PosT SB

It's getting to look a lot like Sweaters

2008-10-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

It's 52 degrees outside. I'm sitting at a desk job that I got, working four hours every morning. I also got a job at a clothing store. But I put my two weeks in. I'm tired and I can't think of anything funny to say. Coffee hasn't kicked in yet. blllaaaaaahhhhhhh....

Adventures on the Highway

2008-08-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

It's funny that a few blogs ago, I was commenting on how amazing this year was going to be. And so far, 26 days now of being 27, there have been quite a few incidents. I wanted to share the latest one.

Impulsively, a friend and I decided to drive to Birmingham to help another friend out last Thursday night. We left around 11 p.m. Our friend had a gig down there and kind of got stranded and needed to be back for work the next morning. I felt awake and good, so did my other friend. So we hit the road. Like Jack Kerouac. Except not as cool. Or dirty.

2 hours into the drive I got pulled over. Of course. My friend was shaking because she was nervous. I've been pulled over so many times now that police men don't really scare me as much as they make me mad. Well I decided to be honest. He asked me how fast I was going. I said 85, and it was because we were going to help a friend out in BHam. He told me I failed to yield. I was kind of just laughing to myself as he walked away. Unbelievable. Of course this would happen. When he came back to my car (because for some reason police take 30 minutes to write up a report) he asked me why my license was suspended. That is when the tears turned on. He told me he was "doing me a favor" by not towing my car, and not citing that I was speeding. And then he asked my friend if she was a maid, because some maid travelled back and forth from Tennessee to Alabama. I was sobbing.

When we finally got to the Ham, our other friend had been drinking. And he refused to come home with us. He laid down underneath a tree, and, after begging him to get in the car for 45 minutes or so, we left. We got home at 7:30. I fell asleep at 9 a.m.

What have I learned? NEVER travel through Alabama.

The Break In

2008-08-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

It is 6:37 a.m. right now. I am usually not awake at this hour. Ever. It is beautiful outside and the temperature is 65 degrees. I woke up to a little knock knock knock on the door. Immediately I knew that someone had vandalized something, and it was most likely my car. Why else would a neighbor be knocking on my door at such a ludicrous hour?

Well I threw on some clothes and walked outside. The window was smashed in and my GPS, recently glued on with Gorilla Glue, strongest glue known to man that withstands heat, cold, and weight (but not the hands of a robber) had been ripped off of my dashboard. I looked in the back of the car, where my brand new keyboard still sat in it's case, at least 9 times the value of the GPS, and rolled my eyes. My parents also gave me a new GPS for Christmas (apparently mom and dad know how directionally disabled I am) and it was in my glove compartment. In my mind I just thought IDIOTS. Sad desperate idiots (not my parents, the robber).

There's this line in a song by Rosie Thomas where she's talking about her friends. And she says "they don't hold things, they don't hold hands, they guard their hearts the best they can." One of her friends that she is referring to is a well-known artist who owns no instruments, I guess he just borrows everything.

So. That is my Monday morning this week. Heckuva start.

27. why this will be the best year yet

2008-08-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

1. 9 times 3 equals 27. I am obsessed with the number 9 and i really like the number 3. my whole OCD life has revolved around the number 9, which sounds completely irrational to you but to me, this is an AMAZING thing.

2. i feel really sexy. not dirty sexy, this is a better definition: really comfortable in my own skin. i am laughing SO much these days.

3. i'm (maybe) going to go organic (sadly, my first meal as a 27 year old was a quarter pounder with cheese, large fries and a medium coke from micky d's. i've also eaten obscenely large quantities of ice cream in the past four nights, and most of my meals have been completely processed... so we'll see.)

4. i have started to make a goal list: one of them is to make a CD. by golly, this is the year (do i say this every year?)

5. i am going to start making my clothes, stop washing my hair as much, and try to emulate the good people of the world like Mother Teresa and Rich Mullins (driven not by my own guilt but by the love of Jesus, which I'm understanding more, believing in more, and not feeling trite talking about it. this is happening by reading the Bible (transforming my mind) and this great book named "The Cross Centered Life.")

6. i could care less if i have a boyfriend. and i think i've forgiven both myself for not getting married and Lifeway for hurting my feelings.

7. i'm going to start shaving my legs more

8. i'm going to travel to the northwest.

9. i just don't have fear like i used to. i went skiing the other day for the first time in like 4 years, and I GOT UP ON THE FIRST TRY!!!!! i'm just livin.

Almond Syrup

2008-03-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I am somewhat addicted to coffee. I think it's interesting because coffee truly is addictive (the INTERESTING thing about this is that coffee is an upper stimulant and it's legal. Marijuana is a downer stimulant and it's illegal. We humans allow with open widely open arms (and wallets) upper stimulants but not downers? hmm). I can be depressed and then go get a coffee, and I am happy. My friend Hailey and I do this often, we get coffee-hyper and happy after a morning of low-energy somewhat boring conversations. My sister texted me and said "I'm starting to feel excited and happy. It's the coffee slowly poisoning my sadness." after a morning of an overwhelming sense of purposelessness and frustration about life. I wonder sometimes if it is a sin, I don't think I'm being gluttonous (when I used to work at Starbucks, I would have 5 to 6 shots of espresso a day, which IS gluttonous and now I only do about 2, or the equivalent of that). I DO think I could be wiser with my money at times, when I'm feeling especially green.

There is a funny story I'd like to insert right here that may sound random, but I'm going stream of consciousness here. I was working in New Orleans at the Starbucks by my parents' home. There are a lot of VERY rich people in the area, and one particularly rich woman came in. She didn't take off her goggle sunglasses that consumed much of her emaciated face, and she ordered some huge very particular coffee drink. The order contained 7 or 8 titles. "Quad Venti half-nonfat, half-soy sugar free vanilla blah blah blah blah." No smile, no thank you, no hi, she simply needed her own coffee high. Well, a band named Bright Eyes, which is still kind of underground but kind of getting bigger, was playing through the speakers. The woman looked at me through her sunglasses, holding her huge coffee drink and demanded "Why are they on the speakers here? WHY ARE THEY SELLING OUT?!?! I can't believe this, WHY are they playing at STARBUCKS??" I was speechless, I literally could not believe the irony of it all as she stormed out. Talk about sellout.

Anyway, so the real point of this story is that Starbucks is dis-continuing the Almond Syrup. This is the only flavor I get in my coffee... It is my little treat, a moment of happiness in the midst of my day. It is delicious and scrumptious and I am going to try to buy as many bottles of almond syrup as I can before they're all gone. That's all, nothing deep. Well, nothing deeper than 12 ounces of espresso, milk, ice, and almond syrup.

plastic surgeons make mountains out of molehills all the time.

2008-03-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

The above is a quote by Dolly Parton. This is one of the most amazing quotes I have ever read.

On the Road, but I'm not Jack Keroack.

2008-02-23T13:59:00.001-08:00

I love hotels. Morgan, a good friend of mine is so disgusted by hotels that she won’t even take her shoes off, and she brings her own sheets!! But I can’t get ENOUGH of them!!! I just walked into a hotel (after watching 2 hours of Lost in the car); we’re in Tupelo, MS getting ready to do a show tonight, and we stopped in at the hotel first. And my heart just exploded because I had an overwhelming moment of gratitude. Well, it’s always good to write those down, right? So, here are the things, in no particular order, that I love about hotels:

The blackout shades: you could sleep until 2 p.m. and not even know it.
There are more than five channels and they’re all CLEAR. And the remote works.
The beds are made.
The feeling of vacation, because when you were young, hotels always meant vacation, which, for me, meant Disneyworld or Branson.
You can crank the a.c. or heater and you don’t have to worry about an electric bill.
My friend Whit once pointed out the brilliance of hotel showers, the curved rod at the top and the high water pressure.
The mirror next to the TV is ALWAYS a slimming mirror. Ladies, do your makeup there!
The window: which means a fresh perspective, even if that’s only a fresh perspective of the highway…it’s different from what you normally see, right? That’s song material.
Usually you get to a hotel after a long drive so a good stretch on the bed is wonderful.
My mom used to “christen” the hotel beds by laying on her back with her feet and arms in the air and making herself bounce, which was hilarious, but we always do it.

Of course there are the negatives:
I know I know, the bedspread never gets washed, who knows who was here before me, there’s always the temptation of porn late at night (which I will admit is not a struggle of mine, though you always hear in youth group how tempting it is), the drinking glasses only get wiped down and not soaked or scrubbed, and I always wonder if, while I’m changing or something, there’s a peephole that some pervert is watching me through. But why focus on the negative (and scary) when, as an adult, SOMEONE MAKES YOUR BED!!! AND RESTOCKS YOUR SHAMPOOS!!!

Life is incredibly mundane, people. I can only be thankful for what I have, and be a good steward of my thankfulness. So as I sit here for a few moments in the Wingate in cute little Tupelo, I will deny the possibility of nasty little scabies (which my hypochondriac mother taught me about) and filthy bedspreads, peeping toms and e-coli-infested drinking glasses. Maybe the maids don’t even LIKE my cheap jewelry. Instead of freaking, I will go christen the beds, make some coffee, and kick my shoes off for a little afternoon of cable. Little pleasures. Like Deb Talan of The Weepies says,

Can I get up in the morning, put the kettle on
Make us some coffee, say hey to the sun
Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds
When they hear just a tone and not understand my love for words

But you will hear me and know
I want to live this
I want to live a
I want to live a simple life.

Zitstache

2008-02-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

I decided I'm going to write a book. The first chapter will say something like this:

I had just broken off my engagement and moved from Minnesota to New Orleans to be with my family and re-evaluate whether I really wanted to get married or not. My brothers love to point out my flaws, like how I sometimes have darker hair on my upper lip, or on my chin (which is gross, yes, but guess what? it happens sometimes). I was a complete wreck and sitting on the front porch with my mom, trying to get in touch with this obsessive compulsive psychiatrist because, well, some of us just go crazy when we go through bad break ups. My mom was sitting there for moral support and I could feel her looking over my face. The psychiatrist put me on hold and my supportive mother whispered, "Sair, you really DO need a lip wax." Inappropriate? Totally. My mother? Completely. She went inside and got the number to her lip waxer at Belladonna, a wonderland of smells, make-up, and all things rich trendy New Orleans. I called and made an appointment for the next day.

The women of the world who wax don't tell you how painful the first one is. I thought I was going to die as she ripped away at my skin, just chit-chatting like she wasn't physically abusing me. Why do people pay for this. And even worse, my mother had told her ALL about my break-up so she was offering her advice and how happy she was as a single woman. And how strong I was to have left Minnesota (this is not consolation, by the way, I can't tell you how many times I heard it though. I wonder if there are TONS of women who were so scared about the outcome that they just stayed in mediocre relationships... that seems devastating to me). So she yanked the hell out of the papers stuck to my eyebrows and upper lip and chin until she seemed satisfied. I swore to my body that I would never do that again. I immediately went to Audubon Park to exercise... all the websites and books about depression tell you to exercise! Well I guess the now-empty glands (since there were no more hair follicles) were too tender to have sweat drip into them. I walked around the park, not realizing that a microscopic volcanic eruption of sweat was pouring into the valleys of non-hair glands, slowly creating mountain after mountain of disgusting, painful pimples. But of course, they didn't fully develop until the next morning. So when I woke up, already wishing I was dead because of the breakup, I looked in the mirror to see a horrid, disgusting, nasty zitstache. It was like my face was giving me the finger. Or like on Arrested Development, when Tobias gets hair implants and as it grows, it's BEAUTIFUL but his body is rejecting it, so he just gets sicker and sicker but his hair grows gloriously. I try not to be shallow. But come on, a zit mustache? That's a hard one to just brush off. Especially given the circumstances. So the zits eventually faded (after like 3 weeks!!!), I got a job at a coffee shop, started going to a Presbyterian church and making friends, and life got better. Nothing gets good overnight though. It takes so much time. But it's good to look back on the suck moments and laugh. Which I do quite often.

Brangelina.

2008-01-10T08:32:00.001-08:00

There are many people who roll their eyes when I start talking about my excessive useless information about famous people. And many people join in on the conversation, contributing their facts from Perez Hilton.com, US Weekly, People, etc. One time in a Bible study, someone pointed out that those magazines were gossip magazines and that it was sinful. For some reason, I SINCERELY did not know that they were slandering gossip magazines, and I was astonished that I was sinning whilst reading my mags, or rags if you will. I just read them while I work out at the Y, because it passes the time. Fluff is much easier to read than depth when your forcing yourself to practically have a heart attack on some ridiculous machine called "the wave" or "eliptical" (I'm not insulting these machines, I use them, but just think about it: when were "exercise machines" invented? maybe around the same time as McDonalds, perhaps. I am also not insulting because I am a HUGE fan of McDonalds and yes i have seen Supersize Me. There's nothing like a double cheeseburger sans onions add mayo, fries and a coke.) So anyway, I had a life-changing day in New Orleans over Christmas that has changed my reading patterns of Trashy Mags. In fact, just yesterday I was tempted with 4 different People Magazines, none that I had read, and I wasn't really that interested. So here it is.

I went to a Presbyterian Church in New Orleans when I moved from Minnesota to New Orleans for three months in the summer. The minister, Ray, had a daughter named Rachel. My sister told her I was a mermaid and she believed her so she thought I was really cool. So I've started to just take her out for the morning whenever I am in town. Over Christmas, I picked her up and we stopped by CC's, a delish coffee house in nola. She was assembling an advent gingerbread house that my mom gave her and I was sipping on my coffee while helping her. All the sudden, people started buzzing. I overheard the words Brad and Angelina. They have a house in the french quarter so there's always spottings. I overheard the baristas "Brad and Angelina are down at Pippen Lane. They've locked the doors and the paparazzi are outside." Pippen Lane is a children's store for rich children that is two doors down from CCs. So I immediately grabbed Rachel's hand and my fake Coach purse (thanks Aunt Libby) and we went to see Brangelina. I've never seen paparazzi before, but there they were, just standing outside waiting. I peeked in the front window and some guard said "they don't want you peeking in." Rachel peeked in too, and I guess the store owner saw us peeking in so, from inside, she motioned for us to come in. I went to the side door and the guard unlocked the door for us. The woman inside said, "are you shopping today?" I said "Yes. Yes we are." I guess she noticed the Coach purse, and the 4 year old in my hand. So we walked in and I whispered "Rachel, what size are you?" She whispered back her size and I just looked for them. My heart was pounding so hard, I don't know why now but I was THRILLED. And then I saw them. Brad and Angelina. No kids, just shopping. And they were short. I expected them to be tall. And they wore sunglasses. I thought that was kind of rock-star ish. So Rachel and I walked past them and Brad said something about bunny ears and she muttered something and they both sounded show-off-y to me. We walked in the back room and there was a huge dollhouse, tigers, and train tables. I sat down in the dollhouse with Rachel and whispered, "Rachel, these are two of the most famous people in all of the entire world!!" She looked outside of the playhouse and whispered back, without missing a beat "We have the same train table at our church." We both started laughing, for different reasons of course. And then we walked out. And the paparazzi said, "did you see them?" and they seemed to be excited for me. As I write this, I just sort of feel like it's all really disgusting now. I mean it was fun and a good story, but what kind of life is that? How can someone that famous even know what humility means? I struggle with pride, for crying out loud! How hard is it for a famous person to know humility? And even harder to know Jesus? That verse "it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to enter through the eye of a needle." makes a lot more sense.

And now I'm sitting on a couch with a 2 year old raking my hair (she thinks she's brushing it) and she's just laughing like crazy. I read this quote on a starbucks card yesterday that talked about childhood as spinning for a living and smelling like cake-breath. Adulthood= coffe breath and meaningless jobs for a living. I don't know who's better off: Brangelina, or Pax, Maddox, Shiloh and Zaharah? Hmm.

Toby pees on every shrub, mailbox, electrical box, and anywhere else he wants to mark his territory and how I am like him

2007-12-01T17:14:00.001-08:00

The family that I live with has a boxer named Toby. He has these ridiculously adorable and sad droopy eyes and jowls that hang down to the ground. I've been watching him since the fam is out of town and I've started taking him on very long walks in the morning (it's mostly selfish because I need to work out but I think Toby needs to get out, seeing as my arms are sore from him yanking me as hard as he possibly can because he's so thrilled to be out of the house). It's interesting how he doesn't recognize the word "crate" when he has to go into his crate in the morning, but when I say the word "walk," (or anything that rhymes with that, really) he looks at me, his ears perk up, his eyes look a little bit less sad, and his movements are stiff and excited and freak-out-ish. So, yesterday morning on our long walk, I started to try to feel a little poetic (because I love drama...speaking of, have you heard Brittney's pregnant again?) and so I focused on Toby and what similarities me, grown Christian woman actively pursuing God and learning about myself in this world and the world to come, and him, 3 year old skinny boxer (I'm telling you, my mind is a big broadway show). Well, he peed everywhere. On a shrub, on a spot of grass, on every mailbox, on huge electrical boxes, and when he heard other dogs, his ears perked up and he got stiff again. He was marking his territory. It was actually really funny because how in the WORLD does a dog have that much pee stored up? Granted, he was doing little squirts, but it was impressive, nonetheless. So, how in the world, in my 24 hours a day broadway play brain, did I relate to little Toby.

Well, a few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend at Fido (this very hip, waifish, dark, loud-music, tattoo, dirty hair, trendy glasses, weird artsy people hang out coffee shop...if Clare Danes and Jared Leto came to a coffee shop in My So Called Life, they'd definitely be here). We actually couldn't handle the music level so we went outside (Let me interject and say that although I'm coming down on Fido, it's because of my own insecurity. They do, however, serve the most AMAZING muffins...my personal fave is the not-so-short-almond-shortbread muffin, which is basically cake and i mouthgasm every time i eat the first bite, and they also have great coffee). So my friend: I was talking about how frustrated I was with this somewhat stagnant place of life because I was very successful in middle school, high school and college in terms of music. I was known as a great musician. I mean, I was a REALLY big deal (that's a joke, because the previous statement sounded cocky, but that was sort of my identity, which was often quite harmful). So my friend said, "Yeah, I remember you had a lot of accolades." And that conversation came back up into my head on my walk with Toby. Then I thought, "We all love to pee on our territory. Maybe not pee but at least "mark" it." And then I had this picture of me being a singer dog and peeing all over my middle school, all over my high school, all over the arts school that I went to, and all over my college. And then I graduated from college. And I got scared. I just held it in and my bladder started to really hurt but I held it in because I just didn't believe that my urine was good enough, I just kind of stopped believing in it slowly but surely, something creative inside of me was shriveling up and giving up. But I felt the reprocussions of it and got sick. So, I sold out to a few organizations, lost my voice, and moved to Minnesota to start over anew. But it got worse and I wasn't happy and I was making those who loved me miserable. So I had to be alone where it all started, in New Orleans. In the chaos of that crazy and art-saturated city, underneath the care of my practical successful father and my wildly expressive and overly dramatic mother, I learned to pee again. Out of the Bible belt, I remembered and learned who God was. And He taught me that not everyone would like that I was marking my territory because they wouldn't believe in my urine, and that was OK. And that is why I'm in Nashville writing like a crazy mad-woman, and I'm getting ready to URINATE all over this town come spring!!! So that is how I'm like Toby. And I know I am weird and I love it and if you don't love it, then why have you read this far? I mean really. I would like to dedicate this blog to the confident and full-bladdered dogs of the world.

Cinci

2007-11-27T21:20:00.001-08:00

OK I didn't actually say much about Thanksgiving in my last blog. I have, however, changed my location from my brother eddie's bed in new orleans (he sleeps on the couch downstairs because he gets in so late from being "out" and i'm passing out by 11, and my other brother David took over my bedroom...the only other bedroom is a storage unit now so whenever the whole family's home, we have to fight to the death to claim a good room), to Nashville in the room I'm renting, which will be a nursery in about 6 months. Sad to say (but for some of you who are very evil and don't want me to be confident and happy, you'll be excited to hear this), I'm feeling a little more like a minnow in the ocean and I miss my family. Humble and lonely. I especially miss my mom. She makes me feel like I am the most talented creature on the face of this planet. While I was home, she spent about an hour just listening to all my new songs. And whenever I make ANY sort of joke, she laughs really hard. But my favorite part about my mom, Cinci (short for Cynthia, it sounds like sin-see), is that she is totally weird.

She flushes a toilet whenEVER she goes into a bathroom in our home (in case there's a hurricane and we need to drink water out of the toilet. I'd rather drink my own pee.) This means that every time she enters a room in the house, the toilet gets flushed.

She starts statements like this "You know when you wake up in the middle of the night and you've just had a throw-up burp?..." like everyone wakes in the middle of the night tasting their throw up burps.

She always has a solution to why she is sick. My dad bought this memory foam mattress and my mom said, "I figured out why your father is snoring so loud and why I'm having horrible sinus problems... it's the foam mattress, we're allergic to it."

Whenever she hears a good band (like if we're at a ball or a fabulous part), she goes to the VERY front, usually dragging my sister or me out (because my dad's ears buzz with music that's too loud and he sucks at dancing honestly), and dances for HOURS.

The other morning, my mom was reading newspaper after newspaper and I said, "Mom, you should get a job. You'd do REALLY well with people in some little snooty retail place on Magazine Street" and she said "I have a job, it's called 4 children." then i said "you're reading the newspaper, that's not a job." and she said, "it's part of my job." and I said, "Dad, is reading the newspaper a job?" and he pretends like he's ignoring us but he loves it. and mom really thinks reading the newspaper is part of her job.

My mother goes HAYWIRE when the maids are coming. She cleans the house almost completely and does the laundry and the dishes...I think this is so they deep clean but I'm still not sure. But she kind of gets like a sargeant so we all just have to leave.

She has made up a language that sort of sounds like Spanish and she speaks it to her poodle Cappi (short for Cappucino). Then at the end of the speech, which lasts about a minute and thirty seconds, she says "ring chunk a ring chunk" and rolls the r's. My sister does this as well with her two pugs.

She is the most hyper person you will ever experience. She could literally converse with a wall or a lamp for hours. And be totally fine. I have told her in the past few months "mom, stop asking me questions, i can't handle it."

Cinci makes us (her children) take a "birthday picture" every year. At first, we just had to put a shirt on, then she found this ridiculously huge birthday pin, then she found a hat, and a pair of crazy sunglasses and somehow, the woman actually found a blowup birthday cake. (she also owns a blow up turkey, a blow up snowglobe, and a blowup santa. Ask me what WT means)

She is very passionate and thinks that bee-otch isn't a cuss word.

She is so compassionate, she gives me and my three siblings the SAME EXACT AMOUNT every Christmas...down to the penny. She doesn't want ANYONE to feel like they're favored (even though I am). My dad tells a story about asking each child individually: me, Catherine, Eddie, and David, about who we all thought mom favored. And we each said, "isn't it obvious, she favors me." She loves to spoil her children. I was thinking as I drove home tonight, "Why do I feel so good and full and beautiful and uniquely gifted in New Orleans?" And i think a big part is due to my mom. She loves me for who I am, just where I am and how I am. Which sounds a lot like God. Around this time last year, I started having panic attacks. And she answered her cell phone at 5 a.m. when I called her, or 3 a.m., and just talked me through it. When I came home because I couldn't get a hold of myself, her life stopped and she catered to mine. And she said, "you don't know suffering until your child suffers and there's nothing you can do about it." As a 25 year old, there's nothing worse than being totally helpless to your body as it shakes and shudders and you lose control. Mom comforted me. She told me the most important thing, and it didn't have to do with God or religion or any other thing I was DESPERATLY trying to hold onto to fix me. She said "I have been through this and you will be OK, just like I am." And I AM better, and I think I understand God's love a little bit more because of her.

Then she went to jury duty and when asked if anyone had a problem with doing jury duty, she said "I suffer from panic attacks." AND GOT OUT OF IT. you better believe I'm using that excuse. Well, that's mom. I'm going to try to put a picture up but I don't really know how.

Well i'll leave you with this as I end and go to bed: I got my mom's passion. We used to have knock down drag out fights while I was in the throes of adolescence and we'd both be crying and slamming doors and breaking things. I can't TELL you how many times I said "I will NEVER BE LIKE HER!!!" But now, I hope to be like her when I become a mother.

Thanksgiving and intro.

2007-11-25T20:58:00.000-08:00

This is my third attempt to start this blog so I'm just going to start it. I usually try to be clever and creative and "hook the reader." Which is really, in the songwriting world, a trick to sell a song (which is a tragedy that I've come to terms with about art versus business, but I'll save that soapbox for another time.) I tried twice to be clever and it was lame. I have to blog and let the world know about my life, because, however pretentious or cocky this may sound, mine is TRULY fascinating.

Now, I've just gone through one of my hardest years and I'm finally on the other side, so now that I am laughing again, it's easy to find things to laugh about. And lately, I LITERALLY get drunk off of the people around me. I have this insatiable appetite to KNOW people. Yes I am dramatic. But that's a part of me so get over it. My sister described me perfectly the other night (when she was trying to be condescending). She says I am a 14 year old girl. And I totally am. It's wrong but I LOVE gossip, I didn't even realize that OK, People, and US Weekly were gossip magazines until a friend up north told me they were. I still read them. And i find gossip is the thing I most often repent to Jesus about. Honestly, I'm tired of trying to be a quiet, introverted, waifish, trendy hipster (this is something I feel like I want to be to fit into this ridiculous crowd in Nashville). I got over that after my most recent heartbreak, which was life altering. And I am in this beautifully amazing place of accepting who I am. And since you're reading, I'll let you in on me. I am loud. I love food (mouthgasm is one of my favorite words, and I usually have one at every meal. Seriously, when I had my first kiss (which was amazing by the way), I compared it to delicious food). I fall in love with anyone who will give me the time of day. I'm competitive. I desperately need to be affirmed. I still try to prove myself to my dad. I'm worth being pursued. I don't really have time for people who are going to screw me over. I am a fan of therapy and medicine. I go to a therapist and take Prozac. I usually tell people too much. I grew up Baptist and I have a hard time with the concept of grace. BUT, I'm learning that everything is NOT black and white and that gray is actually a beautiful color, and that not all Baptists are bad. I've spent most of this Thanksgiving break laughing with my mom. I play tetris and stac (this amazing widget) and get ticked if someone beats my high score. Namely my sister. I got engaged after 3 months of dating someone, and I don't regret it at all. I'm really good at writing ballads. I love cracking my neck, my fingers, my toes, and my back. I have great eyelashes and just this morning, I was admiring my ears. I could drink the ranch that they serve at Chili's. And yes, I like Chili's even though it is not trendy. I like REAL mayonnaise and butter. And now I'm getting tired. More later.