Once I don’t feel like death and my head stops feeling like a ticking time bomb I’ll tell you how my 25th birthday went last night…
Category Archives: Tragic events
Bach•Bash
Our group of five just recently celebrated our second bachelorette party. The second out of the five of us is getting married in a week.
The first bachelorette party was in Palm Springs, this one was in Pasadena. We started the day off with a pole dancing class. That is so hard. I was sore for almost five days and my feet still have bruises on the tops of them. We thought we were doing good until the instructor told us to watch our faces. Our concentration on trying to make our awkward bodies sexy resulted in very ugly faces. They were a mix of concentration and pain. Honestly how can you make a “sexy push-up” sexy? Sexy or not, it’s still a push up, and your knees are digging into wood floor. We looked like five unsexy girls, with no athletic strength, whose faces looked like we smelled something weird. Nevertheless it was fun and an awesome workout.
After pole dancing we drove down to Pasadena. My roomie is in the wedding so she was in charge of the balloons for the pole dancing class. We had to bring the balloons to the hotel next, so she and I drove from Chino Hills to Pasadena with twelve balloons in the backseat. Not only were the balloons obstructing her vision of driving, her passenger side mirror is shattered from someone hitting it and leaving. I had to be her eyes for her to get into the lanes on my side. The balloons kept creeping up to the front seat and trying to stick to our hair. So there we were, driving half blind, with a car full of balloons, and both of our hair sticking up on end. Again, we were pretty sexy.
By the time we got to Pasadena we were dying from malnourishment since we had only breadsticks all day, and the smell of the balloons was making us sick. I googled a McDonalds because it is fast and cheap. Perfect! It was literally a mile away… Okay we should be pulling up on it right now… It should be on this corner… Why is there just a big building on this corner… GOOGLE LIED! We both felt like vomiting by this time and dinner wasn’t for another two and a half hours. Next I looked up a Burger King. This one was a little over a mile away. We were so scared that it wasn’t going to be there anymore too. We found it though! We saw the big sign of the BK Lounge. I got a double cheese burger and she got a ten piece chicken nugget. We literally moaned after every bite. It was one of the best meals we had ever had. Instantly I felt better and ready to take on the night.
We found the hotel and got ready and all that. Luckily we were all in the same room minus the bride. Dinner was good at Pops Champagne Bar where my roomie and I successfully finished a full bottle of wine together. After dinner was the usual bar hopping and DDing (Dancing and Drinking). At last it was 2 A.M. and the last call already passed. It was time to go back to the hotel. We looked up where we were, only 0.6 miles from the hotel. One of the girls asked if we should call a cab. One of the other girls, T, and I looked at each other and both said no it’s not that far, we can walk and make it (clearly we were both broke and didn’t want to pay for a cab). Half way into this journey back to the hotel, T and I were dying. All the other girls had comfy heels except for her and I. Our pumps were killing us. She wanted to take hers off and I told her no! Just like she told that last bride, A, at her bachelorette, we are better than that! WE DO NOT TAKE OUR SHOES OFF! She and I just walked slow behind the rest of the girls. Eventually we kept getting farther and farther behind. We were down to practically a crawl. The other girls stopped and waited for us. They started cheering us on like we were running a marathon and were almost to the finish line. We felt like crying our feet hurt so bad. The hotel was in view though. The second we walked into the lobby we kicked our shoes off. It was the second time I was in heaven that night, first a burger, now walking barefoot in the Hilton lobby.
It was time for bed. We got in pjs and drank some water and Gatorade to avoid a hang over and in minutes the lights were out. About a half hour later I heard a weird noise. I was sleeping next to my roomie and asked what it was, she didn’t know. It kind of sounded like a wrapped. All of a sudden I heard a cork pop, then someone drinking from the bottle. I looked up and saw A putting the bottle down and get back into bed and fall asleep. What the heck! In the morning I asked her if she remember popping bottles in her sleep and she had no idea!
All in all, the trip was a success. Two bachelorette parties down, three to go. May the tragicness continue and get better with each one.
Starting 2015 off right
Today my boyfriend and I helped someone in need. We were driving and on the corner of the street was a homeless man. He was holding a sign like most of them do, but his request was something I had never seen. He was not asking for money, his sign read, “Need a warm blanket”. It broke my heart. I looked at my boyfriend and we both had the same idea. He told me let’s get him a blanket. We pulled into a CVS because I knew they usually have fleece blankets. We walked in and found the blankets and they were 3 for $10! It was perfect. We grabbed three and I bought them. We drove back to the corner we saw him on and sure enough he was still there. We pulled up and stopped. He looked at us and I gave him the bag and said we got him some blankets, and my boyfriend gave him $5. The look he gave us was shock and he thanked us with such a smile it made my heart warm. He said God bless us and we told him to take care of himself. It took a lot for me to not cry as we drove away. My boyfriend turned to look one more time and the man had gotten up and was walking away from the corner. He got what he needed and tonight he will be warm. I can only hope that we gave him some HOPE. Don’t forget to spread some hope when you can. A little goes a long way.
Happy New Year!
Sunday Brunch
Today my four friends and I, we call ourselves the fab 5, had a Sunday Brunch. We all met up at one of their apartments at 11:45 and were all drunk within an hour resulting in us devouring an entire box of wheat thins, a tray of bear claws, a box of waffles, and eggs and bacon. The culprit of this binge eating fest I’m pretty sure was from the five of us polishing off three bottles of champagne (yet not even finishing half of the gallon of orange juice), two pitchers of this amazing concoction I made with lemonade, sprite, red moscato, and dragonberry Bacardi, and a half bottle of wine. Needless to say, we were bombed. If it wasn’t obvious by all the bottles and food out, you could sure tell when all the “I love you”s came out and we kept group hugging. Eventually we all started to fall asleep so I figured I should sober up to drive. My roomie is not in as good of shape as me. She told me, like she has many times before, to not let her drink that much next time, as she holds the side of the couch “spinning”.
Tragic Trippin
About a week ago I got to get dressed up with my four girlfriends, we call ourselves the Fab Five, and we went to support our sorority as respected alumnae at their philanthropy event: Theta Beta’s Sigma Kappa Ultra Violet Casino Night. It was fun to go to but the part we loved the most was dressing up, as usual. One of my girls and I are pretty much known as legends in our sorority, not to toot our own horn but toot-toot, because I was President and she was Executive Vice President and we made an amazing team together. I am not over exaggerating either, one of the girls told my dad this at Casino Night. Anyways after a night of faux blackjack and we felt that we had made a long enough appearance and took the appropriate amount of cute pictures in front of the letters, we left for the next portion of the night.
We were all going to head to a bar in the next city over but first I had to go pick up my boyfriend from daycare, aka- friends house where I dropped him off to watch the USC vs. UCLA game. As expected he was drunk already and by the time we made it to the bar he was asleep in the car. He woke right up though and was ready for a drink. We got inside and found the girls whose boyfriends and one husband also met up. My boyfriend asked what I wanted to drink and I said a Dirty Shirley which he responded to quite loudly that I wanted a whore. Like I said, he was drunk. One of the other girls had one and it was a nice small drink which was perfect because I was driving. Finally when he turned around with my drink it was in a straight up goblet. I asked him what he ordered?! He said that he told the bartender that he wanted a Dirty Shirley and to make her dirty, which is why I am assuming she gave him a giant one. There was no way I was going to be able to drink all of it and drive home so it became a group thing with my roomie and one of the other girls.
After drinking my very Dirty Shirley we decided it was time to go as did everyone else. We would all see each other the next day anyways for our Friendsgiving. I drove my boyfriend and I back to my place, where he sat in the back so he could pretend I was a chauffeur, and he fell asleep again. By this time I had been in my heels for hours and my feet were in pain so I was so happy to finally be home. We were almost there, almost to the door when it happened. Mayday-mayday I was going down and I couldn’t stop it. My heel went on a wet leaf, which then slid into the drain in the parking lot and I ate it. I couldn’t catch my balance because I was holding my purse and another bag so I went right down on my knee. The drunk, non-helping boyfriend laughed and then asked if I was okay, and then laughed again. Bruised and bleeding, I would be the SOBER one who falls down. Typical Tragic Girl.
Out of the Nest
A couple of young people that I know quite personally recently got engaged. Now it’s all about the wedding and what not, and planning, and getting ready for the future. They have about a year and a half until the wedding so there is a lot to think about. One thing of great importance is living together and the issue of where and when. Both of these youngsters still live with their parents so while they may think that they’re so mature and independent because they’re getting married, they are still dependent on their parents for shelter and food whenever it’s convenient, and all of the other luxuries of not living on you’re own where you’re dependent on yourself.
I was discussing this issue with my roomie the other night. We talked about how we feel bad for the couple. As of now they don’t really intend on moving out together before the wedding, and not out of moral reasons, but to save money. Personally myself used to be opposed to living together before getting married because I thought that once you were finally married there would be no difference in feeling if you already lived together. But now I actually think it’s a really good idea to live together first, even if it’s just for a short time before the wedding just so that you really know each other in all situations and you know that your marriage will last. However this is not about morals or cohabitation before marriage, this is about being fully, 100% independent. If you’re not going to live with your fiancé before you get married then you at least should live on your own or with a roommate first. Many youngsters do not realize how truly hard it is to be fully independent.
My roomie and I were making light of this now that we have the hang of things, but we were reminiscing about all the things that used to be provided for us that we now have to get ourselves. Some of these items are things that you don’t fully think about being an issue when you move out on your own. Things like dish soap and paper towels. These things were usually just in your kitchen. You also need essentials like toilet paper and who would have thought that toilet paper could be so expensive. You really get what you pay for. My roomie and I have come to not mind two-ply. She found what she calls a “Mexican Market” in the mall that’s she works in and scored on a huge pack of toilet paper for like four bucks, WINNING!
Girls, wait until you’re on a budget and you need to buy your own tampons since your parents aren’t buying you the ones you like anymore. Yeah we went cheap once and got that off brand, card board applicator nonsense. That crap hurts. So we went a step up and got off brand, plastic applicators. Those still aren’t great. There are some things you just can’t be frugal on. My advice for you girls on what not to be frugal on is tampons and razors. Just get the good stuff or you’ll end up sitting weird and uncomfortable seven days out of the month with band-aids on your legs.
Everything else you need though my roomie and I have found suitable alternatives that are affordable. I know it’s sad, but a sacrifice is your good $20 shampoo and in place get the $1.99 Suave. Most of mine and my roomie’s, scratch that, all of our stuff for the kitchen is the generic brand. Our favorite place to shop is Target. We literally get everything there that we don’t even consider the Target brands to be “off brand” anymore. We have learned how to save money with coupons and the cheaper brands. We even get our dish soap and paper towels or napkins at the dollar stores! We have no shame, you have to do what you have to do.
With this we have learned so much. We were both pretty independent to begin with, we both just didn’t pay rent. Now we know how truly hard it is. We keep each other accountable for turning off lights and wasting electricity or paying bills. Even though we have lived on our own for six months now and have the hang of it we are still living paycheck to paycheck. Getting the hang of it doesn’t mean that you eventually have more money, it’s still a struggle. It just means that we have gotten used to living within our means. We have cut costs where we can and know that if we want to spend money on something that isn’t essential we have to save or budget accordingly. In the mean time we are both working hard at work praying we get raises so that we have extra money. I can honestly say that one of the biggest stresses that I’ve experienced was rent last month and the month before when I literally had to go a week on $10. I couldn’t buy anything extra so if I didn’t bring lunch to work, then I didn’t eat, and yes, we do have a stack of ramen in the pantry just in case.
Living on your own for the first time is not easy but it’s doable and takes practice, and good budgeting and planning. I highly recommend you live on your own before you get married. The stress of learning to survive with the stress of a new marriage seems like way too much stress to be combined. Trust me, if my roomie and I can do this, then anyone can.
BaBangs
How often do girls decide that they need a change after something happens in their lives and they go straight for their hair? I am guilty of this on more than one occasion. Us girls have such a connection with our hair, it’s part of our identity and a way to express ourselves. That’s why when we need a change we go straight for the hair because it changes our whole appearance. It makes us feel better when we drastically change our hair as if we are a completely different person and we feel beautiful again.
A perfect example of a hard time when we feel the need for change is after a breakup. We want to feel new again like we were never with the guy or that we are better off without him and that he doesn’t deserve us. This is where I am guilty. After my first big breakup I dyed my hair dark brown. It completely changed how I looked and I felt good. After my next breakup I wanted to completely forget about the guy so bad that I thought looking different would help, yet again, so I decided to dye my hair more red and get bangs and not just any bangs, I got straight across bangs. Ten months later and I am still suffering from that decision.
Let me just tell you, bangs are never a good idea. But no, noo my sister who is my hairdresser didn’t try to talk me out of it. I said, “I want bangs,” and she said, “Bang is something you do, you want fringe,” and sat me down and cut my hair. Of course I loved them at first, but then I decided I was going to grow them out and that’s where it starts. The struggle of having hair in your face all the time. When they first start to grow out they go straight into your eyes and you feel like you’re being stabbed by tiny needles. You can’t look cute anywhere there is wind and pinning them up makes you look like a child. One of the worst parts though is trying to wash your face. You always have to make sure that you have a headband and of course you can never find one.
Now that it has been ten months they have grown quite a bit. But now I ask the question, how long do bangs have to be to not be considered bangs anymore? Mine are at the awkward chin length so you can still see them. When you do nothing with them they just follow the line of your jaw in a weird curve. Then When you want them out of your face the only way they fit in your ponytail is to have a high, cheerleader ponytail and then they stick out the top of your rubber band like a cockatoo. While sporting the cockatoo you can feel people staring at it while you talk to them.
Again I stress that bangs are never a good idea. My roomie was feeling a change the other day and told me she was thinking about bangs. I practically shouted no at her. Friends don’t let friends get bangs, or to be more correct, friends don’t let friends get fringe. Friends letting friends get “bangs” is a whole other story.
Who is the Real Gossip Girl?
Kristen Bell’s voice is iconic in her opening line of every Gossip Girl episode, “Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite.” How many times did this show have its viewers certain that they knew the real identity of Gossip Girl was Jenny Humphrey, Eric van der Woodsen, then Georgina Sparks took it over then handed it down to Serena van der Woodsen, then the real Gossip Girl took it back. Through all the drama no one ever expected the real Gossip Girl to be, WARNING- spoiler alert, none other than Dan Humphrey, also known as “Lonely Boy” by Gossip Girl, who is himself. At the end Dan confesses that he started Gossip Girl so that he could be a part of something, the Upper East Side’s world. After watching the entire series I couldn’t help but ask, are we our very own Gossip Girl? Was our generation so obsessed with this show and the idea of Gossip Girl that we don’t realize that in reality, we ARE Gossip Girl?
In the show the only form of social media is the Gossip Girl site and Gossip Girl “herself”. She knew everything about all of the characters’ lives. How did she know all of this information? She was not stalking people, people would voluntarily send in “tips” of information about their lives or the lives of others. How is this any different from the “status” updates that we post or “send” into Facebook, or the pictures that we post on Instagram, or the tweets we post to Twitter? When the characters would look back into Gossip Girl’s past, they found their own timeline from freshman year of high school all they way through their college years and beyond. Our Facebooks act as that same timeline. From the day that we signed up and made our profiles to today we have been building a timeline, voluntarily telling the world about our personal lives.
How often has social media gotten us into trouble? We are so obsessed with letting people know or see what we are doing at all times that we often do not stop and think about the consequences, we just think about the “likes”. Now you might feel cool when you get 100 likes on your picture at a party doing a keg stand, but unlike on Gossip Girl, scandals do not always blow over. Though it may not seem like a big deal, that picture can come back to hurt you later, say when you’re trying to get a new job or make a good first impression on someone. If they do just a little bit of research on you in the database that knows you best, they will find years of first person documentation written by none other than yourself.
I am not saying that social media is bad. I myself have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It is the way that it is used though that makes it good or bad. My dad asked me recently why we post things on Facebook and I couldn’t really give him an answer. Thinking about it almost made me feel silly that I partake in posting what I am doing at every second to let my world know that I am eating pasta for dinner. I am sure that everyone really cares what I eat for dinner. The part I enjoy is how easy it is to share pictures and invite people to events and other useful things like that. It cuts out the whole we are going to take a group picture but we have to take it 10 times so that we can take it once on everyones’ phones.
Again I am not saying social media is bad. I just found the similarities to Gossip Girl really interesting since I just recently finished the entire series. When used for bad we are Gossip Girl and we voluntarily put stuff on the internet that doesn’t go away that can hurt us or people we care about all for what? So we feel like we are part of something that isn’t even tangible? To be a part of a cyber world that then gives us something to talk about in our own real world? It is just interesting to me that we feel the need to connect in a way that almost is not real.
XOXO- Tragic Girls
Farewell to Retail
Until a little over a week ago I finished my last day in retail. What a long journey that was. Seven years and eight months to be exact. Do you know what it is like to work in the retail industry? You learn a lot about different people and you learn to have a lot of patience and self control. Don’t get me wrong I love the industry. Working in retail not only gave me a passion for style, but also gave me a serious shopping addiction. I was constantly bringing home new things to add to my closet and of course no closet is ever big enough. When I moved in May I had to condense my overly full walk-in to a small, one sided closet with sliding doors. You can imagine my struggle and the mess of clothes constantly on my floor. To be honest I don’t think that I have enough room in my closet and drawers to fit all of my clothes. This is why I hate doing laundry because I physically cannot put it away. Everything fits much better when there is a basket full of laundry needing to be done. Anyways, I am hoping now that I do not work in retail I will buy much less clothes. Except its been a week and I’ve bought about seven things and my excuse was that I needed it for my new job. I’m working on getting better I promise. Oh wait, I forgot I ordered a dress and a pair of pants too, they are on their way. But that it is!
With all this being said I now graduate to the next step in my life. I am going from a store to an office and I am actually really exited. I am learning something new that I can take to many different jobs. I’ve been training on accounts receivable and it’s been good. So I want to take this time to say farewell to retail, and no one deserves this farewell more than my customers.
Farewell to the customers who come in right when we open to return five items that they don’t have a legitimate excuse to return them except for, “I changed my mind,” because they probably bought them all to get free shipping on the one item that they actually wanted. You’re a joy to start my day off with. And farewell to the customers who want the large on the bottom of the perfectly folded stack of tee shirts and rather than nicely picking up the entire stack to get to their shirt, they grabbed the large and flip the entire stack into a heaping pile. It’s my pleasure to clean up the mess you leave.
The next customer is one of my favorites. Farewell to the customers who come in with their children and think they do not have to watch them since they are inside a store. I absolutely love being a baby sitter and not getting paid extra for it. You have really showed me how to be a good mother one day. For example one of my customers was so smart. She had a stroller with a baby and an older toddler who was walking, and she wanted to try some clothes on. That was no problem, we had a handicap dressing room for reasons such as this so women in wheelchairs or who have strollers can have enough room to try clothes on. So I went to let the woman into the large dressing room so that she could bring her stroller and her toddler in. Instead she had this great idea to leave her stroller and her toddler outside the dressing room so that she could have the big room to herself. While trying on her clothes her baby was crying and the toddler was running outside and hanging over the side of the fountain in front of our store. Some of the best parenting I have seen.
Last, but not least, I want to say farewell to the customers who will try anything to get something on sale. Customers and I will run into many discrepancies while doing a transaction. For instance the jeans I had scanned were $74, but the customer for some reason seemed to think that they are on sale for $20 and told me that I am wrong. I asked them to show me where they got them from. They walked me to the table that had two levels. The top level had tee shirts across the whole thing with a large sign clearly stating “Tee Sale $20”. The jeans were on the bottom row. I explained that the sign that said “Tee Sale $20” meant that the tees were $20. The customer then told me that our sign was way too confusing and that they don’t want the jeans and they left. There are also the customers that blatantly ask if they can have a discount at the register. When I ask if they have a coupon or a promotion code they tell me no. Then I tell them then no you cannot gave a discount. Lastly of course farewell to the tag switchers. The ones who pick up brand new items and switch the tag with a clearance item as if we do not know our own inventory, “I am so sorry ma’am but SOMEONE switched the tag on this item with a tag from clearance.” Or better yet if I catch it before I scan it I just rip the tag off and tell them that it is missing a price tag and I’ll go get a new one. Usually they decide that they don’t want that item anymore.
I could really go on and on about all of these fabulous customers. In fact I think I’ll start writing a book about them since there are so many, and I wouldn’t want to leave any out. Yes, consider this a preview of that book. These were just a few things to note that I will miss from my retail days. It was great and thanks to my customers there was never a dull moment. Ill be sure to add you all in the dedications page in my upcoming book. As painful as it is to leave, I must move on and grow up. If I am to ever go back to the retail industry it will be in a corporate office position. But don’t worry I’ll keep on shopping to remember the good old days. My closet is always hungry for more!
Furniture is for Peasants
When Heather and I first decided to move out obviously we were so excited and probably the only thing we could talk about was how we were going to decorate and how our apartment was going to be so “shabby chic” and blah blah blah. Well we signed our lease and had a month before we could move in so we started packing our things in our parents’ houses. We also started thinking about what we were going to need for our place. Both of us were only coming with a bed, a dresser, and maybe a couple nightstands. Great we would have furnished rooms, but what about the rest of the apartment? Our list of what we needed wasn’t big but it was all big things like a refrigerator, a couch, coffee table, kitchen table with chairs, a TV and TV stand, all of the stuff like that. We were trying to think of ways to get all of these things. It was getting close and we still had acquired none of it so our last resort plan, which was a joke but kind of not really, was a blow up couch, an ice chest for a fridge, and a fold out camping table for the kitchen table. Yes I know, we are so classy. But if it came down to it, we would have rocked these redneck ways. Champagne taste on a moon shine budget ya’ll!
Well good news for everyone, we did not have to do that! Before we moved Heather’s parents decided they wanted to get a new couch and that we could have their old one. They weren’t getting a new couch though until Memorial Day which was like three weeks after we moved in, no big deal. We could be couchless until then. Then they decided we could have it when we moved in! Heather your parents are angels. So couch was done. The next big thing was the fridge since it is kind of essential if we want to have food in our place. We were both in no position to really buy a new one. Heather posted on Facebook asking if anyone knew of a fridge for sale. Luckily one of our sorority sisters had recently moved out and she had a fridge that she needed to get rid of, and get this, she sold it to us for $50! Thank you so much sister, you are an angel too! We didn’t even measure it to make sure it would fit in our apartment. I just had my dad pick it up with me when we moved and we crossed our fingers it would be okay. It was, there is actually a lot of room on the side of it because it is a pretty small fridge. The door of the freezer actually fell off while we were moving it. We opened the trailer and my dad handed me the door and said “here carry this”. Awesome. But it works great! Besides the fact that the inside of the door doesn’t have a railing I guess you would say so we broke the mayo the other day opening the door too fast. The jar tried to escape and cracked a whole in the lid. It knows better for next time now.
Okay so now we had a couch and a fridge. We have been here for a month and a week now. It wasn’t until last week that we finally got a coffee table. Heather and I discussed making a cute one we saw on Pinterest but then finally went against it because we didn’t have time, it would end up costing more than we wanted, and if we made it there was a chance there would be no more blog since it required using a saw and we both wanted to keep our fingers (#wearenotcoordinated). We decided on a cheap $20 coffee table from Ikea. Last week I was going to pick it up but when I finally went to Ikea for something else I needed I didn’t have time to get the table so I told Heather I would get it next time. The next day Heather texted me and said, “Look what I found!” and sent me this picture:
How cool is that? It is like a vintage trunk! I texted her back and said, “Do you think it is big enough to be a coffee table?” She responded with an, “Uh yeah I am pretty sure,” with this picture:
Yeah that is freaking big and takes up her entire seat. So she brings it to the apartment and it is in her car for a good three or four days because we didn’t have a time during the day together to get it out. Finally on Wednesday we did. We were so excited to have a coffee table! Heather unlocked her car and we opened the door and started to take it out. It was a little more difficult than we thought. We tried a couple more ways but still couldn’t get the sucker out. The trunk was being stubborn!
Or maybe it was just too big to even be in the car. Her brother put it in for her but wasn’t there to take it out. It was so difficult. We had to roll down her window so the corner could poke out, and had to have one of us lift up and out while the other one of us was inside the car pushing it. Success though and we did it! Now it is cleaned up with furniture polish and is sitting right in front of our couch. It is so “shabby chic”. Granted if you put your feet up on it they will probably go to sleep since the trunk is taller than the seats on the couch but that is besides the point. The point is now we only need a kitchen table and we will be fully furnished! It’s only been over a month but who is counting? At least we have a coffee table we can eat at now!
the.B.Law 