The REAL Me

I was reading an article the other day and... what? I read articles all the time. I'm super intellectual. Don't look at me like that!

Anyway, it was about how women feel the need to hide parts of themselves in order to make their relationships work. This made me feel a few different things:

1. Do guys ever hide any part of themselves? Kinda doesn't seem like it, because they're always farting and checking out other chicks. And if they don't hide that, what kind of horrendous details ARE they keeping?

2. I am so guilty of this. I feel like I can't be myself around a lot of people because I will frighten them or repulse them or intimidate them or they won't think I'm smart enough or funny enough or pretty enough... or that I'm too smart and not fun... I have done this for years. All I want is for people to like me, even if it's not ME. I could get all psychoanalytic on your butts here and explain my deep-seeded desire for affection because... you know what? Never mind.

So you know what? Enough is enough. No more trying to make myself seem interesting or smart or desirable. Here's the real me. Think what you will.

My name is [insert whatever name you want here]. I'm in my 20's and am also in college, even though I'm not very good at it. I was born and raised in this great (bahahahaha) state of Nebrasky. I bleached a section of my hair blonde in high school because I thought it was cool, and I still think that. My pants are a size 12. My bra is a size 38DD. I have a cat that is horribly behaved and mean to everyone but I still think she's pretty much the cutest funniest thing in the world, even though that kind of makes me a junior crazy cat lady. I lay in my bed and make dinosaur noises on a regular basis. I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue but sometimes I get frustrated and just cheat. I think Geena Davis is possibly the coolest person to ever live. Tina Fey is the second coolest. One time I saw John Stamos on a plane and he told me I was pretty. Just kidding, I stole that from Mean Girls, which is one of my all time favorite movies. It's number 3, after The American President, which turns me into a mushy heap of political romanticism, and Chicago. I am obsessed with Musical Theatre and if I had my way I'd be on Broadway even though I'm not skinny enough or talented enough in real life. I am a computer snob and I can tell you 10 reasons my Mac kicks your PC right in the hard drive if you want me to. I'd have to think of them all first though. My iPhone is my life... it goes everywhere with me and if I didn't have it I'd probably cry. I wear vampire fangs in public, sing and dance in the car, and pretend I know how to use chopsticks even though I'm not sure I really do.

I'm overly emotional, I'm competitive and kind of a sore loser. Poor grammar drives me crazy. I have bipolar and while it's usually well-controlled, sometimes you can totally tell and I apologize for saying I wanted to shoot you in the face. I sort of meant it at the time but I don't mean it now. I can't sight-read music... or read it that well at all. I have no upper body strength and I'd probably trip over something and die if a zombie was chasing me.

My biggest turn-offs are people who don't understand my humor and automatically make it unfunny by saying something irrelevant, trying to correct me or stating the obvious (Hel-LO, that was sarcasm you moron!), people who think Obama wasn't born in the United States (Article 2 Section 1 of the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION anyone?!), and people who make a lot of noise when they eat. I also think Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh should go screw themselves and/or each other and leave the rest of the world alone so we don't have to hear any more of their b.s. Bill Maher is kind of a tool too but at least he's a little bit smart.

Also I'm obviously a narcissist since I just spent this much time talking about myself. But that's the real me. Take me or leave me. (RENT for the win!)

My Swimsuit Makes Me Feel Like Lady Gaga, and Other Reasons I'll Probably Never Get Married

I am under the impression that I am never going to get married. There are several reasons for my thinking. Some are actually rational thoughts. Others may or may not be delusions based on general melodramatic tendencies coupled with a poor self-image.

1. I am a Rookie.

Basically, I've had one relationship in my lifetime and I've spent the last... oh... year and a half or so trying to forget it ever happened. So I consider myself to have no relationship skills or knowledge. Nobody that I'd like to date seems interested in dating me. Which brings me to my next point.

2. I attract the wrong kind of guys.

Here's a sampling of the guys who have showed interest in me in the past 10 years:

✎ Wore snow boots every day, wrote me notes containing Backstreet Boys lyrics.

✎ Turned out to be extremely gay.

✎ Wore Hawaiian shirts and cowboy boots every day, favorite movie was The Sound of Music, brought me a corsage to every dance even though he was never my date.

✎ 3 years older than me, got a 14 on his ACT and ended up shoving his tongue down my throat in the middle of the hall after school one day.

✎ Was borderline insane, probably suicidal, and cut my name into his arm once.

✎ Played the trombone, read Manga, didn't wash his hair, had a ferret and honked my boobs.

There was also an autistic boy in there but I can't complain about him because he was absolutely darling (and also that would make me a horrible person). Anyway, none of these guys were/are bad people. (Actually one of them might be.) It's just that I'm not interested in Manga, video games, spit valves or having my boobs honked. The guys I attract are the ones I have nothing in common with, and the ones that nobody else seems to have much in common with either. It's kinda frustrating.

3. I want it.

It's kind of like Hillary Clinton wanting to be president too badly (except not at all). I want to get married and therefore it will probably never happen. I want it too bad. I'm overzealous to the point of being scary. Actually I'm not yet, but the longer I want it, the more likely I am to become so. A lot of my friends are getting married right now too, and seeing them get their "happily ever after" just makes me want my own even more. I know that I'm really young and that there is no rush, but yeah there kind of is because the end of the world is only 567 days away...

4. I'm really socially awkward.

Not only am I not that attractive (I'm torn between thinking I'm kind of pretty and thinking I'm unfortunate-looking so I usually take the latter), but I'm also one of the most socially awkward people you will ever meet. Just today at work, I was in the bathroom and was singing "Pocket Full of Sunshine" and shaking my butt while drying my hands without even noticing I was doing it. I only noticed when I had to stop and ask myself, "why is that woman laughing at me?" Also, if you were to come into my room at 2am on any given night, there is like a 30% chance you'll see this:

My swimsuit makes me feel like Lady Gaga so I put it on to make a video for my best friend who lives far away, but then I got distracted. There's also a 45% chance that I'll be making dinosaur noises in my bed and a 15% chance I'll be coloring a picture in my underwear and a 4% chance I'll be singing "Friday" and playing the guitar. Which leaves only a 6% chance of me sleeping and/or acting like a normal person.

So who's gonna be crazy enough the marry THIS?:

Probably not someone that I'm going to want to marry, unfortunately.

Creating a Space

I can be kind of a wreck.

Okay, maybe wreck isn't the right word. Maybe I should say I can be kind of a hot mess. But recently I've made a huge effort to be more organized and, like, neat and stuff. So I overhauled my entire living space. I'm telling you... paint an accent wall apple green and suddenly you feel like you can deal with your life. Maybe that's just me... I don't know.

So I redid my space. I have a weird artist's quirk about personalizing things though. I always have to add my own little touches to things. My favorite thing is organized clutter. Feng-Shui is so not my thing. I have the innate desire to make things my own. Does anyone else do this? I honestly put a ton of effort into it. Here, I'll show you.

This is my desk. There's that little area near the edge that I've just graffiti'd the crap out of. Also please take note of my president placemat, my calculator with a dancing shark on it, my Jukebox the Ghost poster (signed!), and the J0-Bros calendar. I got those bookshelves at IKEA.

Now the personal touches. I put a picture of Geena Davis on the end of one of the shelves. What do you mean, why? Because she's AMAZING. Duh. The other has a picture of the Salt Lake Temple and a Wicked Witch of the West magnet. Like I said, weird personal touches.

This is my main bookshelf. Magazines and big books on the bottom shelf. Text books and references on the top shelf. Series on second to top. The rest is basically a free-for-all.

Zoom in on the top shelf and what do we find? Oh yes. A dinosaur scene. Again, what do you mean, why? Because dinosaurs are AWESOME. The next shelf down has lots of little ponies, and an eagle-shaped flask. Don't ask me to explain myself. It defies explanation.

So there you have it. Weird personal touches. The lamp by my bedside has a cutout of a male ballerina on it. My full length mirror has a bunch of Spiderman stickers on it. Nothing remains untouched.

I can only imagine what I'd do with a cubicle.

Pillows and Dreams

When I was a little girl, I asked my mom for a feather pillow. Not only did I want a soft downy pillow on which to sleep, I also wanted it to be encased in a luxurious satin pillowcase. I remember thinking to myself that this was a lofty expectation. At this point in my life I had a very specific plan. I was going to go to high school and ace every class, get a perfect score on the ACT & SAT's, work at a flower shop and be a cheerleader. Then I wanted to go to Harvard and be an actress, which for some reason didn't seem as lofty at the time as having a feather pillow with a satin pillowcase. It also seemed to make a lot of sense, which it obviously doesn't. Going to Harvard for Theatre makes about as much sense as going to AADA for Med School.

One day, I got home from school and there it was... my delightful new pillow. A goose feather down pillow covered in a shiny white satin pillowcase. I couldn't even wait to go to sleep that night... my dream had finally come true! I was on top of the world... I felt like now that I had gotten my pillow wish, any of my dreams could come true.

Fast-forward 12 years. I am sleeping on a flat, lumpy pillow stained yellow from someone's (presumably my dad's) oily head. I'm grudgingly continuing my education at the University of What the Hell Was I Thinking and my current plans? Marry rich and die young. Ok, while that would be nice (the marrying rich part), I'm actually planning on being a teacher. In which case I'll have to move to Connecticut because they pay their teachers WAY more than most states do. 10k more than Nebraska starting salary. So... not going to Harvard, not becoming an actress or the President, and sleeping on a lumpy old pillow with someone else's head stains.

I wonder if your pillow has anything to do with your dreams.

By the way, I changed my background on my blog to space, temporarily. I love space. Do you ever just lay in bed thinking about what a paradox the human race is? How we're so amazingly advanced, and yet, in the scheme of the whole universe we are so insignificant? How we are barely a particle in a vast, infinite universe?

What? Oh... yeah, me neither.....

Employment and Marriage, OR, Things that adults talk about.

There have been 3 things on my minds lately, and I'm going to pick through them one by one in front of you, right now.

1. I have a job.

This is great! I am a wage-earning adult! The problem is that I'm a pansy and I work outside. (At a baseball stadium.) The last couple of days I've actually had to wear a winter coat to prevent frostbite and hypothermia. Probably. I was just miserable because it was really cold. And everyone kept asking me if I was staying warm and I wanted to yell, "NO YOU MORON, I'M NOT KEEPING WARM, IT'S 38 FREAKING DEGREES AND I'VE BEEN OUT HERE FOR 4 HOURS ALREADY!" But I have to be all professional and crap and be like, "Doing my best!" (grin). It's surprisingly easy for me to be kind and courteous and professionally chipper at work though. It's like I have a customer service switch that has been off all my life and now suddenly you give me a walkie-talkie and some responsibilities and thwack it's flipped on. WEIRD. Also I'm pretty sure I saw my 7th grade social studies teacher tonight. The reason I think so is because he looks like Bill Gates only less attractive (gap-toothed and huge nose). I laughed because he didn't recognize me. Hopefully it's because I no longer resemble a preteen female Spock. But maybe it's because I was wearing sunglasses and smiling, neither of which he ever saw me do.

2. My biological clock doesn't know poop from applesauce apparently.

I want to get married. It's just hit me in the last 6 months. Actually "hit" isn't the right word. It's more like... it's crept up on me. It's like there's someone sitting behind me whisperingmaaaaaaariage and the whispering is getting progressively louder as time passes. First it was like you should think about the possibility of marriage in the future.. Then it was like look, your friends are getting married. They're so happy. Now it's like you want to get married, don't you? Pretty soon it will be like You should get married. And then... GET MARRIED! GET MARRIED NOW! TRICK SOMEONE INTO MARRYING YOU OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE ALONE! ALOOOOOONE!!!!

So that's been fun. It's actually pretty stupid because I'm way too young to get married. I've also had some pretty messed up relationships in the past that have confused me about what love actually is and what I actually want from life. Allow me to demonstrate this with a graph:

As you can see, the Y axis represents Age in Years. As you can also see, I do things a lot earlier. I could have added events such as "first period" and "death" but I think this gives you the general idea. Also I completely ran out of room. Long story short: I'd like to get married and have babies now, please.

3. ...

I don't really remember what 3 was supposed to be. I'm exhausted. So I think I'm just going to end this post now. Because who's even going to read it? Nobody, that's who. Although I'd love to be proved wrong. Anyone? Anyone?

No?

Fine.

Out.

xx

Let Them Eat Cake

It's March Second! And March Second is Cake Day!

I baked a cake today, from scratch, with love and care and artful craftsmanship. Well... I don't know about artful, but it's at least sort of cute. Anyway, I spent probably 3 hours of my life on this cake, whipping egg whites and creaming butter, and all that jazz. Stupidly, I realized that I really had nobody to share the cake with after it was done, sitting frosted and also undesired on my counter. A whole cake. Which is actually exactly what you want to eat when you realize you don't really have friends... a whole cake.

Of course I have friends. But I'm at that transitional phase in my life where I am starting to lose touch and common ground with the friends I once had (not that I really had that many to begin with) and am trying to make new ones. Seems like every day I notice a new person that has deleted me from Facebook. I know it's petty but it kind of hurts my feelings. The rumor mill, who shall remain nameless, might have had a little something to do with it, and that's fine because they obviously weren't my friends anyway if they believe him over me. But sometimes they're people who I just want to be like "Really? YOU deleted ME?!" Anyway, I'm getting off topic.

What's my topic again? Oh, right, friends and cake. So I wanted to share my cake with someone... but I couldn't really think of anyone to share it with. Because everyone has gone off to college and I... well... haven't gone off. My life seems to be following a different path of enlightenment than theirs so to speak. I look at my mom and wonder how she found her best friends now. The first one she met in Lamaze class when she was 18 (score one for teen pregnancy). So that's out. The other one she met at work, but it turns out they knew each other from middle school. Since I still talk to exactly 0 friends I had in middle school on a regular basis, and my job is... well we'll see when we get there. But anyway... I don't know.

I'm making friends at church left and right, which is awesome. I even got asked on a date! (it's not a REAL date, mind you, but still, this is big for me.) That's happened all of like... oh I don't know... 2 other times in my entire life. Maybe. I'm not even sure. I can certainly count the number of times I've had feelings for someone on one hand (with some fingers cut off). Anyway, I'm just hoping that some of these friendships will grow to be deep and lasting... and that I will have lots of people to share cake with next year.