I meant to get this posted before the start of the new year, but it took too long to write. I apolgize in advance for how insanely long it is.
CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO ENLARGE.
NEW YEAR’S: New Year’s Eve 2007 didn’t start off very well – I ended up getting into a huge fight with my mom. I was hanging out at Kory’s house in Lakewood, and my mom made me drive all the way back to Yelm (about 40 minutes) to feed the horses. Then I had to drive all the way back to Lakewood to celebrate at midnight with Kory and his family, then I had to drive all the way back to Yelm. My mom had threatened to kick me out of their house, where I was living at the time, if I didn’t feed the horses. Stupid, really, but I had no choice. Kory was leaving for school in Utah on New Year’s day, so I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. Eventually things calmed down between my mom and I, and I ended up having a really good New Year’s.
MY RESOLUTION: I decided that as my New Year’s resolution, I wanted to cut out Mountain Dew. That sooned turned into cutting out all regular soda (anyone who knows me knows that I was a soda addict, so limiting myself to diet pop was a pretty big step). By the middle of January, it had turned into a full-on diet. My mom and I joined Weight Watchers, and in six months we’d each lost about 25 pounds. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, especially with Madre doing it too. I didn’t even work out while I was dieting – I stepped on a treadmill once. I can only imagine how much more I could have lost if I would have exercised more. But I eventually fell off the wagon, and I’ve gained all the weight back. It’s horrible – all that hard work for nothing. I feel like a failure. But I’m determined to try again. My cost of living adjustment will give me about $150 extra per month, and I’ve decided to put a chunk of that towards the Weight Watchers fee. I did it once … I can certainly do it again.
VALENTINE’S DAY: Yet another one spent by myself. I wasn’t in a single relationship this year. Sure, I dated, but it was never anything serious. I focused instead on work, and my family and friends. I’m hoping this year will be different. I’ve never had a successful relationship, and I would like to change that. However, I’m not going to go out looking for Prince Charming. He can find me. :]
MY TWIN, NATALI: Beginning in March, I really started focusing on my writing. I started posting some of my work online, and one of my readers happened to be a girl named Natali. She was also an extremely talented writer, and she also happened to like the Jonas Brothers and many other things that I liked as well, and we quickly became friends. Over the course of the last 9+ months, we’ve come to realize that we are pretty much twins, despite her being 18. Unfortunately, she lives just about as far away from me as possible, in West Palm Beach, Florida. What started out as us being fans of each other’s work turned into writing a joint story, then IMing each other constantly, then texting, then calling, and now we’re planning a trip to Disney World in November of next year. If she didn’t live in Florida, she would without a doubt be one of my very best friends in real life. But we’ll just have to settle for being internet besties, or “iBiffles” as we like to call it. :]
PUTT-PUTT ADVENTURES: In mid-April, Kory and his now-wife, Analee, came to Washington for a visit. They were only here for a couple of days, and I picked them up from the airport. While at lunch on the way back from Seatac, we were trying to come up with something fun to do that night. I was underage at the time, and there were no local clubs that had the age limit dropped down to 18 that night. I was working part-time at a black light miniature golf place, and a couple of days earlier, the owner had suggested that I had my birthday party there. He’d said that I could have the place after hours and everything. So while at lunch with Kory and Analee, I called him up and asked him if I could have the place that night after closing instead, and and he agreed. So I rounded up a bunch of my friends and we partied after closing. I plugged in my iPod and blasted music, and we all had a blast playing black light putt-putt, Guitar Hero, and arcade games.
MY BIRTHDAY: On April 28th, I turned the big 2-1. My birthday was on a Tuesday, and I had to work, so there was no partying at midnight. My actual birthday was pretty uneventful – I went and got my license renewed (and got the cool sideways “big-boy” license that you have when you’re over 21), went to work, drove to Yelm, and had a birthday dinner at Puerto Vallarta with family and close friends. Mom and John were there, as well as Christa and Ina, and Danae and Katelyn. The following Saturday, I had a party at the Loft in Tacoma. Since a lot of my friends are under 21, I had to choose a place that was 18 and over, which was fine. The downstairs part was kind of lame, but the dancing was fun. And the bar upstairs was really nice with private booths and flat screen TVs in each booth. I didn’t actually drink too much that night – a couple of Amaretto Sours (my favorite drink) and Andrea’s brother, Case, bought me a shot called Birthday Cake. Which tasted just like cake. Haha.
OLYMPIA APARTMENT: In early May, I packed up and moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Olympia with Andrea. It wasn’t the nicest place, but it was close to work and it was better than living with my parents. The only thing I didn’t like at the time was Andrea’s dog, Roo. Ugh. Dogs don’t belong in apartments. Especially when the owner is never home to take care of it. Whatever.
AMERICAN IDOL: The finale of American Idol aired in May, and my good friend Laura was home from college and watched the show with me. She was just as addicted to Idol as me, and even though she had been at school in Kentucky, we had constantly talked about the show week-to-week. She and I were both huge fans of rocker David Cook, and were obviously thrilled when he made it to the finale. So I drove out to Laura’s parents’ house and watched Cookie be named the new American Idol. It was so exciting to watch the contestant who had been your favorite since the auditions make it the whole way through the competition and WIN. I think I screamed like a twelve-year-old. :]
KENNY CHESNEY CONCERT: In June, Laura invited me to go with her to the Kenny Chesney concert in Ridgefield, near Vancouver. It was my fourth Kenny concert, and the second one that I had been to with Laura. Sadly, I don’t remember much about the show, and neither does Laura. I remember having to walk like two miles to get to the venue from the parking lot, and almost getting stuck in the mud. I remember standing in line at the souvenier booth for AGES just for a light-up necklace and a guitar-shaped bottle opener. Both LeAnn Rimes and Kenny Chesney put on an awesome show. And I remember stopping on the way home at like 1:00 in the morning for ice cream. Haha!
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SHOW: In late June, it was time to leave for the World Show in Texas. It was a ten-day trip, and it was a blast! Kati and I flew down, but it took us a whopping 23 ½ hours to get there. We were supposed to leave at 3:00pm, but our flight was delayed for 2 hours because the pilot and crew were missing. So we finally left at 5:00, which made us miss our connecting flight in Los Angeles. There were no other flights to Dallas until the following morning, so the airline put Kati and I in a hotel for the night. I remember walking down the block to a Taco Bell, only to find that they had a security guard inside the restaurant! That was a little odd. The next morning, we got to the airport about 2 ½ hours early only to discover that the airline had booked our 6am flight under the wrong flight number. So then we had to go stand in line and by the time we reached the counter, we had missed our flight. Luckily, they rebooked us for a 9am flight and we got to Dallas with no more problems. Until we ran into a cab driver who didn’t know where the Will Rogers Memorial Center was, and after we decided to find a driver who was familiar with Fort Worth, the first driver wouldn’t give us back our luggage. How lovely. Eventually we got our bags and got to the show grounds.
Before I move onto anything else, I have to write about the main reason why I was in Texas – my mom was competing at the APHA World Championship Show for the first time. It had always been her dream to show at the world level, and she finally decided that 2008 was her year. I never dreamed that she would do as well as she did. She ended up placing fifth in Hunt Seat Equitation, and was RESERVE WORLD CHAMPION in Novice Amatuer Showmanship. It was incredible. She did well in all of her other classes, too, and made it to the finals in 5 of her 8 events. In her final class of the show, Kira ended up stepping on my mom’s foot and breaking her toe, but not even that could bring my mom down from Cloud 9.
The rest of the trip was incredible. My mom usually only had about one or two classes a day, so there was a lot of downtime. Most of which I spent being dragged around the HUGE gift show by my mom. I spent WAY too much money on that trip, and I think most of it was at the gift show.
One of my mom’s close friends lives in Justin, a town about 20 minutes away from Fort Worth, and one day me, my mom, and my mom’s good friend Rachel (who shows with my mom but didn’t bring her horse to Worlds – she only came to watch and cheer my mom on) drove to Leslie’s house to spend some time in the pool. We relaxed all afternoon and then went out to dinner to a Mexican restaurant in a town called Trophy Club.
The Stockyards in downtown Fort Worth are fantastic! My mom, Rachel and I spent one afternoon walking around and shopping. We ate lunch at Riscky’s BBQ (the BEST barbeque I’ve ever had), watched the cattle drive, went through a crazy human maze, at fudge at Cowtown, rode a mechanical bull, drank Buffalo Butt beer at the Booger Red’s Saloon, and shopped until we literally almost dropped in the 100-degree weather. I can’t remember if it was the same day or not, but we also went to Billy Bob’s, the biggest honky tonk in the nation, and got our picture taken on the giant bull. I really wanted to go to Filthy McNasty’s Saloon, just because of the name, but we never got a chance to.
I don’t remember much about the fourth of July. I just know that Mom and I went to the Macaroni Grill with Rachel, which was a blast because we were writing inappropriate things on the table. I remember watching the fireworks that they shot off at the Botanic Garden right next to the show grounds. Other than that, I really don’t remember much.
Highlight of the trip: My mom’s Showmanship class, obviously.
Low point of the trip: Losing my Chanel sunglasses. :[
SHOWBOX CONCERT: A couple weeks after I got back from Texas, my friend Sara and I went to the Metro Station/Good Charlotte/Boys Like Girls concert at the Showbox Sodo in Seattle. It was about a billion degrees outside (okay, closer to about 98 degrees), and we had to stand in a line that stretched nearly three blocks for about an hour. While it sucked standing in line for so long, the girls behind us were super entertaining. From making fun of the girl with the shutter shades and shoelace headband to all of the Jonas-wannabes donning fake Ray Bans, the girls (who ended up being like 14 – I never would have guessed) kept us laughing until the moment we walked into the door.
We started out in the equivelent of about the 20th row (it was all General Admission standing room only) for the Maine. I’d never heard of the band before, but they put on an amazing show and now I’m hooked on them. By the time Metro Station came out, we were in about the 15th row. Then for Good Charlotte we squeezed up to about the 10th row. It was so hot in the club that security was spraying water out into the crowd and were pulling people out who were on the verge of fainting. So by the time Boys Like Girls came on, who I had been looking forward to the most, Sara and I were up to about the 3rd row. There were a couple of times that I felt really dizzy, but there was no way I was missing the band that was the reason I bought the tickets. I had never seen BLG in concert before, and they were incredible.
911 DISPATCHER: In late July, I left my job at the Olympia Police Department to take a new job as a 911 Dispatcher with the City of Puyallup. About a week before I left, my Sergeant found this very blog and an entry in which I had talked about how I thought one of the officers was hot, among other things. Definitely my most embarassing moment of the year. So while I would miss my job and the people I worked with, I was also very happy to leave. I LOVE my new job, and the people that I work with. Some days have been very stressful, but overall I’m very happy with where I am at. Plus, people call 911 for the silliest things, and I already have some very entertaining stories.
FAMILY DRAMA: One of the lowest points of the year was the drama caused by my dad’s marriage. I’ve never been a fan of my stepmom – she made my life hell when I was younger, causing me to go to therapy after I was diagnosed with depression at age 13. Needless to say, I was not sad when my dad told me earlier in the year that he and Barb were getting divorced. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long. They were back together before the summer. But in August, he had decided that he’d had enough and told me again that he was done with her. After months of Barb dragging the whole thing out and threatening my dad with expensive lawyer fees, she’s now in the process of moving out and is currently living with a 30-year-old Army guy. How lovely. My dad’s pretty broken up about the whole thing, which kills me. But I just want him to be happy, and I know that in order to be happy, he has to get rid of Barb completely and move on with his life.
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: With the exception of the time one of my stylist friends chopped a ton of my hair off four days before my high school graduation, I’ve always had long hair. And even then, it was still several inches past my shoulders. I always considered my hair to be my best quality. But after I got my job as a dispatcher, I started to consider cutting my hair. My hairstyle made me look young, and I wanted something more professional and more mature. So in August, I called my mom while shopping at the mall and ran the idea of cutting my hair by her. She told me that she loved my long hair and that I shouldn’t cut it. As soon as the call ended, I walked to Gene Juarez and made an appointment. A couple hours later, I walked out of the salon with 14 inches of hair gone, donated to Locks of Love. However, when I got home, I discovered that I wasn’t really fond of the haircut I’d gotten. I didn’t mind the shortness, just the style was wrong. So a couple of days later I went to the Gene Juarez school where my friend Sam is a student, and one of her friends cut even more of my hair. Three more inches disappeared, but I LOVED the cut. It was a modern bob, stacked in the back. I definitely got the mature cut I was looking for!
"DO THE PUYALLUP": I’ve always loved the Washington State Fair (AKA the Puyallup Fair), the same one that I used to show my horse at every September, but now that I’m a dispatcher in the same city that it’s held in I really don’t care for it. Chaos erupted when the fair, which draws over a million people each year, came to town. From calls about the traffic on Meridian Street in front of the fairgrounds to calls about two gay guys doing it in some lady’s front yard a block away after closing, the fair caused me more stress than I had imagined. But I made it through the ordeal, and had a blast at the after-fair party with the other disptachers and cops at the Longhorn in Auburn.
However, I must say that when I’m NOT working, I still like the fair. I even went to the rodeo and Chris Cagle concert with my best friend, Christa, and we had a blast. We took photos in the photo booth, and ate at Marlow’s, which has the BEST French dips I’ve ever had.
Oh yeah, and you can’t forget about the scones. That was the one nice thing about working during the fair – the police officers would bring scones up to the dispatch center. :]
MOVIN’ ON UP TO PUYALLUP: The one downside to my new job in Puyallup was the commute. It would take me about 35 minutes to get to work, but when I fought the afternoon traffic next to the military base, it would sometimes take me an hour and a half to get home. So in late September, I packed up and moved to Puyallup. I had found a gorgeous apartment that was only about three minutes from work, and it even had it’s own garage! Working at a 911 center allowed me to look up all the 911 calls from the apartment complexes I was interested in, and I was able to rule out the ones that had lots of crime. Bradley Park Apartments was the complex I chose, and I loooove the place. I got a two bedroom, one bath apartment, and I painted the living room and my bedroom. When I lived in the Olympia apartment, most of the living room furniture had been Andrea’s so I wasn’t able to get creative with decorated. I love interior design, and I was really excited to decorate my new place, and I love how it turned out. It’s always nicer living in a place that you enjoy being in. :]
RE-FRIENDS: Kira used to be one of my best friends, since meeting in health class in eighth grade. We were walking partners at our high school graduation in 2005, and we moved into an apartment in Tumwater together in 2007. But we ended up fighting a lot, and we both moved out of the apartment. After moving out, we were still at each others throats for several weeks before we severred ties and stopped talking to each other. In late October of last year, nearly a year later, I was browsing through Myspace profiles and stumbled across hers. I was over the drama that had gone down the year before, and I’d grown up a lot in the time since the fight, so I sent her a message asking her how she was doing. I wasn’t even sure if she would respond, but she did, and we both ended up apologizing for the immature fight, and we put it behind us. We began to hang out again, and picked up as if the bump in our friendship had never happened. We even went to a Seahawks game together in early November. We may have had our differences before, but she’s still one of my best friends, and she’s one of those rare friends who I know will be in my life for a long time.
TWILIGHT: Natali has gotten me interested in a lot of things, and the Twilight book series was one of them. I was familiar with the book – I’d seen in in the bookstore, but had always passed on it because vampires and fantasy didn’t really interest me. But Natali swore up and down that I would fall in love with the book, so I decided to give it a shot. Boy, was she right – I couldn’t put the damn thing down. Pretty soon, I realized that everyone I knew was reading it – Christa borrowed my copy and got hooked, then passed it on to her mother. And over half of my co-workers were addicted to the saga, most of them reading it at work when the radio and calls were slow.
So you can imagine my excitement when the movie came out! I’d been counting down the days for two months, and bought tickets to the midnight showing on opening day three weeks in advance. Tanya and Char, two of the ladies from work who I’m closest with, had also been hooked on the books and went to the movie with me. We went to dinner at the Rock beforehand, and ended up getting to the theater at about 11:30, thinking that a half hour would be plenty of time to get good seats. Oh boy, were we ever wrong. We ended up having to sit in the very first row, which was horrible. And the girl who was sitting on the other side of Tanya was CRAZY. She was screaming in excitement the entire time, and I thought Tanya was going to choke her. The movie itself was … okay. It was awkward and cheesy and didn’t live up to the hype, but I still loved it. I ended up seeing it four times, which I’ve never done for any movie in a theater before.
JINGLE BELL BASH: In early December, Brittany and I went to Jingle Bell Bash, or JBB. She was supposed to go with me the year before to the same show, when I had front row tickets and the Jonas Brothers were headlining, but she ended up not being able to go. So I invited her this year, to make up for it. This year it was The Academy Is, Boys Like Girls, and Fall Out Boy. It was my second time seeing BLG in concert, and my first time seeing Fall Out Boy, one of my favorite bands. We went to eat at BJ’s in Tacoma before the show, which is my new favorite restaurant. Their drinks and fettucine alfredo are to-die-for. We accidentally stayed at BJ’s too long, and got to the concert late, completely missing The Academy Is. I didn’t really mind, though, since I don’t know most of their songs. But Boys Like Girls came on second, and they were amazing, as usual. Fall Out Boy put on a fantastic show as well. Our seats were nowhere near as good as the front row ones from the previous year, but that was fine.
WINTER WONDERLAND: Even though winter in Washington is cold, we don’t usually get much snow. And when we do, it’s usually some freak dusting in April or something and it always melts right away. I can’t even remember the last white Christmas we’ve had. But this year, about a week and a half before Christmas, a crazy storm came through and over the course of a few days dumped nearly a foot of snow. The temperatures stayed super cold, and the snow stuck around for almost two weeks! We had a white Christmas, and it finally melted away several days after that. I usually don’t like snow, but I didn’t mind it. It’s just all the crazy people who can’t figure out how to drive in the snow that scare me!
CHRISTMAS: Usually Christmas is a huge family affair, but this year it was very low-key. We spent some of Christmas Eve with John’s family at Uncle Ted’s house, then I jetted over to my dad’s to spend some time with him. We opened gifts (I gave him chocolate, “3:10 to Yuma”, a Louis Lamore book and a bowling gift card, and he gave me money) and then watched a couple of movies and had orange floats – like a root beer float, only with orange soda. It may sound gross, but it’s SO good.
Then on Christmas morning we opened presents at my mom’s house. My sister now lives in Idaho and couldn’t get enough time off work to come home, so my brother hooked up his laptop and we all did a video chat with Larissa for a while. You know you’re getting old when you get house stuff for Christmas – vacuum, George Foreman grill, tupperware – and you get excited about it. Haha! My mom also got me these kickass slippers that I had been wanting. They look like cowboy boots, with faux-faux-ostrich on the toe and leather tooling, and the tops are all furry. She had a pair of them that she’d bought in Texas in July that she was going to let me have, but one of the cats ate them. So she got me a pair when she went back to Texas in November for the NASCAR race, and I love them. I’m wearing them now, in fact.
Oh, and I consider myself lucky to be alive today. John and Russell got small-ish remote control helicopters for Christmas, and there were several times that I came close to being decapitated.
Overall, the year was one of the best ever. There were both good and bad times, but I grew up a lot and learned a lot of lessons. I hope that 2009 proves to be even better, and I can’t wait to see what the year has in store for me.
MY GOALS FOR 2009:
- Eat healthier and lose weight.
- Use the Wii Fit at least four times a week.
- PROJECT 365! (Visit my Myspace to take a look at the project: myspace.com/classygame)
- Learn how to cook.
- GO TO DISNEY WORLD!
- Learn to play my guitar.
- Write a song.
- Go to at least four concerts.
- Show Kira in Showmanship. (Kira the horse, not Kira the friend.)
- Go on a roadtrip with friends.
- BE HAPPY!
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