and i quote.

Janet Fitch has said a lot of things in her lifetime. Here are my favorites among those things:

"How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it." 

"Whenever she thought she could not feel more alone, the universe peeled back another layer of darkness." 

"That was what she really wanted. To forget so thoroughly she'd never have another memory again, the bitter so bitter you gave up the sweet." 

"This was the wonderful thing about strangers. they were big blank pieces of paper, you could draw watever you like on their impressionable surfaces." 

"And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty seperate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door. "  

"If sinners where so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering?
But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I?" 

"What was the point in such loneliness among people. At least if you were by yourself, you had a good reason to be lonely."  

"The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way." 

"She should think about her own soul, what she was going to do with this funky tattered pond dank item. Dark and stained, a ruined thing." 

2 things.

All above photos by me.

1. Today when I arrived at work, a nice, what appeared to be young, handsome, gentleman was standing next to the door. He was waiting for me to use my magical badge to open the door because he lost his. This is when the small talk began. He asked how things were and I said good. I asked him how stuff was and he said fine. Somewhere in between all this, I 100% stumbled up the stairs. Naturally, I was humiliated. But do you know what made it more humiliating? He didn't acknowledge it. He just kept talking. Which now that I type this out, that was really thoughtful of him, but the fact that he didn't laugh or make fun of me, embarrassed me more. Weird of me, I know.

2. I've been really craving a Jamba Juice all week. Yes, all two days of this week. I also watched/listened to Forrest Gump on my iPod while working today. Talk about multitasking! I was able to listen/watch the movie, work, pretend to work and cry at the sad parts all at the same time. I'm thinking about putting that on my resume....

"you've got to let go of who you were, to become who you will be."

Here is a sign to know you may be spending too much time (if possible) around your 1 1/2 year old niece:

You get home to your apartment and stand in the kitchen and start crying a little because you are so tired and so hungry that you just cry.

Photo by me.

 I know I was supposed to have news about my raise today, but I was slapped in the face with the news that I would have to wait til the end of the week. I know, right? What am I supposed to do til the end of the week?? Just work? Well.. probably. But still. So I thought since I couldn't share the news of my raise, I would share with you this picture of the sun about to go to bed that I took.

Also, here are two things that I love today. I know I say I love everything and I really love every little thing... so when I say I love something, I feel like it doesn't have any credibility. But you can believe me this time. I really love these two things:

 That Vanilla Chai Tea tastes like Christmas and those mini Reese's are just wonderful and cute to eat.

bits of my weekend.

 Coffee area at Nostalgia Coffee

 My  friends Mike and Tyler across from me at Nostalgia.

 Sunflower in the ally behind my apartment.  Say cheeeese little Sunflower!

 Tyler's dogs giving more love and attention to Mike. I could have doggy treats covering every inch of my body and these dogs would still ignore me.

 Flowers. Yeah, just some flowers.

 Scene from a corner gas station.

 Photo evidence that I finally painted my nails after thinking about doing it every day.

 Nostalgia, again.

 Just some fine dining on a Sunday night, single gal style.

Me giving a thumbs up to painted nails... and this weekend too.

steps to healing a broken heart that you might think will never be healed again.

I think everyone should experience a broken heart at some point in their lifetime. I would never ever specifically wish that pain and and misery and tragedy on someone, but it is definitely something I think everyone should feel and be familiar with just for the one reason that it teaches you a lot about yourself. After spending my time moping and crying and glaring at happy couples I saw in public, I decided that wasn't going to help me get better. I decided to take my heartbreak as a learning experience.

Here is the advice I would give someone who has a broken heart:

1. Let yourself hurt. If you try and numb the pain, it will only hurt worse when you finally feel it.
2. Cry.
3. Cry in the shower.
4. Cry when you are falling asleep.
5. Cry when you are driving and listening to a sad song or even a happy song.
6. Cry when you see a male and a female duck crossing the street together.
7. Get all the crying out so it doesn't sneak up on you when you are talking to the person scanning your groceries.
8. Keep your life moving. As tempting as crawling under your covers in your bed and never coming back out except to see if your phone is done charging sounds, you have to keep living your life if you want to be happy again.
9. Take it one day at a time.
10. Find new things to do to keep you busy.
11. Take this time to really think about what you are looking for and what your likes/dislikes are.
12. Be selfish. Only do things if they make you happy. This is just advice in general, but it can be applied to this.
13. Be strong. Even if you know you aren't strong, fake like you are strong and it will happen. And you will be surprised.

The thing I am most grateful for that I gained from this nightmare is... I feel like I am now invincible to pain. I feel like from now on, anything could happen to me and it will never come close to hurting me as much as this heartbreak did. I feel free and like there is nothing left to be afraid of.

"You've got to let go of who you were, to become who you will be."- Janet Fitch

raising the roof has never been so literal.

I'm raising the roof.
I'm raising the bar.

Even though I am terrible at giving hints, have you guessed what is going on by those two awful hints I just tried giving you?

I asked for a raise today at work and I am going to hear the final verdict on Monday. So that means this weekend is going to be a variety plate of mixed emotions. Part of me will want it to be a never ending weekend like I wish every weekend was. And the other part of me is going to want it to be Monday already so I can hear the (hopefully) wonderful news. 

If I do get the raise, expect a post from me offering to buy you anything you have ever wanted or wished for... from the dollar store. Just kidding. But i'll be offering to buy you anything that Santa never brought you or your parents never bought you for your 16th birthday.

If I don't get the raise, I will probably somehow make it so you have to pay me to read my blog. Again, just kidding. I would never do that.

Keep me in your 'people that deserve a raise' thoughts. Love you.

Oh and remember when I used to post a lot of the photos I took on here? I'm going to start doing that again.

caffeine is great but caffeine is also bad.

Reader, as you may know, I don't have the most healthy sleep schedule. In fact, if you were to look in the newspaper, you wouldn't see any headlines that say, "Kaleena finally goes to bed at a reasonable hour and gets more than 4 hours of sleep" because that would just be untrue.

As a result of lack of sleep and keeping odd hours in the night, (not all days) but most days I often rely on caffeine as a way to keep me alive (literally) and safe throughout the day.  My problem is, I think caffeine is supposed to start working immediately, and when it doesn't, I continue pumping unsafe amounts of caffeine into my body. An hour later, I don't feel anything except the urge to pee.

Then it hits.

It all hits at once and I start going berserk, but in the most professional way possible. Here are some of the thoughts I have and some of the texts I send out:

I CAN DO ANYTHING.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW, I MEAN RIGHT NOW?
I CAN CLEAN THIS WHOLE OFFICE.
WANT TO COME OVER? BUT I'M NOT HOME.
I CAN CLEAN THE WHOLE WORLD.
I CAN'T SIT DOWN.
LET'S SEE HOW FAST I CAN TYPE BEFORE MY HAND CRAMPS.
IF I SCREAM RIGHT NOW, COULD I PASS IT OFF AS A SNEEZE?
I'M WALKING TO RUSSIA.
WHAT JUST TOUCHED MY LEG? I THINK IT WAS JUST MY OTHER LEG....

So yeah. I get a little insane. Honestly, after reading that, I annoyed myself. Today, I didn't have one drop of caffeine, and someone said "you are really hyper, how much caffeine have you had today?"

My response? None. Cause it was aaaaallll natural babyyyy. Can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think I'll just go make some Easy Mac and think about it.

things thing and more things.

I am grateful for the word: thing. However, I would probably have a larger and more impressive vocabulary if it weren't for the word thing, but thing always seems to get the job done when I need to talk about.... things.

Right now, I have some funeral potatoes cooking in the oven. That's right. It is my first attempt at making them and the process went surprisingly... safe. Nothing in the kitchen broke and I didn't need any bandaids when I was done cooking. This is a huge step because whenever I cook, it takes a day or two of mentally and emotionally preparing myself. Just standing in the kitchen makes me feel like I have zero skills.

Right now (part II) I have hair dye on hair, what I also like to call the roof of my head. If everything goes by plan, my hair will be a dark, brownish burgundy-ish when I rinse it out.

Lately when I take naps after work, I wake up thinking it's the next morning. When this happens, it's worse than death. So I lay there, staring at my clock with panic and alert in my eyes and then shoot up out of my bed faster than a dog chasing... whatever dogs chase. I run out like a crazy person to the living room and then realize, it's only been 10 minutes since I laid down to nap. It's a very dramatic and berserk time.

i wish for these wishes.

I wish my hair would grow really long and really fast, too.
I wish every morning when I woke up, there would be an enormous pile of pancakes waiting for me.
I wish every morning when I woke up, the clock didn't say 7:30am.

I wish I was I was more patient.
I wish I was more patient to wait for me to become patient. 
I wish it wasn't me vs. spiders every night in this apartment.

I wish these wishes would come true.
I wish every day at work would go as fast as today did.
I wish rejection wasn't as scary as 9 spiders walking towards you and then rejecting you. That is TRIPLE scary. An ODD number of SPIDERS, REJECTING you!

blunt card saturday.

Have you ever heard of bluntcard.com? Well if not, here is some easy steps to get there.

Open your internet browser machine.
Fight ever urge you have to go to Facebook.
Type in: www.bluntcard.com
Laugh.
Send some to your loved ones.
Laugh.

I decided that I'm going to post one of my favorites on here every Saturday. You're welcome.

blue valentine.

I just bought this move for 4 bucks.

i'm tired and i'm tired.

I only had to work four wonderful, lovely, cute days this week but I'm almost more than certain this has been the longest week in the history of ever. Those days were anything but wonderful, lovely and cute. Well they were kind of cute. But not the good cute. More like the kind of cute where someone you love gave you an ugly, flowy skirt and you would say "oh, it's cute."

Stay tuned because right now, I'm going to do my favorite thing... COMPLAIN! It's really no my favorite thing, but I am pretty good at it.

I am tired but I can't sleep.
I am hungry but nothing sounds good to eat.
I am bored but too tired to do anything
I want to clean but don't know where to start.
I'm hot and this fan isn't doing it's duty as the 'fan'
I want to go the gym but I went yesterday.
I want this weekend to never end but I know it will.
I need a hobby but I don't know what I want to do.

Well, you should probably stop reading this mess that was in my head but is now on my blog. Reader, you should go do something fun and crazy, life is too short to spend doing what it is you're doing.

Oh and I really hate change and wish that if things just HAD to change, it would always be for the better.

34 years ago.

34 years ago today, Elvis Presley died.

34 years later from the day he died,

there is a girl who is still very much a fan of him and knows every word to every one of his songs and owns all his of his movies and thinks he is handsome.

That girl is me.

R.I.P.

I'm not saying anyone should surprise me with an all expenses paid trip to Graceland, but that would be the ideal situation.

bits of my weekend.

I spent 100000% of this weekend by myself and it was actually quite nice.

my sunday in 30 seconds.

You are about to witness what a Sunday is like in my life in 30 seconds:

I woke up around noon.
Walked to the kitchen.
Looked into my empty fridge.
Decided I wasn't really hungry anyways.
Went back to bed.
Laid in bed awake.
Walked out to living room.
Put in the 4th season DVD of Scrubs.
Downloaded music.
Walked to the empty fridge again.
Tried my new eyebrow liner.
Wished I didn't apply the eyebrow liner to look like I am surprised and confused. And worried.
Typed a list of what my Sundays are like in 30 seconds.

a list of things that you probably shouldn't do if you come into my apartment.

Every weekend, no matter how much I like to pretend like I live an adventurous lifestyle like trying exotic foods that I can't pronounce or singing on top of a piano at bar and getting a standing ovation or stopping a fight I see at a gas station and becoming the hero... you really can find me in my apartment. Sometimes alone, but mostly with some of my closest friends.

My friends (and family) are welcome into my apartment whenever they need it, no matter what the time. No questions asked. Well, I'm sure some questions will be asked, but not for a while. However, I'm about to show you a list of things that I do not want to be done or said if you ever find yourself as a guest in my apartment.

1. Don't comment on a certain mess or the state of my apartment. You are only allowed to do this if it looks like it's about to be photographed for some sort of 'most breathtaking apartments in Salt Lake City magazines'

2. If you leave a mess, clean it up.

3. Don't eat all my food. I mean, help yourself to my Doritos, but if I go to eat them and I have to deal the the suffer and heartbreak of lifting the light bag to discover it's empty, that is just as bad as death.

4. Don't look at... unpleasant things on my laptop.

5. When you first arrive, look me in the eyes and don't break the intense gaze we have and say all the nicest things you can think of about me. I am needy and need to feel special somehow, okay?

another friday night.

It's a Friday night. Rebecca Black said it best when she said "yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday."

While some people to choose to spend their Friday nights in a hot person disguise at a bar looking for someone to love them, cuddling and sharing popcorn in a movie theater, stepping away the pain and loneliness on a stair master at a gym, or brushing Granny's hair while watching Law & Order.... I am choosing to spend mine in my apartment, with the fan on so I don't have a heat stroke and have a dramatic episode on the living room floor, and watching That 70's Show.

Reader, you could have been here too, if you didn't have that thing you had to do.

p.s.
The next time I find an eyelash on my face and I blow it away for a wish, I am going to wish that commercials wouldn't be so long and dull that I could go grocery shopping for six different families of 25 and unload them into their pantries AND still make it back in time for That 70's Show to be back on.

the pros and cons of a free concert.

Tonight I scooted my cheap self down to Pioneer Park to join in the hot, sweaty and elusive crowd that was there to watch a free concert. Usually I like to avoid crowds that are full of unkempt, smelly, filthy, boisterous, and vexatious people. But if being one of those unkempt, smelly, filthy, boisterous and vexatious people means I get to watch the band Bright Eyes play music for FREE then I am terribly quick to join.

First things first. My favorite Bright Eyes songs are: Lua, First Day of My Life, Road to Joy, and Poison Oak. If you don't know who Bright Eyes is and you look up these songs and end up falling in love with them, you're welcome.

As I was standing in the crowd watching all the different kinds of people socialize and do questionable things around me, I realized all the many pros and cons of attending a free concert that is held at a park.

Pros:

+ You get to see a skilled band play your favorite songs in a park.

+ You have something to do besides sit in your apartment changing the words to a commercial song that you have stuck in your head.

+ People watching paradise.

Cons:

+ You breath secondhand smoke for 2+ hours. *cough cough cough COUGH COUGH* < that was me doing my best dramatic cough impression.

+ You get mysterious liquids spilled on your feet/shoes and since it's so crowded you can't avenge the person who caused such an outrage.

+ People who smell like they haven't showered since 1994 will rub up against you.

Photo by me

get outta my shower!!!

Tonight I got into the shower.
I was excited to be in the shower.
Because I love showers.
But then I looked up.
I saw a spider when I looked up.
A big, black spider.
I screamed.
Loud.
Dropped the shampoo bottle.
Grabbed the towel and ran out.

Precisely two hours later, the spider was killed.
It was killed in a dramatic way.
Then, every time something touched me, I thought it was a spider trying to seek revenge for it's fellow spider that was just killed.

I was finally happy and back in the shower.
Then I saw another spider on the door.
Ugh.
I screamed again.
If my neighbors were sleeping before, they certainly aren't now.
So I killed it with a shoe.
I hate spiders.

I was finally able to shower.
But it was the most stressful shower I have ever showered in my showering career.
I'm clean and fresh now.
And I still hate spiders.

The end.

awesome and not awesome.

Not awesome:
1. I lost an earring while riding in the bed of a truck.
2. Feeling left behind.

Awesome:
1. I only have to work three days next week.
2. My footie pajamas:

i sure hope so.

some things will never change.

For the last two weeks I have told myself:
1. I am going to bed early tonight. I will be in bed with my phone and laptop tucked in and TV off no later than 12:30am.
2. Get to work early. Be sitting at my desk wishing I had a window seat and some sort of bed-desk by 8:00am.

And....

For the last two weeks I have:
1. Gone to bed around 3:30-4:00am, yes I did mean to type A.M. each night with laptop open, phone in hand and TV very much on.
2. Gotten to work around 9:30am and sat at my desk that is certainly not by a window with no bed-desk in sight.

Hmmm.

Tonight a girl at the cash register diligently asked to see my ID after seeing that I wrote in big black letters on the back of my debit card: SEE ID. I'm happy she did, nobody ever does. And when they do, I thank them. Thanks girl behind the cash register.

Picture from weheartit.com

[not so] breaking news in the life of kaleena.

It's only Tuesday but many unexpected things have already happened:

1. I decided I am saying bye-bye to soda. Today would be day 4 of a soda free life. If my thighs could talk, I'm sure they would be thanking me for this decision.

2. My Facebook, my Tumblr, my e-mail have been hacked. I plan on tracking these hackers down and biting them.

3. Along with hacked accounts, somebody has been calling me repeatedly on a restricted number. Again, I will find them and bite them.

4. I fell in the shower and sprained my elbow.

Today was really sunny. And hot. But right now it's raining pretty intensely. And the lightening it lighting up my whole living room. And it thundered so LOUD, I'm pretty certain I felt it vibrate the couch.

I liked this day.

Photo taken by: me.