the m-bellished life

Deleting the honesty...there was too much of it

2010-08-04T23:40:00.000-07:00

In the end..the post got deleted. Why? Because I'm a crazy paranoid freak that worries somehow the mentioned person will find out I have a blog and recognize the situation.

Sometimes I just want to roll my eyes at myself.

I'm still Alive

2010-05-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

For my uh, cough cough, many readers I'd just like to say I am not dead. Nor have I given up on this blog. Unfortuantely real life interferred for awhile in ways that were totally boring and unblogworthy, distracted me, and then left me without my gift to gab after I was out of the habit for awhile.

Needless to say, I am forming some new ideas for this thing so bear with me a little longer. I will write again! There might be a youtube component integrated in somehow too because I don't know about you, but as I have mentioned before I love youtube and well, I think I have ADD sometimes because I'll be completely gun(g?) ho for one thing for a little while and all of a sudden I'll get bored and get obsessed with something else so for awhile I've been like, "youtube vlog or blog? youtube vlog or blog?" and well I never figured out which I'd prefer since I like both for different reasons. SOO..maybe I'll combine them and do both!! There's a summer project for me! Maybe? I dunno...well, we'll see.

Never the less, if you are subscribed stay subscribed because then when I reappear you'll see it and yeah.. that's all I've got for now. But FYI, if I really do decide to leave for good I'll write a proper goodbye post cause I'm not one for just disappearing without proper goodbyes..I've got a little bit of a built up resentment towards that kind of thing due to the-one-who-crushed-my-heart-to-bits but that is a story for another day!

P.S. If you are stealthy enough you probably could have figured out I was still alive due to the changing of books several times in my Currently Reading section in the sidebar...and if you watched REALLY closely you'd know that I go through A LOT of books because I do A LOT of reading. So if you ever want to give me reccomendations, comment! I'm always interested in hearing what everyone else is currently loving.

WTF? Give me my group back!

2010-04-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

I gotta say, it's really bugging me that Blog Catalog just randomly deleted the group I created, Bloggers in Their 20's. Seriously, what was the problem? There are like a million groups on there. Why did they come after mine? Geez, it was so relatively new it only had a chance to get a few members before it just up and disappeared. I emailed the webmaster, and of course I get no reply. Great. I'd just like to know why they did it and if there is some sort of reason I am missing out on that I can fix so I can have my group back.

I created Bloggers in their 20's because as far as I could tell there was no such group on Blog Catalog that could group together people in their 20's writing personal blogs about their lives. I looked and looked and after realizing that I'd have to look through a million other blogs just to find people like me I created the group to make it a little easier and to help other Blog Catalog users do the same. After all, some of those groups are kind of intimidating. 6545 blogs are listed under the Personal Blogs group! Who has the time to look through all of those??

Just yesterday I found a website called 20 Something Bloggers which is basically the same idea I had for my group but this is an entire site devoted to blogs of that nature. I joined, but to be honest there's still a million blogs to sort through on there, just like Blog Catalog, and I just find the thought of looking through even a fraction of all of those very, very tedious. Where do people even start? I'm not a big forum person, either. Maybe once and awhile I'll leave a note about something but I rarely go back and actively participate in the discussion. Once again, who has time for that? Besides, I was just starting to become a little more familiar with Blog Catalog so I really wanted my group to work out on there. The least they could do is e-mail me back..

So Blog Catalog if you are reading this (no, I'm not fooling myself into thinking that they are) : Give me back my group, damn it!

The Runaways and my Current Obsession: the 70's

2010-03-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

I finally saw the Runaways at the movies towards the end of last week and absolutely LOVED it. I'm a sucker for movies about bands from the past so this was right up my alley. I thought Kristen Stewart was really convincing as Joan Jett, which was something I didn't expect. She seriously mastered her mannerisms, expressions, everything..definitely showed a talented side of her. I actually wish there had been a little more of Joan Jet's side of the story in the movie but I guess it could only be so long.

Dakota Fanning was also very good...very intense. It was hard to picture her in the same way after seeing her snort coke in an airplane bathroom, haha. They definitely used this movie as her personal "I'm done with kiddie roles" sort of film, though, which was good and bad. Some of the scenes just seemed weird having her in them but in others she seamlessly melted into the character of Cherie Curry and I was able to forget it was Dakota Fanning for a little while. Overall it was a great movie, in my opinion. I have always loved Joan Jett but I was never familiar with her early stuff from the Runaways so not only was the movie good entertainment but it also got me into a bit of a 70's kick over the past week.

I've been listening to a ton of 70's music..from the real Runways to Suzi Quattro to Bowie, just basically immersing myself in that time period, which has been kind of fun since although I've liked a little bit of 70's stuff in the past I was more into the 60's and the 80's. I didn't pay as much attention to 70's music as a whole, I more just listened to individual songs from different artists I liked that happened to take place during that period in time. Does that actually make sense? I'm not sure..I'm feeling a little off today so I wouldn't be surprised if I reread what I've written and it sounded totally incoherent.

Anyway, so my theme of the last few days has definitely been allll about the 70's. (Well, and Joan Jett from ALL the decades she has been around. I absolutely love Joan Jett, but back to the topic..) I am now on a shoe buying mission to find the perfect 70's platform wedge sandals for summer. Being 5'1 this is the answer to my prayers for height and I have literally waited YEARS for these to be popular again because I was all about the platform heels in junior high and high school and then suddenly the spiked heel came back into fashion and dashed my shoe buying dreams. I am absolutely horrible at wearing high heels. It is a skill I have never mastered and I don't think I ever will, to be honest, so I loathe the times when comfortable and easy to walk in platforms and wedge heels are out and spiked high as can be heels are in. I'm pretty sure I am going to order a pair of these when they get my size back in stock:

Soo, I'm going to close my little blog on my love for all things 70's for now, but by no means does this mean my obsession is ending. Oh, no, no..I am still hunting for a pair of wedge clogs to go with these babies as well and I am spending lots of time on itunes checking out more music so if you've got some recommendations for me from that era, throw them my way!

By the way, if you haven't guessed by now I am "phase-oriented" sort of personality. I go through food phases, music phases, clothes phases where it is all about something revolving around a certain theme..Past themes have included: vintage clothes and shoes from just about any ere from the 40's on, embracing any and all things having to do with my Italian heritage (this phase included a hell of a lot of pasta dinners), the girly yet punk sort of rock style, Grace Kelly, preppiness (this one didn't last long in high school cause I got way bored with myself, lol) anything and everything purple (my favorite color), Audrey Hepburn, oldies music from the 50's and 60's, anything French, the Titanic (I was a weird little kid sometimes..I use to read history books on this at the age of 8), and on and on...

I actually could probably fill more than one entry up just listing any and every obsessive phase I can remember going through in my life. I don't actually get sick of these things though, (well, maybe the food temporarily). Usually what happens is I just learn, eat, listen, etc. to everything I can get my hands on about my current obsession and I become so familiar with it that it just becomes one of my favorite whatevers (food, color, style..) and I have no choice but to land on something new because I have exhausted my current obsession to death. Most never fully go away, though, they just lie dormant in the background of my mind for a little influencing a piece of my personailty until something sparks them to come back out again to the forefront of my mind. Anyone else like this?? The more I write about the way my mind works the more I am convinced I am just a little bit odd...haha

Maybe not...

2010-03-22T23:27:00.000-07:00

Wellll, maybe that last post was a little premature. I did go to the class and I did have the option to add into it but three hours turned into a really, really long time. It was intense, and as much as I loved the subject matter and found it interesting I think it was a little too much for me to take on right now. I had a difficult time sitting for that long and I got really tired. I think I could have stuck with it if it were two hours, but three was a bit much. I also failed to realize until I got there that a late start crams everything in at lightening speed since it's a shorter semester so the quiz schedule was pretty brutal for me at the moment. I need to ease back into things, not fast forward at lightening speed! So I am a bit disappointed because I was looking forward to the class working out, but this just showed me that I need to keep looking for something to keep me a little bit busy for now and come summer I can sign up for a different class...one of a more normal length.

Wait, I'm choosing school?

2010-03-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, today I am starting a late-start college class. That's right, after almost a year off of in-classroom learning I am CHOOSING to go back to school. I have always wanted to spend more time studying art history, but my degree requirements pretty much nailed down the last few years of college making it only possible to take one of these sort of classes. Luckily, that experience, my first experience, with art history was pretty spectacular...it was the travel class where I actually saw all the famous pieces of art that I was studying throughout Italy and France for a month. It's hard to top that. Let's just say a textbook will never be quite as engaging as getting a lecture on say, the Mona Lisa or La Primavera while you stand right in front of them. Even so, I was browsing the courses offered at my local city college and when I saw a late start one on the history of midieval and renaissance art it jumped off the page at me. I have no actual mandated reason to take this class. I just want to for three reasons.

The first reason I wanted to take this course was simply to know more about art history. I'm a history nerd when it comes to the arts like dance, painting, theater, etc. I love to learn the stories behind everything so this seemed perfect.

The second reason was missing the "college experience" that I haven't had for (almost) a year now, since I had my graduation. In many ways my college experience was bittersweet. I got to do some amazing things but I also missed out on a lot (especially during the last few years of it) due to what I now know was the Lyme disease. I felt like I was drowning in a lot of my classes because my illness made it hard to keep up. Because of this I started having bad anxiety during class and resenting even going to school because I felt it was an uphill battle for me that I was constantly not good enough for. This was really disheartening for me, a former high school honor roll student, to feel. I prided myself on my ability to grasp difficult subjects and my determination to succeed and flourish and towards the end of college this just wasn't the case for me. It was purely about survival and just squeaking by, so the last few years make me a little sad because I feel like I missed out on actually "enjoying" a lot of what I was learning because I was trying so hard to keep my head above the water. I hope to recapture the enjoyable part of learning through this class and enrich my currently (although also temporary) boring and sometimes depressing life of not much going on.

The third reason I am taking this class is to test myself. I work for my dad but it is usually only once a week, sometimes less depending on how I am feeling and the amount of work his business needs extra help with. This schedule was ideal for recovering from lyme since the way I feel often varies on a day to day basis. However, it also didn't get me out in the world much. I went from being a busy college student to someone young and in their twenties with nothing to do for at least half of every week, often more than that. It's an awful feeling not having something to look forward to when you wake up in the morning. It makes things feel utterly pointless and you get depressed really easily. When I didn't feel up to leaving the house regularly this boring sort of schedule was pretty necessary for my recovery, but as the months have gone on and I've begun to feel a little better I have gotten antsy to move forward with my life again and have a reason to get out of the house more regularly.

I am not back to normal just yet, but I do tend to have enough energy to want to get out and do something productive for several hours at least every other day, so taking a class seemed to be a good way to gauge my ability to handle a little more in my life on a regular basis, while not completely exhausting myself before I am ready. I am pretty confident that by fall I will be handling a hell of a lot more in my life and hopefully be back to working a more normal job and starting to head for some of my goals. In the meantime this class will be my first step back into regularly doing what "normal" people are doing. I'm kind of excited and nervous. Of course all this will be for nothing if there is too many people trying to add the class and not enough room to accomodate them all. For my sake I hope they let me add because I really need a life, like BADLY. Ever since my mom's surgery I have felt the need to get out and do something increase ten fold since I have been taking care of her so much during the day. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom and would do anything to help her but as of now she's driving me crazy and I need to get out and have something else to look forward to.

So anyway, my class (as long as they let me in it this afternoon) is on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4-6:50 pm. It's a little bit longer than I would have liked for the first thing I jump back into, but beggars can't be choosers and it was a miracle that I even found a late start class of something I was this interested in literally two days before it began. This combined with working most Tuesdays will accomplish my goal of at least making about half of my week productive and more "normal". It's just a step, but it excites me because by fall I hope that I will be saying I'm doing things 4-5 days a week again, feeling up to it, and getting back on track to what I should be doing with my life at this point.

Soo..fingers crossed! Hope I get in!

Remember Me Review

2010-03-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

I saw Remember Me yesterday at the movies and thought I'd do a quick review of it.

I was surprised that a lot of critics actually didn't think this movie was anything special. I tend to disagree. Although I am a big Twilight fan, I have never been a huge "Robert Pattinson" fan before this simply because as much as I think he's good looking, I never felt like he had shown anything special on screen. The Twilight films requires him to act rather stiffly, and he delivers that. This movie, however, changed my opinion of him drastically. He plays Tyler, a James Dean quiet sort of rebel who is ready to burst at any second and lash out...and when he does? Wow, who knew Robert Pattinson could act! I was very impressed and felt the role fit him to a t.

Remember Me emphasizes the idea that even when we are most lost and out of touch with our reality, we must keep "doing" even the most seemingly insignificant of actions. They push us forward. Those actions in turn cause reactions and so on and on. At first Tyler seems like a lost cause sort of floating through his life not really committing to anyone or anything in his life, minus his little sister that he seems to take a special interest in. When he falls for Ally, played by Emilie de Ravin, he slowly starts showing more of an interest in life and we see him begin to start "living" again.

Although the movie had some slow and somewhat cliche points, overall I really liked it. The relationship between Tyler and Ally seemed natural and there were more than a few heart rending moments in the film that you definitely don't see coming. I liked the somewhat somber, moody tone to the film. Maybe I'm weird, but I've always liked the occasional "moody" movie that really touches you and makes you think. Life's not always happy and doesn't always work out perfectly, so it almost feels refreshing to see films that can capture that feeling and draw you in, while still not becoming depressing. As the movie shifts from personal issues to a larger issue that touched many real people's lives I felt like it successfully accomplished what its goal was. All the little pieces fit together in a bigger way that showed how Tyler's insignificant actions were in fact much more significant than he ever aimed for them to be.

Book Smart..Life Challenged?

2010-03-09T00:56:00.000-08:00

Ok, so just a quick note tonight before I go to bed about something I found particularly funny today:

I was out to dinner with my dad tonight at the Cheesecake Factory in Palo Alto (We've been driving the hour-hour and 15 minute drive there every day while my mom's been in the hospital at Stanford) and we had just been talking at the table about how it's funny how some people can be extremely smart in the academic sort of way and be completely dumb when it comes to common sense. I hate to say dumb, maybe life challenged is more pc, but you get what I mean. Anyway, the gist of our conversation was something like it's probably better to be balanced and be a little book smart and a little life smart than to have just one of those qualities and be completely devoid of the other one.

So anyway, I get up to go to the bathroom and as I'm leaving the bathroom and going over to the sinks I see this girl in a Stanford sweatshirt holding her phone on her shoulder and talking into it to someone about some complex class project they are working on. I'm washing my hands and out of the corner of my eye I see the girl waving her hands all around the sink area while she continues to talk on the phone. I'm thinking, "wtf?" so I give it a second look and the poor girl is desperately trying to turn the water in the sink on. by waving her hands. all over the place. Let me just backtrack a little and say that these are those type sinks with the sensor soo in order to activate the sensor your hands have to be in front of the sensor, not just under the faucet. A part of me felt really bad for her because she truly had this lost expression on her face and another part of me desperately wanted to crack up because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how she handled the type of schoolwork she was discussing over the phone when she couldn't even do something as simple as turn a sensor activated sink on. My kind side won over and I told her she had to hold her hands in front of the (blatantly obvious positioned) sensor area of the sink. She thanked me and went on her way talking a mile a minute about some class that I would be horribly lost in with my liberal arts major.

My story probably doesn't translate as hilariously in blog form as it was in person but needless to say I thought it was perfectly ironic that just before I got up to go to the bathroom we were talking about smart people who are clueless about practical matters in life and then BAM, perfect example in poor little clueless Stanford girl who couldn't turn on a sink, lol. My dad was cracking up when I returned to the table and told him what had happened. The best part had to be at the end though when he turned to me and said, "Honey, I'm sorry you didn't go to Stanford, but I've got to say, I think you chose the right college when I now see that at least my daughter can manage to turn on a sink by herself." lol

Classic.

Update on blog malfunctions and Life in general

2010-03-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I think I have fixed my blog..at least for now. I added this new background. It's kind of pretty. I was hoping more for a pattern with some blue or purple to it, but when I was looking for one this kind of jumped out at me so I thought I'd try it. We shall see if it stays or not. :)

I've also fixed the comment problem. For some reason ( I have no clue why) the option to comment below the entry in an imbedded comment form just does not work no matter what I did, so I changed it to a pop out window for comments and that seems to work so at least I'll be able to get comments now.

I'm really tired right now. For some reason I always get the urge to write mostly at night when it's late and when I should really be gearing down to get some rest. When I try during the day a lot of times nothing comes to me. I think I just made it a habit for so many years that now I equate blogging with mostly nighttime.

My mom's going in for surgery at Stanford on Friday. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little nervous. She is having surgery on her spinal cord at the back of her neck because it is crushing the nerves after years of chiropractic adjustments gone wrong which have resulted in a lot of discomfort and weird symptoms in the past few months. She barely sleeps now because of it. The doctor assures us that it is a fairly routine surgery and that it is nothing to worry about, but it's hard not to worry a little bit when it's dealing with something major like the spinal cord and when a wrong move could result in something as awful as paralasis. Still, I'm going to think positive. I know she's nervous and I know we will all just feel better after this is all over with and she is on the road to recovery and feeling back to normal again. In the meantime I'm trying to concentrate on other stuff and tomorrow I'm taking my mom to get her nails done to make her feel a little better temporarily. I just need to stay positive and keep having hope. I'm trusting in the ability that a hospital as famous as Stanford wouldn't have a surgeon operating who couldn't handle this sort of operation properly and do a good job at it.

In other news I want to get an app for my iphone that works with blogger so I can upload an entry when I'm out and about sometimes or when i want to add in some photos or video clips. I know there are some blogging apps on there so I just need to look through and compare them all. Let me know if anyone reccomends a particular app to use for blogging.

The fact that this entry is all over the place and kind of just a stream of consciousness at the moment tells me I need some sleep, so I'm off to do that.

Back to the Blog Background Search and Other News

2010-03-01T16:54:00.000-08:00

Back to the Blog Background search.. Is it just me or is it seriously difficult to find the perfect blog background? I found a site a week or so ago that had a pretty cute background that seemed fitting and literally less than a week later all of a sudden the background pattern started disappearing and now in it's place is just this plain blue-ish purple background. I tried emailing the site that I got it off of for help, but of course they don't email back soo...my seach for a background for this blog goes on.

My first subscriber has also let me know the comment function isn't working properly (thanks for letting me know, Jessica!) which I think is also because once the background disappeared the html got screwed up too, so who knows..I might have had more readers than I think try and leave me a note without me knowing it! I am inclined to believe I at least have had a few that have stopped by due to the reports I have gotten from the sitemeter thingy. I don't know where, but apparently they are out there! haha

If anyone knows of a great site to find non-generic looking blogger backgrounds let me know..since this comment thing is the latest part of my blog to malfunction temporarily I suggest tweeting me. :) I'm at: http://twitter.com/mbellishedlife , which I created a few weeks back just for communicating with the people that read my blog, the bloggers whose blogs I read, and the youtubers I watch and keep in touch with...and ok, also so I could see what this whole "celebrities on twitter" thing is all about. I have to say, I find it oddly fascinating that they can share details as stupid as what they had for breakfast with the public and end up getting a few hundred comments! Crazy.

By the way, are you guys in the blogging world into youtube too? I've always known about it and watched the occasional video on it, but it wasn't until this past fall that I started actually subscribing to some channels and regularly watching the ones I really liked. Now I'm hooked! I'm really into the beauty ones and every morning before I go eat breakfast I now have my ritual where I sign into youtube and check for new videos from my subscriptions. It's also reawakened my love for sephora, ulta, and just about any other beauty store because now I watch the videos, get ideas, and decide I just have to go buy some sort of product shown so off I go to try it myself.

Some of my favorite beauty related youtube channels are: AllThatGlitters21 , Juicystar07 , Lollipop26 and ShellsFitness101 . Check them out if you're into that sort of thing too! Trust me, it's gets addictive! They've go beauty blogs to supplement their channels, too. Before I decided to devote my energy online mainly to giving the blogging thing a go once more I even made a video on youtube to see if vlogging was more my style but not much came of it. Like blogging it can be hard to get people to come to your page, plus I felt a little awkward on camera since I didn't even know who was watching me, but it was fun. After I get this blog up and running for a bit more I might give the vlogging thing another shot in combination with this blog. It might work better anyway since I can use the youtube channel kind of as a visual aid of my blog and refer my readers over to it, rather than hoping someone just randomly stumbles on my channel, haha.

Anyway, this entry is getting a little lengthy so I'm going to go. When I'm tired or not feeling really energetic I turn into a complete slob and right now my room is a complete catastrophe, something I really need to fix before I go in to work tomorrow.

A challenge

2010-02-28T13:06:00.000-08:00

Alright, so I feel like maybe some of my posts might have been coming off a little emo-ish. The thing is I've always felt like I write easier when I have strong and usually negative emotions. It sucks, but often when I am really happy I don't have a lot to write about. When I was on livejournal when I was a teenager soo many of my posts sounded emo, so to the casual observer I'm sure I seemed like just one of many sullen teenagers. Actually I was quite happy for a lot of high school, I just also have some low points sprinkled here and there and those happenned to be the times I most often took to my journal.

However, to make sure that the posts in this blog are a little more varied in emotion I have decided to give myself a challenge. It will hopefully both help me, by making me concentrate on more than the negative parts of life, and make this blog a little more interesting because when people discover it I would hate for them to think, "God, she sounds so depressed and boring all the time." The challenge is that for every rant/emo sort of entry I will try my best to post an equal number of positive entries even if they are book reviews on what I am currently reading, or reviews for a makeup product I have tried and want to talk about. This should add some variety.

In other news I am still out of ideas for how to get this blog out there in the public eye. I'm not saying I'm blogging to try and get it to be well known or anything, but I would just like to at least find a way to attract some readers to it for the sake of discussion and just knowing people are out there and reading what I have to say. It can be kind of inspiring when you know you have an audience. Soo..I'm still thinking about how to remedy that. If you come across this and have ideas, even if you don't plan on subscribing or visiting my site again, please feel free to comment and let me know anything that has worked for you and your blog.

Bit by Bit, Brick by Brick

2010-02-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

I think the important thing to know about life is it doesn't come apart all at once..it erodes bit by bit, brick by brick. It's a slow process until all of a sudden you look at it and don't recognize it for what it once was. Somewhere along the way it became something different entirely through each individual life changing occurrence.

Likewise, I guess it can be rebuilt, slowly, until once day it is a full brick wall again. It's impossible to lay more than one brick at a time. You just have to start the process and don't ever start.

Then you'll get your wall.

I will get my wall.

My Love of Historical Literature and a Book Review: O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell

2010-02-24T17:58:00.000-08:00

I am addicted to historical fiction.

It fascinates me more than any other genre of reading. I feel like this genre is near and dear to my heart as it has been there for me to provide a loyal distraction from some of both the best and the worst times in my life so far. Good books, like good music, often get strung along into the woven threads of my memories and I can usually recall what was going on in my life when I read them. More often than not the right book comes to me at exactly the right time. I'm still not sure if this has more to do with the meticulous thought I put into my choosing of each novel I read or if it merely by chance that I stumble across certain gems when I truly need to hear the message they contain.

I could go on forever about so many of the books that have literally altered and helped form the type of person I have become but this entry would truly go on forever. There are so many that are so dear to me, but today I would like to share the newest addition to this collection of mine. It is O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell.

O, Juliet is a retelling of the classic story of Romeo and Juliet. I was fascinated by the concept of it when I first heard about this book coming out many months ago. I pre-ordered it on Amazon and eagerly awaited it's arrival. I have always been a hopeless romantic and even at a young age before I could fully understand the story of Romeo and Juliet I remember pouring over its words, just hoping to grasp even some of what I knew to be one of the greatest love stories ever told. When this new version came out I had a few initial worries about it, only because I was unsure any new story could ever live up to the hype of its predecessors. What if reading this new version changed the way I imagined Romeo and Juliet? What if it changed too many of the important core elements of the story? Still, I was certain I had to read it, if only to get lost in the romance of one of my favorite stories one more time.

I didn't think it was possible to love Romeo and Juliet any more than I already did, but this novel changed that for me. I love it all the more now thanks to Robin Maxwell. Yes, she did make a few changes to the story, but no, they did not in any way diminish it in any light. If anything, I felt the changes she made only made the story more believable and even easier to love and get lost in. As much as I have always enjoyed imagining Romeo and Juliet in Verona, I soon realized that seeing them in Florence was just as romantic and even more tangible to me, personally, since I spent a life changing month in Italy a few years back and Florence was the first city I spent time in within this month. I could literally picture the young couple in the historical areas that I, myself, had set foot in and grown to love.

Although there are a few other noteworthy changes, I wouldn't dream of spoiling any of the story for any reader who happens to come across this blog. If you do read this, I hope you will take a chance on this book as I have because I am certain you too will love it. I actually felt heavy hearted as I neared the end of the story because I knew, like many other great books before it, that I was about to reach the end of a story that had quickly become embedded inside of me like a great friend. I hate the devoid and empty feeling I feel after truly loving a great book, only to realize that in my haste to enjoy every part of it as soon as possible, I also made it go by that much quicker. Still, I am sure this book with stay with me for a long time and it is unquestionably going to be one that I will never part with. It will sit on my bookshelf in the ranks of other wonderful historical fiction novels that I cherish above all others.

I hope to do more book reviews in the coming months, so that another dimension of my blog will develop. As I said before, historical fiction has especially been a strong part of my life and I think integrating my love of it in this blog might be another way to lead other like minded people to my new site and hopefully make a few blogging friends for my lonely blog.

Till next time,
m

Waiting for it All

2010-02-22T01:11:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm waiting for my life to begin while everyone around me already has life rushing forward for them. Being "sick" has caused a major delay in my plans and has caused me to spent an even more obscene amount of time planning out the way I want my life to go...not that planning could have ever prepared for the way things turned out so far, of course. Even still I have become obsessed with figuring it all out so the moment I feel up to once again working a full time job and getting my "life" back I will have a plan of action and a goal in site. I have never been good at waiting though, and this is no exception. The more I think about what I want the more I want to be living that life right now. Yet if if I don't think about it things feel pointless and like they will never change for me.
It's a catch-22.
It really is.

Happy Valentine's Day and What a Great Concert

2010-02-14T02:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day to all (or more likely any) who read this!

It's 2:27 am and I'm still up after getting home a few hours ago from an AMAZING Elton John & Billy Joel Concert. Aah, those are two incredibly talented men, and they harmonized wonderfully in the songs they sang together. It was really great because at four hours total it was basically like getting two concerts in one.

Anyway, I have some funny and peculiar stories to report from the concert but I've got to get some rest so they'll have to wait for tomorrow (er, later today, I mean).

Saturday mornings with my momma

2010-02-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

There are definitely some downsides to still being at home, but there are also a lot of upsides as I have figured out through the years. One of them is how I spent this morning.

On Saturday mornings my dad can't wait to get up and leave the house. He has a habit of waking up early for work that cannot be broken even for one day a week unless he is stuck-in-bed-sort-of-sick. Therefore he's up by 7 or 8 at the latest (his version of sleeping in since he wakes up at 6 for work) and he heads down to the local coffee shop to sit in their big comfy chairs and sip his coffee while first browsing the weekend newspaper and then switching over to his laptop to check on his stocks. Somehow this actually can keep him occupied for hours. It is a phenomenon that my mom and I will never fully understand, but it makes him happy so I guess that is all that matters.

My mom and I are the complete opposite of him, though. We are the night owls who like to sleep in. Both of us having Lyme has increased our feelings of tiredness, so we definitely sleep in more now, but even before all that we were the kind of people who did not like to rise early unless there was a specific reason making us do so. Because of this our Saturday mornings differ from my dad's. We take our time eating our breakfast at the kitchen table (my dad skips breakfast and just heads for the coffee most of the time), and then breakfast is usually followed by us watching one of our dvr'd "girls' shows" like Keeping up with the Kardashians or The Hills...basically the shows my dad would have absolutely no interest in. If we are not doing that we are delving into our favorite magazines and discussing what beauty products, clothes, and advice we find in them as if were as important as global news in the New York Times. Hey, we all have our thing.

This morning we spent analyzing Neutrogena's new clinical line of retinol moisturizers that Glamour featured. My mom was curious about them so I, being the most computer savvy member of the family, got on google and found them for her. We read the reviews, watched the video clips about it, and priced it out. This is our version of hunting. I guess it's a girl thing, because nothing gets us more excited than a well researched package coming in the mail or a legitimate reason to go down to Sephora and see a particular wonder product in person.

As we closed up our magazines, breakfasts eaten and her new retinol products ordered, I could not help but smile at the simple little rituals we had developed through the years that could easily "make" our mornings. I know once I am consistently feeling better I will be able to work a full time job and after I have that job it won't be too long until I am able to afford to live in my own place, and once that happens our rituals might be fewer and far between. It is these moments though, that make me count my blessings because as much as not having my own place can get me down occasionally I also know I am blessed to have the kind of mom who doubles as the best of my friends and who I can happily get lost in magazines with on a lazy Saturday morning.

No matter how busy my life may get, it is these moments I would gladly come home for.

Officially Lame

2010-02-12T00:17:00.000-08:00

It's official.

I'm 90% sure that the few meager hits I have on my counter are all from me checking to see if anyone has come to check out my blog.

Yeahhh...this isn't going to get old or anything.

Psh

2010-02-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

I just spent the last hour reading a blog by someone I use to know in high school. For a new blogger it was promising, but I couldn't help but think, "C'mon, you aren't THAT witty in real life. I remember you!" haha

Let me explain..I have spent the better years of my life "blogging" on the sort of sites that came before these things we call blogs: Diaryland, Live Journal, Open Diary. Oh geez, if I had a quarter for every ounce of high school and college angst I poured out into those things I'd be filthy rich. Back then several of my friends were on those sites too and you could easily read all the entries your friends had recently made on one centralized "friends page", so at the time it seemed way better than blogging out all alone on the internet with the possibility of no one stumbling over my blog and becoming a reader.

I loved those sites, but by the end of college I only had three friends left on live journal and they barely ever posted. By this point I was also feeling a little silly being on a site with the word "journal" in it at all when I was past 20. This was combined with the fact that the one journal I followed the most belonged to an ex-boyfriend turned friend who I had recently started casually dating again and who had once again proven himself to be a sleaze despite what I thought had been a change of character in the past few years since our high school breakup. When things fell apart between us and I lost what I had thought was a pretty good long distance friend I developed a bad taste in my mouth in regards to live journal. Too many memories (oh yes, there was more than just him..he was a minor event compared to the others) had made that journal feel like I was dragging out a part of my life that I needed to get past, so after years of transcribing everything I stopped blogging.

Big Mistake.

At the time I needed to stop focusing so much on my life by writing about it, but in the process of abandoning a hobby I was also losing a piece of my identity, only I didn't really know it at the time. Fast forward to now. I am starting up again after almost three years of not writing and although I feel the familiar call to write I feel like I have lost, for lack of a better word, my mojo. I was pretty good in the past. I had a lot of followers even in addition to the people I knew in real life who read my journal, but now I feel like it is all flat. How do I even begin to attract people to a blog that they probably will never know exists? I have come to realize Blogger is a little trickier than those journal sites where you can easily land on a random blog and begin reading. Are there blog rings out here that I should join or something?

Ironically I wish I had some readers to fill me in on how to get readers. Right now I have nada. I briefly considered advertising my blog by putting it on facebook so all the people I have known through the years in real life would come read it, but then I realized that doing so would affect what I write about because minus a few select people, I really don't want a lot of those people knowing about the more personal parts of my life in the past year such as the Lyme. To those people I want to remain the way they have always known me to be and seem as normal as everyone else, that way when I do begin to feel more normal again and rejoin the busy lifestyle of most people my age nothing will feel like it has changed. If only I could get all those people to become readers without them actually knowing who is behind this blog, haha.

Soo..that's my problem. I can't advertise this blog to people in my life if I want to be able to talk completely free and unedited, yet I don't know how to attract internet readers either because I am inexperienced in this realm of the blogging world after having spent years on journaling sites where people literally stumbled across my blog all the time. What does everyone out there do?

Geez, if even one person stumbled on this entry and gave me a hint on what to do they'd be like gold to me right about now.

Sigh.

I'm off to sleep. I can tell getting this new blog off the ground is going to be a test of my patience. Be patient with me as I redevelop my blogging wit which has laid dormant for several years.

Redecorating Needed

2010-02-09T22:25:00.001-08:00

I've come to realize this blog needs a fitting background for it. While some might say any ol' non generic background would work.. I disagree. To put things in perspective I spent 3 hours straight looking at checkbook backgrounds when I opened up my last checking account and still never found the one that was "me" enough. In the end I ended up using the blah ones that the bank gave to me. Hey, if you can't find something that shows your personality it's better to show a lack of personality than someone else's, right?!

So anyway, that should give any of my currently non-existent readers an opportunity to see how obsessive I am about details. Every background I've come across so far either is a) too plain b) too "pretty" c) not pretty enough d) too emo or e) in need of a little more emo angst. As I write this I've begun to think this says a lot about my personality as well, and it's inability to conform to a certain "type". I'm girly in some ways, but in other ways low maintenance and I tend to mock overly girly and superficial girls. I am also somewhat dark and sarcastic at times, although I think witty is a better description of it. This is not to say I'm like some emo kid, though. I mock them too. Notice a pattern? Oh yeah, and on any given day I can tend to fall one way or the other depending on my audience and current mental state. I pride myself on being different, true, but not in the same ways anyone else is trying to be different because then I'm no longer, well, different.

So after all that the only point I'm trying to make is that if the perfect blog background must match my personality this is going to be quite a long hunt, indeed.

I'd also like to add a quick note that in high school while others dissected Holden Caufield I simply developed a literary crush on him. A guy who has strong opinions and doesn't go along with the crowd..that's my kind of man.

Do what you will with that little snippet of information.

Fresh Start

2010-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Alright. This is officially my first Blogger Blog post. :) The other two posts were moved over from my unsuccessful start of a wordpress blog a few months back. I didn't get anywhere there, so I'm trying again here and hopefully something will come of it.

The Double life of sorts

2009-09-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

I live a somewhat double life.

First some background so I can explain this once and hopefully never have to dredge it all up again…

I have spent the last seven years of my life feeling like something was wrong with me and that I couldn’t keep up with life…school, work, friends, activities. Doctors had me on more stimulants than a kid on crack just to get me through my senior year of high school and through college. I never actually felt completely normal. I was always tired, always dragging myself to class (or missing it), and slowly getting dragged down into a sea of late assignments and feeling stupid for not being able to think clearly and concentrate well enough to actually finish a paper or complete a project on time…something that was especially humiliating to me after being a straight A student all the way through high school. See, little by little those stimulants stopped helping me cause they weren’t actually addressing the root problem at the core of everything. No one actually knew what was wrong with me. First they were certain it was narcolepsy (a diagnosis that horrified me due to the comedic media portrayal of it), which is where my long relationship with stimulants such as Provigil and Adderall began. I went through the majority of college thinking I had one thing wrong with me, when really it was something completely different.

Around the time my junior year of college came those stimulants weren’t working so much of their magic anymore. In fact I my concentration was getting so bad that I was taking incompletes in classes and begging for second chances from professors. By the time I was past my official senior year (I took an extra semester of needed classes) I was all but out of ideas of what was wrong with me. That’s when my parents decided I should see a specialist who looks a little deeper into issues than your average doctor…and six months later I found out I had Lyme all this time.

All these years, but especially now, I’ve been living a double life of sorts. On the outside I seem like all my peers. I don’t talk about what I’ve been dealing with..not even with my best friend. The only people who currently know are my ex-boyfriend, JV and my parents. I’ve convinced myself that it’s better this way. That it is easier not to have to explain or go into details. I’ve found excuses for just about everything, but really, how do you tell your best friend for one (who’s known you since you were 15) that you have left out an entire side of your life for the past seven years? I wouldn’t know where to begin. How do you tell a casual friend that the reason you never were much of a partier in college was because you were too busy just trying to survive and hopefully get somewhat of enough rest along the way? It’s those types of awkward impossible conversations I made up my mind I didn’t want to attempt. I wouldn’t have even told JV about it except it came down to a phone conversation one day when he basically told me that he thought I was cheating on him and seeing other guys because I was always so “busy with all my babysitting jobs”…translation: tired and lethargic and not wanting to hang out cause I could barely drag myself out of bed to go to all my doctor appointments. In the end I did what I absolutely didn’t want to do and told him I was sick..at the time we didn’t know it was Lyme yet, but a few months later when I found out I do have to admit it was helpful having one person other than my parents that I could tell that to and talk about it a little with. I still don’t know if he completely gets how serious it is at times or really understands it fully (I don’t know if a lot of people really do), but it is nice just having one less person I have to weave words with and not spin stories to just to keep myself from seeming any less normal than the next person.

So here’s when the name of my blog comes in. To embellish something is to kind of retell the truth with a decorative take on things. I’m m. and my life is a little embellished right now since 90% of the people in it don’t know the half of things. They see my “m-bellished life” , the white lies for my sanity..ways to keep me feeling normal around normal people. I hate talking about this stuff. I’ve deleted and rewritten the two meager posts I’ve had in here two times each since I started the blog months ago. Both times I started with a rosier take on my life and then got disgusted with myself that I couldn’t even tell it like it is on my own blog, that I am so sick of being me that even when I am writing in a blog that no one I know is currently reading I still feel the need to tell my story somewhat fictiously. In the end I wrote the real take on things, so now the ironic thing about this blog is if I keep it up “the m-bellished life” will be the most truthful thing about my life right now, and actually the least embellished. Everyone’s got to have one place where they can say whatever they feel like and be able to fully relax and unload. Hopefully this blog will be that place for me.

-m.

The Starting Line

2009-09-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

I’m m.

I’m twenty-three and like everyone else out there, I’m trying to figure out my life and, of course, I’ve got my share of baggage (or more appropriately, two other blogs full of baggage on two other blogging sites that I dutifully transcribed the majority of my high school and college life in.) But that’s the past and this is my new blog. Try as I might I couldn’t shake the blogging habit in the long run. After a year and a half hiatus from writing I’m back and ready to try this again. Life’s a little uncertain right now. I’m basically just trying to figure out what’s coming next. We’ll see, but for now it remains a mystery.

Oh yeah, and here’s confession number one and probably the primary unconscious reason for wanting to create this blog…

I have Lyme Disease.