Summer Kickoff Adventure!

One of our meals, NAAN PIZZA! Not very the healthiest, but made at home.

Once again, I find myself in the middle of horse country! I'm pretty much doing the usual (only we're trying to eat out less and healthier- I even got John to try cauliflower the other day. What!), but it's June now, so it's a bagillion degrees and the air is humid and thick. I tried to go to the park yesterday to read outside while John went to work, but I gave up on my walk from the house to the car. The air is hot and thick which makes breathing just a chore. Every time I go to the east coast during the summer, I always pack shorts and tank tops, but I forget how truly awful it is to be outside, so I end up being cold because everyone spends all their time indoors where it's air conditioned.

I'm not naked.

We did actually go outside this weekend though: we pool-crashed one of John's friend's apartments! One thing they have a lot of here are pools. It's probably a combination of a lack of natural bodies of water and that it gets reliably hot enough every day during the summer, that nearly every apartment complex has a pool and probably a good number of single family homes. John just got a water proof case for his phone so we tested it and his phone still works so that's good. Our fingers got too cold from the water after a while that we couldn't use the touch screen, and the case got foggy over the lens because the inside of the case was warmer than the pool. We snapped a couple of memorable ones still. John didn't wear sunblock against my advice so he looks like a lobster now (on his shoulders and back). It's sad because he is in pain, but funny because his biggest worry is having his friends realize he is not invincible.

There's a couple things here that they don't have here that I am already missing. The first is little coffee shops. I've totally been spoiled rotten in Seattle with a coffee shop on every other street corner! Yes, I realized this before, but I didn't realize the magnitude of how much Starbucks is taking over the world. I searched for "coffee shops near me" on my phone today, and I got 3 Starbucks and a Jamba Juice! Starbucks is convenient and you know exactly what you're getting, but I try to go to mom and pop coffee places as much as I can. But I had no other option so I'm sitting in a Starbucks right now after buying a lemonade and getting a refill of water, using their wifi for 3 hours. Was it worth the $3? I'm still not sure...

The other thing they don't have is Asians. Not that it matters- it's just an observation. Yesterday, I was sitting in the cafe at Barnes and Noble using their free wifi when I saw 2 twenty-something-year-old Asian girls. I even did a double take because they stuck out so much, which made me realize that I stick out that much. It's probably because I don't actually see my physically body and face walking around here in this environment. I haven't felt discriminated against, but I have gotten long stares from elementary-school-aged children on 3 separate occasions in the past 2 days. I really don't mind as long as no one is being mean to me!

Can't wait to go outside again.

On weddings

That one wedding where my nephew and I played the parents of my 3 little nieces aka his cousins

I think I have been subconsciously (or rather quite consciously...) planning my wedding for years now. And when I plan it, I don't usually plan it with a groom in mind. I usually just plan my wedding and there's an image in my mind where I'm standing in front of the officiant in the dress of my dreams with bouquet in hand, my arm raised above my head, because, hey, I just got married! As for the dude standing next to me, it is usually a black silhouette, a mystery man with his arm raised above his head also because he is equally happy he just got to marry me.

I think it's a combination of having such a large family that we've had at least one wedding to attend annually since 2005, and the fact that people slightly older than me that I still consider my "age" are starting to get married. It's crazy! And scary. But exciting! I just love the idea of party planning for all the most important people in your life, and looking totally effortlessly beautiful, and having such romantic vows, that even my Vietnamese relatives who are as emotionless as rocks can't help but bawl their eyes out. After, I will feed everyone and we will dance until someone breaks a piece of furniture and the venue kicks us out. Yes, I've thought about my wedding vows to black silhouette. Yes, my wedding is going to be a wild party. Yes, things will break.

I'm not saying I'm ready to get married; I am not even close to being ready to be married. I feel like I have been slowly getting little hints, like family or friends saying "you're next...", in a creepy little voice with eyes kind of scrunched and their shoulders hunched. I am definitely not next- I just love weddings. And when it actually comes the time that I do get married (years from now), I'm not going to care that much. It's not going to matter what I wore or whether the food was good, because I'm going to be so madly in love with black silhouette that I won't care about that infinite day, because it is only a brief celebration of what is going to last for the rest of my life! Right?! Just make sure I have a good photographer because anything can be shot to look like a good time.