It's OK, I'm Not Dying (too much)

Maybe the "two teenagers" in the name of this blog has morphed into meaning me and my (various) alter personalities.... Yeah, I know it's a stretch, but I don't want to have to make a new one. I don't know how. And I'm in college. And I'm learning too many things I don't know how to do by command to go and learn something for fun. Those days are disappearing in my rear view mirror.

I mostly got on to tell you that I'm OK.

I mean mostly. I got a very concerned (and sweet) text from my cousin Tisha the other day and realized that you might come away from my last post thinking that I was dying.

And I kind of was. Thursday was a day of nightmares. In every possible way. It was my wallowing day. I wallowed. A lot. Yesterday was much better. I made cookies and played Apples to Apples with my cousins Kelsey and Thayne (seriously, my cousins have saved my life this week), explored the grocery store, went to class, talked to my parents on skype (skype is one of those things the gods brought down to us out of pity, like fire), laughed with my roommates, and made Saturday plans.

(my teachers say my sentences are too long, what do you think?)

Anyway, the sum of it is that I'm doing much better. There was only an hour or so yesterday that I felt any hardcore hollowness. The rest of the day was OK. So I'm not dying. I am still planning on transferring back to Hawaii for college after Christmas, but if I do I'm not going to be running away. I'm not going to do it because I can't do this. If I go back home it will be because I've decided that that's a better place for me right now. But this--this college in a desert thing, this being away from my parents and Mei and almost everyone who's ever known me--this I will conquer.

Over.

A Pointless Post Concerning Valentines Day and Belly Dancers

On Valentines day a boy gave me a flower...

He was four (or five? possibly six? what, I barely know how old I am) but, personally, I think that makes it cuter. I also got Valentines from my entire Lit class. Among the notable well wishes and compliments (50% of them told me I was smart... which would have been flattering if I wasn't sure that they said that because they couldn't remember anything else about me), I was told that I was smarter than Glenn Beck... Thanks, Kiana. I think.

Be warned: This post has no point. I just wrote an essay about Beloved that was dripping with points, and I've run out. So this will be throughly pointless.

I've been studying for my drivers test (finally) and have spent most of the time wondering who wrote the manual. Whoever it was delighted in obvious truths such as: "No one can see as well at night as they can during during the day."

Um... Yes. Thank you for that. I was unsure before.

I really like some of their hypothetical questions too, one of which involved jaywalkers and asked how a mature driver would engage in such a situation. Among suggested answers was "give them a little nudge to show them who's road it is." I guess can't really begrudge them that one. If I wrote a driving manual I'd probably work in as many incredibly stupid answers as I could.

I hope I never write a driving manual. Ever. I do wonder how you'd go about getting that job, though. Kind of like being a tattoo-artist. Do you have to be licenced  or read a manual? Who do you practice on? And belly dancers too. How do you learn to belly dance and when does it stop becoming a slightly strange hobby/exercise regime and start being a profession? I'm not sure. And I don't think I care enough to google it.

One of the problems of living in a small college town is that it really isn't part of The Real World. Most people here go to school or work for the school. We don't have any driving manual writers, tattoo-artists, or belly dancers that I'm aware of. And while that's OK we're not chock-full of chefs, engineers, interior decorators or farmers either. The result being that when I sat down to write out my possible future occupations (for a school thing--I'm am neither cool nor nerdy enough to diagram my future without my grade being involved) I could only think of four. Four occupations total, not occupations I wanted. They were: teacher, plumber, and beautician. And tattoo-artist

Help.

I am going to finish these posts and leave these thoughts and go study for my theory midterm. Hegel and Gramsci are calling, folks. I'm going to go answer them so that I'll maybe have some occupational options later in life. I don't think I'd be a really good tattoo-artist.

Over.

strike against capitals

once upon a time...

paradise lived in peace. it was beautiful.

blue water. blue skies. balmy beaches. you know. paradise. it was beautiful and limitless. and insect-less.

but that golden age passed. now we have cockroaches. and centipedes. centipedes are long, striped, ugly things. however, they probably didn't deserve that time i chopped one up (they still live after you do that, you know) and then boiled it, because my friend told me that if you just flushed it down the toilet they would crawl back up.

were you lying, bria?

centipedes turn blue when you boil them. thought you might want to know.

anyway. lots of nasty things came with the fall of paradise's golden age (which may have coincided with the fall of the titan's or eve and adam's expulsion from eden), but perhaps among them most evil were mosquitoes.

my mom told me they probably came in a water barrel. some demented ship brought evil on wings to paradise. demented. it is a good and accurate word, only because sadistic sounds a bit harsh. after all, it didn't know the awful, evil disease it was carrying. so demented will do.

last night mosquito(es) woke me up. three times. three times! there is no evil like that which deprives sleep. I am not a nice person when i'm tired. i get these craters under my eyes that make me look like i'm a druggy (i'm not, i promise), i can't be bothered to make my clothes match or straighten up my hair. i suddenly dislike things for no reason.

like today. today i have a sudden and fierce dislike of capitals and opera music. thought you might want to know.

over.

Hiking... Or Lack Thereof

(Marissa)

So, funny story. Remember yesterday when I was on here telling you about my weekend plans (exalting that I had some, for once)?

Well, last night I got back from the Halloween party at eleven thirty-ish, still growling about stupid James Bond writers and their refusal to let Bond retire or any of his poor girlfriends live, and went pretty much immediately to bed. I thought about staying up with a book to distract me from my head ache (curse you, whoever brought those amazingly delicious chocolate cookies), but realized that sleep was probably better medication. Besides, I was going for a hike at twelve today and so it was probably best to go to bed at a reasonable hour. So, like a reasonable and responsible person, I went to bed immediately. I didn't even floss my teeth--don't tell my dentist.

This morning I woke up with the sudden realization that I'd forgotten to do Gov homework and that, for that I would surely fail the class, not get into college and end up as a bum on the streets, like Mr. Violetti said I would... Then I woke up a little more and started cleaning up the house and doing homework.

A few minutes before twelve I headed over to Foodland, our agreed meeting place. I'd locked and double-checked all the doors, turned off all the lights, filled up a water bottle, and left my homework half finished and the bathroom half cleaned. I felt very righteous while I went, because I wasn't just lazing around in my pajamas. When I got there I sat around for a few minutes and, because I'm me, started worrying that I'd got the wrong time, place, or day. Then I realized that all the people I was supposed to meeting live twenty minutes down the road from me and have their own Foodland. Also twenty minutes down the road.

...

So I walked back home, swinging my water bottle and feeling very stupid.

Now I'm sitting in a cloud of bug spray, feeling sunblock rubberize my face, still decked out in hiking gear and wishing that I'd listened to my mom and gotten my drivers licence over the summer. Also wishing I hadn't listened to my mom and had ignored the bug spray on the counter. What do they put in that stuff? Makes my head hurt...

Funny, right? Ha...

Maybe I'll go to the beach.

Over.

If I Was A Duck

This is our first post. Kind of. Not technically. But still.

Ta da. This post we'll be writing rules, because we are rule-abiding people and we need rules to abide by. Just one of those things. Humor us. This is our online blog version of John Locke's (the philosopher, not the Lost guy) social contract. Except it's just us promising. And we're not giving ourselves any punishments if we break the rules, so it's not binding or anything.

We'll talk about why we're actually writing this blog next time, this time is RULES:

1. We promise to post regularly. Of course, we're two teenagers in the twenty-first century, meaning that we've been brainwashed into thinking that we don't have lives unless they include every extra-curricular activity that we've ever heard of and we're going to be hobos unless we have a 4.6 GPA. So regularly might be biannually, but it will be regularly

2. We won't swear, so you don't either, OK? We're Latter Day Saints (Mormon) and so we don't swear, drink, do drugs, have more than one ear piercing or stay out past midnight because that's when the Holy Ghost goes to bed, guys.

3. My little sister's name is not really her first name. Just so you know. We're calling her by one of her middle ones. The only one that you'll actually be able to pronounce. Marie. We also won't use anyone's full name unless we've already checking with them. Or they're Mark Bittman, or the like. And if we're being bratty we'll just say "that girl" or "that guy."

4. We won't be bratty.

5. We will not write posts about waking up and brushing our teeth and picking out our clothes and eating breakfast. We will never tell you about brushing our teeth, unless something really important happened when we were brushing our teeth. Our posts will have a purpose, or they'll be random.

6. We will use spellcheck. You can thank us later.

7. We'll keep exclamation marks to a minimum, because they're annoying (CoughDadCough). We have no promises about parenthesis.

8. We'll tell you who is writing. This is both us, by the way. But Marissa is typing.

You might be wondering what this post has to do with a duck. Mostly we wanted to see if you'd get all the way through it, still looking for a duck. If you are very disappointed that we did not share our many thoughts about what we'd do if we were water abiding birds, then write a comment and we'll write a post about it sometime. If you were really relieved that we didn't go on about ducks, write a comment anyway. Or mark our poll. Yeah, it's just down there. See it?

Love your guts, Katie and Marissa. Over.