I've Never Ridden a Horse

For the past 26 years, the number one thing on my bucket list has been to ride a horse. There’s no real reason that it took so long to happen. I’m not scared of them, I’m not from a big city with no horses, and my family was never against it in anyway. I just never really had the opportunity, or perhaps it was divine intervention?

Me and Horse: A Selfie

For my 15^th birthday by parents gave me horseback riding lessons. My best friend at the time was taking them and I had gone out to the stables with her a few times. I was not allowed to actually ride the animals but I got to help brush them, braid their manes, etc. Then, much like my 3^rd grade gymnastics instructor, the lady who ran the stables up and moved away with no notice. I don’t know if she stole my parents’ money or just stole my pony-ridin' dreams. Either way: messed up, lady!

So in response to the awesome Bucketlist Birthday Bash I threw for her last year, Desiree arranged for me to go horseback riding for my 26^th birthday. Scheduled for the Saturday after the 18^th (my birthday… for future reference), it was beginning to look like my horseback riding dreams would be dashed again when it rained every single day in May. We cancelled and rescheduled for the next Saturday, hoping it would clear up by then. All the weather apps kept us guessing for days. It would predict sun for the day, then a few hours later, change to thunderstorms. Finally around Thursday everyone seemed to agree that Saturday would be a perfect, sunny day.

As the anticipation grew, so did the anxiety. A couple friends (a term I use hesitantly in this context) decided it would be great fun to freak me out about the upcoming event. Although I logically knew they were messing with me, their made up stats about bucking horses, horse-related deaths, and the aggression of these enormous beasts began to get to me. Then I ended up puppy-sitting last minute for my sister. The night before the ride was bound to be filled with excitement, anxiety, and much tossing and turning. This was not helped by the addition of a whining puppy.

Desiree, me and Shooter.

But the morning came and before I knew it I was standing not two feet away from an enormous horse. After expressing my concerns and lack of experience to our young guide (we think she was 22ish), she told me not to worry and that they would put me on the kid’s horse, Shooter.

Turns out Shooter was the biggest horse there, which intimidated me for a minute until I remembered that inexperienced surfers use longer boards and that the smaller horses were probably more dangerous and then I thought, why am I comparing horseback riding to surfing? They're nothing alike and I’m terrible at surfing! And while my mind was being ridiculous, I suddenly found myself standing next to this giant beast with one foot in the stirrup.

Just mounted

From there, everything was amazing.

Geeking out with excitement

Just one of the breathtaking views

Getting on the horse (with the help of a little stepping stool), getting my feet in the stirrups, directing the animal, going up and down rocky terrain… it all seemed so natural. The other two people who had signed up for the same time slot never showed so it was just me, Desiree, and our guide. Shooter was real old and liked to lag behind. He would occasionally just stop for no apparent reason but I think he was just tired. To be fair, Desiree and our guide are both tiny little girls and poor shooter had a heavier load than he was probably used to, being nicknamed the kids’ horse. But, regardless, he carried on like a champ and even trotted a few times, which wasn’t horribly comfortable. The views were amazing and there was something surprisingly fulfilling about getting to the top of a small hill, even if it was Shooter doing all the work.

The start of the ride

In the end, I walked like a cowboy for about an hour and have been fine ever since. I think my considerable time on a bike actually helped with the soreness. I loved being on a horse so much, though, that it’s probably a good thing I didn’t experience it as a youth. I probably would have turned into one of those girls who was obsessed with horses and begged my parents to get a pony and been a real brat about it. As it was, I was just a brat about less expensive things. 

Giving Shooter some sugar

I would say this was one of my better birthdays. Being closer to 30 than to 20 isn’t looking so bad from up here. 

I've Never Done an Escape Room

Last month our dear, good friend, Lauren, came to visit! 

We're the three best friends that anyone could have.

Having lived in Provo for four years, she is very familiar with what our fair city has to offer so we were hard up to find places to go and things to do that would be new and interesting for her. But we, more or less, succeeded. We didn’t take many pictures and it’s because we choose to live in the moment and not on social media (bah! Yeah right, we just got distracted and forgot to take pictures).

One thing we got really into the week she was here was escape rooms. We got so into them, in fact, that we did two! An escape room is exactly what it sounds like: You and some friends are locked in a room and given one hour to decipher a staggeringly large number of clues in order to get out. 

The first one we did was in Salt Lake and it was hard. Really, really hard. So hard that we didn’t finish. BUT we were only two clues away so while my sister, Hannah, was fighting off the worker who came in to kick us out, we solved the last two and finished. So even though we technically didn’t “win,” we still consider ourselves winners. No matter what Jeff says. Jeff sucks.

Official Team Name: "Hot Canadian Dan and his Foxxy Ladies"

We had such an amazing time, we did a little more googling and found a brand new one in Provo called “GETOUT Games.” Dan couldn't join us for this one so it was just the Foxxy Ladies. 

Although it’s the same premise, this one had a very different feel to it. The clues were more intuitive and “process of elimination”-y, as opposed to the random order of things in Salt Lake. Also in Provo you’re racing another team in the room next door. The other group happened to be a group from our ward so we were extra motivated to kick their butts. Which we totally did.

Winners!

I won’t go into too much detail here because I want every single person reading this blog (that’s basically you, Mom) to try an escape room and it’s so much more fun if you go in blind. Even the first one where we finished a minute over the time limit gave us all a sense of real accomplishment. It’s a fantastic feeling to finally unlock a desk drawer after 20 minutes of frustration. And, surprisingly, even more exciting when that desk drawer reveals another lock.

It was a great find and we are really happy we got to share it with some of the greatest people you’ll ever meet.  

Hannah, Rachel, Lauren, Desiree, Amy, and Wallis: Champions Over All the Land. 

I've Never Been Fly-fishing

Me with a fish!

For whatever reason, fish creep me out – like a lot. Something about the feel of them and the way they never blink, and their gills just seem so unnatural to me... However, I wanted to try fly fishing for some reason.  So a guy in my ward, Jon, ended up taking me who is an avid fly fisherman.  Turns out fly fishing is really hard – Not that I was expecting it to be easy, but I was particularly bad at it. 

Me in my "cute" waders

I’ve only been regular fishing once, so I’m definitely no expert on any type of fishing, but fly fishing was extremely different.  Fly fishing doesn’t use live bait, which was a welcome difference. No live worms hanging out of the fish’s mouth after you catch it which was gross.  You also catch a lot more fish with fly fishing.  You just keep casting the line and letting it ride down the river over and over. And if you aren’t catching anything, you just try a different part of the river and chances are good you’ll find some fish there.  The fish don’t bite directly on the hook, which was a little difficult for me. The bait is a few inches from the hook, so you have to pull the line hard and quick when you feel a fish bite in order to hook it.  If you’re too slow or don’t pull it the right way, the fish gets away.  This happened to me a lot.

I got to wear a cute little pair of waders (can waders be cute?), which made me feel a little bit like an Oompa Loompa.  And then we trekked around the river.  I’m don’t have a lot of mass and so whenever we were crossing the river in the deeper parts, I thought I was going to get swept away. Often the bottom of the river would be extremely muddy, too. There was one time where I took a step and my foot sunk an entire foot into the mud! In my effort to pull my foot out of the mud, I ended up losing my balance and fell backwards into the water.  Jon happened to turn around right after this happened (luckily) and I was just chillin’ there in the water like I had just wanted to take a break (or perhaps a mud bath?).

"Please hurry and take the picture!"

Jon was great, though, and kept telling me how awesome I was doing (he was just being nice), but I still did catch a handful of fish.  Most of the ones I caught were little baby ones, though, so I’m not sure what that was about.  I did hold one fish for a picture as you can see, which of course involved lots of squealing on my part (I’m kind of embarrassing sometimes).  The fish was being super inconsiderate and wouldn’t hold still while I was trying to pose for a picture.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, though! My arm ended up being sore the next day from casting the line so much, but other than that, no damage.  Also, the first thing Amy said to me when I got home was that I didn’t smell great, so I guess that mud bath worked. 

I've never...had miracle berries

Miracle Berries

I realize that "miracle berry" kind of sounds like it might be similar to say a "special brownie" but I promise (mostly for my mother's sake) that it's not.  I mean, you can buy these miracle berry tablets on Amazon so it's obviously not that sketchy, right?

The tablets

It's an actual berry from West Africa (I think?) that when eaten, binds to and blocks your tongue's sour/bitter receptors so nothing tastes sour anymore.  So all you taste is the sweet factor and basically it makes everything seem way sweeter than normal.

A couple of my friends bought a bunch of these tablets and had a miracle berry party where everyone took one and then just indulged in a ton of different fruits and other random food like cheese and hamburger meat with barbecue sauce. A few people even tried balsamic vinegar. 

The lovely setup of fruits and other food

You can't just chew the tablet. You have to move it all around your tongue and let it slowly dissolve.  After it dissolves, it's effective immediately so you can just start stuffing your face for the next 20-30 minutes until it wears off. 

The beginnings of the taste testing

It was incredibly fascinating and everyone should buy some of these to try at least once.  All of the fruit tasted a million times better than it already does.  I think oranges and kiwis were my favorite with this miracle berry effect.  Soo good and soo sweet.  You can straight up bite into a slice of lemon and it just tastes like a really good batch of lemonade.  No unattractive puckering of the lips -- just pure deliciousness in your mouth!  All of the acidic fruit did still rip my tongue up a bit, so don't go too crazy with the lemons because you'll probably regret it later.

I've never... played wheelchair basketball.

I'm currently participating in this mentoring program that pairs you up with an 'at-risk' youth around ages 10-13.  And once a month, there's a group activity that is organized by the program.  This time it was wheelchair basketball.  I was kind of wondering if playing wheelchair basketball just because we can is offensive to people actually in wheelchairs but I hope not.

But in any case, I wouldn't say I was super worried about my skills as a wheelchair basketball player just because I was going to be playing with a bunch of 12-year olds.  It wasn't going to be competitive.  But I was still prepared to be absolutely horrible. Basketball is the one sport growing up that I just could not play to save my life.  My freshman year of high school, one of my good friends convinced me to go out for the high school team with her.  There weren't very many going out for the freshman team so I think pretty much everyone who went out that year made it.  However, I went to one tryout and had one of the more embarrassing experiences of my life.  Turns out I couldn't even maneuver a very simple layup and one of the coaches pulled me aside and gave me my own personal lesson during a good portion of the tryout.

Wheelchair basketball actually ended up being pretty fun, though it was also very difficult.  Turns out shooting from a sitting position is not the easiest (or maybe I'm just weak) and I never really figured out the whole dribbling thing.  You have to throw the ball up in the air and out a little bit and then while it's bouncing you wheel forward and grab it and repeat.  I just kept running into the ball with the wheelchair or throwing it too far out in front of me so someone else grabbed it.  

Everyone also kept running into each other.  Luckily they strap you in so you won’t fall out of the chair when you are all grappling for the ball and the chairs are designed with the wheels angled out so nobody’s fingers will get smashed. In any case, nobody was very good and I think only 1 basket was scored the entire game.

I’ve never… made an iron on t-shirt

And I suppose I still have never successfully made an iron-on T-shirt.

A month (or two…) ago we went to Comic Con and because we’re nerds, but not nerdy enough to be cool and go all out on a cosplay extravaganza, Desiree and I decided to make T-shirts.

On our way home from Friday’s Comic Con experience, we stopped at Walmart to buy shirts and iron-on-fabric material, which I didn’t even know existed. Desiree found an idea for a T-shirt that said, “My patronus is a Tardis” which is just a perfect mash-up of our two nerdiest loves. She immediately went to work designing her T-shirt and I kind of forgot that that was what I was supposed to be doing and dozed off.

D-Ray's awesome shirt and our creepy line friend. 

When I heard Desiree printing her design, I snapped out of it and began working on designing my t-shirt. I couldn’t come up with anything. Everything was either way too complicated or cheesy or horrible. So I decided to just go all Doctor Who and keep it simple.

Because I never really know how t-shirts are going to lay on me, I decided to avoid any uncomfortable or awkward placement by just putting a small image where a pocket would be: A TARDIS and the phrase, “Timey Wimey Detector.”

 It’s a Doctor Who thing and if you don’t get it, I will not judge you because I fully admit that this show isn’t for everyone. It’s not even worth explaining but trust me, it’s adorable.

I couldn’t figure out how big or small it should be so I decided to print a bunch of sizes and then decide when it was time to put them on the shirt.

Desiree had finished her t-shirt by this point and it looked perfectly amazing (see above image) so I was filled with excitement and urgency (because it was super late and I was awfully tired). I printed out a test sheet on regular paper and it looked great. So I put in the special paper and hit print. It came out looking perfect… except for one teeny, tiny little flaw: I forgot to print it backwards. It has to be the mirror image so that it irons on correctly.

By this time, it was very late, I was very embarrassed, and I was really just desperate to get this stupid thing done. So I tried to find a way to print the mirror image and I couldn’t. I’m googling it, I’m looking through the help tools, looking in the printer options, nothing. So I decided to take a screen shot of it and then just reverse the picture, because I know how to do that to images. It works! Looks great. But now we’re down to just one piece of special paper because we had given two to Cat, Desiree had used two, and I had already totally screwed up one.

So I grabbed the last sheet and the color on the grid on the back is different. The rest were red and this one was blue (or maybe the others were blue and this one was red? Either way: wrong). Desiree assured me that it was the same thing so this next snafu is totally on her head.

I printed it out, backwards and everything, feeling confident. I pulled it out of the printer, held my breath and…

Yup. Those are spell-check squiggle lines. Because I’m clearly a moron. I decided I could cut around them because, much like I feel writing this post, I was so over it and ready to go to bed.

I cut it out, put it on the shirt, ironed, and then peeled it off. And it was white. Not blue like a TARDIS is supposed to be. But white with some blue peeking in from behind. Desiree is confused, I’m yawning and not really surprised because what has gone right for me as I attempt to do this?

Incredibly long and uninteresting story short: we think that the blue (or red?) backing was meant for dark clothes or it was bad, either way. Fail. So we tried again on some spare paper, tried to iron it on over the white disaster, it ended up looking all water color-y (which was actually pretty cool) and Desiree laughed heartily at me although I still contend that a large majority of the blame is on her.

trying to fix it

final product

my "don't even care anymore" crazy eyes

Moral of the story: don’t let me anywhere near an iron and a t-shirt at the same time.

Oh, and I did not wear it to our Saturday Comic Con day.

I've Never….played a violin before

Now, I'm not claiming to have learned the violin. Oh no -- far from that. It's merely about me playing a violin for the first time…ever!  In fact, I'm pretty sure it's my first time even holding a violin.  So just know that if you click on the video below, you are listening at your own risk.  It's a little painful - okay, actually a lot painful, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Me at a piano recital

I've actually wanted to learn the violin for a while now.  I already know how to read music due to my lovely mother forcing piano lessons on me for almost 10 years of my life (there was some literal kicking and screaming at times as she can attest to).  I also learned the clarinet in band which I played in for a few years. 

Me again

If I had had a choice, I would have done orchestra and not band.  It just sounds so much classier, doesn't it?  Plus, then you don't have all the parades and pep band stuff which was the worst part for me and probably one of the main factors of why I quit band halfway through high school.  It just wasn't really my thing. And don't get me started on those band uniforms.  I only had to wear them once or twice for homecoming games since I avoided the marching band but those 2 times were enough to make me want to have a uniform burning bonfire. 

Band uniforms!

But anyway, turns out my school district was not super great.  I didn't really realize how awful it was until I came to school in Utah and heard about all of the amazing opportunities and programs that others had had growing up.  For instance, my cousins were taught foreign languages in elementary school!  My high school offered French and Spanish--but did we actually learn how to speak it? Ha. In any case, orchestra was not offered in my high school and even if it were, they probably wouldn't have been able to recruit enough students to make it worth it.  My school was the type of school where the goal was just to get people to graduate. And even that was pretty difficult, it turns out.  I'm pretty sure my graduating class was only about half the size that my freshman class had started at (of course, not ALL of those were drop-outs…but still).

So long story short, my school didn't offer orchestra and violin was just never a thought that I even had growing up.  But then, when I came to Utah and everyone and their mom plays some kind of instrument or sings amazingly, violins started popping up all over the place.  And all of a sudden, I really wanted to learn how to play. 

Me in band - Sorry it's blurry

Lucky for me, Amy plays the violin!  And after a few years of established friendship (I promise the violin thing wasn't the only reason I wanted to be friends with her), I started occasionally throwing in random comments about how I wanted to learn the violin.  And finally, it worked! And Amy gave me my first violin lesson.

I discovered that holding the violin is really awkward -- at least it was to me.  You have to cram it up against your jaw bone, and maybe I was a little too intense (since Amy threatened me if I dropped her violin) but I actually had a bruise there the next morning.  I asked Amy if they happened to have left-handed violins but she said everyone learns this way.  I really think it would feel more natural for me to hold it on the other side and hold the bow in my left hand.  But I suppose that's something you get used to and I'm sure it will be fine after a few more practice sessions.  Also, you can't really play the violin with long nails.  So, if I want to get serious, I'll have to chop them off.  Not that my nails are creepily long (at least I don't think so…) but I just really don't like the feeling of super short nails.

Within an hour or so though, she had taught me how to hold it, how to use a bow, where to place my fingers on the strings, and even taught me to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!  Well, "play" is used very loosely here -- it's more she taught me how to screech out the song.  And Amy was so sweet…She kept telling me that I was doing amazingly for my first time.  I can't really tell if she was just being nice or what but either way, it's not pretty so again, only listen if you enjoy scratchy violin noise.