eternal love

the world lost a really great person last saturday.  over the years i have posted a lot about the love that i have for paul walker (you can read those posts here if you want).  i have just always been so attracted to him because, i mean, look at him.  he's perfection.  but it wasn't only about his incredible good looks. he has just always seemed like such a nice, down to earth, humble guy and i really admire that about him.  he was beautiful inside and out.

i might (/definitely do) have a couple pictures of paul at my desk at work so most of my co-workers know about my love for him. the monday before thanksgiving (5 days before he passed away) my co-worker had people around the office write down what they were thankful for and then she took a picture of us with it and posted it on the ultradent blog.  if you can find me in there you will see that i said i was thankful for paul walker, which i genuinely am. well today they made a card with a photoshopped picture of paul and me and then had everyone sign it.  see picture below.

when they gave it to me, i just thought "this is awesome, we look so good together! i knew it!"  i didn't realize it was a card so when they told me to open it and i saw that all my co-workers had signed it, i started to sob.  like crying so hard with tears running down my face in front of my co-workers. i could still cry right now thinking about it.  but isn't that just the nicest and funniest thing ever?  it just melted my heart.

i know it's silly that i have this crush and that he means so much to me but i have had countless people tell me how sorry they are for my loss.  i know that it is partially to joke with me but i still really have felt loved nonetheless.  i just feel really lucky to have so many friends and people that care about me. so thank you for your condolences, they mean a lot to me. it takes away a little bit of the sting of losing the love of my life.  

well paul, as much as i don't want to believe it, i guess this is goodbye for now. just know that you will always have my heart and i will love you forever.

love always,

paige

does this make me a hipster?

my new glasses came in the mail today! i ordered them from eyefly.com and i am in love with them! i suppose one could say that they are hipster glasses, but they do indeed have a prescription so i don't think that counts. i ordered them in eggplant too and they are coming tomorrow. merry early christmas to me!

oh and sorry about the nudity in the background. the things that the milnes keep in their house...

ALSO i know what you're thinking right now, "why did paige take a picture of 25 professionally wrapped boxes of chocolate?"


well, guess what guys. i wrapped those puppies all by myself. today. i used to work at this place called scrappy notes (with my girl darcy) in high school and my entire job was to tie bows. so as you can see, i got pretty awesome at it.

huzzah!

dear diary,

so i am at home in colorado this weekend and i have been reading my old journals. here are some highlights:

september 15, 1995:

today i went to jill's soccer practice and i saw the cutest boy in third grade!!!!!! and he likes me to!!!! (those last four exclamation points had hearts on the bottom)

december 10, 1995:

today we have to go to church because it's sunday, and eryn is so grose she gives me the worst wedgies.

march 5, 1996:

my mom made this new rule that we can't watch tv on week days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

may 22, 1996:

dear journal,

i know i haven't written in a long time!!!

august 25, 1996:

dear journal,

i know i haven't written in a long time!!! well i'm in fourth grade! i got ms. v, she is nice and she has a boy friend. well you might not have known this, but i had a lizard and it died. :( :(

lower down on the page it says: ms. v is EVIL! she is a witch

***side note: said lizard (lizzy) died because i didn't want to feed him crickets anymore because they were gross. i even had the crickets, i just didn't give them to him. i don't know what the sad faces are all about since i pretty much murdered lizzy.

december 6, 1999:

erik asked me out so i said yes. we had a pretty good relationship. i mean we hardly talked, but hey, this is what everybody does in 6th grade.

at this point all of my entries end with "G2G!"

december 7, 1999:

mrs. s - fat & crazy

mrs. b - 24, cool & married

mrs. m - fat, pretty nice, & makes weird faces

mrs. k - mean & her hair looks like a mushroom

brian - i liked him for a few weeks but not anymore because he is soooo stupid, he flunked 7th grade. when i talk to him i feel like i am babysitting.

december 16, 1999:

today i had a bad day. sara told me what kelly was saying while i was running the shuttle "paige won't beat anyone." guess what kelly, i did!

january 4, 2000:

shea has been really mean to me lately. so from now on i am not supposed to talk to her (her rule).

january 18, 2000:

i decided i wouldn't tell anyone that i liked casey, i really did that! yah, right! lots of people know, i told them. when sara was naming guys she thought i liked on the bus, she said casey so i said "stop asking me questions!" that is how sara and christine found out. other people, i just told.

january 20, 2000:

one of the bands i don't really like is godsmack. they really suck. so does rage against the machine. some of the bands/artists i do like are: limp bizkit, blink 182, beastie boys, 98 degrees (because they're hot), orgy, fat boy slim, madonna, enrique iglesias, creed, sugar ray...and more.

so, what did i learn about myself as a child?

-i was incredibly annoying from about seventh grade until i turned sixteen.

-i cared a lot about boys, probably too much.

-i was unfortunately shallow when it came to my seventh grade teachers.

i'm not gonna lie, i don't think i really like pudge in her young adolescence.

G2G!!!!!!!!!!!

childhood

i stole a blue gumball out of one of those by-the-pound candy bins at albertson's when i was a small child. when we were driving home, my mom asked me where i had gotten the piece of gum i was chewing. i was mad at myself for not realizing that my mom was intelligent and would know what i had done.

when i was five i stole a hot pink watch from tj maxx. as soon as we got home i went over to the neighbor's to show it to them. while i was waiting for them to come to the door i scraped off the price tag as quickly as i could. they never answered and i went home. my mom caught me with it (i must have been wearing it) and i got into trouble. i told her that i needed it to learn how to tell time. my dad drove me back to the store and made me apologize. if my memory serves me correctly, the store clerk didn't seem to care that i had taken the watch. this made me feel like stealing is okay.

the beginning of the end

one time in fifth grade, a really cute boy came up to me in the library and asked me if i liked him.

i edited a line from sixteen candles and said...

"i'd rather puke twice and die."

i actually did like him. a lot.

dear summer,

please come soon. i can't wait to see you. if you want to come early, it would be greatly appreciated.

love, pudge

i am clearly not over this. i was going through all my photos from the past year because i got an offer for 75 free prints from shutterfly (sorry, it ended yesterday) and i am longing for summer more than ever.

this picture was taken the night before my cousin mckenzi's wedding in arizona last august, which is why i am sweating my face off.

look at all these beautiful, tan, happy faces. not only are we sooo happy that kenzi is getting married, but it is summer.

with my fellow bridesmaid and cousin, the beautiful jamie thomas. so tan, so warm, so happy. now i'm cold and pale.

as i was sitting outside watching my niece and nephew play today, i thought back to the last time i stayed with them. it was early september, quite warm and i got to sit on the driveway and watch them play in the perfect temperature instead of freezing/sweating in 30 degree sunny weather.

just a few more months...slash it is going to take forever to be warm again.

so here's an awkward story for your friday

this one time, in my stats class my sophomore year, something incredibly awkward happened. it was perhaps one of the most awkward moments in my life. and i am going to share that experience with you right now.

so this is what happened.

i was sitting in that big-ish auditorium in the talmage building with my friend, sarah. the chairs were those ones that are comfortable and have those little desk things that you pull up from the side. so we were just sitting there listening to the lecture and i decided to put my arm out and rest it on my little desk.

i could feel denim under my fingers and at first i just thought that it was my leg. but then i realized that i couldn't feel my leg being touched by my fingers and started to kind of pat around because for a split second i thought that i was all of a sudden paralyzed from the waist down and had lost feeling in my legs.

but then i realized why i couldn't feel it.

it wasn't my leg that i was touching. it was the married man sitting next to me's leg.

when this all came together in my mind i looked over and his face was bright red and i'm sure mine was too. i just said "oh my gosh! i am soooo sorry, i thought that was my leg."

and that's the story of that one time when i felt up a stranger in my stats class.


oh, and this is pretty awkward too.

an ode to my sister, eryn.

when i was younger we had a fascination with making our own talk shows. my sister eryn is an evil genius and was usually the orchestrator of these talk shows. i can remember one talk show that we did quite vividly.

i am fairly confident that i was like seven years old which would make eryn nine and nash three, these are the key players in this story. nash was a very beautiful child and one of our favorite pastimes was to dress him up like a girl. he really did make a very pretty girl with his precious little curls.

eryn's vision for this talk show included nash being eleanor roosevelt. we told him that she was a man and not to worry, men wore skirts and makeup at that time. he was just a pup so he believed us.

we got nash all pretty and then we went down to the living room to film the talk show. eryn was the host and after eleanor was done with her (i mean his) interview it was my turn. it seems i wasn't aware of who i was going to be prior to my interview and when i sat down i was apparently shel silverstien. the first thing eryn says to me is "so shel, how does it feel to be so unattractive?" (while holding up the back of one of his books) and i just sat there staring at her and probably said something to the effect of "that's not what i look like." while eryn laughed hysterically. and that's all i remember.

and that is why my sister eryn is a crazy, hilarious, evil genius and i love her for it.

rest in peace shel, rest in peace.

sixth grade preciousness

i was just heard the song "my girl" by the temptaions and had a flashback to sixth grade.

drew tooley was the first boyfriend i ever had (unless you count kindergarten) and he was the best.

i swear i babysat nash like every weekend and drew would always call me while we were watching tgif. i have no idea what we talked about, but we would talk for extended periods of time - which is really impressive for sixth grade.

for christmas he gave me all this jewelry and body spray. i had no idea what to give him, so i gave him glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs or something. it was lame. he had his new girlfriend call and dump me at my friend's birthday party a few months later and i am pretty sure i cried. we took a picture of me dumping the body spray he gave me as if that would hurt him or something.

at the dare skate night, we went around the rink holding hands and i was terrified. he bought me an icee that night too.

for valentine's i gave him a box of candy and his mom brought me half a dozen roses, a teddy bear and hershey kisses because he was at home sick that day.

on fridays in our music class we could do little performances. one friday he got up there with his friends who were also going out with my friends and they sang "my girl" to us. it was so incredibly precious and i am almost positive that i thought it was lame. oh twelve year old pudge, so much to learn.

i can't believe i remember all that stuff from ten years ago. apparently drew was the love of my life. too bad it didn't last. too bad.

saturday night special

we cleaned out our fridge on saturday night.

we found out that not only did we have a ton of gross, old food in our fridge, but that i can fit inside.

and andrea too. kind of.

and maybe we have the exact same outfit on.

it was definitely a glorious coincidence that could have been easily corrected by changing our clothes, but we chose to not take that route and continued to match for the remainder of the evening.

pretty please?

i really want to go to the killers concert in salt lake on the 26th of september. they are my favorite band and they put on such a great show. i love them. i have already seen them two-and-a-half times, so i am having a hard time justifying paying to go to another concert, but i want to go soooooooo bad.
a couple years ago i saw the drummer, ronnie vannucci, at the salt lake airport when i was getting back from christmas break. i didn't want to be lame and go up to him, but my friend convinced me to and the following awkward conversation occurred:

me: hey, aren't you ronnie from the killers?

ronnie: yeah, i am.

me: you guys are my favorite band. your music is so good, so mazel tov.

ronnie: mazel tov? (laughter) have you watched fiddler on the roof lately?

me: (awkward laughter) no, i just enjoy judaism. can i get your autograph?

yeah...i'm pretty awkward. "i just enjoy judaism" who says that? i should have just said, "no, i'm jewish." it wouldn't have been a lie because i am an eighth jewish after all. he was super cool and nice though. i am still so mad i asked for an autograph and not a picture. i had my camera with me and what good is an autograph going to do me? not much. he did write "city of salts" along with his signature on my baggage claim ticket, which was kind of cool.

the moral of the story is that i want to go to the killers concert. i think you should go too and maybe buy me a ticket??? i promise they will not disappoint and neither will i.

fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me.

i hate the provo river. and i'm pretty sure it hates me because i haven't heard of anyone else having as much bad luck on that river as i have.

last summer we floated the provo river when stacy came to visit. we had fun, but it was also horrible because we weren't very good at navigating and kept screaming as we ran into every single rock and tree along the way. oh, and when we almost drowned that wasn't very enjoyable either. but we did still have fun, it was like a crazy little adventure. at least that's how i remember it.

i decided it would be a good idea to join lindsey, andrea and the ward to float the provo river yesterday. i had kind of been wanting to do it again and it was going to be free, so i jumped at the opportunity. this was a giant mistake. it has been blazing hot lately but we chose to go on the coldest day of the summer. i knew it would be cold, but i thought maybe that would just add to the adventure. it sure did.

andrea, lindsey and i started down the river in our tubes. we didn't want to get separated, so we held onto each other. the water was pretty darn cold, but we were okay once our body parts started to go numb. then as we are just floating down and minding our own business, this family comes by on a raft and they thought it would be a good idea to throw buckets of glacier water on us. they just laughed and laughed because apparently we didn't look cold enough or wet enough.

it seems that if you hold onto each other's tubes it is more difficult to navigate, but we didn't figure this out until about half way, so we ran into everything and it was quite painful, especially because we were so cold. then we got stuck by this huge branch, so we just thought we could push off it and go on our merry way. ummm, that isn't exactly what happened. andrea got sucked under the branch and her tube capsized. i literally was thinking, "oh my gosh, andrea is going to die." seconds later i get sucked under, then lindsey right after me. as the current dragged me along all of the rocks at the bottom of the river (thank goodness it was shallow, otherwise i most likely would have drowned) i was trying with all my might to hop back onto my tube, and i just couldn't do it for the life of me. i was pretty much terrified at this point and finally was able to get on.

then it came time to get out and walk around the bridges. since i had just gotten drenched from head to toe, i was so cold i could barely use my muscles to lift my tube and get out. with some help i was able to get out and put my flip flops back on and start walking, which is really painful from all the dragging and my big toe was bleeding. a good looking and nice man noticed our uncontrollable shivering and the flatness of our tubes and offered to pump them up for us, which made a huge difference. he was really nice and told us he couldn't believe they let us go out because we could get hypothermia. for reals. we didn't stop shaking the entire time while he was talking to us and pumping up all of our tubes.

we got back in and had learned our lesson, so we didn't connect tubes and ended up doing the last half of the river alone. i don't think i have ever prayed that much in my entire life. i paddled the entire time and kept asking Heavenly Father to help me get down as quickly as possible because i was not having fun, and to help me navigate so i wouldn't get hurt anymore. Heavenly Father answers prayers guys, because i didn't have anymore complications and i got down that river pretty darn fast. it isn't too much fun doing it alone, and it also isn't very fun when little boys sitting on the rock you can't get away from think it is really funny to splash you. i was so annoyed and of course yelled at them as i floated away. "thanks a lot, reeeeeallly appreciate it."

i got to the end and was luckily able to get out without any complication, unlike the first time. some man helped me put up my tube and another guy laughed at me while i was convulsing at the side of the river waiting for lindsey to get out so i could get my towel. we sat in the car with the heat on and i really don't think i stopped shivering until i got home. my arms are chafed from all the paddling and my whole body hurts. i'm slightly bitter.

in summation...if i ever suggest we float the provo river, please refer me back to this post.

*this was really long, so if you made it the whole way, you can have a prize.

clumsy

remember in high school how you were always afraid of falling on the stairs? especially those stairs in the common area where people were always standing?

i was walking up the cement stairs by the bell tower on campus today and totally ate it. i didn't just trip, i was literally on the ground, in pain. the girl that was behind me was like, "whoa! are you okay?" the alarm in her "whoa!" didn't really help the situation. i just laughed awkwardly and said that i was fine. it was like high school all over again and i felt retarded just like i often did in high school. one time i was walking down the stairs during my senior year and missed a step causing me to land right on my knees. fortunately for me this was during passing period and one of my friends saw me and yelled, "oh my gosh, that is so embarrassing!" i promptly stood up and said "it's cool, nothing to see."

so everyone, in case you were wondering, i am just as awkward today as i was in high school.

flashback to my childhood

my friend jason bet me i couldn't sit in this box for 10 minutes and i foolishly said i could. he then tortured me for 10 minutes straight...pretty much the most terrifying experience of my life.