Dear Sara, You are INCREDIBLE.

This is the part where I reveal my obsession with Sara Bareilles. Quite frankly, I think she's genius. AND as an avid piano player, I like that I can play her songs and they will actually sound like her songs because her songs are piano enhanced with other instruments but not overrun by other instruments. Capiche? Well anyway...Careful Confessions is her first album and for a long time was not available to the public. Fortunately it has been released again because it is AMAZING. One of my Christmas gifts - I've been dying to own it forever. A lot of the songs on are following albums, but on this CD the songs are in their "raw" form almost - like before everything is enhanced and digitized. It's like it's more of Sara's heart and soul and the way she feels the music as opposed to scripted. Plus there are a few songs that you can't find anywhere else.

And would you believe she came HERE to SLC to perform a little over a month ago and I did not make it to her concert. PLEASE COME AGAIN SARA!

Yes.

This. Is Beauty. The black one is great - beautiful line, and of course I'm always obsessed with ruffles, but the peach one...Oh. My. Gosh. I want that. Add some sleeves and make it ivory and I would get married and have six receptions just so I could wear it more than once and have people's mouths water and their sight blur green with envy as they beheld the beauty that is my gown. Then I would dye it back to this beautiful peach color and wear it to the formal dinner on the cruise ship I am on for my honeymoon and every fifth year anniversary. That. Is how much I am obsessed with this dress.

Unfortunately I am unable to give designer credit to this masterpiece, but the black one is BCBG Max Azria, bless his heart.

Because Jake Says

So Jake is apparently a little disappointed in me because I haven't posted in a very long time and I said I didn't have anything to write about. So he said I should write about him. This is Jake:

Okay. That's the first picture I found. Jake is my BFF and a half who I have known and lived around the corner from since before I can remember. He is about yay tall and wide. We have lots of good times.

Satisfied?

Also. He is desperately attractive and though he'd kill me if I told you, he's Batman in disguise.

A Discussion About Art

I overheard a discussion in my sewing class today about being a perfectionist. Obviously this conversation is bound to come up in a sewing class where you are constantly deciding if it is worth picking out that row of stitching for the fourth time...

This adorable girl in my class is studying art and she was telling a story about how she used to be SUCH a perfectionist. She ended up having to go to a shrink. Yes, she called him her shrink. I'm not just being offensive. This was his advice: Flunk an assignment on purpose. Just full on don't do an assignment so you can see that the world will not crumble on top of you. He tried for over a year to get her to do this and she just couldn't convince herself to not do the assignment.

I'm not sure how she was eventually cured or if she ever actually flunked the assignment...I tuned out and that's not relevant to this post. What IS relevant is this: I am a perfectionist, and at one point in my life, I don't think I could have intentionally flunked an assignment either. I guarantee I wouldn't be able to.

Now I'm in college and I regularly forget to do my physics homework and thank goodness learning to sew has, while aggravating my perfectionism, also taught me that sometimes you just have to let something go and it will still turn out alright. So for anyone who may criticize my perfectionism, and a note to myself when I become frustrated: THINK HOW MUCH WORSE IT COULD BE! I'm glad I don't have to see a shrink over it and that I am learning how to put it aside in some cases.

On another note, I have to ask myself this: why is it the artistically minded that are so tortured by perfectionism? Not always, lest you scientists come after me, but frequently. Ever heard the expression tortured artist? Ever heard of van Gogh? Thought he was no good and killed himself. The guy was a genius and he didn't know it!

We are our own worst critics and it slowly eats us away every single day.

SO STOP BEING SO CRITICAL ALL THE TIME.

One of the greatest quotes I ever heard that I just spent fifteen minutes searching for the person to whom I should give credit: "You are doing better than you think you are."

Okay. I've officially gotten carried away. So we'll leave it at that.

The Good and the Bad

I'm not even sure when the last time I wrote was. But since whenever that time was, life has been grossly, ridiculously, embarrassingly full of good times and bad times and mood swings.

The Bad: Had my car towed, failed a test twice, forgot various homework assignments, got very far behind in multiple classes, missed my best friend miserably, went to bed late on weeknights and early on weekends, battled a fierce cold, fell apart multiple times, got a lecture I didn't need from an adviser, was a semi-jerk to a nice person and potential friend, have only had three meals a day about twice a week, bullied and guilted myself over the decisions I can't make, etc. etc. etc. I won't recall more than that.

The Good: Watched the seasons change, signed up to volunteer at the art museum, submitted my first college paper which I was quite proud of, got a LETTER, got some PICTURES (consequently brought me lower than before but that's irrelevant in this post), got a 74% on my econ test (yes, that's good, relatively speaking), got caught up in school, impressed my sewing teacher, and as of today I have a new nephew.

Unfortunately, as welcome as they are, the highs always slope back down to lows. And I always struggled with being a positive person. I have a hard time searching for the good when deep down all I see is the bad. But I'm working on it. Despite the snow I walked home in today, I couldn't help but marvel at the bright colors of the trees. I would say that's an improvement. I was desperately hoping for a 60% on my test. I would say 74% is an improvement. You don't want to hear any of this (whoever that ambiguous "you" refers to) but I needed to write something. So there.

kerielle

This is a story worth saving. Why kerielle?

Ninth grade. Mr. Willey's Honors/AP Geography class. Waiting in the library for the bus to arrive to take us to Salt Lake City for RHSMUN. Obviously, very bored. So my two friends and I start flipping through the largest dictionary of names in the world. We looked up our own names. We looked at the surrounding names - names that are close to our own but a little more creative. I doubted my name would be in the dictionary - it's so unusual, you can't find it anywhere. But it was, and right beneath it was the name kerielle. Yes. It must be spelled with a lower case k. Leave me alone. And so it became a joke - we all had our close-to-real-name-nicknames. Mine was kerielle. And it grew on me. Certain people picked up on it and used it since then.

So the significance? If, no, cross that out, WHEN I get my own line of designer clothing, it will be called kerielle. It seems like designers are all known by one name - first, last, combination of the two or something completely irrelevant. Neither of my names are very cool. So...kerielle. Designer-worthy. At least, I think so.

That's the story.

Sundays

For some reason, Sundays are the hardest days. These are the days that I miss my dear friend the most. Perhaps because these are the days he would come visit and we would sit on the front porch in the sunshine just talking. Every week.

This week, I invite my South Korean roommate, Heather, home to have dinner with my family. It was an "on" Sunday, which means ALL the family came home for dinner. Heather is an only child. Needless to say, it was much more crowded and noisy than she is used to. At first I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, just because it would be so crowded and noisy and I didn't know if I could keep up a conversation long enough for her to feel comfortable. But I'm SO glad I did. We had fun! My family was very kind to her and asked her questions. She loved dinner, and on the way home we stopped by to visit my Grandma who also made her feel very welcome.

Here's the point of the story. At the end of the night, Heather was thanking me for the evening. She said Sundays are the hardest for her - the days she misses her family the most - and she liked not being by herself in the apartment. I realized that having her over today made Sunday not as hard for me - I was thinking about someone else and not how bad I miss my friend.

I decided maybe days like today should occur more often. Maybe we started a tradition.