I have an idea… I’m up a creek when it comes to what I want to write about. Maybe I’ll ask all who reads my blog as to what you would like me to comment on or write about. It’s kind of an experiment about my views towards life and certain topics and what not. I basically have an opinion on just about everything so leave me a comment and I will do my best to write about what comes up!
I know what you’re thinking! Nano what now? NaNo WriMo is the National Novel Writing Month.
Every November thousands and thousands of people write over 50,000 word novels in the span of only a month, to prove to many that they are bonafide novelists! Apparently your novel doesn’t even need to be good or have a plot; it just has to be over 50,000 words.
I know it is seven months until the month of November, but I’m putting the word out there just incase there are some aspiring novelists, or people who just need something to occupy their time.
I have now been back on my ‘life source’ (Dr. Pepper) for 3 wonderful days now. I think if I had to go even a week longer without it, it might have been necessary for those who know me to get a court order, forcing me to go back on it.
I know you would like to think I’m kidding, but I’m really not. I think the last straw was last Friday when I was driving to work and I happened upon 3 construction workers walking in the middle of the road. Ordinarily I would just slow down and make a moving gesture with my arms while they sauntered out of the way. Well being at the end of my ‘Lent rope’ I not only sped up to about 45 mph but also started yelling and screaming at them to get out of my *&%*$#^ way! Not my finest 10 minutes, but luckily they got the hint that the crazy lady wasn’t about to slow down and promptly moved out of the way.
Since 12:01 Saturday morning I’ve been relaxed, chill, and ridiculously unfazed by my crazy life. To me Lent couldn’t have ended fast enough. To celebrate my enthusiasm I’ve decided to write a really bad poem:
Disclaimer: I’m a writer, not a poet.
“Dr. Pepper how I love thee, I hope beyond hope that you
never leave me.
In Plano Texas I do trust, if the bottling factory closes, it’ll
be a bust.
And in a padded room I’d remain, for the rest of my natural
born life.
The comfort and relaxation you bring to my soul, the
glistening liquid as a whole.
Flows through my veins, bringing them life, when I’m without
you, it cuts like a knife. A pain I hope others never know.
So to Dr. Pepper I’ll pledge my allegiance, no other nectar will have such
brilliance! Forever yours I’ll stay.”
Sorry to put you folks through that. I will never claim to be good at poetry. But it felt nice to get my feelings out there. Thank you for support and not judging me too badly for that awful display.
In less then nine hours from now, I’ll be enjoying the amazing taste of Texas comfort or as it is more formally known as… Dr. Pepper.
As most of you know, I gave up Dr. Pepper for Lent. Thank goodness lent ends as of 12:01am Saturday because I was pretty close to going on a shooting rampage. That may be overstating it a bit but you get my drift.
I’m very excited about this, especially since I will finally be able to relax a little bit instead of trying to find alternate methods of doing so. I’m not the only one excited to enjoy the crisp taste of an ice cold Dr. Pepper. My friends, family and co-workers are just as, if not more excited for me to finally end this crazy crusade. Apparently I’m a lot easier to handle when I have my life source running through my blood stream and soothing my nerves.
All I have to say is that in theory, lent is a good idea but when you only have one vice, it’s not a good idea to give that one vice up. No sir. I’ll be back in action tomorrow and fully caffeinated! I must also thank someone who was the only person who stayed strong with me in my Lent observing endeavor.
Todd! Thank you for being just as addicted to Dr. Pepper as I am and staying strong with me through Lent. I may have shanghaied you into this but thank you for being such a good sport about it.
Finally! I broke down and did my laundry. I was previously doing an experiment on how much of my wardrobe I actually wear, and found out that I actually do cycle through most of my wardrobe, and that after 2 ½ months of avoiding the washing of my clothes, there isn’t much in my closet that I wouldn’t wear in broad daylight. The clothes that are left, I’m giving to goodwill.
So, on March 12, I loaded up my washing machine and started the grueling process of washing my clothes. I think the dryer knew what was coming because it took one look at all the piles of clothes before it, and decided that it just wasn’t going to have that and promptly stopped producing heat. Much to my dismay I had to cart all 10 loads over to my next door neighbor’s house so I could have dry clothes.
I’m not a very big person so I think to anyone watching this process it might have been humorous. People watching the little girl haul large amounts of clothes and all you see are the chicken legs beneath the massive heaps.
I think from now on I’ll be doing my laundry at least once a month. That way I’m not completely screwed should my dryer or washer decide to poop out on me again.
I’ve been pondering recently about how guy’s products are not only cheaper but they are better quality. For example, my new (guys) razor; it was cheaper than my last razor, it has one more blade then my previous one and it does a better job! Next on my list is shaving cream… does the exact same job (and even helps with razor burn) with ½ the price. Hmmm, let me think about that brain buster for a while…
I’m paying for a crappier product only because it’s pink and smells like my aunts garden. I can go to the coast and get soap that smells like my hippie brother that’ll still do a better job and is still cheaper. Hey corporate America, way to target the insecurity of the female psyche!
Why are these products not only better, but half the price as woman’s products? After using the razor and shaving cream, I started branching out to other things that might offer the same type of satisfaction if not less from women’s products, but much cheaper. My first experiment was with undershirts. I’m sad to say that to find a decent undershirt for a female; it will usually cost you around $7 ea. That’s per tank top/undershirt. Ok, that’s ridiculous especially since they sometimes make them with a built-in bra so as to forgo any pesky straps… good idea in theory but they make them with a padded-I’m-blinking-cleavage-all-day filler that isn’t as comfortable as you might think. I was blown away that I could find a pack of 12 guy undershirts, for only $10 dollars. That is less than a dollar per undershirt!
I was flabbergasted and was wondering what else lived inside the realm of boys clothing, when I saw them… underwear. Now for the most part, if you want underwear that lasts, you can find ONE pair of underwear for anywhere from $3-6 dollars. This is for the kind that won’t fall apart after a few wears. Utter dismay hit when I found 7 pairs of tighty-whitey-won’t-ride-up-your-butt-all-day, long-lasting-comfort, for how much again? $6!!! WTF?? You’ve got to be kidding me! In the ‘girl world’ I can buy 5 pairs for $25. That’s $25 that I can take and purchase 35 pairs of underwear that don’t have the word ‘juicy’ printed on the bum or itchy lace! 35 pairs of underwear that I can feel cute and good about myself for wearing despite the fact that they are made for guys! If Carrie Bradshaw can do dang-it so can I!
Don’t get me wrong I still like looking and feeling like a girl but to spend money on stuff that A. doesn’t really get seen and B. is sooooooo much cheaper? That’s a ‘No Brainer’ in my book!
I’ve been conducting an experiment so to speak. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my New Years resolutions this year, I looked back on the previous years and realized that I’m pretty good at sticking to them.
For this particular New Years, I was just bored enough (and without a doubt some of my most creative ideas immerge from my boredom) that the insane started making sense. I was thinking to myself about all the girls I know, and how much clothes we all own, and how much of those clothes we actually wear. So I decided that I was going to wear EVERYTHING in my closet before I’d break down and do my laundry. This is quite a feat especially since I have tubs of clothes underneath my bed for the spring/summer seasons. I’m 52 days into the year and I’ve managed to only touch about 1/8th of the clothes in my drawers and closet.
As weird as this may sound I’m still sticking to it even though my laundry pile is about ½ as tall as I am and there seems to be no end. At least I have my own ‘fashion’, but I’m starting to look more and more ‘coastal/hippie’ ie. Myself before I moved to Utah and got sick of everyone wanting to know what beach I’d wandered off of.
As this experiment drags on, in a few more weeks, I’m going to have to start accessorizing with my hemp necklaces again so as to not look to odd. I don’t mind looking like my northwest self again except for the growing population of ‘emo’ and ‘indie’ kids. As much as I want to continue looking like the genre’s that stole their look directly from the Northwest I might not have a choice come mid may or so.
All I know is that my choices in wardrobe are becoming more and more fun to pick out. Mainly because fewer things are matching but mainly because I actually have to think ‘does this lynyrd skynyrd t-shirt go with this skirt?’ It’s ok because most of my band t-shirts are now being paired with skirts because I’m running out of sweats. Out of my experiments, this is turning out to be a really fun one. I just don’t know how i’m going to explain my ‘hug a tree but shave your armpits’ t-shirt….
I was watching a movie the other day at the theatre when I saw a preview for ‘The Bucket List’. For those of you who have not seen this preview, it shows Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill cancer patients. They come up with a ‘bucket list’ or a list of things they want to do before they kick the bucket.
This got me thinking. Why should I wait until I’m old to create a pathway for experiences? At the young age of 25, I’ve decided I’m going to create a ‘bucket list’ of 10 random/crazy/fun things I want to do every decade until I finally kick it. So, having lived at least 5 years of this particular decade in my life, here is the list for the rest of the 5 years…
1. Write a fan letter to Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden of ‘I
Dream of Jeannie’.
2. Climb a billboard and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
3. Hit a parade on ‘Fat Tuesday’ in New Orleans.
4. Visit a foreign country, excluding Canada and Mexico.
5. Go ‘tray surfing’… This is when you take a food tray from a
food court or cafeteria and surf in a parking lot while holding
onto a car door or the bed of a truck.
6. Create my own parade. Get friends involved by decorating
trucks and cars and making floats and then drive single-file
down a road waving.
The rules of the ‘Bucket List’ require 10 things that you want to accomplish. The last four, I’ve actually accomplished in the previous 5 years.
1. Be an extra in a TV show… Accomplished at age 21.
2. Karaoke in a bar in Texas… Accomplished at age 22 and won
$50 in the process.
3. Start my own Blog… Accomplished at 24.
4. Run in a bikini in the snow on the campus of Brigham Young
University… accomplished at age 22 & 23, and even made the
campus paper.
There are other things that I’ve accomplished and have bragging rights to, but a lot of those were accomplished before I turned 20.
In the immortal words of James Dean ‘Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today’.
So… Here’s an update. I know I was doing the ‘Abating the Norms’ project. Here are the answers to my questions.
1. Everything you do in the bubble of Provo Utah gets a reaction… Not necessarily a good one.
2. For the most part people here in the bubble do not take kindly to individuality.
3. For someone like me who already tests the boundaries of social normality I found this
experiment quite boring.
4. I need a life!
So there you go. Maybe I’ll try my experiment somewhere else at another time and let you guys know.
On a more personal note, my tonsillectomy went fine. I will admit to some serious pain after this. I couldn’t eat normal food for almost two weeks. Here it is almost a month ago and I still have to suck down tea like it’s going out of style. Yikes. Stay tuned for more adventure of me.
Perception. Perception is a funny thing. You go about your life seeing things a certain way and either you A.) Keep perceiving things the way do for the rest of your life and never look for a different view on things; B.) You perceive something a certain way and when you find out a different view, you crumble to pieces because things weren’t what you thought; Or C.) You perceive things; you see a different side and are intrigued by this new side and possible depth.
There are some people who think that this world is black and white. Good vs. bad, weird vs. normal, trash vs. class. With the exception of the last one, I believe the rest to be very gray. What determines these classifications? You could be nice to your fellow man and still be a jerk in traffic. You could steal from a store and then help an old lady across the street. I think as a whole the human race is basically good but all of us make decisions. Decisions that could alter people’s perception of us, and what we are all about. Take kids for example. You have a kid that gets good grades and grows up in suburbia and we automatically assume they’re a good kid. Take the same kid and put them in a trailer park and have them get into some mischief and then they’re labeled a ‘bad seed’. I think it starts when we are young. A kid hears how they are bad and it’s only a matter of time before the vast majority start believing it. Obviously there are extenuating circumstances in all things but I think as an over all assumption, it starts in our younger psyche.
I believe that the same thing goes for so-called ‘weirdness’. I think that everyone on the entire planet is weird; it’s just that some people are better at hiding it. My weirdness had been embedded in me since birth but it was around the fourth grade when it became apparent to everyone. It all started when I conducted my first experiment. I wanted to know if you could make cheese by simply letting milk solidify. I had heard of the concept a week before and I wanted to put it to the test. What I didn’t realize at the time is that smell came along with the milk fermenting process, and that after a few weeks of having it in my desk it started to smell up the entire classroom. After that I was forever more known as the ‘weird girl’. In retrospect I think it was a blessing more then a hindrance because it aloud me to be myself and express myself forever more how I wanted.
As my ‘weirdness’ has progressed, I’ve learned how to ‘fine tune it’ so to speak so that for the vast majority of the time, I’m just myself. It’s a really nice feeling to just be myself instead of trying to hide myself in various degrees of self-loathing. A lot of people walk around afraid to branch out and just be themselves for fear of what other people will think. This is where my experiment comes in. I live in Provo, Utah where it seems that every one is trying to be something they’re not. The longer someone lives here, it seems that they develop a certain air about them, an air of perfection so to speak. I grew up in a very, ‘just be yourself’ type of atmosphere. This is a very special bubble like place. If things aren’t picture perfect around here, the assumptions start flying. It’s crazy but it’s true. This is the point I’m trying to get across. It’s ok to get out of these bounds and just breathe and be free.
My little ‘Provo rebellion’ started pretty much the second I moved here. By the quotes, I mean that my very personality borders on rebellion in this city.
For the first day of my experiments, I observed. The first thing I observed was the reaction to my bumper stickers. I have several semi-political bumper stickers whose soul purpose is to ruffle feathers.
The Bumper stickers say; *Suburbia - Where they take out all the trees and name the streets after them. *Don’t drink and park accidents cause people *Think this car is to dirty then you wash it *Don’t steal the government hates competition.
Reactions to these stickers are either one or the other. There is the obvious eye roll and the hysteric laughter. There isn’t a whole lot of in between. The observation will continue as I go along with my research. Stay tuned for my crazy antics as I blow the lid off of Provo!
