Year in Review!

I do one of these every year on whatever blog I happen to be using, so I figured it was time to post a little update and reflect on 2016. My first-ever year in review was written in 2007 on my LiveJournal so I'm sure you can understand why I'm so good at these*.

*I'm not. I just lied to you. These posts are always the messiest, and no, I will not give you a link to 14 year old Stacie's LiveJournal!

So let me start by saying this: I understand that the world in general agrees that 2016 was Very Bad, maybe even the worst. And I get it! I too am upset that we lost David Bowie, and have a stale Cheeto for president, but for me personally, 2016 was AAAaAAaAAAawesome!

Every year, I set 5 goals for myself to try to achieve before the next year. It's kind of like resolutions, but I'm not always necessarily trying to change anything. At the end of 2015, I set the following goals:

1. Get abs. I did not do this, however I did give up coffee so that's less sugar I guess...even though I totally still drink it sometimes WHOOPS.

2. Get a new car. DONE. It happened a little sooner than I was planning but it all worked out and I love it! Yay for AC and 4 working doors & windows!

3. Get braces. Done!!! I didn't realize they can do pretty much anything with Invisalign these days so that was a nice surprise (you might recall I was very worried about being the nerdiest 23 year old alive). Hard to believe this time next year my teeth will (almost) be perfectly straight! ahhh!

4. Have a better daily schedule/be more organized. Ehhh... I still mostly work and sit in traffic and sleep but I have been making time to write (heheheh) and I did get rid of a lot of CLUTTER, which definitely helps with the organization part. It's a work in progress.

5. Do more art. Hmm. I can't say for sure whether I did more than I have in past years but I can say I am proud of what I've done.

Next year's goals are similar in a lot of ways; I still want abs, for instance. And I want to do more art (and maybe actually finish a painting once in a while lol). The others are more grown up type things - like paying off my braces or car or getting ready to move out or like, learn to make a dinner besides pasta. I'm keeping it a little vague this year because honestly, I'm pretty happy with where I am right now!

While my year in review posts tend to get a little long, I think I'm going to shorten this one a bit. A. because no one needs an extensive recap of my year, and B. because I am starting to feel just a little lazy...I MEAN, what?!! So here are my top 5 moments/days/etc from the year 2016, because why not?

1. CAPE COD!



Even though as I get older I seem to get more terrified of the ocean, I had so much fun this year in Cape Cod, and I got to go twice! One of my favorite days was swimming in a lake my mom found and daring each other to venture out to the sudden drop into the depths (where evil lake monsters probably lived). It is so nice to get away from everything sometimes, to a place where your biggest worry is avoiding getting a sunburn while having TOO MUCH FUN.

2. NEW YORK!

In the spring I went with Meredith to NYC to see Greg Raposo (yes, from Dream Street) in concert at some bar. We both kind of hate being in charge when it comes to traveling/making decisions without a "real" grownup present, so of course we did the most responsible thing: took turns making decisions. My favorite (and least favorite) was when I decided we finally had to talk to him. He was standing next to me and I turned and said hi. He, of course, was very friendly and took this gr8 photo with me. I, well, was my classic awkward self, but hey, I'm alive, so there is that! We didn't get home until 2am that night, which most of the time is cause for many complaints from me, but I have to admit, it was one of the best nights of the year.

3. BDAY!

My 23rd birthday was one of the best days ever. It was the first "party" I'd had in years, and I loved every minute of it. It wasn't the craziest party ever, I mean, we're talking about me here. But we played board games and danced like crazy and there was even ice cream cake. What's not to love about that?!

4. ANASTASIA!

Seeing my favorite childhood movie in stage-musical form was one of the greatest days of my life. We got to sit right near the stage, and somehow the show ended up being better than I was expecting - and I was expecting it to be the greatest show ever. I think of myself as a person who doesn't even like musicals, but this one was SO GOOD. I will never forget the moment when Journey to the Past (an ICONIC song from this movie!!!) started playing and I looked at my siblings to see them all smiling along with me like the huge dorks we are. It was truly magical.

5. CASINO!

It's almost funny that this made it into my 2016 highlights because on the way there I was texting Adam about how much I didn't want to go and how much I wished I could be in sweatpants at home. By the end of the night I lost my "allowance" that I brought with me and my toes felt broken from the heels I chose, but I *mostly* loved it. Sure, there were moments where I was very grumpy about the state of my feet, or when we lost our mom after searching for a bathroom, or when Johnny Rockets took over an hour only to hand us melted milkshakes at 2am. But for every bad thing there was a hilariously good thing, like calling my mom to find her only to realize the weirdo down the hall waving her arms around was her, or while dancing making a plan to dance away from any approaching boys, or drinking those melted milkshakes because honestly anything is fine at 2am. It was such a fun night and I am very happy to have ended the year with it.

And now I think I will end this post. I'm hoping to blog a little more consistently in 2017, but I make no promises. I hope you all have an awesome New Years! In the meantime I will enjoy sleeping in and wearing sweatpants all day.

Recommended Listening: Next Year People - Barcelona

Lindsay

Well hello!

I have decided this every other week thing is gonna be awesome. It gives me more time to do the things I love, like sitting in traffic or eating dinner at 7pm. But also it gives me more time to think about things I can actually write about, versus writing a blog post that is barely longer than something I might say on Twitter.

So this week I have some sort of update for you. I had an orthodontist appointment yesterday at 9:45AM, which was mostly sad because I then couldn't go out for lunch. Working with my mom does have perks though, and this includes her sharing various food items with me so I wouldn't starve (plus she made tacos for dinner...woo!). 

Anyway, I got to the orthodontist right on time, and didn't completely fail at parking like I did last time. For reference, there is no parking lot, and there is room for maybe 3 cars in front of the building on the street. Also, I cannot parallel park even with a fancy back up camera. Then I'd say about 3 major things happened.

1. There was a tiny dog in the waiting room. I can't even emphasize how small this dog was. It made my day when it barked at me with that little noise dogs make like "boof". It was trying to intimidate me, but it was just so tiny! Okay, I'm over it...kind of.

2. I'm told my teeth are moving quite nicely, especially the bottom ones! It's a little surprising because I have broken off all but 2 of the attachments on my bottom teeth. Yet somehow whenever I go to put the new trays on, they fit just fine. He noticed that too, so he said we didn't have to bother attaching them again for now. This appointment, overall, killed about 45 minutes of my time, and most of it was me sitting there, so I was glad to leave. I guess being obsessive about wearing my braces is paying off! He mentioned maybe moving a little faster in the future if this keeps going. I don't know much about that, but I do know it's like, a real thing Invisalign does sometimes. I forget the exact name so I will just call it...TURBO INVISALIGN. 

So yeah, that's pretty exciting. This will be a fun little surprise for my family reading this because I legitimately forgot about it until just now. This might be done by the time I'm 24...maybe!

Now let's get to the real story...

3. I sat in the dentist chair telling the people there about how I love Christmas. It was just polite conversation, but it sort of made me think they think I am like 14 years old. They talked to me like I was a kid, and it's like, come on, adults love Christmas too!

After sitting for a good 20 minutes my orthodontist finally walks over. With his back to me, facing the counter with the boxes of Invisalign on them, he says "Hi Lindsay!"

I continued looking at my chipping nail polish assuming this Lindsay was standing behind me. Then he walked over and kind of bent down to get my attention and said Hi again. I was just kind of like "Oh...hi!" I mean whatever, honest mistake.

 He asked me how I was, and mentioned he had heard I love Christmas. I so casually mentioned loving Christmas it seemed like a weird thing, the fact that he said it again in that tone that one might use with a child. I confirmed, yes I love Christmas.

Then he tilted the chair back and kind of flossed my teeth?? I guess they do this to check the spacing or something, because he only checked certain teeth. And then, with floss in my mouth, he said something about my teeth, like, "These are looking great, Linds."

 

I couldn't correct him! His hand was pretty much in my mouth, and if I talked I would've taken his finger off like Gollum at the end of Lord of the Rings. But it was pretty much confirmed, this guy thinks my name is Lindsay. He then handed me my braces to put back on and again commented on how well it was all going. Then as he walked back toward the counter, he said, AGAIN, "We'll see if at some point we can speed this process up, Lindsay."

  At this point it was just embarrassing and I felt like I couldn't correct him now. If it came up I was just gonna have to pretend I had heard him wrong before. Finally, when he went and picked up a few sets of trays to send me off with he looked down at the bags he was holding. I saw a spark of...something (recognition, fear?)...on his face and knew that he knew what had happened.

He handed them to me and said, "Here you are, my friend" and I thought, right, because you realize I am not Lindsay.

In the end he just put a note in my file about the rubber bands I will eventually need (ick) and said "See you in February, Stacie!" And I so badly wanted to stand up and tell him,

It's Lindsay.

Recommended Listening: Back for Christmas - Andrew Belle