Assorted, Rambly Thoughts on the How I Met Your Mother Finale

Obviously, I'm not holding back with any spoilers, so if you haven't seen it yet, and plan on watching it at some point, obviously skip this post. Or read it now. I'm not your real mom. OR AM I? You don't know, because THIS SHOW IS RIDICULOUS.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a few of my reactions. For the record, I thought we were off to a really great start. At about 8:40, I realized this might not end well. At 8:50 I was starting to get into some serious angry texting with my friends. At 8:59 I threw the remote control across the room.

HOW ARE YOU GONNA DO ME LIKE THAT, CARTER BAYS? WTF DID I DO TO YOU?

So let's get into it. My thoughts are all jumbly, so we're going to go at this in a listy kind of way. For clarity's sake, or something.

Ted seeing The Mother for the first time
Loved it. Love it. Can't get enough of it. I got chills. I teared up. They could have ended the series right then and I probably would have been happy with it. (I'm glad they showed more of their relationship because I really do love them together.

Ted and Tracy have a surprise baby!
I love that they get knocked up before their wedding, and I love that they don't take a traditional path to marriage. 2005 Ted would have pushed for traditional everything, and it was so amazing to see future Ted be so cool and laid back about marriage. So refreshing! I loved it. And their cute little Thursday wedding was perfect. I've never been the biggest Ted fan (go figure), but this made me forget all that. THIS is what character development is supposed to look like.

Barney's Baby
Okay, this surprised me a lot, but I think I'm okay with it. I mean, I still think he and Robin should have worked it out (and they still could have, Robin would be a great stepmom to anyone, just not Ted's kids), but it was pretty adorable to see Barney fall in love with a baby girl. THAT is some full-circle character development. We'll just ignore all the RIDICULOUSNESS that went on between the divorce and the baby. Barney deserves better than that weird regression.

Friendship as an adult... life really does go on
This was probably the part of the episode that made me the most emotional, because that is some real ish right there. Friendships change so much when you're grown up - we've all been the Robin, leaving our friends behind, and we've all been the Lily, mourning the loss of a friendship. As heart wrenching as this part was, I liked it, and I'm glad they did it.

The Swarkles Divorce
I think it's absolutely ridiculous that we spent the entire season at Barney and Robin's wedding weekend just to see them get divorced ten minutes into the next episode. Divorce happens to happy couples sometimes. It's disappointing and messy, but it happens. If a Barney/Robin divorce was the plan, they should have spent less time at their wedding, and more time showing the downfall. I don't think I'd be as upset about their relationship ending if I had a better understanding of why it happened, because I have a pretty hard time believing that traveling around the world with the love of your life is THAT draining on your relationship.

Ted and Robin. 
Ugh. UGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH. The reasonable part of me understands this pairing. Ted wanted kids, Robin wanted her career, so obviously they each end up with those things.. and then each other. But why should we believe it's going to work out this time? Robin is still a career woman, and Ted has the kids and the house in the suburbs. Who's making the changes here? Why does Robin say no to Ted for the better part of a decade, and then immediately fall for him as soon as he becomes unavailable? WHY IS THIS ALL THE WORST?

The Mother.... really is dead?
Are you kidding me?
For the record, I do "get" them killing the mother. Obviously, it's a dark ending, but that's what happens in life. Sometimes you lose people, way before you're ready. (Are you ever ready?)

But the real world is full of disappointment - do we really need it in our fictional lives too? Would it be so terrible to fall in love with a couple (or two, or three) and actually have them work out? Tracy is adorable, and may have deserved a happy ending even more than Ted. She loses her fiancé, spends the next five-ish years dealing with the grief associated with it, she finally meets the love of her life, and then she dies? Seriously? That's it? She said she always wanted to eradicate poverty... did she ever find a job in that field somewhere? What was the mysterious illness? Was it a short battle or a long one? How did Ted cope? How did it affect the rest of the gang? I would be much more okay with this ending if they didn't gloss over it so quickly, but it got a 30 second mention. A wedding that ended in divorce got an entire season. It just doesn't make sense, and quite frankly, I think it's lazy writing. She deserved more. We all deserved more.

Everything Else
I'm glad Marshall and Lily had a third baby, but I wish we knew a name/gender.
I wish there was at least one scene with Ted/Tracy's kids + Marshall/Lily's kids playing together (or something).
I'm glad Robin ended up with a bunch of dogs.
Did Lily pay Marshall back after Ted and Robin really did end up together?
There's no way that How I Met Your Dad show will be successful now.
Why was Bob Saget part of this at all?
WHAT ABOUT THAT PINEAPPLE?

Mostly, I'm just frustrated with how rigid the completely fake rules of television seem to be. Originally, the creators wanted Ted was supposed to be with Robin. Fine. But situations, people, places evolve after nine years - the fans accepted Barney and Robin together, and fell completely in love with Tracy. So why ruin all that? Who said you had to stick with your original plan no matter what? Things change - this show taught us that - so why didn't the creators? I just don't get it.

And anyway, what's so wrong with people living happily ever after?

PS - a lot of people have compared this to the LOST finale... but I loved the LOST finale. I actually thought it was perfect. Does anyone else think the two compare?

PPS - did everyone love the blog reference? I did!

Five Favorites: How I Met Your Mother Edition

So, my beloved How I Met Your Mother ends... tonight. TONIGHT! Can you believe it? If you didn't read my blog last year, you missed how emotional I was about The Office ending. Well... this is no different. I'm really upset about it. What am I going to do now that it's over? What am I going to watch? How long will this episode live on my DVR? (Probably forever. Sorry, G$.)

Anyway, in honor of the finale tonight, I'm coming at you with all my favorites.

Five Favorite Episodes
The Bachelor Party 
"You just winked!" "No, I didn't!" *wink*
This is the first episode that we really get a glimpse of Barney Stinson, Nice Guy. You know Barney's spent his entire adult life Barney makes a real mess of Marshall's bachelor party, and Marshall threatens to dis-invite him from the wedding. Lily comes to Barney's defense, explaining to the group that Barney flew to San Francisco to convince Lily to come back to New York so she and Marshall can get back together.
How Your Mother Met Me.
"I like to believe in people. Besides, what are the chances we're both serial killers?"
I loved this episode.
Drumroll, Please
"A drum roll?! That's it? So what you just said good night, came home and performed a drum solo?"
Ted and Victoria meeting. Their almost kiss. Robin crying in the bathroom. Their actual kiss at the end. Perfection.
Something Borrowed
"It's for the bride!"
This is actually the first HIMYM episode I saw - it was a free download on iTunes or something, so I watched it one morning while I was waiting for one of my classes to start. I was instantly hooked. All the characters were so relatable and wonderful, and I knew immediately that this was a show I was going to love. Luckily, my friend Kelsey already had the first season on DVD, so I was able to catch up quickly.
Natural History
"Yeah, old stuff's great!"
In this episode, the characters see their past selves in museum exhibits. They realize that they're not the people they used to be - and that's okay. Great, even. We all need that lesson at some point in our lives.

Five Favorite Characters
Victoria. Still love her. I think she's adorable and charming and really good for Ted. If the mother wasn't actually The Mother, I would totally want Victoria to be the mother (which is cool, because apparently, if the show had ended after season 8, she would have been. That's why they brought her back).
Mickey Aldrin. I know he and Lily have had their issues, but I love the relationship that they have now. (And Chris Elliot is hilarious.)
The Blitz. Awwww, mannnnn. The Blitz addressed something we're all familiar with: FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. Also, I've loved Jorge Garcia since, well, forever.
Ranjit. Hellooooooooooo, he is the best. The end.
Patrice. I know, I know, no one asked me (LOL GET IT?), but there's just something about Patrice that is just HILARIOUS to me.

Five Favorite Jokes
The Slap Bet. I'm probably way more entertained by the slap bets than I should be, and I'm so glad that Marshall got in his last slap before the show ended.
Interventions. There are times where we want to do interventions on our friends, right?
Challenge Accepted. We should all go through life with Barney's outlook on challenges.
Lawyered. This one has made it into my vocabulary.
High Fives - specifically, Lily and Marshall's. I wish I was that in sync with anyone. Right?

Five Favorite Rules
You know how Barney always says "I only have ONE rule..." and then he says a different rule each time? These are my favorite rules:
Ask yourself, “What would Ted do?” Then do the opposite. This is pretty self explanatory, right?
Never order a “small” beer. I mean, it's boring. And probably not economical.
Black tie is never optional. You'll never regret dressing fancy, ever.
Never pass up a free sample. That's just common sense.
New is always better. Okay, this might not *always* be true. Sometimes, old is better. But SOMETIMES, new is definitely better. Okay, most of the time.

Five Favorite Predictions
Victoria is still actually The Mother. I know it's not going to happen. But WHAT IF she does the wedding cake, and Ted sees her there, and then they run off together? Don't rule it out, that's all I'm saying.
We find out that The Mother isn't dead like everyone is speculating. I'm not sure if you've heard all these 'The Mother Is Dead' theories, but I think they're ridiculous. I think that'd be way too dark for a show that's been so lighthearted and hilarious.
Lily finally makes Marshall Pay Up. Remember their bet about Ted and Robin ending up together? Hopefully at some point tonight they address that bet and Marshall finally pays her. I REALLY hope it doesn't end up with Marshall saying "not yet" again because if there is one more reference to Robin and Ted getting together again I will SERIOUSLY LOSE MY MIND. That would be the worst end to the series ever.
Ted's first interaction with The Mother will be incredibly weird. This isn't as much of a prediction as it is just a fact. Ted is the worst, and it wouldn't be surprising if he made a huge mess of this whole thing.
Ted's retelling the story because they're all super famous now and they're making a movie about Ted's life - that's why Bob Saget is narrating the story, instead of Ted. Okay, this one's probably pretty outlandish. BUT IT'D BE PRETTY COOL, RIGHT?

Birthdays.

I try really hard to live by this motto every single day. I think it's a good message - you know how wonderful and exciting EVERYTHING seems on your birthday? Having that positivity all year long is a great thing.

It just happens to be even more exciting today because it really is my birthday!

Celebrities: They're just like normal people, except $$$$$. Also, more Twitter followers.

So I was watching the Oscars on Sunday night (and loving every minute of it, in case you don't follow me on Twitter) when I realized that I could see myself being friends with 99% of the people that I was watching on TV. Maybe it's because I just love loving people, but everyone seemed like they were just having so much fun, you know? I want to be part of that! I want to get dressed up and throw on a million dollars worth of Lorraine Schwartz jewelry and eat pizza. That is literally my dream life.

And I mean, it could happen, right? Besides appearing in multimillion dollar films and living in really fancy houses, celebrities really aren't that different from us. Really.

Reason #1: They take selfies. If you didn't crack up when you saw Ellen get that whole A-List crew together for a selfie, you're a lying liar who lies. I've told you already I love a good selfie, but this just takes the cake. And it wasn't the only one - there were a ton of selfies on Sunday night. And they were all awesome.

Reason #2: They send group texts. You know you send group texts. Welllll guess what? Aziz Ansari does too? And while ours are about mundane stuff like where we're going to dinner, other people's are about the improv they're doing on their wildly successful sitcom.

http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/47159326421

Reason #3: They curse when they're surprised. Did anyone see Lupita Nyong'o drop an S bomb after she won on Sunday night? Hilarious. And everyone saw it. Everyone.

Reason #4: Okay, they just curse. 

Reason #5: They trip. And fall. We've all been there. You're super dressed up, going to a fancy party, and you trip. But it isn't just a teeny little fall, it's an epic fall in front of a whole room full of people, and EVERYONE saw you. In our case, it's just a room full of (hopefully) friends. But when you're Jennifer Lawrence, it's in a room full of 3000 people, plus the ten million or so watching at home. Either way, we've all felt that embarrassment.

Reason #6: PIZZAAAAAA. I have never felt more connected to a group of people I've never met, and I probably never will again. Sometimes, you just need pizza.

So really, there isn't that much of a difference between me and Ellen. Besides her impeccable comedic timing. And our bank accounts might differ slightly. And I've never broken Twitter. But seriously, we're basically identical.

March is the best month of the year, and if you disagree you can get out of my face.

Okay, well not REALLY. You can stick around, because I like you. BUT: March is still the best month of the year. Let me tell you why.

It's Women's History Month. Um, you've met me, right? So you know how much I love celebrating awesome women. A whole month of celebrating awesome women? Yes, yes, and yes.

The Weather. Okay, while I'm typing this list (on Sunday afternoon) it's 70 and breezy. Monday it's supposed to be 25 and icy. SOOOOOO maybe I should take this one back? But March is when we start to see kinda consistent warmer weather. Here's hoping March has more 65 degree days than 25 degree days this year.

St Patrick's Day. I'll be honest, I haven't always been a huge fan of St Patrick's Day. I don't like things that compete too closely with my birthday, and also, turning 21 two days AFTER St Patricks Day in 2009 kinda ruined it for me. But I'm past all that now, and I love it again. Mostly because I have a lot of green in my closet, and I enjoy wearing it ALL OF IT, AT THE SAME TIME.

It's also Caffeine Awareness Month AND March 7th is National Cereal Day. Just put all my favorite things in one month, why don't you?

Ahem. My birthday. I love birthdays. Your birthday, his birthday, everyone's birthday. I also REALLY love my own birthday. I usually start a countdown way before now, but I've been slacking this year. Either way, only 16 more days!

The March Equinox. Some cultures recognize the March Equinox as the first day of the new year, so if you didn't set any New Year's resolutions this year (or didn't stick with yours, hi), now's your chance to get back on it! Also, "equinox" means "equal night," so there will be equal amounts of dark and light on that day. That's pretty cool.

Spring! This deserves its own bullet because it means WINTER IS OVER. OOOOOOOOOVERRRR. This is even more important than my birthday.

Eight Things Millennials Can Learn From The Kelly Blazek Fiasco

In case you haven't heard, Kelly Blazek runs a Job Bank in Cleveland, Ohio for people seeking jobs in the communications, PR and marketing fields. While her listserv boasts over 7,000 subscribers, it's an invite-only group, requiring you to submit a resume and/or an explanation of how you fit into one of the three fields listed above upon application.

Several people over the last few years have reached out to Kelly Blazek, asking to be added to her email list. While most people made their way onto the list without incident, there were a few people who received unkind (to put it nicely) replies from Kelly. And one apparently made the fatal mistake of attempting to connect with her via LinkedIn.

Rather than just ignoring these requests like a normal golden-rule-following American, Kelly decided that it was her responsibility to put these good-for-nothing, lazy, entitled Millennials in their place. I mean, someone needs to, right? No one in the entire history of the universe has ever spoken negatively of Millennials ever. Click here to read her responses. It'll blow your mind.

Here's the deal: we all need to be better about dealing with the word "no." If Kelly didn't want these people on her email lists, fine. But why not just send a "Sorry, you don't fit the criteria to be added to our email list. Have a nice day." letter? Why attack the recipient? I only say this because I don't want you to think that I believe the senders deserve pity, or that they deserve to be given something just because they asked for it. I don't. I DO believe that they deserve respect. Respect that Kelly Blazek didn't give them.

While I'm obviously writing this with a healthy level of snark, I actually don't care to trash Kelly Blazek any more. I'm not going to say anything about her that dozens of people haven't already said. BUT: I do feel like there are lessons that we as Millennials (and humans) can learn from this debacle.

Rejection happens. Deal with it. Sometimes, you don't get the answer (or the job, or the response) that you want. It happens. One of the things people love to criticize Millennials for is their lack of grace when dealing with rejection. Show them that you're mature enough to handle it.

Follow directions, man. Seriously. While there's absolutely no excuse for anyone to send such a scathing email to someone they don't even know, the reality is that Kelly Blazek HAS stated that she only connects with people she knows personally. If someone explicitly tells you not to do something, don't do that thing.

Don't get too caught up in social media stats. When you spend a good chunk of your time cultivating an online presence, whether it's through blogging, email groups or something else, it's easy to become obsessed with watching your numbers grow. Our girl KB obviously got too caught up in her social media bubble, touting her 7300 email subscribers and 1000 LinkedIn connections any chance she could. But at the end of the day, they're just numbers. Your friends, your family, and even your coworkers don't care how many people get your emails, or how many people respond to your tweets. They care if you're a good person. Don't get caught up in the social media bubble. It'll ruin you quicker than you realize.

LinkedIn IS for connecting with people you don't know. Contrary to what Kelly Blazek thinks, connecting with someone on LinkedIn is not the same as recommending them. There's a whole separate section for that. The entire purpose of LinkedIn is to connect with people - anyone and everyone - who could potentially help you find a job. No one ever complained of their network being too big.

If you ever end up with a "Communicator of the Year" Award, act like it. The irony of Kelly Blazek sending such a hateful email with "2013 Communicator of the Year" in her email signature is just deliciously ironic, right?

If you position yourself in a way that suggests you want to help people, don't be surprised when people, you know, ask for help. People aren't mind-readers, so be clear about your expectations. And if you hate people and their questions so much, don't create a job for yourself where your main responsibility is helping people.

Don't speak in generalities. I'm guilty of this one. I try not to be, but I still do it. We all do, because it's easy. It's easy to blame something on a group.
But here's the deal: we get frustrated (rightfully so) when we're grouped negatively as Millennials. We complain that it's not fair that we're all grouped into the same unfair category. But when we make blanket statements about the older generations, about how they're boring or anti-technology or economy-ruiners, we're doing the exact thing that we hate. And that doesn't do anything to help the us-vs-them dichotomy. It just makes it worse.

Nothing is private, and the internet is forever. Really. Forever. There have been some people who have stated that the recipients of the emails should have just kept them to themselves and moved on with their lives. I disagree. There is obviously a pattern of douchery in Kelly Blazek's interactions with people she considers beneath her, and that should be exposed. With that said, you should always assume that your communications will be forwarded, published, or otherwise distributed. Nothing is truly private anymore, and it's absolutely astonishing to me that people keep making mistakes like this and then act totally surprised when they get caught. Get it together, people!

Lessons Learned: Figure Skating Edition

If you're anything like me, you've been completely wrapped up in the Olympics for the last few weeks. I love watching it all, but I especially love watching all the figure skating. I mean, who doesn't, right? Who doesn't love beautiful people glide around in sparkly outfits?

And then I started really paying attention to these skaters and what they were doing, and I realized we could really learn a lot from them? "Alyssa, that's silly" you might be saying to yourself. Nope. Figure skating is full of life lessons. Just full of them. I'll prove it to you.

There are always going to be people judging you. Always. It's inevitable. So take a deep breath, and leave it all out there on the ice - er, whatever your "ice" is. Is it a big presentation at work? Are you meeting your significant other's family? Just do your best, and the results will follow.

Trust people. No matter what. Throughout the Olympics, I've been entranced by figure skating. I finally figured out that one of the main reasons I find it so fascinating is because during pair skating, the girls fall backwards, without looking, right into their partners arms. They have to trust that their partner is going to be there to catch them.

If your situation isn't working for you, create a new situation. In 2010, when Tatiana Volosozhar's original skating partner retired, she had trouble finding a good replacement partner in her home country. Instead of giving up and retiring, she made the move to Russia to skate with Maxim Trankov.
Of course, changing your situation is much easier said than done, but if you know something isn't working for you, for whatever reason, take the steps to make some changes.

When you fall, you gotta get back up. Did you see Jeremy Abbott's epic fall during the men's short program last week? You could tell he was in a huge amount of pain after he hit that wall. Most people would have skated off in shame, myself included. But Jeremy took a few seconds to compose himself, and then finished his program.
Sometimes, we fall. It could be a little stumble that no one even notices, or it could be a huge wipeout that a billion people see. Either way, you have to take a second, brush yourself off, and get back to it. No matter what.

Sometimes, you just need to throw on a sparkly dress, forget about everyone else, and just do your thang. Look at these beautiful women:

Do you think they care what anyone thinks? Nope. They don't. They're too busy being awesome. And that's what we should do. Be awesome, do what you love, and forget everything else.

Lately...

Ever since my junior year of college (i.e. when I moved off campus), I've started to really hate the snow. It's kind of a shame, because I have a lot of really happy memories of sledding with my neighbors when I was younger, but now, I just kinda hate it. I think I'd like it more if I lived in a place that was better prepared for the snow, but I don't. I live in the south. And since we don't get snow that often, when we do, it wrecks everything. Eeeeeeverything. And it's usually less than an inch of snow.

But this week, we got about eight inches. Eight! As it was coming down on Wednesday, I found myself constantly looking out the window, admiring how pretty it was. Granted, I was able to relax because we had plenty of food (and beer) and Garrett was able to get home before it got really bad. If he had been one of those people who had to abandon their cars on the highway, it'd probably be a different story. But he wasn't, so I'm grateful for that.

So MAYBE the snow cracked my cold, icy, snow-hating heart... maybe. Just a little bit. It was really pretty.

There's something really pretty and wonderful about the first footprints in the snow, right?

My dad ran a half marathon in Myrtle Beach on Saturday, and I seriously think it is the coolest thing. I mean, I couldn't run 13 miles? Could you?

Spending the weekend at the beach was lovely. It was still cold, but there wasn't a single snowflake to be seen. And it was awesome.

And as far as everything else goes, I'm still doing really classy stuff like drinking milk out of wine glasses while I eat girl scout cookies, and finding new, not-boring recipes online.

Some of our favorites have been sriracha honey chicken (add a little bit more honey), tortellini soup, and chicken and bacon wraps. I also made my first meatloaf and it was actually decent, so that was exciting.

What about you guys? What's new with you?

Galentine's Day: It's ladies celebrating ladies. It's like Lilith Fair, minus the angst. Plus, frittatas!

If you watch Parks and Recreation, you know exactly what Galentine's Day is. If you don't, let me give you a quick rundown: Every February 13th, aka Galentine's Day, Leslie Knope takes all her best ladyfriends out for a fancy breakfast. They celebrate friendship over brunch. It is literally the perfect day.

In honor of Galentine's Day, I've compiled a list of the eight best fictional female friendships (say that five times fast), in no particular order.

Ann and Leslie from Parks and Recreation

The originals. Maybe it's because I know Amy and Rashida are friends in real life, but you can just tell these two women really do care about each other. 

(I'm still not over Ann leaving the show.)

Lucy and Ethel from I Love Lucy

Everyone needs a hilarious BFF. Even if that BFF always finds her way into trouble (and drags you with her.)

Thelma and Louise from Thelma and Louise

The original 'Ride or Die' friends. I don't know about you, but I love a pair of beautiful women who don't take any crap from ANYONE. It's my favorite.

Annie and Lillian from Bridesmaids

I guarantee that if you watched this, you saw yourself in Annie at some point. And this movie has one of my favorite lines ever: when Lillian says "Why can't you be happy for me and then go home and talk about me behind my back like a NORMAL PERSON?!" because again: we've ALL been there. We've all bitten our tongue at some point, and then word-vomited all over the place after we left.

Mary and Rhoda from The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Mary and Rhoda proved to us that you and your best friend can want the exact same things out of life without competing with each other for those things. Also, Rhoda reminds me of myself: outspoken, opinionated, and super sarcastic. I loved her.

Robin and Lily from How I Met Your Mother

I've always wished for a group of close friends like the people on How I Met Your Mother, but I've always really loved Robin and Lily's friendship. 

Everyone in A League Of Their Own

The camaraderie! The girl power! The splits! These women have it all.

Jess and Cece from New Girl

I don't have any friends that I've had since I was little, so the fact that Jess and Cece have memories together from their entire lives is just so stinkin' cool. 

Happy Galentine's Day, my beautiful friends! I love you all.

Why I'm Glad I... ignored all those other articles online about getting married at a specific age and did whatever the heck I wanted

I know you've seen the post that's floating around called "23 Things To Do Before You Get Engaged at 23." If you haven't somehow, you can read it here. Of course, there were people who agreed and people who didn't. Rebuttals started popping up. People got offended. Arguments ensued on nearly every social media platform. This article came out over a month ago, but for some reason, it's been making the rounds on my Facebook in the last week, so it's been on my mind.

Obviously, this is hardly a new topic. Kate Middleton earned the nickname "Waity Kaity" when she waited a few years before she married Prince William. People defended her, saying that she is right to wait so long. There are articles about it all: I'm glad I got married young, I'm glad I waited, I'm glad I got divorced, I'm glad I lived with my partner before marriage, You should NEVER live with someone before marriage, I'm glad I never got married at all. People have OPINIONS, y'all. And they can't wait to defend them on the internet.

My question to every single one of these people is: why? Why do you feel like you need to defend your life choices to a bunch of yoyos on the internet? Why do you feel like every article about someone doing something differently than you is a direct attack worthy of a rebuttal? Whooooo caaaaares?

There are always going to be people who do things differently than you, both on the internet and in real life. My junior year of college, my best friend Jenna and I couldn't have been in more different places in life - she was getting married and committing to one person for the rest of her life, and I was regularly rolling into our apartment on Sunday mornings with my heels in my hand. Do you know how much time we spent hashing out our differences with each other? Exactly zero minutes.

All of these pieces have some good points. If there are goals you want to accomplish in your life before you get married, you SHOULD work to accomplish those goals. But goals are goals, no matter who you may, or may not, be married to. If you're in a relationship that is over, you SHOULD take steps to end it if you want to end it. (Easier said than done, of course.) There are benefits to getting married young, and there are benefits to waiting. You can argue any side of anything.

Just because it worked for one person doesn't mean it will work for the next, and to me, that's the major flaw in most of these articles. Statistically, the divorce rate IS higher when you get married when you're young. There will always be people who aren't one of those statistics, but you can't deny that the statistics are there. As Garrett would say: math doesn't lie. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but that's a decision you make that's yours, not someone else's.

I've gotten flack about my relationship. People have said that I'm too young, that Garrett is too old, that we should wait, that I should have never started a long distance relationship in the first place. And yeah, I probably wouldn't recommend that someone else get engaged to someone that lives four hours away because yeah, it was pretty freakin' hard, but ultimately, you make your own choices. Your choices are yours, not other people's.

The point of all this is: stop trying to justify your choices online. No one knows what's best for you except you. As long as you're confident in your own choices, everything will fall in line. And if it doesn't? You know, that's okay too.

My Weekend, in Gifs

This weekend was actually a pretty good one, so naturally, I didn't take any pictures. I know, seriously, I'm the worst blogger in the universe.

But I still want to tell you all about my weekend, so to make up for the lack of actual pictures, I have found some pretty hilarious and accurate gifs. They're going to make you feel like you were actually there. I promise.

Friday night, we went out to dinner for Garrett's cousin's birthday. We went to Flemings Steakhouse. Have any of you ever been there? To summarize it for you: $$$$$$$$$. It's so expensive, they don't even have prices on the menu online. When we found out the party was taking place here, this is how I felt:

And then I realized that I was going to miss the Opening Ceremonies on Friday night because of $dinner$, and that made me SUPER angry.

As it turns out, I didn't miss that much anyway, because apparently all the Olympic rings didn't open. (I obviously DVRed it and watched the whole thing yesterday.)

And then I realized I was going to get to dress up, so that made it a little bit better. I love dressing up.

And then we got to the restaurant, and started eating, and everything was so goooooood. So the rest of the night went something like this:

With maybe a little bit of this:

We slept at his cousin's house on Friday night because alcohol. but there was no sleeping in on Saturday morning because they have kids. Two kids under five. Hanging out with them is something like this:

But thankfully, coffee.

Also, I forgot my face wash/moisturizer, so I woke up looking something like this:

After spending most of the day over there on Saturday, we finally trekked back to our apartment. Well. we stopped at Cookout first.

We lounged around the rest of the night, and then slept for approx. one million hours.

Sunday morning we woke up feeling super refreshed. After some morning snuggles, we got a few errands done, like grocery shopping and taking the recycling to the recycling center. (Can you believe our apartment doesn't recycle? I'm still not over it, and we've lived here for six months.) Anyway, we have meals purchased and planned for the whole week, and that is just the best feeling.

I also swung by Target to look at the new Peter Pilotto stuff, and I want it all. I think it's one of my favorite Target collaborations. I always get excited about them, and then they're just a little TOO out there for me. But this one is floral and obnoxious in the best way. Even though we all know how I feel about florals.

The rest of the day was for the Olympics. Specifically, figure skating. Although I can't watch too much ice dancing without thinking about Blades of Glory. And then I just LOL to myself.

Oh, and we ordered pizza. I mean, I had to cancel out Friday's fancy meal with kid food the rest of the weekend. What are you gonna do, right?

So there you have it! That was our moderately exciting, fancy expensive weekend. I hope these hilarious gifs and witty commentary made up for the lack of actual pictures. I'll start being a better blogger.... someday. Maybe.