BEDA Day 9: Human Interest Stories

You know how something can really, really bother you until you say it out loud or write it down, and then as soon as it is outside of your brain you are just over it? That was what yesterday was like. As soon as all that stuff was outside of my mind, I felt better. I even almost deleted my post, because it just did not matter so much anymore. But that would be cheating. :D

Anyway. Today, I am going to tell you some (as in two) stories about people who are not me.

ONE!

Last summer, there was a day at work in which one of my coworkers got a call, from her parents, saying that her younger sister (about 7) had been hit by a car. Her sister ended up being okay, except she was paralyzed from the waist down. :( Well, I just found out that that little girl's funeral was today. One year later. The last I heard about it, she was getting better... I dunno. Being from a small town, I just feel like I should have paid more attention to the situation. Been there. ...It is just very sad. :(

Two!

A girl in my house works for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. According to hearsay this is what happened to her today: A group of people--two girls and one guy--dropped off a car at her work today. They had driven from Kansas to meet up with people who they had met online. However, the people they were supposed to meet with stood them up. So these three people from Kansas are stranded in Seattle. Apparently, they ran out of money at some point, and the one girl was only there, because the other too were using her as a pocket of money. So once they ran out, she got like banished from their good graces. That girl called her mother and the mother wired her money to get a bus home to Kansas. The girl I live with drove her to the bus stop, and the girl talks about there being a cat in the car. She said they had never let the cat out the whole trip, and it was just sitting in its own pee in its little kennel. Also, that they had not fed it because they did not want it to poop, and were just planning on letting it go instead of worrying about it. Um...bad pet owners much? Anyway. So the one girl goes home via bus. But the other two are stuck here in Seattle. The girl I live with had to help them unload the car and all that business. She said that it was full of luggage, as if they thought they were moving, and it reeked of cat pee. She offered to call a place that would take the cat for them and take care of it. But, I guess they had let it go before she got a chance to offer. They said, "We let it out to give it some food, and it just ran away." Lies. So now that cat is just run wild and homeless in the city of Seattle. Now, the car was super messed up and has to get detailed and stuff. Needless to say all the charges are going to go to that poor girl who paid for the trip and went home on the bus. The two people left had no where to be (because the people had stood them up) and no money to get back home (because they were like...planning on staying here with those people long term). But I guess the man had a bunch of ninja swords that he planned on selling or pawning in order to buy bus tickets to get them home to Kansas. And that is all I know up until now...last I heard they were still at Enterprise Rent-A-Car trying to figure themselves out. Trip gone wrong much? :(

K. That is all. NIGHT.

EMOBLOG: It's looking like another Taylor Swift day...

Today I am feeling unloved, invisible, useless, ugly, disheartened, outcast, untalented, lost, insecure, alone, and a whole slew of other bad stuff.

Maybe it is just a down day. Maybe there are a lot of reasons. Who knows? For now, here are two of them:

1) I am turning 21 in 24 days. Now, if you are like everyone else in the world, this is the birthday that everyone makes seem like the best damn birthday of your life. Our culture ties so much into turning 21 that I have always imaged that it would be awesome at hell. But no. Here's the problem. My birthday falls at a very inconvenient time of year. It always has. I have moved to a different state on my birthday, twice. School has started on my birthday countless times. I was at some kind of swimming event thrice in high school. I have worked on it 3 times. And had major drama going on with friends two times too many. Because of all these things the whole birthday celebration has just been very...Harry Potter all my life. It always falls at a time when people cannot be bothered to care... But this year is my 21st, so I wanted it to be awesome. First, a friend and I were going to go to Minnesota: fell through. Then a bunch of my friends talked about coming to visit me in Seattle: slipped their minds. I thought about going home to WY: no way in hell am I turning 21 within a 1000 mile radius of my dad. Also, not in Riverton, WY. What the hell am I going to do there? Get used by my underage friends to buy them alcohol? No, thanks. Then I thought maybe I could just organize something with people around Seattle: 1) School does not start till the end of Sept, so all of my school friends are not back yet. 2) The lease on my house ends on August 31, so all of the girls I have lived with all summer, including me, will be in the process of moving in elsewhere...some of them quite far away. I know I am complaining a lot, but it is just upsetting that I am about to turn 21, and I have no one to celebrate it with me. The WORST part about it is that I am sure I could get people to do SOMETHING, but it would just turn into a pity party. I do not like feeling like I need to convince people to care about my birthday. Shouldn't friends just be excited enough to WANT to do something with me? To help plan it of their own accord? Without me complaining about nobody wanting to do anything with me? I do not want to celebrate the "most exciting" birthday of my life with people who are only lukewarm friends. I do not even care that much about being 21. I just care about other people caring whether I care or not...

Anyway. Sorry. Emodome. Just really upset. Anyway. I have decided that I think I am going to throw an online party. That way I will be with people who actually seem to care about me, even if they are thousands of miles away. You are all invited. Also. This was all triggered by a dream I had last night...it was not something I was worried about, until then.

2) If you read Hayley G Hoover's or Kristina Horner's blogs today they talked about hate comments. Hayley also talked about feeling like "What's the point?" in trying to write when there is so much intense competition out there. (Word.) Hayley also said, "Do you encounter issues like this in your internet endeavors? Or what about in real life? Ever get a bad grade on a paper in your best subject, and feel totally defeated, whereas a similar grade on something else wouldn't have mattered?" That is another thing that is upsetting me. Bad feedback from my short story writing instructor. I mean. I got an A on the assignment... But still. It was an assignment I thought I had done very well on, but most of her feedback was complaining about my use of the passive voice and not being able to take me seriously because of proofreading errors. It just made me feel like a terrible writer who should give up already.

I am sorry. This is a terrible blog. I was not intending on explaining so much. I was just going to say, "I cannot write a proper blog today, because I am feeling....(insert feelings)." But then it just escalated. I really am sorry. This is a dumb blog...but I have to write one everyday... Also, I cried a lot while I was writing this, which is also dumb. Due to these things, I do not feel like reading it again. Too emotional. So SCREW PROOFREADING. If you feel like you cannot take this blog seriously because of proofreading errors, then I do not care. It is a blog and not one I am particularly proud of...

Until next time, sorry for the emoblog.

Love,

Sara

BEDA Day SEVEN HORCRUXES!

NUMBER 7! You know. Seven is the most magically powerful number. SEVEN HORCRUXES! 13 words ago I had no idea what I was going to write about in this post. Now I know!

There are two reasons why writing about horcruxes is a good subject for today, the seventh day of August. First, because it is the seventh. Duh. Second, because this girl who is TOTALLY awesome named Tianna Weasley had her SEVENteenth birthday today, and she is in a band-- called I Speak Tree --with a super badass song about horcruxes. So here goes...

First off, let me clear up that these are NOT the things I would grab from my house were it on fire and I had three minutes. You know what question I am talking about. The one everyone keeps asking since that movie Leap Year came out. If my house were on fire and I had three minutes, I would probably grab all of my most expensive things, because...well because that shit ain't free. However, those most expensive things are not the things that I would choose to hide bits of my soul in, these are:

1. My copy of Harry Potter:

Once upon a time, shortly before Deathly Hallows came out, I loaned my copy of HP and the Sorcerer's Stone (The first Harry Potter book I ever opened/read/owned. EVER.) to one of my best friends, her name was Amy. Somewhere between the time that I let her borrow it and my remembering, much later, that she had not returned it, she lost it in her house. Her house is pretty large, with a lot of places to loose things. So, that book is still lost in her house somewhere. It has never been found. I feel like this adds a little bit of a I-am-Voldemort-and-need-to-find-all-this-shit-before-I-can-put-my-soul-in-it aura to this horcrux. Usually, I tell her that all of the books are my seven horcruxes and she lost PART OF MY SOUL in her house, to make her feel guilty. "My first horcrux IS LOST! D:" But for the purposes of this blog I will group all seven of the books into one horcrux.

(At this point, I feel like this would be a LOT easier if I were at home...like at my parent's house. I have huge file folders full of memorabilia.)

2. Stuffed animals:

I have this giant pink hippo and this white rabbitish thing that I have had since before...ever. Then I also have this very small brown dogish thing that was present in my earliest memory ever. I have a brown bear that I got when I got my tonsil's taken out. And a white and red bear that my parents gave me the day AFTER Valentine's Day when I was 12...(because I cried on Valentine's Day after all my friends got stuff from their parents at school, and I got nothing.) Finally, I have a green Care Bear with a shamrock on it that I am fond of. One of these things would be a horcrux...maybe all of them together...

3. Ghosts of relationships past:

Mixed CDs. Photographs. Poems. Blankets. Notebooks full of texts I never wanted to forget. Break-up notes. ...Ring... These things might be horcruxes...might. I am over all of these people, so I am not sure...

4. Gable Theatres Inc paraphernalia:

Maybe my name tag. Maybe one of my shirts....a green one. Or maybe some of the 35mm film that I kept... I pretty much grew up at this job--age 16 through 20--and I had my first apartment above one of the buildings so...it means a lot to me.

5. Jewelry:

Locket from my mom. 3 bracelets from my brothers. 1 bracelet from one of my best friends ever, Allie. Claddagh ring and necklace. Purity ring. Gryffindor bracelet. Bracelet from one of my fellow wrestling managers in HS. Mushroom bracelet from one of my best friends in HS, Lily. Rainbow bracelet that a random girl gave me once....just cause I said I liked it... Also, maybe some of the guitar pic earrings I made freshman year... Alsoer, heart necklace from my friend Selena's mom on my 17th.

6. Pins or pictures OR my letterman jacket:

I have a large collection of pins. L-A-R-G-E collection. A lot of which have some awesome memories behind them. I also have a LOT of pictures. But who does not. There are for sure a few in there that I would like to put a slice of my soul in... Like the one of my friends dressed as Disney princesses from the first year I went to DI Global Finals, which has been in a frame on my dresser since...forever. Also. My letterman jacket is ridiculously awesome. It has a dragon on the back. It was given to me on my 17th birthday. Can I just put all these things together as one? Just cause they are all mildly related as explosions of HS memories?

7. Locker key from the Riverton Aquatic Center:

I have no idea why, but when I thought about listing this as a horcrux, it just made sense... There is a locker key from my HS swim team's pool's locker room that has been on my key ring since...2006, I think. Since my junior year...or earlier. Maybe this counts as a high school memory, so it should be in #6, or maybe it counts as a ghost of relationships past, so it should be in #3. I dunno. But right now. I feel like this makes a very good horcrux. I swam in that pool grade seven through high school graduation... So many great memories. :D

Honorary Mention. My guitar:

I would have made this a horcrux, but instead, I am making it my wand. Why? Because when I have it in my hands, I feel....invincible. Like I can do anything. In addition, I feel like it would be a bit unwise to turn something that I have so much interaction with into a horcurx. I do not plan on hiding it away and never touching it again, I plan on using it always so...WANDED!Also, my dad bought it for me, and he could not have possibly picked one more perfect for me. Perfect. My dad has bought be a lot of stuff that is...touching (Harry Potter, my macbook, my letterman), and it all stands for so much in that capacity...as something special someone got for me. Just like so many of the other things on this list. Being given things is just so...incredibly touching, so I tend to care about those sorts of things more...

I pretty much made this up as I went. Initially, I thought I would get really clever with it like making my brain one or something. But that would require previous planning. Maybe I should think about making a legit scrapbook, which would mean condensing a lot of this. For now though, as something that came to mind as I went, this shall do. NIGHT!

PS! Your horcruxes?!

POLL: House invaded by possible rapist/murder or possible Prince Charming

I have no idea what to write about today, so I am just going to tell you a story...

I live in a house with 14 girls, so the place is usually pretty busy. People often have their friends coming in and out, and when we are hanging out in the living room we tend to leave the front door open, because it is hot, so that helps. Well the other day some homeless people walked up to our open door and asked for some blankets (it was SO hot out that day. :S ). We gave him one, but it was just kind of freaky that people could just walk up to our house. He could have walked right in and done ANYTHING. So...... After that we decided to close the door after dark.

However, tonight we left it like half open because there were three or four of us downstairs.

We were watching Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, and this guy comes up to the front door. Now this was a little different. The homeless man was obviously homeless and a bit over middle-aged. This guy was probably in his early twenties (our age) and he was wearing nice clothes...like he looked like a Mormon missionary. So I was like "Hi!" and we asked him if he was looking for somebody. Well the long and short of it was that he was not looking for anyone in particular but was just stopping by to say Hi. This is not so out of the ordinary. Sometimes people know people who used to live here and just know a lot about the house. It is a Christian house for girls only, so people from other Christian houses often stop by to hang out or talk to a few people they know who have lived here for awhile. So it was not so weird. But the fact that he did not know anyone who was currently at home and was not waiting for anyone WAS weird. Usually people have people they are coming to see. Well anyway, none of us knew him, so I thought that meant he would leave. But then he would not leave our porch. He was just standing there, and no one said anything. SO AWKWARD. So I was like, "Do you want to come in?" He looked alright, and I believed that he was just here to meet some like-minded individuals. He said some stuff about having had some good times in our house in the past. Good sign. So we all introduced ourselves and asked him about where he went to school, what he was doing with his life, where he lived, and kept watching the movie at the same time. He was like weirdly enthusiastic about the movie, but I assumed he was just trying to make it less awkward.

Then one of the girls who lived here/my friend was like, "So who do you know that lived here?" (Keep in mind that she was playing on her phone this whole time. No eye contact.)

Him: "Well uh...it was just like my friend knew someone who..." *trails off* Now, when he was on the porch he talked about someone named Julie, so I had thought maybe that she had lived here before, but he did not name her as an answer to this question. Weird.

Girl I live with: "Well, I am kind of a safety freak and am really uncomfortable having you here."

Him: "I could leave if you want."

Her: "Yeah, that would be great."

After sending a few text messages he left. And I was like "Oh, it was good meeting you. Have a nice night." And etc. Trying to make it less...rude/awkward.

As he was leaving I noticed that he was wearing a backpacking type backpack that was pretty full and holding clothes in his hands. Still. He was wearing a suit (suspicious? or okay?)

What do I think about this? Well...I am not sure. The boy said he lived on 80th. Which is about 30 blocks away from where we live. A lot. So...maybe he was just walking home and got tired of it and wanted somewhere to hang out/take a break at for a bit. OR He was totally not from here and was about to ask us if he could stay the night/rape us. It could be either. That girl that lives here was REALLY freaked out, and she keeps telling the story as if he was a total creeper. I did not get that impression. But still. She COULD have been right. He could have been a bad person, or he could have been exactly who he said he was. Maybe he really was a Mormon missionary. Those fellows walk everywhere. And he was wearing exactly the right clothes. I thought my friend was super rude to him at the time. But still...she could have been in the right. I felt bad for him. But maybe I was in the wrong to be so trusting...

What do you think?

If you wear high heels, you WILL be abducted by aliens, and you WILL go blind!

HEYOOOOO!! Man. Day 5. If you read yesterday's blog, I am sorry. Lol. I was super grumpy and tired. College is not really THAT bad.

ANYWAY! On the subject of school. I have a short story due on Tuesday night. Not just A short story. But the most important short story of my life so far. I am pretty sure I know what I am going to write about. But for the mean time, here is a summarized montage of a couple of the terrible ideas that I will NOT be using:

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there was a girl named um...Jessica. Jessica lived in a world with no light. As in, she was unable to see anything. She did not always live in this dark world. No. Long ago she was able to see everything touched by Earthly light. But everything changed when her family moved to a small town in Wyoming. She could still remember the moment that started it all.

"We're not going," came her mother's voice.

"WHY NOT?!" she exploded.

That was all it took. All Jessica wanted was to run in the last track meet of the season, but her mother felt that the amount of travel it would take to get there wasnt worth one track meet. It was just not practical.

But Jessica was determined. She packed her bags and threatened to run. Threatened. Did she actually think she could walk across three states in time for the meet? Maybe she did, but she did not get far. All it took was a rock, empowered by the weight of Jessica's baggage, to end the journey. A bit of gravity and what felt like eons of crying in a roadside ditch later and she was on her way back home, back to her bedroom, her loving bed.

She fell asleep crying, but she woke up a rebel. A rebel with a hot iron, heels, and a skimpy dress. Before the eyes in the mirror, she transformed. She had never snuck out before, but that did not matter anymore. Getting caught would be as fun as anything. It is not like she had anywhere to go anyway. But she did not get caught. She got out, and that was the end of it all. As she walked through the dead of night, on her way into town, they watched her. When finally she crossed into the darkest leg of her journey, they took her. Alone and away from the world she had once called home.

...

*faceplam*

LOL. That should absolutely not be thought of as an accurate representation of my writing talents. Maybe if I really like my short story, I will post it here, and then you can judge me.

XD

NIGHT!

BEDA Day 4: In which Sara is a failure...

Goodness gracious is it day 4 already? It is weird (aka annoying) how fast time goes. Now. Allow me to complain. What the hell is the deal with college? You know those "coming of age" initiation ceremonies that you hear about? You know...the kid has to tie his nipples to weights and if he does not cry he passes the test? Or something like that. Haha. Well, that is how I feel about college. It is this ridiculous, painful initiation-to-adult-life process. I mean, I think education is important, but I feel like the way it is executed is... stupid. It is so overwhelming and intense that it feels impossible to do anything else with your life except school, school, school. Sooooo much school work expect in such a short period of time.

But on the other hand. Maybe I have just lost touch with my time management skills. Which is probably the answer. But still. I am overwhelmed despite that.

So here is the thing. I am always putting off stuff I want to for homework. Like practice guitar. Or writing...recreationally. Or work on hobbies and projects. It is always "I will do it once I finish this homework" but then I do not finish it until bed time or later and by the next day I have another huge assignment to take on. :( Fact: College steals your soul.

BUT! This argument against school is probably just because I do not feel fulfilled by the work I am doing atm. See the truth of it is, even when I took school off during the fall last year I did not really get any cool projects done that I thought I would do. And this is my fear. About life. That I will fail. That I will always be putting off the things I really want to do, in the name of jobs or...in the name of "i am stressed out and need to take a break". I am just afraid of being paralyzed in life and never really doing anything that I love. Which is a fear that has only developed since I graduated high school/community college. In high school, I was always doing and accomplishing and I never felt as much like a failure as I do these days....

Here is my life's story: "When I have time, when I have time"

Maybe my biggest problem is that I am just never satisfied unless I am overachieving with absolute perfection...

Anyway. This blog was a fail. But it is what I am thinking about right now, and being creative would have cut into my homework time. :) NIGHT.

BEDA Day 3: The Bible as Literature

Okay. Let us start this with a disclaimer. Do not get offended. I am just entertaining some ideas. Not saying this is what I believe or what people should believe.

I am currently taking a class entitled "The Bible as Literature". The point of which is to read the Bible as literature. Meaning that we read through it and treat it like a story rather than a code of conduct. Basically, we try to decipher what exactly happens in the stories and what it tells us about the authors of each story. So instead of worrying about whether something means God wants me to be this way or that way, we concentrate on why these stories make it into the Bible. (Because not all stories proclaiming to be written about God did make it. Just like not all men proclaiming to be "prophets of God" are "true"...) Which is to say, we think of the Bible as an...anthology created by man.

This class does not, in any way, tell people what to believe or how to interpret the stories. It is more like a book club. Except we are reading the Bible. I think anyone who has taken a literature class can kind of understand what it is like... Anyway. So the point is. This idea of reading the Bible as a recreational story rather than a book of rules made me think about how that might not really change the experience... Even now, I can read these stories and draw from them morals and ideas about life. I can interpret the motives behind the actions of the character God and relate them to real life. But I can do the same thing with say...Harry Potter or Withering Heights or Moby Dick or any book ever written. Hell. Any story ever told, poem ever read, movie ever seen, song ever heard. I can experience these things and relate them to real life. Learn from the lives of the characters within them and apply that lesson to my life. Which is the same thing so many people do with the Bible.

What seems to set the Bible apart from these things is time and the character God. The fact that all the stories in the Bible are so old, with origins so far removed from our knowledge, gives them the power of mystery, which is to say, the power of our imagination filling in the blanks. In addition to this, the actions of the character God are read, by most, as being the real life actions of the person they pray to everyday. To them, he is not a character but a real person. When I was 11, I wrote in a diary everyday and addressed each passage to Harry Potter. Are these two things really so different? To me, he was a real person (or I wanted him to be), but really he was just a character in a story, but what he stood for, for me and what I learned from him would shape the person I would become. Much as the Bible does once people reach an age that they can truly understand it.

Now. I am not saying that Harry Potter is my Bible. So do not go off getting that impression. What I am saying is that it is possible that every story of value ever written is just as important and sacred as the Bible. Because what it comes down to is that writers are taught to write about real life. Regardless of how many fantastical layers you put on a story, there is still real life behind it. Voldemort is a murderer of muggles. Hitler was a murderer of Jewish people. Stories must always say something about real life. (That is the rule my creative writing teachers keep hammering into my head.) And just as we learn from real life we, draw morals from the lives of the people in the Bible, because they are based on real life. But I am willing to bet you could also find a true lesson about life from that new movie Inception for the same reason.

Despite what religion you subscribe to. I think there has to be something to be said about the idea that all Biblical stories, all modern stories, and everything in between are equally important, because they are all rooted in the human experience and...ultimately the human conscience (given to you by your creator). They are rooted in this idea of right and wrong, that writers portray in their stories, and that we interpret in whatever way seems best to us...