Monthly Musings: August 2016

To be entirely honest, I'm not really sure where August began and where it ended. Was I even there? To be fair, it's really hard to keep track of time when you're not in work or school. I very rarely know what day it is anymore. Roll on the start of my first semester back at uni!

But, for all that, it's been a pretty good month. My baby niece turned seven (seven!) and, partly because I want to be the coolest aunt ever and partly to wind up my brother, I bought her a six foot unicorn. I finally renewed my gym membership and went for a swim for the first time in about 10 years (I felt as if I was going to drown after a mere two laps, but, hey, I'll get there eventually). The sun finally came out a couple of times and it was even warm enough for a dip in the sea!

So all in all August has been an excellent end to my summer!

Magical Moment

Here's a picture of my touching a cow. A cow! I've been terrified of cows for most of my life. Nobody (including myself) understands why. It's not like I endured any bizarre cattle-related trauma as a small child of anything, but, whatever the reason, even the knowledge that there could be a cow somewhere within a three mile radius was always enough to send me into hysterics.
I knew I had to deal with this fear. After all, it's not acceptable to turn 25 and still have a crippling fear of lumbering herbivorous farm animals.

So, when my friend Beth and I went to a local country park and came across a miniature farm, I repressed my initial instinct to flee, arms flailing at the mere thought that there could be cows lurking nearby. In fact I looked them square in the face, sidled up to their enclosure and touched one (after a great deal of hyperventilating and crying).

Monthly Musings: July

Look everyone! Monthly Musings are making a comeback and, whats more, they've had a bit of a revamp! Please contain your 'oohs' and 'aahs' as far as possible.

July has, for the most part, been a bit of a strain on my poor, fragile nerves because my parents decided to pull apart the kitchen and fit an entirely new one. In fairness, it was crying out for a makeover. Those counters were here when we moved in 14 years ago and they weren't even fashionable then (nor, if you ask me, were they ever).

But, as excited as I was at the promise of an oven that wouldn't burn all my cakes and a Tassimo machine for a never-ending supply of vanilla lattes available in the comfort of my own home, the dusk til dawn drilling, the dust, having to wash all the dishes in the bath and living off extremely questionable microwavable sausages and powdered soups eventually took its toll!

The main thing is I survived! And, beige diet and general kitchen drama aside, July has been a pretty good month!

Magical Moment

At 24 years old I'm still a festival novice. The mud, lack of running water and the whole sleeping on the floor thing really put me off. But this month I donned my wellies and obnoxiously large flower headband and attended the extremely exclusive Wellifest. Never seen it advertised in the Rolling Stones magazine? That's because it's a festival that my (extremely creative and slightly bonkers) cousin, Elinor, throws in her back garden every year. We had bands, we had hay bales, we had pulled pork, we even had an impromptu dance floor! And, amazingly, it didn't even rain...until everyone was a few cans of cider too many to notice.

I had such an amazing afternoon and took so well to the boho-chic festival style that I might even go to an actual festival next summer. You know, if I can get over my aversion to porta-loos by then.

#FAIL of the Month

The sheer amount of straw I managed to get in my Jack Daniels during Wellifest. I mean...how?!

This month I'm obsessed with...

Crips that aren't really crisps.

Since the kitchen has been off limits, I've been pretty much living on snack food (or at least that's my excuse). So imagine my delight when I came across a delicious alternative to crisps that I could exclaim, through a mouth full of crumbs, were in fact pretty good for me...well, better than ordinary crisps at least. This month I discovered a brand called Eat Real, which produces all kind of gluten free, vegetarian and vegan friendly crisps made from lentils, hummus, quinoa and veggies. My personal favourites are the Sour Cream and Chive Quinoa Chips. Nom!

Photo|EatReal.co.uk

If you're reading this and thinking, "quinoa crisps...really?!" then to you I say, "Yes! Really!"
They taste delicious, satisfy my midday cravings and have the same satisfying crunch as those deep-fried potato crisps without the guilt.

Book

This month I've been reading *The Count of Monte Cristo and, to be entirely honest, I think I'll still be reading The Count of Monte Cristo for a good few months to come. It's a impressive 1300 pages long, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's some kind of meandering Victorian novel that spends the first 500 pages setting the scene by describing the colour of the grass and the noise of the birds (though, in all honesty, I do enjoy those kinds of books too). It jumps pretty much straight into the action and it's fast pace, intriguing characters and the unexpected twists and turns of the plot have got me totally hooked.

Photo|BarnesandNoble.com

In case you're unfamiliar with the story, a young sailor named Dantes is accused of treason by his jealous acquaintances and is imprisoned for 21 years before he escapes and vows revenge on the men he thought were his friends. I'm only a third of the way through and I'm struggling to put it down!

Youtube Channel

 LeahXO

This month I was lucky enough to be part of a collaboration with a group of small Youtubers. I thoroughly enjoyed it since, not only was it a great way to find some new channels to binge-watch, but I got to meet some lovely new Youtube friends too!

So this month's Youtuber of the month simply has to be the lovely lady who organised the collaboration and got us all together. Leah's channel is all things makeup and beauty related. She has a really sweet personality and a Northern accent that makes me want to listen to her talk all day long. Is it just me or is listening to a Northern accent like cuddling up under a nice, warm blanket somehow? No? Just me? Ok.

Photo of the Month

Here's me living the life of a real-life fairy princess at Welliefest. I AM the Snapchat filter!

Instagram: @aimee_oddball

The soundtrack of my month was...

Miranda Lambert - Gunpowder and Lead

Not that I personally want to go out and shoot anyone (though there were a couple of times during traffic jams...). But there's nothing quite like a good old sassy country song to turn up nice and loud on a summer afternoon.

This month I discovered...

There are only 880 wild Mountain Gorillas left...in the whole world!

Photo|WWF.org

I've been on a bit of a Netflix documentary binge recently (there's only so much time you can waste re-watching That 70s Show after all) and last week I came across Virunga. It's a 2014 documentary film about the work of conservation workers in Virunga National Park, a 7,800 square kilometre World Heritage site in the Congo, which is home to lions, elephants, hippos (basically the entire cast of The Lion King) and 25% of the remaining Mountain Gorillas.

You see the gorillas, how adorable they are, how the conservation workers dote on them and literally give up their lives for them and you begin to think, "Well surely no one's so thoroughly evil to the core that they'd consider hurting these poor, beautiful little balls of fluff."

Cue the arrival of the British! (There's a reason all movie bad-guys have British accents.)

A company called SOCO International barges in and starts exploring for oil (which is totally against international law). Throw in a rebel army, some tanks, a French journalist and a member of the Belgian Royal Family who is prepared to lay down his life to protect the park and you've got yourself one heck of a documentary. It will have you screaming at the TV and despairing at the greed and selfishness of the human race (even more-so than you do when you're fighting your way through the January sales).

Definitely go and check it out!

(Affiliate links marked with *)

Swapping High Heels for Trainers: How the Ultimate Girlie Girl Survived Sports Camp.

Well, I've shaken off the jet lag, caught up on those two months worth of sleep, and the green tie-dye on my fingernails is finally starting to fade. A month ago I was a camp counsellor in Maine. I'm amazed at how quickly I got back into the monotony of the real world and began to feel as though it was all just some kind of hazy dream.

There's no excuse for abandoning you all for so long again without a post. True, my first four days back on UK soil were dedicated purely to sleeping with short intervals of napping (and a brief pause for pizza on the fourth day), but since then I've had ample opportunity to sit down with my laptop a write about my experiences in the USA. The only thing that's been stopping me is...well, where do I even begin? How do I organise two months worth of memories (99% of which now seem totally bizarre when I look back on them) into a blog post?

Well, I'm going to give it my best shot.

For those of you who don't already know, my agency paired me with an all boys' sports camp. Yes, yours truly, collector of high heels and avid lip-gloss enthusiast, was went to work in an all boys' sports camp. Have I ever given any indication to anyone that I am good at or have any interest in sports? (Aside from cheerleading, of course, but come on! Half the fun of that is the sparkly bows!)

No, I don't do sports.

But all the same I ended up in an all boys' sports camp with only three other girls to keep me sane company. Naturally everyone else there was a sports enthusiast. It didn't take long before I was exposed as the freak who couldn't so much as kick a ball.

At some point during the first few days of orientation, we were sent to meet the basketball coach for a talk. Alarm bells started ringing as soon as I realised the 'talk' was taking place in the basketball gym. By the time we got to the gym and the coach told us all the line up at the edge of the court, I had by-passed panic and had simply resigned myself to the fact that humiliation was imminent.

"Ok, I want you all to sprint up to the free-throw line and back."

Wait! What? Why are you making me run? I didn't know this job would involve compulsory sprints! I don't run. I fall!

But, above all that, was another concern. I put up my hand.
"Ok, it's just...which one is....I don't know...which line is that exactly?"
The coach looked at me like I was a Martian (which was actually pretty accurate in this instance) and said, "You do know you're in sports camp, right?"
"Yes."
As if I could forget!
"Wait, which sport are you coaching?"
"...Arts and crafts."
And just like that my secret was out. But at least from that moment on we were all on the same page. Don't ask me any sport-related questions. Don't throw any balls my way. Don't expect me to care about the difference between Michael Jordan and Lebron James.

That's not to say I managed to avoid sports for the rest of the summer. After all, it was a sports camp!

There was the afternoon I was scheduled to coach tennis. I'm not entirely sure why, when there were two professional tennis coaches, they had to bring in the arts and crafts director who hadn't so much as picked up a racquet in over ten years. I quickly got demoted from teacher to student...and was by far the worst student on the court. It's very demoralising when the nine-year-olds you're meant to be teaching are significantly better than you.  

Then there were football games I was asked to referee ("I'm sorry, I have no idea what the offside rule is so you'll probably need to find someone else"), stray balls I was asked to throw back to their owners, the afternoon the ice rink was opened up for free-skate. As much as I tried, there really was no way around it. I had managed to avoid sports for the first 23 years of my life, but suddenly there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

All I could do was try my best and hope I didn't get hit in the head with a ball.

And maybe all that compulsory sport did me some good after all. I mean, by the end of the summer I could actually catch a ball and, for the first time in my life, I could do a respectable push-up! 

But even so, I think I'm going to be taking a break from sports for a while. You know, like the next 30 to 40 years.

I've Returned with my Sanity (ish): My Summer at an All Boys Sports Camp

Well, what a long, bizarre two months those were! I successfully survived a summer working at an all boys sports camp in the USA, although my opinion of cheese has been dramatically altered forever and it may be some time before I can look at a football without being reduced to random outbreaks of twitching and tears. In fact, I may have reached my quota for all things sports related for the next thirty five years. 

I had every intention of keeping my blog at least somewhat up to date while I was out there. I lugged my out-of-date, 5 tonne laptop all the way to Maine with the best of intentions, honestly. I just didn't have the time. I mean, how is it even possible to be awake for so many hours and still have so few minutes free?

One night I did find myself with a little bit of extra free time and, being the dedicated blogger I am, I opted to attempt writing up a post through my haze of utter exhaustion instead of collapsing on my bed to indulge in some American Netlfix.

And this is what I wrote...

Hey y'all! Apologies for abandoning you for over a month without much more than a few half-hearted snaps on Instagram, but when you're a camp counsellor time is like gold dust. I work anywhere from 12 to 17 hours a day and, during my one break, I face the daily struggle of trying to decide whether my highest priority is showering or napping. I never thought I'd consider shaving my legs to be a luxury, but now that point is long since passed.

And yet, even though the days are seemingly never ending, even though the bags under my eyes have gotten so bad I'm concerned they may be permanently engrained on my face from this day forward, and even though I've been reduced to wearing my hair in plaits and cutting eyeliner out of my life completely, I really am enjoying myself.

I arrived in the USA on June 21st after a 4 hour car ride, a punctured tire, a 7 hour flight and a 90 minute wait at border patrol. I was welcomed into the country by a grumpy Bostonian at border patrol who sounded eerily like an angry version of Buddy Valastro from Cake Boss. Thus my American adventure began.

What do I even begin to say about camp?

This job ranks very highly on the list of most bizarre things I've ever done and, let me tell you, that says a great deal. At least five times a day I look around and find myself thinking, 'is this just a long, drawn out, extremely bizarre dream?' Of course, it could just be that I'm so sleep deprived by this point that my brain is actually starting to melt out through my ears, but...

And that's as far as I got before I literally passed out on my keyboard. I am not exaggerating when I say I was like the living dead. Most days I survived solely on questionable coffee and sheer willpower.

But, despite the long hours, sleep deprivation, being forced to watch more sports in seven weeks than I'd planned on watching in my entire life, and constantly finding glue in my hair, it was fun. I made some good friends and I have some amazing memories. Yes, there was also plenty of humiliation scattered throughout, but, for this post at least, let's skim over that.

And now I'm back! I hope you didn't miss me too much!