If your living room floor looks like a toy store

(Mom Song–Go Fish)

You know you’re growing up when walking into your apartment and seeing this:

just part of the mess…

doesn’t just feel really homey…it kind of also feels like a disaster zone that you are going to need to clean up and you are wondering why you can’t just keep things neat and organized…and it is no consolation that it is a lot cleaner than it was earlier…that picture seriously doesn’t even do justice to the disarray I walked into…

Apparently I have now learned how not to make bean soup…yuck…so I read recipes shortly before spring break and over spring break implemented the plan and then froze it, and I tried it for the first time yesterday and it is gross…so the directions were black beans, chili seasonings, chicken broth, water…seems easy enough, right?…well I thought I could short cut a little and use chili beans…and then it seemed to watery (because I got a little carried away with the water), so I was going to put in a little thickener…except I got a little distracted and ended up with an extremely large amount of thickener…so anyway, today I heated it up and decided it was a little bland so I added some chili seasoning and pepper…the result: a mushy goop that tastes vaguely spicy but definitely not like bean soup, and not like chili…luckily I only did that to one can of beans…

It is probably going to be a frustrating day today…yeah…so guess who forgot her headphones at home…which means distraction will be more of a problem than usual…and I can’t listen to the videos I wanna listen to…

Every Sunday I re-learn the same lesson: not every crumb on the bed is food…

We’re grounded and surrounded by folks who are dumbfounded

(No Fair O’Hare–The Plane Truth)

Oh my…I don’t even know what to say about this…I just wish I could un-hear it. Some girl was talking on the phone in front of me, and she says something like “oh my g**h! Did you hear that he was diagnosed with a mental illness???!!” Besides just how gossipy and rumor-spreading that sounds, I took huge offense at that, because it wasn’t just what she said, but how she said it. She sounded so excited to have gossip to share, and when she got to the words mental illness her voice got quiet and secretive as if it is something shameful, embarrassing, and unfit for conversation. This is the kind of attitude that I want to change on campus. This attitude of superiority…this attitude of disgust for people who didn’t choose to struggle…this attitude of meeting people with a heart of disqualification rather than of empathy and concern…

You may want to be cautious before clicking over if you are easily grossed out, but this post over at (in)courage is a really good reminder of the blessing of kindness…accepting kindness doesn’t *just* bless the giver… #kindnessmatters

This picture speaks for itself…

‘Cause I am For You. I’m Not Against You.

(Drops in the Ocean–Hawk Nelson)

…I had one of those moments last night where I realize that even though I am perfectly happy to attempt to communicate that the years of practice I lost to social anxiety mean that I do not have the experience to know how to respond in some situations…Inside my heart I know what I want to convey, but inside my head although a few words and communicative gestures are coming out of my mouth, they aren’t really communicating the sentiment that I want them to…What I am trying to use to say I love you, I care about you, I understand how you feel and want to give you hope feels like it is coming across more as get over yourself…which is then making me even less able to listen as I am trying to figure out how to fix what just came out of my mouth…practice makes perfect?…How do you explain that you really have lived in the self-made prison that person is describing in a way that is real, non-minimizing, validating, loving, hopeful?…I’m sure I’ll figure it out…It took a while of being comfortable on the phone before I figured out to consistently say hello and identify myself first even without a script to tell me to do that…so I have no doubt that as I have more experience that I will figure out some of these things…

So…umm…if you wouldn’t mind, I’d still really appreciate getting the word out about my previous post abt allergies…my original goal was 100 views…(considering I normally get around 3-5 views per day unless I accidentally go viral in which case I get 15-25 views…but I didn’t even reach the level of going viral…not going to get me down though…I trust my God to get my words to the people who need them, and I did my part sharing on my home and school facebook pages, on twitter, on pinterest, and on a social media community site that I used to spend way too much time on until it changed to a point where it wasn’t holding my interest anymore…

I am NOT a fan of the snow today…finally got out the door with what I thought was everything I needed, down the stairs, open the door…and is that rain really hard? Should I go all the way back upstairs for my umbrella?…wait a minute, that is snow…can I just keep going? No stupid, go back upstairs and put on long pants and closed toe shoes…pouty face…

So new on the blog: categories…So you might (or might not) have noticed that I am working on adding categories to my posts…I originally didn’t, because, this is going to sound a little crazy, but those extra few words were more than my social anxiety could handle…yeah…I could write a blog post, but I couldn’t categorize it…

It is going to take me a while–I have over 200 posts, and each has to be individually assigned, and I don’t plan on really comprehensive categories…with an endeavor like this, general is just the only realistic way to go, but hopefully soon the categories will be assigned far enough so as to be useful in finding what you are looking for…

In the process of putting in categories I do end up skimming my posts since I can’t exactly categorize what I do not know what is…and it is kind of cool to see how far God has taken me. I’m not who I was in so many ways, but at the same time my core identity and personality has remained unchanged…in some ways though without the anxiety it really allows who I am to shine through more, although in other ways the other circumstances in life have limited sharing…

I also tried a while back to get on bloglovin, and I’m not sure if I was actually successful, but if you would like to see me join that community or any other blog community (blogfrog? blogher?) I would be happy to look into seeing if I can figure those out…I don’t want to put in the effort though if no one is interested, because the writing I do is mostly for me, but those things are more work than I need to do for *just* me.

And on that note, if you have any other suggestions for me, let me know, and I will see what I can do…I’m not the most computer savvy person, so I might not be able to implement everything, because I have no intention of hiring anyone to help me with the blog, but I am very open to suggestions…

Have a beautiful day bloggy friends 🙂

Life Knocks Me Down I Won’t Stay Down

(Who you say you are–Britt Nicole)

Are allergies *really* that dangerous?

It is allergy season, and while itchy eyes and sneezing can be irritating, allergy can be much more.

Researchers have recently discovered that Major Depressive Disorder, MDD, was linked to excessive release of cytokines, substances that promote an immune reaction. In patients with MDD, stress elicits an immune reaction. 

This new understanding of the biologic basis of depression elucidates a novel approach to treatment. Monoclonal antibodies that neutralize the cytokines the body erroneously releases was shown to effectively eliminate depressive symptoms.

It is significant to have the ability to effectively treat depression, because depression can create impulses similar to the urge to sneeze—patients are not thinking about alternatives, they just feel the need to sneeze—and that sneeze is suicide. They do not truly want to die.

We tend to put emphasis on the why. Why did the person die? But what we should be looking at is how. Similar to evidence from the British Coal-Gas Conversion, gun availability plays a crucial role. If the death had been an impulsive homicide, we would not question the importance of the how, yet when encountered with depression we seem to turn our focus from the how.

 How can we both recognize and treat allergies, and how can we prevent the death of those who slip through the cracks and feel the impulse to sneeze?

Want more information? See below for links to further information.

Open minds was created to spread awareness and stretch your perspective and understanding about a variety of topics. Open minds seeks to create an environment where everyone’s voice will be heard and respected. If you would like to contribute or have ideas or suggestions please comment below. Open minds would love to hear your commentary, and incorporate your suggestions or partner with you.

For more information on the research on the link between allergy and depression, click here!

For more information on how suicide is essentially a sneeze, click here!

For more information about suicide in general, and the British Coal-Gas Conversion, click here!

If you are in currently hurting or feel the impulse to sneeze, click here for anonymous online chat with a friendly, supportive operator between noon and midnight, or a number to call for help between midnight and noon.
These people do not judge, and you don’t need to tell them anything that doesn’t feel comfortable to you. They want to help you feel better regardless of what your concern is, big or small. They are trained to listen and help you through anything that is bothering you. If they are worried about your safety they may ask for more information about your location, but you do not need to answer if it doesn’t feel good to you.

Open Minds recently had a second meeting–if you were already on break check out the Open Minds blog to find out what we talked about!

(So this was supposed to be in an email to go out to my pharmacy school. Unfortunately, a certain someone was being this person’s usual self: power hungry and controlling and doing whatever possible to make my life miserable and shot it down, but no one can regulate what I post and share here, so here it is, moderately less well formatted, because formatting on wordpress is a LOT more difficult than on email, word, or blogger, and I am not great at it any of those places either–I tried out publisher for the first time last week because my email kept “helping me out” by re-formatting my email completely each time I opened it which was NOT helpful. Like usual it seems, the amount of time and effort I put in is inversely proportional to the positive results I obtain…but we can sometimes change that…and that’s where I need your help! No, I am not starting a petition.

Just watch me get more views on this post than I was ever going to get from an email…’cause we all know, many people would delete the email before even knowing what it was about and without even reading as far as the subject line regardless of how intriguing it may have been…so yeah…if you don’t mind, I’d love to see this post shared with everyone you know or even have never met before…’cause I am stubborn like that…you tell me it isn’t a message worth sharing and I’ll prove just how many people I can reach with it! You better believe if I am passionate telling me no will light a fire underneath my feet to press on harder towards what I want…life is not bad…I overheard some people having a conversation the other day and I was laughing so hard…Person 1: Do you have OCD? Person 2: just parts of it. Person 1: Just the O and the C? (and then later in the conversation Person 1 started talking about something I taught her last year and I was SO proud that the teeny tiny lesson I interjected that day apparently had some impact…spreading OCD awareness one little lesson at a time…)…so yeah…)

What’s your story of wrestling with trying to be “perfect”? How is God setting you free? Linkup with Holley Gerth

Hey friends! If you’ve been around here long you know other than in the past month I don’t really do linkups…but Holley Gerth, author of You are Already Amazing, You’re Going to Be Okay, and You Were Made for a God-Sized Dream (among others) just released a new book, You’re Loved No Matter What. Disclaimer: I have not actually read any of her books, but I want to…that is on my someday list…but she is an amazingly talented blogger so I have no doubt that her books are also amazing…

I have spent a lot of my life seeking perfection…and simultaneously having quotes like “Perfection is my Enemy” adorning my room…it is kind of a contradiction, but at the same time it really has described a lot of my life…

In school, people have always assumed that everything came easily to me and that I didn’t need to study…when in reality school was a struggle and I was spending every waking minute studying…I was the one in middle school who came to swim meets equipped with a calculator, textbooks, and graph paper notebooks in plastic bags, and while other girls were drawing on themselves or whatever else middle school girls do to occupy their time, I was doing homework…and I was and still am a firm believer in the idea that days off for school were created to give students a little extra time for studying (which is why it is frustrating sometimes to take finals and then immediately go on break in college…although I do appreciate only having finals twice a year so that kind of balances it out)…and with that comes the expectation that I would always do well on every assignment…people have literally told me that they wouldn’t expect anything but A’s from me…that’s a lot of pressure not to disappoint…

I want to do well…and I really want to make sure I am doing well enough to get the residencies and jobs that I want…but really I feel no need to be perfect…

…and I am learning to accept less than even “okay” because my grades are seriously bad…(people who know me might be expecting me to say that OMGZ I have like only a 93% in some classes, but I legitimately am rocking the D range in a few classes…at the end of the day D’s get degrees, but I doubt that D’s get residencies regardless of the situation surrounding the grades…and I only have about a month of school left to get the train back on the tracks…)…when I got my first bad final grades a year and a half ago, it was frustrating, but in reality, no one hated me…although unfortunately, it didn’t change people’s expectation of me…

…but seriously, I do NOT seek perfection, but it is seriously frustrating when I try so hard for so little results…I would really appreciate if my grades could reflect how hard I worked…or at least reflect how much I knew…

If you were a boat…my darling I’d be the wind at your back

(Boat Song–JJ Heller)

Alternatively titled: in which I write about everything except what I really want to talk about…

Sunday became the best day of my entire life in the history of ever (slight exaggeration) because I wasn’t even looking for it, but I found out that someone unblocked me on facebook—which of course meant that I checked if anyone else had that I knew of, and they hadn’t…but that didn’t steal my joy!…I am thrilled…I never had any desire to be facebook friends with this particular person ever, but for me it feels very hurtful to block me regardless of who is doing it or why it is being done. It makes me feel excluded and unwanted…and it is not like blocking me will do anything different than not being friends with me unless you like to share things with friends of friends and have some friends in common with me…

Just to be clear in case anyone reading my blog sees this and wants to be mad because someone is being even marginally nice to me, I just want to make it clear that I am 99% sure this person currently resides in Hawaii or Florida or one of those other states that has oceans…just want to make that clear so I don’t get anyone in trouble in the midst of announcing my excitement…

Haha…oh…and if you were wondering where the title came from…I happened across another facebook page that I thought was someone I knew—the puppy looked really familiar and the first and middle name was a match so the only problem was the girl’s hair, being too curly and the husband’s hair being too spiky but hair can change drastically especially on girls…(and considering my very low ability to tell people apart, for a dog the color and approximate size are the only things I have at my disposal to distinguish them, ’cause I can’t analyze stance, clothing, personality, or voice—especially via pictures…so really the dog being a match probably doesn’t mean anything anyway…) and I was trying to decide if I was brave enough to rock the boat and try friending her…but I was afraid that while I was thrilled to see her page that if I even so much as reached my arm out enough to touch the surface of the water that the entire boat would flip over and I’d lose what little progress I’d made…I have made a few new facebook friends recently, but for the most part I have asked first if they wanted to be friends before actually friend-requesting them…but anyway, upon looking at the actual profile, the only public information was a wedding date that was completely wrong…and I feel like most people if they are going to put their wedding date on facebook would at LEAST get the month and/or the year right…or hopefully both…and before I saw that, not knowing how long this had been around before I had noticed it, I didn’t want to be that person who friend requests the minute the link goes active…’cause that could very easily feel stalkerish…

I mean, I definitely felt intruded upon over winter break with a social media situation. I hadn’t wanted a LinkedIn and had been resisting for a long time, but you can’t really long-term keep refusing to create a LinkedIn. So anyway, I had had a LinkedIn for about 3 days, didn’t even have any connections yet, and had entered minimal information (as in like my name, school, and MAYBE current workplace) when I got my first connection request…It was from a counselor I had never met with. It felt intrusive, creepy, and unwanted. This particular counselor was the one I had set up a first session with in November but cancelled in about three more days when I found someone else with an opening, because in the course of a very short phone call to set up the session she had already conveyed a distinct lack of trust and told me straight up she doubted I would even bother to show up to the first session anyway…all that to say this is not someone with whom I had anything close to a positive relationship…and it felt creepy and intrusive to have a connection request from her within so few days of even creating an account…I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. We have no mutual reason to be connected—no shared career path, not classmates, not coworkers, hardly even acquainted…so I am not sure I even want to know why she decided to look me up and why once she found me she thought it would be okay to request me…

On the positive side, within the span of about 10 minutes on Monday I saw three people that I do not like and seeing them usually makes me really mad on the inside (I promise there aren’t a lot of people like that—which makes it that much less likely I would ever see three even within the same 10 days much less the same 10 minutes)…but I was just fine…although considering how upset I got about something pretty unrelated to that Monday evening, either I kind of suppressed the anger for a while, or else my response in the evening was just magnified because of the quiz in Therapeutics in the morning that I was stressed out (more likely causative agent) about because my grade in T2 is already not that great, and it seems like the harder I try to study the less information I manage to learn and it is getting to the point where I have started considering whether I should try to become one of those people who doesn’t really go to class or study or do homework that much and therefore doesn’t really care a whole lot about the grades because a good grade is going to be a gift…(but I’m not a quitter so I’m not gonna do that…you can just call me Miss Bull-headed over here, because I refuse to give up even once I have passed the point of the seeming futility of my efforts…but that isn’t always a bad thing…my persistence and determination is how I finally got to where I am today living anxiety-free, and most days I wouldn’t trade that for the world…(though there are occasional days I would take it back in exchange for a few of my friends back, but I kind of know that if it were even possible to make that exchange that I may eventually regret it…)

Also, banana flavored tootsie pops do not taste like bananas, and while they are good, they are not as amazing as they look…but they still adequately deliver sugar for a reasonable period of time…and still way better than the chocolate flavored ones…

Also I kind of wish stupid IT hadn’t taken DDR off my computer after the company I bought my software from went out of business, because now I can never get back the songs I had a download of online…also I wish I had bought the GodRocks expansion pack disk before they went out of business, because I am craving that music, and it would be awesome to be able to listen to it in the background…even if that does mean hearing it tell me how I failed the song (because I wasn’t actually playing, just listening…)

If try really hard counted for anything I would be an amazing person…unfortunately, most people are more interested in results…and not necessarily the same results that are important to me…

And it is now time to stop writing before I start getting to close to what I really want to talk about which will probably not be something that is appropriate to share…see, I didn’t learn NOTHING in high school…it has just taken a long time as is still a work in progress to create a filter that usually expresses myself without over-sharing…yeah…I would be the one who announced that she didn’t always wear pants when she cooked or washed dishes because it is one less thing to throw in the laundry basket when I am done…

There Ain’t No Disguising What’s True

(Jesus Freak–DC Talk)

If anyone wanted to know what I was passionate about, a tour of my backpack would give a really good idea even with the journal remaining closed…

Let’s see…pictures drawn and given to me by IttyBitty (age 3) and FireBall (age 4ish)…

(Digital) Folder of “cute kid pics” starring primarily people I have no connection to besides both living in the world and having some sort of internet access…(Edited to add: I know tis sounds kinda creepy if you don’t really know me…I never take pictures of kids, but I have cute files for pictures I find on the internet…I recently deleted the cute penguin, cute kitty, and cute dolphin file, ’cause I don’t care anymore, but I still have the cute kid file…they come mostly from advertisements or random pics that show up on my twitter or facebook feed…)…

Most common internet uses besides email: reading Scary Mommy and watching What’s Up Moms

Things I have spent more time than I care to admit distractedly soft-researching when I should have been studying: gluten-free daycare…selective mutism (hey, I was watching a kid video and then youtube’s stupid new autoplay feature picked an SM vid and I was hooked)…raising triplets or quads…reusable pouches (which speaking of reusable pouches, I think those have been around for a long time…it’s called tupperware…I don’t think I understand the appeal of a special container solely for applesauce or pudding…if you really want it to be squishy you could seal it in a plastic bag…I do like the idea of the commercial pouches though, because they seem less likely to get a hole and start leaking than the foil covered serving size bowls of applesauce…)

One of the very few pics I have of myself beyond high school aged: in the church nursery

I was feeling rebellious this morning so I turned off the chime on the dryer so I could internet as long as I felt like I needed to without bothering my neighbors in 23 minutes when the chime would go off over and over…I later realized that if that was my conceptualization of rebellious that is kind of pathetic…so I suppose that is how I get labeled as a good girl…and I guess it isn’t such a bad thing to be unable to intentionally hurt anyone or do anything (overly) “wrong.”

Why Would I Fall For a Fool Like You…I’m Better Off Without You

(dismissed–ZoeGirl)

Oh my…how things change…the phone ringing used to terrify me, and I am totally fine with it now…except today the phone was ringing (and I accidentally hung up instead of getting the screen turned on to find out who it was), and it left me a little concerned…

See, I don’t have proof of “who” was calling me, but the call came from the message system at my apartment…the one that is designed to act as a doorbell and calls to your phone (and mine goes to my cell since I don’t have a home phone) so you can either talk to someone through the intercom or let them in…here is the problem with that system calling me…

I do not have internet service at my apartment, and I don’t have a TV, much less cable service, so there is no reason for a worker to be wanting in.

Anyone who works for the apartment complex can get in without involving me, so they wouldn’t need to contact me, and if they just wanted to talk they’d call me from a real phone.

My parents can also get in without me, and I am pretty sure they would tell me before just showing up here…especially since it is a pretty long drive…

…And only two other people have ever been to my apartment…and one of those people knows that I am at school on Saturdays and would have no reason to stop by my apartment to see me…

…Which leaves one person who I have no idea why would be interested in getting into my apartment, but she is not welcome there. I would be happy to meet with this person elsewhere, but I have to have at least a marginal level of trust with you before I am going to be interested in having you drop by my apartment unexpectedly…

I suppose there is one other possibility. It is possible that someone was not specifically looking for me…however I am fairly certain the way the system is set up you have to type in someone’s apartment number and then it gives you verification of the last name of the person you are calling so someone would have to be really not paying attention…so in that case it seems like the most likely possibility would be a criminal hoping I would just let in anyone who called without asking whom it was first…which also is not a positive situation…okay fine, my school also has my address on file (even though they only ever mail things to my permanent address for my parents to forward to me) and someone could have looked it up and opted to say hello, but again, the chances of doing that without at least mentioning it to me first seem pretty low…

#notahappycamper #prayingforbestcasescenariotonight

I’ve Known Rejection

(Until I met You—Laura Story)

…oh yes…I have known rejection and hurt, which is why yesterday when a security guard beckoned to me my immediate reaction was to assume the worst…I admit that I have had a few good interactions with security like second year when I accidentally learned about the center of balance and gravity, and was internally freaking out about the resulting broken glass, but even more so about the germs that I felt were now covering my lower body. The security guard calmly called a janitor to clean up the broken glass and was gently concerned about my bare feet as I wandered around picking up the non-broken items and throwing away the bigger broken pieces (but not yelling at me and not mad)…but the bad far outweighs and outnumbers the good, and being beckoned briefly flashed me back to the first day of school, but I heard my name over the radio, and I was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be collaboration to hurt me without someone more gently letting me know in advance…so my mind was still going a mile a minute and the next thing it came up with was that they were looking at security footage and saw me walk through the mulch instead of using the sidewalk like a civilized human being…I know a lot of people cut across the mulch, and I know that doing so is rude, and I don’t usually do it, but I was having one of those days where walls and other stationary objects are not my friends, and cutting through the mulch was going to save me turning a corner, and I was terrified that someone looking for a chance to hurt me had decided this was it. I was getting ready to have my tattered heart ripped into shreds…but instead I was pleasantly surprised by someone who cared.

Usually communication is not so great at school, but someone made the specific effort to tell me that the res hall and Jones hall would be closed for 2 hrs in the morning. That was awesome and meant a lot to me. This was a good step towards building a bridge across the river of hurt that has flowed through my life. Expectation management is huge, and usually I only find these things out by trial and error and my primary inside study spot is the res hall, and my secondary inside study spot is Jones hall, and it is a LOT less frustrating when I know in advance what is going on and can even plan what I want to do about it…and it also saves the frustration if I am not physically blocked of being told to leave as if I should have known that when I had absolutely no way of knowing…

Also, another good experience I had yesterday was that I charged 4 cents to a card…see inside my head I needed to go to the store…however based on my former plans for the day I didn’t have time for Schnucks, so instead I went to Walgreens…except I didn’t really need anything from Walgreens so after hours wasted not getting anything done earlier in the day because I am stupid and lazy, I spent another 20 minutes wandering around choosing something to buy…and I ended up spending 4 cents more than I had left on my phone and since Walgreens wasn’t originally on my to do list I didn’t have any real money with me…I don’t know why I expected that to be a problem—at work I have had people swipe their card for even less than that before…but the workers at Walgreens are not always the greatest, so I kind of just expected to be laughed at, and I wasn’t…I should have gone to Schnucks on Tuesday when milk was on sale…however, I kinda forgot that ads change in the middle of the week here instead of on the weekends so I planned to go Saturday…someday I will install an upgrade on my brain that makes it work better…I think that upgrade is called graduate and go home where everything is how it is supposed to be, because it is dumb for the ads to change mid-week…

Part of getting free from the pressure to be perfect is knowing nothing can separate us from God’s love Linkup with Holley Gerth

So I’m a day late…and I don’t really have much on topic today, because I think that prompt pretty much sums it up better than I could say it myself anyway…

I talk to myself a lot…and sometimes I want to freeze in time some of the things I say, because while some of them are reflexive phrases that don’t mean much (like repeating you’re okay over and over when something is wrong), others I have to stop and think because did that really just come out of my mouth? So from the helpful to the mundane, here are a few of the random things that have come out of my mouth yesterday…and whether they make sense or not, God loves me the same 🙂

Emails work better when you hit send

People might make you mad but you are strong.

Life isn’t fair, and getting upset won’t change that.

Remember the surprises that are positive. That will be better for you in the long run.

You are a responsible capable girl whether people treat you like that or treat you like c**p.

When all else fails get up and try again…unless you just realized that your glasses fall off your face when you try to cartwheel…then carefully try to find them and sit your stupid butt down.

Look for the good in people whether they make you happy, frustrated, or are people who are getting a longer end of the stick than you are…everyone has some somewhere if you look hard enough…but some people make it like a really ridiculously hard treasure hunt to find the good…and maybe the good is only that they make beautiful babies…but someone’s gotta make good babies seeing as how you are interested in from birth special needs domestic adoption…and it is hard for a baby to not be beautiful…so basically, anyone who can make babies (including the dude, ’cause you can’t have a baby without a dude being involved) has at least a teeny tiny piece of good in them…

I don’t care that you weren’t going to get up again until you finished the paragraph—you are going to pee your pants if you don’t, and I am not interested in dealing with functional urinary incontinence.

There would be more cute drawings in your journal if you drew more cute drawings in your journal, but there’s not, because you didn’t.

Big girls don’t tense up and try to hide into a ball of flesh pressed against the wall when people stare at them. Eyes won’t hurt you.

Remember that you might not feel that smart but you are right way too often to be a weatherman.

Corollary: Trust your instincts, not the weatherman, and you will probably be less dissappointed.

Hold on tight but be ready to let go. Friends are awesome but it hurts less when you don’t have to have them pried out of your clenched fists…and cultivating relationship is good, but not when you stay even when you are being intentionally hurt.

Treat yourself the way in which you treat little people: markers break but there are lots of other colors left to color with.

Don’t forget sugar and water.

If you can’t stop playing with SD and can’t type and play at the same time then after 20 minutes it doesn’t matter that no one is taking her from you. You need to do homework. She knows the word mama…bring her as close as you can get to where mama hopefully is and tell her to find mama…

Sometimes spoons just need to go to spoon heaven, and you have to let them go. (I should probably explain about this one…see I have this folding spoon that I LOVE! Unfortunately, during fall break of third year I had a germ crisis and as a consequence, my nachos were heated over and over to the point of boiling to make sure they were clean enough to eat, and in the process this spoon got just a little melted, and ever since, no matter how much I try to clean it, it looks dirty and feels a little sticky…but it is an awesome spoon so I keep it and occasionally still use it, and I was doing dishes in the middle of the week which I pretty much never do because I wanted to use it again, and I decided that after this time I needed to consider throwing it away…I don’t actually believe that spoons go to heaven…just the landfill).

I should check out the semicolon project because after seeing this really powerful and reasonably well-done video about it, I am intrigued.

There is a special place in hell for toilet squatters. If you are going to pee like an animal then there are plenty of bushes outside…and as one commenter noted, even if you wipe it up with TP, that is NOT clean. Do you just let your kid’s blanket dry and re-make the bed when they wet it because now it is dry and therefore it is clean, or do you actually wash it?…umm please tell me you did not just read 57 pages of the comment section…this is why you get nothing done.

Be careful what lyrics come out of your mouth; “I don’t even have any clothes on” on repeat sounds real sketch.

That’s so tired.

Doesn’t everyone sleep with a cup of dried up milk?…but if I try to throw it to the sink it might land on top of the clean dishes…