Swing!

I don't know about you, but I've always thought swing dancing was really, really cool.

  There's this one adorable couple at school who feels it necessary to show off at every school dance by swing dancing while the rest of us just kind of shuffle around in a circle with our arms around each other.   As a long-time shuffler, I have always been extremely jealous of this couple, to the point where, when I'm dancing with someone, most of my attention is focused over their shoulder to watch them instead of doing any conversing or dancing myself.  I promise it's not as creepy as it sounds.

It's totally as creepy as it sounds.  Anyway.

According to people who know about things like this, the next elevation of jealousy is envy, or the point at which you move past just wishing you had someone else's mad dancing skills to actually planning out how to get them for yourself.  My plan involves a tall, dreamy man swing dancing into my life and (literally) sweeping me off my feet and then marrying me.  We would be so good, and look as good as that couple I'd always envied, and it would be fantastic.  And we would have a child named Jeffery.  Basically, ever since I first witnessed swing dancing, I have always really, really wanted to learn.

And guess what? (Drumroll please) I learned how to swing dance yesterday!  That's pretty much the only part that matched my fantasy, considering my teacher was one of my little brother's friends.  Someday, maybe my little brother might have hot friends.  Yesterday was not that day.  But I LEARNED HOW TO SWING DANCE and can now check it off my bucket list! Some things I learned:

1. Flip flops are not suited for swing dancing; that's why people back then wore those cute oxfords and heels and stuff! My flip flops were sliding around on my feet and seriously threatening to trip me and twist my legs around and otherwise injure me severely.



2. You can swing dance to "normal" music.  Like, not just big band/50s stuff.  Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed that, but who knew?

3.  The boy is supposed to lead.  The girl doesn't have to be good at dancing AT ALL!  (Score!) That in itself is good for me.

4.  It makes you really dizzy.  There are a lot of spinning and twirling and other circle-y activities involved, so if you're prone to motion sickness - say no.

5.  SO FUN!

So, go swing dance.  Just GO!

Food

WIAW

It's time for (drumroll please ...) What I Ate Wednesday! The cool thing about this post is that I'm writing it on a Tuesday, so in basically predicting the future. I mean, I'll alter it before posting if I get something wrong, but I'll most likely be dead on and that's pretty cool. Also, I'm really nervous about this because it's a link up and as of right now I'm too technologically challenged to do link ups but ya know first time for everything so here we go!

Breakfast (AKA favorite meal of the day EVER!)
Eggs with spinach, onions, mushrooms, and turkey bacon.
I prepped 8 eggs worth of scrambled eggs yesterday so that I could eat them for breakfast all week and it was genius because they are really. Good. (I got this one right . . . plus I also had half a chocolate Pure Protein bar because HELLO morning chocolate!)

Lunch
Greens and tuna salad - spinach and lettuce with tuna salad (Chicken of the Sea + Dijon mustard + dill + chopped carrots) (I didn't have any of this because I overslept and only had time to grab a banana. So I had that and the apple and the brownie.  And then starved the whole afternoon.)
Apple
Healthy brownie

Actually, the brownie will probably be gone before lunch because that's how I roll in the morning during school. A girl's gotta have some sustenance! (Yeah, that brownie was history.)

Dinner
I honestly couldn't tell ya. Mom handles that (thanks ma!:) it's always super delicious and I can't
get it in my belly after sports practice fast enough.
(Oh my gosh you guys, it was pancakes with peanut butter and turkey bacon. And carrots.  Yummmmmmmmm.)

Dessert
More brownie, or maybe some dried fruit.
I managed to keep today's brownie intake to one ((for now)) but the dried fruit definitely happened.)

And there you have it.  It's Wednesday, and that's what I ate today.  And I didn't take pictures of any of it mostly because I forgot and a little bit because I just wanted to eat and not mess with picture taking. Maybe next week . . . gotta have goals!

The Perks of Being Sixteen

Some people look back on being 16 and remember a really, really great time of their lives, and I'm sure some don't.  I personally think it's fantastic, and maybe that's partially because I'm able to do things like staying up for 29 consecutive hours and then bouncing back enough (by means of a three-hour nap) to write a blog post about it.   Normally, the idea of doing something like that would make me cringe. And maybe cry (another perk of being a 16-year-old girl!) Not today! And I thought maybe you'd want to live vicariously through me, because who doesn't want to spend 1.125 days awake, eating junk and watching movies? I thought so. So now you get to know what I was up to, hourly, for all 29 hours.

6:30 am, Friday | Burying my head under the pillow, as my little sister told me that "Dad says you have to get up now."

7:30 am, Friday | Cleansing my face at school instead of in the comfort of my own bathroom as a result of aforementioned burying.

8:30 am - 2:30 pm, Friday | Learning, which is the part of being sixteen that you either don't miss or aren't looking forward to, so I'll spare you.

3:30 pm, Friday | Blowing hot air because running fast does that to you.  Track practice was 10 200s, and it was good and torture-y all at the same time.

4:30 pm, Friday | Selecting a prom dress for a male friend of mine who lost at What Are the Odds to try on. We chickened out and got Slurpees instead, which was a good choice.

5:30 pm, Friday | Chewing and chewing and chewing Cubby Bears for the first time, which are basically the harder, worse tasting children of Gummi Bears from the dollar store.

6:30 pm, Friday | Awarding said Cubby Bears for prizes at a youth night hosted at my high school.  Because I'm mean.

7:30 pm, Friday | Rolling across the floor, ninja style, while playing Sardines.  I never, ever win, but that does not stop me from acting like the offspring of the FBI and Jackie Chan to hunt down whatever unfortunate person has to hide first.

8:30 pm, Friday | Blending a chocolate peanut butter protein smoothie, which is one of life's greatest pleasures, before heading to partay stop numba 2, a church lock in.

9:30 pm, Friday | Singing along to Frozen. And being way too happy about it.

10:30 pm, Friday | Catching my second wind of about five that night after almost nodding of during our devotion.

11:30 pm, Friday | Swinging, outside. At night.  It's one of those bucket list things that you just have to do and can't really be described unless you just do it. Go ahead, no one's stopping you.

12:30 am, Saturday | Laughing way too hard at Awkward Family Photos, the game. The board includes the likes of this picture and about 40 of its closest friends, and that is fantastic.

1:30 am, Saturday |

2:30 am, Saturday | Screaming because game of Sardines number 2 was just too much for my fragile nerves, and every shadow was an axe murderer who decided he wanted to join in the fun.

3:30 am, Saturday | Drafting this blog post after being assaulted by Nerf missiles and having a cold pop can rubbed on my face by high school boys with too much sugar in their system.

It'll probably come out sometime this week. Stay tuned.

4:30 am, Saturday | Honing my skills as a future 2048 record holder. For those of you who haven't played it, 2048 is a super addictive game that is available on the app store for free.  It's just as dangerous as it sounds, and I like to think I kick butt at it even though I don't, which is part of its magical addictive qualities I guess.

See that tile that says 1024? That's a big deal. 

5:30 am, Saturday | Hypocritizing, which my dad claims is the one word version of "being hypocritical." Anyway, by this point we had changed places with the boys who inspired the nun post and were making noise and scrolling through memory lane on our phones and liking it a lot.

6:30 am, Saturday | Leaving the lock in two point five hours before everyone else to be hard core and go work out for 194734 hours.

7:30 am, Saturday | Preparing mentally to head to Oak Pointe's exercise class demo day, which was 3 hours of back to back to back to back 20-minute samples of classes. We weren't sure if we'd make it. (We did.)

8:30 am, Saturday | Spinning, which is not the same as twirling in a dress but is actually really fun! I now give major props to my mom for voluntarily spinning three times a week for what seems like my entire life.

9:30 am, Saturday | Piloxing, (pilates + boxing + dancing).  Where do they even come up with this stuff? Also, sweating. 

10:30 am, Saturday | Drumming on exercise balls with drum sticks. Which is apparently a work out these days, despite the way it brought me back to the days of whacking the heck out of my mom's pots and pans as a 5 year old. I got hit in the butt by the lady next to me. It is a dangerous sport.

11:30 am, Saturday | Drooling while sleeping in the car, (not even kidding) and probably looking really attractive. Maybe something like this.

Adventures in Detroit

If you live anywhere in the U.S., you've probably heard things about Detroit.  I know, at least, that whenever I'm out of town and tell someone "I'm from the Detroit area," their initial reaction is to draw back slightly and hold onto their purse. Maybe they thing I'm a gang member or a thug, or at least a little tougher than your average teenage girl. 

At which point I usually explain I'm from the suburbs. 

Usually. Sometimes I just go with the tough girl thing. It's kind of fun!

In spite of everything you've heard about Detroit or anything you're thinking of now after my description, it's not all shady, run-down buildings, graffiti, and liquor stores. The city has some really, really interesting stuff to offer - I think the fact that you have to dig through the rubble and avoid the gangsters to get to it makes it even more so! I kind of love the mixture of the the struggle of the present city and the beauty that's in its past or its hope for the future.

Belle Isle is one of those interesting places, and although it's seen better days, it is, after all, an ISLAND! (I really like islands) and it's full of history and hidden secrets and is just a bridge away from downtown Detroit. 

This monument is visible across a small lake as you're driving into the island, and the view is

#Instalife

I've been kind of a jerk blogger recently, I realized.

"We get it, you've been a jerk," you say. (And get major props from me for quoting Sky High)
Really, though, I have. Its been, what, 10ish days since I've visited here? Life lately has been full of final exams, grad parties way out who knows where, my brother's baseball games, and late, long talking nights with friends. I'm the last awake in one of those right now; we've decided we have our best talks at 4 in the morning after too much chocolate and Fat Amy - you know those talks, the ones where you make big life decisions and talk about what you believe and what you want to be when you grow up. Luckily for me, I've got my phone handy and now that the girls have dropped off I can give you an update!

Due to the "fast, beautiful photo sharing" provided by Instagram, I'm able to keep track of what I've been up to; namely, sending off the 8th graders at my former gradeschool, wearing pink on Wednesday, dyeing my hair Aqua Rush (a rebellious color, according to the box), drawing with chalk, and becoming a ride warrior at Cedar Point.

Chalk + rain = tye dye chalk. Highly recommend!

I've coached these girls since they were in 6th grade, and I'm pretty proud of them!

Cedar Point with some of my favorites. 

Business in the front, party in the back?

On Wednesdays, we wear pink. (If you don't know what I'm talking about go watch Mean Girls right. now.)

I'll leave you with that. 

Love, Bella

Supersets and Summer Squash

Say that five times fast! Supersquash and summersets. . . super summer squash sets . . . Summer superset squash . . .

Ok, that's enough of a brain workout for a Saturday night.

Back to the supersets - I tried them for the first time this morning/afternoon, and it was great! After a late night with some good friends, I woke up around 11 a.m. (WAY late for me!) in the same clothes I had worn the night before . . . at least I remembered to brush my teeth. Anyway, those mornings-after always leave you feeling a little sluggish, don't they? They definitely don't leave you feeling in the mood to eat a nutritious breakfast, do your Bible Study, get ready for work, and then actually go to work - and yes, that was my agenda for the day. I definitely didn't feel like doing (dun dun duuuuuhhhh) supersets.

Luckily, that 2 days old shirt I was still wearing was very inspiring and around noon I dragged myself off the couch and got down to business.

Naughty, isn't it? It comes from a friend of mine who's a fantastic, hard core . . . badgrass cross country runner.

Anyway, the supersets I did cam straight out of the June 2011 issue of Susie, a Christian magazine for girls I used to get, but don't let that fool you -

Lifestyle Change

Ahh, Memorial Day.  It's tradition around here to get the pool up Memorial Day weekend so that we can escape the heat for a swim with the neighbors. We have just one other tradition: walking to the Memorial Day parade in downtown Farmington and getting ice cream from Hershey's afterwards ( or as the last few parade participants walk by - we're mostly there for the ice cream.) By those standards . . . Today

Dance

I've always loved rain. It's kind of like your favorite bottle of perfume: it's beautiful, it smells great, and everything it touches gets a little freshening up. There's nothing quite like a huge, banging, flashing thunderstorm as I'm going to sleep or a slight mist when I'm out for a run. One of my favorite touches on a good love story is when the couple gets caught in the rain storm and dance, or kiss, or run through it together.

Rain got a little bit better for me last night - it has this inexplicable power to drive people together, something to do with experiencing the same hardship I suppose. I was out for a walk with my little Shih Tzu puppy, Eddie, when the sky grew dark. I take that back - it didn't actually grow dark; it turned dark all of a sudden. About five seconds after that, the rain started. I take it back again - the torrential downpour started. A monsoon got lost on its way to India. Eddie had to doggie paddle down the street instead of walking.

We dealt with it the best that we could, darting from tree to tree. Eddie's fur was doing some crazy, spiky, crimpy thing and he was not a happy camper to say the least.  I think he was happier than me when we heard a voice from deep inside a stocked garden, inviting us to sit on a porch for a while. The voice turned out to belong to an old lady I'd never met before, M. She bustled into her house to get me a jacket to wear - "My favorite garage sale coat," she informed me. "Just make sure you get it back to me before winter." We sat on the porch and chatted about the rain and where I went to school. She told me about a time when the busy road in front of our subdivision was dirt and people road their horses around instead of cars. And you know what? It was unexpected, yes, but it was a really cool moment. I mean, so cool that I went home and made the woman cupcakes to return to her with her jacket (not that it takes much persuasion for me to do that!)

Another great thing about rain? Rainbows. And we saw a great, big vivid one as the rainstorm lightened up Wednesday night. This one stretched allll the way across the sky in a perfect arc, and the whole thing was visible. It was the kind of rainbow that makes you think the pot of gold might actually exist.

Moral of the story? When it rains, dance!

Color Therapy

For this next post, I'm going to need some audience participation.

No, seriously. To get the best possible idea of what I experienced on Saturday, you're going to have to do a few things.  Turn on some fun music. Think, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepson or Imagine Dragons's "On Top of the World."

Provided here. No excuses.

Have your friends dress up in tutus, horse costumes, rainbow leg warmers . . . you get the idea. Get someone to throw free stuff to you as you stand in a tightly packed jumble of elbows, heads, hair, more tutus, more rainbow leg warmers. You'll also need a few of these:

Obviously, The Color Run is one heck of a good time. 

The excitement starts when your fun little packet full of your official Color Run t-shirt, color packet (those bags up there), race number, and headband arrives.  You start to get excited. You even start to have delusional thoughts that you might actually enjoy running.  I'm telling you, it's a wonderful feeling. 

Oh yeah, AND two official Color Run tattoos. TWO!

On the morning of, you wake up bright and early.  You eat a breakfast more fitting for an olympic marathoner than a casual 5k run/walker and feel great about it. You protect your trusty camera with a tightly sealed plastic bag (sorry for the less-than-stellar quality!) You put on your white t-shirt and anticipate being doused with colored powder over. and over. and over. and you can't wait. 

In our case, we headed to college town Ypsilanti. We joined the white-shirted masses and shuffled our way towards the start line. 

When our wave (Wave 13) finally made it to the start line, we had the fabulous fortune to be right in the front! 

Which made us feel like champs, like real runners, like winners, for the first 30 seconds. 

After which we slowed to a brisk walk punctuated with photo ops and laughing fits, due to my knee injury.

And felt a bit less . . . champ-ish.

Celebrating the completion of each 'k' was a color zone, lined with flags and manned by volunteers stocked with barrels of what felt like colored baby powder to baptize us with.

Through all that powder, the pink zone pretty much looked like this. I must say, it's a miracle we made it out alive.

Are you still listening to music, running, being doused by baby powder, and possibly wondering when the free stuff comes in? Good work, my friend.

If you hate running, color, music, and crowds, well . . . if nothing else, do The Color Run for the after pictures.

And the after party. (Queue the free stuff!)

More color packets are spread around for one last color throw before the crowds disperse to the local restaurants, painting the town and completely destroying the effects of their workout at a mid-morning brunch.

Ever run The Color Run? Want to now? It's not too late - these guys tour all over the country until the end of the summer! Watch this video - you'll get even more pumped about it! (Remember those delusional "I love running" thoughts?)

Love, Bella

Stop and smell the flowers. Not just the flowers in your garden; your neighbors' flowers, the flowers growing between the cracks in the sidewalk, the flowers on trees. And don't just smell - take pictures so  you don't forget. 

Seriously. I highly recommend it. 

Home

As I reminisce about when I first decided to blog for real for real, (all of one week ago!) it was scary! I was hedged in on all sides by socialites,  gourmet chefs, and the like, all of them with what seems like and endless supply of time and resources.

That, and a photographer that follows them around taking pictures of their glamorous selves.

 I've never been to the kind of party that you wear a party dress to. I don't go out dancing at night or travel to exotic places or have famous friends.  I don't even have my own car!

I mean, seriously! But really, I've realized what makes blogging cool is that fact that we get to see so many different sides of life through it. Its the same magical quality that makes crayons and jelly beens so great - we're diverse! And maybe there's a gorgeous, cultured, exciting someone out there who's honestly interested in the life of an average suburban highschool kid like me. You know, the one who nearly just ran into a light post as a result of trying to bike and blog at once?  If that's you, than here's a peek into my version of life, the little town that I've lived in and loved for over a decade.

There's the concrete mountain under a highway bridge that my brother and sister and I would climb as kids on our way downtown for the Memorial Day Parade each year. (Still do - we're still kids!)

The dresses are complemets of a gem of a boutique called Clothes Encounters.  Yes, the dressing room doors are missing any kind of lock, latch, or other security.  Yes, it's a little scary to have the 50 something man who works the counter address you from the other side of that unlocked door, earnestly wanting to assist you in any way.  But this place has some of the most unique pieces you'll find in suburbia.

The neighborhoods surrounding downtown are full of beautiful, brightly colored old houses that are everywhere from rose pink to cheery orange and yellow to bold red, white and blue. It's really such a cute little area, and its a shame that more people don't get to visit.

The commute. 

Love, Bella