Prompt 5: A Photo Of Myself Two Years Ago

This is, quite possibly, the best picture of me to exist in the entire world.  It was inspired by this blog post from The Bloggess.  If you don't know who the Bloggess is then I really have to question our friendship.  Well, I say inspired by, but who are we kidding.  The minute I saw this gigantic metal chicken just hanging out on the side of the road I knew I was going to have a picture with it.  It was whole minutes after that that I remembered The Bloggess and Beyonce.  There was actually a whole series of photos taken that day, featuring, in addition to myself, the wonderful Callie and Summer.  We literally drove out to Home Depot with no other goal in life but to take pictures with this vast menagerie of cast iron/aluminum (the chicken was aluminum) creatures that this man had put out for purchase.  It was the best possible use of a day.  And for good measure, here are pictures of Callie and Summer posing with some of the other, slightly more reasonably sized animals

This was Summer and the Bear's engagement shoot

Callie cradling a baby t-rex...presh!

Come back tomorrow to find out what kind of animal I wish I had for a pet.  Feel free to post guesses in the comments...

Prompt 4: A Favorite Photograph of Your Best Friend[s]

The most challenging element of this post is determining who is my best friend.  Answer: I don't really know.  But I think the two top contenders at this point in my life are Kara Baxter and Matt McDonald.

First, Kara.  Kara is definitely my oldest friend, and by oldest I mean in terms of the age of our friendship.  I'm actually friends with people much older than her.  I think my favorite thing about our friendship is the amount of crap it has been through.  But despite those rough parts we remain friends, and are, in fact, better friends now than we've ever been.  Besides my brother, the only person here in Provo who has any idea of my history and development as a human is her.  Unfortunately, we neither of us have a favorite photo of her, so instead you're going to get a small sampling carefully collected from facebook.  Do enjoy:

because this was high school

because this was the trip where we became adult friends

because running is part of who she is

because she is beautiful and has a very unique style

because obviously

because that expression is my favorite expression.  

And then Matt.  Technically Matt and I go way back to my days in Russian class.  However, since we literally never interacted there, that hardly counts.  Then for a time our relationship consisted of him running in to me when I was at dance things like booth or the Malt Shoppe where I, this random girl he barely knew, would try to coerce him into dancing with me.  This was a frightening time for him.  Then at last he moved into my ward in Campus Plaza and we became real friends.  Then, after he moved out of Campus Plaza, and then back in, he became my best friend.  I love Matt because he listens to me and because he trusts me.  Aside from those few months in Campus Plaza, the bulk of our friendship has existed online.  We talk about whatever we want or need to talk about.  We watch movies together via netflix and chat.  We share whatever we're interested in or working on with each other.  Matt tries to help me be healthier and I try to help him be more confident.  This is a picture I took of Matt during one of our many summer evenings in Campus Plaza.  He's wearing the tie I gave him and being happy and annoyed with me for insisting on taking his picture.

I miss this human

Coming up next we have prompt #5: A Photo of Myself 2 Years Ago.....(*dun dun dunnnnnn*)

Prompt 3: My Idea of the Perfect First Date...

I suppose I should link to this blog post on my tinder profile...

Let's see...what would be my perfect first date.  Aside from April 25...

Ok, so, to begin with, let's be honest, the perfect date must obviously start with the perfect guy.  A high-seas adventure in piracy can't save a night with a guy you just aren't in to.  Conversely, getting arrested by a Honduran drug cartel could be the best night of your life if you have the right partner in crime in the cell with you.  Strangely, both of those scenarios involve crime...

That being said, this is the best I can do without a specific guy in mind:

First, all major activities of the night would be disclosed in advance.  Surprises are well and good, but elephant rides and swing dances require very different clothing and I am very big on dressing for the occasion.  The only time this rule is negated is if you are Logan Huntzberger and can simply supply ballgowns  etc, in correct sizes, as needed.

Second, and this is especially important since it is the first date, the guy may strive to take me out of my comfort zone if he's big into that, but I have a comfort zone of out of comfort zone and he best not take me out of that.  Which is to say, rollercoasters: ok.  Haunted houses/horror films: not ok.  Awkward and absurd social interactions with strangers: ok.  Sports: not ok.  That last one is entirely to preserve my dignity and nothing he says or does will change my hatred of him if he tries to force me against my will.  He can deal with it.

But enough of what shouldn't be done.

Ok, I'm imagining the best night I can...and I think it begins with him picking me up and taking me over to his place where we would cook dinner together.  As this is a fantasy, we're going to make him a non-college student without roommates and with a decent, taken care of place.  Cooking together (I have no patience for sitting awkwardly whilst he cooks) will give us something to talk about to break the ice and by the time we sit down to eat we are comfortable with each other.  If we're trying something new and exciting I want it to be new and exciting to him to.  I don't want him to be doing that patronizing "let me share my world wisdom with you" thing.  If we both hate it he doesn't get embarrassed, he just laughs with me and we go get fast food or something.

After that we could go see a movie if there is anything good showing.  This is important not for the sake of the movie, but because after the movie we go get ice cream for dessert and talk about it.  And I mean really talk about it.  He never tells me that I'm over thinking things or that it's just a movie and I should just enjoy it.  Nor does he sit there with no opinions of his own, nodding dumbly while I talk.  He listens to me and he also shares his own ideas.  We have an actual conversation.

Now, since this is the perfect date, not just a pretty good date, the evening doesn't end here.  Instead, after our ice cream and conversation, we finally go blues dancing.  This gives us both the opportunity for some physical connection, but also a bit of a respite as we mingle with everyone else at the dance.  Blues is nice because I am more and differently at ease there than anywhere else.  And since I'm fantasizing, the two of us will have a really great dance connection.

After blues dancing we shall excuse ourselves and he shall take me home.  Since this is a first date by no means should he kiss me at the end of it.  But a nice, solid hug would be quite lovely.  Having hugged me, however, he then mustn't linger because I hate when I can't end a social interaction and it gets drawn out into pure awkward.

And that is that.  Somewhat uninspired, I'll admit, but it really does sound nice to me.  Really nice.  I think I nailed this prompt pretty solidly.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Prompt 4: My Favorite Photograph of My Best Friend

Prompt 2: A Photo of Yourself and a Description of How Your Day Was

First, a photo of me, taken on this very day

What is noticeably lacking here is the really stellar sunburn
I've since developed.  Photo is courtesy of Kara

And now a description of my day: 

It was sort of up and down.

I began by waking up at 7:30 am which was vulgar and unacceptable.  So I dozed more and less deeply till 9:00 when I woke up properly and commenced worrying about arriving at Thanksgiving Point on time to meet Kara at 11.  This proved to be both completely unnecessary and also very on point when Kara texted to tell me she was running late and we should bump our rendezvous back to noon...and yet, despite having been ready to go in time to make the original appointment, I still managed to arrive 20 minutes late.  

The plan was to catch the last day of the Thanksgiving Point annual tulip festival.  Tulips are Kara's favorite flower, so she tries to go every year.  I had never been, but it sounded lovely so I decided to make the pilgrimage.  Unfortunately, it seems that every other human along the Wasatch front had the same thought.  The place was crawling with humanity.  

Since I had previously informed Kara of my need of a picture of myself to post today, we were planning on taking one amongst the tulips.  The hordes of humans, however, proved an endless source of annoyance to Kara's photographic sensibilities.  Nevertheless, we perservered and took several pictures.  I also learned that over the last several months I have completely lost the ability to smile on command.  When I try I start thinking about each muscle that I'm using to form the expression and suddenly it feels like a completely unnatural shape for my face to be in and I can feel my expression sliding from smile to terrifying grimace.  Apparently my natural response to this experience is to assume what Kara not at all affectionately refers to as "The Face."  The Face, so I'm told, appears to express my extreme confidence in the stupidity of the person at which I am looking.  Unfortunately, it seems The Face comes of its own accord and without my conscious knowledge or effort.  It appears to be the product of me striving for a non-grimace-like expression.  I'm not sure what that says about me, but I know it must be something...

There was one good thing, however, which came out of my loss of facial abilities.  At one point a woman, overhearing Kara yelling at me to smile like a normal person, stood behind her and started making ridiculous faces at me to make me laugh.  Even more awesome, this then inspired a completely separate random Indian couple to also start making faces and giving me jazz hands.  This is possibly the most fantastic thing any stranger has ever done for me.

Hordes, grimaces, and some really unseasonable heat aside, the tulips were quite lovely.  Nothing makes me quite so happy as flowers.  I found myself missing Kew Gardens quite a lot as we ambled.  

After the tulips my day took a turn for the incredibly boring and mundane.  Much of it was spent resisting the urge to take a nap.  I wrote my blog post for yesterday, finally started reading Way of Kings (Mike lent it to me about 50 years ago), and chatted with Kara and Matt.

It was when Kara sent me a few of the pictures for this post that things took a dip.  When I look at myself in the mirror I don't think I look skinny, but I also don't think I look gigantic either.  But the first thing I thought when I saw these pictures was how I just looked like a morbidly obese blob.  Was that really what I looked like all day?  I thought I looked ok...

It was on that depressing note that I took off to satisfy my week-long craving for fish and chips.  And while I normally have no problem going out to eat alone, having set out already primed for melancholy, it hit me hard throughout dinner.  I had chosen to bring along a really abysmal book called Love Walked In (when the waitress asked why I was reading a bad book I explained that I hadn't wanted to get anything on any of my good books) which spends the first 30% of its pages describing a completely ridiculous romance.  Ridiculous though it was, even with such painful prose, I still got all pathetic and wistful.  The Lonlies plus the Loathings are a dark combination...

And that brings us to right now.  

You'll be glad to know that I am forcing myself to look at those pictures with a positive outlook.  I am trying to put my ideals into practice, as it were, in terms of self-love.  It's a struggle, but as you can see, I posted one of them, as instructed, at the beginning of this post.  I feel like that is a step in the right direction.  Against all expectations, my mood is looking slightly up (I feel like there's a Sunday School lesson in there for anyone who wishes to tease it out into full development) and I plan on watching a movie before I go to bed.  

Coming up tomorrow we have prompt 3: My Idea of the Perfect Date.  That should be interesting, so stay tuned!

Day 1: Are Writing Prompts Always Stupid? I Hope Not...

You guys, I'm already behind.  This is so sad.

Ok, so I am officially starting the 30 days of prompts.  Prompt #1 was to post a picture of something I ate today...or, in this scenario, something I ate yesterday.  That is the world's stupidest prompt and since facebook is already swamped in food selfies, I refuse.  Also, I ate very little yesterday and have pictures of none of it.  So I shall instead write about...

Day 1 [as suggested by Kara]: my most poignant/evocative smell

I've never really considered my sense of smell to be terribly keen, to be honest.  But I can tell you that there were two smells that instantly came to mind when Kara gave me this prompt, and they both come from my grandparents' old place in New Mexico.

The first is the smell of my grandma's food room.  Imagine a dark, mysterious room out in the barn that you've only ever been inside a few times.  In my memory it was lit with a single low-wattage bulb, giving me only partial view of lines and lines of jars from ceiling to floor.  Those jars held magical things like canned peaches and pears and cherries and surely many many others though I have no idea, now, precisely what.  We lived in New Mexico, but that room was always cool, no matter how hot it was.  I'm realizing now, thinking back on it, that she must have packed oodles of insulation on the walls, which would explain why I remember the door being so thick, like the door to a vault.  Somehow it smelled cool in there.  I don't know how.  But it was the smell of cool, just ever so slightly damp soil, mixed with glass, and a hint of dust.  As a child it was purely exciting to me, signaling my presence in a room as mysterious and promising as Lucy's wardrobe must have felt.  Now that I'm an adult, I still get that same feeling of expectant excitement, as though I can find a treasure if I explore long enough, but I also feel utterly comforted and at home.  I judge all food rooms based on the presence or lack of that smell.  My mom's food room in Union has it.  The last time I was in my aunt Marge's it also had it.  Those are the only other places I have found it.  But it makes them two of my favorite places in the world.

As for the second smell...let me tell you a story.  Perhaps the most revolting of all of my habits as a wee toddler was the intense joy I had in sucking on my grandpa's watch.  Mind you, my grandfather's primary business, as I remember it, was selling bolts and nuts, and his spare time was devoted to manly tasks like clearing land or simply washing his hands with grease and machine oil.  Thus, his watch was absolutely caked in years of collected oil, dirt, and other grime.  Sitting on his lap and sucking on that disgusting watch I apparently absorbed, all unknowing, the scent of machine oil straight into my amygdala where it lurked in secret till last year, when Caleb bought his CnC mill.  He put it in his garage, where it sat for a day or two seeping the smell of machine oil into the entire room.  I opened the door and it was as though I was walking into a hug from my grandpa.  I literally stood in the doorway inhaling deep breaths for minutes.  It smells a little bit like gasoline mixed with dirt.

Thusfar, those are the two smells that have had the most profound visceral effect on my memory.  Interesting that they both are related to my grandparents, and I described both as reminding me of dirt.  I don't know what that means.

Coming up next time (later today) is prompt #2: Post a picture of yourself and describe your day (seriously, who is writing these???)

A Brief Thought About Presents

So I decided that, as I am newly graduated and free to bestow my time however I wish, I wanted to try a blog challenge where I post every day for a month.  I then promptly forgot to post anything yesterday, aka the first day of the month, simply, I presume, to prove to myself that I'm not the boss of me.  But it actually works out.  I have one serious (ish) post that I want to write, and then I have this blog-meme my friend Laura gave me one billion years ago with 30 days of prompts that I've wanted to do for said one billion years.  So this way I shall write my real(ish) post for yesterday as though it isn't actually part of the month, and then start with the goofy posts from there on out.  

So, without further ado, here is my non-prompted post of yesterday (just pretend like it's May 1st, ok?)

~~~

...

hm.

I wanted to write a post about gifts, and how I feel about them. Because I love them, and I feel like so many people have a really hard time with them. I had this big long post all written out and I kind of hated it. Then I was talking to Caleb about it and he said that he dislikes getting presents. When I asked him why he thought about it and then told me about a miniature ship his parents brought him back from a vacation, and the little wooden airplane stocking-stuffer he got one Christmas. He said those were his favorite gifts he's ever received. Gifts that were a physical representation of  people he loves and cares about thinking of him. I feel like this sums up everything I wanted to say. That is exactly why I love presents. They tell me that someone loves me and cares about me. They could be ridiculously over the top like a graduation iPad, or as small as a pint of chocolate milk for no reason at all. No matter the size or the cost, when they simply express someone's love they are literally the best.  And I guess that's all I have to say about that.

Graduation: A Summary

I am a college graduate.

In a matter of two days I crossed the threshold from student to…bachelor? Plain old label-less human? At any rate, not a student. Thursday, out-going university president Cecil Samuelson “bestowed” upon me and one or two thousand others a degree, the physical manifestation of which will arrive in a couple of weeks via the thoroughly unceremonious United States Postal Service. Friday I was handed an empty vinyl cover in which that magical piece of paper will eventually reside.  I shook the hands of men I'd never before laid eyes on and walked from one side of a stage to the other. Thusly was my education declared complete and my life, as a student, pronounced over. 

If all of this sounds like I am terribly prosaic and unsentimental, I am. If you recall, I have previously declared a complete apathy for engaging in the ceremonial hoop-jumping known as walking for graduation. To me a nine year bachelor’s degree feels less like something to celebrate than something to just get over with as soon as possible…    

The problem is that, though probably less so than it was in high school, a student’s graduation is by no means an achievement which belongs solely or even mostly to them. Even a relatively self-sufficient person like me is still indebted to her parents to some extent, albeit perhaps more in intangibles than otherwise*. Hence I feel that all this pomp and circumstance surrounding graduation is not so much for the graduate’s sake as for the family’s. Which is why I decided not to let my graduation pass silently in the night like my brother. Well, that and I was hoping for congratulatory cash donations. Because I’m classy like that. And poor. Mostly poor. 

Unfortunately, letting your family celebrate your achievements isn’t exactly fun for them when you yourself couldn’t care less about them. In fact, I can tell you from my own experience that it’s actually incredibly irritating and insulting. So it behooved me to strive after some level of engagement in the hoopla which, after all, was specifically for me (and also Dan). 

Alas, behoovement does not engagement make. 

It doesn’t help that there are apparently only two questions anyone can think to ask you post-graduation.  “Do you feel any different?” and “So what’s next?” These are especially trying when you have weaned yourself out of school as gradually as I have. I had exactly zero changes pending the ceremony and, in fact, slightly resented it for awkwardly interrupting my regular schedule. If nothing else, this makes for dull conversation—though I discovered on Sunday that it is still preferable to the guy who uses his congratulations to humblebrag about his own self-funded education, graduation, and consequent disposal of student debt 25 years ago (after his fourth or fifth assertion of hatred at the idea of dragging that debt around with him I was forced to reply “Oh really?  Because I just love it!” because I can only handle so much humblebragging)

In the end, I guess I can be grateful to the fifteen year campaign my brother and I have inadvertently waged upon my mother to strip her of any vestige of hope for a nice family moment. Sadly, we not only lack sentimentality for educational milestones, but for pretty much every other thing my mom cares about. Because my mom is practically nothing but sentiment. Poor woman was somehow cursed with two pragmatically stoic children who could never satisfy her need for heartfelt and teary-eyed moments. But despite my mom’s enduring optimism on this front, Dan’s and my war of attrition has, at least, conditioned her to accept an incredibly low level of participation as satisfactory. She’s like an emotional migrant worker living through the Dust Bowl years of her children’s lives—she can make do with practically nothing. 

This is not to say that I didn’t try. I sincerely tried to glean wisdom from [stay awake through] the speeches, even the incredibly pompous student speaker on Friday. I rebuked myself when snarky commentary about all the arbitrary traditions rose, unbidden, to my lips. I even pulled out Rory’s graduation from Yale to strive after inspiration.

Alas, it was all in vain.  I am as I am; incredibly unimpressed with the ceremony of graduating college.

Luckily, as anyone who has ever talked to me about my birthday can attest, I do love any occasion where my friends and family get together, especially if it involves presents and/or food (as we all know, food is kind of like a very frequent gift to your mouth, so they’re basically the same thing).  Therefore, on that front—that is, the front where tradition dictates the giving of some sort of graduation gift—I found the weekend to be quite nice.

Of course, I admit this with some embarrassment, though my feelings on being an enthusiastic receiver of gifts should probably wait for another post.  Suffice it to say, I have a feeling that it is generally deemed tacky to openly admit that you look forward to events for the presents.  But in this case my natural tackiness came to my assistance, buoying me up to find some enjoyment in an otherwise boring and rather inconvenient weekend.  If I couldn’t muster a tear for the ending of an era, at least I could easily smile for the bouquet of lovely flowers I received to commemorate it!

Thus my favorite part of my graduation weekend had nothing to do with actually graduating, save that it was the occasion that brought us together. And that was our big dinners Thursday and Friday nights. All four of my parents were there (a first-time experience that I very much enjoyed) as well as some of my closest friends. There was delicious food and even a couple really fantastic gifts. 

I am left wishing that it didn’t require some arbitrary ceremony or “milestone” for people who love each other to get together and eat and even give each other presents. If I had the money, I would make weekends like this happen far more often…only without the polyester robes, ridiculous hats, and time wasted in uncomfortable chairs. Perhaps then I wouldn’t be left with a vague feeling of failure at the end. Regardless, I am glad that I got to see my family this weekend, and even that I graduated, though that’s more in an abstract, reasoned sense than any sort of emotional response. That’s how I feel. 

And before you ask, I don’t know what’s next…

*Let us pause a moment for the obligatory disclaimer about how I’m making some assumptions here and that I acknowledge that actually there are plenty of kids who may not have anything at all to thank their parents for and I’m sorry if they’re feeling marginalized right now and they have my sincere apologies