the boulevard of broken (eucalyptus) dreams

On Tuesday morning while I was scanning Pinterest, a particular photo and caption caught my eye. I didn't re-pin it, so I can't say exactly which pin it was, but the picture was something like this:

Source

The caption went something like this: "When I was in _____ (some European country) I noticed that everyone had bouquets of eucalyptus in their shower. I couldn't figure out why until I was taking a shower one night. The hot steam from the shower mixes with the fragrant eucalyptus and makes the entire bathroom smell just divine!! It was like a spa!!"

Well I mean...that certainly sounds delightful. And do-able, when you have this growing in your front yard:

So I made a mental note to do a little eucalyptus pruning/home-spa-creating at some point in the future. I told Matt about it and I think he was even more excited at the prospect than I was. 

So last night we trimmed a few branches, and I turned them into a 'bouquet' with the help of a rubber band and some string. Then I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out where the heck to hang them in my teensy, coffin-like shower. Unlike whoever's shower is in that picture above, I actually use PRODUCTS in the shower...and those products need a home, and that home happens to be in a hanging thing that hooks over the showerhead. There was no space for a large bouquet of leaves if I ever hope to use my shampoo or face wash again. Which I do, for the record. 

I finally found a suitable spot to hang them, and then it was go time. Operation: My Lame Shower is a Spa Now was complete!

..............

..............

Ummm...yeah. Maybe there is something wrong with my eucalyptus? (Which I don't think there is-- it smells freakin awesome in the yard when the wind blows, and your hands smell really good after I touch it, so I'd say it's as fragrant as you'd expect) Maybe there's something wrong with the steam in my shower? But I really couldn't smell it in the shower. I even moved it so that it was hanging literally 4 inches from my nose.

Nothing.

Biggest letdown ever!!

I think that at the very beginning of the shower, prior to opening any (scented) products, I could smell it very faintly. But as soon as I started using shampoo and body wash, that's all I could smell. So then it was just like I had a big plant taking up precious real estate in my already-cramped shower. BUMMER.

So...sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this wasn't the life-changing shower experience I know we were all hoping for. We left it in there and thought maybe things would be different this morning when Matt showered. I had big plans of the bathroom having this magical scent enveloping me as I apply my eye makeup...and...no. Not at all.

Maybe my 'bouquet' isn't big enough? Maybe I'll add some more branches to it tonight and it will become more potent. Then again, maybe I'll have to move out of the shower altogether cause there really is not enough room for a huge tree AND me in there. Good grief, Pinterest. How you toy with my heart.  

an app, a book, a date

Last night on Facebook I saw my friend Lisa mention a new app she was a little obsessed with: Fooducate. I downloaded it to see what the fuss was about, and then I proceeded to spend the rest of my night scanning everything in my kitchen. Even Matt got in on the fun. It's an app that has several functions-- one of them being a food tracker-type thing (like MyFitnessPal or something). I'm not interested in that at the moment, but the food grading system is what really drew me in here. You can just scan the barcode of any food and it will instantly give you a 'grade' for that food, as well as a lot of interesting tidbits about the product. It doesn't just grade items based on calories or fat (or things you could easily figure out on your own by looking at the nutrition panel), but also on things such as controversial additives, chemicals, presence of GMOs, and a bunch of other crazy things. I'm telling you-- for someone like me, who is already fairly interested/aware of that kind of thing...it was an ADDICTION running around my kitchen, scanning like crazy!! I was holding my breath as I scanned my favorite/most-frequently-eaten foods, praying they wouldn't get failing grades or weird alerts for strange ingredients. There were plenty of pleasant surprises as well as huge let-downs.

Look- all of my favorite coffee products and veggies got good grades!! (When you are actively scanning (this is just a glimpse of the history), you get much more information and details about each item.)

Probably NOT terribly surprising-- but still devastating-- was how poorly my favorite gum fared. Oh poor delicious watermelon gum. You got a D+ ('much worse than average') grade!! Now I'm going to have to feel super guilty every time I chew you...which is like 11 times a day. Boo.

Anyway. I can't wait to scan everything in the whole grocery store next time I go. If you're looking for a free, educational way to kill some time-- I recommend downloading this! It's free and available for iPhones and Androids. And now I totally sound like an advertisement, but whatever. If you have this app, you should tell me what your biggest disappointment/lowest scoring item is. And whether you will quit eating it or not. I'm undecided on my gum. (Oh- we happened to have a container of Yakisoba noodles that our visiting Chinese student left. It was like 'extra cheesy' or something, which makes me want to vomit-- CHEESY RAMEN NOODLES?! Ick. Anyway. We figured it'd get the lowest score in the house. It did do pretty poorly- a D...which is like...equivalent to my gum. TRAGEDY. I was hoping it'd get an F.)

Oh! While I'm busy being a walking advertisement, I would be remiss to not point you in the direction of Sephora's sale page. There are some super legit eyeshadow palettes on mega-clearance...some of which I own and paid A LOT MORE for a year ago. Which I'm not bitter about or anything. Anyway. I'm plotting my own order, so my only request is that you not beat me to it and snatch up the rest of the inventory of what I want. Thanks so much!

Last night I started reading Ridiculous. That's seriously the name of it. I had my doubts about how enjoyable it would be, especially since I was busy judging the title and cover and plot, but I'm glad I gave it a go: HILARIOUS. It's actually a miracle I'm blogging right this minute and not reading. Self-control, people. Between that book and the food app, I really don't see how I'm going to get anything done for the rest of the week. Sheesh. 

Today I'm having lunch with Amanda G.!! I'm not sure if you can still call it a 'blate' if you've already met and hung out in real life before? Since this is our second time to hang out, I guess you can just call it lunch with a friend. Anyway. I have been super pumped about that all week and now all of YOU get to be jealous, too!! With that, I'm off to scan random food items in my office and scarf down a few more paragraphs of cross-dressing Regency romance...yeah. For real. 

things i want

Yesterday I decided to mix things up. Instead of using my hour of free time before work to blog, I rebelliously perused Pinterest instead. I know. Life on the wild side. To be honest, I haven't looked at Pinterest much at all in the last 6 months or so, so I mean...it was time. A new season, right? So that means tons of new pumpkin and caramel things to pin (and never make), fall crafts to ogle...you know how it is. 

I'm not sure if this slight change in my morning routine is what threw my day (or at least my mental state) off a bit or what, but I've gotta say: the rest of the day was spent thinking about THE THINGS I WANT. Pinterest does nothing for making you satisfied with what you already have, does it? It makes you want all the things you DON'T have. Bah. But strangely, the things I spent the rest of my day obsessing about weren't actually material sort of things.

#1 THING I REALLY WANT NOW:

A subscription to E-Meals. 

Maybe it was all the food pictures on Pinterest that reminded me that I never cook anymore. So when I start contemplating a recipe, or thinking about buying stuff to cook a recipe, I feel immediately overwhelmed. And then a friend of mine blogged about how much she hates meal planning, and then it hit me: they invented a solution to this problem already. E-meals. Why the heck am I not doing E-meals?? I remember researching it a few months back and thinking it sounded pretty awesome-- some of my co-workers use it and rave. So I spent the rest of the day pondering it, convincing Matt that it's totally necessary, and thinking about how awesome life will be (and how happy my wallet will be) if I can get back in the habit of cooking and not eating out 48 times a week. So I think I'll be biting the bullet here. Soon. Like maybe today. I think I want to start with the Mediterranean plan. The sample menu looked totally awesome and most similar to how we eat. Anyone a fan (or not a fan...that perspective is also welcome) of E-meals? Any idea how I can get my subscription to come with a personal chef and maid who will come and actually do the cooking and cleaning? I think that's really gonna be the key to getting me to eat at home.

#2 THING I REALLY WANT NOW:

A tattoo.

I know. This is very unlike me. But there it is. It's been in my mind for the last week or so. I think it got in my head while I was reading Divergent...you know...since I'm so Dauntless and all. I just really need a tat. Unfortunately, that's as far as I've made it. I have no idea of WHAT, or WHERE, or like...anything. So that's pretty dumb, really. I guess I like the idea of having a tattoo but I'm really lacking on the specifics. Oh also I'm sure I'm way too much of a pansy to actually let someone stab me with needles, so I'm gonna put the odds of me actually GETTING one at like...slim to none. But nevertheless-- let the record state that today, I really want one.

OH- but then I saw this on Pinterest. And it cracked me up. And quickly eliminated 'random Chinese word' from my bank of potential tat ideas. 

Source

My favorite thing about that picture is that 'water' is in Comic Sans. HAHAHAHA. Way to pick the most stereotypically awful font in the entire world. (Note: sometimes my friend/co-worker Diana and I will change our email fonts to REALLY AWFUL fonts like Comic Sans, Curlz, or something else ridiculous when we email our other graphic designer co-worker. It's really hilarious. To us. I think it makes our designer friend cry.)

The final thing I spent my day jealously wishing was that I were going to the Mumford concert last night with everyone else in the state of Georgia. Life is so unfair. Instead, I ate Mexican food and listened to my Mumford Pandora station. I'm sure it's exactly the same as being there. Oh well. Maybe I'll go see if there are any awesome tattoos of Mumford lyrics. In Chinese. Or Comic Sans. Equally amazing, I'm sure.
 

another extremely cohesive monday post

The weekend got off to a solid start shortly after I posted on Friday morning. This guy dropped by my office for a little 'you can make it til 5!' pep talk and was kind enough to pose for a picture before he disappeared into the supply room with a brown-bag-covered bottle...

Despite the fact that it looks like he's stabbing my left arm with his sword, I can assure you that our relationship is decidedly peaceful, as pirate-professional relationships go. As a side note: it's hard to say whose shirt has more ruffles. Ha. 

My weekend goal was to purchase fall nail polish, and I can happily say I accomplished that by about 6:30pm on Friday. What can I say? Sometimes I get really goal-oriented. 

Hand pictures are weird.

 I went with Essie's 'mochachino'-- according to Essie, it's 'a perky gray with shimmer,' which is pretty much true, but I'd say there are definite undertones of brown to it as well. All in all I love it and feel much more seasonally appropriate now with my garish hot pink gone. I used a dark navy-ish purple with shimmer on my toes...it's OPI from last season but I forgot to check the name of it. Anyway, since there's a good chance we'll still be in open-toed sandals for another 2 months, it's nice to have my toes join in the seasonally-appropriate party as well.

Since my weekend goals were basically accomplished by the time I'd arrived home Friday afternoon, the rest of the weekend was pretty much gravy. We got a lot of yard work done, I read 2.5 novels, and we watched a lot of football.

I also spent the better part of Sunday afternoon *ahem* organizing my Kindle.

I know. THIS is how exciting my life is.

But seriously! A few months ago I was really slack about deleting books off the Kindle once I'd read them, so things were getting really out of hand. Add to it the fact that I occasionally go on free-book-downloading sprees and will download 3-6 books at a time...and maybe do that several times before I ever get around to actually READING a book...and what I had was 8 pages of book titles that I had no idea what they were about/if I'd read them yet...and it was getting really overwhelming. When I want to read a book, I usually am in the mood for a particular genre. So then I'd be squinting at 8 pages of titles, trying to decide 'is this a historical romance?' or whatever...it was annoying. SO! I discovered that you can create 'collections' on your Kindle..basically make groups, name them whatever you want, and then file your books into handy little collections!

So I spent an obscene amount of hours with my laptop and Kindle-- I'd look up every single book, figure out what category it belonged in, and file it. Or determine that I was temporarily insane when I'd downloaded it and delete. Or realize that I'd already read it and delete it. So basically, the Kindle equivalent of spring-cleaning my closet or something. I almost never re-read books, so I didn't save any previously-read books unless a) I paid for them (which is very few), or b) I might want to loan them to someone. Therefore, don't think that the numbers in each category really mean anything...that's just the number of unread books. For instance, Nonfiction and Memoirs will probably remain stuck at 5 for about 5 years because I'm pretty much never in the mood to read either of those genres. :) But Loooooove Stories, Mysteries, Historical Romance, and Dystopian categories see a lot of flux. Because obviously those genres are the best.

SO! Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about my Kindle and my OCD organization strategies. 

Finally, a non-recommendation:

I was so excited to find this at Aldi yesterday. You know how I love me a good mojito. And since I have pretty cheap taste in alcohol (beer proving the exception to that rule), I figured a wine-cooler-knockoff version would suit me just fine.

WRONG.

NASTY.

End of that story. The fact that I dumped out my glass after 2 sips should tell you something. ICK. Save yourself the $4.99, people. NO BUENO.

Matt was like 'IT TASTES LIKE MINT!! AHHHH!' (that's a negative/grossed out 'ahhhh' by the way). I was like 'it's a mojito...it's SUPPOSED to taste like mint, genius. What do you think the plant they muddle in the bottom of the glass is?' And then I drank it. And by 'tastes like mint,' what Matt meant (mint? HAHAHAHA so punny) was 'tastes like disgustingly sweet mouthwash.' Anyway...there's an entire bottle minus 2 sips in my fridge if this sounds like something you're interested in. Maybe I should give it to my BFF Jack Sparrow? I hear pirates are pretty indiscriminate in their drinking...

Have a great week!!