in a new york minute

you can embarrass yourself a million times.

i hate being an obvious outsider. i like to pretend i am a cool-as-cucumber real resident of any metropolis i visit. but the time has come to indulge my out-of-towner status because, quite frankly, there's no escaping minor bouts of idiocy when it is me my mother, and my grandmother traveling in a pack.

here's a list of today's blunders:
1-grandma ran across the street, when the sign read "don't walk" mind you, right in front of an ambulance with its sirens blazing.
2-we walked into a broadway show that we didn't have tickets for.
3-i lost my phone. i swear i had had it in my hand. i must have set it down or something, but i have no recollection of what i did with it. i had it in my very hand and then two minutes later i had no idea where it could even be.
4-while stepping off the subway, a tube of mace fell out of grandma's bra.

maybe i'll get some pictures up here. maybe, i took a lot on my phone, so that's not possible.

but life is good.

being a twenty-something is harder than i anticipated. probably because i thought, in my infinite self-conceit, that i would just cruise through it.

but i intend to make these the best days of my life, come struggle, strife, joy, elation, victory, loss, love, heartbreak, pain, healing.

which isn't so hard to do when i have so many wonderful people in my life who love me.

and i am going to london in a week and to new york in three days.

i really am the luckiest kid in the world. i've got it good.

i am just like the rest of my kind

i'm in a particularly writerly mood today. which generally is a result of me having had huge swathes of time on my hands and have filled them by musing over my life, and those musings needed space outside of my brain, thus i feel compelled to let some of them ooze into sentences and paragraphs.

this american life ran a show the first week of may which was titled "this week." in that one hour of air time they covered events that occurred just in the week prior. they got a big break with the biggest news of the last couple months falling in that week, the announcement of the death of osama bin laden, but they covered lots of smaller, less typically newsworthy events as well. like a young couple with conservative, strongly religious parents were moving in together, a kid was learning to ride a bike, and a young twenty-something girl, freshly graduated from college moved back home.

the latter was the most compelling, not necessarily because the girl was compelling. i was more intrigued by the interviewer. he had been a this american life intern the year before. and despite a dream internship, he had graduated jobless and like his interviewee had returned home. he called that time the most depressing six months of his life.

i am those kids. and it punches you in the gut. you know that you've got skills and talents and abilities and ambition and work ethic, but for some reason, you can't move yourself. maybe for some people it's because the won't settle for anything less than exactly what they want. and what they want doesn't want them, at least right now. however, for me, i am stuck because i am a chicken. i hate rallying recommenders and doling out application fees. i hate answering the little essay questions about why i believe children are our future, or explaining a time when i had to communicate to an unreceptive listener, or how i could contribute to the company.

whatever it is that keeps me and the thousands of kids who swarmed to their parents' basements last year and last may in our childhood bedrooms, it is draining us. i feel less motivated than i ever have in my life. i feel depressed, not necessarily clinically (although, i am a frequent online depression test taker, usually scoring mild to moderate), but i am more inclined to spend all day reading other people's blogs or watching tv than moving my ambitions along.

i am not where i thought i would be on the cusp of 23. but i had pretty high hopes for myself. but i wouldn't brand myself a failure. my friend recently pointed out Florence and the Machine lives with her parents. being a bamboccione isn't wrong for everybody. but i think living with the parents for me is a symbol of something bigger, a symbol of the suppression of my dreams for cowardice. for fear of failure.

but, baby, when you've got nothing you've got nothing to lose.

thank you, bob dylan.

i think i will now listen to "like a rolling stone" and make a list of goals, as i often do when i feel like it is time to crawl out of my "rut."

hipsterdom

sometimes i wish i was a hipster.
because they seem pretty cool.
but i only have one pair of skinny jeans and and i graduated from byu.

and i don't cut my own hair and have pretty dorky musical preferences.

but i do like this american life.
and i usually wear that pair of skinny jeans at least one time a week, even though i think they make my feet look like clown feet, never mind my analysis of how they don't always flatteringly contour my legs.

i think i just perceive hipsters as possessing a little more reckless abandon than me.
i'm not a terribly organized or anal-retentive person, but i am a devastatingly acheivement-oriented person. i think that things have to have an outcome and i have to be mapping a course to successfulville with every action i take.

once i told my little sister's hipster friends (and Randi may actually be able to claim the title 'hipster') that i had a lyrical soul. and the asked me if i wrote songs or poetry and when i responded no they just sort of glanced quizzically at me. i don't know why i said i had a lyrical soul. i just felt that i did at the moment and needed to share. but maybe my lyrical soul is caged by my rational self and those hipsters couldn't tell that deep down i was one of them.

actually, her friends may have been more emo, was emo the precursor to the hipster? or have they always been distinct and separate? is a hipster just a slightly happier emo (with the male equivalent growing a beard instead of donning eyeliner)? these are important social questions here.

and this is effectively a late night rant that i will wonder what possessed me to push publish in the morning. but i'll publish it anyway drunk off of late-night, exhaustion-induced uninhibitedness.

what i wrote down last night

I felt a quiet satisfaction at the capture of Osama Bin Laden, but the celebrating death in the streets tore me apart. On facebook this morning I read something my friend Amy posted, a quote from J.R.R. Tolkein on the death of Hitler that bears repeating:

"We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted."

It felt so reassuring that other people condemned the shouting and partying in the street. Celebrating an execution is a glorification of hate. Justice is quiet and blind and not boastful.

Anyway, last night, I felt really upset. So I wrote down a little prayer.

"I don't pray for mercy on Bin Laden's soul (final justice belongs to someone who knows his heart, dark as it may be for whatever reason, better than I), but I pray for all hearts that are full of hatred to know love and goodness, and if I can, Lord, let me help bring it to them. Let me help teach that Thy way is love and forgiveness instead of destruction. But if I can't change them at least let me build, let me be an instrument of peace, and never let the cruel act of another rob me of my humanity."

pudding is the missing link!

i recently decided i would add instant pudding mix to all my baking endeavors (which have thus far only been chocolate chip cookies). so far there have been no blunders, just awesome pudding flavor infusion. i may move on to cakes. some white cake with a hint of butterscotch, anyone?

seriously, i feel like paula deen here. it is the simplest addition, but i feel like i am crafting my own recipes. it doesn't take too much to get me to be proud of myself in the cooking arena.

a short list (but not THE short list) of things i love

*disclaimer in the form of a cheesy quote: the most important things in life aren't things.
they are obviously people. this is a list of things. i love people more*

1. water beds.
2. stickers.
3. claw machines.
4. pistachio pudding
5. old churches.
6. the movie angels in the outfield.
7. cupcakes.
8. bookstores.
9. communist ideology.
10. monopoly.
11. this american life.
12. stationery.
13. roller coasters.
14. car drives.
15. mix cds.
16. television.
17. licking the pudding off the lid of my snack pack.
18. daffodils.
19. socks that go up to your knees.
20. bop it.
21. the smell of the air conditioning in my car when i turn it on the first time after winter.
22. fire.
23. watching babies taste lemons. (this one sounds mean, am i horrible?)
24. temporary tattoos purchased from vending machines.
25. all things miniaturized.
26. deviled eggs.
27. stars.
28. laying in bed in the morning, even though i am awake.
29. old pennies.
30. bicentennial quarters.