Mad Hot Words

Once upon a time this week I was driving with my dad and he said to me, " Where the Hell do you think you're going?!" (I was taking Bangerter, obviously..) And I said to my dear brother, sitting in the front seat beside me, "I love the fact that we are becoming a swearing family!"

Sounds sarcastic, right? Not so much. Deadly serious, actually.

Alex replied, with a characteristic raise of the eyebrows and wide eyed stare," Becoming?"

I was thinking about that today. We are not a perfect family. We have our own small rebellions and imperfections, including but not limited to, messy basements, dramatic twenty person conversations, and a tendency to drink more caffeinated liquid than our family health history recommends. My favorite of these is the occasional casual cussing.

Let's be perfectly clear. I consider this a family matter. I was taught to swear by the fine example of my older siblings, specifically Erin. Further, (perhaps damning) evidence is contained in the following justification for swearing, offered by Erin to me at a young age. " Those ones don't really count. Grandma said those. She said to me, "Those aren't swear words! Those are mad hot words!"

According to Grandma, "Mad Hot Words" are all damns and hells. Not swearing. Grandma said so, so I guess it is allowed. Free pass! Snap!

I got home from work tonight and was nursing one of those headaches that is less a headache and more a stabbing, blinding, incessant pain behind one eyeball. Still worked up from the epic argument with a shrewish customer, I said tiredly while hugging my mother, "Oh, Hell."

Instead of giving me a dirty look and telling me some mommish thing about how that language was not allowed, mom half smiled and said, "How did I end up with daughters who swear?" And, gesturing to Alex upstairs, "And a son!"

Simultaneously shouted Responses to her query were as follows:
" Don't worry, Aunt Debbie. I could probably cuss way worse than any of them."
" Whoa! Remember all the times you swore at us? Yes, you did!"
"Mom, sometimes swearing just makes life better."
" Damns and Hells don't count!"

We are wonderful, refined people. Yes, we are.

Announcements! What a terrible way to die!

Hey everybody! I have been sort of absent from the blogosphere lately, due to an exorbitant amount of participation in actual life. I had all these half formed thoughts in the form of half typed posts that I never published, and I didn't really think a whole lot about it. And then Erin the Carolina sister said to me the other day, "Milla, what is going on with your life? You haven't been blogging and I feel like I don't really know what's up with you."

I am used to my siblings telling me to blog, but I didn't know it was such a vital form of communication. I didn't realize it was such a catalyst for insights into my soul. I never really posted all those old posts I had half finished because it was all stuff that happened forever and a half ago. But I guess it is necessary. So get ready for some past tense posts as well as an increase of presently happening posts, posted in no particular order.  There is some adventure telling, coming shortly.

Mazeltov.

Remember Dopamine? Me too.

My brain has been releasing happy chemicals at breakneck speed, basically all day. Setting aside that three hours at work where I couldn't decide whether I wanted to go all shrewish up in there or have an emotional breakdown, I realize that the rest of the day was filled with emotions on the extreme opposite of the spectrum.

I hugged Libby today. I played peek a boo with my Little Lemonade. I had my hair stroked by my lovely sister Erine the Deevine. I drove home with Ben in our little car. Remember the Fig Newtons I haven't seen since Christmas? yep, that'd be them. Maybe tomorrow I'll see them for more than twenty minutes and then who knows what I'll do with myself!

There was also some cheesecake and a belated birthday gift. It was pretty great too.

Trumped

My life has consisted of some straight up awesomness of late, and it is gonna get a whole lot better.

For example:
James throwing boomerangs while I duck with Matthew. We proved that a boomerang can be smacked with a flip flop in midflight.  "That law of physics has been tested!"

Stealing Matthew's nose, a game that was followed with shrieking as we stormed around the house like five year olds. I love that boy.

Roadtripping with my siblings! We saw the GRAND FREAKING CANYON and a solar eclipse turn red on top of a forest fire, and we fed a tiger and got really really sunburned and watched a whole heap of Marvel movies and ate copious amounts of cheesecake. It was probably one of the best weeks of my life.

Working full time. I probably made a thousand plus pizzas single-handedly this week. Love it.

Hiking up to the Timpanogos caves with Daxx Orion Stryker, who talked our way into the cave tour even though it was sold out and we didn't have tickets. Like a boss.

Sleepovers with Amy and Mark, who made me oven smores and soothed my ruffled spirit and gave me lots of dating advice. Mark is a champion at dating advice. Works like a charm, every time.

Crowning Glory:
MY FIG NEWTONS ARE COMING HOME TOMORROW! Which means that it is exactly twelve hours and twenty six minutes until their plane is scheduled to land and then I can hug them all to my heart's content.  Quote bookage from some very excited aunties: "You know what would make it all better?" "What?" "Snuggling with Lemma." " Mmmhmm."
 And that is just the morning! The evening hours are scheduled to indoctrinate previously mentioned Daxx Orion Stryker with the wonderfullness that is the Phantom in Purple Spandex. Basically, it's gonna be a good day.

Your day might be good, but mine will probably still trump it. Life is "Fantastic!" Boom Roasted. 

One Week!

One of my favorite songs by Barenaked Ladies, One Week is also the amount of time left until Erin and the Girlheads will once more reside in this time zone. Oh hey, internet, did you know all the Newtons are coming to live with me this summer and I get to share a room with my nieces?  I'm a little excited. (Read: Yelling about it while I'm awake and dreaming about Emma and Libby while I'm asleep.)

However, the panic is also setting in. I have to clean my room.That tornado of stuff is not currently a suitable child habitat. I have to get everything ready! I have to finish the dresser and I have to make posters or something and I have to find the play pen which suddenly vanished and I have to find a place where the crayons will be accessible! I've got to find that fan so Erin and Ben don't suffocate in that furnace we call the yellow bedroom. Basically, there's a lot to do and I am running on a totally unstructured schedule and I have to get going and get it done so the whirlwind of my brain can settle and let me think again.

On that note, everybody listen to Barenaked Ladies, which is what I will be doing whilst I whirlwind around cleaning everything! Happy June!

Epiphany

I just got done trying really hard to write something brilliant and failing, and then it struck me. Of course I can't write anything worth an editing exercise. It is 1:23 a.m. Why the hell am I still awake?

Maybe I'll be more talented if I start sleeping. I hope.

My apologies, siblings dear. That's all I've got for now. I have to be unconscious now.

(side note: I had to use my computer spell check to realize there is an s in unconscious. What is happening to me?)

Per your Request

Day One, Fall Semester. See Shakespeare over there? Mom told me it was a hazard to sleep in public places. Thankfully, this is a rather more amusing result than the one she was thinking of.

This was actually a creepy story. There I am, asleep between Shakespeare and Lit Analysis, when I am suddenly jolted awake. I look up at the strange man who has just woken me, and listen to the first statement out of his mouth: "Hi, I just took a picture of you."

Uh....how do you say? You are a creeper.

But it was okay. It was just for the newspaper. So I groggily signed the thing he thrust at me and went to class. I came home the next day to my roommates looking at my picture and telling me I am a pretty sleeper. And then I went to church and my Bishop came up to me and asked if I had been getting enough sleep cause he saw me in the newspaper asleep. Also cause I nodded a bit during sacrament meeting.

So what do you think, world? Do I have narcolepsy or am I just a college student? I don't really know. I'm too distracted by my awkward sleeping leg to really form an opinion.

Everything I need to know I learned at USU

Well, folks, life in Logan as we know it has come to an end, at least for a little while. I am moving out and moving on and moving east. I have one sole regret from my time in Logan. After two whole years and several awkward dating stories, I have yet to become a True Aggie. But that's alright, because I never made out with someone I didn't know, and I feel prouder of that than I feel sad I never got up on the A. All the peer pressure in the world failed to sway me. So there, every roommate I ever had.

In celebration of the last two years, shall we proceed to the Logan guide to Life? Compiled through my own experiences, here is a guidebook filled with wisdom. Feast....

 - The date stamped on the jug is only loosely correlated to the day the milk goes bad.
-Questionable milk never hurt anybody I know.
-Trespassing is often not as big a deal as everybody thinks.
- It's hard to stay mad at the roommate you serve.
-Cleaning your room the night before is a sanity preserver.
- If you take your wallet to Walmart, you will spend money.
- Don't be decieved by the corner of the grass by the FAC atrium that is always cleverly disguised as snow. It is really freezing liquid.
- The booter guys are the meanest humans in a hundred mile radius.
- Singles ward bishops are superhuman.
-When you are walking across seventh, the drivers are inconsiderate. When you are driving down seventh, the walkers are inconsiderate.
- Best friends are sometimes made in really odd places. Sometimes the boys shower will leak through your ceiling and it will be gross, but you will make friends with them so its worth it. 
-Seven degrees below zero isn't even a big deal.
- If it can't be fixed with a magic eraser, duct tape, or a phone call to mom, it can't be fixed.
- Doorbell ditching cookies is a favorable alternative to eggs and toilet paper.
- Snow Angels are better without shoes and coats.
- Don't look in the tupperware in the back of the fridge. Just don't. 
- Beto's has really large, cheap burritos.
-  The Ray B. West Poltergeist is a lot easier to handle when you learn to love him.
- The stairs outside the Family Life building are a deathtrap awaiting unsuspecting victims.
- If you are gonna lose something on campus, don't lose it in Old Main. There are twenty seven offices with lost and founds.
- If your phone goes off in Leiker's class, he will  bust a move.
- The fine line between sleep and studying is diet coke.
- Pancakes are better at three in the morning. So are old spice commercials.
-"Let's go for a walk" is code for "I'm breaking up with you."
- Stairs are dangerous. Proceed with caution.
- If they get you anyway, remember that the Doctors at the Health and Wellness Center don't know how much x-rays cost. Beware. 
- The cops hang out at the nunnery too. The blood spatters in the buildings are just paint.
-It cannot be a bad day if Eli is out yelling at Mormons.
- Date the boy who lives on the other side of the wall with extreme caution. That is a pretty high-risk/high- return situation.
- Cafe Rio has vanilla coke. Score.
- If you fall asleep in the library enough, people will start taking your picture. It might even make it into the Herald.
- Cafe Ibis in the hub has life preservers in the form of dollar bagels and cream cheese.
- Everyone has to take Biology from Vicki Rosen. Grit your teeth and ignore the animal pictures on reproduction day.
- The fraternity houses don't shovel their sidewalks, so wear boots.
-Work hard, play hard, and don't be afraid to have pizza delivered to the fourth floor of the Library.
- The white car parked on the road into the canyon is not a cop car. Keep speeding.
- Sometimes roommates suck. But mostly they will save your life. 
- Quote walls make life nine times more joyful.
-Four square isn't just for third graders anymore.
-Speaking of four square, Dial soap stays on black top for months at a time and as such, should never be used on your body. 
-Slack lining is way more fun over a pool.
-English majors don't have a dead week and a finals week. We have Finals week number one, wherein all final papers are due and sleep is not on the to do list, and Finals week number two, wherein  your hand will ache constantly from all that furious timed essay writing. Heads up. 
- Unhealthy as it may be, sometimes the only thing that will get you through Finals weeks 1 and 2 is an overabundance of diet coke. Just accept it and buy the twenty four pack.

I loved my life in Logan. It was a really difficult, exhausting, discouraging, confusing, wonderful, spontaneous, happy two years and I will miss it. But, as Anne Bogart would say, I "finished the sentence" and I am satisfied to say goodbye for a while.

So farewell, dear Logan, and try not to freeze over before I come back. mazeltov.

Mixing Metaphors

The other day I was walking through a parking lot with my sister, animatedly discussing the good stuff that comes from doing really hard things. Because we are geeks like that. But I was in a really odd mood, and when that happens I tend to use really descriptive language.

I was using as a specific example the end of the last semester, at which time I drove myself absolutely nuts with exhaustion, living at work, and pulling all nighters on campus writing papers about Shakespeare. It was hard. Really hard. It was also one of the times I have felt the most help from Heavenly Father. We were a stellar team. We kicked those finals in the butt and did a dang good job writing papers and going to work on two hours of sleep, if I do say so myself.  As I said to Bekah, "It was hell, basically. Absolute Hell, and I loved it."

That doesn't make sense unless you hear the rest of the conversation.  This is where I started talking about how the really hard times of life are really actually great, masochist that I am.
 Me: "It's like being thrown into a vat of hot oil that is maybe radioactive and emerging a superhero with powers and stuff!"
Bekah: "Sorta like the ninja turtles."
Me: "Yes! Green goo that makes you really really cool! Or, if we are being serious, I would probably say it is a consecration of your efforts and sacrifices and obedience to make your experiences valuable and even sacred."
Bekah: "You have such an interesting way of describing things in really opposite ways."
Me: "Yeah. I just described the same feeling with vats of oil, green goo and the word consecration, didn't I? That was weird."

I've been thinking about that lately, sort of regretting that my life hasn't been that productive this semester. And then, because I wished for it, it started getting that crazy. And then I started thinking about the vat of radioactive hot oil and thinking, "We can get it done. And when I am done, I will be a superhero!"

So I am gonna go continue working and not sleeping, and you should all come up with cool powers I can pretend I have. Happy Finals week!

Sure showed me!

Today while I was cashiering, I told the guy sneaking three bags of chips out that he was not permitted to take food out of the Junction. I walked over to take the bags and he reluctantly relinquished his hold after I tugged a bit.

The best part, however, was when he looked at me, made a face that looked sort of like Mrs. Nelson the swamp creature and stuck his tongue out at me, boldly showing me both his freshman status and his tongue piercing.

I smiled my most winning smile, took the bags, and tried really hard to keep from laughing. I think a giggle might have slipped out, though. And I thought to myself, "Self. Congratulations! You are both five years old. "

It was a good day.