Today's post is brought to you by real life. Haha ok, I guess all of my posts are technically real life with a little extra makeup, but usually I post a fashion related post on Wednesdays and this week I'm switching it up a bit. Not really because I meant to but because I was too lazy (and wet from all the rain) this past weekend to actually do a fashion shoot so here we are! And that's what I call real life. Being too lazy (or busy) to tend to my interwebs life so I get to throw something together, which I will say, is completely unlike me since I am a planner and usually incredibly organized. So grab a cup of coffee and join me for some random thoughts.

// Monday was National Tequila Day. You'd think being in the industry I'm in that I would have known that but somehow (I blame Shark Week and my crazy weekend) I completely overlooked it. However, seeing all the Twitter posts about it made me super sad I wasn't sitting at La Cava de Tequila with my girl, Kerri, enjoying a shot of Dobel or Casa Noble. Ker, I think we need to make up for missing it soon ;)

// Speaking of La Cava, I've been seriously missing my Disney passes lately. Despite the fact it's hotter than Hades out right now, I miss being able to walk around, people watch and of course eat and drink all the things. I don't feel bad about having 5 margaritas and 7 tacos when I walked 8 miles in one day. 

// My kombucha and water obsession has been real lately. I keep Snapping the GT's Cayennade and if you like spicy things... it is amazing. I've also recently become a fan of WTRMLN WTR. I wasn't sold at first but it grows on you.


// Despite the fact it's insanely hot out, I can't help but to want to spend as much time outdoors as I can. Call me crazy or a glutton for punishment but I'm happier outside even if it is melt-your-face-off hot. Of course it's always a little easier with a nice cold beer.

// I might be the only blogger in the history of fashion bloggers who did not purchase a single thing during the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale. Not. One. Thing. I was going through some of my pictures from last fall to see if I needed to replace anything and I realized I wear a lot of plaid and leather in the fall. I'm not sorry but just as a warning, it's coming.


// I've been doing a lot of stuff with my work blog lately including migrating to self-hosted Wordpress, designing a new layout, working with the CSS to customize it and even renaming our blog and getting a new logo which has got me both completely unmotivated to do anything with my personal blog as well as motivated to make design changes to mine. It's such a double-edged sword. 

And with that, I'm out! My co-worker just dropped a bomb on me and now I need to go talk to her about her life. Hope everyone has a fantastic rest of the week!

I'm not going to lie, I've written this post multiple times over the past few months and just never published it. Although those times it was different from the way I'm feeling now so now looking back it's almost like a private look into my feelings throughout the course of this journey. I'm usually a fairly private person on my blog, don't get me wrong, I blog about real life and things I do but I try to keep my friends (who aren't bloggers) and family private from here for the most part which might be part of the reason I never hit publish on those posts or it could be because it made it less real if I didn't say it to the whole world. I feel like I'm handling it pretty well now so I decided to finally hit publish.

For those of you who don't already know, my grandmother passed away this weekend. She was my last living grandparent and the one I spent the most time with growing up. As an only child I used to spend every summer with her and my grandfather in Bar Harbor, Maine for the majority of my childhood. I haven't gotten to see her much lately, but when I talked to her on the phone, she could talk your ear off. I don't know how many times I had to get off the phone with her strictly because my cell phone battery was dying and not because we had run out of things to say.

I found out my grandmother was sick on Mother's Day this year. She was diagnosed with colon cancer but at the time we didn't know how much longer she had left to live. I didn't call her right after I heard the news because I hard a hard time not bursting out crying but when I called her the next day you would have never guessed she was sick. She sounded exactly like her normal self, I can still hear her saying "Why hello there little one" (something she's said to me since I was extremely little even though I'm not little any more and she has younger grandchildren now) when she figured out it was me. It was hard to be sad for her by the time I got off the phone because she was so upbeat and positive about the whole thing. As weeks went on I started noticing her health deteriorating and she seemed tired more often. Several stints in the hospital later I found out in July that she only had three months left to live. It hit me again that this was really happening but things happened so fast from there that I didn't really have much time to process it. A little over a month later my grandmother passed away in a hospice before I ever even got the chance to go up and say goodbye in person. My mom made it out to see her a few weeks ago and because of technology I got to FaceTime with her one last time. The last few weeks were especially hard, watching her deteriorate so quickly when we thought we had more time was rough. Part of me thinks that she wanted to speed up the process and that she was ready to leave this earth. My grandmother passed away on her 63rd wedding anniversary. I like to believe that she left when she did because she had a date planned with my grandfather to celebrate. Love you.

Thank you so much to everyone for all the kind words, texts and messages. I know I said it yesterday but I truly do have such an amazing support system and have found so many amazing long-term friends through blogging.