two years

dear you,

a little more than two years ago i wrote that if we just had each other, we could have it all. i was a little desperate back then, a little naiive, and very optimistic, but looking back i don't think even then i knew how true that was. i couldn't have. because it wasn't until we became the kind of best friends that we are today that i could know how it felt. we're the kind of best friends that only two and a half years of friendship can make: the kind that tell each other when one is upset with the other, the kind that more than anything respect the other, the kind that tell each other everything and never run out of things to say, the kind that when there's nothing to say know just what to do to fix it and can also sit comfortably in silence, the kind that push one another to go after their dreams and believe in themselves, the kind that are always laughing together, the kind that have grown up together, and the kind that at heart, you'll always care about. i couldn't have guessed what our relationship would develop into and i certainly couldn't have guessed what it would feel like two years later. and it's better in a completely different way that i dreamed of.

i'm so happy we're us. i'm so happy we've come out the other side of being apart for a year, transitioning from a high school couple into a college one, and from the big and little mistakes we've made. i'm so happy that it's so easy to talk about uncomfortable things now. i'm so happy that the first time we had a real conversation on the beach in mexico, i was right in that you were special. i'm so happy that we continually get better. i'm so happy that it seems like i like you more every day and fall for you again over little moments. i'm so happy that we're not perfect and we had our struggles. i'm so happy that fate seemed to take our side and place us at the same college together. i'm so happy that we still can be the 'cutesy' couple that we were in high school, but that in college we act more like best friends that care deeply for the other; which is how a real relationship should be. (i love cutesy, i'm all for the cutesy, but the deeper stuff is great, too). i'm so happy how comfortable it is to be together. i'm so happy that we got this far. i'm so happy that we grew into something so unexpectedly great.

the roadtrips. going to each of our senior proms together. coffee dates. seeing taylor swift live. knowing we'll always be tied to her music. going to matinee movies. our graduations. hgtv. online shopping together. going to concerts. the letters. taking so many pictures.

i'm so happy that we're just us right now. i don't know what "we" mean and i don't know what "we" mean for our future, but i don't really know that i want to know that. i just know that the present is wonderful and what it means for right now: happiness.

yours truly,
me.

last friday night

... asking if "zac brown" lives here. like the band? no, his name was zach brown.

...meeting the cute kid who makes my coffee four times a week like a champ and recited my order to me. 

...adding him on facebook when i got home.

...realizing we didn't take one picture of the night.

...being the weird people that were casually invited but coming anyways and being the 'randoms'. 

..."is it legal to flurry with guts? oploid. tried to get free coffee." i really hate autocorrect.

...dancing to lady gaga because that's better than dubstep. any day.

...figuring out that i can fit my keys, phone, and cash in my boots for optimal dancing.

... last night out in missoula for the win. kind of. sometimes you have to make the best of a dud kind of night.

(another) rainy day

The weather around here doesn't seem to want to make up its mind, but then again, being a PNW girl through and through, I'm used to that. It seems like spring in Montana means that I have to change what I'm wearing three times a day. It can be in the low 40's and storming when I wake up at 7am, hot and sunny by the time 2pm rolls around, and warm but breezy at dinner time. Pants, dress, shorts.

I'm still getting used to the whole curling my hair thing. These pictures are actually a few weeks old and I think I'm getting used to it, but it's still a process! I don't technically have to curl my hair, but there's something about curls that makes my hair feel so much lighter on my shoulders. I have such thick hair that I usually have a hard time leaving it down all day and usually end up throwing it into a ponytail by the end of the day.

On a less superficial note (clothes and hair rant over), I'm getting really excited for what summer has in store! I'm working two jobs, both in labs, and taking two summer courses. All are happening on the same campus where I'll be working two floors below my dad in the same building and I'm kind of excited to get to take my lunch breaks with him again. It's seriously one of the coolest things to go a full year at school away from home to coming back for the summer working so close to my dad. I love his random visits or when our labs work together and I actually get to spend an entire day in his lab. Being that I'll be moving into a rental house next year that I will have to pay for on my own, I'll be working more to earn more money this summer and I'm a teensy bit excited about the additional responsibility. I think my summer was a little too relaxed last year and this summer will probably be my last going back to Idaho for a few years!

*these pictures aren't edited at all!

outfit deets:

dress & sweater- borrowed from my roommate

boots- Sperry via Nordstroms

tights- Urban Outfitters

bow- Forever21

about life lately

lately,  i've been a little (... a lot) frustrated with school. i love college, i really do, but once having decided what i want to do and what i want to study, i'm so ready to be done with the semester (i.e. done with organic chemistry) and move on to doing things i love. i'm ready to throw the towel in this semester and i think mentally, i'm already done. i have the drive to get through the classes i don't enjoy and the mentality that they are important and helping me whether I like to think so or not, but i'm sososo excited to move on as well. i'm not abandoning science all together. in fact, i think the fact that i've discovered that i can incorporate science and writing together in my studies has made me fall a little bit more in love with science as a whole. i'm just really excited to start studying writing as well and learn about how i can use the two together to do something i love. 


the thing about college and especially sophomore year is that everyone seems to be swimming through their classes. for the people that know exactly what they want to do, they're really lucky. but so many of us have changed our majors this year, realized they want different things out of their life than they thought they'd want as incoming freshmen, or all together realized that we're only 19/20 and have no idea what we actually want. i think that's something i'm realizing is very, very prevalent to us at this age. i might change my mind in four years or in ten, and since we can't exactly plan for those changes, we just have to be doing what we love right now in the hopes that it's somewhere along the line of the right path for us. or at least, doing something that will lead us somewhere we want to go. it's overwhelming to think about college right now as an absolute for where our lives will be in fifteen years, so i've stopped trying. i'm going to double major in journalism and take as many creative writing workshops as i can because i love both of those things and majoring in science because it's just something i like to do and know will be a versatile degree later. 


the truth about college is that it goes so fast. i'm nearly halfway done. it's amazing when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, you realize how much you've changed since the first day of class freshmen year or how little you've changed, but how much you've grown up at the same time. there's still a lot of growing up to do, but i'm more grown up than i was at sixteen who filled her journals purely on boys she liked or people she hated (... there's still a lot of that in my journals now, but there are definitely more profound thoughts in them now, too). i can't believe i only have a couple years left (but probably three) and it hit me how badly i just need to sit back, relax, study hard, but enjoy the present. we can't plan our futures right now no matter how hard we really try and i'm finally okay with that realization. nothing is easy in college and now i know that stressing over every tiny little detail of how it'll affect my future doesn't help nor will it help me later. 


i have faith that it will all fall into place as long as i'm doing something i like and working hard at it to continue in some direction that 'feels right'. and that's possibly the greatest thing i've learned so far.

seattle in 24 hours

it all started with a hey, i have to go pick up my car in seattle this weekend to bring back to missoula, wanna go? text followed by a laura, niklaas invited us to go to seattle this weekend, wanna go? freefreefree. and a i want to go to seattle! yes!! text after for us to decide to make the 8 hour trip (...accomplished in 6) to the west coast for less than 36 hours. it was hands down one of the best days we've had in a long, long time filled with seattle sunshine, city street walking, spontaneous adventure-ing, family seeing, friend seeing, and floor crashing fun. it was one of those things that made me really appreciate the fact that we're now 19-almost-20-year-olds with the world to explore on our own. i absolutely enjoyed every exhausting city minute in the 75 degree seattle sunshine.

the space needle was unfortunately SOLD OUT by the time we got to the seattle center so we didn't get to go up, sunset plan and all. niklaas has never been and it was my goal, $20 a pop or not, to get up there because i love it soso much and everyone should really view seattle from the space needle once in their life. it just gives us another reason to go back, though... right!?

we all piled into a suburu. it was me, my best friend laura who is from seattle and my pre-med scholarly friend who is one of the few friends i have that has a similar school/studying mentality that i do (aka, bordering on the edge of insanity...), my roommate molly (the funniest person i know, seriously), and niklaas. we made a fab travel group, taking the eight hour drive in stride, getting along seamlessly without grumpy travel spats, exploring seattle spontaneously in a relaxing demeanor, laughing a whole lot, and being quite the mature group of teenagers on the loose (i was proud, though i probably shouldn't have expected less from any one of the four of us).

niklaas and i luckily got to steal a few hours in the morning together to walk around seattle alone and browse the stores. um, awesome! it was nice to have a couple hours to ourselves. also, i realized that we went to seattle a little more than two years ago together with our high school before we started dating and it was kind of awesome to come back together, two years later, as much the same people together with an official title now. i love being together but feeling like we're the same best friends we've always been. it was fun. i blogged about our trip to seattle two years ago here. (does anyone else feel embarrassed when they look back on old blog posts..?)(...horrible braces? saying things like 'hehe' and typing like thhhiissss? smily faces and winky faces? UGH!).

just before the sunset. so perfect. the space needle was looking like quite the little beauty on saturday in the sunshine.

when i was in minnesota with maggie, we couldn't get a Jcrew employee to even look at us let alone if we needed help (i guess we don't look the 'jcrew' part)(i.e. classy/sophisticated/has a lot of money to spend), but when i was in the jcrew with niklaas he got complimented by two employees and smiled at. it might have helped that he was wearing their pants, but he really did gather quite the up and down looks. what a stylish jcrew stud. also, my uncle thought he was pretty "hip".

nothing tastes better than pizza after walking for hours and hours on end. especially big mama's pizza. holy cow, was it good (and cheap and by the slice and wonderful). i even tried pesto pizza and it was fantastic. i have a new favorite.

definitely my favorite skyscraper in seattle, if you ask me. i'd die to see seattle from the top of it.

although we didn't get to go to the top of the space needle, we were able to hang out on the 33rd floor of laura's dad's environmental law office. it was crazy cool!! laura's family lives on an island one 30 minute ferry ride away from downtown seattle. her dad is an awesome environmental lawyer and takes the ferry commute every morning and then bikes the few blocks to his building where he gets to enjoy this view every day. i could live with looking out this window at the space needle every day.

pikes place! i'm not a huge fan of pike's place for some reason, but i do love the fresh flowers. they have the best flowers.

the picture of pike's place that every single tourist takes. i looked like a tourist with my nikon and huge purse while niklaas was mistaken for a local a few times. i really brought the team down.

we spent a solid two and a half hours in nordstroms helping laura find business professional clothes for job shadowing and job interviews (when did we get so old where we need business clothes?). niklaas ended up picking the winning gorgeous suit top and the winning shoes. he won for the day.

my roommate molly is seriously the funniest person i know, as i said above. but she's also one of the nicest people i know as well and i love her a lot. she decided to room with us at the last minute last year and i was the only one between the three of us that knew her, so it could have gone terribly bad or incredibly well. i'm so glad it was the latter! anyways, i think she looks gorgeous in this picture and it depicts the sweeter side of molly we all know lies underneath the sarcastic one. oh, and she has a killer sense of style. i love her closet.

the seattle aquarium is entertaining for twenty five minutes...and then it bores me. i like the zoo more, what can i say?

i was really excited to finally wear my favorite new sunglasses for the spring. oh, but i definitely got a nice sunglasses burn on my cheeks.

we went to 'molly moons' ice cream mostly because it was called 'molly's' and we had our own molly in the bunch, but it was fantastic. homemade waffle cones, homemade thin mint ice cream... i'm drooling right now.

laura is great. i think one of the best parts about going to college is the fact that you get to meet people so different from you that you'd never have met anywhere else. i love getting to meet their families and their friends and getting to know them from the place they live in. it was truly a neat experience (and the sappy moment ends).

coolest library i ever did see! we didn't get to go inside, but maybe someday? next time? when we come back?

there was a laura b's design, a molly moon's ice cream, and lastly a maggie's shoes. niklaas was left out.

i wore my sperrys, but i quickly developed a blister halfway into the day in a spot that kept rubbing against them. i very badly wanted to hop on this horse...

where the awesome homemade ice cream cones were made. they were still warm!

i like this boy a lot. two years later. adventuring. seeing new (and old) things. we're so much the same as we were and i'm so happy for the two years of experiences we've shared. two years! we're days away from the big day but there's no point in not acknowledging it two weeks early, right? (i started saying 'two years' a few months ago whenever people would ask us how long we'd been together, anyways so it's close enough in my book to now celebrate it).

red wall, green boots

Let's get one thing straight. My Hunter Wellingtons are my favorite item that I own. I wear them in rain, sun, and snow. If they weren't so expensive, I'd probably buy them in every color and wear them every single day. They are absolutely my favorite gift that I've ever received and I get so many wears out of these babies! I realized today that I'd never worn them here, which is strange considering how often I do wear them. I got dressed today prepared for a rain day and put on my atypical rain uniform: a dress, tights, Hunters, big cozy scarf, and a big bun. It didn't rain... but finding this red wall while I was wearing my Wellies seemed like fate anyways.

Also! I've sometimes worn my fake UO readers here... but I always feel a bit silly walking around in fake glasses. Today, I just happened to be wearing my actual prescription glasses when we went out to take pictures and happily obliged to show them off! I used to have boring glasses that were cheap and completely covered by my insurance. But once my eyes got worse enough that I had to wear glasses all day long at school, I invested in a nicer pair with a bit more punch and I love them. Maybe one day when I get over my fear of touching my own eye, I'll opt for contacts but for now I'm happy being a four eyes when I drive, go to class, watch movies, and watch tv.

a creative writing assignment: miranda july

I've had an index card taped to the wall in front of my desk that reads, "What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real." I'll be honest, it was something I came across on tumblr and proceeded to jot down so that I could think about it some more and it wouldn't just be something I reblogged and forgot about for forever (...wait? what? I have a tumblr? That's embarrassing). It wasn't particularly inspiring but something I was perplexed by. Regardless, I taped it to my wall when school meant there was a heap of papers on my desk and I wasn't ready to let go of the words I hadn't figured out yet.

When I have to do homework, I usually do one of two things : procrastinate by cleaning or procrastinate by going to the gym (proving I'll do anything not to do it)(this makes me sound like so much more of an active/"together" person than I am but I'll tell you now I'm not a gym person nor a clean person). One particularly frustrating day, I googled the quote I'd seen on tumblr and happened across a dozen more oddly perplexing but increasingly more fascinating quotes that after a few scrolls and clicks revealed themselves to be excerpts from Miranda July's "No One Belongs Here More Than You" book of short stories! Alas! Miranda July is an accomplished college drop out that at 37 years old has published two books of her short stories, directed and written the film Me and You and Everyone We Know (now at the top of my 'to watch' list), and did all of the above while acting in Portland, Oregon.  She'll also tell you that school got in the way of her beginning her adventures/aspirations and actually changed her own name to July based on a zine. Um, way cool.

I justified spending the twelve or so dollars on a copy of "No One Belongs Here More Than You" by telling myself I'd use one of her stories as my blog post for this class. Except, once I finished the book from cover to author's note, I wasn't quite sure what I thought anymore. The quotes I loved so dearly were needles in a haystack of a jumbled combination of plot twists, obscured reality, and a whole thought of stuff. In fact, in most of her stories I rushed through them so quickly to get to the quotes that I loved so much that I wasn't even sure what the point was or what it was about (...not that either is always necessary in a good story). Her amazing one liners that stand alone as quotable index cards to hang on your bedroom wall are perhaps the clearest clues as to the meaning of her story but other than that, she doesn't give you much but leaves you out on a limb to decipher the rest.

The story that stood out among the rest of the sixteen stories packed into the yellow covered book to me was called "Making Love in 2003". It begins with a nineteen year old young woman sitting in the living room of a publisher's home with his wife who told her that the fictional piece she wrote had "promise". One year after telling her so, she's back with the ultimatum that this moment will define if she is going to be a writer or if she is not going to be a writer. Unfortunately, he doesn't show up and she instead finds out that the woman who is eager to get her out of the house is none other than a famous author and also that her classmate is ahem getting risky with the publisher in his frontseat. The rest of the story follows revealing what that fictional piece was about (at first I thought it was a rape until I then realized it was the true story of her first love that she let go of) and then what she does when she teaches teenagers with disabilities. I still need to read it again to wrap my mind around all of the pieces, but the way in which the narrator recounts her relationship with the 'dark shape' is both relatable, haunting, sad, funny, and all together something I can't forget in the most genuine of ways. And I think I fell in love with being confused?

My favorite lines from the whole story:

For the first six months, I just walked around in a constant state of amazement. I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I'd always had- oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I could go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before.

If you like funky stories that are both emotionally driven and somewhat chaotic while still remaining down to earth and relatable, I'd recommend her pieces. I love how she makes out of the ordinary circumstances feel, well, normal such as an entire story about a woman who teaches swim lessons in her kitchen. Then again, the more I read her work the more I just want to read read read Miranda July and write less because I'll never write something so brilliantly.

sincerely,
maggie.


*this was an assignment for my creative writing class
**go read Miranda July now

"the mondays"

I tried really hard to like today. In fact, the universe seemed to want me to have a good day. It gave me a wonderful cup of morning coffee, an easy 7:30am wake up call, a brisk three hours of class, and a delightful package from Jasmine with lots of great goodies. I tried. Because what reason did I really have to be unhappy? I'm a believer in saying what you need to say in the moment, a little lesson I learned last October. If someone reacts differently than you hope, then at least you said what you could and can't regret that. But then I remembered that when I'm sleepy, I get emotional. Emotional to the point of pulling out The Fault in our Stars just to cry. And then I felt stupid for getting emotional over something that actually was so much more simple than I made it out to be in my tired little emotional head. I'm an overanalyzer and overthinker and I'm aware of both of them that are both my strengths and my greatest downfall when I've gotten three hours of sleep. Especially when I've gotten three hours of sleep. Of course, once I realize that I'm exhausted and that's why the whole world seems to hate me as it so clearly does not, I realize that I really have no reason to be upset at all and feel dumb for loathing in self pity which makes me feel worse.

In the end, it's nearly dinnertime and the fact that I have no class tomorrow means that I'm going to sleep in, get a full night's rest, and drag my brain out of its funk. I may over-think things, but I am good at forcing myself out of a bad mood, too.

him&her: boat shoes

he got them first. in fact, he's had the boat shoe bug for a long while now. she finally joined the bandwagon (...original? hardly) and instead of picking up a pair of toms, went for the sperrys. after a couple days, it's safe to say that the boat shoe craze is entirely justified. sturdy, cute, practical, and most of all comfortable. sorry, toms, you were fun for a while but you didn't even last a full summer before you got all holey and flimsy. i already know that this is the start of a beautiful and long relationship with these new kicks. and now she and him match wherever they go and can play the part of the obnoxious couple that buys matching shoes. if they wanted.

not them

there are the kind of people who don't have to study at all, don't get nervous for tests, have all the confidence in the world going into a test that they're going to do well, but i'm not one of them.

there are the kind of people who know exactly what they're meant/born/supposed to do with their life (however, i'm increasingly aware of how few of those there are), but i'm not one of them.

there are the kind of people who always have clean rooms and seem to do laundry every single week without fail, but i'm not one of them.

there are the kind of people who go on a lovely jog when the first sunny day pokes its head through the montana clouds that are stubborn as heck and don't lay in the grass after downing an ice cream cone, but i'm not one of them.

there are the kind of people who are seemingly perpetually tan, or become so at the drop of a hat, but i'm definitely not one of them.

there are the kind of people who can write short stories under 35 pages that are concise with a few awesome sub-plots that connect well with the main plot and end with the right amount of questions left unanswered and the right ones answered, but i'm not one of them (i like to find the small details in everything).

there are the kind of people who just seem like they can glide through life being handed every amazing opportunity ever without ever really failing at anything, but i'm not one of them. the kind that 'have it all together', but i really don't and i think maybe that's okay for now.

there are the kind of people who fall in love easily and frequently like it ain't no thang and can say so without wanting to pull their hair out or die at the thought, but i'm not one of them.

there are those kind of people but let me tell you, i'm realizing at nearly twenty years old that i really and finally like being my own kind of person in every silly and not-so-silly regard.

two years ago

on april 11, 2010 he told me he liked me for the very first time. i pulled out my old journals just for fun last night because i couldn't sleep and flipped to today's date not knowing that two years ago to the day it was the first time that he said it. i remember that night perfectly and i remember driving home with a huge smile on my face and writing about it seconds after i got home.

was i shocked that he said it? no... not really. the entire school knew. i thought i knew. but he was the last to figure it out. but to me, it was one of the sweetest moments of my life until that point. there were a couple people i'd "liked" but no one that really made me think was worth risking something for.

no one i'd liked enough, anyways.

i couldn't explain it, i couldn't decide why i thought that he was so special nor why i thought that there was something there. i didn't know, but i guessed and taking that leap of faith got us further than i ever expected it to. i can't believe that it's been two years or that it turned into what it did. i had an inkling that it was something, but i didn't know. i couldn't have guessed anything that would have happened after that. clearly, i didn't think we would survive the summer, do the long distance thing, survive the long distance thing, and make it to the same college. i don't know why or how, but it's been two years and he hasn't stopped saying it since.

i'm lucky.

spring giveaway!

i'm really, really excited to finally announce my giveaway!

bethany of his&hers vintage is sponsoring $25 of store credit to her store

to one winner and i am providing an extra gift set of my favorite sweats ever 

to victoria's secret that was shipped to me! 

in the VS giftset includes:

-one size Medium tshirt

-one size Medium pair of capris fleece sweats

all you have to do is be a follower via blogger!

to enter leave a comment below with your name

and a way to reach you! 

my giveaway will end on april 25th.

*bonus entries*
-follow on instagram (maggeygrace)
-blog about it (send me the link below!)
-leave a comment for each additional entry

*if you enter via twitter, simply tweet me your entry

but with the hashtag #lifesizepaperdoll!

visit bethany's shop for more goodies like these! they're lovely.
really, i'm not just saying that.