Arguing with myself

Look, I've been out of high school nearly four years. I'm going to graduate from college a year late because of a combination of reasons (not all my credits transferred, my school has an insane liberal arts load that I must complete, etc). And I've found peace in that. I would have had to kill myself to graduate just a semester late, so stretching it out into another year will do a lot for my peace of mind. I can find a part-time job while I take classes and save money and take time to figure out job options for when I'm graduated. I feel like this is the best decision I can make.

And yet, I feel like a failure. I see so many people I went to high school with who are already married and/or have kids, and who have decent jobs and their own houses. And I feel like a loser for being single and childless, devoid of any job prospects at the moment, and I'm definitely not moving out on my own any time soon. I know I shouldn't compare myself to other people, because what works for them may not work for me. Even if I had a boyfriend, I wouldn't want to get married before I finished school. I'm DEFINITELY not prepared to be a mother right now. And I'm saving money by living with my sister when I'm not in the dorms.

I guess I'm just afraid that I'll run into people I haven't seen in years, and they'll judge me for all of the above. And I KNOW that feeling insecure by people I went to high school with is something that I should have left behind in high school. But knowing this and convincing myself to believe this are two different things.

God, writing this all out makes it seem so trivial! I'm 22! If you had asked me five years ago where I would be now, I would have been completely wrong. Who's to say where I'll be when I'm 27? Or 37 or 47? I will (hopefully) have many more years of life left. In the long run, is it going to matter that I graduated college at 23 instead of 22? I doubt it. As for marriage and kids, I may never get there, but that doesn't mean I won't be happy. I'll find a path that's right for me, even if it's different from everyone else around me, even if it takes some time.

Hold your own damn elevator

When I arrived at my night class, I decided I would take the elevator up to class. See, the building is a long way from my dorm, it's up a steep hill, and I'm out of shape, so I was too out of breath to climb the two flights of steps. I stood in the hall and waited for the elevator to come, and as the doors opened, a girl came around and asked me to hold the elevator. "My friend's coming," she explained, so I awkwardly stood in the elevator holding it open. We waited and waited, me in the elevator, she outside, apparently able to see her friend but unable to explain what was taking her so long. Finally, another person came to climb on the elevator, and she relented. "You can go on, we'll catch it the next time," she said.

Great, so I've been standing there holding the door for no reason. That's just peachy. I need to get in better shape so I can climb the stairs and not have to deal with this elevator etiquette nonsense.

20 things you may not know about me

1. I like to dip potato chips in ketchup.
2. I can burp louder than anyone I know.
3. My toenails are always painted.
4. One regret I have is quitting playing the trumpet in high school. I wish I could pick it up again.
5. I'm a loner, and I used to think that was a bad thing, but really, I'm happiest when I'm alone.
6. Despite that, I would like a guy I could share my life with, but I worry I'll never find him.
7. When I find a song I like, I listen to it on loop.
8. I haven't seen or spoken to my father in nearly five years, and I don't miss him at all.
9. I google people I went to high school to see where they are now.
10. I worry that I'm not becoming the woman my mother wanted me to be.
11. I'm afraid that sometimes my sister resents me, and is happy when I'm not around.
12. I spend way too much time worrying about what other people think of me.
13. My class ring is the only piece of jewelry I wear every day. I feel naked leaving the house without it on my finger.
14. When I go to a familiar restaurant I order the same thing every time, because I'm afraid if I try something new, I'll be disappointed, so I might as well stick with what I know is good.
15. I've never dyed my hair, even though it already has gray in it.
16. I've never broken a bone or been in the hospital as a patient (except for when I was born, of course).
17. I like to rehearse important conversations in my head so that I'll be prepared and hopefully not come across as an idiot.
18. I feel like I'm not really good at anything.
19. I'm not religious and I resent it when people try to foist their religion onto me.
20. I work my thoughts out by writing, which is why I started this blog.

Two Very Important Things

First, happy birthday Alli. 32 years ago our mother was in labor with you as Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president. I'm sorry she wasn't here today for your birthday and for the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Barack Hussein Obama is our president. Words really can't describe how I feel about this. I was in eighth grade, 14 years old, when Bush became president, and over the next eight years I changed so much. I became an adult, a real woman with political opinions, and they were shaped during the Bush administration. Bush leaving office feels like an end of an era not just for the country, but for me personally. But I'm excited about the future with Obama. I had a hand in his election, donating money to his campaign and voting for him, and I'm ready to see him as president. I'm ready to find out what changes he can bring for the nation, and I'm ready to see how I change over the course of his presidency.

Let it snow (please)

Where I live, we don't get snow that often. Even at school in the mountains we haven't gotten a substantial snowfall in a year. But there's a good chance of snow tonight for home and at school, and I'm praying that it happens.

I'm trying not to be too optimistic, however, because I've had my hopes up plenty of times in the past and been burned. As a kid, whenever there was snow predicted I would get up in the middle of the night, scurry down the hallway and peek out the onto the back deck, hoping to see snow. Nine times out of ten I would be disappointed, and would head back to bed with a heavy heart, knowing that I would have to get up for school in the morning. But on some magical occasions, I would be greeted with the sight of fluffy blankets of snow.

I'm fully expecting this snow prediction to be a bust, and I'll head back to school tomorrow (I'm home for Martin Luther King day) and the week will proceed as normal. But some part of me can't help but hold onto a tiny sliver of hope, that maybe, just maybe, we'll be lucky this time.

Pink or Blue--Does It Matter?

There was an article on Jezebel recently about the color pink and its ties to femininity. Reading through the comments was interesting, with some people absolutely hating pink and others embracing it. Does the environment that a person grows up in influence their color preference? I decided to analyze my sister and myself, since after all, we did grow up in the same house with the same parents.

My favorite color is pink (I mean, duh, just look at this blog). When I was little my parents told my sister and me that we could pick the color of carpet to go in our bedrooms; I chose pink, Alli chose blue. Our favorite colors haven't changed since we were small. Pink is traditionally associated with girly behavior (think Elle Woods in Legally Blond) and blue is deemed the appropriate color for boys since birth. Yet in my situation, I'd say that my blue loving sister is the more feminine.

I do like girly stuff such as having my nails painted and wearing perfume, and I put on make up when I have the time (that is, when I'm not in a hurry running to class). But generally I live in my jeans and Nikes, and I never do much to my hair besides throwing a headband on. Alli is the girl who spends plenty of time in front of a mirror every morning putting on her face and fixing her hair just so, and has a closetful of fancy shoes. We're different in other ways, too. I realized a big difference between us this past weekend when she was in one room watching Cold Mountain and I was in the other watching the NFL playoffs. She walked through the room when I was cheering the Giants because they got a safety, and I had to explain to her what that even meant.

Really, I think your favorite color isn't important. Just because I'm a girl who loves pink doesn't mean I can't hang with the boys, drinking beer and watching football. The concept of pink=girls and blue=boys is pretty useless, I'd say.

BSC Friends Forever

Friends Forever was the updated version of the Baby-Sitters Club. It had the same characters (the core four of Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey) with less baby-sitting and more modern notations (the characters have cellphones and email). I guess the publishers wanted to keep the familiar characters yet tweak them and take them in a more mature direction; thank GOD there are very few baby-sitting chapters, because those got so tedious and annoying. The girls actually act like thirteen year olds really do, which is ironically the drawback of this series--they are STILL thirteen and in eighth grade. I think this series would have been more satisfying if they had started off as freshmen in high school. It just makes NO SENSE to repeatedly acknowledge things that happened earlier in the BSC series (in which they were eighth graders) and yet have them again start eighth grade.

The themes in this new series seem to fit so much more with a high school setting, which is why it's puzzling to me that they weren't in ninth grade. They've scaled back the baby-sitting club, so Kristy has to deal with not being a dictator; Claudia and Stacey have a huge fight over a boy; Mary Anne breaks up with Logan and tries to strike out as a new, independent girl. Old friends like Mallory and Jessi are really only mentioned in passing, which would fit with high school, since they are two grades behind the other girls. From personal experience, high school is the place where old friendships either end or are re-formed, as new people come into play.

Did the publishers think that the girls who are reading about eight graders wouldn't buy books about freshmen in high school? I kind of doubt that would happen. In fact, I would say that the reason Friends Forever was unsuccessful was because there was no progression in the time line. The fact that these girls are perpetually thirteen begins to grate on the reader after a while. Plus, I think there really should be books about freshmen; it's a brand new, exciting, confusing time, and most books (and television shows) skip right over it to when the kids are older, like juniors or seniors.

Maybe this whole post is just telling me that I need to write a young adult series about freshmen. It's something to consider....

A look inside my crazy head

Nathan watched The Wizard of Oz a while back, and that may have been a bad thing, because now he always asks where the Wicked Witch is. He especially gets worried right before bed time, and we have to assure him that the witch is not real and no one can hurt him. I guess I had that on the brain last night as I fell asleep, because I dreamed about killing the Wicked Witch.

She didn't look exactly like the witch in the movie, but she was a witch, and she lived in a tree house full of secret passages. I thought I would have to kill her by cutting her head off with a sword, but finally I used a spell. I separated my shadow from my body, and my shadow held the witch down while I strangled her. She burst into dust, and I burned the tree house down to make sure she was really dead.

This dream just proves to me that I have learned a lot from supernatural television shows. The body turned to dust, just like on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the shadow separation was probably inspired by a Doctor Who episode I watched recently; and I burned the witch's remains and house down, just like Sam and Dean would do on Supernatural. Who says television isn't educational?

The Big O Has Landed

The dealership came through with a good price, so we have an Odyssey now. I must admit, it's pretty sweet. I'm in love with the fact that I can control the temperature of the back seat, plus there's all sorts of storage space that will be useful, especially on long trips. The seats are super comfortable, too. And it has that new car smell that I love so much.

As cool as it is on the inside, it's still got a remarkably uncool exterior. Luckily it comes with built in sun screens that I can pull down so no one can recognize me.

How I Learned to Stop Bitching and Love the Van

My sister and her husband have been talking for awhile about getting a new, bigger car with a third row of seats. They've decided they like the Honda Odyssey, which is a van. I cringed when I heard this news, because hello, it's a minivan, and minivans are decidedly uncool. It also seemed like an unnecessary purchase to me; we rarely go anywhere where we would need extra seats to fit more people. But then I began to think; they're talking about trying to have another baby in the next couple of years, and if they're successful, they'll have two car seats in the back, with no room for me. So if I ever want to travel anywhere with them again, I'll either have to drive my own car, or they'll have to get a bigger car. So I'm supporting their choice to get a van because it will benefit me, and I'm supremely selfish.

It's not set in stone that they'll get the van anytime soon. They're still talking to the Honda dealership about what kind of finance rates they can get and all that jazz, and they may wait a while or look into an older model. But they're definitely interested in buying. I've heard that the Odyssey (I'm not calling it a van anymore, it just sounds too lame) has some cool features like a temperature control in the backseat, which means no more complaining to them to turn the damn heat up. It also has a really powerful engine. The Big O (that's a proper nickname, don't you think?) may actually be fun to ride in. I'll keep you posted as we proceed in talks with the dealership.