1. The Dentist- It's a new guy, who is probably 8 years older than me at the most. There has been a nasty cavity on each side of my mouth (making it impossible to enjoy any type of sugary deliciousness without also feeling like I'm chewing on needles) since September, and I haven't been to the dentist since Sophomore year before I went abroad, so I went in knowing what to expect. What I did not expect was a stern talking to about choosing the type of candy I indulge in.
I think I was so unreasonably bothered by it because he told me the way a timid piano teacher tells you that you have to keep practicing the same song; I already know, and he knows I already know, but on formality he feels he needs to say it anyway. Don't patronize me, baby dentist. Then I had to fight with the dental hygienist over whether I could handle having both sides of my face numbed in the same day. Ergh. I know that it's my fault for having been dainty for so long that people are surprised when I'm not, but still. I had my wisdom teeth removed, I can get two cavities drilled in the same day. yeesh. I'm not going in twice.
2. Zumba- I went with mom today, and although I will always remain loyal to the instructor at school, I had plenty of fun. Highlights include Selena Gomez songs and not having to do Jillian Michael's workout today. Water is almost starting to fill the void where my salty snacks usually inhabit. Almost.
3. Michael Buble's Christmas Special- Does he rub anyone else the wrong way? I love his voice, but he just seems like an uber-deusch to me. Also, Canadians should not sing Elvis songs. They just should not.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Finished the Divergent Trilogy...
After I had a few hours to be upset about the ending, I've determined that Allegiant was a good book. No spoiler alerts, but if I hadn't been in denial the whole time it would have been predictable. It was right, the way Veronica Roth finished everything.
But the feels.
Unfinished Business
I tend to get really enthusiastic about projects, get halfway through, and then get enthusiastic about something else and let the first project sit. Sometimes for years. So I've decided my goal for Christmas break is to finish up some of those projects and tie up the loose ends that have been hanging over my head.
Project #1: The Afghan
I started making this stupid thing freshman year as a present to a boyfriend, and I still have two skeins of yarn that need knitted in. But this is my year. I can feel it.
Project #2: The Tshirt Quilt
I have the tshirts cut into squares, and I have them put on backing, but I don't know how to use my sewing machine. They've been sitting in a pile since last summer, waiting to be put together, but I need to finish it before graduation-- did I mention these were my high school tshirts? So once I finish them, I can start my college quilt.
Project #3: Lose Weight
I'm going to do a whole separate post on the subject, but last year I was not kind to my body, and it's been a process trying to get it back in shape. I'm 1/3 of the way there, and I'm hoping to be 2/3 of the way there by the end of Christmas break. 30 day shred, here I come.
Project #4: Find Something to do with my life
If one more person asks me what I'm doing after I graduate, I will scream.
Project #5: Write some Flash Fiction
The goal would be to have 5 rough pieces that I can use for my creative writing class next semester. I picture myself being an author someday, sitting down to my computer in some chic but affordable coffee shop (I don't even like coffee, so I don't know what I'll be doing there. Drinking water), and writing my bestselling novel. I say I can't do it now because I'm too busy with work, and school, and blah blah blah... Here I am, with 3 weeks of free time. I better have some writing to show for it.
Project #1: The Afghan
I started making this stupid thing freshman year as a present to a boyfriend, and I still have two skeins of yarn that need knitted in. But this is my year. I can feel it.
Project #2: The Tshirt Quilt
I have the tshirts cut into squares, and I have them put on backing, but I don't know how to use my sewing machine. They've been sitting in a pile since last summer, waiting to be put together, but I need to finish it before graduation-- did I mention these were my high school tshirts? So once I finish them, I can start my college quilt.
Project #3: Lose Weight
I'm going to do a whole separate post on the subject, but last year I was not kind to my body, and it's been a process trying to get it back in shape. I'm 1/3 of the way there, and I'm hoping to be 2/3 of the way there by the end of Christmas break. 30 day shred, here I come.
Project #4: Find Something to do with my life
If one more person asks me what I'm doing after I graduate, I will scream.
Project #5: Write some Flash Fiction
The goal would be to have 5 rough pieces that I can use for my creative writing class next semester. I picture myself being an author someday, sitting down to my computer in some chic but affordable coffee shop (I don't even like coffee, so I don't know what I'll be doing there. Drinking water), and writing my bestselling novel. I say I can't do it now because I'm too busy with work, and school, and blah blah blah... Here I am, with 3 weeks of free time. I better have some writing to show for it.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
10 Books that Shaped Who I am
This has been going around facebook, and I've been tagged a few times, but I'm a little intimidated. Only 10? Any 10 at all? No judgement? Well, ok then. Here they are, in no particular order.
Stargirl -Jerry Spinelli
Edit: I can't believe I forgot Secret Life of Bees! I'm not going to add a quote, because you should just read the whole thing, but it needed to get at least an honorable mention.
Stargirl -Jerry Spinelli
“She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”Divergent -Veronica Roth
“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”Harriet the Spy -Louise Fitzhugh
"Everything bored her. She found that when she didn't have a notebook it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her, whereas when she wrote, they flowed out faster than she could put them down."Looking for Alaska -John Green (As if I could really pick just one quote...)
“It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.”The Perks of Being a Wallflower -Stephen Chbosky
“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”Wintergirls -Laurie Halse Anderson
“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”Invisible Monsters -Chuck Palahniuk
“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”The Virgin Suicides -Jeffrey Eugenides
“Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.”Slaughterhouse-Five -Kurt Vonnegut
"So it goes."
Edit: I can't believe I forgot Secret Life of Bees! I'm not going to add a quote, because you should just read the whole thing, but it needed to get at least an honorable mention.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
22 Rules for Being a Lady in 2014; Thoughtcatalog
1. Master at least one dish that you can whip up on relatively short notice, for when you’re having people over and don’t want to be like, “There’s a box of stale Wheat Thins left if you want to fight over those.”
2. Hold doors for everyone, especially older people or people carrying heavy things.
3. Make plans with friends you haven’t seen in a while, and actually follow through with them. (This includes not scheduling things on a morning when you know you’re going to be too hungover to go anywhere.)
4. If one of your friends is a little too drunk to handle herself at the bar/club/house party, do the right thing and remain sober-ish enough to properly babysit and facilitate her trip home.
5. Do not assign moral value to food items, on your own plate or anyone else’s. A mozzarella stick is a mozzarella stick, and nothing more.
6. Always give someone the chance to make up for it if they’ve hurt your feelings, and the best way to start that process off is giving them the dignity of telling them how they hurt you. Ladies don’t subtweet, they earnestly reach out on Gchat.
7. Be happy for friends when they announce big life moments, such as engagement or pregnancy, if only on the surface. (Exceptions of course being made for situations that are seriously unhealthy or endangering.) When it comes time for your big moment, you’ll want the same kind of support.
8. Have at least one outfit in the closet for job interview, one for first date, and one for going home to see family (yours or someone else’s). The amount of headaches that can be spared by simply having a versatile blazer and pencil skirt at one’s disposal are incalculable.
9. Never disparage another woman for choosing and embracing the domestic/housewive/stay-at-home-mom life.
10. Never disparage another woman for choosing a really demanding career instead of family life, if that’s what she wants.
11. Keep a small bar in your apartment with the basics to make a few classic, tasty drinks for a small variety of tastes. There is a time and a place for having only a bottle of Mad Dog and some Boone’s in your cupboards, and that time is 19 years old.
12. Learn the worlds of options there are between “orthopedically criminal high heels” and “computer programmer running shoes.” Find something stylish that also works for your life and tastes.
13. Never base your feminism in telling other women what makes them a “good” or “bad” feminist. Being a good, compassionate person should be your only criteria, and wearing makeup or liking Sex and the City should not be an issue.
14. Keep fresh-cut flowers in your house.
15. Be a good hostess — learn how to make people feel comfortable and welcome in your house, and leave feeling like they got to be themselves.
16. Stop looking at marriage as the defining endeavor in a woman’s life, no matter how much it has been ingrained into you. It should neither be something you actively disdain, nor something you seek out with white-knuckled deadlines.
17. While you are not obligated to like any other woman strictly on the basis of being a woman, and there are certain things that are totally fair criticisms, her weight is never one of them.
18. Do not consume media which you know, before you even see it, is going to make you feel badly about yourself. If you watched the VS Fashion Show and spent the whole time liveblogging about how ugly and inadequate it made you feel, do not give it your mental health next year. It doesn’t deserve it.
19. Always have a backup plan.
20. Give other women compliments when they are sincere and non-selfish, because girl-on-girl compliments are the greatest thing and the mark of a true lady.
21. Do not hold gender-based expectations about who is “supposed” to pay for things. Everyone contribute, everyone do what they can, everyone take pleasure in being the one who gets to treat the other sometimes.
22. Be the one to kiss first sometimes, and don’t ever think that makes you weird or too forward. First kisses are too great a joy not to be shared by all genders
2. Hold doors for everyone, especially older people or people carrying heavy things.
3. Make plans with friends you haven’t seen in a while, and actually follow through with them. (This includes not scheduling things on a morning when you know you’re going to be too hungover to go anywhere.)
4. If one of your friends is a little too drunk to handle herself at the bar/club/house party, do the right thing and remain sober-ish enough to properly babysit and facilitate her trip home.
5. Do not assign moral value to food items, on your own plate or anyone else’s. A mozzarella stick is a mozzarella stick, and nothing more.
6. Always give someone the chance to make up for it if they’ve hurt your feelings, and the best way to start that process off is giving them the dignity of telling them how they hurt you. Ladies don’t subtweet, they earnestly reach out on Gchat.
7. Be happy for friends when they announce big life moments, such as engagement or pregnancy, if only on the surface. (Exceptions of course being made for situations that are seriously unhealthy or endangering.) When it comes time for your big moment, you’ll want the same kind of support.
8. Have at least one outfit in the closet for job interview, one for first date, and one for going home to see family (yours or someone else’s). The amount of headaches that can be spared by simply having a versatile blazer and pencil skirt at one’s disposal are incalculable.
9. Never disparage another woman for choosing and embracing the domestic/housewive/stay-at-home-mom life.
10. Never disparage another woman for choosing a really demanding career instead of family life, if that’s what she wants.
11. Keep a small bar in your apartment with the basics to make a few classic, tasty drinks for a small variety of tastes. There is a time and a place for having only a bottle of Mad Dog and some Boone’s in your cupboards, and that time is 19 years old.
12. Learn the worlds of options there are between “orthopedically criminal high heels” and “computer programmer running shoes.” Find something stylish that also works for your life and tastes.
13. Never base your feminism in telling other women what makes them a “good” or “bad” feminist. Being a good, compassionate person should be your only criteria, and wearing makeup or liking Sex and the City should not be an issue.
14. Keep fresh-cut flowers in your house.
15. Be a good hostess — learn how to make people feel comfortable and welcome in your house, and leave feeling like they got to be themselves.
16. Stop looking at marriage as the defining endeavor in a woman’s life, no matter how much it has been ingrained into you. It should neither be something you actively disdain, nor something you seek out with white-knuckled deadlines.
17. While you are not obligated to like any other woman strictly on the basis of being a woman, and there are certain things that are totally fair criticisms, her weight is never one of them.
18. Do not consume media which you know, before you even see it, is going to make you feel badly about yourself. If you watched the VS Fashion Show and spent the whole time liveblogging about how ugly and inadequate it made you feel, do not give it your mental health next year. It doesn’t deserve it.
19. Always have a backup plan.
20. Give other women compliments when they are sincere and non-selfish, because girl-on-girl compliments are the greatest thing and the mark of a true lady.
21. Do not hold gender-based expectations about who is “supposed” to pay for things. Everyone contribute, everyone do what they can, everyone take pleasure in being the one who gets to treat the other sometimes.
22. Be the one to kiss first sometimes, and don’t ever think that makes you weird or too forward. First kisses are too great a joy not to be shared by all genders
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Inspiration for my Final Paper: Dorian Gray vs. Patrick Bateman
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
“There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”
American Psycho:
Monday, December 9, 2013
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