in your life. Not too sure on the whole fluoride thing, but do yourself a favor and...Brush Your Teeth!!!

A Day at the Park

Friday is a day that I am always looking forward to because it's the only day that both Amir and I have off of work. I'm forever grateful for this day. Today we dccided that we'd bring the dogs to the park and let them run around. This is something that we didn't get to do enough of this summer, as it seemed as though there were always something else going on. So we wanted to let the dogs have some fun and just be able to run around on the grass hanging out soaking in the sun. This is one of Rufus's favorite things to do as he is a Florida/California dog. I'm jealous of him because he got to live in San Francisco, and I haven't. Haha...jealous of a dog. I think i'm crazy! Anyway, besides that today was a day of relaxing and not doing too much. Tomorrow's Saturday which means a day of probably 9 massages and the other day I woke up feeling like my right index finger was jammed. Still feels that way so tomorrow's gonna be a lot of fun. I am going to an orthopedic doctor in a few weeks for my hands so maybe he'll find something. Hopefully, I just minorly strained it in some way.
So after the park we dropped the dogs off and went to eat at Sweet Tomatoes which I always love. It feels like a somewhat healthy buffet. It's a salad/soup/pasta buffet and I thorougly enjoy it. I posted a few pictures up on flickr of the park. Bout it for now. Peace out!

European Vacation

(the matterhorn in switzerland)

I'm already getting really excited for next summer!! My mom's friend's son is getting married in Bristol, England next July and my mom has been acting like she wants to go. She doesn't like flying anywhere alone which is where I come in. I will be her flying to England/vacation partner! This makes me SO happy because i've not been to England since 2001, when I came back from my last abroad program in London. It's crazy to think that in a matter of two years I went to Europe/England and beyond 4 different times and since then have NOT been back. Until I went to California, London was my favorite place, so it's gonna be cool if this really does happen. I did some really good shopping there, and ate a lot of delicious food. Camden Market and Oxford Street here we come!! And Wagamama!!! Yay! My mom has never been abroad before so i'm looking forward to show her all of what her and my dad's money was paying for while I was there. haha! Not sure if we'll be going to any other countries while we're visiting. It might just be a London vacation which is fine with me. I'll be completely happy with that. I'm hoping to get out to Cali next summer too so all in all it's gonna be like a 3 week thing. Not too concerned with what work tells me because i'm taking it no matter what! For me to stay sane I need to be able to get outta where i'm at and vacate for a bit. So should everyone. Americans work too much, if you ask me and need to be more like Europeans. I love the idea of the siesta!! We need more of those!

Blessed

Everytime I start to be annoyed with work or annoyed with whatever, I need to think of how good I really do have it. I've got the most fabulous husband that I could ever ask for, my beautiful boys (dogs), a great family, and such great friends even though I never really see any of them because they are all over the US. I'm also lucky enough to be able to take a vacation once a year to keep myself sane. Even though i'm not rich, I still feel like a blessed person in this world. Have a good day before Friday!!!

Doing it on my own!

The other day I found something out that I pretty much knew, but just made me a little more frustrated, than I was prior. This all having to do with my place of employment. Let me just give you a little info about my work. I work in a spa/salon. We are located in a hotel...the salon is upstairs and we are in the basement. There are NO windows and we usually keep it pretty dark down there to keep the spa "mood". So before I started working there, they had had several floods in the basement where the spa is located. I was told that there have been at least 4 to 5 floods in the past 5 years. In this time, the carpet was NEVER replaced. I guess that my coworkers were told that the carpet would be replaced by February of this year and that has never happened. So because of all of the flooding and water that was down there, there has been a growth of mold that has happened. AND it's STILL THERE!! There has been nothing done, and the worst part is that corporate knows about it and says that there is no mold and that everything is fine. This is so infuriating to me because this is something that is harmful to peoples' health. I have already experienced symptoms of mold exposure. It has definentely affected my breathing, I cough when i'm there and ONLY when i'm there, and sometimes my eyes burn. All of which are symptoms of mold exposure. I've already decided that I DON'T want to be pregnant while I work there because I dont want to expose my unborn child to it. I signed a contract with this company stating that I have to stay with them for one year or I have to pay money, which I heard some people haven't had to pay. But we'll see. So here are my goals for these next 7 months so I can prepare myself to get outta this place!

* Hand my business cards out to everyone/Market myself as much as possible!!
* Get certified in pregnancy massage
* Learn some new deep tissue techniques
* Get more massages for research
* Move into a house so that I have my own massage space

Those are just a few goals for this next year so that I can get my own business going. I know that people enjoy my massages and I feel like I know how to make people feel good so I just need to get my own clients so that I dont have to wait around to get booked or not get booked. So if you or anyone you know (if anyone even reads this) needs a massage let me know!! I'd love to work with you!

The Unveiling!

For the past year or so i've been wanting to get a portrait tattoo of my parents. However, I never had the money to do it. Well, finally the funds came and I found an awesome person to do it so hence, I have two new awesome tattoos. I wanted to completely suprise my parents and tell them nothing of it until I was able to show it to them, and today was finally that day.

On the weekend of July 4th, I got the first one which was the one of my dad. I am glad that he put my dad on top because the shape of his head really forms into my shoulder. They are on my right upper arm, by the way. This one took a bit over 3 hours to do and had some painful areas. However, the majority of it wasn't all the horrible. I never thought i'd be able to sit for a 3 hour tattoo, but I did it. When I know how awesome something is gonna be in the end, I can usually take the process, even if it is not the most comfortable. Pretty much the entire time, I read my People and US Weekly mags. They are the perfect mags to read because you dont have to be completely focused 24/7.

Exactly 1 month later on August 8th, I went to get my mom done. This tattoo was the most painful one i've ever experienced ( I feel as though I know a bit about tattoos now that I have 7). The lowest point of it came almost to my elbow which was not the most pleasant experience. The closer that you get to the bone, the more painful it feels. This one took the same amount of time as the other, and I am so happy with!!

It's so awesome to finally have my idea finished and now I have forever to look at it. It's obvious that i'll never not want it, because it's of my parents.

So today I got my family to come up so that I could do "the unveiling" , and finally see what they would do. I told them that I got a new tattoo and at first it didn't seem too happy, but then I showed them that it was them and they liked it. Mom asked if it was real (prolly because she was SO suprised that I did it). They really seemed to like it and I was glad since I did it even more for them than I did for myself. Mom even asked Nick when he was gonna get a tattoo of them on him. Haha!

I'm very happy with how the tats turned out and am kind of glad that my original idea didn't pan out. Originally, I wanted to get portraits of them from their younger days. I had a few photos of them in the 1970s that I was gonna go with, but because the photos were so small and didn't have enough detail, he couldn't do it. Thus, I ended up getting portraits of them now which I actually like better because that is how I know them.

So i'm gonna leave a few photos from the day and the tattoos up above!

So tired!

I remember when Saturdays used to be a day that I always looked forward to. A day that you basically were able to do nothing, when weekends actually mattered. When people talk about the weekend it feels as though I have no idea what they are talking about it's been that long since i've not worked weekends. In my life what Saturday means is money. It means that everyone that has "regular" jobs and "regular" hours will be coming to see me. The thought of having a 9 to 5 job excites me because I always end up getting put to work in the evening, even though I would rather be working in the morning. On a regular fully booked schedule for me, I am booked for 9 massages. That may sound like a lot, and it kind of is. However, this is the day that I make the most money because we're obviously the busiest. When I was in massage school the thought of doing 3 massages in a row was crazy! I can hardly believe that I can do 9 in one day. The good part is that i've for sure, built up an endurance to be able to work through them all, and when i've done them all if I had to I could do 1 or 2 more. But still...by the end of it all, I am SOOOO tired and am ready to go home, sit on the couch, and watch whatever netflix we have at the moment. And with that i'm off to eat some dinner (amir made veggie fried rice..yay!! )

i'm a married girl

I don't have much time at the moment but wanted to say that married life is fabulous...i have an awesome husband who is an AMAZING cook and I love very much! I'm a lucky lady

stormy nights

Last night was a bit scary for us people in the suburbs of Chicago. We had some fierce storms going on here... some of which turned into tornadoes. I had not much of an idea that there would be such a vicious storm, but when I had gone to the store earlier it looked a tiny bit dark...didn't think much of it though. I was watching some show on tv when all of a sudden the Chicago weather people came on saying there were some storms coming our way some of which some may be turning into tornadoes. Probably less than 5 minutes later the wind started picking up and the rain started coming down. The lightning was a lot more than what I really feel comfortable with. I made sure to have a flashlight in hand for the both of us JUST in case the power were to go out. Since things looked not so good outside we decided that the best place in the house to be would be the bathroom since there were no windows and it happens to be the most closed place in the apartment. So I loaded all the dogs in there and tried to get them to calm down a bit. Rufus was looking nervous, and melvin was shaking quite a bit. I tried petting them to calm them, but that wasn't working too good, so Amir gave them some old bones that were in the fridge that he had been meaning to give to them earlier in the week. As soon as they saw the bones they were happy and forgot about the storm for a bit. All of this was happening, while we had the tv on to keep ourselves updated on the storm situation. So we hear that there was a funnel cloud spotted in Carol Stream which freaked me out a bit because we LIVE in Carol Stream. Not cool!! It wasn't long after this that the lights flickered on and off a bit. I felt a little bit as though I was in a scary movie. My mind was going a little crazy while I was trying to keep it cool for Amir and the dogs..I know that when we have a little one around i'll totally have to keep calm in these kinds of situations because they most likely will be scared....SOO..I just pretended to be as strong as my parents' always seemed to me when I was young.

After they came on the tv saying that there was a funnel cloud, we never really heard anything more about it, which I took as a good thing because maybe it had disappeared. It wasn't much longer before they came on saying that the storm was moving on thank gosh!! It was moving more toward the city, however, the lightning was still pretty fierce but we were able to come out of the bathroom and move on with our night of watching our regular Monday night tv...Intervention.

Today I heard that there was an actual tornado in Bloomingdale which is less than 5 minutes from us!!!!!

Yay, we are alive to tell the story....haha....

Simple Things

The past 4 days have been so fabulous! Originally, I was planning on going to my 10 year high school reunion this weekend, however, that plan didn't quite surface. Basically nobody that I was actually friends with was going so I figured that I wouldn't go either and risk the fact of looking like I once again didn't quite fit in. Instead of that, Amir, me, and the dogs chose to go to Marseilles anyway, but to visit my parents and brother.

This past Tuesday was my birthday so the fam came up to hang out with me and then we went to eat at Olive Garden. From here, Nick decided to stay with us til we went to Marseilles on Saturday. It was nice to have him around again. Felt a little bit like the old Chicago times when we all used to be roommates. I do miss him, but it's good to be living our own lives again. Hopefully he figures out what he's doing with his life, but I know exactly where he's act because even now sometimes I feel like i'm still not really sure what the hell i'm doing. So, if you're reading this and you're in the film industry, my brother NEEDS work ASAP!

Anyway, so yesterday we drove down to my parents house to hang out with them. It was a pretty low key day. Played a little cards with my ma, ate some good homegrown food from their garden and did some much needed relaxing. While we were there Amir got the good ole Buick Riviera up and running again, after a much anticipated time. We had to park it there for the whole 2 years that we were living in Chicago so Camille was extremely happy to hear that we were taking her back home with us.

One thing that I had been wanting to do for several months now was drive into the hills of my hometown, if you can really call them that. haha. There is a farmer or group of farmers that have put some energy windmills up there and i've been obsessed with taking pictures of them for a long time. So finally we got to drive up there getting as close to them as possible and take some photos. I completely forgot how beautiful it is up there because the last time that I was probably up there was in high school when I know that I wouldn't have appreciated the land quite as much. I don't think that I would say that I want to live in the country, but it was such a good feeling out there. It really feels like you're in the midwest when you're out there.

Just not being at work is a good feeling in itself but it was nice to be able to see my family after a few months. Soon enough it will be back to the everyday grind of life. Hopefully my hands will hold up!