Reasons Why I'm Crying

It's Meg Ryan's birthday. Can we all just take a moment to thank this woman for bringing Kathleen Kelly to life? I can't be the only person who crawls under the covers and watches You've Got Mail whenever my painstaking attempts to micromanage the next 10 years of my life explode in my face. Part of me wants to throw everything out the window and move to Manhattan and work at a doomed bookstore just so some online stranger can tell me, "Don't cry, Shopgirl." /bawling

Ryan Cabrera used to be relevant. Remember his YuGiOh hair? His sentimental-without-actually-saying-anything songs? I sure hadn't. Like, for a good six years, I'd forgotten that this guy had ever existed. So hearing "On The Way Down" and "True" brought back a whole lot of memories.. mostly of stressing out over what a boutonniere was and avoiding my biology leaf project. And of failing to realize that Laguna Beach was a TV show, not a retail offshoot of Abercrombie and Fitch until my hopes of being remotely cool vanished into thin air. Thanks for the memoriez, Ryan.

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Obvi.

This Stephen King book isn't getting any better. In the spirit of JFK Day, which is this city's bizarrely laid-back name for the 50th anniversary of the president's assassination, I thought it would be appropriate to read Stevie K's novel about going back in time to save Kennedy. Shockingly enough, the first half of the book was about fun times in Derry (fun times in Derry today! Derry!). After 350 pages of thoroughly enjoyable "It" references , it felt like some passionless editor reminded Stevie K, "Hey, this book is supposed to take place in Dallas. And it should probably include Lee Harvey Oswald. Maybe throw in a generic love interest for good measure. Have people say 'Hun,' a lot." Don't listen to them, Stevie! Listen to your heart, and if your heart tells you to ditch the historically appropriate premise and bring us back to Derry for the billionth time, just do it. I WANNA SEE YOU BE BRAVE.

Tears of joy: there are two flavors of ice cream in my freezer. Not one, but two flavors. Few other things in life bring such tidings of comfort and joy. In this case, "comfort" is spelled "Spiced Apple Pie" (or what I refer to as apple pice cream) and "joy" is spelled "Mint Chocolate Cookie Crumble," and both go extremely well with chocolate syrup. I kid you not, these two tubs of ice cream are currently the highlight of my existence. If there's more to life than this, I'm not interested.

Nature is breathtaking, too, I guess. After a hellish two weeks that drained pretty much all of my will to live, Ernesto and I went camping in Oklahoma. This inferior blog gives a pretty decent recap of our adventure, though none of the pictures do a great job of capturing the number of alcohol swabs from our first aid kit Ernesto used to start our fire. Our outdoorsy incompetencies aside, the trip was a welcome reminder that the earth is a gem.

Fan club

Let's Go Red Sox. There's been a whole lot of sloppy baseball going on this past week. Like, a LOT of sloppy baseball. But as someone who spent my entire 6th grade baseball career on the bench eating sunflower seeds whole because I didn't know I was supposed to spit the shells out, my credibility leaves something to be desired. I love this team and I've gotten pretty used to getting my heart broken by them, but here's hoping they pull a little magic out of their butts tonight. And if they don't pull it off, may they have enough grace and good humor to go down like my second favorite team. 

Let's Go Sonic. Does spending an entire week fantasizing about going to Sonic make me a lousy human being? I don't know, but making this my desktop background has done a great job of motivating me to get through the first half of the week. We're driving there in approximately 10 minutes but I'm going to stop writing about it before I drool all over this laptop.

Let's Go Leann Rimes. Please tell me I'm wasn't the only 7th grader who was weirdly obsessed with this song. Ten years later, my life has just as much direction as it did middle school, but I don't have braces anymore. Ms. Rimes, on the other hand, had already recorded "How Do I Live" when she was 14. What were you doing when you were 14? Updating the "fUnNy QuOtEs" page on your AIM BuddyProfile? Feeling like a rogue superstar for wearing a Good Charlotte shirt to school? Spending three hours designing a mix CD with just the right combination of Sugarcult, Weezer and un-ironic Nickelback? Yeah.

Breaking Sad

I've lost a considerable amount of integrity since my last post, mostly due to the shameless fluff writing I've been doing elsewhere. As cool as it was to meet 2/5 of Maroon 5 last Sunday night, it took all of my willpower to keep from asking them, "Is this concert really worth missing Breaking Bad?" 

The weekend has barely started and it's already thrown me an onslaught of emotion. Mariano Rivera left baseball (too little too late), I ran out of Cinnamon Life cereal when there was still too much milk in my bowl, and as if that weren't enough to knock anybody's life out of balance, Breaking Bad's final episode airs in approximately 24 hours.

How do you say goodbye to something that has become engrained into the fiber of your existence? 

Here's one option I came up with: 

Breaking Bad Bingo: Felina

What's gonna happen in tomorrow's episode? wHo KnOwz?! But here's a handy-dandy game you can play while you watch, and by 9 p.m. tomorrow, you can all laugh at how obviously wrong my predictions were. 

To make watching the series finale a little less heartbreaking, I've included a mix of possible spin-offs / fan fiction opportunities that I may or may not use for NaNoWriMo. The possibilities for a Walking Dead/ Breaking Bad remix are especially attractive, but I could see Skyler doing her thing in Orange is the New Black, too. It could happen! Also, I had to keep myself from writing all of these about my favorite characters, Huell and Saul, since they're getting an actual spin-off and I don't want to fix what isn't broken. And by "Someone eats at a diner," I really mean "Jesse takes Brock to Waffle House and they discuss the virtues of flavored syrup while Walt goes on his revenge rampage in the distance." Did you get all of that, Vince Gilligan? 

Shocked, appalled, etc.

Over the past 10 years, my sincere love for all things Mariah Carey has transitioned from being one of many closeted guilty pleasures to being the essence of my soul. By "all things Mariah Carey" I definitely mean the same 5 songs I repeatedly loop on my Carey Like Mariah Grooveshark playlist. She's what I listen to when I make dinner, she's what I sing in the shower, her performance in Precious had me in tears long before Mo'Nique's character had her Oscar-winning emotional breakdown. I take enormous pride in the extent to which the cadence of her voice has infiltrated my bloodstream and if this is getting creepy I'm not even sorry.

You'll imagine my delight when I heard Mariah's new song on the radio this past spring. She delivered the same power-packed vocals that bring me to my knees each time I hear "We Belong Together", and there was no denying her trademark R&B vibe that makes my whole world feel like a piece of heaven. What was her new song, you might ask? Oh, just her latest single from March 2013 called "The Way" and - what's that? That's not Mariah Carey?

Yeah. This morning I got halfway through Ariana Grande's album until "The Way" started playing and I asked myself, "Hm, what's this Mariah Carey song doing here?" A quick Google search cleared things up/ broke my heart and this is what my face has looked like for the past hour.

THAT'S RIGHT. I HAVE SPENT THE LAST SIX MONTHS THINKING THAT ARIANA GRANDE IS MARIAH CAREY SO I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, CRUEL WORLD.  

Let's be honest though, "Yours Truly" is quickly turning into my new obsession.

Where I show tremendous courage and strength

by undergoing routine oral surgery.

I'm super excited to be writing from the comfort of my bed in home sweet Rochester. Is it just me, or is everything prettier in Minnesota?

It's been a rough week leading up to the joyous moment when I hopped off my flight at MSP (geddit) (#miley) that is going home, especially because last week consisted of getting all four of my wisdom teeth taken out and eating Cream of Wheat three times a day. Getting their wisdom teeth taken out was a rite of passage for most of my friends in high school, but my family didn't believe in that specific branch of modern medicine. Did I feel the teensiest bit superior to all of my friends who complained about numb cheeks and painful gums and not being able to eat solid foods for a week? Did part of me secretly celebrate that, finally, Hispanic people found a loophole that I could wholeheartedly support? Yes and yes. I sincerely apologize for being such a jerk. But rest assured that after all of my hopes and dreams of never needing to have my wisdom teeth taken out crashed and burned, I've come away with this experience with tremendous respect for all of the 17 year-olds who are stuck on the couch eating jello while their non-Caucasian friends are stuffing their faces with chewy food.

To be honest, I was hoping to come out of the event with tons of hilarious stories about silly things I said while I was high off my meds. It turns out that painkillers make me boring and depressed, so I have no funny stories to share. As Ernesto can attest, the only notable things I said after coming out of the procedure were some questionable comments about being in love with Selena Gomez, and I cried when he reminded me that I couldn't use straws to drink things. HAHAHA OH ME.

Getting my wisdom teeth taken out was an excellent excuse for me to watch disgusting amounts of TV, so I saw the first two seasons of Private Practice, the Dr. Sloane-less spinoff of Grey's Anatomy. Private Practice is like GA's unassuming, laid-back younger sibling who manages to get away with lame jokes and predictable plot twists because everything takes place in Los Angeles. It's all good. When I wasn't watching Addison Montgomery being the LeBron James of neonatal surgery (and getting judged by Netflix for doing so three hours straight), I tried catching up on House of Leaves. I still don't know what's going on in that book, it's a hot mess.

Anyway, all of that stuff happened and then I got on a plane to Minnesota, waving goodbye to Ernesto as he said, "I swear to you over my dead body not to eat any of your Sour Patch Kids while you're gone." One delayed flight and a banana nut muffin later, I stepped onto sweet Minnesotan soil and greeted my favorite midwestern paradise with open arms. It almost didn't matter that my face was still roughly the size of a planet.

 My brother took our family to a block party in Minneapolis where Motion City Soundtrack was playing a set, so we spent the night singing along to the soundtrack for our collective teenage angst. Yay whiny music!  And my sister took a picture with Justin Pierre! Yay Natalia! Now seems like an appropriate time to thank my wisdom teeth for being a part of my forget-me-nots and marigolds. That being said, see ya never. I'm gonna go spend the next 10 days convincing my family that it's okay to like the "Cruise" remix unironically. 

#winning

- After spending approximately 15 hours trying to download the app on my piece-of-crap phone in time for the wedding of the summer, this guy is on Instagram! Get ready for some quality hashtagz.

- My lifelong struggle with keeping my rate of quarter-life crises at less than three per week is slowly getting better thanks to my new five-year plan, which consists of moving to Georgia so that John Mayer's songs will be about me. 

- In other news, Men in Black is on TV so I'm going to go live-tweet this thing in the hopes that Amelie Gillette will notice me and ask me to be her bff. I've got the matching necklaces ready!

Is my life as epic as Charlie Sheen's? You be the judge. 

When Ernesto asks if I'm starting dinner anytime soon

Natalia: Improving our family pictures since 1999

Please this be a normal photo..

With Natalia? No way!

Awwwwww. 

Here's a chronological example of how our photos usually go. 

Let's start in 2006. At least one of us was really excited about our road trip to Tennessee.

I like how her eyes just disappear in this one.

At this point, Mami is regretting having brought her kids to the mall. 

Aw, a romantic picture of two loving paren- nope. 

Competing with Chihuly for Best Looking Thing in the Room

Natis was peening before it was cool. 

I wonder where she gets it from..

"Say 'AHHHH'!" 

This gorgeous nature scene looks like it needs some duckface.

Aaaand in 2012.. not much has changed. 

In all seriousness, though, June 25, 1999 is the date my family found its missing piece. My baby sister astounds me every single day with all that she's capable of doing. She's played the piano for a crowd full of strangers in downtown Dallas, she's our family's Eliza Thornberry, she's a better arm wrestler than I ever hope to be in a million lifetimes, she could give Serena and Venus a run for their money, she introduced me to the Hunger Games trilogy by writing the world's most hilarious illustrated book report, and she's crazy good at getting stuffed animals from vending machines. If I could choose between Katniss and my sister, I'd choose my sister. 

Because my sister IS Katniss.

Yay May!

Yay 5 de Mayo! Sorry to be that guy, but.. I have the best job in the world. To celebrate 5 de Mayo and Mother's Day, all of the grade levels at OHE put together a fantastic Mexican-themed music and dance show. I give you Pre-K's version of El Jarabe Tapatio:



Grad school seems kind of like a day at the dumpster compared to how much fun this was. Someone, please press the Pause button until I'm ready to say "Goodbye" to my second family (which will probably be NEVER).

Yay Red Sox! We got to see the Red Sox play with their heads up their butts at our very own Ranger's stadium! It's not really a Sox game unless they're hopelessly losing, so we sat through the game knowing that at the very least, we were having an authentic Red Sox experience. 

Yay Med School Prom! It's kind of like real prom, only:
1. Nobody goes to med school prom.
2. It's in Deep Ellum, aka Dallas's creepy underbelly that for some Godforsaken reason, everybody keeps telling me is "not so bad." It IS that bad. It is.

Like everything else in the past 5 months, the event was Gatsby-themed, so here's our attempt at looking dapper! Ain't we got fun?

Yay Jarabe de Palo! Years will go by and I will never be emotionally stable enough to remember this concert without torrential sobbing. FOR REAL. Ernesto and I saw Jarabe de Palo in Leon, Gto. and it was hands down the most beautiful musical experience I've had in my entire life. Like many others, I've been listening to my parents' Jarabe de Palo CDs since I was 7. Perhaps due to the fact that the only music my parents brought on our 24 hour road trip to Yellowstone was Depende, they've been my mental soundtrack to every romantic encounter I've had since I was 14. Needless to say, it was all kinds of crazy to LITERALLY brush shoulders with Pau Dones at our hotel the night of the concert. I hope that he'll remember how cool and collected I looked in the hotel elevator instead of my out-of-control waterworks of pure, unrefined joy at the concert. Seriously, every time Pau looked at me, I looked like this:

Yay Minnesota! After the senate's disappointing show of incompetence regarding basic gun control in the past month, it was refreshing to see my home state make real progress towards marriage equality. Finding a person who brings out the best in you and who loves you unconditionally is such a privilege and a joy; the search for someone with whom to make such a special commitment should be the tricky part, not asking for that commitment to be publicly recognized and affirmed. I'm so thrilled for the many friends and neighbors who are one (huge) step closer to receiving their due recognition for their life-long commitments. There's more to Minnesota than Prince and Judy Garland and a bunch of lakes!

Yay TMJ! Usually my jaw sort of sorts itself out after a few minutes when it locks open or shut, but this week I went a full three days of looking like a really untalented ventriloquist because nothing would pop back into place on its own. The cons are pretty obvious, but one big PRO is having "Pop, Lock and Drop It" stuck in my head all the time! Or maybe that's a con, too.


Yay Family! Against all odds, my family made the 16-hour drive to Dallas to spend a mere 24 hours with us, and then make the 16-hour drive back to Rochester. Are you getting the sense that I'm the luckiest person in the world? Because that's what it feels like when my family showers me with love like that. One of the most memorable moments together was having bacon waffles for breakfast. Bacon waffles. I'm telling you, it was a weekend of wonders.

Yay Herbal Essences!

All I want for my birthday is

one day when it's acceptable for me to tweet lyrics sans punctuation in all caps.

I'M NOT ALWAYS THERE WHEN YOU CALL BUT I'M ALWAYS ON TIME

MY GIRL EATS DINNER AND YOUR GIRLS JUST EATIN SUPPER

RAP STYLES VARY AND CARRY LIKE MARIAH

OH YEAH ALL RIGHT TAKE IT EASY BABY

HE LOOKS AROUND AROUND HE SEES ANGELS IN THE ARCHITECTURE

I REALLY DONT MIND WHAT HAPPENS NOW AND THEN

WHOMIGUNNA LEAN ON WHEN TIMES GET ROUGH

DOWN TO THE WIIIIIRE

ITS YOU ITS YOU ITS ALL FOR YOU

WHEN THE RAIN WASHES YOU CLEAN YOULL KNOW

^ like that

#feelingsmatter
#godimlame

Francisco Abraham: Never-Before-Seen Footage

If your name is Sherri Dupree Beamis, the only thing you really need to know about my brother is that while his obsession with your husband is slightly unsettling, it's all well-intentioned, so there is no need for you to be overly creeped out by any possible confessions of love/ care packages/ unsolicited groupie applications he might send your way.

If you're anyone else, there are some other things you should know about Panino. For example:

- When making a pitcher of Crystal Light, he mixes in twice the recommended amount of flavor powder because otherwise "it doesn't taste like anything."

- He's played the keyboard, drumsets, guitar and the saxophone, but all he's really ever wanted to play is Melody's magic rock-flute from Pokemon 2000:

- He's the original creator of dozens of words that belong in the fuzzy area between English and Spanish (e.g. moona, burbujula, hermanatee).

I could go on, but a picture is worth a thousand HP points. I give you the never-before-seen scenes of Panino's 21 years on the planet:

Move, Bugs, get out the way.        

Advocating for animal rights since 1992!

Leading Dr. Grant and those two useless turds to safety like it ain't a thang.

Enjoy it while it lasts, guys.. It only goes downhill from here. 

When do we start stanky-legging? Oppanino Style!

Happy birthday to my favorite Pokemon master, ToonSquad champ, orca lover, raptor fighter, baseball player, tooth chipper, diary reader, hair puller, etc and so on. I only have one brother and I'm thankful every day that it's you.

Things that are happenin'

Hey! I've been meaning to write about spring break because it was the best week I've had in years and I want all of you to know how unpathetic my life can be from time to time, but there are all of these pictures I'm too lazy to upload so you're just going to get a run-down of this week's events instead.

-      Soren is not dead yet! For those of you who haven't heard about the newest addition to the family, Ernesto and I have a plant now. Like.. a living, actual plant that is not made of plastic and depends on us to live. Sneer all you want, but I am 100% serious when I say that I consider it a major life accomplishment for Soren to have survived living with us for the past month.
        There have been a lot of ups and downs with him (mostly downs.. he looks like a mini weeping willow but he's supposed to look something like this ), and when Ernesto and I decided to leave him home alone during spring break, we were pretty sure the little guy wouldn't make it through the week without us. To our surprise, we came home to find Soren looking healthier than the day I brought him home! Is it a little concerning that he is better at not dying when Ernesto and I are hundreds of miles away from him? Only a lot. Further updates to follow.


-     In other news, this kid is going to grad school! Not sure if I should laugh or cry, but I've been doing plenty of both just to cover all the bases.

Q: What am I most excited about?

a) Spending the summer with education research
b) A whole new collection of school memes on Facebook
c) Impulse-purchasing SMU gear at Wal-Mart
d) No longer feeling like a dork for being subscribed to r/gradschool


A: llɐʍ ƃuıqɯılɔ ǝǝɹɟ ǝɥʇ s,ʇı ǝʌoqɐ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝuou

-       I am extremely pleased and incredibly excited to tell you that a few days ago,  I started a new Stephen King audiobook. It'd been MONTHS since my last one and everything in my life was starting to lose its meaning and if that sounds a little bit like I'm addicted to listening to Stevie-K fiction it's because I am absolutely addicted to listening to Stevie-K fiction. Not even trying to be cute.
        Despite my body's desperate need to fill up with yet another bizarre horror story set somewhere in Maine, I was hesitant about that story being Cujo. Every time I see Cujo on a half-priced paperbacks shelf or wherever, I assume that it's just the grown-up version of Bunnicula and I move on to some other SK book that seems like less of an Air Bud antithesis. This time, there were no other options on the shelf, and I got my weekly dose of Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover. It turns out that this story has just as many Red Sox references and typical Woe-Is-Me Writer characters as any other SK novel, so all systems are (Cu)GO and my world has officially been restored back to its proper balance.

-     While listening to the aforementioned audiobook, I was grating a bunch of zucchini (the world's most versatile vegetable) when I got caught up in the excitement of a scene and accidentally grated off part of my thumb. No worries, it's just a flesh wound.

(It's not actually a flesh wound, I've just always wanted to say that quote in the right context.)

(If I'm going to be very honest, I've actually said that quote many, many times before, I just never realized that it was from Monty Python until sometime in high school. Some of my friends really liked that movie and they said that quote a lot, and I assumed it was just a cool thing to say that was funny for reasons I didn't understand, so I'd say it, too. This is just the first time I'm saying the quote in the right context AND having actually seen Monty Python.)

(#Imthelamestpersoniknow)

-     Josh Ritter is going to be in Minneapolis on my birthday and every time I think about it I just want to shout at the stars for aligning in the most beautiful way when I am LITERALLY 1000 miles away. THE COMEDY OF DISTANCE THE TRAGEDY OF SEPARATION.

Look, I figured out Grooveshark widgets.

Now you can see all the different songs I've been listening to for the past week! ...



Don't mind me while I loop Boyce Avenue's Fast Car cover until I forget about the supermassive black hole of ambiguity that is my future.

I GOT NO PLANS I AIN'T GOING NOWHERE SO TAKE YOUR FAST CAR AND KEEP ON DRIVING AND I-IIIIIIII HAD A FEELING I COULD BE SOMEONE BE SOMEONE BE SOMEONE

Love Poems: #1

So. If you're interested in having the best Valentine's Day of your life, work in an elementary school. Between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. today, I've gotten more hugs, handwritten notes, stuffed animals and boxes of chocolate than I ever got in all of my previous February 14ths combined and quadrupled. I'm super impressed with myself for not turning into a mess of tears and snot every time one of those kids told me "La quiero mucho, maestra!" (usually pronounced mayestra) 

Beth Ann Fennelly's "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding" isn't as loud or as cheerful about the subject matter at hand as the kids in my classroom, but it makes just as big of an impact on me each time I read it. 

Love Poems: #2

Each of the past three poems manages to leave its own uniquely shaped pit in my stomach, but most of them more or less resemble the same Dysfunctional Relationship sort of silhouette. "I Don't Buy It," by Wendy Videlock is like a gentle, fortune cookie-sized reminder that there's more to love than emotional abuse and disappointment.

Had this been published before the summer of 2011, you can bet that it would have replaced those 1 Corinthians verses at my wedding ceremony. If anyone has any experience engraving beautiful words onto a living person's bones, give me a call. 

Love Poems: #3

There are numerous times I've been left breathless over the course of my life. There was the time in the third grade when some punk kid kicked me in the gut at a soccer game in Miami. There was the time my family and I had our eyes superglued to the tv screen as Johnny Damon hit a grand slam at Yankee Stadium on Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. And there was the first time I read "All That Glitters" by Bianca Spriggs. 

I'm always a little bit hesitant to re-read it, like I'm afraid that I've unconsciously been building up a tolerance to its effect and this will finally be the time that this poem doesn't work on me. No worries - it always does. 

Love Poems: #4

I generally try to suppress most of my creepiness, but it is especially hard to do that while talking about people I am obsessed with. Take, for instance, Jon Sands, the Brooklyn based writer whose abridged biography I have more or less memorized. 

When I heard Jon Sands recite "A Working List of Things I'll Never Tell You," I felt a little bit less alone in the universe, and I think that sort of reaction is a good indicator of something being worth my while. In my calm and objective opinion (ha!), this poem is worth your while, too.

Love Poems: #5

Contrary to what you might believe after perusing through the God-awful material that makes up this blog, I'm a big fan of good writing (which includes Stephen King and anybody who says otherwise needs to gtfo). In an honest attempt to be a less terrible person (i.e. to use this blog to write about something other than my love affair with food and Ryan Gosling), I thought I could go for a change of pace this Valentine's Day and spend the first half of the month sharing my favorite contemporary love poems I've read in the past year. 

Coming in at number five in this countdown is "The Elements of Solid Relationships" by Jesse Manley, who grew up in Fort Worth (DFW FTW!). I wish I could wear the poem around my neck or something so that I could carry it around with me all day, dayum. 

Where we learn more about my terrible taste in music

So I was in the kitchen the other day, slicing up something (probably zucchini. Sometimes I think the only vegetable I eat is zucchini. 90% of my Pinterest recipes are for zucchini.) and wishing there was something on TV other than 3 and a Half Men when I started playing music on my computer and accidentally listened to Fallout Boy for the first time in years.

Needless to say, dinner prep quickly turned into a solo mosh pit. The cool part of me (haha wait no such thing) wants to write that I was really embarrassed at how many of the lyrics I still remember... but lezbehonest: I was (am) pretty impressed with myself for knowing the words to a dozen-ish songs I hadn't listened to since I was 15.

What I'm actually embarrassed about is how long it took me to realize that "number one with a bullet" and "loose lips sink ships" were actually American idioms and not just angsty lyrics, so that made for a couple of weird moments where I'd look at the person speaking and almost say, "I didn't take you for a Fallout Boy fan!"

Most of the songs I remember weren't catchy enough to have made it onto top 40, (#hipzturd), but there was that one Fallout Boy song that everybody knew and nobody could really understand. Every single time I hear it, I remember this one time in seminary that Haley and I drew a bunch of scenes from the Sugar We're Going Down music video, the one with the deer-people.

When I think about it, Fallout Boy played a pretty big role throughout all of high school. I mean, they accounted for a solid half of all my AIM away messages. I'm not really sure why it played out that way, but I have this distinct memory of sitting in a rental car for 8 hours while my parents drove us from Vallarta to Salamanca on Christmas Eve freshman or sophomore year and listening to Fallout Boy the entire time because I'd forgotten to sync the rest of my music onto my iPod. Like so many other things in my life, it would be years before I realized just how much of what I was singing was a sex reference, so I just kept belting out the words to "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'" with my parents next to me like there was no tomorrow.

Anyway, what's done is done, and Fallout Boy's two earliest albums are running through my veins. Be impressed or be disgusted, it's your call.

2012 in Review

Who's up for a recap of the past 12 months?

January

- Tony, Erik and Spencer visited us in Northfield. My calves hurt like a mofo for a week after they left, so there was probably a double-dutch tournament or a lot of jumpy dancing. 

- Ernesto and I flew to Miami for Debby and Yuziel's wedding, where Luis managed to set something on fire during the reception.
- Also in Miami, I learned that car eyelashes are a thing

fake eyelashes aren't just for guidettes

- The Current played "We Are Young" and I texted my brother that fun. is getting famous (there were several exclamation points). we r hipzturds. 

February

- Ernesto and I ate at a Chinese buffet and I opened a fortune cookie that had TWO FORTUNES.
- I took the GRE in Edina/Eden Prarie. After walking out of the Prometric center in tears, Ernesto bought me a sandwich at Subway and I ate my feelings.
- The amazing Hannah Jensen directed her cinema comps film, Last, where twentyish dancers performed her choreography in the Weitz Center. It was beautifuuuuul, watch it.

March

- I finished studio art comps and dayum it felt great. This was my studio by the end of the term:

je t'aime toujours, boliou

- I finished my Insomnia audiobook and was pretty disappointed that the Stephen King novel had nothing to do with the movie with Robin Williams.

- We spent spring break in El Paso.

- I joined Pinterest and have been wasting approx half of my life on it.

- March to the Reub happened, where I ate more than the appropriate amount of buffalo wings.

April

- Quality Bakery put up the freaking creepiest Easter bunny in their window shop on Division Street. I practically peed my pants every morning on the way to class. Bunnicula is real and it lives in Northfield.

Enjoy your upcoming nightmares. 

- Ernesto gave his comps talk, "DNA, I Hear You're Single.. Molecule Replication"
- We went to our first baseball game in Target Field with Natalia and Francisco, and watched the Red Sox demolish the Twins 11 to 2. Happy birthday to me!
- Ernesto and I tore the apartment apart looking for his Spanish passport.
- We celebrated his birthday in Chicago with Jenny and Tony (who somehow didn't know about the metal bean that everyone visits). We stayed at the (HAUNTED) Congress hotel and it was a good time.We went to a bunch of museums and whatnot, but my favorite part was seeing Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, this pretty cool experimental theatre place where the price of admission is whatever you get when you roll a die.

May
- We went to Madison and woke up to this beauty the morning after Mifflin:

Nothing like the smell of burnt couch in the morning

:(  

- The senior studio art majors had our final show, for which nobody could agree on a title, so it was called Untitled: For Reasons. It was dumb and I hated it UNTIL one of the juniors brought the following snack to the show opening:

Untitled (Four Raisins)

So good. Art in its truest form. 

- I had my final show with Whoa! Hip Hop Dance Co, which was emotional for obvious reasons. It was by far the best show we'd put on since I'd been at Carleton DESPITE being zombie themed, which is saying a lot. There were technical difficulties at the beginning of the show which delayed it about 20 minutes, which was great because my family was running 20 minutes late (shocker). 

I choreographed two dances for the show, but this one was by far my favorite. And it's not even a Justin Timberlake song!

June

- Ernesto and I graduated from Carleton College WOOOOOOOO it was great. 

- The day after graduation, we went to Mexico with my family and spent a week in Cabo with Tia Laura. Ernesto got a minor injury while diving after his sandals on the beach.

- Haley Johnson had her Rochester baby shower and I not-so-discreetly ate half a dozen cupcakes. 

July 

- I cried a lot on the road trip from Rochester to Dallas (where I saw a double rainbow for the first time!)

- Ernesto and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary with his parents and with Gustavito's family in Atlanta, where we ate Spanish food and danced a ton.

- We went to the Dali museum, which was crazy.

- I took his family to the art galleries on Lincoln Road that my family used to visit when we lived in Miami. 

- Luis changed our lives by introducing us to Breaking Bad on Netflix. 

August

- I kept finding different aspects of our Ikea furniture hilarious. Like.. look at these Poker Face Planks. They're adorable. Obviously I was a less-than- efficient furniture assembler. 

Poker Face Paulina hanging out with Poker Face Planks

- Ernesto and I lived the all-american summer camp experience that we'd never had during childhood at his med school retreat. 

- I taught a bunch of M1s the soulja boy dance and the lyrics to 'Call Me Maybe' for a contest that we later WON. You're welcome, future doctors.

- Ernesto officially started medical school.

- We caught up with Breaking Bad and started watching the latest episodes at Angelika Theatre.

September

- I officially started working at Onesimo Hernandez Elementary, and instantly fell in love with all 22 of the kids in my classroom. 

- Ernesto got an iPhone and WE DISCOVERED SONGPOP. 

- I heard this song for the first time and have had it stuck in my head ever since. 

- We went to a waterpark with Ernesto's family, and he lost his sandals. 

- It took me like 5 minutes to realize that the ticket booth guy at Angelika Theatres wasn't kidding when he said that Breaking Bad was over until July. 

- Dr. Mark Sloane died in the Season 9 premiere of Grey's Anatomy, and I had a minor meltdown.

October

- We went to the Texas State Fair and stumbled upon this..

Nicholas Cage: Rock Star Demigod

This alone would have been worth the trip. We also ate 4 different kinds of fried food.. it was a great night overall.

- I sent in a MN absentee ballot so that my vote would count for the prez election.

- We got to Ernesto's white coat ceremony 15 minutes late.

- On Halloween, Ernesto dressed up as Mona Lisa and I dressed up as zombie Dr. Sloane to get $2 burritos at Chipotle. 

November

- My classroom went on our first ever field trip, and I learned that a bus filled with 5-year-olds is the best kind of bus.

- Obama FTW! We celebrated. 

- The beautiful Kristen Vellinger came to Dallas for a conference, and we had her all to ourselves for a Thursday night! She introduced us to a place that has like 5 different kinds of pazookie. Friends let friends eat way too much dessert. 

Just like old times! Minus Jon and pajamas and overall Carleton-related misery.

- We spent Thanksgiving in Rochester, where we sang tons of karaoke and ate tons of food with my family and spent time with some of our dearest friends (e.g. Perkins ). 

December

- Ernesto took his last anatomy exam which is GREAT because now he won't spend as much time showing me gory pictures of people's faces that are 50 shades of terrifying.

- Jon Sands talked to me at a Google hangout and I about died. 

- Todd Anderson said he liked a poem I wrote and I about died a second time. 

- We spent the holidays in Ft. Myers and Luis showed me Grand Theft Auto for the first time.

2012, folks! 

It was a good show. 

2013 has gotten off to a pretty good start ever since I was introduced to Killer Karaoke.