wise words wednesday {19.}...

I finally feel like I am getting back in the regular blogging groove. This makes me happy, because I truly do love this little blog of mine. It is a good outlet, and it helps me keep in touch with the many ibffs I have made since I started blogging. You all are awesome by the way. Now it is time for a new 'Wise Words Wednesday' post. These can be some of my very favorite posts. I adore this quote...and I honestly don't think that it needs any explanation at all.

{19.} Wise Words...

I think in 2011 I am going to really try to remember this quote. My new motto? No regrets. I am just going to enjoy living! Here is to another amazing year.

xoxo

the three best friends reunion {3.}...

It is now time for the final installment of 'The Three Best Friends Reunion'. I am sure you are all sick of hearing/reading about it, but like I said in Part 1, I am stretching this adventure out because my life has been extremely boring as of late. I present you with the last picture explosion of my trip to Flo-rida.

The Three Best Friends Reunion Part {3.}...

The day of Lauren's wedding Ashton and I knew she would be a super busy bee. We also knew Lar and her wedding party would need all the space of our joint hotel room to get all beautified. So, Ash and I decided to peace out and get out of everyone's hair while they were getting ready. We went to see 'Tangled' in 3D...it was the cutest movie of my life. Then guess who we ran into at the movie theatre? Yep. You guessed correctly...we saw The Biebs. Holler.

After our lovely movie date, Ash and I booked it over to get Lar's wedding gift. Yes, it was last minute but only because we didn't want to have to check it on the flight, or ship it out there. It doesn't even matter, because we got her a killer present. lol However, the GPS is a big fat liar, and we ended up taking WAY longer than anticipated. We ended up having about 45 minutes to shower, do our hair, makeup, and get dressed. Basically if Ash wasn't there to help me pull my life together we would have never made it on time to see Lauren get hitched.

I think we pulled ourselves together quite nicely in the 45 minutes we had to get ready. Ashton looked fabulous. Her dress was all kinds of fierce.

This was our table, we once again sat with an amazing group of people. Aren't Lauren's flower arrangements beautiful?! I loved them so, so much.

If you think Lauren's flowers were awesome...check out the wedding favors. Um...who DOESN'T love a good coozie. I mean really? Best. Idea. Ever.

Not sure if you all got the memo yet, but I absolutely adore these girls. They have become two of my closet friends, and I am so happy that I met them through this little ol' blog of mine. Anyone who says that you cannot make 'real' friends online has zero clue what they are talking about. I am so happy that Lauren invited Ashton and I to be a part of her special day. I am even more happy that we were both able to be there. I cannot wait for the next adventure the three of us have. Seriously...it will be so very epic.

xoxo

week in review {1.}...

I honestly do not think I have EVER been so excited to see it be Friday! This week was bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s. So, I am not sure if I have shared on my blog that I have a new job. Yep...another one. Let me break it down for y'all. In July I nabbed a super great job working for the county as a Substance Abuse Counselor. I loved that job. I mean I loved it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. It was a field I never really considered entering, especially working in a treatment court program, but it was an amazing opportunity and I learned so much during the six months I worked for Drug & Alcohol Services. However, in December I was encouraged *cough* forced *cough* to apply for a position that was open in Mental Health Services. How it works with the county is we have the entire Health Services Agency, many departments fall under that category. Mental Health Services and Drug & Alcohol Services are combined under the umbrella of Behavioral Health (even though we share a building it is two totally different departments). Anywho, I was basically stolen from my happy D&A home and moved over to Mental Health. I was NOT happy about that little situation.

Basically because I have OCD organization skills and I work super hard at my job, they wanted me in Mental Health in order to be on the ground floor of developing a pilot project for how smaller counties in California will be handling health care reform when it comes into play in 2014. Hi. I am SO not qualified to be in charge of something this HUGE. I mean...I don't think I can stress how big of a deal this project, and the grant that is paying for it, is. I don't think I want to even try because just thinking about it makes me get gray hairs and frown lines. Yikes. Am I overwhelmed? Yuuup. Is is a stellar opportunity? Hells-to-the-yeah.

Okay, so moving on from complaining. It is a great job. I am going to learn so much. It is going to look killer on an all future resumes. I am trying really hard to be positive about the situation. I miss my old job, and coworkers, but I still see them when I am in the other office building and my new coworkers are pretty alright people. Plus, I really went to school to be in the mental health field anyhow.

So last week my new supervisor set me up with a shadow schedule. She wants me to see EVERYTHING that Mental Health does, so that I can have a full grasp of what the services are, how they are administered, how/if they need to be changed, and what else needs to be added.

Since I have already written a freaking novel (sorry guys, I understand if you don't read all of this) I will just give you the highlights of my first week as a employee at Mental Health Services.

{Monday}: I was bitter this entire day. My main beef was that I was moved to a different office building. We have two main buildings for Behavioral Health, the O-town building (my former home base) and the W-town building (which is so stressful and uptight and where the BIG time bosses work). Guess which is my new home base? Yep...the uptight one. Awesome. I spent the entire eight hours of my day talking to our department head, and reading a 168 page grant. Kill me now folks...

{Tuesday}: Tuesday was SUCH an improvement from Monday. I got to shadow one of our clinicians, who is amazing. She is about 28 and shares my love of all things designer...we were basically pals from the moment we started talking purses. I got to shadow Steph throughout her day. We went out in the field, and I went on some client home visits with her, I met some very interesting people. We had super delish turkey burgers for lunch, took some crisis calls, chilled at the hospital with a guy who was in crisis, then met with a 6 year old little boy whose mother called that he was in crisis. His mom brought him in and it was...whoa. I honestly don't think I have the words. He was a scary little kid. I am not going to go into too much detail, because of confidentiality laws, but holy crap I was scared this boy was going to hurt one of us in that room with him. It was very alarming.

{Wednesday}: Wednesday I had my appointment to sign up for health benefits, life insurance, union stuff, oh my! Then I scurried out of that appointment with the quickness so I could run off to the O-town office, and catch the end of our staff meeting. This meant I was in my old home base! I got to see my mentor Susan, and chat with her, she put my complaining ass in check, and then I was back to shadowing Steph again. We went to our drop in center, and I sat in on a 'Hope and Healing' group , it was a great group.

{Thursday}: Thursday was chill. I chatted with my boss, then headed to the O-town office to have group supervision with all the clinicians, case managers, and whatnot. It was great. Then I had one on one supervision with my direct supervisor...I love her so bad. She is awesome. I of course snuck over to see Susan and the DH Girls in my spare time. Susan and I grabbed lunch. Then I went to Juvenile Drug Court because I was shadowing Tania...it was great. I really enjoyed seeing the juvenile treatment court program, because it is so different than what I did with adults in treatment court.

{Friday}: Basically I spent my morning doing more shadowing, and that's it. Then I left the W-town office to go to O-town because my supervisor is LEGIT! She allowed me to take 3 1/2 hours in order to be at the DH Girls graduation. I was SO happy she said yes. I know I don't work on that side of things anymore, but I love those women and their children. I wanted to be there to honor them, and they told me that if I wasn't there they would hate me forever. It was an amazing, tear filled ceremony, Susan gave a great speech to them, and both graduates gave speeches that warmed my heart. I made a teeny tiny speech, just to let them know that I respect them and that I honor them for all their hard work. Then Susan goes and busts out a certificate to me for my dedication to the women of Discovery House. It was a total surprise, and so very sweet. Yes. I did cry if you were wondering.

Holy crap. I am so sorry I wrote so freaking much. I guess I just needed to vent/share a bit of what week one was like. I am thinking I may do this on Friday's if exciting things happen during my work days. I promise they will be WAY shorter than this one.

Here is to everyone having a very happy weekend! My plans? Sleep...and a ton of it.

xoxo

wise words wednesday {18.}...

Over the New Year weekend, I was basically dying. By dying I mean I was curled up into a ball on the couch, under a blanket, in my pjs, dying of strep throat/sinus infection/migraine awfulness. So, I rented a bajillion movies...and watched them ALL. Seriously, I have to quit partying like this. I am SO hip and exciting, but whatever. One of the movies that just melted my heart was, 'Away We Go'. This movie stars Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski as a couple who are in their mid-thirties, who are looking for a place to call home for them and the baby they have on the way. So they travel all over the place, looking for that 'perfect' place. They meet a ton of zany characters, and these wise words may not make tons of sense unless you have seen the movie, but they are beautiful.

To sum it up, this couple, Verona and Burt, have been together for a VERY long time. They are looking for a home, she is pregnant, she also refuses to marry Burt. Burt and 'Rona travel to see his brother, who has just been left by his wife. The wife who left also left their lovely 8 year old daughter. Thus, this conversation happens...on a trampoline in the middle of night...

Verona: Burt, what are you doing?

Burt: I am calling everyone she knew. Her old company. Her friends.

Verona: At midnight?

Burt: Right. The element of surprise.

Verona: Well, can you stop, please?

Burt: I mean, what kind of god damned person leaves her daughter?

Verona: I don't know. Maybe not such a strong person. Please stop.

Burt: And you know what the worst of it is? There is nothing we can do about it. Because she is gone. And this family can't be fixed. And that is it. And what if one of use freaks out like that?

Verona: We won't. It can be fixed. And you know it. Look at me, please?

Burt: But really. I mean, what if something happens to one of us and just makes us go crazy? I mean, what if I'm walking by a construction site and something falls, and then my frontal lobe gets chopped off and my personality's altered and then I'm not a good dad? What happens then?

Verona: Well, be careful walking near construction sites.

Burt: What about Munch?

Verona: She'll be careful walking near construction sites, too.

Burt: No, really. Don't you just look at her and want to give her everything she has ever wanted? It's so incredibly unfair that she can't...

Verona: It's unfair that she won't ever be able to have a baby, and that bad parents still get to be parents and good parents die when their daughters are in college. So what?

Burt: I'm sorry 'rona.

Verona: Look all we can do is be good for this one baby. We don't have control over much else.

Burt: Will you marry me? At least.

Verona: Never.

*long pause*

Verona: I will never leave you.

Burt: Yeah.

Verona: I promise.

Burt: No, I know. You...you promised never to marry me because you don't want to get married without your parents there. I get that. You promise never to leave me. Do you promise to never leave this baby that we are having?

Verona: I promise. I do. Do you promise to stop talking about your ability to find or not find my vagina after I give birth?

Burt: I do. Do your promise to let me cobble-

Verona: Carve.

Burt: ...carve in my spare time? And let me teach our daughter the lore of the great Mississippi?

Verona: I do. Do you promise never to develop a thing for seahorses?

Burt: I do.

Verona: Good.

Burt: Do you promise to let our daughter be fat or skinny or any weight at all? Because we want her to be happy, no matter what. Being obsessed with weight is just too cliche for our daughter.

Verona: Yes, I do. Do you promise when she talks, you'll listen? Like, really listen, especially when she's scared? And that her fights will be your fights?

Burt: I do. And do you promise that if I die some embarrassing and boring death that you're gonna tell our daughter that her father was killed by Russian soldiers in this intense hand-to-hand combat in an attempt to save the lives of 850 Chechnyan orphans?

Verona: I do. Chechnyan orphans. I do. I do.

Does this seem odd? Yeah, a little. Hence, why you need to watch this film to truly *get* it. This is the most perfect, specific, non-wedding, wedding vows. This to me is romance. Making promises to the one you love in your pajamas, on a trampoline in the middle of the night. Silly, sincere, loving promises. Odd...but true.

Now please do yourself a favor and watch this movie as soon as possible. Holler.

xoxo

the three best friends reunion {2.}...

I am going to stretch out this reunion series of posts...because my life has been mega-boring and this is ALL I have to blog about. I apologize ahead of time, my friends.

The Three Best Friends Reunion Part {2.}...

After a day of shopping and getting our nails did, it was time for Lar's rehearsal dinner. It was so sweet of her to include Ash and myself in this small little gathering. She put us at THE BEST table...with super cute place cards and everything. Hmm...wonder what that says, oh yeah 'Alexandria'...which was weird because only my mother calls me that.

Here is a lovely photo of Ashton with her place card! Like I said...we were at the best table in that joint. We sat with two of Lar's bridesmaids, Amanda and Amber, Amber's mom and step dad, and her girlfriend Nichole. They were hilarious and we had a blast. Just a few words ladies..."I like to buy my food retail." The end.

Ashton, Lar's bridesmaid Amanda, and myself hanging at the rehearsal dinner. Ash and I look like giants. We both had fierce shoes on. Mine were SO fierce my toes were numb for like the next two days. That is the price we pay for fashion. Holler.

These are some of our awesome table-mates. From right to left: me, Ashton, Lar's bff and bridesmaid Amber, Amber's girlfriend Nichole. Basically I adore these two gals! They were so much fun, and absolutely hilarious. We ended the weekend being total besties with both of them.

And the piece de resistance, THE Three Best Friends. Has anyone else noticed that Lauren is always in the middle of our pictures? Yep, the world is LarCentric and we are all just living in it. I just love these ladies. Words cannot even sum it up.

xoxo