a city flea saturday!

yesterday was just one of those days where you walk around with your chest puffed out in pride. those days where you look around your little city and think "wow. i love that i get to be a part of something big happening" it was a city flea day and those are my favorite days of the month. we head over to the OTR, usually get lost for at least 5 minutes (that place is a labyrinth) and speed walk toward the music coming from inside washington park. it's amazing the energy coming from that place. so many faces in so many booths displaying so much art and food. it sort of reminds you of walking through a science fair with a bunch of kids standing proudly next to their work, ya know? except this is edible work that you can buy sooo that's a much better science fair. 

it was hot- it always is on flea days- but that only makes you appreciate the park sprinklers more... but only if you have kids!! Let me explain: see because when you have kids, then you can be like "oh i'm just running through these sprinklers because my son/daughter wants to" that kind of thing. this is where parents get lucky. but those of us that are childless? we just look like nut balls running through the water. so we sweat to keep up appearances.

it was an amazing day as always, complete with food trucks lining the streets and artists from neighboring states. and i made sure we took home a bag of something good (homemade sea salt caramel swirl marshmallows. i'm planning on making the most bad A s'mores you could ever imagine) 

^  this little girl is cooler than i will ever be. that haircut? i died ^

 ^so many tents! ^

 ^ a smart business tactic to let us sample our mallows first. genius ^

^ lucky kids ^

and you remember my friend blair with the bakery?? well by the time we got there of course that girl was sold out of everything. bummer. but that just means i'll be reserving for next month! 

a great saturday as always, city flea. thank you! 

hot yoga is for the devil himself!

try everything once, i always say! and hot yoga? though i have committed to doing it again next sunday, may be a "two times and done" experience. have you ever tried it? experienced the agony that is hot yoga? oh my god. now don't get me wrong- you feel like $2 million dollars walking out. but heck, who wouldn't? after what you just endured for the past hour (not the mention the longest hour of your life...)

 i had shoulder surgery not even a year ago, so yoga and i have a fairly non judgmental relationship. yoga knows that i can only do so much. i mean, i "push myself" sure, but let's just say i'm not balancing on my pinky toes with the rest of my body floating in mid air while i breath calmly. (like the yogi in front of me today. he was really good. but when i tried to talk to him after class, he had the personality of my yoga mat... and i mean my yoga mat, post work out!) but, nevertheless i survived. that hot hot hour of sweat beads rolling into your boobs and my feet slipping down my tj maxx yoga mat.  a friend of mine sent me this link and please please please go read it. you will cry laughing, i promise you. it's this guy's experience with hot yoga and it had jon and myself rolling! 

enjoy. while i go chug water. 

photo source

jawbreakers and arguments... that sounded kinda bad.

do you and your husband/boyfriend/wife/girlfriend ever have a massive blowout of a fight? something that started out small, then turned big, then by the end of it you have no real idea what you were arguing about at the beginning become you've moved on to more important arguments (like leaving an empty milk carton on the counter or not turning off a hallway light. note my sarcasm) this was us, two nights ago. what started out as a minor disagreement, and us both paying very close attention to tone, body language and wording... turned into a world war in our bedroom. remind me later to send our above neighbors some cookies. because i know if i can hear him singing "crazy little thing called love" all morning, i'm sure he can here us yelling for an hour straight. 

our fights are always funny when we look back on them in the morning or once it's resolved. we both just sort of look at each other all doe eyed and say "let's never fight again, ok?" "of course, my love, never again" and sure enough we'll be back in the ring a few weeks later. we both want to be right and we both want to make the best points and we both want to prove the other ones points are not as right as ours. i know this is a horrible tactic. i know we are suppose to be on the "same team" and in every other aspect of our life together (two years this month! woop!) everything is hunky dory. but when we fight? we joke that we need to start video recording the whole thing in order to keep track of what topics we are on. it's a hot mess. but this fight a few nights back was a doozy, and as the night was turning into morning, we both just sort of went silent for a minute. we whispered i love you to each other, rolled to meet in the middle of the bed and just hugged and said sorry over and over. "i'm sorry for being mean" "no, I'm sorry for being mean." stuff like that. 

this post has no real point, only that sometimes it's best to just throw up my white flag and let a fight fizzle out. it doesn't matter who "wins" because we are, in fact, on the same team. team jamie and jon. you all have your own teams, too. how do you handle arguments with one another? or are we the only people that yell it out sometimes? 

and on a lighter note, to prove that we do in fact love each other (!!)  these photos were from our day date yesterday! we went to newport on the levee, had lunch and went and watched the Hangover 3. nothing to write home about, but still very funny. oh and my tongue is blistered and swollen... you'll see why if ya scroll! 

that red smudge was waiting for a chalk outline, as it was the remains of the bug that landed on my menu. the joys of outdoor dining under flower bushes. 

i refuse to buy candy at the movie theater. whoever decided that $6 for a box of whoppers was a reasonable and fair price was out of his mind, right?? this is where being a girl has its advantages. one big purse is all you need for movie theater snacking at a bargain! 

ya see that jawbreaker? more on that guy later. 

now i must say i owe jon an apology. i got the bag of gummies. sweet, delicious, chewy gummies that are the perfect movie snack and i made fun of his chocolate covered whatevers. "looks like deer poop!" too fast to judge, i was. because once we got home last night and i found the bags wedged deep in my purse i popped one of those little deer pellet looking things in my mouth and my head about exploded. chocolate covered COFFEE ?? i nearly licked the bag. 

this thing has just about killed me. when i was little and we were going on family vacations, we would always always always eat at a cracker barrel. even now, if i go there, i associate it with travel. fancy, eh? well, these were always my candy of choice and my parents never argued. i mean, it is literally going to keep a kid quite for hours. and hours. and hours. so i sucked thing through the whole movie, and carefully examined it with my cell phone light every so often to see what color i'd discovered next. and then i would make jon look, too. haha. but they're so cool looking! 

we were the only kids in the theater. it was amazing. thursday afternoons are dead as a doornail at the theater and i'll remember that for next time. 

have a great weekend!!

i need a new body and this new thing i'm doing

i blame my mother for not forcing flintstone vitamins down my throat as a kid, as i have the most horrible reputation of health.  when i was younger, i had broken more bones than any kid (that doesn't play sports) ever should and as an adult, i've always got something out of wack.

and for every cast and sling, there was never a good story as to how i got hurt. like, i never got to say "oh man it was totally worth it! it was awesome!" no, see i either tripped, or fell or flipped off of something being clumsy. once it was my dad's back that i fell off of, actually. we were horsing around and wrestling when i was about 12 and he started poking me in the ribs and tickling me, which infuriates me more than anything (don't you agree? tickling? absolutely the worst) so my tactic was to always play dead, basically. i would fake cry so that he would stop tickling. genius. well, genius until the day my dad realized i was crying wolf. i think you see where i'm going with this. so we're wrestling and carrying on, and he flips me over his back onto the floor and i fall right onto my thumb. i started crying like a maniac but my dad thought i was faking. i then yelled out my very first- and most dramatic- swear word in my life. "damn it, dad! stop!" welp, that did the trick for sure. i've lost where i was going with this post, but good grief,  try explaining that whole wrestling situation to a doctor... without children's services being called! my poor dad, all the guy wanted was a son to wrestle! sheesh.

aaanywaaaays, my health. bleh. it doesn't help matters that i am a hypochondriac thru and thru. so basically, i'm always certain that whatever ailment i have is the leading symptom of some sort of cancer, probably one that my body actually just created. this week, i went in for my annual pap smear (high five, ladies!) and the very next day i find myself at the very beginning of what was sure to be an amazing UTI adventure. yes, we are on day 4 now and it's nearly ending thank god. but no UTI would be complete without trips to the bathroom that lead to disappointment, crying to everyone and no one, sleeping on bathroom floors, gagging down real god awful cranberry juice and calling off work. so yesterday rolls around, and just as i am seeing the end of the tunnel, i feel a sharp pain in my right wrist... and the pain has yet to go away. no really, i have not slept in over a 24 hours due to the pain and i have no idea what it is (probably cancer, right?) or where it came from. i must have slept in a handstand or something. so all day today it's been about icepacks, gauze wraps and ben gay. why, body, why?!?

the point of this entire post, is that i have taken to bed at 8:30, just swallowed a percocet the size of my head and am praying to god to let me sleep and ease this pain. but in the meantime, it's youtube searches to distract from the minty smell lathered all over my wrist. honestly, for as long as ben gay has been around, you'd think they could have a few more scent options. lavender maybe?

and there's nothing better than finding a great video online, whether it be weird, funny or interesting. 

so i think i'll start uploading a few on the regular. it's always fun to share cool videos with everyone!

i'm gonna call it "LOL Life On Line"
^ i hope i still like that series title when the perc wears off.  here we go! 

1. hilariously embarrassing game show answers

2. this reenactment of a 2 year old's thoughts 

3. these cuties and one of the cutest acts 

4. i've seen this video a million times but it still cracks me up

5. a toddler's thoughts on eating meat

6. a homeless fellow that would definitely earn a few bucks from me.

ok goodnight now!! 

and yeah, that photo up top is totally irrelevant. 

come back meli!

today is bittersweet. this little lady is Amelia (you know her from all of her rocking chair pictures!) and dang it, she's an army brat wouldn't you know.  so her mama and her have just recently left me to go live with her daddy in washington. it's taken me a few weeks to accept that i am not, in fact, as important as her dad! *rolls eyes* kidding, bri!  they will be moving back to ohio in a few months hopefully but good grief i'm gonna miss that baby girl. they've been gone now for about a week and all i can say is thank god for social media. she posts videos of her daily; trying to crawl, "talking", even videos of her drooling have my heart melting. oh i love that kid. 

last week i got to have her all to myself for the day and it was so fun watching her. we got her in the morning and had her into the evening. let me tell you, seeing a carseat in your car for the first time was the craziest thing i have ever seen in my life. as well as finding a pacifier in my bed a day later. what?! but it was so much fun. we took her to lunch and played with her all day and it was a fun challenge to say the least. 

when we were in high school,  our home ec teachers did an exercise with fake babies to show us how hard raising kids was. your "baby" was in fact a sack of flour with a diaper on it! good lord. and yes, it was definitely an eye opener but oh my god it was such a blast this past week! but let's also keep in mind i'm 25 now... not 14! 

 i'm going to miss her mama and i'm going to miss her more than anything. i just hope she remembers me when she gets back. love you, Amelia!

 

happy memorial day!

jon's prickly pear margarita & the sweet built in tv mirrors at nada, downtown cincinnati

soooo happy memorial day everyone!! 

this always feels like theee weekend, right? the weekend that says "summer is here!" and i'm practically giddy about it. it's hotter than hell outside and it sort of makes you have a 'be careful what you wished for' sort of feeling. like, all i want during the winter is spring and all i want in the summer is the fall, etc.... and i would also kill to have brown eyes instead of blue, if i'm being completely honest. but that's a story for another day.

 so the past few days have been pretty damn fantastic!! (i explain why at the bottom!) we are home now from the taste of cincinnati which was awesome as always. taking a nap and then headed to grill out at my mom and step dads then out with friends later tonight. i'm exhausted, but this day has been a real treat. plus, wait until you see what i munched on at the taste of cinci!! 

that, my friends, is my first ever deep fried PB&J. strawberry, obviously. 

holy clogged arteries, it was fantastic. but just one of those halves was plenty. whew!

wedges plus whatever this sort of flooring was quite the experience. i felt worse for the doggies walking across it though! 

today was a good one at the festival with live music, calorie drenched food and plenty of people watching... but actually yesterday was better and i have to document it. right now. 

so, i waitress. and it's not the most glamorous of all trades, but i don't really mind it. it' quick money and it's easy to take off work and pick up more shifts if you need to. all that sorta stuff. but yesterday, being a waitress reached a whole new level of amazing. i'll make a long story short. i, along with a fellow server, were taking care of a group of 40. a wedding party. their bill was about $1000 with a $150 added gratuity. which is totally cool. $75 a piece? for 2 hours of work? i'll take it. so we hand the group their check and the gentlemen paying (their priest, i might add) added $300 extra dollars on top of our gratuity. he handed it to me and told me i should always thank god for my blessings and gave me a hug. i got a little choked up from this because.. well.. who wouldn't? craziest thing that's ever happened to me in that place. i hope he at least got plenty of points on his american express card.

 so i tell jon this story, and though he was proud of me, i could tell he was a wee bit jealous. so he took off to the casino that night to basically one up me, and it payed off. he walked out $650 richer. we felt like we were ballers yesterday, to say the least. then we meet up with my parents that surprised us with kings island passes! for anyone that doesn't have any clue what kings island is, it's a huge amusement park here in cincinnati. the sort of thing you don't just go blowing money on any day, ya know? and the best part-- the water park!!! oh my lord, thank you! at least i know now we won't melt all summer long.