scavenger hunt

Saw a blog scavenger hunt on a friend's blog, think I'm gonna try it. =)

1.) Your favorite Youtube video.



It's a really hard choice, but this one always makes me laugh a whole bunch.


2.) A photo that will make everyone say "Awwwww."



And in case you're not a cat lover:



Monkeys cuddling at the San Diego zoo...one of my friends took this, I do believe, when the band went there in high school.


3.) A funny t-shirt:



I love my HP. =)


4.) Something geeky:



2 words: George Mcfly. Although, this picture is from the scene where he punches Biff in the face and is no longer a super-geek. And that knowledge probably shows MY geekiness, but I don't care. I ADORE the Back to the Future movies.


5.) Link/image to your favorite movie:

Oh no, you can't do this to me. I even got to cheat with #4, and I still can't decide. I'll go with a classic:





It's a wonderful wonderful wonderful movie. =)


6.) A link the newest blog you've discovered:

Urmmm? I don't really look for blogs. How 'ere, I googled "fun blogs" and found this, kinda cutesy:

http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com/



7.) An item on your wish list:



To one day visit Santorini, Greece.

In response to a comment about Santorini, I will go into some more detail, although it's probably a little lame. For one, I'd pretty much be cool with traveling anywhere gorgeous and full of history. But I've been interested in Greece for a few years now, ever since I saw Mamma Mia and also (yes, go ahead and cringe) the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies, where the one girl went to some gorgeous island of Greece. I don't know which one she was at in the movie, but I decided I wanted to travel there. So awhile back I googled images of Grecian islands, and thought Santorini looked cool, and that's pretty much the story. I would be happy to visit any of the islands, really.

Who's awesome? YOU'RE awesome. ;)

I gotta admit I've almost completely lost interest in my letter-writing extravaganza. But I hate leaving something hanging and not ever finishing. So....

Day 21: Someone who I judged by a first impression

Dear R,

you are one of the coolest people EVER. You've never said a mean word about me or to me. You're hilarious. You do the nicest things for people, with no thought of what's in it for you. Simply because. You're just wonderful. Whenever someone brings you up in conversation, I always end up laughing and saying "I love R!" I say it so much that everyone around me probably thinks to themselves, "yes Sheridan, we KNOW". You put a smile on my face.

But could you guess by the description of this letter that my first impression of you wasn't anywhere close to my opinion of you now? Yep, the first time I remember seeing you, I immediately thought something not too nice. Just because you're not exactly like everyone else. I turned up my nose and decided you should be avoided. How awful of me. I'm grateful for being given a second chance, years later, to learn about you and have a friend in you, now that I'm not as much of a jerk. Because you're a great friend and I was wrong. It sort of makes me grossed out about myself wondering how many people I've judged so wrongly like that and haven't ever gotten another chance to really get to know them.

Thanks for being you!

Take a bite of my heart tonite

A few things I've learned in the past week:

1.) If you get a gut feeling about something, it's probably right.

2.) This all depends on who your ex is and how mature they are, but in my case, if you send a "hey how've you been?" text to an ex that you haven't talked to in awhile, it apparently means that you're a creeper, you're hitting on them and you should know better because they have a girlfriend, and you're trying to get back together with them. And they will freak out and tell the entire world this. Needless to say, I'm not texting him again until he grows up and stops thinking so highly of himself.

3.) One weekend can change the course of your life. That sounds really dramatic...I mean that things happen that suddenly change your future plans for the coming months/years.

4.) If you work in a school with kiddos, and if you want to stay healthy, your 2 best friends should be Airborne and hand sanitizer.

5.) Don't drink an entire cup of something at a restaurant and leave without first peeing.

6.) I am completely and sadly tactless. No tact whatsoever. And more than likely the moment I open my mouth I'll stick my foot in it.

7.) I HATE that phrase.

8.) Murphy's Law prevails, so just go into a situation with the attitude that no matter what happens, you'll enjoy the ride.

9.) Don't try to impress someone/make a good impression when they already like you and have a decent impression of who you are. Disaster. Hopefully I didn't permanently mess things up.

10.) Just when you think you escaped the stink bug problem everyone else has, they will grow exponentially in numbers over nite and terrorize your home in droves the following day. And they will never cease to gross me out. There are currently 2 alive in my room. I killed at least 10 today. If I hear a single buzz tonite, I will not sleep.

11.) When you work where I do, reading about Beauty and the Beast can turn into loud and wonderfully hilarious renditions of the song ("Tale as old as TIIIIIMMMME") which leads to ballroom dancing around the room, which leads to turning on the radio and having a dance party for our social skills group activity. And autistic kids have thee best dance moves. Ever.

12.) That new 106.7 station is kind of amazing. Songs of every genre from my childhood/adolescence on shuffle. Woot.



Things I already knew but re-learned in the past week:

1.) Life is good.

2.) I don't deserve my wonderful friends and people in my life, but I really love them.

3.) Stake conference makes all of life's suckiness seem so far away. It's like one giant "it's gonna be ok".

4.) I LOVE fall.

5.) At any age, boys will be boys.

6.) Procrastinating leads to lack of sleep and nothing good can come of that.

7.) I like Glee, just a little.

8.) Love everyone, because we are all equally unimportant and important.

Glad that's all figured out

I'm weirdly self-conscious about how I write on here. I feel like I come off sounding really superficial. And I use a lot of stupid cliched phrases and try to sound overly dramatic. And I only use about 100 of the words in my vocabulary. And this matters to me. Because I'm dumb. Let me tell a funny story, and be a nerd and psycho-analyze myself for a second.

Really Long Part 1:
Back in the dark ages of my life (I have never referred to them in such a way...it fits) I thought I was thee. worst. writer. inthehistoryoftheworld. Why? Because I had this super-awesome fantastic really and truly wonderful student (let me make that emphasis) teacher for english class, who flat out told me my writing was the most terrible thing she had ever seen/read. She would criticize me over every other word I wrote, and write lengthy paragraphs in red pen all over my papers about how awful it was. She even did this over tiny details in simple rough drafts for lame small assignments. For example: "you put an extra comma in the middle of this sentence that did not need to be there. therefore, your writing is awful. Your vocabulary is very limited. This wasn't long enough. The final copy is to be 3 pages long." (Umm, that's why it's a rough draft lady.) "Why did you put an exclamation point at the end of that sentence? It should've been a period. You have too many paragraphs, were you trying to make it look longer than it actually is? You should have used the word 'plethora' instead of 'abundance'. Your hand writing is sloppy, I can't even read it. If you don't improve your writing, you will fail your SATs. There's no chance you're getting into college. It sounds like a 5-year-old wrote this paper. It looks like it too. I tried so hard and couldn't begin to figure out what you were even trying to say, or what the point of all this rambling was." (Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot the main idea you assigned us to write and was rambling on about the plot of my favorite movie, my bad) "Everyone else understands that you need a main idea when you write a paper, but you haven't seemed to grasp that concept yet, because I didn't find one. Haven't you been taught that in english class since like the 2nd grade? I took the liberty of crossing out about half of what you wrote, because it was trash. You need to start over completely. I can't believe you're in 11th grade and passed a class with writing like this. Maybe you should be in the applied class; your writing is nowhere close to the other students' in this class."

No joke. And then after writing all that, she would call me back to the desk while everyone was quietly working and tell me the same things and insult me even more. And while everyone else was finishing up and handing in their papers, I had to start over and work on it over the weekend and hand it in late...for a measly 20-point assignment.

Looking back, I totally admire all those kids that spent their time in ISS because they stood up for themselves and did what they felt like. But no, back then I thought those kids were terrifying and bad and disrespectful to our wonderful nice teachers. HA. Then-me sat there and took the criticism, and the unfair grading and poor grades on my report card, and held back tears, and slipped further and further into a depression that I wouldn't realize I suffered from for another 3-4 years. That rhymed. Now-me would at least have punched that woman in the face and said a few choice words good little religious girls shouldn't. And sat in ISS feeling like a queen sitting on a throne for doing it.

So why did she treat me like that, do you ask? Well, I can't say for sure. I do know that she was a little 21-year-old cougar and liked to openly and obnoxiously flirt with my then-boyfriend during class (to the point everyone else noticed it and discussed it constantly). And she praised every sentence and word and letter and punctuation mark that kid wrote. To this day I remember walking down the hall with him to the band hall for a different class, in tears because of another failing grade and more harsh words from that woman. And it ended in a big argument in which he scolded me and made me feel worse, telling me I was just jealous because for once he had found something he was good at, and he was better than me. And I was such a bad person for putting him down, insulting him, and thinking I needed to be better than him at everything. And maybe I should just come to grips with the fact that I'm not a good writer and she's trying to help me (blahblahblah, bs bs bs, I'm a manipulative jerkface). Hahahahaha...he was such a gem.

Happy ending to that story, after Christmas time she was gone, my grades jumped up dramatically and I got high A's in that class, I took the SAT the following spring, got a 1270 or something, and a 4 out of 6 on my essay section. The better-writer-than-me bf got a 3. And, though it sucked at the time, it makes for a pretty awesome story to tell, write in my blog, and laugh like crazy about.

Really Short Part 2:
Because of all of that, I started at Millersville thinking I wouldn't do better than a C average. After all, it was engrained in my head that I was the world's worst writer. But I tried my best. Turns out, according to college professors with PhD's and years of experience, I'm a pretty darn good writer. And modest, too. With the exception of the hard time I had with my spanish classes (hello, 3.75 gpa and crappy spanish-speaking skills, goodbye 4.0 and zip spanish knowledge), I was at the top of my classes. And when it came to paper-writing, not once did I get a paper handed back to me that didn't have some comment from the prof of how well I write. For awhile I didn't believe it. Then there was a period of time where I had a huge head about it and thought I was such a smarty.

And now here I sit. Confused as to what sort of writer I am, or what level I'm at. But in writing this post I've begun to realize something. I don't care. Some might think my writing is crap. Some might love it. Maybe my vocab does suck. Because I used 'suck' and not some other word to describe it. I might have a PhD one day and still describe a bug as 'icky'. I work with kids, what do you expect? It's a good word to describe something; it gets the point across. I'm not speaking to impress people and sound important with my big words. I'm speaking to be understood. Maybe my words and phrases sound cliche and overdramatic. If you think so, too bad. I'm trying to express how I feel. And I might not be the best at it in writing, but it's me.

I've seen more spine in jellyfish

Day 20: The one who broke my heart the hardest

To: Dh

I said my piece in a previous post and don't really have much more to say to you. We're strangers now. Hallelujah. You know that Garth Brooks song, "I thank God for unanswered prayer"? That's like how I feel about you, except I think it's more prayers answered no, rather than unanswered. You know your scriptures pretty well, right? Do you know that parable where it's talking about prayer and parents wanting the best for their kids and giving them the best gifts? And it says something about what kind of parent would give their kid a stone when they're asking for bread? A great person in my life recently talked about how sometimes we so very badly want what we think is bread, but it's really a stone, and that's why we don't always get what we want, or things don't go as planned. Because it's not good for us. You were a stone. You were more awful than a stone. And I got away before it was too late, though at the time I didn't want to and hated what was happening. Now I understand. Getting away from you was one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given. Escaping that life and the future I was headed towards, that was the bread.

Several years separate us now. I'm a different person. You wouldn't recognize me. I lost weight; I'm confident. I smile, I laugh. I don't put up with crap from people like you. You couldn't walk on me or push me around if you tried. Not that you would, you tend to just run away. Remember that time we ran into each other at the parking lot of Target? And you were so mortified at seeing me that you put a handkerchief over your face and tried to hide in your car? Hahaha what did you think me and Mom were gonna do, bite you and give you rabies? Give you a filthy incurable disease through a greeting? Or were you worried about getting struck down by a bolt of lightning for being in such close proximity to me? Like I said before, you sure can make me laugh.

You're on my mind love, it happens all the time love

Day 19: Someone who pesters my mind, good or bad

Dear TOIMM,


You're in my head for a reason, of that I'm sure. I'm doing my best to figure it out and do the right thing without letting my feelings get in the way. I think a lot of times when people are on our minds, it's because they need something, or someone. Whether it's just a phone call or a hug or someone who will listen or an "it's ok, I'm not mad at you", whatever. If they pop up unexpectedly in your head and won't leave, there's a reason, and we should act on it. And if on top of that, people keep mentioning that same person to you or the person randomly gets brought up what seems like constantly...you really shouldn't be ignoring that.

All of the above has happened to me, and I can't ignore it. But what exactly should I do? What do you need? Or the question I keep thinking, what on earth can I do for you that someone else can't? Isn't there someone closer to you? More qualified/stronger/better prepared than I am? Yet here is silly little mistake-prone me, and I'm the one with you on my mind and worry/care about you almost as much as a mom. Maybe one day it'll make more sense. Until then, you have my prayers and a little soft part of my heart.

Love,
Me

Having the time of my life

I'd like to take a short break from my letter-writing project to talk about how awesome the past week or so has been. And how great life is in general.

I'm currently sitting out on a deck at a condo in north Myrtle Beach, with the beach literally being RIGHT THERE in front of me. And the breeze is gently blowing and the waves are crashing and the water is actually blue-ish here, unlike the gross murky gray of Delaware, and I love it. The beach is a wonderful creation.

I'm so grateful for my job. Really really. From mid-July to about a week ago, we had this summer camp thing, and I was kinda nervous about it. But it ended up being SO fun. I love the kiddos, and I love the people I work/have worked with. And this is exactly the kind of experience I wanted to get to prepare me for grad school. And ok, getting a paycheck is pretty awesome too. For awhile I was legitimately sad that I'm missing the first week of school right now to be at the beach. Who does that?

So two Fridays ago was the last day of our summer camp, and afterward a bunch of my coworkers and I went out and I was just so happy to have people I like working with, and to have successfully made it through a summer that I was a little afraid of at the beginning. The next day Mom and I went shopping at Park City and I found a piece for my Halloween costume at Hot Topic. I'm keeping the costume secret til Halloween, of course ;) Then that Sunday after church, (great ward conference and I only had to teach 3 moderately well-behaved 5-year-olds instead of 938274626 naughty ones) I went over to my bff's house to keep her company while she was packing her life away to move to Arizona. We're all grown up now. It's weird. I went home the next morning, and then later that afternoon went with Dad to the Phillies game. It was a tragic loss and it was a little rainy, but I still had a great time. I love live baseball games. And we had awesome seats, 30 rows up right in front of the pitchers mound between 3rd and home. Seeing all my faves play up close, not on tv, is amazing. Win or lose.

Last Tuesday was institute, and I got to see and hang out with some friends, always a good time. And one of these friends and I had a good talk and decided to make the extra effort and use some teamwork to go retrieve a lost and wandering sheep in my life. The one I miss most. I'm really nervous, but praying it all works out. I haven't seen said sheep in a looooong time. Where there's a will there's a way, and I won't stop hoping for the best. No matter how long it takes.

Wednesday I went out for breakfast with bff and bff-mom at that dinky little place across from the state police barracks. And then a few hours later I drove over to Steelton and the 2 of us spent the evening in Hersheypark. This is something we've been doing since as long as I can remember. We got on all the good rides, and it wasn't too full, and the sun came out for the first time in a week, and we ate yummy bbq-ness, and got our caricature done together. I had such a good time, and ended up crying on my drive home that nite because I'm gonna miss her so much.

Thursday Sam and I went to visit Brookie Cookie. ;) It was good seeing her and hanging out with Navie and talking about the good ol' days of young womens and dances and roadshows, etc. I miss her, especially since we only get to visit like once a year. The hour and a half drive was totally worth it. =) Sam and I also got to have a good talk/therapy session on the drive home. I do love therapy time with Sam, she understands me. Or at least pretends to. ;) I'm so glad we have each other to talk about all that stuff. Love both of you girlies.

Friday was dance party nite, which was great except for me feeling kinda old and almost falling over from all the strobe lights. I'm 22, this should not be happening. And a bunch of us went to see the Takers which was kind of a wee bit terrible. See, the beginning was this fantastic bank robbery and I thought it was gonna be all awesome like Ocean's 11, but it ended up just being disappointing and lame. Fortunately Chris Brown's attractiveness kept me going. He's such a cutie. And it was nice to see Hayden Christiansen play a role besides an annoying, overly-powerful, whiny little brat like in Star Wars haha.

Saturday I went out for lunch with bff and her (as of Friday nite) "more than boyfriend" haha. And then we said our goodbyes, as they go on to the land of dry and hot. And then Sunday we left for Myrtle. And now here we are.

So in short, I've had a super busy week or so of no work and lots of friends and family, and life is good. Do I have everything? No. Do things always go the way I want? No. But I love what I have and I'm grateful for it, and I don't want to forget that, or the events of this week and how happy I felt.


One more addition: Tonite on our way to Broadway at the Beach, the Mystery Machine passed by on the highway. Literally, the very same vehicle as seen on Scooby Doo. And I said, "hey look! the Mystery Machine!" and that was that. THEN, on the way back home, we were driving behind a Delorean, and I said, "hey look! a Delorean, just like the one from Back to the Future!". And then I looked at it more closely and realized, it really was like the one from BttF. It had all the additions just like the time machine did in the movie. And then I saw that the license plate directed you to a website, "bttfcom". And I said, "oh hey! It really IS the delorean from Back to the Future!". And then we decided that there must be some convention down here at the moment, or else random people like to drive up 17 in vehicles straight out of movies. OR maybe my dreams are coming true. I'll know for sure if I see Harry Potter fly by on a broomstick, or a dragon, or something cool. I'd even settle for an owl flying by with a letter attached to its leg.