Pop's Heart

Thank you Dad.
for having a huge heart. and for passing it on to me. You love so many, and so much, and so fully. i admire that. and i respect that you never fail to make your love known. you give the sincerest compliments and the most heartfelt well wishes.
I try really hard to be like you in that regard.
I'm not always as confident as you, though, and it's hard sometimes.
but thank you for setting the example. Even though some days it's difficult to handle, I'm grateful to have inherited your tendency for strong emotion.
thank you for showing me how to feel.

Melissa Michiale

Werefolf

yes, folf. not wolf, folf. 

Hai Mahm, di es juat eye half bean dewing four da pasht phew weeeeeks.

love, me. 

ignore this creepy picture of George Harrison and enjoy the beautiful song as you scroll. this is mah jam. i listen to it while i'm walking to campus on Thursdays, because my 8:00 class is hard to wake up for, and i need to get pumped. 

1. Purple Potatoes are practically the only thing i ever eat anymore. potatoes for life because it's all i can afford. 

2.

1%.
live dangerously.

3. that time I did Imagine Dragons Scrabble justforfun and it got a normal amount of likes on Instagram. 

but then uhmm, the Cancer Foundations that Imagine Dragons sponsors re-posted it. 

and it got hundreds. aka i'm a big deal, so start lining up for autographs now before i get too swamped. 

4. I got Derek some new Harry Potter trading cards for his birthday and they didn't come until November. k. 

and this card referenced T-swizzle. 12 years early. 

5. that dinosaur on the bottom left corner. "Don't kill Stefan! He's the only one left of his family!"
because that was the last chicken nugget of that kind...

6.  Steph and i are almost finished with the second HP book

7. you sent me Jello in the mail, and Lime is my favorite. and i ate it to look like Mike Wizowski.

8. We have a "tender Mercy" wall. and i love it. it's getting way bigger than this picture, and they all make me really happy.

9. My apartment/favorite number

10. Steph and Sophia make me breakfast sometimes because they're angels. 

11. You sent me raisins and i was happier than ever because of it. 

12. in case you were wondering, this is true:

13. I legitimately live in a winter wonderland. show these pictures to Weasel and make her come join me in the fall :)

the real mountain of snow in front of my manager's house:

I love Hoar Frost. 

hashtag my complex is ghetto, but i love it. 

my preschool playground

13.5 oh yeah, i teach preschool and it's really hard but i love it :)

14. you sent me a cake mix (LOVE THAT.) but i only had one egg. so i used one egg, and then half of each of the other liquids and made cookies. THEY WERE AWESOME. so i shared them with my roommates.

15. painting painting painting painting is my middle name. 

portrait of sistas

me and Weas forever. 

16. Hey Mal and Jay, our old roommate left her trash can here and i lol'd:

17. I do my hair in really cool ways because i don't want to hire someone to do my hair someday when i get married. (dont' worry mom, still single here.) porque the most important part of a wedding is the fact that i'm literally getting married to man of my dreams, so why should i blow all the money i have on a giant party when we're about to start a life together? so i'm doing everythign by myself and people can judge me. don't care. 

anyway. here's my cool most recent updo with a creeper Soph in the background

the back. after church, a nap, and a living room pajama dance party, and being attacked by nerf guns. it looked flawless before church, haha. 

18. i know my roommate Stephanie because she served her mission in the good ol' Fre-yes. she has these magnets on our fridge and they make me real happy. 

19. FOR REBECCA. 

the health center on campus had sharpie-d out an incorrect apostrophe and i giggled, thinking of you.

20. some of mah best pals, right here.

21. I CHOPPED OFF MAH HAIR. 

i know it's really not that short. but it's WAY SHORT for ME. 

it definitely makes me look like a soccer mom:

but i ruv it. miss the braids, though. let me tell ya. 

20. FRENCH. TOAST. CRUNCH. 

SECOND GRADE FOREVER.

and by the way mom, this is my friend Travis. nope, we're not dating. Just pals. He's Soph's. He's like Christopher Michael Moen 2.0

and that's life lately. 

real happy. 

tryna be real brave. 

prolly trying too hard. 

also prolly don't care. 

you know. 

the usz.

love, melissa michiale

The 48-hour date

Got your hopes up, mom, didn't I?

it wasn't 48-hours long. just 7. but it maybe felt 48-hours long because we were with the same group of boys all weekend. 

We were together all last weekend, too. Because A) we didn't know anyone else and they are kind enough to invite us over and B) it was a 4 day weekend and 2 of our roommates were out of town, so we couldn't even do a reasonably sized roommate date. 

well then on monday after FHE 3 of us asked 3 of them on a group date for this Friday. 

they all gave an enthusiastic yes, which was a confidence booster. they're all great guys. 

thursday night we (our whole apartment, their whole apartment, and the other girl apartment we're grouped with for Home Evening) were supposed to climb rock walls.
we went to the place, but it was PACKED. so we went bowling, because it was only $3 and we all still wanted to do something. 

I suck at bowling. 

actually and honestly, i hate bowling. haha. i am horrible, and you go up one at a time, so my horrible-ness is only accentuated. I usually try to be funny and do like, crazy trick shots to spare myself some embarrassment. 

I got one strike, though! on my 9th frame. coincidence? I THINK NOT. NUMBER NINE FO-EVA.

anyway. 

i got 49 points in all. woo-hoo-i'm-the-worst-bowler-ever-yay

THEN.

On friday after preschool, i literally RAN home, took a shower, made the worst Lasagna of my life, and curled my Soccer Mom hair (which i actually love.) in preparation for our date with these 3 really cute, really fun boys from across the parking lot. 

after dinner, we all walked up to campus and carved each other out of soap! haha. I think it's really fun, and luckily, this group thought so too. that's not always the case.
It just so happened that "Hook" was playing on a GIANT screen in the next clearing over, and just around us was "game night" which is apparently a campus-hosted event every friday night. lol. and a journaist from our school newspaper tried to interivew me as pasrt of an article about game night because he thought we were just doing a game. lolx2 my date explained the situation, and the reporter was embarrassed and i felt a little bit bad but not really. lolx3. why is carving soap so weird and hard for people to get? 

can we appreciate the genuine concentration on Shaun's face, and in my posture, in this picture:

my date, Shaun, is a Graphic Design major, and i'm me. so we were both way too engrossed in our carving. the others had fun, but this was like, a real competition for us. ha.

My roommate Sophia and her date Travis finished first, and were struggling to stay interested in the rest of us while they waited for us to be done, so they went downstairs and microwaved their soap shavings just for fun.

Soph's rendition of Travis:                                         Travis' rendition of Sophia:

like i said, Travis and Sophia got bored, haha. 

My roommate Stephanie and her date Spencer were almost as engrossed in each others' thoughts as Shaun and i were in our soap.

But they finished not long after Soph and Trav.

this is a sideways (?) me with Stephanie and Spencer's carvings of each other. 

and then everyone got antsy waiting for me and Shaun to finish. 

I eventually decided i was done because i kept messing up, trying to fix it, and making it worse. aka his nose and chin were gone. so i finished and Shaun soon followed. 

He made us show each other at the same time, so then i felt like a 3 year old because his was amazing.

winners. 

my rendition of Shaun. which you can't even see because of the light. 

And his rendition of me. 

holy cow. 

i'm not saying it's a perfect replica, but HE WAS CARVING SOAP and made a human-looking carving. and if i do say so myself, he nailed my mouth, chin, and hair. 

even the back. seriously.

we joked about how flat the Soap-Shaun's face was compared to real-Shaun for about 2 seconds before the rest of the table almost staged a revolution because Hook was almost over and we were still carving soap, haha. i was fine with it. 

 the finished products.

Left to right: Me by Shaun, Shaun by me, "Sophia aka tooth Kool-aid man" by Travis, Travis' Head by sophia, Spencer including his plaid shirt by Stephanie, and Frankenstein's Monster slash 'The Scream' Stephanie by Spencer

Sophia, Travis, and Stephanie graciously volunteered their soap as sacrifices for the microwaves. coolest.  BUT IT ONLY WORKS WITH IVORY SOAP in case you were wondering...

also, we rode in an elevator facing the back. just to let people wonder what the heck we were on. 

then we played a wholesome Truth or Dare. SO MUCH FUN. and i feel like we really got to know each other better. like that Shaun and Spencer assisted a fellow 3rd grader in robbery without their knowledge. Or that Travis would miss hearing himself eat if he went deaf. k. 

p.s. i promise i was happy when this picture was taken. haha. I look annoyed, but i'm pretty sure i was just trying to look cool, calm, and collected and not like i was doing cartwheels in my brain. 

also, as a dare, Travis and Sophia did Yoga and i gained a new set of Abdominal muscles from laughing so hard. 

 when we finished Truth or Dare, we gave the Boys a blatant way out in case they were sick of it, but they brushed it aside and suggested that we go get ice cream instead. i love them. 

Before we left, Shaun found a campus-run compliment box and we all went crazy stuffing it with notes for our friends. Sophia and i laid down on the Ricks Seal, because tradition.

 

                                                                              

                                                                        here Travis almost squished us:

we crept on Steph&Spenc on the walk home

and then all piled in Shaun's car to get Ice Cream!

once we had it, we came back home. we ate more lasagna, ate ice cream, and played Heads Up, but mostly we just talked and laughed and sat pleasantly close to each other on the couch until ten minutes before curfew. 12:50 am. 

am

A.M. 

these boys stuck with us for 7 hours straight. 

the realest homies, every last one of them. 

hooray for best dates and best boys and best roommates.

and no mom, we're not getting married. but if nothing else, we'll have a really close Home Evening group this semester :)

also, 48-hour play = zero homework is accomplished over the weekend. 

distractions. 

happy ones.