Summer Land's Blog, page 9

#SummerWeen is a thing now.

Halloween is hands down my favourite holiday. And this year, I’m going to give you more than just candy and a slutty nurse costume. I will be giving away a few signed copies of my book to the best Halloween Costume Summerlandish Selfies! Just be sure to post them either on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and mention @summerlandish and tag #SummerWeen!

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Bring It On Pregnancy, Birth & Baby EXPO

Save the Date // Nov 15th, 2014 // Bring It On EXPO! 

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Buried Memories.

When I was visiting my mom, Donna, in Florida last month, we drove past a quaint restaurant called The Yearling. It’s themed after Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s famous novel. I asked my mom if she’d ever eaten there. As she twisted her hair while simultaneously driving (moms are such multi taskers!) she said, “Didn’t you eat there with Ryan and his family in high school?”

Even though high school was only a short ten years ago, I had to really think about it. Something about that restaurant looked super familiar.

And then I remembered.

Ryan, my super cute high school boyfriend, his family and I had been staying at the beach for a week. On our way back home, his mom, Yvonne, made me stop singing Shania Twain’s “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under” to ask if we were hungry. Of course we were. So Ryan’s dad, Duke, pulled their oversized giant American made SUV over and Ryan, his little brother, Chris, and I all hopped out.

The Yearling restaurant was amazing. It’s good ole’ southern loving country food. All around us were stuffed squirrels and eagles and, well, enough taxidermy animals to make the Hunting Man proud. The food was also something to write home about. Quail and alligator were probably the most mild things on the menu. I finally ended up choosing frog legs and I’m pretty sure some sort of turtle stew. Which made me sad, but I felt like I had to have the full “cracker” experience.

As Yvonne finished up her brisket, my belly started to churn. Apparently the quail, frog leg, turtle stew combo wasn’t sitting well. I got up and asked where the toilet was. Chris chimed in, “It’s this way! I have to go too. Come on.”

I followed his adorable 12-yr-old bounce and stopped cold when I discovered that there was only one unisex bathroom available. “Ladies first!” he politely chirped while holding the door. On one hand I was dying to poop. On the other hand, I knew that what I was about to do was not okay and should not be inhaled by a small child.

I awkwardly suggested that he could go, but then I felt a tiny fart slip out so I hurried inside instead. I dropped two nice logs and felt relieved. And it didn’t really smell! Hooray! So much poop anxiety for nothing. Or so I thought.

The toilet wouldn’t flush. At all. I lifted the back, but honestly that equipment was more foreign to me than an uncircumcised penis (at the time…) I had no idea what to do with it. Soooo I did what any girl who was eager to not have her boyfriend’s little brother find her poop would do. I grabbed wads of toilet paper, reached into that toilet and picked it up. I then did my best to hide it in the garbage can. Since I was already man handling my own poop, I went the extra mile and used more toilet paper to wipe the little skid I had left in the toilet bowl.

I washed my hands in scalding hot water and then opened the door to face Chris. And now RYAN. Oh GAHD. Ryan rushed in, pushing Chris to the side. Apparently his quail poop wasn’t willing to wait either. Before I even had time to think, Ryan was now inside the tiny room with my poop. SO MUCH FEAR. What if he could smell it? Dear GOD. How would I be able to explain it?

All of the sudden my mom tapped me on the shoulder, “So have you eaten there?”

I must have zoned out. “Uh yeah, actually. With Ryan’s family. I pooped in the toilet and it wouldn’t flush so I picked it out of the toilet with my hands and put it in the trash can.”

My mom started dying with laughter. “How could that have not made it in to your book?”

To be honest, I’m proud of myself for being able to block it out of my mind for so long.

(Image via here.)

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Please Exit Through the Vagina

Post by Summerlandish.

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JUST DON’T.

Don’t be mean. Don’t bully. Don’t expose someone. Don’t steal. JUST DON’T.

I cannot believe that over 100 women have had nude photos STOLEN from them. WHY? HOW? How could someone be so creepy and mean spirited that they’d go to great efforts to hack into someone’s phone and steal personal photos? I am seriously getting so bummed out by mean people. Why would you want to purposefully hurt someone like that? If said person hasn’t made the nude photo public, then why would you think it’s your job to share it? We can only hope that these victims are strong enough to not be affected by this horrendous act of bullying and theft.

Like it or not, our lives are now lived mostly online. While I like to see social media as a positive thing, more and more often, I see the Internet being used for evil. Just because you’re active online, doesn’t mean that you are public property. We need to treat the Internet and people’s lives with respect. You wouldn’t go into someone’s house and steal photos from their picture drawer, would you? (The correct answer here is NO.) Then don’t steal from people online. You might as well be breaking their window.

To all of the women (and men) who have been violated by someone online, I beg you to please be strong and to know that you are still amazing and beautiful and that NONE of this was your fault. Lots of people take naked photos. Unfortunately, some people are also dickheads who like to steal photos from people. #nudiestrong

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GUEST POST: JESS O’REILLY

If you haven’t subscribed to the blog, Comfort is for Wimps, you’re doing it wrong. This shit is hysterically awkward.

Exhibit A:

I Date Girls In London: Confessions Of An Experience Seeker.

I’ve been on a Tindate.

Correct, I said a Tindate: a date enabled by Tinder.

Shut up. Everybody is doing it.

Tinder – it’s so hot right now – it’s the new fuss-free dating app everybody is using to create awkward moments for themselves.

Of course my Tinder date was a complete fail…primarily because the date was with another female.

**Waves awkwardly at family and colleagues**

I thought I might be a lesbian, you see. Guys haven’t really been working out for me lately and sometimes I develop fuzzy feelings for pretty women when I’m drinking alcohol.

So when girls kept popping up on my Tinder, I decided to start swiping right for the ones I thought were more attractive than myself.

Only cream of the crop for me thanks.

Laura was her name and she was really intelligent. Like super dooper, my-brain-could-beat-chuck-norris’s-brain intelligent.

Usually when courting, you will find that I am the smart one. This girl however, had me using my dictionary app on at least two words per text.

She was a lawyer… and she asked me for a drink.

(WHY DON’T MALE LAWYERS ASK ME FOR A DRINK?)

So I went. And I rated it about 8 out of 10 awkwards:

She was early, I was late. She drank beer, I drank gin. She bought two, I bought none. She was a lesbian, I am straight.

So apart from the fact that we both get our period, which is a new concept in dating for me, the conversation was also a little dry.

I could make her laugh but I stopped trying to do that after a while because I didn’t like the sound of her high-pitched laugh. She couldn’t make me laugh so I just asked her questions about her smartness.

Things really started to peak at awkward level when we started talking about our lesbianess. She had clearly known about her sexuality from an early age and she started asking me questions about my lesbian history. She knew that I had seen guys in the past and (fair enough) wanted to know about my “girl-on-girl experiences”.

So I had to lie…

WELL, I didn’t want her to think I was wasting her time!

As far as I was concerned, this date was me “experimenting”… So I wasn’t intentionally trying to waste her time.

But I still felt a bit bad.

So I made up a tall story about a girl I used to “see” in Sydney, who unfortunately didn’t work out because we didn’t have the “marriage of the minds” I was looking for.

Needless to say, she saw straight through me. A polite kiss on the cheek to end our wonderfully awkward evening and I haven’t heard from the smart lesbian lawyer since.

But despite the nerves and the slight sense of guilt I had for taking time out of her busy schedule, I had something else…

…lesbihonest, I had a little life experience.

This is a guest post by Jess O’Reilly and was previously published on her epic blog, Comfort is for Wimps. 

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Fear and Roaching in Santa Monica

When I put on my long navy and white striped Lily Pulitzer maxi skirt last June, I left my Santa Monica hotel feeling fun and flirty. Little did I know that when I would remove it later, I would be feeling as defeated and violated as a wannabe Hollywood actress after a long day on casting couches.

I was meeting my friend, Toonie, and her boyfriend, Jeff, with my baby, Daisy, for dinner. We chose a fun restaurant called Stout because not only does this place only offer amazing burger combinations fit for stoners and breastfeeding moms, we scored outdoor seating. With a stroller.

I was in heaven eating a burger with Brie and fig paste (foodgasm times a thousand) when Daisy made her first peep. I quickly picked her up and rocked her back to sleep in my arms. Her little human weight felt so nice against my body. She was the perfect amount of heat on that early summer’s night.

As Toonie talked in detail about a new work project, I felt something on my right leg. Maybe it was my skirt. I did a light leg shake. Nope. The mystery weight was still making moves. I tried to hold eye contact with Toonie, but the thought of this unidentified creature on my leg started making my pulse sky rocket. Immediately I pictured the worst possible thing: a roach. I AM TERRIFIED OF ROACHES. (Seriously, this is my third essay on them.)

Trying not to freak out, I thought maybe it was my skirt tag. When the creature moved higher than my tag could, I grabbed for my thigh and felt its body. What I did next could not be helped.

I threw my baby.

Like straight up screamed for Toonie and tossed my bundle of joy without really checking if Toonie’s arms were open and ready. I then slapped the shit out of myself and ripped my skirt up in an effort to rescue myself from the roach raping happening south of my hips.

Frantic, I couldn’t find the roach. We all looked. And looked. But then I remembered my child who was now crying in Toonie’s arms. When I got her back, Toonie was half laughing/ half truly concerned, “You really over reacted. I mean- you threw your baby.” And then Jeff chimed in, “Yeah. And are you sure it was even real.”

To be honest – I hate roaches SO much that I didn’t want it to be real. I wanted the sweet fact that I may be losing my mind to be the truth. Anything than an actual roach on my body.

But then we saw it. Climbing up the wall like it was Spidey. Its back muscles were huge as each leg gripped to the jagged brick to hoist its (clearly sterroided) body up to the top of the building to seek out its next prey.

We all shuttered. I begged someone to kill it but the SoCal locals pleaded with us to let it go. There was a full minute of relief as it climbed higher and higher.

We went back to eating and my blood pressure came back down.

As I took a sip of my drink, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Then I heard a THUD on Toonie’s back. And then we heard Toonie.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!! The roach had crash landed on her back.

She screamed BLOODY MURDER before sprinting through the restaurant to the bathroom. It was back. “It” being the most aggressive roach in the continental United States. Now the other patrons were jumping up and looking for it. However, because of our reactions they thought they were looking for a rat. I didn’t correct them.

Toonie came back sobbing and hyperventilating and could barely be consoled. When she was finally able to breathe she looked at me and said, “So you throwing your baby was actually a pretty mild response.”

Considering that this roach came back for seconds, I am going to agree that I handled that situation well. I mean, I was just trying to save Daisy (and myself) from the Santa Roachica.

 

For More Summerlandish stories, get my book here!

(Image via Trip Advisor)

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Summer and Paul: The Reality Show(S)

If you are what you eat, then I am what I watch.

Over the past few months, my husband, Paul, and I have been completely consumed by renovating our new house. Not only did we buy a nice piece of crap fixer upper, we bought land to subdivide. Suddenly our day jobs of  “author” and “coal miner” became real estate mogul and contractor. Lest we forget the biggest role we took on this year: parents.

Yes, times are busy in the Land-Jongsma household. There are walls to be knocked down, DAs to be submitted and tiles to be grouted. In an effort to be able to afford this, we’re all living in one bedroom while the rest of the house gets an overhaul. We have takeaway nearly every night, wash our camping forks in the bathtub and do our best to make our daughter, Daisy, comfortable in the walk in closet. (To be fair, it’s a pretty big closet.)

With every nail, we get closer to civilization. But as they days roll on, I’ve noticed that my life is slowly becoming the reality TV shows that I am obsessed with. We’re basically The Block meets Hoarders meets Super Nanny meets Newlyweds. See our photographic essay below:

 

The Block: Summer and Paul

BEFORE

 

AFTER

 

Stay tuned for more The Block: Summer and Paul: Next month // Kitchen Reveal!

NEXT UP: Hoarders: Summer and Paul

 

Summer is currently undergoing counseling to stop buying clothing and toys for Daisy since they seriously have nowhere to store them.

 7PM: Super Nanny: Summer and Paul

After two weeks of SOS, Daisy now happily sleeps in her own….closet.

End your night with: Newlyweds: Summer and Paul

 

Check back for more updates soon!!!!!!

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7 Things Better Than Monday

(Image via How Stuff Works)

 

(Image via Erin Has Thoughts)

(Image via Film.com)

(Image via Getthefive.com)

(Image via OneGuyRambling.com)

(Image via Mobypicture.com)

(Image via Full on Fail)

 

 

 

 

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Meanwhile in Australia…

 

 

This spider is in Mudgee. I live in Mudgee. Therefore this spider could potentially crawl on me in the middle of the night. Or day.  Goodbye, sleep.

(Spider victim/ Image credit: Cate Simpson)

(GIF found here.)

 

 

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