Why hello old friend. It's been a while. Let's reminisce.

I feel pretty pathetic. It's been so long since I posted that my stats now look like this:

There was a time when I'd have over 25 views a day. Now I'm down to 2...

But I promise there's an excuse for my lack of posting. Well a couple actually. The first being that I just moved so I was really busy. I have photos to prove it.

I had to stop on the way over to the new house to photograph Coach Lace Pond. Very beautiful.

The U-Haul we rented with the wicked scary ramp that I avoided using. I pulled myself up by the handles instead

My mom being a goofball in the U-Haul when we first started loading stuff in.

First meal in the new house! Grilled sammiches.

The temporary seating area we made for ourselves while moving so we could eat our sammiches.

Crack-head and Stares-a-lot being afraid of the vacuum together in the old house.

My new room! You can see the iced coffee on the dresser in the bottom left corner :)

Okay so that was the first reason I haven't posted in a while. The second is school work. Remember that time I didn't know about the Microbiology test and showed up for class and had to take it without having studied? Well there was another test in that class today and I wanted to make sure that I rocked it. I studied non-stop all week. I slept, ate, and breathed microbiology for four days. I did nothing but study. We'll see how that pans out.

Another reason why I haven't posted in a while is that I've been watching a shit ton of The X-Files on netflix. For serious, who wants to blog when you can watch a possessed doctor liposuction a guy to death? No one, that's who.

I'm going to try to make an effort and post more often. Which is easy to promise when I have nothing really important to do right away.... also, maybe you can bribe me to post more often by commenting more often?

Wonderings.

I wonder how long it's going to take for my cynicism to make me explode.
I wonder how long I can "stick it out" before I break down.
I wonder how long I can stay quiet.
I wonder how long I can pretend to care.
I wonder how long it would take me to forget how I feel.
I wonder how long I can deny that I'm headed in the wrong direction.
I wonder how I let my self become an outcast?

Insert clever title here.

Post started on Wednesday. I never got around to finishing it... also, sorry about the random photos... I don't know what I was thinking.
 

Since my mom and I are moving to the new house really soon, my mom said that I should pack up all the stuff in my room today in boxes. There's not much stuff in there so I knew it wouldn't be a difficult job, but nonetheless, I wanted to start early and get it done in a timely, organized fashion.

I woke up this morning around 10:00am and made myself a couple of eggo waffles. Those things have crack in them (just like odwalla). I sat in my bed eating my waffles and watching Veronica Mars on netflix. I glanced at the clock and promised myself that I would start packing after this episode and after I finished eating.

But after I finished watching the episode, I kind of just clicked the "next" button. One more, I told myself. At 11:30 I started thinking about what I would make myself for lunch. I went through the freezer and found some particularly appetizing leftovers and popped them in the microwave. I'll start packing at 1:00, I told myself.

Around 2:30, and about 5 Veronica Mars episodes later, I finally started packing. But I kind of cheated. I set up blankets and pillows on my floor, propped my laptop up on a file box and queued another V. Mars episode while I worked. I also made myself an iced coffee.

So I guess you can look at me in one of two ways. One, you can say that I'm incredibly lazy and sloth-like, or two, I'm incredibly inventive and efficient at getting large tasks done in small amounts of time while still enjoying a few creature-comforts. Go with option two. It'll make both of us feel better.

My mom keeps telling me that I have to write about procrastination. And I guess this is probably as good an opportunity as any. I'm probably the worst procrastinator you'll ever meet. People always say they procrastinate worse than everyone else but it's really true for me. I mean, how many people do you know, that would wait until their car is basically nonfunctional (as in on the edge of exploding and killing them in a transmission related hellfire of doom) before they even began planning to get it fixed?

There ya go mom. Procrastination mentioned.

Although I guess you can't really call me a procrastinator since I finished my Ethics midterm tonight when it's not due until Friday afternoon! Burn. I don't know who I'm burning....but they're burned.


So now it's Thursday. I started this post last night. I have to stop doing this. Starting a post and then finishing it the next day. It makes it kind of difficult to finish when all of the time references are off.

I just got out of class and I'm laying in my bed right now shivering because I'm too lazy to shut off my fan and shut my window. I'm all bundled up instead. Playing around with my window is really annoying because the shade is broken. I have to stand on a chair and roll it up by hand to get it up. And when I pull it down it just falls all the way down to the floor. obnoxious shade.

 So now it's Friday. I think I feel guilty posting short blogs so I tell myself I'll finish it later and then never get around to it for days... 

Tonight I'm enjoying a nice night to myself. Just laying in bed, drinking way too much coffee, watching Veronica Mars, sketching, and pretending that my life is interesting like Veronica's, and that people would be interested if they watched a TV show based on my life. Which is false. But hey, a girl can pretend to make herself feel better right?


Well here are some interesting tidbits. Jordan and I were in Walmart today (I like how spell check doesn't recognize the name of a multibillion dollar corporation... it also recognized "multimillion" but not "multibillion"...) and this little kid was being pushed past the lingerie section in a carriage by his mother. The little boy kept shouting "MOM. I see double D's!!" While the mother kept shushing him. The toddler, of course, refused to stop informing his mother of the fact that he saw double D's in what can only be described as his "outside voice". Needless to say, Jordan and I had a lot of fun laughing at the expense of the embarrassed, large chested mother.

Another semi-interesting thing that I heard today: Jordan said that she once heard someone describe Dunkin Donuts' apple cider as "like making out with an apple pie"

Also, Julie just gave me this little golden nugget: " I found out I'm allergic to shrimp juice."

I'm so eloquent...kinda

I haven't posted in a while. I've been so unbelievably busy... I still have a mountain of homework to do but most of it isn't due any time soon so I can pretend it doesn't exist for a bit.

So I'm going to start with some good news. My amazing brother, Brandon, agreed to put some transmission fluid in my car on Saturday and my car is behaving wonderfully! I'm pretty sure this means that it's not going to explode and kill me in a rampaging spontaneous combustion episode :) All I have to do now is figure out if there's a transmission fluid leak, how bad it is, and where it's coming from and hopefully my car will be ship shape again.

I was just thinking about the car and the name Ursula popped into my head.... I feel like that may be my car's name...

Ursula's bad ass tramp stamp

This weekend has been kind of crazy. I'm really glad that I have today to relax. We got the new house painted and I'm really pumped about the color of my room. It's a sage green and it's so pretty!

I'm sitting at home right now, waiting for my mom to get back from work so I can be like "SURPRISE I'M HOME!"  My class got canceled tomorrow which means I'll be enjoying at 5 day weekend :)

I decided to come back to Clinton today to look for some pieces for my homemade weird girl from The Breakfast Club Halloween costume. I didn't find anything but I did see this while walking down High Street in the center of Clinton. I couldn't help myself it was just gorgeous. And there I go with the "morbidly beautiful" again.

My mom just got home and apparently seeing my car in the driveway gave her a heart attack instead of a pleasant surprise. She thought I was home because something was wrong. Epic fail on my part.

So after I calmed my mom down we gave Beau a bath because he had a "poop skirt". It's like a hoop skirt except poop. Basically when he has a belly ache his fur on his bum gets.... well kind of gross. We cleaned him up this afternoon. So while he was in the bath my mom asked if I could give him a hair cut to get rid of the offending fur... you're probably thinking "Well she's trained in grooming, that should be easy" But you're wrong.

If you've ever groomed a dog, you know that, even under the best possible circumstances, it can be a disaster. And believe me, I've had some disastrous grooming experiences.

Once in my intermediate grooming class, my group had just finished bathing a particularly monstrous sized lab. Getting him out of the tub took three people because he was so enormous and unwilling to cooperate. When we went to put him in a cage with a blow dryer, he freaked out and refused to go in. He trashed about, shoving his body backwards and away from the crate, all the while getting more and more stressed. We asked the professor if it was absolutely necessary for us to put him in the crate. She told us that we had to keep trying despite the fact that the dog was clearly stressed beyond belief, purple tongue and everything. His sheer massive size had created problems handling him before, but add that to the fact that he was now soaking wet and pissed off and you have a dog who is not going into that fucking cage.

The final straw came when the dog, stressed out to the max, finally lost control of his bowels. And being me, with the worst luck and coordination ever, I slipped and knelt in it. I was so angry that I started berating the professor, who finally gave in and told us to stop trying to shove the oversize dog into a crate. I left the class early that day without even saying anything I was so angry/mortified/overwhelmed.

Today with Beau wasn't quite that bad. But it was comical. I don't have a pair of clippers at my house so I wasn't able to do anything close to a professional job on him. But I tried. I basically just took a pair of scissors and started hacking away at the fur on Beau's butt. And now he has a clean bum and he's happy :)

Beau after I gave him a butt trim

A random digression.

Sometimes I wonder whether the animal science major is the right path for me.

I was sitting in my microbiology class, listening to my professor speak about DNA and genes. He broke  DNA down so far that it was hardly recognizable anymore. A gene that signifies a trait such as eye color became a sequence of random letters. In my opinion, science takes the poetry out of life.

I'm a firm believer in scientific research (in all aspects) but I'm beginning to feel, and not for the first time, that my heart really isn't in it.

I think that part of the reason I was feeling this way is that I have an aversion to looking too deeply into things. I know knowledge is power, but how far can you go, breaking your world down, before you ruin the sum of the parts, which are so beautiful when appreciated the way they are intended to be.

In English classes, they give you an enchanting poem to read. But instead of appreciating it the way it was meant to be, by noticing it's phonetic beauty, the teacher would have you chop it into pieces, looking for stanzas and rhyme schemes, and themes and hidden meanings that the artist may or may not have even intended you to see. I always rebelled against dissecting poetry. It would ruin it for me. It turns a magnetic work of art into a bunch of incomplete and meaningless pieces.

Education these days is so focused on the non-artful and routine.Thank goodness I have the Theatre Club at Becker because if I didn't I'd be going insane for lack of creative outlets.

 Okay, now that I've gotten the serious rant out of my system...

I don't know what I was thinking with this one. It was late...

So Facebook isn't working right now and I'm pretty sure there's going to be a riot. Especially since I haven't posted yet today and the natural second choice for a lot of you would be to read my fantastical blog. Wow, fantastical is actually a word that spell check recognizes.... What is our world coming to? We really aren't off to a good start if the fact that facebook isn't working is such a cause for a riot. Julie says that she thinks it's because "mark zucherberg decided it would be funny to have 500 million people all go into hysterics when their fb stopped working"

It's almost as bad as that time that the dining hall served roasted turnips and everyone thought they were potatoes... mass chaos.

I for serious just went to check my facebook page. But I can't. Because facebook is FUCKED. It's actually kind of heart breaking watching the tab where facebook should be in my browser trying so hard to load, but failing so miserably. I feel kind of empty every time I stop typing my blog and instinctively go to check my facebook but it's not there...

I shouldn't even care that facebook isn't loading anyway. I should be working on the enormous Brain and Behavior packet that was supposed to be due on Thursday. I got an extension on it by badgering the professor for some extra time because I hadn't even started it and was going crazy thinking about doing it in basically one day. Yeah I should be working on that. But I'm not. I'm blogging. And worrying about the fact that facebook is being lame sauce.

I'm actually at home right now because I have no class (kind of, I'm skipping one class and the other got canceled) tomorrow and I have a ton of stuff I need to get done. I wonder if I'll actually get any of it done. I have a panic attack just thinking about taking my car to a mechanic but if I don't want to die when it explodes on me, I should probably get on that. And my phone has been shutting off every 10 minutes lately so I wanted to go to the Verizon store down the street to complain and be like "Give me a new phone BITCH" but that also gives me a certain amount of anxiety. Although not as much as the car thing. Because if I wanted to, I could live with my phone shutting off for a while. My car stalling and being crazy and not working however, I cannot live with.

Just checked to see if facebook is working again. It's not.

FUCK I messed with the font in this post and I don't know how to fix it. Well... if you're reading this and all the font is different, then you'll know I never figured it out...

My mom is going to be angry at the amount of "f-bombs" I've dropped in this post.

Did I mention I'm half asleep and I apologize for the CRAZY flow (meaning non-flow) of this post?

YES I figured out the text. HTML is obnoxious. For serious. So all the text should be the same font now. YAY.

BAH facebook is finally working!

I think I'll share some pictures with you.

My cat Izzy. She's hiding in some pillows. She does that. Sometimes I'll sit on my bed and then the bump that I thought was a bunch of blankets will meow.

My nachos                              Jordan's nachos

Jordan and I had nachos one day. Further proof of how I am absolutely NOT a perfectionist.

On this day I got a beer and a kids meal. I was over 21 and under 13 at the same time. Great day.

Because setting them on fire once didn't seem to do the trick.

Jordan kept kicking me away and then posed to make it look like I was just ruining the picture on purpose.

GAH HTML really sucks. It keeps putting random spaces in this post that I never put. And the font just randomly went back to the crazy non matching thing... thank goodness I found out what the "remove formatting" button does tonight!

They started singing and I set them on fire.

Okay so I've got my iced coffee and muffin. Now it's time to blog...and try not to suck.

So I just completely revamped the "I have no doubt one day the sun will come out" post and now all you have to do is click on the song and it will bring you to the youtube video so you have no choice but to listen to the songs. So DO IT. And then comment about how they make you feel :) 

 I'm definitely loving the weather today. I walked over to Dunkin to get my coffee because I wanted to walk across the Leicester town common because its all Autumny and gorgeous. Fall is by far my favorite season. I love when the temperature goes way down and it gets windy but not freezing. If I could pick a season to live in all year round it would be fall. I especially love running around stepping on all the crunchy leaves during fall. There's something so exciting about it... people usually think I'm kind of crazy when I try to explain why stepping on crunchy leaves is so thrilling for me... So I won't attempt to explain it.

So last night, at the rehearsal from hell, we choreographed my favorite song ever. Okay false, it's my least favorite song ever. "We Go Together" from Greese. I literally would rather jump off a cliff than listen to this song. It's like, while they were writing that song they said "What is the most annoying thing we can do with this song? Oh I got it! We'll stick a bunch of stupid, impossible to remember gibberish in there, and then we don't have to write the lyrics anyway!" While we were on break after practicing "You can't stop the beat" the choreographer was playing "We go together" Almost all of the other dancers were singing along and smiling and talking about how much they love the song. I was facing away from the choreographer, smiling a serial killer smile, miming shooting myself in the face.

They started singing and I set them on fire. 

And the best part was that the choreographer made us think that we were in for easy choreography. FALSE. During the worst part of the song, where they are no real words at all, and ONLY gibberish, the tempo of the dancing is so fast that I could barely keep up, let only keep up and sing the song. Forget about looking and sounding good while doing all of this now.

And even better than that? I have had the song stuck in my head since last night. So of course I've been walking around going "Chang chang changity chang chi bop! Dipty dipty dip, shoobopie dobie do! Rama rama lama da dingity dingy dong!" And then wishing I were brain dead rather than have this song in my head.

It's okay though. I'm keeping my sights set on "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago. That will make up for everything. And we get to go see "Wicked!" in Boston a week from tomorrow.

...sorry

I just got back from rehearsal and two hours of dancing really takes a lot out of you. Especially when you forget to eat dinner! So I'm too tired to really write a post tonight. So I'll leave you with this:

Thanks Mr. Obvious Cleaner Spay Bottle, I was actually intending to drink your contents. Good thing you warned me not to.

If someone can tell me what the hell this sign means, I'll make them a sandwich.

I actually had "I want my SANDwich    X" written on my white board when I got back to school today....weird.

Don't forget that there are new drawings in the "artsy stuff" page as of yesterday. And remember to keep up to date on my posts!

Happy Birthday Mom... sorry I killed your dog.

Just brought my dogs to Dexter Drumlin, which is a big field in Lancaster donated to the town especially for dogs. You don't have to leash dogs there so my wild and crazy Jane gets to run free. It's pretty much the only thing that will tire her out for a few minutes (running at full speed for 15 minutes straight). And then of course on the way back I got myself an iced coffee. I'll update later on whether or not I spill it.

But while I was walking around the back side of the hill at Dexter today, I saw a random glove with some dog treats on it in the middle of the grass. Of course Beau ran over to them and started inhaling them before I could say "LEAVE ITTT!!!" I started panicking. Who leaves random treats in the middle of a field? What if they're poisoned? Oh shit my mom is going to killlll me if I poisoned her dog the day before her birthday! I started having daymares (Nightmares during the day? Why the hell not?) about us having to call poison control and them saying that they don't cover dogs and then having to go to the vet and how much of a pain in the ass that would be because we still haven't found a vet out near our new house and that we still see Metrowest Vet in Milford. We should probably get on that......

So I kept walking, panicking about some evil poisoned-treat leaving maniac who poisoned my mom's dog the day before her birthday. I figured I'd call her and explain the situation and ask her if I should bring Beau to the vet. And not once during this panic walk did I think "Hey, there are a lot of loose dogs that come through here... maybe I should go pick up the random sketch treats so some other owner doesn't have to go through this..." But no, I'm not that intelligent.

If the walk back to my car was a movie, there would have been some really dramatic music playing. And the path in the field would have gotten realllllly long, like hallways always do in scary movies. And then I'd start walking faster and faster until finally I was forced to break into a run, carrying my mom's dog in my arms. My voice would break into the epic musical montage as I whispered words of encouragement to the sickly dog.

"Hang in there Beau! Don't give up on me now! Don't let the random sketch treats win!"

A single tear would trace its way down my cheek..

And this is where I explain what actually happened.

As I approached the road where my car was parked, I saw this lady with a Springer Spaniel puppy hooked up to a really fucking long leash. My boisterous dogs bounded over to the puppy, greeting her in the only way they know how. Janie barked really loud and ran around the puppy like the crack-head she is. Beau laid down in front of the puppy and stared at her without blinking.

The puppy's owner freaked out "Are they friendly???!!!" She yelled over to me in a voice of shear panic.

This is what I wanted to say to that: "No. They're vicious. I let them off the leash in public so that they will rip people and their puppies apart so that I can point and laugh at the mangled pieces of their bodies."

This is what I actually said: "Yes, I wouldn't let them off leash if they weren't." Stupid people make me angry. And this woman got even worse.

Stupid Lady: "They didn't eat any treats did they?"
Me: "What?
Stupid Lady: "I set some tracking points for my puppy, a couple gloves with treats for her to find on the ground."
This is when I stopped panicking and got angry that someone would be so stupid to leave treats on the ground of a dog park and expect them not to get eaten when people bring their dogs off leash to this place all the time.
Me: I didn't see any of them... I don't think they ate any treats...
Stupid Lady: Oh okay, you would have seen them if they ate them.
(Obviously Stupid Lady forgot that my dogs weren't on the leash and that they were running free and that I wasn't watching every little thing that they touched on the ground because they run like maniacs and I couldn't possibly see everything.)
At this point I walked away. Stupid Lady was annoying me. And I was extremely relaxed now that I knew I hadn't poisoned my mom's dog the day before her birthday. 

Beau- Mom's almost poisoned, stares a lot dog

Janie- My crack-head dog

I have no doubt, one day the sun will come out.

I miss pretty daisy weather :(

Brother brother we all see
You're hiding out so painfully.
See yourself come out to play.
A lover's rain will wash away
Your envy and your fear.
So have no envy, no fear.
~Joshua Radin






It's gotten to that time of the season when it rains for days and I can see that it's definitely been affecting people's moods. Especially my own. I find myself reverting to the way I usually get when I'm depressed...even though I'm not. I'm actually really happy with the way things are going in my life right now, except for a couple things that I want but can't have : /...but I'm getting over that. So I should probably stop brooding and listening to sad music because I'm not sad... I'm blaming it on the depressing weather.

So remember the other day when I said that I had written the word "rain" in my notebook but couldn't remember what I wanted to say about the rain? I remembered! It had started to rain shortly after I had cut my nails, but I didn't realize that it was raining out. I just heard this weird noise. I went searching frantically around my room trying to find the noise (because I can't sleep with any weird noises happening). I threw away some pieces of paper and random shuffly noise things that I thought maybe my fan was blowing around. But nothing seemed to stop the noise. Then finally, I looked out the window and saw that it was raining and recognized the noise as water coming out of the gutter and onto the roof of the cafeteria below my window. I'm so silly.

I updated the Insomnia Playlist! Be cool like me and listen to these songs for inspiration!

 1. The Funeral- Band of Horses*
 2. Non Believer- La Rocca*
 3. Wish You Were Here- Incubus
 4. Sky- Joshua Radin
 5. Naive- The Kooks (FYI my mom told me that she doesn't like The Kooks because they sound like the type of guys who would be wearing skinny jeans, white button down shirts, and black skinny ties. um... mom you were a beatles groupie back in the day were you not?)
 6. Lovers in Japan- Coldplay
 7. I Will Follow You into the Dark- Death Cab For Cutie
 8. Sing Theresa Says- Greg Laswell
 9. Polaris- Jimmy Eat World
10. Huddle Formation- The Go! Team
11. Speeding Cars- Imogen Heap*
12. Dig- Incubus
13. Work- Jimmy Eat World
14. Who Says- John Mayer
15. No Envy No Fear- Joshua Radin*
16. New Slang- The Shins
17. Kill- Jimmy Eat World
18. Casimir Pulaski Day- Sufjan Stevens*
19. World Spins Madly On- The Weepies

I feel like all of the songs bring out such strong emotional responses for me. I wonder if it's true for other people as well? Listen to some of them and let me know. The ones with stars next to them are the ones that bring out especially strong emotions in me. So start with those first and then let me know! Seriously though I really would love to find out if others experience similar feelings when listening to these songs or if it's just me and the way my brain interprets things (because we know how different my brain works than most!) or maybe my experiences and associations that my brain has made? Even if you don't want to take part in my little experiment, I do suggest listening to these songs. But I do encourage you to tell me if you experience an emotional response to any of the songs.

And now that I've convinced all of you once and for all that I'm absolutely crazy...

Trapped in another DIMENSION.

Started this post last night but never got to finish it.

I'm feeling really anxious tonight... and I've no idea why. I just can't seem to shake this "wrong" type of feeling that's overwhelming me right now. It feels a little like I'm experiencing emotional build up or something. I'm usually a very outwardly emotional person, but lately I've found myself holding most of it in. I haven't really been letting myself experience my feelings lately. I think I'm over stressed and trying to hold everything in so I don't lose control. But in the process I'm probably making it worse for myself. Because sooner or later, all that emotional build up is going to boil over. This happens to me every once in a while. I hold things in too long and then explode, often hurting the people around me in the process.

Okay, so I just took a shower, cleaned my room, and took an online A&P quiz (and got 90%) so I'm feeling a little better now. The only problem is that it's now 2:00 in the morning and I'm still keyed up. And I have class at 8:30 in the morning. I haven't been sleeping well the last couple of days... another symptom of the anxiousness...

 So I'm really lucky that I have friends that provide me with such amazing entertainment. I was just looking through some files on my computer, getting rid of stuff that I don't need any more and I came across this:

So it's been one of those days when I have virtually nothing to blog about. I told Julie that I had no idea what to write and this was her suggestion:

Julie's screen name 6:43 pm:   '                           dry erase boards and their accessories
 wake up lyndon 6:43 pm: lol wtf?
 Julie's screen name 6:43 pm:  it was the first thing to come to mind'

I don't even know what to say to that. Because really, dry erase boards only have two accessories; makers and erasers. And while dry erase boards are fucking awesome, there just isn't a whole lot to say to them.

Dear Dry Erase Board and your accessories,

Thanks a ton for being awesome and writing things I need to display, and then erasing with such ease. It makes my life simpler.
Sincerly,
Taylor

But see, now we're back at square one. Because there just isn't enough to say on the subject of white boards and their accessories.

So I guess the only thing I can provide you with now, is an awkward story from my childhood.

I have three brothers (two older and one younger) and growing up, I was always closest to Jordan, my younger brother. We were practically inseparable. When Jordan was about five and I was around eight, computers and the internet were really starting to get popular. We had a desktop computer in the living room on which our older brother Dustin had downloaded samples of a few songs, just the first minute or so, maybe even shorter. The only two songs I remember that were on there were "Hypnotize" by Notorious B.I.G. and "Around the World" by Daft Punk.

One day Jordan and I were alternating these songs, playing them over and over again, when we decided it would be an awesome idea to run around the house while we played "Around the World" It started out fun. We would run/skip down the hallway and out of the living room, turn around at the end and then run/skip back into the living room. We'd keep doing this until the music demo would stop and then we'd replay it.

After a while though, it got kind of dull.  And being the incredibly imaginative children that we were, we thought "HEY. What if we pretend that we're actually traveling around the world during the song? And that if we don't make it back into the living room by the time it ends, then we are trapped in another DIMENSION!"

Any statement that has the phrase "Trapped in another DIMENSION!" is a great idea. Period. End of story.

The new plan:

We were wicked pumped for the new twist to our game. So we started up the music and began running around the house like maniacs again. And sure enough, when the demo ended, we were "trapped in another DIMENSION". For like, thirty seconds, it was the coolest thing ever. We stood in the middle of the hallway, looking around dramatically like we could see freaky bird hybrids or some other shit that would exist in another DIMENSION.


And then it hit us. The rule we had made for getting out of the other DIMENSION was faulty. We had established that, in order to get back into the living room, and our own dimension, the music would have to be turned on again so that we could travel out of the other DIMENSION..... but how the hell we were supposed to get to the computer when we were "trapped in another DIMENSION?"

So to solve this problem, we did what any kid would do to win the game. We cheated. One of us would run into the living room turn on the music and run back into the hallway so we could run back into the living room and arrive safely in our own dimension. We must have thought that running over to the computer was okay as long as we were quick about it... And clearly this logic is totally sound when playing "trapped in another DIMENSION".



10/2/10 UPDATE: My mom just told me that the way our little game started was that Dustin told her Daft Punk would be a good workout soundtrack so she tested the beat by walking up and down the hallway to the song. And then Jordan and I started running up and down the hallway every day. Because we're awesome... I don't know if this new information makes this story better or worse... it will depend on whether you liked it in the first place I guess.

Tree.

I  finally got around to posting the picture of the tree I climbed! You know, the one that Julie took a picture of me being a spider monkey in. I know I said I'd post a picture of it like, a week ago, but I forgot. I doubt I have any religious blog readers at this point who are angry that I didn't post a picture of the tree earlier anyway so... It's here now. So you guys can stop badgering me. That's a lie. No one is badgering me. People barely read this.

Anyway, I was in a hurry to take a picture of the tree because I didn't want to look like a freak, randomly taking a picture of a tree. When I actually went to look at the photo I took, I realized that, from this angle, it doesn't look like Rafiki's tree :( But it's okay, because I still love the tree anyway. I actually went back last Saturday during "Family Fest" with a friend and we climbed the tree together :) I've decided that this is my tree. I realize that I probably can't just claim this tree as my own and expect others to respect my ownership of the tree. But who said I was logical? So I'm going to do it anyway.

Maybe I'll make a sign:

Hopkinton High School conditioned me to always walk on the right.



My high school posse

In my high school, walking on the right side of the hallway was LAW. On the day of my high school orientation, the orientation leaders all told us that, if you didn't walk on the right side of the hallway, the upperclassmen would eat you. We had no problem remembering to walk on the right after that statement.

So understandably, after four years of walking on the right, it became part of my body's memory. And now, as a result, I get super pissed off whenever someone walks on the left and fucks with my body's natural habit of walking on the right. For some reason, whenever this happens, I get so angry and think to myself psh what is this jerk thinking? He should know better.

I'm so set in my habit of walking on the right that, even when I come across an idiot who decides to walk on the left, I continue to try to walk on the right side of this person, even when it is clear that they are moving out of my way and leaving me free to walk to the left. This always makes for an awkward situation. Like last night, on the staircase coming into Knight Hall, this guy moved to the left side (my right) of the stairs to let me pass. Even though the path was clear for me to walk up the left side of the stairs, I continued to try to get past him by going to the right. He looked at me like I was crazy (which is actually a pretty accurate description of me).

It's been over three years since I graduated high school and I'm in my senior year at  Becker College now. You'd think that I would have given up trying to start up the walking on the right fad, but no. I'm much to stubborn to resign myself to walking in an unorderly fashion.

I can live with people not walking on the right. But what I can't live with, that Becker College girls are notorious for, is when six girls walk next to each other in a line at a glacial pace, blocking everyone from getting to their destination anytime before next week. And if you try to walk around them, I swear at least one of them will be able to sense this and will purposely position herself in front of you, no matter where you go. And then, if you are finally lucky enough to be able to get around them, they will act like you just knocked all of them over, set a couple of them on fire, and broke a few limbs in your attempt to get past them. The rolling eyes and sneering lips will be inevitable. They will probably insult you in a loud voice and pretend they think you can't hear them.

So thanks Hopkinton High for ruining my expectations of orderly and functional walking systems in college, and thanks Becker College for the extra opportunities to prove how awkward I am.

Pigs make happy noises when they're happy.

So the Becker College football team won their game the other night. I'm pretty sure this means that the apocalypse has started. I'm a little scared for my life. You should all start preparing yourselves. Find proper shelter, gather canned goods, warn others. I suggest googling "preparing for the apocalypse" because you can never be too careful.

Saturday night I was up all night sick. I don't think I actually fell asleep until around 6:30AM. At first I placed the blame on the Becker College dining hall. I'm allergic to cherries and they had cherry garnished desserts Saturday night. I figured the only logical explanation was that they must have let the desserts contaminate some of the other food.

But upon further investigation, I've come up with a new possible theory. It occurred to me that, because of the football team's recent victory, the Earth may have started preparing to implode. Maybe my body is just more sensitive to the vibrations of our impending doom? The only way to test this theory will be to wait...

So while we wait, I'll tell you about my notebook. Last night I decided that it would be a good idea to keep a notebook by my bed while I sleep so that if I got a random stroke of genius in the middle of the night, I'd remember to blog about it the next day. But it seems that the brilliant ideas I came up with last night are.... well, less than brilliant now.

Apparently I thought it would be a good idea to let you guys know that I woke up at 3:00AM and had the sudden urge to cut my nails. I have a thing about my nails. I hate it when they get even a little long and I woke up last night and freaked out so I cut them... I don't know why I thought this was a funny idea to blog about...

And then I wrote the word "rain". I haven't the slightest idea where I was going with that one...

And then I wrote "David after the dentist"... I think I wanted to cleverly incorporate the phrase "Is this real life?" into the whole, football team winning their game thing. I'm not even going to try.

And then I have two stories from fourth grade that I guess I must have thought you guys would like. One of them is about the worst haircut I've ever gotten. It's not a particularly funny or involved story... so I don't know why I wanted to tell it so badly... but basically my mom took me to the hairdresser and they let me look through a book of celebrity haircuts. And for some reason, I thought that it would be a super fantastic idea to get a Darma (from Darma and Greg) mullet. At first the hair dresser kept my hair at relatively the same length but gave me that style, so I imagine it wasn't so bad. But I insisted on going shorter. You know, to go for the full mullet experience.

The next day at school I spent ten minutes at the beginning of the day in the coat closet crying my eyes out because I looked like a boy.

The other story I wanted to tell happened that same year probably a few months earlier. I had just gotten my glasses after faking the eye test and purposely failing so that I would get glasses. Which is ironic because now I actually need them and don't wear them. But at some point during the first few weeks in which I actually liked wearing glasses in fourth grade, I suddenly decided that I didn't want to wear them anymore. I would leave them in my back pack in the closet and pretend I left them at home. My teacher, that had decided my work became magically better while I wore my glasses, always asked me where they were. I would lie and tell her that I left them at home.

One day, my teacher decided that she wasn't satisfied with my answer and took it upon herself to search my back pack and brought my glasses to me. I still can't believe she did that and I was so stunned to be caught in my lie that day that I didn't even think about the fact that what she had done was unethical... but then ten-year-old kids don't usually know about privacy and property laws....


P.S. I know the title of this one is really random. It's something a girl said in my ethics class today. LOL.

Simon says: read.

I'm really not sure why it works this way, but I swear I only feel inspired to blog when I have other things I should be doing. I posted three times the other night when I had a bunch of things to be studying for. And now that I have nothing to study for, I have absolutely no topic on my mind to blog about. It's been a couple of days since my last post and I almost feel guilty for not posting. But I swear that every time I sit down to write something, it just seems like complete trash. And to top it off, my artistic flow was definitely quelled by some unnecessary (and very public) criticism. I embarrass easily (as you'd know if you read my previous posts) and the feeling often puts a damper on my ability to create.

So I'm going to do my best to share with you what I've tried unsuccessfully to blog a few times now.

On Friday I spent some time with my family from Missouri. I was so proud of myself. I actually played with children and enjoyed myself. At first it was a little difficult figuring out which of the kids wanted to be "it" and which didn't. Some of them would get upset if they didn't get a chance to be "it" and some of them got upset if they had to be "it". The solution to this: pick a different game. 

Me playing "duck, duck, goose" with the kids.

We ended up playing Simon says, which was a lot of fun. But soon after we started, we were called inside by the grown ups because it was getting dark.

I swear that some children can speak and converse with people as if they were adults. Seven year old Brayton, the boy who I had just named "goose" in the photo above, talked to me about college with as much incite and interest as I would expect from someone close to my own age. He asked me about living at college and if I liked it and if I came home very often. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed talking to Brayton so much is because children are such good listeners. When an adult asks me how school is going, it feels like a courtesy question. Almost like routine. But Brayton seemed genuinely interested in the answers I was giving. It was so refreshing talking to someone who doesn't already know the answer to the question they are asking. I don't fault adults who ask these questions, but it was just so much less awkward talking to Brayton because he seemed so enthralled with everything I was telling him.

I joke around a lot saying that I don't like children but I have to say that I honestly felt a connection to kids while I was playing in the yard with them. Brayton asked me right before he and the others left our house if I could visit them in Missouri soon and I was being completely honest when I said that I hoped I could.

I should be studying...

Just so you guys know, this post was written over the course of around five hours... so it skips around a lot. Bear with me.

I got maple syrup in my hair today. I also had a microbiology exam at 8:30 in the morning that I had no idea about. I cried after my Brain and Behavior class because the subject was way too close to home. I actually just got back from that class. So I apologize if the beginning of this post has been a little "down in the dumps". I promise you it will not be a repeat of "The journey that ends at the beginning" I'm not quite that far gone. Just a little mopey.


So I just got back from watching the tennis match with Julie! It was nice to just sit back for a bit and pretend that I wasn't super stressed/upset. I climbed a tree. It made me feel better :) If you ever feel sad, climb a tree. It's a guaranteed pick-me-up.  So while I was up in the tree, I shouted at Julie "Take a picture! I'm a spider-monkey!" and this is the result:

Spider Monkey (kinda)

I would probably not say that this is an accurate portrayal of a spider monkey. I actually don't even know what a spider monkey is... 

I just googled spider monkey, and I was wrong. This does kind of look like me.

Spider Monkey (for serious)

So after I so boldly climbed the tree (which was awesome, I should have taken a picture of just the tree, it was kind of Lion Kingesque, you know, the one that Rafiki hangs out in and is like "Simba" when he paints the picture and then is like "HE'S ALIVE!"... yeah, that's kind of what this tree looked like. I'll probably go back tomorrow and take a picture of it so don't you guys worry. You'll be able to see where the Lion King was filmed.)

Anyway, after I climbed the tree and was safely back on the ground, Julie and I started talking about our tail bones. She said she broke her's in the fifth grade. I hurt mine sometime ago.... while I was climbing a tree! I think that that was actually the last time I climbed a tree...How very brave of me to get back into the saddle! It was a pretty traumatic event. I was acting like a champ, climbing this tree with my friends near this pond that we used to go to around the corner from my house. Suddenly, the branch that I was swinging on snapped and I plummeted to the ground.

I'm pretty sure that I was probably 4 feet from the ground. My ass hurt so bad I was sure I broke it. I was lying there, howling in pain while my friend laughed. I don't think she understood just how much pain I was in at first. But after a while she helped me up and walked me back to my house. 

I had completely forgotten about this event when I climbed the tree today. I'm extremely relieved that the experience hadn't left me traumatized and afraid of trees because then I wouldn't be nearly as cheerful as I am right now. Because climbing trees and pretending to be a spider monkey is awesome. 

After I told Julie about my tail bone incident she told me about hers. Hers is funnier, but only because of the side story she told after it. And because she's Julie. 

She was telling me that the injury was the result of a bad softball incident. I can't be sure of the details because I was not paying attention at first (sorry Julie!) But when I started listening again, she was talking about getting onto some base (not sure which one) and being pushed off it by a mammoth of a girl on the other team. The mammoth girl caused Julie to fall to the ground and break her tail bone. 

 Julie then continued on with her second story. She told me that, the next year, her father coached the softball team and she was surprised and dismayed to learn that Mammoth Girl would now be playing on her team. But don't worry, our heroine got her chance at retaliation. 

During one game, the referee made all of the players take their jewelery off and place it in one container on the bench. Our malicious protagonist then saw her opportunity. 

Listening to Julie describe the next part of the story was priceless. I wish you all could have been there. Her face turned guilty but also sweet and innocent as she said: "Well.... I'd always wanted a clatter ring, and that girl had one... It was so perfect because I was the only one on the bench. So I knocked all of the jewelery off the bench and onto the ground. And was like 'OH NO!' As I was picking it all up, I picked the clatter ring up and just pretended to put it back on the bench. Then I told my dad that I was going to get gum in the car and put the ring under my hat on the back seat and went back to join the game. At the end when everyone noticed that the ring was gone I even helped search for it on the ground after I explained that I had knocked the jewelery over." 

It was at this point that I looked at Julie, with an expression that I can only assume was incredulity, horror, and pride mixed into one. When she saw my face she panicked and said "She broke my tail bone so I took her ring!!" As if that makes everything justifiable... which in my book it does. 

Here's a random transition that I have no idea how to do smoothly........... so I'll put this here.

So I'm listening to my "insomnia" soundtrack. The one with my feel good songs that I mentioned in my very first post. I told my mom that I would burn her a CD with these songs on it. She was telling me today how much she loves when I make her listen to one of those AMAZING melody songs. What I'm talking about might make more sense if you read the insomnia post. I wrote the poem and took that picture by the way.... Here's the poem in case you can't read it: 

Standing still

Under frost clad trees.

The only sound around

Is the creaking

Of branches, tilting

In the soft and

Bitter wind.

They reach, longing

For a warmer breeze.

Shades of dull blue

Dominate this grove;

White blankets of snow,

Grey trunks and boughs,

Silver-blue sky.

The silent, humble beauty 

Of winter.

My life would be so different if...

I knew how to talk to boys.

caffeine actually affected me.

the internet wasn't so fun.

lettuce didn't taste like shit.

beds weren't so comfortable.

I wasn't afraid of my car exploding.

I had one of these:

(If you get the reference, you win)

time went by the way I wanted it to go.

they made extra-firm grip cozies.

wallhuggingatparties was an Olympic sport.

I didn't feel like I was going to vomit every time a dead animal carcass is ripped open in front of me. (I'd probably be Pre-Vet in that case)

I thought about things before I said them (making a joke about how you don't care about other people's feelings can often be misunderstood...even when you try to explain it... and deny it... and take it back entirely...)

I didn't ignore big things and STRESS OUT over little things. (Ignoring the fact that my car is going to explode but STRESSING OUT over the fact that I undercooked the cookies for a dorm program)

Odwalla drinks didn't have crack in them and/or weren't so expensive...either one.

people my age would stop falling in love with Justin Beiber *cough* you're a pedophile..... Just sayin'.

Becker College served hot breakfast after 9:00am.


Comment with some of your own!! And don't make me look like a loser with no comments after posting this. You are required to comment now.

Update: You guys SUCK.

You're probably wondering where the phrase "waking lyndon" comes from

It originally came from "wake up Lyndon" I tweaked it a little for some variety. But I use the phrase pretty often. As user names, screen names, whatever. The term comes from one of my favorite movies; "Dear Wendy". Lyndon, is the name that Huey (a handicapped teenager) calls his gun. Because the theme of the movie is "pacifists with guns" of course.

Here's the trailer.

The phrase "wake up Lyndon." is said towards the end of the movie, by Huey and it introduces one of the most emotional scenes in the movie. That, and the fact that the phrase is somehow aesthetically pleasing to me, makes me want to use it very often. It is also pretty unique which means I don't have to go fumbling around looking for a user name that is not taken already :)

We Won't Need Legs To Stand.

I found this post in my unpublished posts section. I don't ever remember putting it there or what I intended to do with it... It was blank except for the title "We won't need legs to stand" which is a Sufjan Stevens song. I probably had high hopes for this becoming an otherworldly and deeply artistic post but must have come up short when it came to actually writing it.

So instead I'll share this with you:

I swear I don't do it on purpose. At least it just tipped over and only spilled a little.


But now I'm actually going to get serious. Kind of.

I was thinking today about the fact that I am really just one giant oxymoron. I doubt that oxymoron is the right word to use here but it's the only word that almost kind of describes the way I am.

In some respects, I'm incredibly ambitious. To the point where I try so many things, that I'm not able to perfect any of my skills, but just hover at being mediocre at a bunch of stuff. I'm a mediocre guitar player, artist, singer/songwriter, actor, writer, poet, dog trainer, student, photographer... you get the picture (ha). I feel like I have the capability to be amazing at all of these things, if I were to just pick one (or settle for a few) and actually work at becoming amazing at it.

Now here's where the oxymoron part comes in. Despite the fact that I want to be good at all of these things, and that I try so many different things, I am probably the laziest person you'll ever meet. I skip class, I don't study, I'd rather do nothing than do something productive. I envy people who can focus their energy so much. If I had that focus I could definitely apply myself and become sufficient enough at one of the things I mentioned. So I would feel confident enough to actually show people. At this point I settle for telling people that I play guitar, but I often will refuse to prove it because I feel like I'm not good enough to submit to another person's judgment.

This habit is only reinforced when I complete a drawing and I'm so proud of it and all 4 hours it took me that I actually show someone.

Me: "Look what I drew!"

Random Person: "That's really good. I draw dogs too. Look at this."

And they respond by showing me a way better drawing that makes mine look like a bad cartoon drawing. It's even better when they whip up a masterpiece in five minutes as I'm standing there clutching my bad cartoon drawing that took me four hours.

Or, after my friend tells me I'm an amazing singer, I start telling people that I can sing. And then some random person tells me I have to sing for her. And I do it, because she says I have to, and plus my friend told me I'm amazing so it must be true... So then I sing for this person and she says "Yeah you are good." But follows up with not so nonchalantly singing something herself that makes me feel like William Hung.

And even though these people have the best of intentions and tell me that my William Hung impersonations and cartoons are fantastic, I still feel like they are judging me. Even though they are not.

It's like, they'll say this: "Wow that's a really fantastic drawing, you're so talented!!!" And I hear this: "........ I could do better. And I'll show you. Because you suck." Which isn't the case at all.

P.S. The dog drawing person and the nonchalant singing person are two different people. Because they both have enough sense to actually focus on one artistic talent instead of trying to tackle all of them and coming up short as a bad cartoon drawing William Hung impersonator.

I had written three paragraphs about boys here, but it was so awkward that even I couldn't handle it. Maybe I'll talk about how all my ex-boyfriends were way more talented than me another time... or not.