the couch sessions

Oh My God

2010-06-11T01:47:00.001-06:00

It's 1:45 in the morning.

I can hear a kitten crying outside.

What do I do? It's cold! What if it's hungry and scared? Ohmygodohmygod.

But aren't you supposed to leave them alone? If you get your human scent on them, don't their mothers abandon them? Or is that only baby birds that fall out of nests?

UPDATE: rescued and fed. Sleeping on back porch now. Will deal further with furball in morning.

Overheard in the Hallways of a Frat

2010-06-09T00:22:00.000-06:00

Late night quotes from some of Moscow's finest:

"Jens, it would be an honor and a privilege to drink that with you."

"Are you peeing? Because I'm about to kick down that door."

"There's nothing wrong with my carpet. NO I DON'T CARE THAT IT WAS MOLD INFESTED ONCE."

"I wasn't doing what you think I was doing...yes, that's a screwdriver in my hand, but that's not what it was for."

Laundry

2010-06-08T16:38:00.000-06:00

I hate doing laundry.

I once went an entire semester without doing any laundry of my own. I waited until I got to a point where I was wearing the same jeans five days a week, and then I packed all my dirty clothes into the trunk of my car and I drove home for the weekend. I then dumped all my clothes in the wash room and waited. Magically, my clothes were washed and folded by Sunday afternoon, just in time for me to return to Rexburg. Later, rinse, repeat and voila! An entire semester without having to set foot in the creepy dorm washroom.

More often than not, though, I find myself in the tragic situation of having to do my own washing. Laundry is a viscous cycle that leads to misery and despair in my life. This morning was not the first time that I've considered flinging myself out a window to avoid the mess, and it won't be the last, either.

I've been staying with Chandler because I left my job and hey, it's summer! I have nothing better to do, right? There are several pros to being around my significant friend, and one of them is that now I have someone to share laundry duty with.

Except, you know, not really.

Here's how laundry has gone down the last week:

The first two days of being here, I glare passive-aggressively at the two (yes, TWO) overflowing StorageMate tubs of clothes. They offend my sense of justice. How can one person possibly have that many clothes just SITTING ON THE FLOOR IN A BIN. WHY DON'T YOU USE YOUR CLOSET.

The third day, I emphatically tell Chandler that he has to sort his clothes so I know which ones are clean and which ones are dirty. He agrees.

The fourth day, I tell Chandler again. He agrees, again.

The fifth day, I threaten to throw them all away if he doesn't tell me which ones I can wash. We then proceed to spend three hours cleaning his room, avoiding the laundry for as long as possible.

Finally, I am given a bin with dirty clothes and told that anything that goes in there is safe for washing.

There are so many clothes that it's too heavy for me to lift. I make Chandler carry it to the basement.

There is only one available washer in the laundry room.

It's also dark and creepy down there.

We strike a deal: I'll be in charge of putting the clothes in the washer and dryer if Chandler will fold most of them. Perfect.

One load down, three to go. I return to the room to watch a movie.

An hour later, I remember about the clothes and go back to the basement.

I step in a puddle. That's odd. I flip on the light. There's a few centimeters of water covering the entire floor.

I think through my options, and decide that I might as well move the finished load from the washer to the dryer, while I'm down here.

Cold wet cement is cold and wet and splashy and eeeew I hope that slippery stuff I just stepped in is soap. Cold wet cold.

Realize there are no available dryers.

Fold someone else's clothes so I can have their dryer.

Move first load to dryer.

Back to room. Chandler asks me what took so long. I told him the basement was flooding. He runs downstairs.

Returns with the good news that he doesn't think the washer is leaking. It was a hose in the utility sink. But it's all fixed now. He thinks. And he put another load in the washer for me! How sweet.

Now I have to wait up until that load is finished washing, because I can't leave it in the washing machine overnight, it will get that weird wet clothes moldy smell.

Finally transfer second load from washer to dryer. I should fold the clothes...no, wait, that's Chandler's job. Score! Bedtime.

Next morning: basement floor is dry. Oh, good. Time for more laundry.

Fill only available washer as full as I can, realize that I'm not going to get all the clothes in. Will have to do ANOTHER load. Ffffffuuuuuuu.

Half-heartedly fold some socks, get tired, go back to internet.

Forget all about laundry.

Later that night: bring Chandler downstairs to fold laundry. Basement floor is wet again.

Seriously, not my fault.

And then I killed myself. The end.

Peck Peck Peck

2010-06-08T16:02:00.002-06:00

I'm laying on the couch, tentatively pecking at my keyboard.

Am I...am I going to do it?

*peck peck peck*

Yes. I think...I think I am.

I'm...omg, I'm writing a post.

Late Night Nutella Snack

2010-06-08T00:30:00.000-06:00

Have you had some? Seriously, go get some.

Tragedy Is:

2010-06-06T17:15:00.000-06:00

Being expected to meet your boyfriend's friends...and not having a hair straightener.

In unrelated news, the recent moisture Moscow has received has turned my hair into a puffball.

I Am Bird, Hear Me Roar

2010-05-25T08:18:00.002-06:00

My cousin is so cute.

The Internet is full of Kittens and Kindness

2010-04-25T20:49:00.000-06:00

Chandler thinks I sound like Miley Cyrus.

I know, right? What kind of terrible boyfriend IS HE?

I caught a cold over the weekend, and have subsequently developed the voice of a 40 year old smoker. I have a terrible dry cough and squeak when I try and start a sentence. The worst side effect of all is how my lack of volume has negated my ability to gasp in righteous indignation. When I attempt to speak loudly or quickly (which is to say, any time I open my mouth) my vocal cords give out and only every other word is audible. In short, I sound like Carol Channing.

Thank you for your lovely comments on my last post, guys. Your sentiments were touching and appreciated. They lifted my spirits and gave me a better ability to be happy and supportive for him, and for that, I thank you. The Internet is a wonderful place sometimes.

In return, I give you kittens. Warning: You will find yourself longing for a new pet.

2010-04-23T21:46:00.000-06:00

And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, my trials and tribulations have become so insignificant that they have vanished completely; they are not just pushed aside, but they are gone, to make room in my heart for all the love and worry that consumes me today.

The boyfriend called me with some less than good news yesterday, and today has been a bit of a whirlwind of intense rescue driving to bring him home from school so he can be with family. The details are not mine to share, and they aren't important anyway.

But as I'm sitting here in the hospital waiting room, I am feeling very thoughtful. Waiting rooms give you a lot of time to think; there's not much else to do. No, that's not true. Sometimes, a pair of curly headed kids race by your chair, running in circles as they try to stave off the boredom of hospital walls. I keep trying to coax them over to talk to me, or give me a smile, but they are pretty emphatic about staying the heck away from strangers; I should probably give up before someone calls security on the suspicious maybe-kidnapper in the corner.

Being a bystander is hard. You are forced to sit and watch and be available but rarely utilized. If you have a clue at all, you know that sometimes the best help you can offer is none at all. I'm doing that right now, just existing in case there's something I can do.

While I am busy existing, I am pondering how fond I am of this boy, and how interesting it is that I feel such a profound sense of affection toward him now, in these difficult moments. I mean, I still like him when there isn't a crisis, don't get me wrong. But I am struck with just how much I want to squeeze him right now. That seems to be the only appropriate way to describe it; I just want to hug him to death.

Some instinct tells me, however, that acting on that particular urge might be counterproductive right now. Maybe I'll go hug him almost to death, instead.

Don't Worry, It's Not Too Late!

2010-04-22T21:42:00.001-06:00

The college I'm planning on attending just sent me a lovely email, stating that they have noticed I have yet to register for any classes.

Me: "Um, yeah, I know."

Them: "But don't worry, it's not too late!"

Me: "Good tip, thanks."

Them: "But you should hurry!"

Me: "I'll think about it."

Them: "Before it's too late!"

Me: "Why are you using so many exclamation points?"

Them: "Classes are filling up fast!"

Me: "Does that mean I don't have to take any if I just wait a little more?"

Them: "Have a nice day!"

Me: "I wish I had some more cheese."

The Silverware Drawer

2010-04-22T02:27:00.000-06:00

When I was young, my mother taught me the proper way to put away silverware.

We were living in a small apartment in Los Angeles. It was a distinctly ghetto neighborhood, and when I say this, I mean that one time, one of my classmates was involved in a drug bust during lunchtime.

At my elementary school.

Needless to say, Mom liked to keep us indoors a lot, given the fact a dead body was rumored to have turned up in the alley behind the apartment complex. We were very sad when we had to give up playing there. I once found a dollar in that alley. I'm lucky the original owner didn't track me down and stuff me in a dumpster.

Part of keeping us inside was keeping us busy; I ended up in the kitchen a lot, doing dishes because my other sisters couldn't touch dirty water. We were an OCD bunch of screwballs.

One day, when I was putting away the silverware, Mom came in and sat down at the table. She looked tired and sad, which was nothing new. She asked me why I was frowning, and I blurted out, "I hate forks!"

"Rena, you're such a strange little girl. Why?"

"Because. It takes forever to put them all away. And then there's the spoons. And the butter knives. And it's boring."

She looked at me for a second, and then smiled one of her rare smiles. "Do you want to know a secret?"

An eager nod.

"I hate putting away the forks and spoons, too. I'll show you how I do it."

She pulled open the drawer all the way, removed the plastic silverware tray, and took the dishwasher holder out of my hands. With a quick flip, she dumped its contents in the drawer in a glorious cascade of metal and noise. She handed the empty container back to me and slid the drawer shut.

"There. Don't tell your grandma I taught you that."

The memory came to me today as I pondered this profound and inescapable sadness that I'm grappling with. Maybe you were right, Mama.

Maybe you can't always put the silverware away like you're supposed to. Maybe it's better to dump it all in a drawer, and shut the drawer, and walk away.

Lost: My Identity

2010-04-20T22:04:00.000-06:00

I have just discovered that I have been operating under false pretenses for almost three years.

I actually scored one point lower than I thought I did on the English section of the ACT.

It's like I don't even know who I AM anymore.

Fresh Air and Sunshine (Or, according to my father: Computering al Fresco)

2010-04-18T17:19:00.000-06:00

It's sunny and delicious in Idaho today.

I'm laying on my front lawn in swim shorts and a tank top, basking in the sun and lazily browsing facebook. Someone from the UK just added me as a friend. I do not know him, nor do we have any friends in common. I accepted anyway. The more British contacts I can make in my life, the better.

The Glee soundtrack is playing in the background, much to my contentment. I didn't get to listen to it as much as I would have liked to this weekend, since Chandler has prejudices against hearing the same songs over and over. I was sad when he left this afternoon, but then I remembered that now I can listen to my music as much as I want to, and my soul was soothed.

(That's not to say I don't still miss you, baby! I totally do. It's just that, you know, you get in the way of my Glee, which is a dangerous position for you to be in.)

Last night I may or may not have been in a state of mind that resulted in karaoke. Loud, tuneless karaoke. And thinking back on it, I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a video of this unfortunate incident. Unacceptable.

I've moved on to browsing the classes I might take this fall. I should email my advisor and find out if I can test out of English 102. I got a perfect score on the English section when I took the ACT. This has to count for something.

There's a language requirement with my major, which means I will be taking, for the 4th time in my life, Spanish 101. I took it in high school as a regular class, and once over the summer at the local community college. I was also enrolled in Spanish 101 at BYU-I, but of course, it was the semester that I didn't finish. Admittedly, I do not have a gift for languages, and so starting over yet again might not be a bad thing; despite taking Spanish several times in my life, I can still only remember how to insult someone's pet. Tu gato es muy feo (your cat is very ugly).

I'm sorry, but Lea Michelle sings Don't Rain on My Parade as beautifully as Barbara did. There, I said it.

The Top 10 Things I've Been Meaning To Blog About

2010-04-14T14:28:00.002-06:00

1. I got into college.
2. Two of them, as a matter of fact.
3. I stressed over which one to go to.
4. I finally picked one.
5. Because this college is stupid, I have to live on-campus.
6. In a dorm.
7. In a girls only dorm.
8. I am NOT living in a girls only dorm again. This is not Rexburg.
9. My boyfriend does a lot of cute stuff. Someday, I will document it.
10. I miss you guys.

Thank You For Calling

2010-04-01T21:19:00.000-06:00

When I'm in the office, I sit at the front desk and help answer phones. I kind of like it, because I always have a lot of down time when I'm not in the field, and answering the phone is fun. I like to talk to people.

But see....when you're on the phone, especially in that first part of the conversation, people don't hear you very well when you pick up. My name has always been a problem; there's a standard greeting that anyone who answers the phone has to use, and part of it involves stating who you are. You know, "This is Lorena, how may I help you?"

"Well hello, Serena. Can I speak to one of the nurses?"

"Valena, I'm calling to inquire about a job."

"Sabrina, can you put me through to extension 266?"

I guess I can't blame them. My name isn't exactly topping popularity charts in terms of being well-known. This is also the least interesting story I've ever told. I can't remember why I found it so amusing when I started writing it earlier today. Just wanted to tell you guys that in the hundreds of times I've picked up the phone, I've probably gotten called Sabrina 988 of those times?

God. I'm shutting up now.

It's Hard to Blog When You Have Nothing to Write About

2010-03-30T16:27:00.000-06:00

I was a bit emo last night. It happens when I get tired. Our best bet is to just pretend I'm not a manic-depressive, neurotic headcase and move on.

My BFF in the blogging world, Mr. Too Many Mornings, gave me a little shout-out on his blog yesterday. It's always embarrassing when he does that, especially when I realize that people are going to wander over here and judge him harshly for having such bad blog-roll taste. Sorry about that, Mike. It's your own fault for enabling me.

I've taken to carrying a journal in my purse, and whipping it out and writing when I feel like my brain has too much to process. I was definitely on overload this weekend, and it's because I was at a college orientation. People expected me to like, have my shit together and make decisions and take initiative and stuff. Do they not understand how much they are asking? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT ME TO PICK A MAJOR SO I CAN REGISTER FOR CLASSES?

Here are some excerpts from my journaling of Friday and Saturday. Afterward, we can all psychoanalyze what it means. It'll be fun. Warning: dull writing and lots of whining ahead.

Section One: Wherein I have been emotionally beaten to the point of exhaustion and it is only 10:00 in the morning.

I've got fifteen minutes before I need to find out where the Kibbie Team Room C is. That's where the Transfer Student orientation session is, I guess. I skipped doing anything for the first 10:00-10:40 time slot and opted to sit up here and write instead. I was getting overwhelmed and just needed to catch my breath and my bearings. This whole thing is not my cup of tea, at all. But I'm trying, I really am. I'll attempt to make a friend with someone at the Transfer Student session, then I can check that off my list so when Chandler bugs me about it, I'll have some line of defense. There's just...so much going on. So many people, so many lines, so many little options and decisions I have to make. It stresses me out. I hate this. Maybe I'll just hide in my car until lunch time. Whoops, time to track down Room C. This map is useless, I'm going to have to ask someone where it is...the horror!

Section Two: Wherein I reveal how miserable I really was, and how like a sad, scared little girl I can be sometimes. What this says about my psyche, I have no idea, but I was definitely feeling sorry for myself at this point.

My anxiety has lessened considerably, now that I can see the end. The "information" session that I went to was pretty useless, although they did hand out candy at the end. It did make me feel like I had a starting point, so I guess it had psychological value. So far, the most useful part of my day has been wandering around the activities fair. Side note: A fair implies cotton candy. There was no cotton candy. I feel I have been mislead. Lunch was good, because I found someone to eat with. Her name was Shannon. I kind of lost her after lunch, I got the feeling she was tired of me following her around, but it was good to have someone to latch on to while we both timidly tried to figure out where we were supposed to be next. I hate wandering around on my own. It's always much better to be clueless with someone else. Michelle was perfect for that, because she was ever more timid than I was in situations like this. It made me be more confident and more calm, because if I wasn't in charge, then neither of us were going anywhere. But when I don't have her to lead around, I feel lonely and lost. It's sad.

Section Three: Wherein I become a little more happy now that things are almost over, and revert to my usual snark as a way to combat unfamiliar situations.

It's 15 minutes to 1:00, when we're supposed to register for classes. I think I might just go to the English advising session and listen. My only problem now is that I'm supposed to be sitting in a specific section of the stands, I think; the schedule says to group behind your College and Department sign in the dome. I see no such signs. FAIL. After this, I am so done. Going to hang out with Chandler for awhile and then I'm off to spend a night in a sorority..dun dun DUNNNN. Actually, when I was walking through the "fair" (lies! Where is mah cotton candyyy?), I got accosted by a Delta Delta Delta who handed me a flier. I'd heard of them before, and I asked Chandler, "Isn't that the group that everyone calls the Tri-Deltas, and they joke about if you can't sleep with anyone else, Try a Delta? Did I just get recruited by the slutty sorority??" He laughed and said you can say that about pretty much all of them, Tri-Delta just happens to have a clever wordplay. I blinked and said that wasn't doing much for my already low opinion of sororities.

I just re-read this entire post, and realize I could have summed up everything I said with this phrase: blah, blah, blah.

Unfortunately, I'm just not that efficient.

Chameleon

2010-03-30T02:00:00.000-06:00

When I was a little girl, I was fascinated by chameleons.

Thanks to the erroneous reporting of a storybook, I believed chameleons were magical creatures, capable of blending in with the wallpaper, the fruit basket, the fabric of a couch in the blink of an eye. I was bitterly disappointed when my dad explained that at best, a chameleon could probably slowly change from a shade of brown to a shade of brownish-green if necessary.

A reflection of my life reveals that I never gave up on channeling my inner chameleon. I try to morph and shift and adapt to my surroundings, to match seamlessly with the decor and the people around me. I am not necessarily one thing or the other; I am influenced by what I think would be the best fit for the situation. Chameleons belong everywhere, because they always match. It makes sense, doesn't it?

Ultimately, though, the chameleons will always have one up on me, and it's because they don't change color to fit it. They change color to hide, to be safe, to sit quietly and not be observed or noticed or judged. My talents are not that impressive.

I'm jealous of the chameleons.

R&B stands for Rhythm and Blues

2010-03-28T00:41:00.000-06:00

*sigh*

I opened this up to write something, and the first words out of Chandler's mouth were, "You're not going to blog right now, are you?"

......

Nooooo. Of course not.

But, you know, I'm alive. I still love y'all, even though I haven't commented on your blogs in like, two weeks. Please forgive me. Please come back. Tomorrow, maybe? I'll post tomorrow. Cross my heart.

He's looking at me suspiciously. Geez, having an anti-blogging boyfriend is like being on prison lockdown. Gotta go.

Just So We're Clear...

2010-03-21T20:59:00.001-06:00

...I have no problem with public funding of abortions.

Seriously.

You want to take my tax dollars to fight a war I don't support? I'll take your tax dollars to support a woman's right to choose.

Thank you, and goodnight.

PS: Health care reform? Helllllllll yes.

He Doesn't Like Cheese Sandwiches, But I Think I Love Him Anyway

2010-03-19T12:08:00.000-06:00

When I first met Chandler, it was three days before he got a plane to go to England and study abroad for five months. We spent the next half a year talking every day on webcam. For FIVE MONTHS, the only thing I saw was his Skype (dirty). I do not recommend that. We got to know each other really well, but there are some things that you just can't learn over the Internet.

For instance, the first time he came over to my house in real life, I asked him if he wanted a sandwich for lunch. Boy loves sandwiches, so of course he was real excited about my offer. I told him that it was just a cheese sandwich and he was like, "Cool." I made it for him, though, and I noticed he was looking at it while he was eating, all puzzled-like. He finally looked at me and asked, "Did you mean to not put lunch meat on this?"

Me: "Um, yeah. It's called a cheese sandwich for a reason. I told you that."

Him: "I didn't know you meant JUST cheese. That's insane. Who eats a sandwich that's just bread and dairy products?"

Me: "I do. Dude, cheese and bread is the best thing in the world."

Him: "Huh. I don't think I'm a fan."

And then I cried, because seriously, WHO DOES NOT LOVE A CHEESE SANDWICH? Crazy people, that's who, and maybe hard core vegans who don't even eat animal byproducts.

I know I haven't updated in over a week, and it's because this crazy boy, the one who doesn't eat cheese sandwiches, is home for spring break. Any spare time I have has been devoted to doing frustrating things and watching his eye twitch as he tries to reconcile his affection for me with his desire to see things done his way. It's been fun.

Aaaaand he's waking up from his nap and demanding his computer back (Lorena! I have to finish coding! I've been working on this program all morning!) so I must bid you adieu. Maybe I'll go make myself a cheese sandwich.

Iced Coffee and Rain

2010-03-10T23:23:00.002-07:00

First things first: BRAINFREEZEOHGODWHYAHGGHHHRRRRAAHHHHH

****************

That was as far as I got when I started this post on Monday. I vaguely remember what I was talking about; it was something to do with how cold and rainy it was, but that hadn't stopped me from ordering frozen coffee. Even though the temperature outside was like, -12 degrees, I refused to order hot coffee. Is gross. Do not want. Actually, as a general rule, I don't drink any coffee unless I really need help staying awake. I don't want it to lose its effectiveness and have to start down the slippery slope that ends in me needing eight cups a day just to function. One dose is sufficient for all-day energy, and actually tends to make me bounce around like a hyperactive squirrel. My near-virgin status with coffee results in a really crappy knowledge of coffee flavors, which results in me always forgetting that I hate mocha and ordering a mocha something or other, and then taking a sip and going FFFFUUUUUUU MOCHAAAAAAAAA.

Phew. Aren't you glad you didn't miss out on that riveting tale?

Aside: I opened up Blogger to write an entirely different story than this one, but I really couldn't bear to see that lovely title go to waste. It is so evocative and stirring; the imagery in those four little words...*shakes head reverently*

Isn't it Scary That I Used to Think Like This?

2010-03-09T11:36:00.004-07:00

You can find the context for this post here. I invite you to read all 500+ comments. I did. The inspiration for MY particular rage can be found at the end of this post, but tell me, what part of this sets YOU off?

Just in case anyone hasn't ever learned the definitions of these words, here's a reference: equal does not mean the same. Same does not mean equal. Ergo...CJane's thoughts on the matter are ridiculous, unless she really means that she enjoys being inferior to her husband and she doesn't think other women should have the opportunity to choose for themselves what they want in life. I don't think she means that, I think she's just too lazy to pick up a dictionary.

(No, I will not bother to be polite. If you are going to carelessly dismiss the hard work of thousands of women across the generations, stating that equality has never done anything for you, even though you state that from a comfortable middle class lifestyle that you have BECAUSE OF YOUR EQUALITY AND RIGHT TO CHOOSE, then I am going to carelessly disrespect you. Let's not pretend.)

It makes me sad and angry that people think this way. It makes me regretful that I wasted a lot of years of my own life thinking this way. And most importantly, it makes me scared that I can pinpoint the source of these thoughts and the source, one of the most powerful religions in the world, is perfectly comfortable letting young girls grow up to say and think things like this.

http://i.imgur.com/5kaq2.jpg

Life is a Love Story

2010-03-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I can't sleep, and I come downstairs and open a New Post to try and help me settle down. I stare at the white text field, vast and empty, and I feel an overwhelming urge to fill it with words, even when I have nothing good to say. Tonight is one of those nights. Aren't you lucky?

There have been several times in my life when I have made decisions in the heat of passion. Sometimes I look before I leap. Sometimes I throw myself off the cliff and hope that, if I am impaled on the sharp rocks at the bottom, I remembered to kiss my grandma when I left the house that morning.

(I can already see that my fondness for run-on sentences, and the inevitable comma abuse that follows suit, will be rampant in this post. Count the commas! *9)

I made the impetuous decision to not refill my anxiety meds the last time they ran out. This was about... two months ago? Three? Approximately? My internal calendar has never been strong. I told Michelle that I wasn't going to pop any pills for awhile and she just looked at me. I launched into my reasons; I wasn't sure that I needed them. There were so many other factors at play when I had that breakdown. So many things have been resolved in my life since last May! I just think that maybe I'm don't have as much of a need for mood-altering substances as I thought I did! Michelle...I just have to try. I have to see if I can do this on my own.

She looked at me and asked quietly how I was feeling so far. I thought about the weeks I'd been medication-free. "Pretty good...I didn't have any withdrawal symptoms, really, and my stress has been manageable."

"Manageable?"

"Well, things are starting to get hard again, but nothing I can't handle...I've started driving around a lot more again, though. I haven't had to do that in a long time."

"Have you had any panic attacks? The ones where you can't breathe?"

"Nooo...I do have to sit really still sometimes and think hard about in through the nose, out through the mouth."

"Are you still seeing your therapist?"

"....she was weird. I stopped going back after the first few visits."

Her blue eyes turned on me and she sighed. "We've already been here before. I know the ending to this story."

************

One month later, and I am stubbornly pressing forward. I think about that conversation almost every day; specifically, I think about that conversation when I feel overwhelmed and scared and the only place that seems appropriate to be is under my bed.

I lost it, in a big way, for the first time today. I thought she was right, that we had come full circle. Back to the final pages of a chapter we'd already read, and I screwed it up because I was too prideful to learn. Little things had been building and building for days, maybe weeks, and I found myself on the hood of my car, chest heaving from the four laps around the track I had furiously run in an attempt to...escape? I don't know. I was having a full blown panic attack, and I gasped for air between the sobs that left my face covered in tears. I couldn't even remember what I had been running from, I just knew that I had lost, and the world had ended in some metaphorical, emotional Apocalypse.

If this were the end of the story, I wouldn't be telling you guys. It would just be another drop in a bucket full of melodramatic stories where Lorena failed to keep her shit together, fell apart in despair, and slunk back to the real world feeling depressed and sorry for herself, the anxiety buried again but not fully resolved. I think everyone I know is tired of that old song and dance. I know I am.

I told myself that, today. I bit my bottom lip until it was almost bleeding and I dug my fingernails into my palms and I forced myself to calm down. To breathe. To stop. I thought about all the times I'd been through this before, and how I was still alive. That I was proof to myself that it could be done, it could be handled and conquered. I thought about that college acceptance letter that was sitting on the top of my dresser and how it represented the opportunity for positive change, if I would let it.

I thought about all the perspective I have gained since last May. I thought about the girl I am now, compared to the girl I was then. I thought about how exhausting it was to always be the victim to my own shortcomings and feelings and weaknesses. I thought about how badly I didn't want to be a victim anymore.

And, suddenly, I wasn't. I sat up and wiped my face with the backs of my hands. I wrapped my arms around my knees and watched the last rays of the setting sun disappear beneath the horizon. I grabbed my phone and light heartedly texted my boyfriend that, "I just went running, and it made my teeth hurt. Exercise has always made my teeth hurt...isn't that weird?" I came home and refilled Lelle's water dish and sat down to spend the rest of my evening in my favorite way: griping irritably about stupid people on the Internet. I forgot about my meltdown from earlier and was able to move on with my life, instead of dwelling in fear. I didn't feel the need to whine about how hard it was, or how much it was beyond my control. It was in my control. I was triumphant.

I will never overcome all my neuroses. I will always be me. I will always be prone to anxiety. But tonight, I feel like I've proved to myself that it doesn't have to define me. People will read this post and feel uncomfortable with my honesty (I hope you don't). But I just really wanted to tell you, everyone who reads this. I wanted to share some of my victory. I wanted to say that my life is a story that I don't know the ending to, but it will be an ending that I write. Me, myself. It will not be dictated by a personality trait that sometimes overcomes me. I will recognize that I am human, and I will continue forward.

I love my life. It is a love story, and I am so lucky to be living it.

(48 commas)

The Same Thing Goes For Pillow. Not Pallow. Pillow.

2010-03-06T13:03:00.002-07:00

I Don't Know Where It Came From, But It Hurts

2010-03-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'm Giving You a Look of Hearty Disapproval

2010-03-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

First things first: one of the IT guys is walking around the office with a Bluetooth headset, talking to mysterious people about mysterious things. He keeps saying, "The servers! The servers!" in a kind of exasperated way, and squints angrily at the wall behind the water cooler. I should take him more seriously, because he does magical fixing things to my computer and doesn't even expect me to listen to his explanation of what he just did, but all I can think is that he reminds me of Beyonce right now, with his wireless microphone on his ear.

My ear is still bothering me, in case you were curious (and oh, I know how much you care. Deeply, is how you care). I can't hear anything on my right side; yesterday, I was sitting next to someone at a meeting and they kept having to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention, because I just didn't hear them saying my name. Hearing loss is incredibly inconvenient. I should have scheduled a more appropriate time to rupture my eardrum. My doctor is supposed to look at things later this week; maybe she'll have an answer for the mysteriousness. She usually doesn't, though. Not because she isn't a good doctor, just because I am a bundle of inexcplicable ailments for which the usual treatment is a hearty dose of, "That will probably clear up with a good night's sleep." Hint: It never clears up with a good night's sleep.

Speaking of sleep and good nights, I haven't had a decent bedtime in a week. Dear Chandler, stop keeping me awake until midnight, one, two in the morning. It's bad for my health. Every time 10:30 rolls around, I tell myself, "Seriously, go to bed now." And I never do. And it's your fault. Having a boyfriend is such a trial...except for when you force me to talk about my phone plan even though you know how much I hate to discuss matters of business and finance, and then you discover that I can add data to the other two lines AND pay way less than I am right now, and then you make me call the phone company and make that happen. I guess your behavior is acceptable, in those instances. Except I still wish it could happen before 12:30. That would be ideal.

God, aren't you guys tired of listening to me talk about myself? Maybe I should mix things up a bit. Turn this into a political blog, or something. Maybe tomorrow I'll give you my opinion on Jim Bunning and this unemployment benefits nonsense (click here for context). Or I could just close with my grandpa's thoughts on the matter, brought to you by his morning commentary after watching CNN. I've never actually heard my 84 year old grandpa use such language before:

"That Bunning is a real dick, isn't he?"

Stalin and Lenin Got Nothing On This

2010-02-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

Moscow, Idaho. That's MossCoh, not MossCow. MossCow is in Russia. I'm not. I'm in Idaho! Shocking, I know.

The trip up here was lonely, to say the least. Five hours. In a car. By myself. It wasn't so terribly horrible in the beginning, when the radio still had music. But there's this big ol' stretch of nothingness in the middle where every station is pure static. At that point, it might have been wise to break out the iPod, or some CD's. Yes, yes, that would have been wise, had I remembered to bring either of those items. Chandler probably asked me ten times in the last three days what I was going to listen to on the way up here, since the LAST time I came, I had the same problem...no music. His words went unremembered, and I found myself singing out loud for an hour (a whole hour, I am not even kidding). Then I remembered my phone has some songs on it, so I pushed play, turned the volume all the way up, and held it next to my head. Thus, I survived.

Avatar. If you guys haven't seen it, you really, REALLY need to. Ignore whatever you've heard about the plot being just like Pocahontas. It's kinda true. But it has the most amazing special effects EVAR. It's only going to be in theaters for another week, or something. You don't want to miss it, I swear on my mother's grave <-----serious recommendation, there.

Today, we're supposed to go look around campus and stuff. I'm most interested in the library. It's supposed to be the biggest one in Idaho, or something, and I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but I like words, and books, and reading. Like, a lot.

Yuck. Chandler's trying to talk me into a scavenger hunt with his frat. Can you imagine the look on my face right now? I could win this argument by pitching a fit, but do I really want to expend that energy?

No time to finish. I didn't win the argument.

One of the Outreach Coordinators...

2010-02-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

...just asked me how old I was. I told her, "Nineteen." She looked at me and said, "Huh. I wouldn't have ever guessed you were that young."

/happy

Oh, You Make Me Smile

2010-02-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

I have, for better or for worse, survived the mysterious ruptured eardrum/chest cold/maybe it wasn't ruptured after all, except we can see where it perforated, so we don't know why the fluid hasn't drained and relieved the pressure in your head/sore throat malady of 2010.

I (and many other members of my team) spent all day in a meeting with a consultant from St. Louis. We made a lot of decisions regarding my responsibilities, and in some respects, I feel like I'm starting from scratch with a brand new position. It was really exciting, and I'm still feeling that adrenaline surge you get from having someone important tell you that you're good at what you do. I am very motivated to please authority figures. My peers, not so much...but put me in a teacher-student situation and suddenly, my happiness void can only be filled by their praise and recognition. My only satisfaction can come from showing them that I am smarter and brighter and more adept than everyone else at this subject.

(Why yes, indeed, this might be something I want to work on.)

Lelle is twitching in her sleep. Strangely enough, it's in time to the music I'm listening to right now. I have a genuis dog.

I can sense this post is about to devolve into a rambling stream-of-consciousness feed. Because I am kind and gracious, I'll just put a stop to this nonsense right now.

Too Good to Not Share

2010-02-23T10:56:00.001-07:00

Quick, before they catch me not working again.

I made a visit to a client today (I have a real-life job, as you may recall) and met the cutest little dogs ever. They were of the variety that you could fit inside a large purse. My favorite!

One was black and named Teddy, the other was brown and named Grizzly. When their owner introuduced them to me, she said, "And here's Teddy and Grizzly...the Bear Brothers!"

That was just too much cute for one person to handle. I had to tell you.

Fluids Are Leaking From My Head

2010-02-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

......Delicious.

PS, I didn't get better. My eardrum ruptured. Wait, what? You didn't say anything about an earache, you had a CHEST COLD when you last posted.

Um, yeah. I know. Don't ask me.

I'm off to see the ear/nose/throat specialist now. Being sick makes me crabby; go kill someone stupid for me. It'll make me feel better.

Handfuls of Orange Pills from a Little White Chicken

2010-02-18T05:58:00.001-07:00

For as many years as I can remember, Grandma has kept vitamins in a little ceramic holder shaped like a chicken. When you lift the lid, the chicken is split in half, revealing the contents inside. It's not like taking the head off, it's like slicing the chicken completely from front to back and then removing the top half. Pretty sure I never realized how creepy/gross this was until just now. I guess that's a good litmus test for things you take for granted because you grew up with them; just tell someone else and then think, "How weirded out are they right now?"

Don't get me wrong, it's a very lovely white chicken, when it's just sitting innocuously on the countertop. It serves its purpose well, holding and dispensing handfuls of Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, fish oil, and some oblong green pills that we've always called "greenies". Typically, I never actually take vitamins, but it's kind of reassuring to know that they're always right there if I wanted to be healthy or something. Or if I want to take a retroactive approach to wellness.

Right now, for instance, it is 4:50 in the morning and I can't sleep. I've been up for an hour with chest pain, the kind you get when a chest cold is coming on and it hurts all the way down in your lungs when you cough. My joints are all achy in protest of the infection that is gearing up to ravage my body. In a feeble attempt to lessen the blow that is sure to fall, I'm drinking water and eating handfuls of Vitamin C like they're goin out of style.

I know that the effects of Vitamin C on a cold after it has begun are negligible, at best, but I think that half the battle is mental. I'm certain that there were several occasions when I was in middle school that I wrung a few more days of sick leave from a nasty flu or other infection by sheer force of will. The mind is powerful like that. It stands to reason that it should work the opposite way too, right? I should be able to make myself less sick by comforting my body with the idea that the 23 chewy orange tablets (yes, we still have the chewy vitamins that have like, a billion mgs of citrus and sunshine but taste just like you would expect something orange and chewy to taste, which is to say: overly sweet and not super delicious after the first two) will help make things better, right? RIGHT?

In perfectly related news, and we'll get to how it's perfectly related in minute, don't you doubt my seamless segues: I started dating someone this weekend. His name is Chandler, and he has a really cute face. I probably won't talk about him that much because he reads this blog (sometimes) and my modus operandi is to talk about people behind their backs, when they have no idea I'm dissecting them on the internet. Also, I don't want to be this guy. PS, if you're wondering why I didn't tell you the second it happened, I have just one question for you: are you my friend on facebook? If you are, then I told facebook as soon as it happened (via a relationship status change), which is the same thing as telling you. If you don't check facebook that frequently, then this should be a lesson to you, now shouldn't it? If you aren't my friend on facebook, then this question is moot, because you obviously don't love me enough to want to know the personal and intimate details of my life.

I'm tired, and I have to get up in two hours, and I forgot where I was going with this...oh, yes. The boyfriend and the seamless segue. I'm pretty sure it's his fault that I'm sick, and I'll tell you why. He did a study abroad in England last semester, and came home a month ago. My theory is that he acquired all kinds of mutant germs while he was away; he's immune to them because he lived there for five months, but my weak American body is defenseless against the foreign invaders. When he first got back, I came down with a terrible double ear infection that kept me home from work for three days and caused much misery and woe. Then he told me he was coming home for President's Day weekend and I developed a sinus infection, in some sort of bizzare, premature reaction to Lancaster Disease. Now, a mere four days after he has gone back to school, and I have come down with a chest cold. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

Guys, my boyfriend is a harbinger of doom. Sad.

Sixteen Candles on a Cake

2010-02-15T23:41:00.000-07:00

To the Magnificent Milly Marie,

Sixteen years ago today, a very disgruntled four year old was left at home with her aunt while Mom and Dad walked out the door without her. This didn't happen very often, and she couldn't understand what could possibly be so important and why they were leaving her behind. Dad kissed her on the head and promised to bring back something cool.

I wanted to name you Jasmine. I thought it was unreasonable that the parentals insisted on telling me what to call my real life baby doll. For weeks, I called you Jasmine, thinking that the name would stick if I just said it often enough.

For several years, you slept in my bed more often than you did your own. You had a terrible habit of twisting at the mole on my neck and running your fingers roughly through my tangled hair while you slept. You also liked to thrash around and had a core body temperature of about 101.4 degrees Fahrenheit. The alternative was making you sleep alone and listen to your nightmares all night long. I didn't get a decent night's sleep for eight years.

You were everything the baby of the family always is; you were pampered and coddled and cooed over. You tagged along and got in the way and tattled on us whenever you could. You had overactive tear ducts and could scream seven ways to Sunday. You had (have) a phobia of spiders that was so strong that even teasing you about a little eight-legged friend being in your hair would send you into sobbing terror, followed by sobbing fury over being tricked.

Yesterday, at your pre-birthday dinner, I watched you tuck a strand of that wild, unruly mane of curls behind your ear. I had a flashback to the days when Mom would pull all your hair up into a tiny tuft that stuck straight up out of the top of your head. She said it reminded her of a whale with a water spout. Life is so very different now from those days when you were just a wittle bitty baby!

My nostalgia is making me digress. I'll wrap it up. Happy Sweet Sixteen, darling! In just two short years you'll be graduating from high school, the last of the Davis sisters to pretend to be all grown up. You have become such a lovely and accomplished individual thus far, for which I take most of the credit. If anyone doubts my claim to this, please refer to the third paragraph of this post. I DIDN'T TAKE CARE OF YOU ALL THESE YEARS FOR NOTHING.

And I will keep taking care of you, for the next sixteen years, for the next sixty. You hold a very special place in my heart, baby girl. Sixteen years is quite a milestone, but there is still so much life ahead of you. Get out there and fill it with happiness.

Love,

Rena

Updates From A Phone

2010-02-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

The following entry is comprised of pictures I took on my phone and finally uploaded to my computer. My life is fascinating. (Now with 20% more visuals!) Timeframe: within the last two(ish) months.

Lelle wearing her cone of shame.

Because I am a Responsible Pet Owner, I made the decision to have my dog "fixed". I find that euphemism ironic, because technically, the procedure is breaking something that worked fine to begin with. I think this makes me an anti-feminist.

I call it Portrait of a Creepy Something-or-Other with One Tusk

This picture courtesy of the Bean Museum in Provo, from the weekend I visited Greg and Alyssa and Thaddy. While we were watching Thad run back and forth between two invisible points on the carpet, Alyssa pointed out to me that this particular display was missing something. It delighted me to no end.

Another gem from the Bean. I couldn't stop staring. Oh, the HUMANITY.

Horrifying spider is horrifying.

Again, taken the weekend I visited Utah. We took Thad to an aquarium, and my nerves were already stretched tight, given my anxiety over fish and water (another post entirely). I rounded a corner in an attempt to get away from the disquieting stare of an eel and THIS was in my face. WTF? YOU ARE A SPIDER. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WATER. WHY ARE YOU HERE, EXACERBATING MY TERROR?

They have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.

PS, my best friend got married this weekend. Once again, I defer the whole story to another post, but look! Look at how gorgeous my Michelle is! The man in this picture is greatly improved by the woman on his right. Just sayin.

In Which My Hand Looks Frighteningly Bony and Emaciated

Quick pic before we started the arduous process of getting Michelle back into her wedding dress for the reception. I was her Maid of Honor. The sleeves on my dress kept falling down. Moving on.

The end of a very long night that was not very kind to my hair.

Meh.

Just A Reminder...

2010-02-09T17:50:00.002-07:00

...to go to knuckleheadhumor.com and vote in Blogger Idol!

It's the final round, people. I'm really not asking that much.

In case you forgot, Too Many Mornings is the team I'm rooting for. You can root for whomever you choose, but if you want a suggestion, I suggest that guy.

You should probably read some other stuff on Knucklehead while you're there. Tis good. This is an entry I'm very fond of.

Thank you, that is all.

Lorena: Noun

2010-02-01T22:36:00.001-07:00

Lorena: the best person there could be known to live.shes adorable SEXY and energetic. shes a funny lovin girl honest, loyall, and you can never forget her beautiful face

hey have you heard about the new girl in school her names lorena
shes sooo sexy adorable and energetic
i luv herrr

Lorena: Crazy and energetic. Loves boys and the occasional girl. Dances in clubs constantly though refuses to try different scenes.

A lorena loves her food. She will eat like a bottomless pit though will never gain an ounce of body fat. Fun and caring, everyone needs their dose of Lorena cause like I like to say, "a dose of Lorena a day, keeps the soberness away".

a Lorena is a lot like Anna Nicole Smith minus the drugs. just the alcohol.

Lorena: To look bad, or terrible. Or to feel nasty, bad, or horrbile.

Today I look so Lorena that it's not even funny.

Lorena: A girl who is typically a booty call, can also be used for girls who TRY to pull off the whole rocker-chic look and end up looking like whores.

L - large
O - obsesively
R - ridiculous
E - entertaining
N - neurotic
A - ass wipe

OMG!! have you seen that LORENA girl? She is THE biggest slut in our school!

Source: Urban Dictionary

Blogger Idol

2010-01-31T17:11:00.003-07:00

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if I'm allowed to promote this contest, since I'm not one of the participants. I'm going to do it anyway. Watch me boldly defy a law that may or may not exist! I'm a rebel without a cause.

There's a competition going on over at a website called Knucklehead!, and I think you should go check it out. Two reasons: One: My very best blog friend in the whole world, Michael Whiteman-Jones, is in the final three and if he makes it past this round, I'll have something other to do than the Superbowl next week. Two: Okay, seriously, we all know that I'm only mentioning this for one reason, and that reason is to tell you to go vote for Mike. Yay Too Many Mornings!

I mean, you could vote for one of the other two competitors, I guess. I wouldn't like you very much if you did that, and I know how y'all CRAVE my approval, so be warned: if your little heart is touched by another entry, you should tell your little heart to shut its yap.

Happy reading!

Edit: Fifteen seconds after posting this, I felt supremely guilty (it's the Mormon in me) and thought I should come back to say that No, you shouldn't vote for Too Many Mornings if you don't think it's the best one. There. My sense of morality is appeased.

Untitled, For Lack of a Title

2010-01-31T00:18:00.000-07:00

Things That Are Not Okay

Feeling a panic attack coming on, because life is just a little stressful sometimes, and going to drive around in your car, because that is what you do to cope with said panic, and realizing that it is snowy and slippery and driving is causing you more panic than it is alleviating.
Confusing feelings. Srsly, get out of my head.
The dead cow in my driveway. True story. Hate you, hillbilly neighbors. Hate you and your dead livestock.
Losing your favorite pair of earrings.
Sitting at the kitchen table late at night, blogging, and getting scared to death when someone creeps down the stairs and turns on the light.
Having a mom haircut. I was doing my hair the other morning and noticed that my current hairstyle is distinctly old-person. It made me despondent the rest of the day. Good thing I have a hair appointment in a week and a half. My lovely and talented stylist can make me be non-middle aged. That would be awesome.
Blogger formatting.
People who are not on Skype. Stop being offline. Makes me feel grrrr.

On nights like this, when everything is Not Okay with me, there is one little guy who reminds me that it will be better in the morning.

Bleghhhhhhh

2010-01-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

Bleghhhhhhh.

This is how I feel right now. Off to make it better. Be back later.

Free Association

2010-01-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

Last night my friend was teasing me about my excitement over my blog comments. I deserve to be teased, though, because I get so thrilled about every one of my comments...all four of them, if it's a productive day. I'm a little bit of a persona non grata in the blogosphere. It's alright, though, because it makes me appreciate my comments even more. People who get 42 comments on an entry probably don't love their comments as much as I love mine (cough cough MIKE cough).

My keyboard is getting kind of filthy. I wonder how one goes about cleaning a computer. I'm pretty sure soap and water would be A Bad Idea in this case. The 3 key is especially dingy looking. I guess I use it more frequently than anything else. Puzzling, since I can't recall a particular fondness for the number three. 333333333.

Listening to Lelle crunch on her dogfood is a very soothing sound. She has a very specific way of eating. I can hear her little paws as she pads over to her corner (click click prance prance click). I can hear the food crackling around as she roots her little nose in the dish. I'm not sure why, but she always pushes the kibble around before selecting a mouthful. Maybe she's sniffing out the particularly tasty bits. Then she munches enthusiastically, tossing her head back for effect. Swallow, repeat.

Girls shed their hair a lot. It's especially disgusting when it builds up in the shower drain. I've been avoiding that mess for weeks....and weeks...but I think it's time to face the hairball from Hell. It's seriously starting to affect the draining capabilities of my shower. Maybe I'll take pictures, you know, for sharing purposes. I'm a kind and generous person like that.

Squee

2010-01-26T23:27:00.002-07:00

Someone told me I was "gracious" today.

Awwww. I love compliments. They make my heart happy.

I Love Me A Good Semicolon

2010-01-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

I knew I loved the oatmeal, but I didn't understand just how deep my love was until today, when I saw this:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

Go. Read. Use the semicolon wisely, my friends.

Snow

2010-01-23T08:49:00.002-07:00

When I was in kindergarten, I wrote a poem about snow. I liked snow, back in the day. We got a lot of the fluffy white stuff where I lived, and being the naive little child that I was, I thought copious amounts of frozen water covering the earth and stopping the flow of normal life was a thing to celebrate. (The following work of greatness was accompanied by a handcut snowflake colored in gray and blue sparkle-crayon)

When snow falls to the earth, I'd like to go and play.

But mom says, "No no no. You must stay in today."

Clearly, my mother had much more common sense than I did.

I'm in Moscow, Idaho, and it's snowing today. I woke up and I was furious at the world for existing. This is not anything unique to the snowfall; I am generally furious at the world for existing for at least the first five minutes of my eyes being open. I'm a very slow mover in the a.m. and it takes me a little while to accept the fact that sleep is gone for the next twelve or so hours.

My irritation with life is probably going to extend into the whole rest of today, however, because everything outside is covered in a layer of wet, cold, obnoxious snow. And I can see that it is still falling.

Right now, I enjoy a measure of relative protection, seeing as how I am inside a semi-warm room. At some point, though, my self-preservation instinct will kick in and the need for food will force me to venture OUTSIDE, THE HORROR.

Stay tuned for an account of Lorena's car sliding off a cliff in a fiery ball of death (at least it would be warm) or at the minimum, her falling on her face.

Announcement

2010-01-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

I might just quit my job this summer and go to Greece.

Seriously? What could possibly be a bad idea about that plan?

For Someone Who Claims To Only Want Children With Two X Chromosomes...

2010-01-20T21:17:00.003-07:00

I Know, I Know

2010-01-18T21:46:00.001-07:00

The amount of changes I make to my blog is ridiculous. I really think I've found a design I like this time, though. It's even got a touch of pink, so that I can learn to embrace a typically feminine color.

(I'm still not taking my husband's name if I get married.)

Speaking of learning to embrace things I previously refused to show acceptance for, I added a new blog to my links over there. Her name is Lauren. I find my interest in her blog fascinating and humbling. She has a very...trendy sense of self, and that's something I occasionally sometimes almost always mock.

Strangely, when I first read her blog, I didn't feel the need to mock. I didn't understand her fashion...or her vocabulary...or her taste in books...but I kinda liked her.

The more I read, the more I liked. She's different. She's perky. Some of the things she likes/does/says are cliche. She doesn't care. I can respect that. And I should respect that. I should learn to just let people be.

I'll never wear colored tights or nerd glasses. But I don't have to care if other people do.

Thanks, Lauren. I needed to learn that lesson.

While I was writing this blog post, Lelle got into my purse and chewed up my favorite lipgloss. It looks beyond repair. Dang it all to mother frackin heck*. I got that for Christmas, Lelle. Have you no soul?

*Rest assured that I used much stronger language.

86400 Seconds in a Day

2010-01-12T21:22:00.004-07:00

Kris Allen. This song. I'm a fan.

(What would you do with your last day?)

These Thoughts, They Bounce Around My Head

2010-01-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Who puts a shortened version of Sweet Child O' Mine on my iPod? Seriously, who does that? I'm listening to Guns 'n Roses all ecstatic-like and then the abruptly, right in the middle, the song is over and Beyonce is singing. WTH?

To The Person (Or Persons) Who Used My ChapStick, But Didn't Apply It At The Correct Angle, Thereby Ruining The Slant I Had Worked So Carefully To Build: Die. Die slowly and painfully.

The Oatmeal is my favorite. Is hilarious. I only wish there were more content. I've read the whole website several times. Do not read at work. It will make you cry with all the funny, and then your co-workers will complain about how loud your laugh is.

I really want this column, the one with all the words in it, to extend further to the right. You see that blank white space over there? I want these words to occupy it. Someone make this happen? Kthnxbye.

Avocados Make Me Sad

2010-01-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

There was an avocado in the salad tonight.

Gross, I know.

Avocados are squishy and slimy and have a weird flavor. I don't like them. They taint everything around them, with their gross mushy coating that covers the lettuce and cabbage. I don't know how it spreads so quickly. Probably something that happens when the salad gets tossed. It's like a fungus.

Rawhide Bones Are Gross

2010-01-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

Especially when they are soft and soggy and freshly chewed and sitting on your pillow, waiting to make contact with your face when you unsuspectingly lie down.

Decisions, Decisions

2010-01-03T15:02:00.008-07:00

I have self-diagnosed myself with severe social paralysis. It is the result of a lifetime of critical thoughts and severe inner-ear problems that affect my balance so thoroughly that I can trip and fall down while standing still. I don't really have inner-ear problems, I'm just pathetic, but it sounds like a much better excuse.

I don't really do well with people around my own age. I am so inherently uncool, and I can feel it, I feel that handicap of uncoolness when I'm in an unknown peer group. I am awkward and tense and I say things that should really not be said. I also trip over things a lot, or drop glassware.

This social paralysis causes me to be uncommonly strange when faced with the prospect of doing anything while other people are watching. I will go out of my way to sit, hands folded and head down, even if it makes me totally miserable and bored because the boredom is better than the alternative of standing up and falling on my face, or breaking something.

Today, for instance, I am sitting at a table with three guys I have either never met or have only met once. (The fourth one I know very well, but it hardly matters, because he does not offset the ratio of me-to-them.) Can you imagine the anxiety this is causing me? I sit here quietly, and I feel unconscionably rude for only answering their questions in a quiet, clipped answer. Then I try and force myself to be more sociable, to smile and carry on a conversation, and I end up babbling and repeating what they just said and laughing too loudly. It's a hard life I lead.

To make matters worse, my computer is dying. I guess I should mention that we are all on computers; this is a Starcraft party. I know. Oxymoron much? But they're having fun and I've never been the girl who minded doing her own thing while everyone else was busy, so I guess it's a good fit.

EXCEPT. OH, THE EXCEPT. My computer is dying. My computer that is my link to the outside world. They are all doing something and if my computer dies I will have NOTHING to do, seeing as how I forgot to bring a book. I'm sitting here, watching the little red battery flash at me, and I know what you're thinking, Internet, because I can read your mind. You're thinking, "Why don't you just go plug it in?" Oh if only it were that easy!

Remember the social paralysis? DO YOU REMEMBER IT? I remember it. Here's how this situation could potentially unfold, and believe me, it has happened before, so don't think I'm just being paranoid. Plugging in my computer would involve me having to navigate a myriad of hazards, the first of which involves getting out of my chair. I'm sitting close to the table (rule number twenty-three: always sit a good distance away from the table so you don't have to push the chair away from the table when standing and sitting. If you didn't know this before...you're welcome). Pushing your chair out from the table when there's a rug underneath you is dangerous business. It gets caught on the carpet and the next thing you know you've gotten your ankles caught on the rung because the chair didn't push back at the correct speed and then you fall backward over the chair. Hypothetically, of course, because I have never done something that dumb.

Once I get out of the chair I'd have to untangle my computer cord, which is sitting by my feet. That's pretty manageable, but then comes the part of walking to the outlet. Let's say I manage to get to the outlet without falling on my face. I'm not even sure the outlet is available. I know it's over there on that wall because someone unplugged something earlier to plug another thing in, but I can't actually see it. For all I know there isn't an open space, and then I will have risked everything for naught. I'll have to ask if there's another outlet, and then people will look at me and judge me for being that girl who dares to interrupt their Starcraft to ask about a power source. The expected humiliation, it burns!

What if there is an open outlet? Awesome, right? No. There is much more to deal with. I don't know if my power cord will stretch all the way back to my computer. I mean, it doesn't look that far away, but my depth perception is bad and I've been very wrong about distance before (ask me to tell you the van and the barn story sometime). If I try to plug in my computer but it's too far away then boy, will my face be red.

(I know. Like anyone is actually watching that closely, or would care. The social paralysis ignores this logic. It fills me with fear and the inability to do anything productive except blog about how woefully pitiful I am.)

The other option is to just let my battery die, pretend I was tired of the computer, and then sit on the couch and study the wallpaper for the next two hours. I know this is silly, but my anxiety level is so high at the thought of attempting the Great Computer Plug-In of Twenty-Ten that this might be what it comes to. I'll let you know, and then we can discuss options for better therapy and meds, because clearly what I'm on right now is not cutting it.

UPDATE: I definitely mentally slapped myself in the face and just plugged in the computer because good lord, woman, you're having a panic attack about getting up and moving two feet to preform a perfectly safe and routine task. Stop overthinking things. But hey, I did it! Woo! I think this is the kind of good progress I need to share with my therapist.

UPDATE TWO: Do you see how ridiculous I am? I don't know how my family puts up with me. This is why I cannot have friends. I am doomed to a lonely existence because I don't have the common sense that God gave a squirrel.

It's The Little Things In Life, Bob.

2010-01-02T11:23:00.001-07:00

Celery would be delicious if it weren't for those gosh-darned little strings. I bite into a piece of celery and one of two things happens:

A) I get a razor sharp strand of celery caught in my teeth

B) The celery won't break cleanly in two, leaving me with one half a bite of celery dangling from my face, as if I were a mule. That's attractive.

Yesterday I was really paranoid that my haircut made me look like a boy. I know. Weird. Ever since I was twelve years old and I realized that I were to crop my hair really close to my head and I could easily be mistaken as a male counterpart, I've been paranoid. This revelation was thanks to a book I read about a girl who pretended to be a boy so she could join the army during the Civil War. It was very traumatizing. My hair isn't even that short, and I still have this fear. Yesterday I was straightening myhair and the way it looked was so reminiscent of some 16th century drummer boy that it made me a little twitchy. (I just spent 20 minutes googling pictures of men with long hair, trying to come up with a good visual, and I couldn't.) I wore big sparkly earrings the rest of the day to try and offset my manliness.

Fake leather is one of the coolest things in the world. I bought a white biker jacket yesterday at Target (again, just googled for 20 minutes without success so just USE YOUR IMAGINATION). Later I figured out that faux leather might be totally lame but it is so soft and pretty and it buttons at the neck to keep the cold air out and nomnomnom I'm gonna go put it on right now even though it is 70 degrees in the house.

England might be cool and all, with its fish and chips and the accents and culture, but...America is way better.

Here's To You, Twenty-Ten

2010-01-01T01:11:00.002-07:00

In the year 2000, I turned ten years old. My grandma had a stroke, my mom died, and we moved to Idaho. I was in 4th grade for three weeks and made it on the Top Ten list of most avid readers in the school. Most importantly, Spencer was born.

In 2001, I started 5th grade and learned about D.A.R.E. My best friends were Michelle, Kayla, and Janell. I was in the car on the way to the dentist when my grandparents told me something very, very bad had just happened in New York.

In 2002, I got my first locker. I was late to class because I couldn't get it open. I read my books by hiding them on my lap under my desk when I was supposed to be taking math notes. I learned that I could get out of P.E. if I took band and choir.

In 2003, I was still getting out of P.E. by taking band and choir. I figured out I could miss the first part of science class if I went to the school counselor to talk about my feeeelings. I also realized that books didn't have to be checked out from the library; I started walking off with a lot of books when the librarian wasn't looking.

In 2004, I was in 8th grade. They figured out I'd been skipping P.E. I had to start playing dodgeball with all the other kids. I also started high school in 2004. The boy I'd been crushing on since 5th grade finally told me he liked me too.

In 2005, I was a sophomore. I was the only kid in my group not old enough to date or drive. I stayed up all night on the phone with Andrew, whispering into the wee hours of the morning so we wouldn't get caught.

In 2006, I was a junior. Math made me cry. I spent too much money on a red prom dress that I still love so much that I want to be buried in it. I got my first kiss a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday, outside the Coca-Cola factory.

In 2007, I was a senior. I spent almost every weekend with my friends. Michelle and I made plans to go to college together and spend the rest of our lives doing big things. I got in my first car wreck on the icy winter roads.

In 2008, I graduated. Michelle and I went to college ten days later. We lasted long enough to rack up a freshman year's worth of credits. I loved and lost intensely and started to realize that my life was not what I always thought it would be. I also got my first car of my own, a bright green Toyota Camry that would later be named Jasper, against my wishes.

In 2009, I had to start from scratch. I dropped out of school and moved back home without telling anyone my plans. I had to face the reality of my anxiety that had been plaguing me for so long. I got my first real job and swore I would never go back to the places and situations that had derailed me so thoroughly. I lost myself in 2009. I spent a lot of time looking for the old me. I never did find her. I had to decide to stop searching for what I had misplaced and instead, begin to build anew.

Here's to you, 2010. Here's to a year of building. Of progress and fresh starts and hope. Of success and self-worth and a general sense of win. Of moving on and moving forward.

It's been one hell of a decade.

Stop It

2009-12-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Christmas. Oh, people. You are driving me crazy.

I will say Happy Holidays if I damn well please. Cut the Jesus is the Reason for the Seaon crap. No, he is not! It's a freaking pagan holiday that dates back a million billion years before Christ was even born. The Christian world celebrates December 25th as if it were Christ's birthday, but most historians agree that Jesus was not born in the middle of winter.

Why is it, then, that people get so worked up when they feel their precious season is being paid less respect than it is due? Seriously, guys, someone in the marketing department at Jesus Inc. pulled the wool over your eyes. I can see them now, in their snazzy sheepskin suits and sandals, chuckling to themselves about how well they capitalized on the December 25 opportunity. Wake up, sheeple!

I understand that for lots of people, it's about the symbolism. I understand (and partcipate in) that kind of celebration. But I draw the line at tolerating some illiterate notion that everyone else should be deferent to this Holy of Days. No. The Christian community has no ground to stand on when they talk about keeping Christ in Christmas. Christmas didn't start with Christ.

You, my dear friends, are free to worship and celebrate however you choose. But please stop trying to impose your delusions on everyone else. The campaigns to keep the season "sacred" have to end. It's none of your business how other people treat December 25th. Do whatever you want, and stop expecting other people to do what you think they should do. And please, for the love of toast, stop being offended when you are wished a Happy Holiday instead of a Merry Christmas. Just be grateful the person who said those words took the time to say something kind at all.

Happy Winter Solstice, y'all!

Hydration and CNN

2009-12-21T19:11:00.002-07:00

My office is a pretty stellar place. The people I work with are great and there's always free food on the breakroom table. (Today it came in the form of a loaf of banana bread...delicious.)

HOWEVER. There has been a severe backsliding in the awesome of the workplace. Let me tell it you.

It was about a week and a half ago that I noticed there was an unfamiliar man standing by the printer (this is the same demon printer that grumbles ominously by me when I walk by and refuses to print on the correct paper, even if I've emptied all the other trays. I hate this printer with every fiber of my soul). He was holding a measuring tape and talking seriously with a few members of the corporate team. At first, I was excited, because it didn't look like things bode well for the Printer of Satan. Then I heard this:

"So, we'll have to get rid of the water fountain to make room? Well, I guess no one really uses it anyway, so...go ahead."

WAIT. WHAT?

I rounded the corner faster than a jackrabbit and demanded to know what was going on. I got a weak answer about how Bezzelebub's Printing Machine needed more room for a "cardboard bypass tray". The only place the printer fits is in this one hallway. And the only way to make more room in that hallway for the printer is to move the counter that sits next to it. And the only way to move the counter is to (you guessed it!) get rid of the drinking fountain.

Yes. They got rid of the drinking fountain. The only drinking fountain in the whole building, and it's gone. That drinking fountain was so convenient! It was like seriously, one foot from my desk. I could get up and quench my thirst at random intervals of the day, whenever I wanted, taking just as much as necessary. Now, when I'm thirsty (which happens more and more frequently, now that the fountain is gone...coincidence? I think not) I have to go get a cup, and then walk to the other hallway that has the water cooler. Then I have a choice: fill my cup just enough to satiate my water desire, or bring some back to my desk with me?

Trouble is, when I bring water back to my desk with me, I don't want to drink it right away. I mean, I just had water. I don't want more right this second. So it sits there, and looses it delicious chill, and then I'm stuck with a mouthful of only mildly cold water when I do get thirsty next.

It's a sad life I lead. To add insult to injury, someone in the office likes to watch Fox News. Like, a lot. Everytime I eat lunch in the break room, Glenn Beck is yapping at me. You guys know how I feel about Glenn Beck. At first, it was like...oh. Someone left Fox News on. I'll just switch to CNN, since no one else is in here anyway. Ohhh Anderson Cooper, you beautiful man, you.

Now, though, it's turned into some sort of challenge. Every stinking time I go in there, it's Glenn
Beck.How is Glenn Beck on so many hours of the day? I have no idea. I think whoever
watches it does it on purpose. They wait until they hear me coming down the hall and
then they switch the channel and bolt.

Seriously, what other explanation is there?

Panic Button

2009-12-19T00:06:00.002-07:00

Can I tell you guys a secret? (Once I tell you, it won't be a secret anymore, but for the purposes of this story, let us go on.)

I have generalized anxiety disorder.

That wasn't a super great secret, you say? I'm sorry. It's one of those things you keep secret for a really long time, because you don't know how to bring it up or you think it's supposed to be a secret. It's not exactly something people talk about over cocktails, you know? So you're all hush-hush about it, and then when you finally tell people, you feel really stupid for keeping it quiet because Lame, I Am Not Impressed With Your Psychological Issues.

Anyway. What's my point? I have two points, actually. (I know. I like, thought about this post and everything before I started writing. I spent tons of time planning it out. The quality will not be affected at all, though, so don't hold your breath.) I think I over-addressed the first point already, but let me continue to beat it to death: I have anxiety problems. It's like...not a big deal. So why have I been holding out on you guys?

When my doctor first told me to get myself to a psychiatrist because things were clearly not right (and had not been right since, oh September of 2008), I was overwhelmed with relief. I know. Relief? Seriously? But you guys, things were bad. There's no reason to share the gory details. It was terrible and dark and I thought everything was my fault. My fault for not being strong, my fault for not having more control over how I felt; my fault for CHOOSING to react like this because of course it was a choice, and of course I was just failing to have some perspective.

The guy I saw told me I had an anxiety problem. The brain is supposed to process all the information it receives as Threatening or Non-Threatening. When too much stimulus is tossed in the Threatening category, you feel anxious, but eventually the threat is resolved and there's balance and la la fairies and meadows and jellybeans. With G.A.D., your brain labels most everything as Threatening. The anxiety and the fear wears at you, chips away at your defenses until you're ready to kill yourself, just to make it all stop.

Cheery, eh? So why are we talking about it, in this blog space that is usually reserved for awesome YouTube videos and my brilliant social commentary?

It's because I'm tired of feeling apologetic for something I can't help. I'm tired of bending to the social rule that says I can't talk openly about something that's a physiological part of me without feeling like I'm whoring for attention. I'm tired of fearing that people will think I'm making it up, and mostly, I'm tired I feeling like I'm the only who struggles with this.

Something my therapist and I talked a lot about was that people with serious anxiety problems often feel very isolated. People with clinical depression are understood by everyone else because even if you haven't ever been diagnosed with chronic depression, you understand what it feels like. Oppressive depression is a common denominator among a lot of us, even if it was only for a brief time in our lives. Anxiety is different. People don't understand when I tell them that sometimes, the smallest everyday things send me into such panic that I burst into tears. A day can be so bad that simply listening to everyone talk at the dinner table is so overwhelming that I have to leave the house. That level of irrationality isn't something that most people have dealt with.

I guess what I'm saying is I know how crummy it feels to have people look at you like you might be exaggerating. "It's not that I don't believe you, it's just...I've never felt that way, so I don't know how to relate." Yeah. Awesome.

I don't want it to be that way. It's inexcusable for me to be in a position of empathy and not offer it. I'm offering it now. It's okay to talk about our weaknesses and our triggers; the outrageous things that give me a meltdown are probably not the same things that will make someone else a nervous wreck. It's better than nothing, though. I'd love to talk to someone who understands the end result of a panic attack, even if their panic attacks aren't caused by the same things. That's my second point: I know that some of the people who read this are in the same boat. Let's paddle our little boats together.

Vermont*

2009-12-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

I broke my computer the other day. I don't know how. It might be related to the number of times I drop it from great heights. Cough.

So, because it was broken and had taken with it a little piece of my soul, I stumbled into work today, begging the IT department to Fix It, Fix It Now PLEASE Or I Will Die.

They're fixing it right now. And I'm just kind of chilling here, watching them do...whatever it is they do. At one point they were brandishing screwdrivers and throwing around words like "firewire" and I didn't know if they were talking about arson or not, but I was afraid.

Apparently I broke the hard drive. They pulled out the old one and showed it to me. It's so tiny! I might go so far as to call it cute. There's all these little screws holding it together and itty bitty dots...precious.

Computer's done! Ohhh they fixed it. Next time I post, it will be from my beautiful Apple. Thank you, my darling computer geeks.

*This title is apropos of nothing, I just have the word Vermont stuck in my head.

But Not To Worry!

2009-12-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

The one part of me that will always be the same is my ability to mock, and mock mercilessly, everyone I come in contact with.

Gems that you must watch, if you don't view the entire video:

I'm an American. We don't have czars in America.

Profiling is a must; compromise is for people who are WRONG.

Alaska is just right across the street from Russia!

At Odds

2009-12-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

When I was still in high school, I heard a lot about how to live your life. I was taught that your choices are not your own, and that decisions made affect everyone around you. It was very difficult to separate my responsibilities to myself from my perceived responsibilities to other people. I heard a lot of this: "You always come first, of course, BUT...you can't ignore how your life affects the lives of everyone around you." There were a lot of visuals used, especially of the ripple in a pond variety. If I was ever content with my choices, it was a happy coincidence. I literally taught myself to be happy after I had taken care of everyone else .

Being such a martyr eventually got the best of me. It was a healthy lifestyle change, to start looking out for myself, but old habits die hard. I still think, a lot, about whether or not it's right of me to do so many things that are at odds with family. Today, for instance, I was downright miserable as I contemplated my two-sided personality. I've made a lot of changes in my life. I'm not the same person I was even three months ago. I feel like these changes are for the better, in that I'm truly starting to think for myself and stand on my own two feet. But I also feel that there's a pricetag attatched, and it's one that makes me sad.

I know that there are aspects of my life, of me, that would be truly hurtful to my family and my friends, and all the other people who watched me grow up, if I were to flaunt them. I try and keep a lid on those things, but I feel like it's less easy these days to just act out the role they hope I will fill. The Lorena I used to be and the Lorena I am now are on opposite sides of a divide that is ever widening. I get the sense that someday, maybe someday soon, I'll have to make a choice. It's one I'll have to make on my own, and that feels very lonely indeed.

That's the source of my melancholy tonight; it's wearying to always be on guard. Juggling two personalities is getting the best of me. Whining about it on this blog certainly didn't help that much. I think the only cure is a trip to Hawaii, where I can lay in the sun and dream about Taylor Lautner. Not that I don't do that here.

Macro Photo, Mega Awesome

2009-12-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

In case you guys ever wonder, I get a lot of this awesome stuff from a website called Reddit. I wouldn't exactly recommend it for the pure in heart, but everyone else should take a look. I'm on it every single day. Go on, check it out.

Edit Fever

2009-12-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

Have I ever mentioned how much I desire to have my own domain name? It's true. I really want to get out of the anotherdomain.com world.

Every time I'm reminded how unsatisfied I am with my blog, I think and think about what I could name my catchy new website. Then I get stumped, and then I revamp my current blog to try and soothe my aching heart. That's why everything's all different today. I keep editing and deleting and tearing out my hair and walking away and then starting all over again in hopes that all that frenzy would help me forget that I don't have my own website.

I'm very weary of it. I wanted to pick out a really freaking awesome domain all on my own, but I'm clearly ill-equipped for that kind of win.

I turn it over to you. Anyone who comes up with a really good idea that I just can't help but love gets a prize. I don't know what kind of prize. That stupid longboard is still in my garage. You could have that. Or I'll give you a PayPal gift certificate. Actually, yes. That's how much I want my own domain. Give me an idea for a really great name, and there's a distinct possibility you'll get money. No promises, but I have been known for paying people to give me what they want. Ask Michelle about the time I bought off an FHE member on one of those weird, "Bring-your-own-picnic-and-we'll-set-you-up-on-a-date" activities.

Helpful hints: I want a personal one. Some kind of story behind it, or perhaps a cute nickname. Short is better. Ready, go.

I Can Still Quote This Whole Video

2009-12-11T21:47:00.002-07:00

This Is Fun

2009-12-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

And by fun, I mean PAINFUL.

Go to The Oatmeal and listen to that noise. Can you hear it?

I can hear it. It hurts my ears. But all the older people in my office really and truly don't hear anything.

So cool.

December 7, 1941

2009-12-07T10:48:00.004-07:00

Every year, on this morning, my grandpa asks me very gravely, "Rena, do you know what day it is?" And every year I answer, just as seriously, "It's Pearl Harbor Day, Grandpa. Of course I remember." I guess it's a tradition of ours, to ask these exact same questions every year. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, Grandpa will tell me stories about the war and how he served his country. He doesn't like to talk about it much, but it's important to him that I remember.

My grandpa is a man among men. I feel this very strongly, all the time, but there are some days when I'm reminded even more how lucky we are to have his kind. Thanks, Grandpa.

Another Reason I Don't Eat Breakfast

2009-12-07T08:21:00.002-07:00

Hot chocolate+last remaining clean pair of pants=oh of COURSE that just spilled all over me.

Now I'm late for work. (And posting about it. Duh.) Still listening to Kings of Leon, by the way. I told you I get obsessive about music.

Crabster McCrabby Pants

2009-12-06T22:33:00.004-07:00

I'm really grumpy tonight. Even more so than usual, which is saying a lot, considering that I spend much of my life saying things like, "Get off my lawn!" and telling people about my most recent trip to the doctor and how many pills I'm taking for my aching bones. Do you not see a distinct resemblance between myself and the elderly?

I don't know what to blame for the downward spiral my mood has taken. It could have been that I spent the whole day re-reading the Twilight series. I read the four books to remind myself of the finer details of Jacob Black, but I wanted to tear my hair out because Bella and Edward were so nauseating. They deserve each other, she with her astounding inability to do ONE SINGLE THING RIGHT and he with his creepy emotional manipulating. But why do you have to take Jacob down with you, Bella? He is perfect and good. LEAVE JACOB ALONE!

Another thing that may be contributing to my inordinate glumness is the lack of Christmas decorations around our house. I don't know why my family is such an epic FAIL, but we don't even have a Christmas tree yet. This hurts my heart, more than you can probably imagine. I am

one of those really annoying girls who get all SQUEEE about Christmas and like, oh-em-gee it's my favorite season and I love the music and the lights and the Christmasy feeling, like...guys! Yay for x-mas! *sparkly christmas button* I am that girl. I am not ashamed. I am feeling a little panicky about the fact that no one is really playing any carols and we don't have a tree or any decorations up yet. Do you want to know the worst part? My grandma is apparently feeling anxiety over our lack of Christmas spirit as deeply as I am, and this morning do you know what I caught her doing? I CAUGHT HER PUTING UP THE NATIVITY SET. Do you know what has been my specific Christmas job since I was four years old? PUTTING UP THE NATIVITY SET. None else get to touch those little glass figures, including that one sheep that has no legs left, except me. I got all whimpery and asked her Why Grandma, Why Are You Putting Up My Nativity Set? She quickly put them away, muttering some weak excuse about just "wanting to make sure she had all the pieces", but I know better. This is some kind of holiday conspiracy, and I just want all my family members who are reading this to know that I AM ON TO YOU. NICE TRY.

A distinct throbbing behind my right eye is alerting me to the fact that the medication for my headaches has once again fallen through. Come forth, monstrous pain of my head. I await your full blown attack with resignation.

There is one bright spot to my night, and it has come in the form of Kings of Leon. I recommend doing something else instead of watching the video. Just allow yourself the luxurious pleasure of the lyrics and save your eyes, unless you like men who are dripping with too much fake sweat. Maybe you're into that sort of thing.

I Wish Everyone Was Loved Tonight

2009-12-02T23:26:00.003-07:00

And you asked me what I want this year
and I try to make this kind and clear
just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
'cause I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
and designer love and empty things
just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words and sing out loud
'cause everyone is forgiven now
'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

I need some place simple where we could live
and something only you can give
and that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive
and the one poor child who saved this world
and there's ten million more who probably could
if we all just stopped and said a prayer for them

So take these words and sing out loud
'cause everyone is forgiven now
'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

I wish everyone was loved tonight
and somehow stop this endless fight
just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words and sing out loud
'cause everyone is forgiven now
'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

Out, Damned Spot!

2009-12-01T08:10:00.004-07:00

I've been missing in action because we went to California for Thanksgiving. We left Wednesday morning and didn't get back until Sunday night. And then yesterday I had to work until 8:00 at night so FORGIVE ME FOR NOT POSTING, I BEG OF YOU.

Actually, I really do need your forgiveness, because I'm pretty sure that any chance of eternal salvation I may have had prior to this weekend is gone.

Turkey Day was fun. I helped make the most delicious dessert I have ever eaten (pumpkin white chocolate cheesecake, and I would like to be buried with a slice, take note) and hung out with cousins I haven't seen in far too long. All the girls went to see New Moon on Friday night and I don't care what everyone says, the final judgement is TEAM FREAKING JACOB. He'll be eighteen in February, and then everyone can stop calling him jailbait, thankyouverymuch.

Sadly, guys, I will never live in eternal glory with my one true love, Taylor Lautner. There is a special place in heaven for bodies as perfectly sculpted as his own, and I'm not even getting past the pearly gates.

Do you guys want to know the secret behind my dark shame? Of course you do. That's why you come here, faithfully, devoted readers that you are.

On the way home from California I....I killed a cat. Oh, the horror of it all. I saw them running across the field. There were two of them. I saw them run under the fence. I tried to slow down...there was one on the right, and one on the left. I couldn't swerve. I closed my eyes. They were right next to the car...I thought we'd made it.

And then, the thump. And, I swear to you, a fluffy clump of white hair fluttering by my window.

OH, THE HORROR.

I only saw one cat in the rearview mirror. Becca tried to tell me she saw the other one run to safety...but I know the truth. I know that somewhere in the bushes on the side of Hwy 44 an innocent orange cat lies dead. The blood of that poor kitty stains my hands. Or my wheels, if we must be technical.

If I'd Had An Older Sister, These Are The Ten Things I Wish She Had Told Me In High School

2009-11-22T18:01:00.005-07:00

It does matter what people think about you. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something. But at the end of the day, it matters more what you think of you.
It's okay to be a little bit hypocritical sometimes. It's human nature to be inconsistent. You can wear makeup and still be disgusted by girls who spend too much time looking in the mirror.
Always question everything you're told. That doesn't mean you always have to do the opposite of what you're told. It's okay to do what people tell you to, sometimes, as long as you always ask, "Why?"
All boys have ulterior motives. Even the nice ones, and especially the ones who always know the right thing to say. It's okay to love them, but you have to know that you can't always trust them. Calculated risks, not blind adoration.
Grades don't matter. Really, they don't. Doing your best does matter. Living up to your potential is important.
Once you start to think you're more mature than the people around you, you can be sure that you have become one of the most immature people in the room.
You're thin. You have body image issues. These two facts are not mutually exclusive. Your insecurities over your 115 pound body are just as legitimate and real as your friend's insecurities over her 145 pound body. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We're all in this together, and there's no reason to diminish one person's problems because they aren't the same as your own.
Belonging to a religion should not feel like belonging to a cult. Dare to be different. Worship in your own ways. The God you believe in will still love you.
Don't be so determined to be "counter-culture" that your every opinion is simply the opposite of what everyone else thinks is cool. Really, you can be true to yourself if you refuse to like Twilight but you also can't help but love those stupid, ironic nerd glasses.
Someday you will have a big crush on someone you never thought you could like. Just go with the flow. It's all part of growing up.

I'm Moving Up In The World

2009-11-22T12:36:00.002-07:00

Today, for the first time in several months, I looked at my blog dashboard.

(For those of us unfamiliar with Blogger, this is the important area where boring information like how many posts you have written is kept. I always skip it and come straight to the homepage, where I can stare and be awed by my awesome self)

There was a funny box on my dashboard. It said something about comment moderation. I was puzzled, because I don't moderate my comments.

So I clicked on the box, and beheld a wonderous sight: two spam comments, one about Viagra and one about Dragonage.

I guess Blogger recognized them as spam and wouldn't post them until I approved.

Do you guys know what this means? I'm getting spam comments now. I'm practically an A-list blogger, y'all.

I'll try and remember the little people when I'm on Dr. Phil.

Bread Animals Have Rights, Too

2009-11-15T17:54:00.001-07:00

I was going to start this post by saying that I find sourdough bread to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I realized this was silly, and a little redundant. I edited the first sentence to say, "I find sourdough bread to be the greatest invention of this century."

Unfortunately for my opening sentence, sourdough bread was not invented in this century. It wasn't even invented last century. Sourdough bread has been around since approximately 1500 BC. The Egyptians are the first civilization with a recorded use of sourdough. This makes sourdough the oldest leavened bread known to man, and also the most original.

Leavened bread is a fancy way of saying "bread that rises". Like most good things, it was probably discovered on accident, just like electricity or LSD. The Egyptians made a lot of beer, and breweries and bakeries were often in the same place. Someone probably sampled a little too much of the good stuff that day and dumped some flour in with with their brewski and sourdough was born! Well, actually, they would have had to take the resulting dough and bake it into something delicious, but THEN sourdough was born!

Unfortunately for America, sourdough bread didn't become popular until the days of the California gold rush. It quickly became a staple in the diet of the miners, even though I don't like to think about what other kinds of food they were eating, *cough dead muskrats cough*. The sourdough tradition became part of the culture of California, particularly in San Francisco.

You know, I started writing this post a really long time ago. 10-3-09, at 8:55 am, to be precise. It was a response to this, which was clearly a thinly disguised attempt to quell the jealousy of my awesome sourdough bread animals. I got tired of researching it. So I'm just posting what I have. Haha, suckers. I have more pictures. Without further ado...

(The infamous alligator, which started it all)

And Some People Tried To Tell Me Getting A Dog Was A Bad Idea

2009-11-15T12:12:00.001-07:00

The Tale of Ted and Fred

2009-11-12T08:32:00.001-07:00

For Mike and Kate, who are so interested in Ted and Fred. Who knew my wrists could cause such a hubbub?

Yes, my wrists.

I have scrawny arms. I always have. When I was a wimpy prepubescent eleven year old, they didn't seem so out of proportion. I grew up, eventually, but my arms...never really did. Especially my wrists and my hands. My forearm resembles the forearm of a concentration camp victim. I had a boyfriend once who told me I had witch hands, because my fingers are so long and bony.

I would put a picture here, but I'm typing this on a foreign laptop, and I have no pictures of my wrists. Just imagine a broomstick with some skin draped over it, and there you have it. This explains Kami's surprise that Ted and Fred could support the weight of 24 ounces of smoothie.

I had a friend who liked to grab on to my wrists whenever we were watching something intense. The grabbing of the wrists happened a lot during our time on the soccer team. We had nothing to do but sit on the bench and gasp when something exciting happened on the field.

My friend had strong hands. She hurt my wrists, when she grabbed them. One day I said to her, "My wrists would like you to know that they are fragile beings, and you have to handle them with care."

She blinked at me a couple of times and said, "Your wrists told you that? What are their names, pray tell?"

I thought quickly. "Ted and Fred."

"Your wrists have names...and those names are Ted and Fred?"

"Yes."

"Well...how do you tell them apart? They're identical."

"No, the one on the right is a little bit smaller. So that one is Ted, because Ted has fewer letter than Fred."

"Um, okay."

It's Cold, Down Here In The Salt Mines

2009-11-06T10:25:00.002-07:00

Every day for the last week I've been drinking a smoothie called the Jungle Jack. 24 ounces of coconut and bananas and blueberries and cream and other various goodies. It is the most delicious thing I have ever consumed, and I doubt I will ever go back to regular breakfast food again.

It all started when I decided to try being in The Zone. The Zone is a diet that my aunt recommended to me. I wasn't really using it as a dieting tool, I was using it as a nutrition tool. What I mean by that is that I'm already thin enough, considering that I will sometimes go entire days without eating more than 400 calories. I don't know how I do it. I just kind of forget to eat sometimes. So being in The Zone was less about losing weight and more about learning to eat healthy food on a regular basis.

Blah blah talky talk. Like we care. The important bit is that being in The Zone requires breakfast.

I hate breakfast. I really always have. Eating before noon seems obscene to me. Nothing ever sounds good when I wake up. So this whole, "Eat equal amounts of carbs and protein within thirty minutes of waking up" was not really working out for me.

Until I remembered the Jungle Jack. There's a really cute, yuppie coffee shop in the town next to mine. It's funky and youthful and serves the most delicious smoothies in the world. One morning before work, I went to the coffee shop and ordered a smoothie. And then the heavens opened. My mind was illuminated. I drink a smoothie every morning for breakfast now. I don't know if it follows the exact rules of The Zone, but it is damn delicious and I will not give it up for anything.

In fact, I'm drinking one right now. But we're running into a problem, my Jungle Jack and I. It's really cold outside. I'm having to scrape ice off my windshield in the mornings. And the Jungle Jack? It is made with ice and cold ingredients. And my office? It is filled with humans who apparently have less than the average number of nerve endings, who insist that the temperature be kept at a chilly 71 degrees.

I'm freezing. And my delicious smoothie, which I love so dearly and tenderly, contributes to the hypothermic state of my body. I think I need to figure out a way to turn my Jungle Jack into a powder, so I can make it into hot chocolate. That would solve a lot of problems.

Proud Of Myself

2009-11-04T23:26:00.003-07:00

Today, I read a blog. The author is very happy. The author has everything that I thought I once wanted. The author is obviously at peace with their life. The author is enviable.

I am not always happy. I don't even know what I want, much less have it all. Peace comes infrequently to me. I never feel that my life is anything that someone else would want.

This used to make me angry. I was truly furious to see other people so content and happy when I was floundering and in despair. I was jealous and hurt by the success and accomplishment of other people. I judged everyone harshly and hated everyone easily. I didn't need a reason to be a bitch to someone. Everyone was fair game by nature of the fact that they existed and were happy.

Today I read a blog. And I just smiled to myself, observing the happiness the author has in their life.

I'm still searching for my happiness. I am still indescribably bitter over the tumultuous, painful year that marked the beginning of the end of the life I had known for eighteen years prior. I am overwhelmingly unsure of who I am. I get quite lonely sometimes. Any day of the week you can find me with eyes stinging from unshed tears.

I am proud to report that you can also find me, any day of the week, with a real smile on my face. There was a point when there wasn't anything I wanted to smile about. But the smile is making a comeback. I like to think this is a sign that I am loosening my grip, ever so slightly, on all of my emotional baggage.

I haven't found my happiness, yet. But I have finally found a refuge. This point in my life, this place I've finally reached, is good stuff. I'm proud of myself for making it this far. It's a joke to think that I don't have a long way to go. To put in perspective, I've walked an inch of the miles I have left. But it has been a very healing inch.

A Few Things I Have Observed On This Early, Early Morning

2009-11-02T05:10:00.001-07:00

My body does not adjust well to Daylight Savings Time
Lelle is going through a hairbrush phase. She likes to chew off the little plastic tips on the bristles.
When you stop blogging, it's really hard to start again.
When I get really bored with my life, I tend to start thinking in terms of, "What color should I dye my hair?"
Having two phones makes life real tricky sometimes.
On that note, Blackberry is far superior to Palm. If I had to compare the two, I mean.
Swiffer is possibly the best cleaning product on the planet, and I don't know why I can't marry mine.
When you go too long without getting your car maintained, it starts making angry noises, and the people at the shop give you dirty looks when you finally bring it in.
I have a secret admirer. It is .3 percent fun and 99.7 percent frustrating because I HATE SECRETS. (Confession: I unwrap my Christmas presents when I find them, and then carefully wrap them back up so no one knows. I've done this for a long, long time. It's an art.)
I wonder if my secret admirer knows I have a blog?
I am currently in The Zone. I'm too lazy to tell you guys what The Zone is. Maybe later.
Toothpicks are not something you want to step on. The wound in my pinky toe is proof positive.

Did You Know...

2009-10-28T12:42:00.001-06:00

That my self worth is directly related to the number of comments I get?

Right now I'm suicidal, people.

Way to go.

Wondering

2009-10-27T12:37:00.000-06:00

Why people have to come ask me a question right as I'm dozing off.

Don't you see that I'm under the desk? That means something. That means I'm trying to sleep.

Best of Times, Worst of Times

2009-10-26T17:57:00.002-06:00

I love my job. I really do. I don't even do anything yet, and I still love my job. Or the concept of my job, since, like I said, I don't do anything yet. Tomorrow I will be done with training, and THEN, finally, I will get to do what I was actually hired to do. I think.

I have to get up at 7:30 every morning. 7:00, if I want to do anything with my hair. This is kind of a big deal because I've been sleeping in until 11:00 for the last three and a half months. Don't bother telling me how slothful I was. I'm aware. At least I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Having something productive to do with my day is by far better for my mental health than sitting around the house all day is. If only someone had told me this sooner.

My only complaint about my new lifestyle is that NOBODY WARNED ME WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO TRICK YOUR DOG SO YOU CAN LEAVE THE HOUSE.

This is our new routine in the morning: Lelle jumps off the bed at 6:45, crawls under the bed where she has stashed a pair of underwear, and chews contentedly until 7:30. At 7:30, the alarm on my cell phone goes off, signaling to Lelle that the end of the world is nigh. She shoots out from under the bed, does an aerial 180, and leaps onto my face in panic. Once I have extracted her claws from my eye sockets, we both go into the bathroom where she whines until I get out of the shower. (I think she believes that I go into the shower to die or eat steak without her, or something equally heinous, because she sobs the entire time the water is running).

Life goes on, Lelle biting at my feet and me trying to remember where I put my computer bag, until 8:15. Now I have to abandon my dog to a life of solitude, leaving her to waste away in lonliness, never to return. At least, that's what it feels like. She practically sits on my feet as I walk to the door. I have to pick up a toy and toss it for her a few times. Then, without warning, I throw it one last time and run out the door when she goes to retreive it. I am tricky, and cruel.

I made the mistake this morning of turning around after I shut the door. Lelle was up on her hind legs, face pressed up against the glass, whining and scratching as she watched me walk away.

*SOB*

On the one hand, I love my job. I love having a morning routine, I love being productive, I love feeling important. On the other hand....

I'm wondering if it would be a legal use of my two fifteen minute breaks to run home and check on dah puppy.

Awkward Silence

2009-10-25T22:02:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm a copy cat.

So there's this girl I know. And I checked out her personal blog and HOLY CUTENESS.

So then I came back to my bloggity blog all inspired-like, you know?

And I made some changes.

And now I realize that there are many things similar to hers.

It made me uncomfortable, even though I'm willing to bet that she doesn't even know my blog exists and can't see my copy cat ways.

But I didn't mean to be a copy cat! Oh, the shame of it all.

Oh well.

{Except I would like to point out that I have ALWAYS used the cutesy brackets instead of regular parentheses. Anyone who follows me on twitter can testify of the truthfulness}

Peanut Butter Lellie Time

2009-10-24T23:45:00.001-06:00

When I was in the middle of writing my, "Oh I love Saturdays because they're peaceful and relaxing and lazy" post, Lelle was choking on a giant chunk of peanut butter.

For reasons unknown to everyone but my grandma, the peanut butter is kept in the fridge. This renders it hard, like unto a rock. I find it inedible, but that's really beside the point, unless the point is that I AM STARVING TO DEATH IN MY OWN HOUSE.

Back to story. Becca is using a knife, trying to chisel out some peanut butter to make herself a sandwich. I'm standing there laughing at her and trying to convince her to just open a new jar. Lelle is stalking the floor at our feet, as per her habit any time her sixth dog sense tells her that food is being prepared.

Suddenly, Becca digs out a massive peanut butter ball. It's the size of a scoop of ice cream. It balances precariously on the knife for a split second then drops to the floor, right under Lelle's nose. Becca yelps, "No, Lelle, no!" and in the time it takes us to bend over (we're only 5'3", so: not that much time) Lelle has like, vacuumed the peanut butter up. Slurp, gone.

I start honestly panicking at this point. I shriek to Becca to hold Lelle's mouth open and I stick my fingers in her mouth to try and scoop the peanut butter out. Lelle ~~actually enjoyed having my hands down her throat and was pretty accommodating for the whole process~~ tried to bit holes through my palms.

Despite my best efforts, and I tell you that I have never been so frantic to succeed in all my life, the peanut butter was lodged in the back of her throat and I couldn't scrape anything more than a few ounces out. Lelle started to cough and gag and I started thinking, "ohgodohgodohgod please don't let my dog die." Yes, I was praying to heavenly father to not let my dog die, and I know that the world has many more problems than my three pound poodle, so I was selfishly taking up space in God's inbox with this little catastrophe, but I love this dog really a lot, okay?

So I tell Becca, "I can't get the peanut butter out!" and she goes, "Let's run water in her mouth!" (We are beautiful and brilliant in the Davis family.) I take my hands out of Lelle's jaws and we turn on the faucet. Then I notice that Lelle isn't choking as much anymore...or at all, really...could it be that my fist down her gullet was the cause of her suffocation?

Even though it is now apparent that I was the one smothering her to death, and not the evil peanut butter, we half heartedly splash water on her face anyway. Then we set her down and watch as she swallows hard for a few more minutes, effectively eating probably a quarter of her weight in peanut butter.

She never threw it up, either. My dog is insane.

Wondering

2009-10-24T13:26:00.001-06:00

If it would be a really bad idea to take my dog in the shower with me.

I Love Saturday

2009-10-24T10:48:00.004-06:00

Because I can sleep in.

Because I don't have to do anything once I get up.

Because I can eat ice cream for breakfast.

Because Saturday is a lazy day.

Because I can sit in front of the fire as long as I want.

Because pasta on Saturday just tastes better.

Because Becca is playing in the soccer state championships.

Because Milly is playing at District Three.

Because I get to be there for both of them.

Do Try To Be Serious

2009-10-23T12:37:00.002-06:00

Disclaimer: I am definitely not writing this post during work. Cough.

If I were, though, I might be really tempted to tell you guys about how my friend in England hacked my Skype and made me call myself on the main phone line so when I answered the office phone it broadcast throughout the whole building.

Not embarrassing in the slightest. Cough.

Other things that could have gone on earlier today, in theory, if I were writing this at my desk:

The consumption of approximately 437 stale Good&Plenty bites. Soooo delicous. Soooo hard on my jaw.
Filling in for the receptionist and always managing to hang up on someone every third time I answer the phone.
Messing up my laptop so thoroughly that the IT guy told me, "This is a record amount of time I've spent trying to fix a laptop."
Trying to explain to the compliance officer that I didn't staple my ID badge, those are puncture bites from when my dog jumped on me and started attacking my picture.
Wishing, hoping, praying for someone else to watch the phones for like, two seconds, please dear Lord, so I can run to the bathroom.

After Every Other Sentence, I Pause To Throw A Rubber Bone

2009-10-20T06:17:00.003-06:00

Seriously, this post is taking a million times longer than it should because Lelle demands that we play fetch this morning. Except when she fetches, she brings it back juuuuuust out of my reach and then dances away when I try and grab the bone from her, leaving me to lunge and tackle to retrieve said toy. So it's less of a game of fetch and more of a sadistic doggy version of tag.

Michelle and I went to Rexburg this weekend. I don't really have much to say about that right now, since I'm still kind of recovering and all, but I will tell you that the closer we got to that town, the deeper my sense of foreboding. By the time we could see the temple from the highway, I was nauseous, disoriented, and almost overcome with the urge to repent of sins not yet committed, just in case.

I had a wonderful time visiting our old roommate (hi Emily! I love you so much!) but by the time the trip was over I had developed a twitch in my left eye and looked something like this:

Rexburg will do that to you.

In other news, I got a job. An honest to goodness, paid vacation, terrible-photo-badge ID job. It's really exciting. All snark aside, I am so happy right now. My life feels good again. I'm actually up so early because I'm getting ready to make the rounds to the satellite offices, introduce myself and explain what I'll be doing at this company. I haven't really set guidelines for myself about how much I'll talk about work on my blog, so I'm going to go eat my breakfast and leave it at that.

But hey, guys? Remember this point in my life? It sucked. Sometimes it still sucks. But it's getting better. Thanks for being here for all of it. I'm really happy right now. I'm getting back to the basics of being me.

Can't Stop Thinking About...

2009-10-13T12:01:00.001-06:00

This Spongebob clip. I saw it on tv like, five days ago and I'll still randomly think about it and then cringe and try and curl up in a ball. This doesn't work really well if I'm driving my car. Gahhhhhhh so horrible. I'm going to go get fitted for steel toed shoes today.

At This Moment In Time, My Dog Is Licking A Napkin

2009-10-12T17:03:00.008-06:00

If you tell me that I'm annoying, I'll just nod my head. Because I know. Believe me, I know.

I'm seriously aware of all my shortcomings. I think about them all the time. I'm the most self absorbed person on the planet, and part of that is because I spend a good 30 precent of my day making a mental checklist of all the things I wish I wasn't. Spoiled, lazy, immature, stubborn, arrogant, indecisive, whiny, and prone to psychotic rage.

Mostly what I'm thinkin about is the immaturity. I know, know, KNOW that I'm immature. It kills me how childish I can be sometimes. But I just can't stop. I mean, I can sometimes. But mostly, it's in my nature. It's like I'm still a teenager, or something.

I beat myself up for not being adult enough. But it's hard, dammit. It's hard to do the right thing all the time. It's hard to be responsible when you don't have to, it's hard to work hard when you don't have to, it's hard to be kind and generous and charitable when you don't have to.

It's hard to not whine when you know people are nice enough to listen and it's really, really hard to stop pleading for attention. I know that I'm an attention seeker. I know that there are a lot of reasons I think I need so much attention. I know that some of them are even legitimate. That doesn't stop me from hating myself for being That Girl, The One Who Is Always Begging For You To Pay Attention. (Oh the irony, as she blogs to an audience about hating that she thinks she needs so much attention. But I told you, AT LEAST I RECOGNIZE IT.)

All the knowledge in the world doesn't make it easier to work on your faults, though. If anything, it makes it that much more difficult. I feel that since I recognize the problem, it should be gone, like magic.

My flaws aren't going away like magic. They aren't even going away like not-magic. I feel like I work so hard to better myself sometimes and then at the end of a day like today, I've made zero progress. Or have even gone backwards. I hate that. I hate knowing what I need to change and not being able to make the changes.

It's beyond painful to see in yourself what other people see in you. It makes you feel so yucky. Seriously, if I'm this disgusted with myself sometimes, why the hell does anyone else put up with me?

On the plus side, there's still this guy. He's great. I love that he is going through a phase where he likes to pose for the camera. He directed all of these shots.

We were being squirrels, if anyone cares to know.

And is this not the most magical picture of my hair?

Please Don't Stop The Music

2009-10-11T11:33:00.002-06:00

I have an obsessive personality. Any one who knows me in real life will attest to this. (Kami? Alyssa?) I get...stuck on things. And I can't.let.it.go. I was at the office yesterday, trying to put together a FAQ pamphlet on text messaging for the older nurses who are really, REALLY unfamiliar with the whole concept of texting, and I had the brilliant idea to insert pictures of the different icons they'd need to recognize. You know, a little white envelope indicates a new voicemail, a mailbox with a red flag indicates both a new text and voicemail, etc. Except guess what? I could not for the life of me find a picture of the actual icons that their phones used. And no, I could not settle for just any old little white envelope. It NEEDED to be a picture of that exact same icon that was on their screen. I was probably on google for forty minutes, searching madly for "sprint unread message icon". Forty minutes!

I have a problem with music. Not a "problem with music" as in, music and I had a falling out a few years ago and now neither of us send Christmas cards anymore. Quite the opposite. In the same way that I am obsessive about "sprint unread message icon GOOGLE, YOU HAVE FAILED ME", I am obsessive about music.

If I dislike a song, I do not just dislike it. I will hate it, wholly and uncompromisingly, for the rest of my life. I will stalk out of the Hollister store and sit outside until enough time has passed that they aren't playing the song over the loudspeakers anymore. And then I will glare at the employees for not having better taste. In my defense (what's that thing they say about crazy people? That they will never, ever admit that they're crazy? And they're always defending themselves?) I usually only hate songs this passionately if there's some kind of emotional background. So when I hear this one song particular song that makes me gag, I remember how the ex-wasteoftime really loved this song. It's unbearable. I refuse to like almost all acoustic guitar music on this same principle. Do not even get me started on the evils of Jack Johnson.

On the flip side of this coin, if I discover a new song or band or artist that I just adore, I can't stop listening. My family goes stir-crazy because all day, every day, I will listen to the same song. Not even the same album, usually. I get stuck on one particular song and that's all I will listen to. Over and over. And over.

I will listen my music to death, long past the breaking point of a normal human being. One time, when Michelle and I were driving to Rexburg, I popped in a CD of a mix of 15 songs I'd randomly selected before the trip. Five hours later, we arrived in Rexburg, and Michelle stumbled out of the car, fell to her knees to praise the Lord that we had finally arrived, and swore a solemn oath that she would never again let me be in charge of the tunes, because that CD played the entire time we drove. It took her a full seventeen hours to detox from overexposure to Mandy Moore's Only Hope and Rusted Root's Send Me on my Way.

My current addiction is the soundtrack to the television series Glee. Disclaimer: I have never watched Glee. I have received mixed reviews, ranging from It Will Change Your Life to I Had To Stab My Eyeballs With A Blunt Toothpick. I really can't debate with you on the quality of the actual show.

But the music. THE MUSIC. This is the kind of music they play in heaven. Jesus and I are listening to the same soundtrack right now, I'm sure of it. The Glee version of Don't Stop Believin is seriously the greatest thing since Legolas, which reminds me of another story I should tell you guys someday. I've had Don't Stop Believin on repeat since the day before yesterday, and the only reason I'm allowed to take my headphones out and listen to it on my computer speakers right now is because everyone else has gone to church, and the only other person in the living room is Grandpa. He's deaf.

I fell in love with Glee so hard that after I heard Don't Stop Believin on someone's blog, I raced to iTunes to buy the whole album. Tragic moment of my life: iTunes isn't selling Glee as a whole soundtrack yet. You have to purchase each song individually, which is obviously way more expensive than buying them as a set, since there are currently 18 songs out. A normal person would have only bought two or three songs. Or waited until her computer hacker friend who handles all her illegal computer business came back online and downloaded her the whole soundtrack for free. Or just contented herself with listening to the full versions online, without needing to download them to her computer.

I bought all 18 songs for $1.29 each. I can't really do the math in my head, but isn't that something like $25.00? That's half a pair of delicious shoes. This is how much I love this music.

A Little Known Fact

2009-10-11T02:14:00.014-06:00

I am actually a brilliant writer.

It’s true. In my head, I am a freaking genius. The most amazing stuff is floating around up there. Sometimes, when I’m driving around late at night, I sit and think about all the things I’d like to write about, and frankly, I’m downright impressed with myself. I am succinct without under-explaining my points. I don’t ramble; I begin at the beginning, and when I get to the end, I stop. My logic is pretty irrefutable and the whole essay flows beautifully. Seriously, in my mind, I am the kind of writer that with a single blog post could bring this country to its knees. Too bad it doesn’t translate on paper.

In my head, I am also a more than adequate public speaker. Do you guys want to hear something really ~~funny~~ weird and kind of embarrassing? I talk to myself when I’m alone in my car.

No, seriously. In my mind, I’ll be sitting on Oprah’s couch, discussing any subject that I happen to be thinking about (because I am a supreme authority on just about everything) in great detail. We’re chatting along, the cameras are rolling, and all of a sudden I’ll start telling my steering wheel about the hypocrisy of the public school system.

This ~~neurotic mental breakdown~~ quirk of mine is very telling, for a few reasons. Obviously, it’s indicative of the fact that I really should find myself a good therapist. It also clearly illustrates what I have always admitted about myself, that I suffer from a touch of narcissism, since I like to imagine that thousands of people are hanging on my every word. I think the most important lesson to be learned here, though, aside from purchasing a car you can really trust to keep a secret, is that I clearly have a desire to be famous.

Unfortunately for me, I am never going to be famous. I am not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly, so the fashion industry has no use for me. I don’t possess any marketable talent to speak of, unless you count spewing angrily about everyone around me, and Perez Hilton has pretty much filled that niche to the brim. Even if Perez were to step down, Glenn Beck isn’t going to quit until he’s dead, so there’s really no room for me in that department. I don’t think I can be famous for being famous, because as we’ve just established, I’m not famous. Unless I can become best friends with Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. I don’t think that I can, but if I were given the opportunity, I’m prepared for the 75 point hit my IQ would take. Being famous would be worth it.

Turn Off Your Freaking Brights

2009-10-11T00:27:00.001-06:00

All thirteen cars that I passed tonight? You all had your brights on. And none of you turned them off.

Yikes

2009-10-07T20:02:00.003-06:00

A few things I am pondering on this night:

(These may very well be my last words, as I took a giant nap from 5:00-8:00 and subsequently missed dinner. I am now starving to death, kept alive only as long as my bag of Twizzlers holds. At last count, there were eleven Twizzlers left. So I do not think I am long for this earth.)

I wonder how many years I'm taking off my life by not flossing? I have never been a friend of flossing. I tried to get into the habit when I was a little kid, but I couldn't keep the floss wrapped around my fingers properly. And by the time I developed enough brain-hand coordination (when I was 17. My brain developed slowly) to do so, I had permanent retainers behind my front teeth, top and bottom. They made it impossible to floss those eight teeth, and really, what's the point in dental hygiene for all those back teeth? No one sees those.

****************************

My dad and I are watching the St. Louis Cardinals play the Los Angeles Dodgers. I've fallen in love with Andre Ethier. Actually, as per a team from Los Angeles, many of the Dodgers are Hollywood faces. I asked my dad, "Why are there so many strikingly handsome baseball players?" He said that he didn't think there were. I said that there definitely were.

Dad: "Well, maybe the cute little boys get bought better equipment and receive more attention from the coach."

Me: "So, America only likes the pretty children?"

****************************

Speaking of sports, what was up with my epic rant that I wrote earlier today? Good Lord, but that was a lot of words. And a lot of bitterness. I feel like this is the point where I should apologize and admit that I don't have that much hate festering in my soul. But I prefer to be small minded and envious, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I have a firm belief that too much emphasis is placed on athletics over academics, and that a school would benefit as much from a journalism department as a jock department. I'm very tempted right now to make myself feel better by bragging about how I might not be able to catch a ball, but I scored a 34 and a 35 on the reading and writing sections of the ACT, respectively. I won't do that, though. That would be tacky.

****************************

I'm pretty sure my dad is getting elderly and nostalgic enough that he really wants a grandchild. These were some clues I picked up today that led me to this conclusion.

He randomly sat down on the couch and started reminiscing about how much fun he had when I was a wee munchkin.
After I burned him for the thousandth time today, he said something about how an adorable baby wouldn't be so sassy.
When I got on Lelle's case for chewing on something she wasn't supposed to, he scooped her up and as he was walking away with her he said, "C'mon Lelle, your mom is mean to you, but grandpa will play with you all you want."

Now, in his defense, everyone talks to Lelle as if she were an actual baby. I should amend my position on the matter: everyone wants an actual baby. I feel as though I've already done enough for you, family, in providing a small creature to shower with love. Why isn't that enough? Why must there be all this pressure to produce an actual human being?? So on that note, buying a puppy did not satisfy the insatiable baby lust that my family possesses. Does anyone have a baby they would like to lend to me?

****************************

I've run out of Twizzlers. Goodbye, cruel world.

Green With Jealous Rage

2009-10-07T13:14:00.011-06:00

[Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting... there are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young people to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators. ~George Orwell]

[Sports are too much with us. Late and soon, sitting and watching - mostly watching on television - we lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm and, in time, attention as more and more closing rallies and crucial putts and late field goals and final playoffs and sudden deaths and world records and world championships unreel themselves ceaselessly before our half-lidded eyes. ~Roger Angell]

[When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury. ~Fran Lebowitz]

I'm the kind of person who will find something to trip over even when I'm not walking. No, seriously, it has happened before. I was standing in my kitchen and I went to turn around really fast, but my feet stayed facing forward even though my torso was starting to twist, and somehow or another I ended up on the floor. I'm also pretty notorious for falling up flights of stairs, usually while walking slowly and carefully, and burning my whole hand when trying to strain the hot water from my pasta.

My disabilities go much deeper than mere clumsiness. I am completely, thoroughly, utterly, extensively, absolutely incompetent at sports. Like, you guys, I cannot even throw a frisbee. I can't drop kick a soccer ball, catch a baseball, throw a football, and I once hit myself in the eye with my own racket when I was "playing tennis". (I put it in quotes because it's like...how cute. Lorena thinks she's playing tennis. That's sweet. But what she's doing in no way resembles tennis playing. It looks more akin to trying to defend herself from a swarm of invisible bees.)

It might surprise some of you, therefore, to learn that I was on the Varsity girls soccer team all the way through high school. But honestly, anyone who wanted to be on the team was on the Varsity team. The first two years I played, we were happy if we had enough players to make up an entire team. So yeah, in my high school, being on the Varsity soccer team had nothing to do with your ability (or lack thereof, in my case) and everything to do with how much spare time you had after school.

I actually liked soccer the first two years. We never won. It went beyond not winning. We lost most of our games with abandon. I remember a particularly epic slaughter where the final score was 15-0. I'm sure that for the girls on the team who were actually talented, playing soccer on our team was frustrating, to say the least. But I had fun hanging out with my older cousin and bonding with our goofy coach.

Sadly for me, my experience went downhill with the start of my junior year. There was a huge influx of players who were actually, how do I say this...good, and one of them was my younger sister. I was pretty much a benchwarmer from there on out. I'm not gonna lie, it was an embarrassing and not fun way to spend my last two years of high school. I quickly came to HATE soccer, with a passion. A lot of the other girls were catty and immature and it was a bummer to go to every single practice, look really stupid because everyone else was playing spectacularly, and then go to every single game and just sit there on the bench, bored out of my mind and wishing desperately that I were good enough to play.

It surprises me how resentful I still feel about that experience. I was talking about it to my aunt one day, and I guess my tone was particularly venomous, because she looked startled and said, "Wow, honey, you really hated it, didn't you? I always figured it was just the pressure of being on the team, but even now that you're out of high school the memory still burns, huh?" Um, yeah. I still rant about how the evils of high school sports while people stand by awkwardly and pray to whatever god they believe in to make the crazy girl shut up long enough for them to make their escape.

I guess maybe I should pause and explain what has brought on this little confession. Last night my sister had a soccer game. It was against our rival school, and it was freezing cold (that was unrelated, I just wanted you to know that I SUFFER A LOT TO SUPPORT MY SIBLINGS IN THEIR ENDEAVORS). The only time I ever become one of those crazed fans is when we play this school because I hate them a lot. And so I'm standing on the sidelines, screaming and jumping, and suddenly, I am bombarded with thoughts (I don't think a lot, so being bombarded with thoughts is a strange experience).

I start thinking about how ridiculously proud I am of my sister, of how I feel special by extension when I hear people talking about how fast she is and the intuition she shows on the field. She's mega-good at what she does, and I could write a whole other post on how much I love to brag about all my sisters, but since that's not the point, I'll save it for later. The point is, I'm standing there thinking about how freaking amazing the soccer players are doing and I start having this debate in my head about whether or not I really hate high school sports. And then I came home and started writing this post. Well, first I rubbed ice on my toes to try and reverse the hypothermia, and then I started writing this post.

Back to my feeeeeeelings. I think high school sports is a delicate, delicate issue. I know that in my case, a lot of damage was done to my already questionable self-esteem. I still look back on the time spent on the soccer team as time totally wasted. Even though I always tried to make a joke out of it, I was not impervious to feeling inferior because I sat the bench all the time. I would have been way better off it I had quit at the beginning of my junior year instead of waiting it out, hoping for some fun and some playing time.

It bugs the heck out of me when people make the argument that football or basketball or soccer or whatever your sport of choice is necessary for you kid because "it'll teach them the value of hard work, of being a good sport, of learning to be a team player." Um, no. I'm being really blunt but if your kid doesn't learn those things off the field, then you have failed as a parent. It isn't a coach's job to teach a kid those things, it's yours.

With that being said, I can see the positive aspects to sports, too. For people like my sister, who are extremely talented and have fun because they get to play all 90 minutes of the game, sports are great. But I fall on the other side of the fence, those group of kids who aren't even close to being elite, and always feel like they've failed in some way. That feeling sucks. It sucks bad. I'm only now starting to come to terms with the fact that I will never, ever enjoy playing sports because I look like a complete moron when I try. Seriously, something bad happens every single time. There was one game when I went to throw the ball in but my shoelaces got tangled and I fell flat on my face. Ahhh, good times.

This is where the conclusion goes, right? Okay, so, in conclusion: I admit that I hate sports in large part because I'm jealous that athletes possess a competence that I will never have. I will freely admit that part of my problem was, and is, jealousy. I'm jealous that I lack any talent on any field, court, or arena. I'm jealous that I'm not fast or coordinated. I am green with jealous rage. (20 points if you can guess that movie.)

Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D

2009-10-06T14:35:00.004-06:00

The first thing I thought when my dad handed this book over was, "What's with the goblet on the front? It looks like the poison that the evil queen on Snow White drank. Dad, is this really the screenplay for Snow White?"

Then I flipped to the back cover. "Dad, was this book written in the 80's? It was written in the 80's, wasn't it? You know how I feel about books written in the 80's."

I opened up to the copyright page. "Ah-HA! I was right! You're trying to trick me into reading a book from 1983. Let me just flip to a page. Any old page. I bet you a million bucks I can find an excerpt to make fun of."

I think at this point my dad was pretty exasperated, even though he should be used to it by now, because this is how pretty much all of our conversations go. He tries to interest me in something that he's totally psyched about, and I mock it (and him) mercilessly until he goes into his bedroom and cries. It's our thing.

At any rate, he kept telling me, "No, you really need to read this book. *It's trippy how many of the characteristics fit you. It's a valuable insight into the workings of your mind and would be very beneficial to you, I think, as far as being able to finally verbalize, with scientific data to back you up, all the ways your mother and I have socially handicapped you and your sisters by our alcoholism, and furthermore, be able to address the less than pretty aspects of your character, that aren't necessarily your fault mind you, but need to be addressed nonetheless, so that you may become a more fulfilled and happy individual, and in the end, that's really all I want for you, sweetheart, is for you to be happy, and actually I was thinking about this the other day, when I was reading Rumi, who has a beautiful verse along the lines of happiness is the point of existence, and I think after you read this book you should read Rumi, unless you've already googled him, and how does that even work, anyway, google I mean, doesn't that blow your mind?"

*My dad really does talk like this. That sentence I just typed? Verbatim, I swear to you. I took the book from him somewhere at "finally verbalize, with scientific data". He kept going anyway. And people wonder why I talk so much.

So, I took it. And I flipped through it. I literally mean flipped though it, because on the drive home the air conditioning wasn't working properly so I kept fanning myself with the pages. And then I told my dad that yes, I'd flipped through it, and it was an EXCELLENT method of keeping cool. Except I don't think that was what he wanted to hear.

This was a very long time ago. Several weeks, probably. Long story short, I actually picked up the book and read it (well, mostly) this morning. I was pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong, it was still written in the 80's, and therefore all the characters are named Bobby and Janet and Carol, because apparently those were the only names that existed in the United States publishing system before the year 2000...um, I forgot where I was going with this. Oh yeah. The writing SUCKED, but the premise was worthwhile.

(Side Note: It was at this point in my life that I tried to scan a picture of a particular page from the book. That effort was in vain. It was thirty minutes before I gave up. I am a prime example of someone who continually looks for ways to beat my head against a stone wall.)

(Side Note 2: After giving up on the scanning, I went to the internet to look for an image. I obtained and uploaded the following image in approximately 90 seconds, I kid you not. Moral of the story? I am stupid, and like to waste my time doing things all "old school" when I could just google the **#$@(#$&!! page that I spent half an hour trying to scan.)

{Click to view image in a size big enough that you can actually read the print}

This is The List that the whole book is based on. Like I said, it's a pretty good list. It was really enlightening to me because I posses...um...every single one of these traits. I wasn't even consciously aware of some of them until I read The List, and then it was like *ding!* Lightbulb. Oh yeah, I really do that. And that. And OH MY GOSH, YES, I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT RIGHT THERE!!!

But the fact that it's a good list, even a great and enlightening list, will not save me from making fun of it. Oh no, it will not. Ain't nothing safe from the list of Things I Must Make Fun Of.

Every. Single. Chapter in this book has at least thirteen sentences that start with "Adult children of alcoholics...", because every single chapter lists out each trait. On top of that, the author goes on to explain every trait in detail, and every single time the opportunity presents itself, she says something like, "The adult child of an alcoholic will have to work hard to overcome this" or "The adult child of an alcoholic may identify with this syndrome". By the time I got through reading it I decided that I can no longer call myself by my real name. I must now refer to myself as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. Acoha, for short. I know, I know, my new name sounds like a sneeze. I'll probably get blessed a lot when I introduce myself.

Love,

Achoa

I Had A Whole Post Written For You Guys

2009-10-03T17:37:00.002-06:00

But then I stumbled across this post. And....dear mother of pearl, can you even believe this??

I have no words. Nothing that can compare. Go read that. Read EVERY WORD. CAREFULLY.

I have already read every word. Carefully. Now I'm going to go...I don't even know what I'm going to do. Burn my bra?

The Headcold From Hell Has Pretty Much Wiped Me Out So Here, Look At Some Pictures

2009-10-01T19:11:00.006-06:00

I want to be in this city right now.

Walking by all this gorgeous architecture.

Soaking up the seabreeze and the culture.

And eating this bread. This delicious sourdough bread.

♫ (I left my heart {♥}...in San Francisco...) ♪

Rhymes With Belle

2009-09-29T16:04:00.007-06:00

She had been looking for months. There were several exact specifications in her mind. It had to be a toy poodle. It had to be apricot colored. It had to be a girl (she has dog-penis issues). It had to be from a good breeder. She had to be able to see it before she bought it. She didn't want to drive three hundred miles to the nearest place that was selling poodles, but the internet wasn't yielding any better results, even after a whole summer of looking.

Her dad came up to her one afternoon and asked her if she'd checked the ads in the paper. She laughed and tried to explain to her poor, technologically ignorant father that she had been scouring the internet for months, and she didn't think that someone who was selling poodles would be in the paper and not on the World Wide Web.

Five minutes later, her dad hands her the classifieds, with two ads circled in red. "Toy Poodles for sale. Male, female. Reasonable prices. Call xxx-xxxx." And look, honey. Those towns are only thirty and forty minutes away, instead of three hundred miles. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that my old school paper just beat out your fancy internet.

Shut up, Dad.

****************************************************

Remember, we're just going to look. We can't buy the first dog we see. Okay, Rena?

Yeah yeah yeah. Can we just gooooo, Becky? Pleeeeeeease? I must haz puppy!

I often wonder if you ever got any older than the age of five.

Nope don't think so. C'mon c'mon c'mon go go go to car to car driveeeeee!!

****************************************************

She walks into the garage, where all the puppies are kept. The lady is talking to Becky about boring things, like how much they cost and which ones were born when. The sisters are bending over the kennel, trying to catch one of the eight rambunctious puppies.

Her eyes are drawn to a little chocolate brown fluff ball. She immediately whirls around to ask the lady if that one, that chocolate one right there, is male or female. The lady reaches down, scoops up the bundle of fur, and hands it over. It's a girl.

The little one is straining to lick her face, trying to climb up her neck to her shoulders. Everyone crowds around to coo at just how precious she is. The lady asks, But I thought you were looking for an apricot? Let me show you the apricot we have over here.

She follows the lady to the other litter of puppies, but she can't stand to put the first dog down. She holds the squirming little one in her hands (yes, she fits in her hands) as she looks at all the other puppies. None of them can really compare. When she discovers that the apricot baby is, in fact, a boy, her mind is practically made up.

Ignoring reason, like she usually does, she falls in love with the first puppy she sees. She tries to tell herself to go look at the other litter of puppies first, to wait a few days before making such an expensive purchase, to bring someone else who knows more about dogs to check out this dog before deciding anything. But.......how is she supposed to go home to think it over when she can't bring herself to put the dog back down?

Annoyingly so, none of the other people who came with her will make the decision for her. She agonizes over it for many minutes, thinking about all the ways this could go so wrong if she is too impulsive. Buying such an expensive dog on a moment's notice is the epitome of not using your head. You weren't even here to buy a dog, you were just looking. It would be really dumb to take this dog home tonight...

She reluctantly places the poodle back in the arms of the breeder and says,

"I have to go find an ATM. We'll be right back. Don't sell her while we're gone."

****************************************************

And thus this little bundle of fluff became the first indoor dog in the history of the Davis family, dating all the way back to the 13th century, I kid you not, because we are a strict outdoor-hunting-dog clan. Blood, sweat, and tears went into picking her name. She was finally dubbed Lelle, much to my grandpa's dismay, who believes that an animal should only be named according to some physical characteristic it possesses. He calls her Grizz, because she is brown like a grizzly bear. It's just one of those things I have to bear.

She was two pounds when we brought her home (all the picture are from the first weekend we had her, so you can see how small she was). She was incredibly timid the first few days we had her, and I was a nervous wreck. I bought her on a Saturday and took her to the vet that Monday, where I presented him with an ENTIRE PAGE of questions I had about how to best take care of her, including my worry that she had weakness in her hind legs because she liked to scoot around on the floor sometimes. (I've mellowed out just a tad since then).

Her name is Lelle. It rhymes with Belle. You can call her Lellie, Grizz, Cocoa-Puff, Lelle-a-bell, Scout, Dirty Q-tip, Baby, Goose, or I Will Skin You And Make You Into A Hat, I Swear It. She is quite possibly the best decision I've made since I decided to leave the hellhole of Rexburg. Everyone in the house loves her, even though I think that Milly is a little bit jealous that she isn't the baby anymore. (Don't tell her I said that.)

She is not a sweet, mild little girl. She chews up rug fibers and is a very slow learner when it comes to potty training. Sometimes she runs the opposite direction when you call her. The big dogs are afraid of her and she likes to terrorize them when we go outside. She likes to bite my fingers, hard, when we're playing, no matter how many different ways I try to discourage that behavior. She stalks us at the dinner table, waiting for someone to drop some morsel of food so she can gobble it down and then promptly throw it up on the rug a few minutes later. She wakes up at obscene hours of the morning and demands that I be up at the same time, too. She cries when I leave the room, even if someone else is cuddling her. She chews on my hair. She barks defiantly when you tell her no.

We all love this dog more than we ever thought we would.

And The Winner Is...

2009-09-28T18:38:00.003-06:00

My dad.

I know. I was disappointed, too. For two reasons, actually.

One) It would have been nice to give this away to someone who doesn't visit me every weekend and will probably bring it with him, DANG IT ALL TO HECK.

and

Two) I've liked having my dad around. I'll miss him when he breaks his neck.

Thanks for playing, guys. Know that I was rooting for every single person who entered the contest except my dad. So, of course, he won. This is also a pretty good indicator that I didn't cheat and just click until a number of a person I wanted to win came up.

Um, my dog just walked like, an entire eight inches on her back legs. That's all.

Scatterbrained

2009-09-28T13:36:00.001-06:00

I woke up with a cold this morning. I didn't go to bed with one last night. It was a most disconcerting feeling. I would really like to take a nap right now but I can't, because both Lelle and Spencer need watching. I'm clearly not watching them well because I'm on my computer, but it's okay. I think that Spencer will get the hint if he does manage to get that fork all the way in the light socket.

I changed my twitter background. I don't like it. But I'm too lazy to go back and pick a new one.

Speaking of stupid people, they are bothersome. Upside: they're so entertaining and good for self esteem. I love that they so effortlessly reaffirm my belief that my mental abilities are far beyond theirs. You came to this battle of wits completely unarmed, sweetheart.

It's the last day to enter the contest. Comments will be closed at 2:30, so go cast your comment now if you're interested in a free longboard. (PS to Chandler: No freaking way am I shipping it to you in England. You can pick it up in January.)

I've updated my blogroll. I feel like explaining why I chose to link to these awesome websites.

Amalah: This is a blog of a hilarious woman who also happens to be a spectacular mother. Hers was the first "real" blog I ever read, and I have been in love ever since. She has the most darling family and always manages to write about even the smallest things in a way that makes me cry from laughing so hard. Amy rocks. She rocks hard, people. I will never stop loving her in that special could-be-creepy-but-isn't-because-WEAREBLOGGERS-internet love. I like to pretend that one day I will move to her neighborhood and we will become best friends.

Dooce: I don't remember how I stumbled across Heather's website, but I distinctly recall the first few weeks of reading. I was sometimes appalled, sometimes tearful, sometimes rolling on the floor laughing, but I was always in awe of her brilliance as a writer. As I read her blog more and more frequently, I realized that Heather is what we call an A-lister. She has made a huge impact in the world of media and has a large presence. Discovering that she is pretty much an internet celebrity didn't make her that much cooler to me, because I'd already gained a tremendous amount of respect for the grace, honesty, and integrity with which she handled important and troubling subjects.

Douglass Diaries: I found Brandi's blog when I was reading through some comments on a dooce entry. She's funny and honest. I like her tell it like it is attitude. She pulls out all the stops when something is really important to her. She also keeps it real, even though she has a big audience. She doesn't underestimate or overestimate the importance of what she says online. And she has really funny readers. Sometimes I enjoy the discussion that goes on in the comments more than the original post.

I Totally Forgot You Go Here: Kirsten, Kirsten. I like her to read what she has to say because she is incredibly articulate. I always know exactly what she's trying to say when I read her posts. I'm always thinking to myself, "Why couldn't I have said it like that?" And then I plagiarize her mercilessly. (I'm just kidding. I don't. But oh, I so want to.) She can be hilarious without trying, but she can also write about her pain in a way that makes me want to reach out and hold her and help this complete stranger in any way I can. Her blog just has that effect on me.

Seriously, So Blessed!: BIG DISCLAIMER! THIS BLOG IS SATIRICAL!! DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!!! An anonymous lovely who calls herself TAMN (short for Tiffany-Amber-Megan-Nicole) writes an awesome spoof on the "Mormon Mommy Blog" phenomenon. Even though I don't personally know anyone who writes blogs like the kind she pokes fun at, they are apparently out there, and I'm glad they are, because now I get to read TAMN. I have learned so much from her, like the importance of highlighting my hair (hair that is all one color just SCREAMS spinster). Mwah!

The Mormon Child Bride: Reading Stephanie is like being inside her head. When she wants to, she can sit down and post something that leaves me floored with its deepness. She has a knack for arguing and debunking myths about Mormons. In her own words, "I have accepted that I didn't inherit the chipper gene", and I think that's my favorite part of her. She doesn't try and shove sunshine down my throat.

Too Many Mornings: Mike was (well, still is) my only commenter who doesn't know me in real life. This astounds me. Dude, you aren't related to me, and you're still here? Why?? He is an excellent writer who doesn't worry about keeping things brief. I like that about him. If you can string sentences together as professionally as he can, why limit yourself? And I talk a lot too, so really, we're quite compatible as far as blog buddies go. It helps that even though he is a comedic genius sometimes, he also is very level headed when the occasion calls for it. His advice is something I respect a lot.

A note to family and friends with blogs (I love you all dearly. I really do. Especially if you link to me): I don't link to you because I don't know how much unwanted publicity you're prepared for. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a huge readership, or anything. I think that's pretty clear by the fact that I only have ONE commenter who doesn't have a familial obligation to be impressed by me. But I do try a little bit to put my name out there, and I would hate for someone who has a problem with me to have the opportunity to take it out on you because I was dumb enough to post your blog information. But trust me, I have a private blogroll to keep track of you, and I stalk you all EVEN MORE than I do the people I mentioned above. Heh heh. Feel better?

Dang it. Writing this totally random, all over the place post didn't make my cold go away. So much for new age internet therapy. I wish I hadn't spent so much money on those crystals.

Feel The Love. Errrr, The Hate.

2009-09-27T20:06:00.003-06:00

I'm pretty proud of this. I have long wanted my own haters. Okay, this doesn't really fall under the category of hate. But it's still the first semi-confrontational thing that has ever been said to me under the anonymity of the internet. And I love it.

http://skitch.com/lorenadavis/ny7d5/twitter-urblogsux-lorenadavis-has-anyone-ev-

PS-If you don't follow me on Twitter, you should do so now. If you don't have a twitter account you should get one, so you can follow me. I'm that important.

Update!

I am this random 'ho.

So exciting.

(And I'm not joking. I really think it's AWESOME!)

I Love That Facebook Knows Me So Well

2009-09-26T22:59:00.000-06:00

Quiz: What Happy Bunny Are You?

You have a true gift when it comes to sarcasm. You have a knack for seeming sweet when you speak to people , only for them to realize much later you were insulting them the whole time. Your smile seams genuine and few people know that you are actually laughing AT just about everybody.