MadelineAwesome

my boyfriend should also wear these really great swimming trunks. so beautiful. really.

lady on burda style made them. soo good.

in other news: only three days left til I leave for college. Its a pretty stressful time. I have so much on my to-do list that is kind of time sensitive and then i have all the people i want to see before i leave. Here are some of my iCal events and to-dos before i go:

8/20
FAM DINNNER AT MARCHE 530
ADRIAN HANGOUTZ
ANON, GOOD NURSE AT REGGIES

8/21
MORNING SHOPPING WITH IAN
DINNER WITH ERIC

8/22
AIRBRUSH TSHIRTS WITH SASHA

and then i leave on saturday! that is a lot of stuff to do considering i also have to pack the other half of my stuff. and complete this to do list:

Compare PC and Mac music libraries and burn the difference.

Memorize gracias ala vida and it had to be you lyrics.

snacks

laundry detergent

kleenex

Start PRINCESS BRIDE tshirt

tell dan wakenfield that his voice is not just morrisey, it also has a touch of stephen malkmus

Finish “OUR BAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE” and give it back to adrian

hamper

umbrella

showershoes

i mean, i guess i can wait to tell dan about his voice. But really. everything else is pretty time sensitive. mainly i have to pack. thats the big deal. and i am such a “stuff” person that i really need to have my things or i will be uncomfortable in my dorm.

oowee i’ma miss this pretty city.

here is another painting deal.

my graduation party was on saturday and it was a complete success. My closest friends all came and mingled with my family and life coaches. And by life coaches I mean i have weird old friends. Like 40 year olds. Its complicated. Don’t worry about it.

but the party was great. Aside from one disastrous number, Vague Babies performed pretty well. I made a dress the night before that turned out to be pretty adorable and worked out well for me. Pictures to come.

Today i’m going to get some ballin bubble tea from BeBoBa and then return some sound equipment and go see my lawrence, kansas buddies– Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk.

still suped up about this scanner. i had a good time last night digging through a big box of pictures and finding the best pictures to upload to the intarwubz. here are a bunch with some explanations.

best year book picture i’ve ever taken i think. good sweater, good hair, decent smile. totally good. totally 6th grade.

in third grade my family went to Italy for spring break. here are some pictures:

the flickr caption on this one is “lollipop[e]s” i so clever.

little white speck in middle of all the commotion is pope john paul. holla. he is my favorite pope.

hey JP. sup?

this is in ireland. land of my father. actually, land of my great grandfather. he was born in the upstairs of this pub. (picture circa 6th grade/2001)

this is a picture of two girls completely psyched about getting their hair done for their first communion. (1998/2nd grade)

communion hairrr.

my gramma loves me.

dear american girl, you can make checks payable to ME.

so my backyard used to be a jungle. i love log. (circa 1995)

CUTEST TINKERBELL EVER. dont even try and refute that. (circa 1995)

before moving to the Chi, we lived in Burnsville, Minnesota. It snowed. that is not my house in the background. that is the babysitters house across the street.

uncle steve and aunt julie got married. These are all the cousins. before steve and julie had kids. i think i am going to use this picture as our facebook groups default. good idea madeline. and yes, my cousins and i have a facebook group.

first day of kindergarten.

my brother is an Ultra-Artist.

hey/hay/hei is for horses. i wish i still had that shirt.

my dad got my mom a scanner like 2 or 3 years ago and we never opened it. yesterday i was sitting in this dirty ass room feeling ambitious so i cleared off the desk and rearranged all the machines and got rid of all the unnecessary crap. I opened the scanner box and set it all up. Now this desk has some nice feng shui. or something. Nice centered monitor with speakers on either side, phone, printer, scanner. and there is still room for me to stash some crap while i work on computer shiz.

basically, i have wanted a working scanner for quite some time. i even forgot we had this scanner sitting around. so i scanned a few things today. rest assured that embarassing and/or cute pictures of me as a child are to come. for now:

image 1 includes my receipt from reckless records last week and a completely overworked to do list of school assignments. to break it down for you: first i listed all my classes chronologically and wrote down the stuff i needed to do in them. then i ranked all of the assignments in order of importance AKA how poorly i’m doing in that class. then finally i took the time to remind myself of the location of all the materials i need to do this assignment. here is an update. this is from march 6th and to date i have completed two of these. i really need to get down to business.

image two includes a mix CD that my friend Adrian made for my friend Emanuel but i had to be the courier service for. too bad i intercepted it and i took the liberty of putting this on my itunes before forwarding it to eman. i actually still havent given it to him. its sitting right here. and i even saw him today. oops. i’ll get it to you eventually. it also contains a bobby pin, and a Madeline who is completely psyched to be having her picture taken some day in Kindergarten in her velour dress. holla.

hey internet. long time no see. and by that i mean not that long, but considering how much i’ve been up to i guess an update is due.

So I guess really I just was bored when I was in mexico last week and so i sat down at my brothers laptop and decided to make a list of things to blog about upon my return. in my initial plan these were all going to be individual posts, but as this trip gets further and further away, i figure i’ll just get it all out now. also now you might not be as sick over my thoughts of mexico. whatevzzz.

here it goes:

• Bribing cop

We had been out of the airport no more than 20 minutes when we were asked to stop by the cops at the speed bumps (what is that all about? speed bumps every 3 blocks on the highway there!) and basically the guy was like ‘you are not wearing your seatbelts and i just found out that you are staying 50 minutes away from here so it would be really inconvenient for you to come back and pay a fine tomorrow so i am going to tell you to do that so that you will give me money and i will let you go.’ i guess my dad picked up on that and gave him a twenty. we went on our merry way. wearing our seatbelts.

• Friendly babies

i guess people really hate when babies and toddlers are on airplanes. It doesnt bother me too much. The sound of babies crying isn’t that horrible and I have some complex where i enjoy watching the embarassed faces of the parents and the annoyed faces of the other passengers. especially when the toddler is in first class. It was especially funny for me because on the way home, i sat in the emergency exit row so i had MAJOR LEG ROOM, the flight was in a new plane so it had touch screen video games for even coach people, and basically all the jerks paying top dollar for their first class flight had to listen to a whiney screaming toddler. The point of this little anecdote though is that on the flight there there was a couple with an adorable 7 month old boy who cried a little bit, but when he was not crying he was smiling at me. it was cute. i wish i had talked to them more and been like “WE LIVE IN THE SAME CITY. I BABYSIT!”

• Geico commercial

THERE WERE LIZARDS EVERYWHERE. IT WAS LIKE LIVING IN A GODDAMN GEICO COMMERCIAL! SRSLY.

• Chernobyl on the beach

i am reading this book ‘voices from chernobyl’ and it, as you can guess, is a really depressing book. It felt wrong to be reading it in the sun on the beach of the gulf.

• Pool/beach dilemma

so yes. the condo we stayed at was steps away from the water, but it was also steps away from the pool. fewer steps from the pool actually. i told myself before going that it was the dumbest thing to have the pool on the beach. only assholes would pick the pool over the ocean. But i got there and realized that i am an asshole. the pool was so convenient. No nasty saltwater, no rocks, no sand, same awesome view. the pool was great. not to say i didnt go snorkeling and scratch my leg a might scratch, but i loved the pool. i am such a jerk.

• Stealing a salt shaker

after completely outfitting our refridgerator with flan, tortillas, beans, avacados, salsa, chorizo, eggs, plantains, milk and jalapenos (we are mexican at heart), we realized that many of the things we got wouldn’t taste good without salt. so we went to a restaurant for dinner one night and took the salt shaker. it was a very sophisticated operation. don’t worry. we returned it at the end of our stay. i dont think they missed it.

• Mexican microwave

THE MICROWAVE HAS A SETTING FOR FRIJOLES. AWESOME.

• Drinking age is 18!

I am 18. The drinking age in mexico is 18. Not that i was all of a sudden a lush or anything but it was nice to be able to join my family in ordering a drink with dinner.

• Snorkel—float, coral, cute little fishies, cut my self…

so as i mentioned, i went snorkeling. It was an experience. I mean it wasnt the colorful, discovery channel coral reef and rainbow fish, but it was really cool. I cut my leg on like a rock or an urchin. I dont know. Just that when i got out of the water my mom was like ‘you are bleeding.’ so it was a good thing i was still not snorkeling when….

• SHARKS—happy they weren’t there before when I was bleeding my leg out into the carribean.

we saw some baby(?) sharks off the coast. it was cool. there were like 2 or 3 of them swimming around and eating shit i guess. My blood probably attracted them. Sorry sharks, this fish is on dry land. EL OH EL.

• Camera troubles—insert picture here, followed by description…

basically the camera stopped working like 4 days into the trip. it was lame. all the pictures are gone. so here is a list of things i had planned to put pictures of on here: lizards, the view, salt shaker, microwave, me drinking a corona, sharks, me swimming with the dolphins, assorted embarassing pictures of my family. sorry.

i came home from mexico to find my BFFs had becoming BFFs with eachother. its cool though. they didnt leave me in the dust or anything. but i think i now know who my real friend is. the one who didn’t lose her present less than 24 hours after getting it. THANKS ALOT SASHA. good job sarah.

with tomorrow being thanksgiving and stuff, i thought i’d let you know what i’m thankful for. dont get too excited or anything. this story is actually pretty lame.

so my grampa came to stay with us for a little while and basically for a number of reasons we put my nice ass bed into my brothers room (broman is at college) so that my grampa would have some space. good. great. wonderful. my grampa is an amazing d00d who deserves all the shit-that-is-good in the world. the downside of this arrangement is that i am stuck with this weak-ass futon that is all defluffed and stuff (not puff’n’stuff.) so after a week of less than perfect sleep on this sack of rocks, i slept on my bed for the first time last night. it was AMAZING. so, in conclusion, i am thankful for my bed and un-thankful for weak-ass futons.

NOT THANKFUL:
 

EXTRA THANKFUL:

shoutouts to sasha and pat and sarah and maybe someone else for getting me that duck pillow for my birthday last year. it must have cost all of you a fortune. <3

EMBROIDERY UPDATE: HAIR IS LIKE DONE! now i am just scared to start the skin. it probably wont end up looking like him. whatever. also: he’s coming to chicago on 3/1. AWESOME.