Hawaii and Boredom

So I'm home,

Yes, always home in Hawaii.

Though last week I went to Ohio. I went ziplining and ghost touring and inter-tubing and spent time with family and rode on segways and...well, had a lot more fun then I'm having now.

My mom offered to keep me there so that I could help my family move into a 6,000 sq foot, 3 level house but...I was a jerk and let my anxiety get the best of me. It's too hard to switch my plane ticket I said. The truth--I get too nervous when plans are changed. I like everything to be set in stone. I arrive when I say I will and I depart when I say I will. "Never be late, it's rude" as mom says.

Oh well, now to make the most of Hawaii by cooking strange dishes in my underwear. Like, sweet potato with black bean, brown rice and salsa. Weird...but...good.

Tonight is the crazy meteor shower where 100 meteors are supposed to fall every hour. I'm going to this place called China Wall with Mike to watch it. It's in the middle of a suburban neighborhood at a place next to the ocean. You go down this small trail and it leads out to a bunch of rocks that if you fall off of you'll have a fun 40 foot drop into the ocean below. People jump off it all the time during the day and frankly, that would scare the shit out of me. I've skydived before but that jump looks super scary.

Anyhow, Hawaii is very boring right now. No one wants to hang out with me and my boyfriend is at work all day long. So I spend my days by cleaning the house and watching law and order. Today I've watched 5 episodes I think.

God, I need a life. Oh sorry, I don't mean God I mean universe. My mind just replaces God with universe these days. Makes my life a lot easier and much more loving.

Speaking of God, have you seen those He>I bumper stickers and t-shirts? I want one that says I>He. That would be incredibly epic in oh so many ways. I guess I'll go cook some more--tonight is lemon-grass beef with more brown rice--should be interesting.

Love you. <3 p="p">

I am back

and boy oh boy does it feel good to be back.

So, I'm currently apartment hunting and it's hard. I find so many that I like but have little inconveniences and that makes it difficult. Like one apartment that I like that I'm going to see today is cheap by Hawaii's standards but it doesn't have a washer and dryer anywhere near the unit. So I'd have to walk to the laundromat to get my clothes washed. It bites but we'll see how it looks. I'm tempted to want it already because it's close to school and my boyfriend's uncle would be the landlord. Since I've never rented before it'll be difficult for tenants to want to allow me to live in their apartment.

On other news I'm also job hunting. Turns out I can't return to my last job and so I'm looking for a new one. I'm hoping to end up making more money then my last job. Since I have so much experience it won't be too difficult to find one that's better...i hope. In the meantime Mike is buying me all of my food and supporting me. I went shopping last night and he got a little upset since I was spending apartment money. My bad. XD But I feel I'll be able to get a job as soon as I start actually looking which will be today and Friday. I still need good interview clothes though I keep wanting non-interview clothing. haha. Thank god for Walmart. Except the child workers, shame on you, shame. on. you.

Anyhow not much else going on here in Hawaii. Weather is beautiful but a little hot. Mike's car randomly won't start so it'll be nice just to move back into the city so we won't have to bother much with his pretty sucky car. lol.

Oh, Ohio was good. Except now my mother's side of the family is angry with me because I didn't come to visit them. Truth be told I was busy with my dad's side of the family and kind of forgot about them. I really didn't mean to not see them. I was only there for a week and it was difficult for me to leave my dad's side because I was having so much fun with them. By the time I remembered it was 10pm the night I was supposed to leave. Apparently that makes me the most awful person in the entire universe as my grandmother made perfectly clear. I say a big fuck you to her and I really wish she didn't exist. She's an incredibly mean person who only cares about herself and her ideas of the world are very messed up. Of course I didn't want to see her. I don't even like her. I never have.

I feel bad about not seeing my friend of the family who is supporting me though. I just ran out of time. I'm sending him a thank you card and macadamia nuts in the mail. I hope he forgives me for it. : /

Wish me luck.

~mel

More updates to return when I find an apartment! =)

Final Days

So,

I have the hiccups. I wouldn't mind having them if mine didn't sound obnoxiously weird. Like some walrus moaning from being stabbed in the throat by a unicorn. Some people have cute hiccups, you know the little tiny cute polite hiccups? Mine are just like..."Trogdor has arrived inside Mel! Prepare for the impending war on her intestines!"

Yes, I know, incredibly obnoxious. If you don't know who trogdor is your missing out and you should youtube him right now. Don't even bother with the rest of my writing, Trogdor is way more important.

I'm totally serious.

He's incredibly important.

Like, Obama important...but...more.

Anyhow, now that you know who Trogdor is I have to say that it is coming down to my plane ride.

Farewell Annecy! I will not miss you small town that is fun for the first day or two. More like, day. One day. Farewell massive amounts of bread and cheese and noodles. Goodbye forever.

I will be flying to Ohio on Sunday (France time). Time should fly like tea time with the Mad Hatter and then I'll be off to Hawaii after a week. Yippee! I get to see my boyfriend! I get to find an apartment! I get to attempt to have a business of my own! I get to fail at creating that business and then find any job that I can! Yayyy!!!

I really do hope my business actually works out. As long as I can get it up and running it'll bring me a ton of money. So, at least there's no cost to me unless I can actually get it up and running. That's a good thing. =)

What else is happening? Not too much. I'm wondering what Ohio will bring except a lack of internet connection and a "hello" to my cell phone which has been out of commission ever since I left the US.

Oh, I was stumbling yesterday (if you don't know what that is check out stumbleupon.com I guarantee you'll love it) and came across a website that said you can diet just like the French and lose massive amounts of weight. It said to do all of these things and while I was reading it I realized...this is not what the French do at all. It was saying to eat less protein and lots of other weird things that should actually make you just a really strange person. It said nothing about gorging yourself with bread and cheese, walking everywhere, drinking a lot of wine and champagne or smoking until your lungs are black. Strange how that happens. My host mother here in France smokes at night in the bathroom. Why? I have no idea. She literally sits on the toilet for 20+ minutes smoking. Then when she's done of course that's the only bathroom in the entire apartment so when I gotta go it reeks. It's like I was just rolled up and became a cigarette myself. Talk about nasty.

Well, that's about it. I'll update when I'm in Ohio if I can catch a sec of internet or when I'm in Hawaii!!!!! Wahoo!!!!

I had a dream

that my mother read my blog. Maybe it was a nightmare. Just the fact that if she knew where it was located that she could and would actually read it.

Some things I like to keep to myself and my friends and not my mother or my grandmother (on my mother's side).

So I'm starting this new weight loss program. Go me for joining in with the rest of America in wishing to be thinner. I'm going to start on August 20th. I'm hoping to be 50 pounds lighter by my birthday, February 14th. Yes, valentines day. Also it'll be my 21st so I'll be celebrating my weight loss journey by going to Vegas, drinking and gambling my heart away with the love of my life.

So this isn't the first time I've tried to lose weight. The first time was in high school I think. I had gained fifty pounds in a year. That's really insane if you think about it. I have no idea what was going on with me. I remember distinctly the first time I was truly concerned with how heavy I was though. I was with my neighbor in my tree house in my yard back on bainbridge and we

were talking about losing weight and how to do it. We both had this plan to ride our bikes around the park like 2 times every day. Of course that really doesn't do much at all for you. haha. After nothing happened with that I did weight watchers with my mom. I think that was my freshman year of high school. I lost twenty pounds then. My heaviest was 180lbs and since then i've kept off that 20lbs and am now at 160lbs. But this, this 50lbs will be the most I have ever attempted to lose a significant amount of weight as well as a) living in an apartment and b) following my own designed weight loss plan. There was weight watchers, dieting, Atkins diet, and lastly a personal trainer. I can honestly say that I am incredibly healthy, strong as a horse but not at a healthy weight. Which, doesn't make any sense at all to me honestly. How can you be healthy but not be healthy? My trainer said that I am perfectly healthy but I guess just not at my ideal weight or at society's ideal weight for me. So after spending lots of money on learning how to workout I now have the knowledge to design my own plan. One that might actually work. I couldn't lose weight with a trainer because I wasn't eating right and it wasn't even possible for me to eat right. In fact, my whole entire life it has been impossible for me to eat right. Someone else is always there to mess up my "perfect, should be" diet. But I'm going to try to lose this weight the correct,

healthy way. The gym will be a close friend of mine with me going twice a day. Once in the morning, once in the evening. As well as my personal chef: my boyfriend. He will be making only healthy recipes for me and him to live with.

If your wondering how I figure out everything I need to do it just involves a little bit of math.

The first thing you do is find your BMR or your "Basal Metabolic Rate" there's lots of calculators to help you figure this out.

Next you need to figure out how much you burn throughout the day without exercising. Just walking around, going up the stairs you climb to your house, jogging to catch the morning bus, all the stuff you usually do. Or if you just sit most of the day. This is easy to figure out too. A lot of websites will give you all the necessary information.

You add those two numbers together and that number is how many calories you need to eat in order to maintain your current weight. If you eat 500 calories less then that or burn 500 more calories then that then you'll lose one pound in a week. If you eat 1000 calories less then that or burn 1000 more calories then that you'll lose two pounds in a week. Yes, that is every single day.

So my numbers are to reduce my BMR by 500 calories and to also burn an extra 500 calories a day with exercise. This means I can eat 1,385 calories a day and in order to burn the extra 500 calories I will be hitting the gym twice a day. In the morning--40 minutes of heavy cardio (go stair master! i love you but hate you at the same time) then in the evening there will be weight lifting (which I learned through my trainer) and another session of cardio for 45 minutes. Just light cardio. Nothing too bad. Walking for instance for 4mph. That's 2.5 hours at the gym every day about. Of course I'll have my day off or a light day where I only walk for a little or do something small. That'll probably be a friday since I'm going to be starting my business when I get back to Hawaii as well.

I know this all sounds very American. Weightloss...own business...etc. But, hey, i'll be able to live longer.

Some websites for my new diet:

1. http://www.hearthealthyonline.com/healthy-recipes/main-dish-recipes/cheap-dinner-ideas_ss1.html
2. http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus
3. http://www.womansday.com/Lifestyle/Food-Recipes/Healthy-Recipes.html
4. http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods
5. http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/Superfood
6. http://www.delish.com/recipes/cooking-recipes/quick-low-calorie-cheap-meals

I'm really excited to have my man cooking for me. I'm kind of worried though, too. I don't want him to lose weight with me! He's so skinny I feel that if he lost even a pound he might die. He's 5'10" and 155 pounds. I love him to death but I think I might be making crazy full fat snacks for him and force him to have 5 servings for dinner. Though then he might say I'm his mother and won't want to be with

me anymore. (haha)

So back to weigh loss my first goal is 24 pounds in three months starting when I get back to Hawaii. It's much to hard to even try to exercise here in France. It's raining so much and I don't think french people even know what a gym is. They all just smoke in order to stay skinny. I'm thinking they're all that "skinny fat". I know I'm not fat, I'm not obese, I don't really need to be on a diet and exercising like I will be but I think I will feel better about myself when I can look in the mirror and be happy. I was like that for awhile back in Hawaii but then summer happened and now I just want to be back in Hawaii where it's easy to focus on myself.

Right, France. I should be writing about that since I'm here after all. Like I said, it's raining a lot. Paris was wonderful last weekend. I saw the Louvre (amazing), Notre Dame (very dark inside), the eiffel tower (of course) and Harry Potter. I had too. I'm glad I saw it too. The movie was so sad I cried and the theater in Paris was...ginormous. Absolutely huge. It's the size of two of the biggest theaters in Hawaii. It's like...IMAX size. It's amazing. Oh, and props if you can say why I

took a picture of that red cafe which lies right next to the Moulin Rouge (one of my all time favorite movies).

I love the family I'm staying with here except they left for a week on vacation and left microwave dinners for me. :/ I wouldn't be upset if I actually liked the majority of what they left me. But I have this thing against microwaved fish. It seems sad and usually tastes really nasty. If the fish was grilled I would love it no problem. I feel you should respect fish for giving their life to you to eat and they should not be put in a package for you to eat whenever you feel like it.

LoL

I want to start this post by saying how much i hate LoL and how even the name disgusts me. It has to have an acronym of the common "lol" to symbolize laughing however...LoL is no laughing matter. It sucks the souls of those you love and care about away from you. It creates breakups, fights, and lots of other things besides "lol"ing. I'm upset. You want to know why? LoL. Exactly. My boyfriend, countless number of times, would rather play this game then talk to me or spend time with me. At least that's how I feel. He feels i'm overreacting and he just does it when he has free time. Time to calm down after a stressful day at work. Time to just play with friends. Oh, I understand, however, when that's all you do after work, school, anything else, there's a problem. Our relationship is suffering because of it. So congratulations, LoL, if we break up it will be your fault. So mike, this one is out to you, think about that the next time your "winning" and if it's really worth it. Doubt you'll even read this because you'll be too busy playing. Cheers.

Parlez-vous l'anglais?

Oui! Oh my God. It had been awhile since I've heard a "Yes" to that question.

Today I ventured to Switzerland with my school group here in France. It was...boring actually. There's not much in Switzerland except a big fountain, lots of shopping, people who speak english (amazing), fancy schmantzy hotels and lastly the United Nations building. I kind of wished I had stayed home and studied for my test tomorrow. Who's brilliant idea was it to have a test the day after a national holiday? Not so smart. On top of that I'm really hungry and tired and need to learn to conjugate like...15 verbs. I am unhappy.

My host family is gone which is good and bad. I'm hungry so there's not going to be food until they get back (who knows how long that will be) on the other hand I can study till my heart desires because there is peace and quiet and no little girl bothering me every 5 minutes shouting "regard! regard!" at me. Which by the way means "look! look!"

Happy birthday to Elrik who's always going to be older then me and who will always have his birthday on Bastille Day (which if your in France is a really big deal). Fuck you.

There are a lot of fireworks tonight but I seriously need to study. So I may just go, buy a sandwich and then go back and study. I'm sad that i'll miss the fireworks but hey, there'll be a lot of them in my lifetime.

On a completely different note I really want to enter a word finding contest because I am like the shit at it. I'm super fast. All those plane rides I've taken since I was 4 years old have really paid off. Oh fun fact about me. I have been flying solo ever since I was 4. Pretty cool, huh? I was scared to death about leaving my mom the very first time and I remember these crazy airport dreams I used to have. Pretty wicked. One of them involved little people. But that's for another time. So really I'm writing right now to stall for A. getting food and B. hearing myself speak yet more french. Why can't the whole world just speak one language? Life would be so much easier. I mean, why do we need to have different languages? It just makes a huge issue for almost everyone. I say almost because sadly there are people who never even leave the US or their own country. For them language will never ever be a problem...unless they're deaf. That'd be the one language I might actually be good at. Sign language doesn't involve talking...I probably should've taken that instead of french. Hm...things to think about for the future.

Which reminds me. I have so much to do back in Hawaii. One of those things is learning how to have my own business. My entire family can do it and make a wealthy profit off of it I just hope I don't fail. That would be seriously humiliating. I also don't want to be working for "the man" my entire life. I sure do hope my husband is seriously wealthy or that I'm seriously wealthy. I really care about material things and traveling. In order to have both you really need to have good money. Is that shallow of me?

Ciao,

~mel

If you're sleepin are you dreamin?

if your dreamin are you dreamin of me? Give a hand to Blue October for making my life amazing when I'm in the weirdest moods possible.

Things I love:

• Blue October
• Emo-ness
• Hot pink
• Sitting criss-cross applesauce
• Applesauce
• Lukewarm tea
• Facebook
• Nicknames
• Salami
• Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ben & Jerry Style
• Being alone
• Laughing
• Smiling
• Throwing my phone
• Bipolarness
• Not knowing what mood your in
• Playing the Sims too long and thinking maybe you are actually a Sims character and there is someone clicking and telling you what to do next
• Taking pictures of strange things
• Winning things in spontaneous contests that you entered because there is nothing better to do in your life
• Being left alone
• The rain
• The sun
• The fall with all the leaves different colors
• Avril Lavigne when I'm upset
• Head banging
• Wet, curly hair
• Walking around in my underwear
• Chocolate
• Shoe shopping
• Eating chocolate, feeling fat but still fitting into skinny jeans
• Walking
• and walking
• Did I mention walking?
• StumbleUpon
• Google
• My crazy weird moods that occur when I do nothing with myself

Well, that's all of them...or rather most of them. Why am I telling you this? Because that last bulletin is me right this second. I'm typing but don't know why or about what.

Did you know that some buttons that you press do absolutely nothing for you except make you slightly happier knowing that pressing the button could actually do something? It's true. Scientifically proven and everything. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/

If you love me you'll buy that book for me. Send it to hawaii...oh wait. Don't. I'm homeless. As my mother says, "you'll always have a home here." Funny how I don't even have a room there. *sigh* I'll have an apartment in hawaii soon though. With my man. My man. Not really my man. I don't "own" him.

What's a soul mate? Why does Coca-Cola fuck you up? Why do important, amazing characters have to die in tv shows?

Things I hate:

• Not being able to leave a situation you really want to. This happened to me last night. More about that later
• Boyfriends who obsess over video games more then you
• Crazy girlfriends who are overly protective and treat their boyfriends like shit
• Loving people you can't have and don't want to have
• Loving crazy things
• and people
• Love
• Like
• Therapists
• Long fingernails
• Long toenails
• Running out of chocolate
• Not having enough money
• Having too much money
• Best friends who abandon you
• People who don't have a facebook
• Myspace
• Wall decals
• Pre-furnished apartments for rent
• Fish
• Blood, scary movies and bleeding
• Fainting, me fainting that is
• People who smoke and don't care whether or not the smoking bothers you
• People who don't answer questions fast enough

Trying to write and not being able to think about what to write about because your high on caffeine is pretty up there too.

So last night. I was kidnapped by my host mother. Like, literally grabbed by the arm and had me go with her to a birthday dinner party. They decided that once they were there it was absolutely impossible to be there without me and that I must join them. So they decided to get back in the car and drive back to the apartment and force me to go. By them I mean my host mother and her boyfriend. So that's where I was all of last night. Alongside people who don't speak english and were babbering in french all of last night. Mind you it's babber not blabber. So I was there till 1am and I had been finished and ready to go back before 11pm. It was awful. I was also in the rain today at a marketplace. It's enjoyable to be in the rain alone but not with another 300 people. They all start freaking out and your the only one not freaking out it makes you feel strange.

Well, that's all for now. I entered a photo contest. Results in December. I'll let you know what happens when that time comes.

Love y'all,

~mel