Things that I should've learned when I was 13....

It's amazing how I'm still growing as a person, and I'm double that age now. Does the changing and struggling and fixing things about yourself ever really go away? Or is that just a delusion of youth?

So, because I like lists, I'm going to list a few things I should've learned a long time ago, but didn't.

1) Mayonnaise is delicious. I've been hating on it for years, but that's only because I've been eating gross sweet mayo. Homemade mayo is manna from heaven.

2) Hurrying through my meals is a bad habit. I should be able to sit and enjoy food, since I'm eating it anyways. I used to see my speed-eating as a positive - like I could put it on my resume or something. It's not. It makes me eat too much and gives me stomach problems.

3) Canada is not just a crappy version of the U.S.. My first comment to Norman when we landed in Hamilton, ON, was "Canadians look like Americans, except they're happy."

4) I'm a feminist. I've been avoiding that word for years, because it is so loaded - especially in a conservative, religious atmosphere. But the truth is, I'm a feminist. I believe in gender equality. And no, that does not mean I love power suits or want to be a man in any way. I just want the access to the opportunities and blessings to be the same no matter your chromosomal makeup.

5) Happiness is not complicated. I used to think that I had happiness figured out - that it is something achieved after years of struggle with self, with God, with others. That it was a balance. Turns out happiness is what happens when you accept who you are and what you are capable of. It happens when you start living every day as a new opportunity for good, as opposed to a punishment for past mistakes.

6) I never want to be part of a society that teaches women that they need to wear shapewear every day. It is indicative of restraint in so many other ways. I can honestly say that, at least for me, the shapewear I sported on a daily basis was the outward manifestation of something very, very wrong in how I perceived myself.

7) Not everything I think is bad is universally accepted as such. Not to say I change my view of whether or not it is bad, but rather that people who don't have the exact same view of what is "good" and "bad" as me are not, therefore, "bad" people.

8) There are bad people out there. Very. Bad. People.

9) I've let people manipulate me far too much in the past. I discovered that there are very, very few people whose opinions matter to me. The rest of you can feel free to shove your negative feedback where the sun don't shine.

10) My faith journey is mine, and mine alone. Maybe someday I'll start sharing it on here. But I don't need to validate my testimony or personal convictions to ANYONE, EVER.*

11) I really like me. I think I'm great. And I think that leaving the abyss known as Provo, Utah was the BEST thing I have ever done. For myself and for everyone there.

So what are some of the things you know now that you should've known when you were 13?

*Except in a temple recommend interview. Then, you know, it's kind of, like, mandatory.

PARADISE FOUND!!

I promise there will be pictures next time.

But for now, let me just say....


I LIVE IN PARADISE!!!

It's beautiful. And I am very, very tan.

Relatively speaking.

Tere

So, let me introduce you to a friend of mine.

This is Tere. She is 25. I first met her when I was her teacher in the MTC. We got along WAY too well.... all the time. Like.... I shouldn't have been her teacher. Because we would joke around and laugh and have fun. All. The. Time.

She came home from her mission in September, and was home in Merida, Mexico, for a few months.

In February, she came to Utah to visit. I always dreamed we'd be friends, but now it was really happening!

Last weekend, while playing games up Provo Canyon, Tere climbed a particularly tall tree. It wasn't the first tree she had climbed in her life.... she was actually pretty good. Unfortunately, this tree was old, and dry, and kind of dead.

While she was climbing out on a limb about 15 feet high, she rested her weight on a small branch. It broke, and Tere fell.

The first thing that happened was that her face hit the branch she was on. She fell 15 feet and landed on the back of her neck, slamming the rest of her body down. After being assessed on the scene, it was decided that she would need to be life-flighted out of the canyon. A few men went and cleared a nearby meadow so that the helicopter could land.

Over the next 48 hours, she had scans, tests, and 3 different surgeries. It was determined that she had crushed a vertabrate so completely it had entered her spinal column. The vertabrate above it was dislocated. They operated and placed steel plates and rods in her back. Her bones surrounding her eye were fractured, and the muscles torn, so they repaired those. She also had broken ribs, so she had tubes placed on either side of her body to drain the fluid from her lungs.

The doctors are expecting that she will never walk again. She has full upper-body function, but her legs are no longer functioning normally.

Now, this sounds like a sad thing. And in some ways, it is. But in other ways, it's not. Tere is strong, and happy, and well. She is recuperating quickly, and has many visitors.

The only problem is that she has no medical insurance.

So her sister and her brother-in-law are setting up a donation account in her name, to try and gather some money to cover the costs. And so yes, I am going to ask you for money. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime this week. And I am pleading with you to give just a little bit. Maybe a dollar. You don't think it will make a difference, but it will.

I will be posting how to donate later this week. And I ask you to consider donating. This is an amazing woman who will never walk again. She has enough to go through without the crushing weight this debt is going to place on herself and her family.

If you choose not to donate, I will still like you :). But please, consider donating.

An (almost) Desperate Plea for Validation

This post is probably going to come off a little bitchy.

If you're not into that, here are some other fantastic websites you can visit that don't have that tone:

hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

http://iwastesomuchtime.com/

http://attackofthecute.com/

If you are into that, then here goes.

So, I hang out with people. Most nights. I have the few nights where I stay home, but usually, I'm not home. Not in the spring, summer, or fall, at least. And I see all these people I love - old friends, new friends, acquaintances that still think I'm awesome and therefore still want to hang out with me (they don't last very long (:).  And these people I see usually bring up my blog. They say things like

"You're so funny!"

"I love reading your blog."

"That post about (fill in the blank) was awesome."

and

"You're so awesome you make unicorns and Chuck Norris alike bow their heads in shame, eclipsed by the blinding glory you emanate."

(K, so that last one was fake. But I'd LOVE it if someone DID say that to me!)

And yet, it seems that these people chuckle in silence, never bothering to validate my hilarity (thus ensuing its continuance) through comments, either here or on facebook. And I just have to say....

REALLY? As I'm writing, I spend a good amount of time thinking of the funniest and best ways to phrase things. I find amusing and informative videos to illustrate my points.

If you think I'm funny, tell me so.

Because, dear readers, I could REALLY use some validation right about now.

The Saga of How I Became a Pirate: Part Duex

If you haven't read The Saga of How I Became a Pirate: Part One, now would be a good time to do so.

SO!

On to part duex. When I became a legit pirate.

Ok. So after getting used to my giant, sweaty, yellowed eye gauze with an actual black eye patch over it (to keep out the light), I started to go back to my usual self. Falling down stairs because of my lack of depth perception, almost falling off ladders because I REFUSE to let people help me.... You know - being adventurous and not thinking things through. It's what I do. Haters gonna hate.

At this camp that I worked at, we would have different night-time activities during the week. Usually there were a few evening campfires, which would take place at Bennington Point. For convenience, I have decided to include a map of camp.

Bennington Point..... on the southwest point of the island.

We would prepare skits, musical numbers, activities, and the like for the campers. I have some AWESOME stories about that. (Hint: celebrity jeopardy where I played the bad-ass velociraptor from Jurrasic Park.) Other nights, we would play risk, or tag, or soccer.

And then, there was my FAVORITE activity.

CAPTURE. THE. FLAG.

For all those who didn't spend their childhoods PINING for the opportunity to play this game, I included a short video explaining the basics.

Yeah. Majestic, right?

Well, if you've ever met me, you would know - I can get PRETTY competitive.

So one wednesday evening, it was capture the flag night. As usual, we got two gallon jugs of washable, non-toxic paint in red and blue to mark the teams. (I include those details to show that Camp Abnaki is awesome at fun AND safety.) The campers would line up in two long, unwashed, slightly smelly lines to get painted. Two counselors (Ian Boyajian and Eric something) were assigned to mark them. They decided to dip their hands in bowls of paint and basically facepalm each camper. So I helped supervise the lines, making sure the campers didn't get in any savage fights, and then I went up to the red team to get my handprint.

The conversation went something like this:

Ian: "Hey Princess." (That was my nickname)

Me: "Hey". *Sticks out my face to be facepalmed*

Ian: "Um, seriously?"

Me: "What? I want to be on the red team. Like the communists."

Ian: "You're not playing."

Me: "Why not??"

Ian: "Remember how you fell down the stairs yesterday, because your depth perception is off?"

Me: "Whatever. I do what I want."

I then dipped my hand into the paint and face palmed myself.

(Side note: That paint was non -toxic and washable, but smelled terrible and was SO ITCHY.)

After some formalities, the game began.

Now, they were being pretty permissive with me, letting me play. I think everyone assumed that I would play capture the flag exactly like I played risk or basketball... hide behind someone and pretend I'm available. NOPE. I'm a freaking CHAMPION at capture the flag.

So after the ichty self-facepalming, I joined my team. They created a strategy which, unsurprisingly, did not include me. They don't even know, I thought. I'll show them!

Okay. Now fast forward about 45 minutes. Our team desperately needs to score. And although most of my existence that summer was ALWAYS in the spotlight (one of three women on a boy's summer camp..... yeah, let's just say I was constantly aware of my gender), this was the one circumstance in which I was overlooked because of my dos equis. Most of the time I was looked over. If you understand the distinction. Mae West did.

I was totally overlooked! So I didn't even have to sneak as I approached their flags, took one, and began walking nonchalantly away. Eventually one of the younger kids noticed..... and I TOOK OFF running.

So there I was, running full out towards the median line, in athletic shorts and a bright pink T-shirt, braided pigtails flying, a pack of sweaty boys in hot pursuit. My lack of sight in one eye was the last thing on my mind.

You know what was my first?

VICTORY.

The sweet mistress of glory. She would crown me, "princess", the QUEEN of capture the flag. True, my cover would be blown, and never again would I be overlooked, but the street cred I would get? Totes worth it.

As I sprinted toward the line, I could hear the chariots of fire theme song playing in my head. I pictured myself looking something like this:

But I'm pretty sure I looked more like this:

I was so close.

And then, all of a sudden, I was tumbling down the hill sideways, with a sharp pain in my knee.

What the heck had happened?

As I lay at the bottom, the bitter taste of failure in my mouth (or was that dirt?), I pondered that question.

Basically, what had happened is this. A counselor decided my victory must be thwarted. So he charged me at full speed. From my right side.

The side where I had no vision.

And in doing so, he had hit me hard enough to sprain my knee. Badly.

So after a quick trip to the hospital on the bigger island nearby, I came back to camp.

With, basically, a peg leg. (immobilizer and crutches.)

This is one of the few pictures from that summer. That's me. In the middle.



I was banned from woodshop for the rest of the summer. Nobody wants to work with an arts and crafts director with a hook.

The Saga of How I Became a Pirate: Part One

When I was 19, I met this girl named Maureen. We worked at "Veg Prep" together, an awful job that started at 6am and consisted mainly of washing and chopping fruits and vegetables for the on-campus restaurants. We would make 40 pounds of fruit salad, de-stem 50 pounds of grapes, and if you were ESPECIALLY lucky, you got to slice the 96 pounds of tomatoes that Subway used every day. This was the most dreaded task, mostly because the slicers were dull and sometimes you'd get one of those grenade-like tomatoes that would explode on contact. And getting slimed by tomato snot is not my favorite past-time.

Anyway, I met this girl named Maureen. And if there's one thing people should know about me, it's that I'm not a morning person. I'm NOT. A. MORNING. PERSON. And I don't feel bad for it. And I'm uninterested in being converted to the infernal belief that the morning is a great or even acceptable time to be awake or making sound. So you can imagine how pleasant I was at this job. However, much to my liking, people were mostly silent through my 6-10 am shift.

Except Maureen.

She'd ask questions, and talk, and laugh, and listen to ruckus music. ("Ruckus", if you're wondering, is music I would usually like, but in the morning, it sounds like putting a brick in a clothes dryer.)

Even though she was awful in the morning, the rest of the day, Maureen was nice and fun. And she was from Vermont. Which was new. Through the few conversations I could carry on in the morning (because carrying on a conversation is hard, when all you can think about is ripping out someone's trachea) (I warned you! I hate the morning!), I learned that Maureen worked on a summer camp in North Hero, Vermont. Every summer.

Do want.

So, I applied for the job, and although I was MASSIVELY underqualified for the position of Arts and Crafts Director, I was hired. (In my defense, they should have screened me more. They barely even ASKED about my artsy fartsy skills). I flew to vermont, moved into a cabin infested with wolf spiders, and began that summer.

There are so many stories I plan to tell you about this period in my life, but the first is about the crazy injuries I sustained.

So I was the arts and crafts director, right? And this was an all boys summer camp. So we had to mix normal arts and crafts activities such as "candle making", "clay sculpting", and "hemp necklaces" with other, more bad-ass alternatives such as "fire", "building a kiln", and "making a whip that Indiana Jones would jones for". In one such activity, which included building an epic fire, heating up pots of water in it, then melting cans of colored wax in the water, was fire-candle-making. I was doing my best to help 11 and 12 year old boys have fun dipping wicks into the wax and then a bucket of cold water, all while keeping the fire burning and making sure that they didn't burn themselves in a way I could get in trouble for. During all this, the water in one of the double boiler pots boiled out, and some wax from my giant aluminum cans leaked into the pot.

Well, if you know anything about wax, water, and hot fires, you can probably guess what happened next.

But, for the rest of us, who didn't know how lethal those three could be, I'll tell you.

I leaned over the fire to make sure one of the particularly savage campers didn't hurt himself while poking an extremely dry stick into the embers of the fire. At this precise moment, the three unknowingly lethal substances combined into one tiny fireball from hell, which spat up from the fire and landed directly on MY EYE.

I think I was impressively collected for about the next 5 minutes. I continued being awesome and making candles with unwashed pre-teens.

Then, I realized I couldn't open my eye without it stinging. And I'm not talking about some pansy "open your eyes under seawater" sting. I'm talking about if someone pried your eye open and actively salted it. Yeah. That kind of stinging. The kind that makes you yell out the Lord's name, but not in vain. Because you are genuinely pleading for help. So after a few momets of "DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE" and "WHY!!!!! WHY!!!!", we began to actually search for a solution. (To the everlasting credit of those pre-teens, not even ONE of them laughed at me right then. Good boys.)

So, basically, we found the camp nurse, Shelley, and the next thing I knew, I was laying on a table in an office building that probably once was a greasy diner, being examined by a man wearing a hawaiian shirt.

(NOTE to everyone who wants to be a doctor: unless you're in the caribbean, wearing a hawaiian print shirt while examining a patient does NOT inspire confidence.)

After an overly long visit, during which I had begun to regard my doctor as a harmless but inept bird pecking around me and making odd squaking sounds, he numbed my eye, glued it shut, and gave my giant gauze pads and athletic tape to cover up my eye so light couldn't get it.

Well, if you know anything about Vermont (which, if you don't, it's cool. It's tiny and the only good thing about it is epic maple syrup), you know that it is HUMID. Like, sit around under someone's tongue for a while humid. And my gauze pads were white. So combine those two with an almost camping - like atmostphere, and you have....


A 19 year old insecure girl wearing a crudely cut and taped eye patch that is yellowed with sweat and curling up instead of sticking to the skin, once again because of SWEAT.

NOT what I looked like. But I'm not confident enough to post what I actually looked like.

What's funny is that I had a boyfriend then, and not now. Go figure.

Up Next: How I became a legitimate pirate. Or at least looked like one. Not on purpose.

Operation Evolution: FAILED

Today, I'd like to discuss why I believe evolution has failed. (And by saying that, I have just lured some creationists who believe that the earth is 7,000 years old into a false sense of security.) I'm not about to talk about how the dinosaurs died in Noah's flood, or how science is all malarky trying to make us stray from the path of God.

In fact, I have almost attacked people who have said those very things. Not believing in the fundamentals of the theory of evolution is like not believing the fundamentals of gravity: if you jump off a building, you're still going to fall.

Go ahead! Jump!

Anyway. I digress.

In my job, I encounter many different people. MANY. And every week, I like to compile a list of people who evolution should remove from the gene pool. And by list I mean I like to think about it. Who has paper anymore anyway?

This week, I've decided that human evolution has failed because there are people who:

1) Don't know their own phone number. WHO the HELL doesn't know their own cell phone number? There are only a few viable excuses for this, which include advanced Alzheimer's and a strange fear of 7 or 10 digit numbers. But even then, just put the 1 in front of it, and it's 11 numbers! PROBLEM SOLVED! What if Matt Damon asked you for your phone number? What then?

Imagine this man...

Asking THIS question.

2) Have their zumba instructor/clandestine lover/5 year old child write letters of reference for them. That is suspicious. There's NO ONE ELSE who would recommend you? The only people who think you're a swell enough person to write something nice about are someone you interact with only when sweating, when cheating, or someone completely dependent on you for life? How about I have my dog write my letter of reference. She thinks I'm awesome.

3) Spend 20 minutes telling me about every detail of their lives in order to come to the conclusion that: "I need to set up an appointment with someone to clean my teeth". I don't need to know about your last bowel movement, when and where you contracted the clap, and that you heard that dog's saliva is more sanitary than human saliva. Just tell me what you want.

I feel like this sometimes.

4) Have no concept of how awful they are. These are the people that always assign blame to someone else, and assume that nothing they do or say is wrong, ever. Usually I want to tell those people that they come from *enter city name, USA*, not Mount Olympus, that they are eating McDonalds, not manna that has been rained upon them from the heavens, and that no, they do not in fact shart unicorns.

Really? Cause I'm pretty sure you're 5. And that makes you better than no one.

If you are guilty of any of these, please - tell me why I'm insensitive in the comments. Also, if you would like to tell me how science is all malarky trying to make us stray from the path of God, post it in the comments. If you think I'm right, feel free to counteract the negative comments from the first two groups of people and redeem my self esteem. In the comments.

Also, today I had to get shots. So while they were stabbing me, I pictured myself riding a pegacorn, eating bacon.