I have officially finished my first semester of grad school. And all I can think about it how badly I want Panda Express.

Oy Gevalt

I know it's strange, but I have a fear of not being able to speak Yiddish. That, snakes, and forgetting to put on pants when I leave in the morning pretty much sum up my greatest fears in life.

The fear isn't simply that I cannot speak Yiddish, but specifically, I fear that I if I were to run into Mel Brooks at, oh say the supermarket or movie theater, I would not be able to speak to him in Yiddish and tell him how amazing I think he is and I would feel like a total shmegege.

That being said, I've decided to pick up trying to learn Yiddish again.

Giving Thanks

I should publicly express gratitude with great frequency and not need to hide behind a holiday as an excuse to do so. But I never said I was perfect.... so in honor of the holiday, I figured I'd share a few things that I am especially grateful for right now. Especially after the last blog entry I wrote. I now feel the need to prove that my life isn't totally awful. In fact, it's pretty dang awesome (minus the boot cast).

So here goes. I am thankful for...

1. First and foremost, my family. My whole entire Big-Fat-Greek-Wedding-times-seven family. They are everywhere I go. Seriously. I mean, I have a HUGE family. These people alone make coming back to the AZ worth it. I had a lot of people I needed to get close to again.

2. Dreyer's seasonal ice creams. Pumpkin rocks, but seriously, I could eat Peppermint ALL DAY. Good thing they are just seasonal or I'd have to buy bigger pants.

3. The Tierra Rica Spanish branch. I started going in addition to my n

ormal single's ward because I felt like I needed to get my spanish solid. Best decision EVER. Suddenly, I have weekly dinner invites, a tummy full of tres leches cake, and invitations for Mexican weddings and Quinceaneras all over my fridge. All that=happiness.

4. My roommate Amy, who brings with her a total of 0% drama. And she's clean. And really funny. And gives me lots of healthy recipe ideas. And she like The Smiths. She's basically the perfect roommate.

5. My friends. I have the most amazing friends ever. That seems like something Paris Hilton would say in an interview with People magazine, and as much as that makes me want to hit the backspace key, I can't. I really have amazing friends. A lot of you guys reading this fall into that category and I hope you know who you are and know how much I love you. If I've ever read you my journal, bawled uncontrollably in your presence and you still speak to me, or flown somewhere to see you or be your bridesmaid, if we ever stayed up really late chatting about life and such, shared a twin bed, camped together, wrestled in water spilled on the kitchen floor, went to the desert to burn a hateful hateful calculus book, or burned anything together (yeah, I'm a bit of a pyro), driven across the ENTIRE country together, or imitated bagpipes while strolling through France, you fall into this category. And if you have (or your mother has) ever cooked for me, you DEFINITELY fall into this category (and so does your momma). Thanks for being there for me guys. Even though you are spread out all over this planet (which is so lame), I am so grateful to have had you in my life. And I really miss you.

6. upcoming vacations

7. lovesacs

8. Arizona winters

9. imeem.com & pandora.com. If you don't know what either is, just go. Right now. Just go and check them out. Trust me.

10. caffeinated crystal light. I may owe a master's degree to you one day...

11. DEEP-FRIED FLAVOR-INJECTED TURKEY. We Thornhills do not mess around with our meat.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

This is my life...

I've avoided updating my blog because I haven't had much in the realms of happy news to report. But hey, if news channels waited for "good" news to air, we'd be stuck watching reruns of Law & Order 24/7 and never getting a daily dose of that silver fox Anderson Cooper that we all (i.e. me) seem to need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So here goes. My update:

I got the swine flu. It sucked. It was especially ironic that just the morning before I came down with it, I was musing over the fact that it had been a decade since I'd had the flu. I still went to school to take a final. I had a fever and was shaking while I took it. Before you judge me for infecting everyone, any of you guys paying for your own school would have done exactly the same thing. To add to my list of reasons I hate Wal-Mart, I managed to get in a fender-bender in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I guess there's all sorts of things you should do when you get in an accident...get their insurance information, not admit guilt...I basically did none of these things. Luckily for me, I hit the nicest old couple in this country. When they called to tell me the bill would be over $1000, and I proceeded to cry (in between classes), the husband told me to "just not worry about it" and there was too much good in life to get bogged down by something so trivial. The next day they told me that they told the insurance that they didn't know who hit them and just had me pay the $200 deductible. They said I just had way too much life ahead of me and they didn't want this little thing hanging over my head. I left bran muffins on their doorstep a few days later with a thank you note for being so lovely and the day after that, when I got home from work and class, there was a thank you note that they had dropped off, thanking me for the delicious muffins. These people singlehandedly restored my faith in the general goodness of man. They'd have to be absolute saints to thank me for those muffins.

Rock climbing has been my vehicle for dealing with stress these last several months. With full time grad school and work and attending two wards on Sundays (I attend my singles' ward and a spanish branch and have callings in both), life has been really insane. THe kind of insane that I like, but nonetheless, insane. Rock climbing is what kept me balanced and brought me great joy. That is, until I managed to land wrong when I jumped down from reaching the top of a bouldering route. It began swelling immediately and I couldn't move it or put any weight on it. I iced it and could only lie there until I didn't feel like either vomiting or passing out (which took about 45 minutes). I then drove myself home. The next day I woke up and couldn't put any weight on it. So I went to the doctor and, as fate would have it, I fractured my fibula and had either a bad 2nd degree sprain or a 3rd. In other words, my life was sucking pretty bad at this point.This picture was taken not even 24 hours after the accident. A couple days later, my foot was this gorgeous purple and blue. It also swelled up much larger. I felt like elephant man. I kept wanting to exclaim: "I am not an animal! I am a human being!" (skip to 2:30)

So the doctor stuck me in this equalizer boot that I was going to have to wear until the possibility for me to bear children had passed. My life felt over.

However, after about 2 weeks in the boot and no follow-up doctor visits (screw that, I thought), I decided that my fibula was no longer fractured and my ankle no longer messed up. I stopped wearing the boot. I went to the gym to try and lose some of the 10 lbs I managed to gain in the two weeks of inactivity and subsisting entirely off of Dreyer's peppermint ice cream. I even did some rock climbing. Life was good.

That is until the doctor's office called and said they found more stuff on the x-ray and that I needed to see a podiatrist asap. So I went to a podiatrist who told me that I could either wear the boot for a few more weeks, then wear a brace for three months and do intensive physical therapy--or I could have surgery and a lifetime of issues. The choice was mine to make.

To my discredit, it took 45 minutes of Dr. McKay lecturing me and another 5 hours of weighing out the pros and cons of both sides in my mind before I actually decided to put the boot back on.

After the doctor's lecture, he then proceeded to try and set me up with a former patient.

No joke.

Confused

I'm confused. Since when did the "dia de los muertos" become "dia de los slutty costumes galore?" I mean, really. Ladies and gents. Really.

My facebook newsfeed has been streaming loads of Halloween pictures from people I know--people who any other day of the year appear quite unlike the aspiring porn stars they portray in these photos. I'd say a solid 3/4th of the images I've seen fall into this category. People who would never say "hell" and "damn" dressing as Victoria angels and speedo models. Confusing.

All I can say is that when I have children, I'll be spending October 31st with my hands over their innocent little eyes.

Bag lady

My conversation with a co-worker today:

Me: Geez Chris, I need to find a way to get more sleep. Check out the bags under my eyes.

Chris: What bags?

Me: What do you mean what bags?

Chris: Well, you've got that make-up under your eyes.

Me (getting super confused): What are you talking about? What make-up? Is my mascara running?

Chris: You have all that black under your eyes. All that eye shadow.

Me: Um, Chris, those ARE the bags under my eyes.

Chris: Holy crap. Erin, you need to get some sleep. You look like someone gave you two black eyes. I thought it was makeup.

Me: Chris, why would I use make up to look like a complete mess?

Chris: [silence]

Needless to say, full time work, full time grad school and an internship are all catching up to me.

Bad idea of the day:

Eating bluberry yogurt over 2 months after the expiration date. Bad, bad idea.