On a scale from Kanye West to Taylor Swift, how great is life?

 The past 43 hours was the coolest day ever for approximately nine thousand reasons.
But the top coolest things (coupled with any/all applicable quote-boardage) are as follows:

One
I didn't have math this morning. Always good. Also, yesterday was a math test which means that not only did I not have class today, I also had no math assignment. Can it get better? I think not. Wait, yes. I kicked that test in the butt so it got better.

Two
This is election week here at college, which means that everyone and their brother's dog have been giving out campaign flyers with coupons on them. Coldstone. Rumbi. Texas Road House. Coldstone. Quiznos. Bagels. Free Bracelets. Free ties. Yep. Tanner gave us ties and Spencer tied them for us.
 " These are going on our Ceiling, no battle!"

"That would be an appropriate thing to do."

Three
Katie left for anthropology, came back five minutes later with muddy wet jeans and announced that she had fallen and hurt her knee.
"Is this a sign from the universe that I should not go to class and instead clean our gross apartment?" " yes, yes it is."
So we went to Wally World for cleaning supplies and came back with clorox wipes, paper towels, bagels, and french fries, and then cleaned our apartment (using only the paper towels and clorox wipes.) And then it smelled better. Which I am personally a fan of. Go Febreze.

Four
You remember those little stickers for your nails that you used at five year old girl birthday parties? Katie found a box of them for cheap and we painted our nails, put stickers on them, and plastered them down with clear nail polish. We look super cool.

Five
One of those campaign coupons was for Costa Vida, if you remember. So Katie and Shane and Spencer and I went and used that. Good food and diet coke. cheap. Hello!
" Can we leave them? They are being slow!"

 Six
Also, I was wearing shoes that apparently have no tread because I almost fell on the way to the car. Then, in the Costa Vida parking lot, I fell hardcore. Like, the kind of banana fall you see in cartoon and think, that person is stupid.  So there I am, half laughing hysterically, half crying cause I hurt my shoulder, lying in a parking lot getting my derriere a wee bit wet. So they help me up, we eat, and then leave. Apparently, these people have no faith left in my ability to walk, (which may be a valid concern) so Katie and Spencer actually went and got the car while me and Shane waited on the curb and then he "put me in the car" so I wouldn't kill myself. On the way inside, I slipped again a little bit so they formed a line like ducklings so that if I fell forward Katie would  catch me and if I fell backward Shane would catch me. I felt completely handicapped and idiotic, but that's okay cause I've got good friends who stop me from killing myself.
" Guys, she's dying."
" Um, I am just choking on my own saliva. It's fine."

Seven
So forever ago at the beginning of this whole college thing, Katie and Chelsey  drew a crayon family portrait of all of us and gave out some ridiculous/greatest thing ever nicknames. But since then, Chelsey got married and left the family and Shane and Spencer and Ruthie have been adopted in. So we got crayons and made a new family portrait. Which is brilliant. New nicknames but also we now have thought bubbles, some of which may seem inappropriate if you weren't here for the joke.
We make good fridge art.
" Nose goes!" " We are all going to be adults and draw part of it."

Eight
Katie brought up a huge quilt to put over our beds so they look like just one bed, which is great because it looks cool but also cause our house is cold. (did I say anything about when we pushed our beds together and called it the Marriage Bed? my mom told me that I shouldn't call it that, and we have sleepovers sometimes. You can fit a lot of people in two beds.)
"On a scale from yes to no, should we go to the gym still?" " Maybe....no."

Nine
Katie and Jasmine and I made a hardcore breakfast this morning, including,  but not limited to: Breakfast burritos, pancakes, and diet coke. Except Jasmine, who drank pomegranate juice because she is way more healthy. And also cause carbonation gives her migraines. I don't know how the poor girl survives.
"Give me a scale for how hungry I am."
"You know my hungry scale!"
"Fine. Starving in the desert for five days hungry." -and-
" I always get food in my nose!"

Ten
Katie and I sat in the living room doing our biology assignments online together. And we are doing our genetics unit right now so there was lots Pea Pod theory and talking about how people in close knit communities like the Amish have more disorders because you are getting less genetic variation and suddenly they are asking us to predict the genotypes and phenotypes of ......aliens. Seriously. Not joking. little green men with either black or orange eyes depending on the heterozygous alleles involved. Someone writing this assignment was on drugs. Eventually Katie's computer did that wierd shutting off in the middle of things nonsense and my mouse started doing that wierd thing where it just doesn't work until I reboot. So we stopped because apparently, "It's another sign that we shouldn't be doing biology anymore."

Yep. My life is great. Kanye West great. Which is the low end of  the scale for a lot of people including Katie (who made up that scale) but it's my high end cause his music is way better. But if we were measuring jerk status instead of music Kanye would definitely be on the low end. Anyway.... tangent over. Life's great.
Being jealous would be an appropriate thing to do.

The coolest youtube moment ever

Completely on accident, Shane and I just found a youtube video that is Hotel California with lyrics in Hungarian. What the random?

What I want to know is, was there some Hungarian person who was converted to the awesomeness that is the Eagles and suddenly felt the need to translate it for his fellow Hungarians? I bet that was a really cool story, however that ended up on the internet.

that's it. k, bye.

Math and Calamities. which are sometimes different things. sometimes.

Today, the unthinkable happened.

A calamity so large and disastrous that I don't even know what will happen because my creativity is drained.

I took a nap. On freaking accident.

I went to the library and got cool books after class cause I felt like it and also cause I don't have anything new to read minus some Jane Austen and sometimes we have fights, Jane and I. Today we are fighting.
Anyway, so I told Jane to shove it (in my mind, of course, because if people knew that I have conversations with my favorite authors on a regular basis, I'd get sent to a sanitarium. Sometimes I feel upset that I have schizophrenic tendencies and then Doestoyevsky tells me it's fine.) About three in the afternoon, after I told Jane to shove it I got in bed and decided to read for a little while before studying up the place cause I have a math test tomorrow and those are always, always, always, a big deal/the experience from hell.

And then I woke up at 8:47 p.m.

And I felt this mixture of panic and mind-swearing and a calm rested feeling and I am pretty sure I haven't felt that good since eighth grade.

So here's the thing. Today I was talking to my Math Professor about how I have trouble with math tests and how last test I felt so good about it and then I failed with capital 50. So I was, of course, flipping out a little bit because I feel like I am really prepared for this one too but that is apparently no indication of how it will really turn out.
And the guy told me:
- that I have test anxiety
- that I should meditate
- that I should just calm down and stop worrying
(I didn't know that he was talking to my mother.....)

So now I studied a little bit but I also slept for like six hours instead of studying. And I can't decide if that is good or really, really, bad. Cause I am well rested, right? I feel great as a result of that accidental nap, so I think that I choose to feel calm about it.

Good? or BAD?  Also, what happens if I fail another one? Also, I should just shut up and stop arguing with myself about it because I know how to factor polynomials and I know how to do functions and I can even do the zero property principle problems and stuff.

be calm. be calm. be calm. great song, by the way. be calm. be calm.

Randomness. yeah.

I feel like my whole life could blow up in my face any minute. But really, it's fine. Because, In the words of my friend Basil, "I'm free to be happy no matter what hormones are rushing through my body."  Not that I feel particularly hormonal at the moment, but still, if I can be happy when I do, I can certainly be happy right now cause there is nothing worse than that.

Anyway, there's my classic amyfreakingoutallover moment. I'm done now. And guess what song just came on Pandora? Who'da Known by Lily Allen. Which is a song that I can't decide about. I can't decide if I really like it or if I feel like it is super creepy and stalkerish. Especially after I saw the music video which is beyond freakish but also kind of hilarious. It involves kidnapping and Elton John. how do you say......

I also just got done with one of the best weekends of my existence. Playing with Matthew and Libby, dancing around the kitchen with Emma, talking to my mom until two am, staying out with good friends till all hours, Julie gave me two twelve packs of diet coke because she loves me, the works. It even involved cheesecake.


Doesn't get much better than that.


I think that is all for now. K, Bye!

The Shimmy List

Katie has been trying to teach me to shimmy. Let me tell you, my shoulders just won't do it. Which sucks, because all those songs we listen to all the time most certainly  call for some shimmy. But I made up for it by dancing on my bed and singing along. (That is, until I smacked my head on the ceiling. Good things I landed on a mattress.)

Anyway, I have been experimenting with Pandora stations, trying to find exactly the right one that includes the optimum number of songs that I love to listen to while I do homework. Most of them include some point when you either have to dance or explode. I actually have a list of these songs, and I have dubbed it The Shimmy List.

I think I have gotten pretty close. A combination of two stations, Cooler than me by Mike Posner and Just the way you are by Bruno Mars seems to be the closest I can get, and I would estimate that it includes about ninety percent of songs on the shimmy list, including, but not limited to:

High School never ends by Bowling for Soup
Club Can't Handle Me by Flo Rida
Magic by B.o.B.
I gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas
Do you Remember by Jay Sean
Dynamite by Taio Cruz

and the ever classis Hey Ya by good old Outkast.

Probably no one cares. But in the event that you were just dying for a good song to shimmy to, try these out. And then come teach me to shimmy so I can stop hitting my head.
(There is this six year old inside me that tells me that as long as I can't shimmy I might as well jump on my bed. Can't stop it. And I am getting a headache. )

pure joy overflowing from my soul and landing on the internet

BEST. DAY. EVER.
For the following reasons:

1. I got two letters. that alone is enough to make the day shine with happiness.
2. Nate sent me his old decrepit CTR ring in one of the letters. I love this thing so much I almost don't want to wear it because it is so huge it will fall off and I will cry. Or I could just be really careful. whatever.
3. I am going home tomorrow for a four day weekend and I am kind of ecstatic that I get to see my crazy family and kiss the children all I want.
4. I am driving home in Katie's car. Which means that during the drive we will blast music. Good Kind.
5. I just remembered that I have cafe rio leftovers in the fridge.
6. Pandora just played My Girl even though it is on my Mike Posner station. Whoever mixed that with The Temptation is pure genius. 

Other great things in my life that didn't actually happen today but I am still happy about it:
- sleepovers in mine/katie's bed. we pushed them together and fit five people in for a sleepover for Morgan's Birthday. 
-the collage of randomness that is on the ceiling above our bed, including, but not limited to: Dwight Schrute, the award Cammie made for Katie for not having breakdowns at work last week, my breathing bag, a map of the east and west sides drawn by sarah on a cafe rio tray cover.
- sarah, katie, and I made snow angels yesterday in our pajamas. no shoes. very wet. awesome.

it's a day from paradise.

Something is exploding in the dishwasher

But it's in the middle of a wash cycle and I am not sure how to fix that. So I guess I'll just wait and see what it was when it is done. It is probably a piece of tupperware getting thrown around in it's own mini hurricane, right? All the same, the sounds make me nervous that something is breaking and dying a terrible death.

hmm.. oh well.

Confession Space

Most people who know me are familiar with the fact that I love previews and I have been known to say that previews are the whole reason for going to the movies. Sometimes, the preview is so excellently done that I am disappointed with the actual movie and then I just youtube the trailer on a fairly regular basis. There's a whole list of trailers that I watch every week even though I've seen the movie. (Never Been Kissed is the #1 best trailer in America. Try it.)

I'm an odd duck. It's fine. Anyway....

What fewer people know about me is that I have a weakness for music videos that are corny and cliche. Whatever. I watch them anyway. Especially all those ones with random love songs cut in with scenes of a fictional couple. Buttercup and Westley, Tony and Ziva, Arwen and Aragorn, you name it. I even engage in the occasional love triangle music video, because the harry potter triplets are just so much better when they aren't actually talking.Cheese freaking Whiz, man. but the cheese whiz applies to non romantical videos as well.  Every time Hey Ya comes on Pandora I have to youtube the NCIS version because the part with the wierd special sound effects at the end is cut in with a clip of tony doing a raptor impersonation and it is just so dang brilliant. This habit is probably dumb and pop-culturefreakish. At least I admitted it, right?

What no one knows about me is that I am a closet music video maker.Not that I have ever actually made a music video. I just think about it in my brain. You know how people say they sometimes dream in black and white? I dream in previews and compliations of scenes that are matched with a thematically perfect song. You think I'm joking.


But.

You're wrong, and I'm a freak.

Yep.

No matter how serious things are I find that there is always a Tiny little speculator in the back if my mind thinking, this is serious. this sucks. but if i could just get a camera angle from over there, this moment would fit perfectly with the bridge from that one lifehouse song... My consolation in life is that even the most dramatic sucky things guarantee that sometime I'll be able to create a music video for it in those hours between sleep and awake.

Someday someone will invent the technology that will allow me to share with the world all of the movie trailers in my head that are spawned from my own life experiences. My family and friends and possibly the bum who sleeps in my chair on the fourth floor of the library who I named narcolepsy man will all be flattered and awed because they are heavily featured. Except some, namely narcolepsy man, are on the recieving end  of the mean jokes and clever schadenfreude that posesses all my sleeping brain creations. But the rest of you are safe. I like you.

(Do you ever seriously wonder if you have an undiagnosed mental illness? I do. Every day. Because I write things like this and then I read them and think to myself, "Self. You are a raving lunatic." And then I post them on the Internet. )

Mazeltov.

dad is great. he gave us chocolate cake.

so true. not specifically chocolate cake but my dad does make very delicious concoctions. and mom actually does give us chocolate cake. so really, mom plus dad equals the bill -cosby- cool kind of combination that is ideal in a marriage. anyway. that's mostly it. i like my parental units.


peace. love. chocolate cake.

Dear Internet,

I feel like a lot of my posting lately has been when I was freaking out and emotional. Heads up to the world... my life doesn't suck even though I make it sound like it does. Just cause I am feeling dangerously close to being a complainer, here are five great things that happened today.
1. Talked to three family members. That is an uncommon day, and a good day.
2. Rose got a job and that is fabulous!
3. I found out that university scholarships and departmental scholarships stack. Mulah. woot.
4. Class got out early, leaving me with an extra forty five minutes. I read Persuasion. go Jane.
5. I made up a new game with Shane that involves a ruler and a plastic cup and lots of throwing and       catching attempts. I felt five years old, and it might have been the best ten minutes of my day.

That's all. Life's good.

Gauranteed my head will explode in exactly five seconds.

Because. Half of that math assignment was stuff we didn't even talk about in class aka there is no chance I will be able to figure it out. And those problems where I have to figure out how long it will take for a rocket to go from mars to the sun, the sun to venus, and venus to mars. If I tell you how long it takes will you tell me why the freak anyone would ever care? I don't give a crap what the simplified version of parenthese 4p to the 3rd power over one sixth k to the negative ninth power parenthese negative twelfth power divided by 9k to the second power plus one fifth p is.Absofreakinlutely. Don't. Give. A. Crap.

Anyway.

I just have to get through 1010 and then I can be.... oh, not done. Still have to take quantitative analysis after that. And that thought makes me  too tired to explode so instead I am going to bed.

Goodnight, world.

P.S. If anyone knows how to do any of that, can you maybe call me?

Bob Ross and Other Randomness

Let's talk about how I really like writing. Like, I am a crazy person who chooses English for their major cause I have this thing with words where I really like them and I miss high school solely because of Fab Vocab. (go parrish. i like your shoes.)

Everyone has tried to paint, right? Or at least draw something at some point in Elementary school? And there is that frustrating moment, or, you know, whole days/lifetimes of frustration when you have that perfect thing in your head and you can't get the freaking thing to come out of your hand and stay put on the dang paper! ( oh geez. my blood pressure is going up just thinking about this.) Well, I did that. And then I gave up because my seventh grade art teacher told me I was right brained or something and I am more analytical than artistic or some crap like that. And now I have that same thing when I write things. You know, like papers or essays or letters or blog posts. I have this beautiful idea in my head and then it all comes out as word vomit. Or at least that is what I feel like. And then I read things that other people write and I think, I will never be able to write as well as that. And then I start freaking myself out about it and think, I will never be able to write like that but also, her life is just cooler than mine, aka this person knows where she is going and what she is doing and I don't. And then I freak out even more. Which is the one thing I know for sure I am always, always good at. Ask my mom. Ask my therapist. Ask any random person in my apartment building who saw me bawling in the hallway in my pajamas last week.

Someday, I am going to learn to put all those ideas on paper and make them as beautiful and well constructed as they were in my right sided brain. And then I'll learn to make my life look like that well-constructed idea too. But in the meantime, I choose to be calm. Because bad things happen when your blood pressure goes up rapidly.

Step one in this endeavor may have to start off with the basic painting idea. Everyone knows Bob Ross, right? He is the guy with the painting show on TV and he paints landscapes with happy little trees and happy little foxes and happy little cottages in the midst of snowy mountain terrain. Basically, he is the coolest person ever and I want to be him when I grow up. Minus the man part.Anyway, I used to watch him paint when I was a kid and I love it. And then over Christmas Break there was one day of many that I spent at Erin's house, but this time she had gone to fix the car and stuff and surprise Ben, so I was at her house with the girls. Libbs was asleep and Emma was screaming and teething and getting upset cause I am just an Aunt and she wants mommy. There was lots of pacing and singing and rocking going on and then I realized that Bob Ross was on TV. Now Libby never did this but Emma watches TV. And I sat down on the couch and pointed her towards the TV and BAM. The crying ceased. We watched the calmest man this side of Jupiter paint happy little trees for a while and then she fell asleep on me. The man is magic, and he wasn't even in the room. And it calmed me down too. And at the end they advertise the full collection of tapes for every episode he ever taped and I almost broke down and bought the thing before I remembered that I don't have a job. But someday, the goal is to buy all the tapes and a tidy collection of canvas and paint the crap out of all my frustrations. Because I believe in Bob Ross, and he looked at that camera and told me I can paint. And maybe if I learn to paint, it will solve some fundamental issues and get rid of some frustrations in my life which I believe started when I discovered in elementary school that I don't have the drawing gene.

Take that, Seventh Grade Art teacher! You squashed my dream for good and now Bob Ross has resurrected it. I am going to paint, and in a more immediate sense (like now cause I have a paper due), I am going to write, and I am going to breathe and live the ideas I have instead of freaking out, and there is nothing you can do to stop me or smoosh anything else because I have successfully navigated, and graduated, the public school system. Which means that I am no longer obligated by law to go sit through classes taught by people I don't like.

(Now I pay money to do that, but that's beside the point.)

The point is, Bob Ross is cool/the ultimate role model which proves that television can have a positive influence on children. Specifically children like me who are trying really hard to be adults. Some of us might actually make it, too. Thank you, Bob.

Four Letter Words

WARNING: The following post includes subject matter which pertains to curses/oaths and may also include some. Then again, it may not.

Big news. I generally disapprove of people cussing up a storm and I always disapprove of the F word, but there are some times when swearing is so d*** stress-relieving. Why is that? If I was allowed to say those words, would they be any fun to say? Not so much. I struggle with swearing, and I think it is mostly for the following reasons.
1. Ninety percent of all my favorite teachers, the really good ones, have been full-fledged cussers. And let me tell you, it is just plain hilarious. I always felt guilty for laughing in class when they start swearing, but I never tried to stop. Kreuger/Schmid/McLaren/Sharpe/sometimes even Brough- you are too funny for my own good.
2. My siblings swear. Not Rose cause she is a better person than the rest of us, I guess. But the rest of us do when the children aren't around. My older siblings have socialized me into it over the years, I suppose. Dad too. Only once do I remember him swearing. He found a pan put away in the cupboard that was still dirty, (really, truly, dirty. like somebody just didn't feel like washing it after making bacon or something) Anyway, he called us asses. It is a cherished memory.
3. I know that no one in my family struggles with this view of me, but in other arenas where my devilish side isn't so well- known, people think I'm a goody two shoes. And I get made fun of about it, so sometimes I have been guilty of letting one or two go to disillusion everyone who thinks I am a self-righteous,judgemental hater.
4. It's really fun to swear at people in theatre class. Sure, I was doing a scene. Sure, you can say it was Lizzie calling Starbuck a jackass. The truth is, I didn't like my scene partner all that much either, and I was only slightly ashamed that I put that line back in after they cut it for me. ( because there is no way Amy will be okay with swearing, even onstage. Uh huh.)

Long story short, I struggle. I may be going to h***. 

I like my whole house!

Best day ever. In honor of this joyous, bright, sunny, almost on the positive side of zero weather day, I would like everyone to enjoy a little girl who has the best attitude in the universe. Please watch it. Because there is this magic thing about that video that makes your frowning muscles stop working. It's a scientific phenomenon. For best results, memorize and sing with your roommates every morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR3rK0kZFkg

Dwight and Arachnids

For FHE last week, we played a fantastic game called Bigger and Better. I don't know who all has participated in this epic activity, but for those of you who don't know what this is, get ready for some awesomeness.

You get in groups and start out with something small and relatively worthless and cheap, such as paper clips or pennies. You go to random people's houses, knock on the door, and ask if they have anything bigger or better that they want to trade for said small item. (This seems wierd, but it's Utah, so you are generally safe because people know about wierd games like that here. ) You will be surprised at the insane things people will give you. You'll get such great loot that it is usually wise to bring along a pickup truck, and even the smaller items can be surprisingly valuable. We played this in mutual when I was in High School and ended up with an end table from the 1800's that someone's grandmother brought from England on a boat. The other group got a trampoline. Seriously.

When we played this, we started with dish sponges. From a dish sponge, my group got, in order, a bottle of contact solution, a fake flower arrangement,  a TV, and last, a purple armchair. (We also got scolded pretty hard by an old man who was quite offended that we weren't watching the President. Nobody remembered the State of the Union Address was on before we left.)  Jeff, who had been carrying the TV for a while, carried the chair a few blocks back to our building. (there was a lot of stuff stuck in the cushions. he was shaking out the crayon fragments from his hair/clothes for a while afterward.)  So we sat it in the hallway for a while admiring our work, and then, because we are wierdos, we named the chair Dwight.

We moved Dwight into our living room. The really amusing part comes next. The day after that, I was in my room with a movie playing while I slugged through some math homework and Katie was doing homework with her headphones in and the door was closed. I hear a wierd noise and go out in the hall to investigate, right? Sarah, standing in the kitchen, sees me and yells, "You are a horrible roommate! I screamed and you didn't come!" umm.. okay? I didn't hear anything. As it turns out, Sarah found a spider. (Which she claims was a foot long. Right.) Now, most of you probably don't know this, but Sarah, our very own ninja, who strikes fear into the hearts of large men named Tyrel with her ninjaness, is terrified of arachnids. She'll stab Shane with a fork when he annoys her or head butt Nate between the eyes without blinking and without remorse when he invades her bubble, but put this woman face to face with a spider and she dissolves into a shrieking mess. When she screamed and nobody came, she actually went next door and got Mike to come kill the thing. Apparently, "killing spiders is a man's job."

Why are these two incidents related, you ask? Sarah, having never ever seen a spider in our fair freezing city of Logan prior to that day, is convinced that the thing came from Dwight. She wouldn't sit in him for two days because I hadn't vacuumed him yet. So on Friday I came home from class and vacuumed, and cleaned out Dwight cause he was pretty dirty, even though Jeff found most of the Crayon fragments. I didn't find any spider remains, webs, or babies. So I think it's pretty safe to say the chair had nothing to do with it. A more convincing argument would probably be that I have killed spiders before, right here in our kitchen. But then, I'd have to be crazy to tell Sarah that. I like her better as a ninja than a squeamish little girl.