Category: Life

First Time: Tubing.

Charcuterie board and tubing, that’s how we do it for birthdays.
There’s a place in Newaygo, Michigan where you can take your tubes or kayaks and just float along the Muskegon River. It’s about 4 fun hours in the sun if you just let yourself float naturally. I’ve actually never been tubing like that before and every time my friends go, I’m stuck working the whole day. I finally got the day off and let’s just say I took advantage of it haha. Let me tell you about my first tubing trip.

Hello, hi! I should start off with some facts about me, I don’t know how to swim, tread water, and struggle with floating, I am only 5 feet tall, and my skin sunburns very easily. This is Kona and I before we left to go tubing. (No dogs were harmed, Kona actually doggie smiled every time he got picked up) We’re alive, well, and sober. My friends also roasted the fuck out of me the rest of the day for dressing like a hooters girl LOL.

I would also like to add that my tube was very comfortable and I would recommend it to anyone who is trying to last minute find a tube. Where I live, river tubes are sold out everywhere and I was lucky to find this ducky tube on Amazon and have it shipped to me the day before the trip. Plus, who doesn’t like a big floating duck with sunglasses? Some cons of it being camo is that it gets hot in spots and the dragonflies on the river thought I was a tree so I was surrounded by them. I’m terrified of bugs, so trying not to abandon ship and drown was a challenge.

The river was a smooth ride besides some random big rocks and logs, but you could easily maneuver yourself around those. About half the time the water was shallow enough for you to get off your tube and swim or walk in the water. There was plenty of times that I could get off my tube.
My friends and I brought coolers just filled with food and drinks, we even packed a charcuterie board for the two birthdays that we were celebrating. Fanciest water food selection ever. It was just *chefs kiss*. Well I started to drink a little more than usual since the sun was beating down on me and guess where I decided to fall off my tube? Yep, a deeper part of the river. Only my luck LOL. I could touch the bottom, but the water was up to my neck and getting back on the tube was a struggle, if only it stopped there. Turns out I drank way too much and I ended up throwing up and falling asleep right after for the rest of the trip. I held on the my friends hand for the last 30 minutes as I was slowly waking up super drunk, but hungover. TYPICAL SALLY. Thankfully, my tube was big and I’m just small, so I was sleeping beauty on a river. I did get sunburn after just recovering from my Colorado one. I’m really surprised that I haven’t gotten sun sickness yet, these sunburns are pretty bad haha

When I was alive during the trip, I did get video footage and I’m working on making a video, another hobby that I’m trying out. At the end, I was able to gather myself up and pack the cars. We just all went back to my friend’s house and grilled up some hotdogs and hamburgers with asparagus, tried to sober up so I could be fine for work the next day. What a day it was. I absolutely love my friends and I would risk my life all over again to go with them ♡

Until the next adventure!
SALLY ♡ T

CHEERS TO 25.

CHEERS! I am now a quarter of a century old. I literally came down from the top of the world to turn 25. It’s crazy how old I am and still get asked if i’m a minor, just blessed I guess. I won’t complain about it when older, but until then… YES I PROMISE THIS IS NOT A FAKE ID!

I am no where near where I thought I would be at, but I’m perfectly okay with that. I’m in no rush to grow up and I’m pretty much just living my life the best I can. I just hope it stays like this a little longer. I’m in that ‘I can go anywhere to travel whenever I want’ phase in my life and it’s been such a dream. I also have the best group of friends and love them so much. They set up a charcuterie picnic for my birthday and it was perfect, not even covid could ruin it. ♡

CHEERS TO 25 AND THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE OF MINE, xoxo
SALLY ♡ T

Two Places.

I’ve felt like I’ve been in “The in between” lately. I’m not really sure how to get out of it or if this is something I need. I can’t tell if it’s just emotions of my birthday coming up or if it’s really how I feel. Is it coming from our new reality that’s clashing with the lifestyle that I’ve always and only known before? Is it part of past history or is it the overcoming of it? Healing and life are messy.

Physically and mentally I am not aligned and I can admit that loudly. That does not scare me, but it is concerning and has been difficult to deal with. When I say I feel like I’m in two places at once, I don’t mean just between my heart and mind or physically and mentally, but within that one thing as well. My thoughts are in two places, how my heart feels like it’s in two places, my well being is in two places, and what you see the outside is in two places. Every aspect of my life is currently in two places then battling their adjacent/opposite, whatever it is. It’s been really difficult to know where is right because honestly they both feel right. One just takes more strength than the other.

Let people heal and leave them alone if you have no business in it. With everything going on in the world, I’ve seen too many times where people are just sticking their noses in where they don’t even have the right to say anything or trying to manipulate the situation into their own narrative. You can try to sympathize and be there for support, but unless it deals with you don’t try to insert yourself unless that person is willing to let you in. You are doing more harm and can really set them back no matter how far they’ve come. Let others heal on their own time. It’s okay to back off, sometimes people just need to find the strength to pick themselves back up. Don’t manipulate someone else’s process so you can feed off of it. It’s not suppose to be an ego boost. Let them keep their healing to themselves and search for your own.

SALLY ♡ T

QUARANTINE: How it helped me.

Can I just start with a WTF IS HAPPENING 2020? I really had a rough 2019, so I was excited to walk into a new year and leave all the shit behind, but then things just got crazy in a different way. I was already feeling lost before the quarantine and overwhelmed with work and trying to have a social life.

Quarantine was kind of rough for me to adjust too in the beginning. I actually felt a little more overwhelmed and lost because of all of the restrictions. I’m use to working a lot and my life just being busy all the time with my job, my relationship and with friends. Working 60 hours a week and having a social life is tough. I think I was only getting 4-6 hours of sleep a night. Going from constantly busy to not having any work and not being to able to hang out with friends was a drastic change for me. I didn’t know what to do with all that free time that I was given and my hobbies are going out and doing non essential things. With nothing being opened and outdoor things closing and opening back up randomly, I felt like there wasn’t much to do. I pretty much had that winter seasonal depression feeling.
Things are better now and I ended up making this blog to occupy my time. Some things I’ve learned from quarantine is how much I appreciate my friends and being able to hang out with them in person. Another is how much I love being outdoors and how little I did outdoor things. Because I worked so much before, I didn’t have time to go on walks, hikes, or even to a beach. So being able to do that again was refreshing. Having outdoor picnics, getting takeout foods from new restaurants and taking little outdoor walks really helped get rid of those negative feelings. There’s still tons of things changing as the states start to open back up, but i’m adjusting to it a lot better than before. Even though, this had some negative impacts on parts of my life it has bought me some time to figure out how live like a normal person again. When things start coming back close to regular life, I know how to keep myself happy and not overwhelmed and hating my life.
A lot of events that I was planning on going too got cancelled, but it just give me room to plans more adventurous, outdoorsy ones. I can’t wait for summer to go into full effect.

BLACK LIVES MATTER: I stand with you.

** If there is any false or incorrect information in my post, please correct me and feel free to send any sources or links so I can further educate myself! Thank you.

I have spoken and voiced my stand on other social media platforms. Today I feel confident and comfortable enough to write about it where my characters are not limited. I don’t have a big platform, but I still have a voice that I WILL use to spread awareness with. I HEAR YOU, I SEE YOU, I RESPECT YOU, I STAND WITH YOU. I cannot represent or speak on behalf of any groups or communities, but I will raise awareness and defend those from racism. I will use my voice to try to educate anyone within the asian communities about the existing anti-black racism. Racism is still very present everywhere and it’s time to unlearn it and stand together. We are not against each other, it’s us against racism and injustice.

I have experienced little racism being Vietnamese and live in a very diverse area, so I don’t fully understand what it’s like for others, but from my experiences I can only imagine how horrific it can be. I can admit that I am privileged. I don’t feel a sense of pride saying that, knowing that people in my community and neighboring ones cannot say the same. It’s a huge problem that you would think would be fixed by now. It’s the year 2020 now, a change is past due.

I want to send my condolences to the families and friends who have lost someone to police brutality. Also to those who are racially profiled and wrongfully accused. For those who are reading this, I will add some links below that you can use to find information on how you can help and what you can do if you aren’t able to come out to any protest. There’s plenty that you can do from home.

SAY THIER NAMES SO THEIR JUSTICES ARE SERVED. SAY THEIR NAMES FOR THE GENERATIONS AFTER US, SO THEY ARE NOT FORGOTTEN. SAY THEIR NAMES SO THIS MOVEMENT IS NEVER FORGOTTEN AND SO WE NEVER TAKE A STEP BACKWARDS INTO RACISM.

  • There’s plenty of more names to say!

Links that you may find helpful:

Tons of great information for different states: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/#
Multiple bail funds to donate too: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-floyd-protests-bail-funds-police-brutality-black-lives-matter-1008259/
Website where you can split your donations to multiple bail funds: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd
Stream to Donate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgLa25fDHM

Welcome to the SALLY♡THINGS blog

Thank you for the support and feedback! It’s been a while since I’ve had to do anything with coding, so creating this blog was a challenge and I had to brush up on a lot of it. This was something that I’ve been going back and forth on since I created Sally.Things on instagram a couple years ago. I really didn’t know what kind of content I would be creating and if it was enough for a written blog since you can still share things verbally on Instagram. I’m still very much learning as I go and coming up with new ideas. If this blog works out, then done deal. If not, then it’ll be here for me to post memories. There’s still tons of things for me to add and change around, so please bare with me. Thank you again for your support!


SALLY ♡ T