Evil Villain Sweat

I don't even know how to start this post because I am so distraught. (Warning: approaching is a First World Problem) The other day, I saw a box of Lucky Charms cereal in my cupboard. I don't even really like Lucky Charms, but we never ever ever have sugar cereal, so when we do I eat copious amounts of it even if it's kind of gross like Lucky Charms. Anyway, I saw the box and got hit instantly with a craving for cereal. However, I was working. I had brought my nanny kids to my house for the day, and if I starting eating pure sugar soaked in milk, they would want some too. But I am selfish and didn't want to share I didn't want to give them sugar because it's bad for them and would ruin their appetites and I'mthebestnannyever. So I decided the Lucky Charms would have to wait until after work.

So later, after roughly 12 hours of anticipation, I am seriously looking forward to my cereal. I get the box out while talking to my mom about the pros and cons of Lucky Charms marshmallows. I pour a huge bowl, while still talking to my mom about it. I get a spoon. I crush the box and start heading toward the fridge when my mom turns around, looks at my bowl, and goes, "Oh, we're out of milk."

And with those five words, my whole world crashed to the floor. Or maybe it was just my spoon. Regardless, I was upset.

Maybe now would be a good time to explain something about myself to you. Growing up, we always had about 5 gallons of milk in the fridge at any given time. We usually drank a big glass of milk for every meal, and all through high school my breakfasts consisted solely of Carnation Instant Breakfast, which is just chocolate milk with extra vitamins. So when we ran out of milk, it meant I didn't have breakfast that day, which is always a harrowing experience.

That mentality followed me into my first year at college.  When I ran out of milk, it didn't matter if my cupboard was completely full of nutella, bread, puppy chow, noodles, soup and myriad other edible items. It didn't matter if the fridge was full of eggs and leftovers. When I ran out of milk, I thought that I had also run out of food. I became convinced that I had nothing to eat and would definitely starve unless I immediately went to the store and bought some 2%. The two semesters when I didn't have a car made that pretty rough, however. I would sometimes have to last for hours, even days, existing on whatever measly crumbs I could find until I could find a ride to the store and bring home that gallon of milk. Once it was sitting comfortably in the fridge, my food cupboard was suddenly full to abundance with decadent meals like Rice-A-Roni and PB&J, and I could eat to my heart's content. It was always an emotional experience.

My cupboard without milk

My cupboard with milk.
Meaning I would immediately eat myself into a food coma. Which is maybe why I gained so much weight at school.

But back to the Lucky Charms. My world/spoon had just crashed to the floor, because my mom told me we didn't have any milk. I opened the fridge just to see for myself, and sure enough, no cow milk to be found. But then I saw it. Sitting right against the edge of the fridge, where the real milk was supposed to be... Two boxes of rice milk.

Ordinarily I would have gagged and walked away, but I was so excited for my Lucky Charms, plus the picture on it looked so creamy and thick and milk-ish. And it was now organic! Surely a substitute milk wouldn't make much difference, especially not if it's just there to moisten the cereal a bit, right? Wrong. Listen close, blogland: rice milk is probably what they serve in Hell, just to give people a little hope of tasting real milk and then crush them by what a ridiculously bad substitute it is. Rice milk is the stuff of nightmares. It tastes like I imagine the sweat of true evil villains would taste like. Which is definitely a gross thing to imagine, let alone have to drink. I don't even know why we had it in the fridge, or why anyone anywhere would drink some and think "Yum! This is definitely as good as real milk, I'll continue buying it!"

And what's worse is that I still really really wanted my cereal. So I tried to muscle through it. I tried to focus only on the taste of the crunchy marshmallows and soggy frosted shapes, while ignoring the all at once too-sweet and incredibly bitter taste of the imposter milk. I even made it through about half of my bowl before raising my white flag of shame and dumping it down the drain, hopes and dreams completely obliterated.

The next morning, joy of joys, I discovered that somehow four gallons of real milk had appeared in the night. Probably a gift from the milk-fairy, who surely felt bad about my terrible experience with pure milkish evil the night before. I breathed a sigh of relief until I saw, right next to it, [insert scary music here] two cartons of Almond Milk. Someone in my house clearly has it out for me. I will find you, imposter milk buyer, and I when I find you, I will question you. And after I question you, I will complain about your poor choice in "milk".

UPDATE: I think it deserves to be noted that not all imposter milk tastes like the sweat of villains. Chocolate Soy Milk is essentially liquified candy mixed with crack. Also, I just realized this is basically just like my Netflix post, except with milk. Sorry for the unintentional repetitiveness, sub-par substitutes just really upset me, apparently. Kaybye.

Accidental Rejection Syndrome

I alluded to something in this post. Something I'm not proud of, but will share with you in more detail because it's a serious issue that needs to be brought to light. Alright, here it goes. I'm just going to say it. No big deal. Just spit it out. The truth is...

I have a serious case of Accidental Rejection Syndrome, or ARS. ARS is a highly infectious and dangerous syndrome that anyone can be infected with, at any time. I have yet to find a cure.

For me, it all starts with my atrociously bad cell phone communication skills. I simply suck at responding to messages, answering phone calls, or even knowing where my phone is most of the time. I know, people my age are supposed to be glued to our phones, thumbs flying and messages going in and out every .5 second on the... half second. But somehow, when all the mothers of my generation were eating whatever they ate to turn all my peers into techno-communication freaks, my mom was busy chasing my four older siblings and drinking lemonade. Which, as it turns out, does not turn people into techno-comm freaks. So now I have a deficiency. Thanks, Mom.

Sometimes, when I'm at a party or something of the sort, I start talking to people. Sometimes "people" ends up being a guy around my age (and by that I mean between 2 and 7 years older than me), who knows no one that I know, and vice-versa. We will call him RandomPartyGuy. Sometimes, after a conversation of some length, RandomPartyGuy says something along the lines of "Hey, let me get your number, and we'll go dirtbiking/snowboarding/paintballing/on a date." So I give him my number. Sometimes I'm excited about it because he's not ugly at all. All of these sometimes end up happening at the same time about once every month or two. And then the following happens:


Boy texts me either that night or the next day:

"Hey, this is RandomPartyGuy. It was great meeting you!"

I respond a few hours later:

"Oh hi, RandomPartyGuy! I'm glad you texted me! It was great talking to you the other night!"

He responds immediately:

"Yea I would be crazy not to text you! You were super fun & adventurous! Two great qualities & I'm sure you have soo many more!"

 (That may or may not be, but definitely is an exact quote. Note the proper spelling, punctuation and capitalization. Also, the compliments. Totally swoon-worthy, yes? Yes.)

I then read the text, note the cuteness, have a brief internal debate over whether or not to be creeped out. Usually I decide he's not a weirdo and start formulating a sassy response, but end up getting distracted and put my phone down instead.

Thirteen hours later, I remember I was having a conversation with guy who wants to take me on a fun adventure. Go back through my messages, and realize it's been a ridiculous amount of time since he texted me. Have a brief moment of guilt. Decide to text him back and explain that the place in my brain where phone-communication skills should be is occupied instead by the title font and cover design of almost every book or movie I've ever seen. Except I don't give him that much detail. Mostly I just explain that I suck at communication.

Thirty minutes later, he responds and tells me he forgives me, and he sucks too sometimes. Tells me good news about his dirtbike related injuries. I respond in record time. Seriously, only like, two minutes. He responds quickly as well. (this puts our total up to a whopping six text messages in 24 hours or so. Going strong... for me.)

Three days later (today), I realize I never answered RandomPartyGuy, and I can tell by the lack of him texting me to re-start the conversation that he feels completely rejected and kind of offended and has already written me off even though I totally would have been interested in getting to know him better and was even pretty excited about it. I am just incapable of showing that interest by spending the second it takes to respond in a normal period of time. Like any normal girl, not afflicted with ARS, would. 

Approximately 3-6 weeks later, essentially the same situation will happen, but with a new RandomPartyGuy. (I will never hear back from the other one). And then three to nine weeks after that, the Accidental Rejector (me) will probably have unwittingly struck again, leaving another RandomPartyGuy confused and offended. This cycle has been happening with varying frequency, (excluding a few months when I was in a relationship) for the past two years or so. I simply can't help it, Blogland. I have a sickness. Accidental Rejection Syndrome is a real and under-represented problem facing many of America's youth who have no real problems to worry about. If you, or someone you know has suffered from ARS, I want to let you know that you are not alone. I can't promise that it will get easier or better, but I can promise you I have hope that it maybe will, eventually.

Men, if you're reading this, please take this as encouragement and consider that maybe the girl you think is ignoring you is actually, like me, simply incapable of having the brainpower and attention span necessary to maintain extended textual communication. Text her again, I bet she'd like it.

Women, if you're reading this and thinking it sounds strangely familiar, learn from my mistakes. Go through your phone right now and respond to all the people you have so rudely ignored. Throw the guys a bone. Maybe they'll bring it back, if they're not too wounded.

Last but certainly not least, I want to send a shout-out to the RandomPartyGuys that I may have personally infected with ARS. I'm sorry. Please don't feel rejected. I really (probably) was interested in getting to know you and going on a date. You are (probably) a super cool guy. I just (actually) suck, sometimes. I promise, it's not you, it's me. Really.

The Time I Moved Into a Horror Story (Part One)

 Once upon a time I lived in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. I was content in my own little sheltered, combined bubbles of mormonism and upper-middle class suburbia, where we never locked our doors, left our bikes out in the yard without fear and I often went walking by myself far too late at night. I lived in the same house for 15 years. After being at school for about 10 months, I heard from my sister that my parents were thinking seriously abut moving.

Here's the deal: my family has been trying to move for as long as I can remember. My parents would decide every few months that our house was too circular, or too small, or too close to the neighbors, and we would start stopping at every "for sale" sign we saw and picking up fliers. We would take family drives into the mountains to look at random houses with tons of acreage for sale. After a while, I stopped getting excited over the possibility of a four-story house, or a library, or a room with a window seat in it (okay, that's a lie. I will always love window seats.) I stopped looking forward to maybe moving because it simply never happened. There was always something wrong with every house we looked at, and so we stayed where we were, in our circularly laid-out house with a backyard that the neighbors could see right into. Needless to say, when my sister told me our parents were looking at a house, I didn't bother getting excited about it.

And then she told me that my parents had actually bought a property. I was amazed and weirded-out. What? My parents are actually moving? After years and years of talking about it, it's actually happening? Then I hear we were moving from our neighborhood, about 30 minutes outside of Denver, comfortably located in the center of quite truly anything you could ever want or need, to Larkspur. The smallest town ever, about an hour and fifteen minutes outside of Denver. We had some good family friends who had moved out there a few years before, and I had always thought they lived SO ridiculously far away.

Let me tell you about Larkspur, friends.

I stole this picture off the internet. I don't even know if it's a real sign, because I'm pretty sure I've never seen it, and there's only really one or two roads leading in or out of the town, so if it were real, you'd think I would have seen it, right?

Larkspur's population is about 190 people, and the amount of land area is a whopping 1.56 square miles.
 Larkspur has a total of one point five roads. Along the one road you will find: a gas station, two pizza places, two bars, a Mexican restaurant, a salon, a park, a trailer park, and a huge fire station. We have no stoplights, and a single stop sign. The speed limit is 25 MPH, and at that speed it takes approximately 160 seconds to get from one end of town to the other, including the stop sign.

There is technically another road, that intersects with the main road, but the only real reason that road exists is to cross the train tracks and provide access to the Renaissance festival which takes place there every weekend all summer. Yup. The Renaissance festival. Which explains why we have so many food places (and bars), for a remote little town with very few people.

Now, why Larkspur? My parents had found a fantastic deal on a house with 6 acres, about three or six miles outside of the actual "town." My dad has always wanted land, and so they were pretty excited about it. What I didn't know, however, was that they had gotten a great deal on the house because the previous owner had blown it up. Apparently he had gotten foreclosed on, which made him angry, and so he accidentally let his RV roll straight into the gas line in the kitchen... making a huge explosion.

So this was my first impression of the house... Needless to say I was super excited.

Doesn't this just say "welcome home"?

So we bought the house, and started fixing it up, and improving it greatly. It took a long time, and a lot of effort.

Child Labor Laws are for fools.

The property is settled in a beautiful valley, with a mountain to our backs, a view of red rocks down one side, and horses running through fields on the other. Needless to say, it was picturesque. We routinely would find deer running or grazing on our land. It was like a real-life fairy tale. Until things got scary.

Along with the property came several... structures. They included a chicken house, a goat barn, a garage, a barn, a shed, a pig roaster, and a grotto (According to wikipedia: A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans). So basically it was a man cave. But we'll get back to the grotto in a minute. Actually, it's probably going to have it's own post, it's so bizarre. The other structures were all pretty normal, aside from some weird graffiti on the shed:

It says "Democrat Republican Liar" but all the letters are crossed out and marked over.

The grotto and pig roaster, from the outside.

A close up of the grotto's entryway...

So that's what the grotto looks like. Note the beer bottles around the edge. Behind each one of them is carved a name in the concrete. Sticking out of the sun is a concrete mold of the position the Pope holds his hand when he blesses people (or something along those lines) There are also random concrete faces, possibly of saints, and a little spanish dancer/fighter man. Now, if all of that isn't weird enough, wait until we take this tour inside the man-cave, because that's where things start to get really weird.

To Be Continued...

Something about Pinterest! Er... I mean... Exercise?

Have you ever been on Pinterest? It's actually a really cool concept for those of us who browse the internet in the same way that boys browse for hot girls on the first Sunday in a YSA student ward -- taking note of sites (or sights... see what I did there?) of interest and trying to remember where and how we found them so they can be returned to at a later date when we have more time to more fully explore what the girl/website has to offer. Yeah, I did just compare my gender to soulless internet webpages. No, wanna-be feminists, I don't feel bad about it, so just hush and keep reading.

Anyway, Pinterest. The concept is awesome. As you're browsing the internet and you come across something interesting, you can "Pin" it to an online pinboard, which you can categorize, and then return to it later. It's actually exactly like the bookmarks feature on every browser, except it's way more visual and has turned into this huge social media network. Whenever your friends pin something, you can see it, comment, like, or re-pin it to one of your own boards. You can also browse pins by category or just see everything that anyone in pin-land has pinned lately. And basically, it's really addicting.

This is what my page looked like this morning. Lots of exercisey things that my friends pinned. The picture makes it look crappy, but believe, me, Pinterest is fun. Do it and you're cool!

I avoided getting an account for a long time because it seemed weird fad-ish and I didn't want to be one of "those" girls. I don't even know what made those girls "those" girls, as opposed to other girls. So my good friend Danielle (who you can read about here.) was obsessed with it and, along with other girls I didn't know so well, encouraged me to join the club. And they were cool and so I did. Yes, mom, I would (and have) jump(ed) off a cliff just because my friends were doing it... but don't worry, there was always water at the bottom and I never died. Yet.

And it's true, Pinterest is fun and addicting and interesting and you can learn lots of new recipes and tips and crafts there. It's also evil. Because in addition to being all those great things, it's become this weird world where girls go to plan weddings they'll never afford with men who only exist in pornographic yet inexplicably super-popular fiction novels and there's a whole bunch of legal issues (where basically when you "pin" a copyrighted image, you're using it without permission of the rights-holder and it's kind of too complicated to explain in a parenthetic statement but is actually on pretty shaky legal grounds). But all of that is besides the point. WAAAAY besides the point actually. Because If we're going to be honest, during the last few paragraphs while I was writing, I was wondering what the main point of this post was because I could not for the life of me remember where I had intended all of this Pinterest stuff to end up, but I just now remembered and it's not about how Pinterest is evil or maybe not-so legally solid or even a breeding-grounds for immaturity. It's not even about Pinterest, really. It was supposed to be about exercise.

One of the really popular things on Pinterest is nicknamed "thinspiration," and it's where girls will pin exercise plans, healthy meals, and pictures of motivational statements or quotes put over pictures of really skinny or fit girls to help inspire them to lose weight. For a while it was getting kind of pro-eating disorder, but I think they've curbed it into the right direction.

Pictures like this are alllll over the place.

But anyway, I have been a mild browser of Pinterest for a few months, and just like when you first jump into a lake with a wetsuit on, at first I didn't feel the effects of the thinspiration messages. Then, after being fully submerged in the water of Pinterest for a while, it started to seep in. It was slow and it was cold and foreign. I would look at the pictures and read the quotes and think, that's nice. It would be nice to be a mega-babe like that, good for that random, half-naked girl. And then I would keep eating nachos in my bed while I watched Netflix. Then, over time, the messages and the motivation and inspiration fully seeped into my wetsuit, and my natural body heat warmed the messages up, and all the sudden it didn't feel so foreign. And so it sunk in. And I started to get motivated to work for that mega-babe body. So I thought, hey, I'll start working out. Those pins make it seem so easy and fulfilling.

So I would go into my closet and find my running shoes in the back of my closet. I would spend a lot of time putting my hair up in a ponytail. I put on running pants, a sports bra and athletic top. I filled up a water bottle. Dragged the treadmill out from the storage room, put it in front of the tv, grabbed my ipod, downloaded new "exercise" music, put in my headphones, turned on "Toddlers and Tiaras" and (now a good 45 minutes after I began the process) proceeded to stretch, walk a warm-up lap, and then run at a comfortable 5 ish miles an hour. And it felt fantastic. My brain started a slideshow of the motivational pins I had seen. I pictured my future super-toned, super-hot body and ran a little faster.

And then I remembered why I don't run. Why? you ask. Because, Blogland, running sucks. After like 120 seconds on the treadmill I remembered that with every slap of my shoes against the moving belt, I hated my life a little bit more. That every time my ponytail would swing across my shoulders, the burning in my legs, chest, lungs, butt and even shoulders (who runs with their shoulders???) would get worse. And for some weird reason, my feet always fall asleep when I run. And I would try and wiggle my toes and then I would think, "Wow, this really sucks." And for a while, I would push through it, because my pride made me. So i would run for like 15 minutes. Then do some yoga to cool down. Then take a shower and feel kind of good about myself. And then the next day, I would do the same cycle. For like four days, it goes like that. Then on the fifth day, I have no more motivation. Zero percent of me wants to go run on that treadmill of death. Who needs a super-toned body and a killer butt? Not me. Who needs a huge bowl of ice cream topped with brownies and hot fudge? This girl!

Want.

And so then I eat like a pig for a month without exercising at all (another thing for which pinterest is great: showing you how to bake anything with Nutella, as well as make any unhealthy, ridiculously delicious dish you could think of) so I would gain a little weight, then get re-motivated to lose the extra pounds by pinteresting and running. Which lasts for five days, makes me remember it sucks and I hate it, and I stop. Then I eat like a pig, gain weight, Pinterest.... And it continues, in an endless, crazy cycle. So right now I'm in the "I'm gonna get super fit and super hot" phase of the cycle. Yesterday I ran outside for a change, and it was really nice. I didn't even hate it and my feet didn't even fall asleep. And then I got lost and ended up on a WAY longer run than I had intended, and then I kind of hated it.

So here's what I'm looking for: lasting motivation to develop a healthier, more active lifestyle. Motivation that's stronger than my love for baking and eating things that are ridiculously unhealthy. Pinterest didn't work. I did one whole day of P90X and hated it, so that didn't work either. Any ideas, blogland? I'm open to anything that doesn't involve a pole and "breaking stereotypes". But I would prefer it's cheap to free. Without the cheap option... so basically just free is what I'm looking for.

But listen, this has been a really long, un-interesting post, so I'm going to go. Good job if you read this far. Feel free to comment, even if it's just to say "hey, I read to the last paragraph!" I'll give you a medal, because you would totally deserve it. Except I won't really give you one, but you can imagine. Anyway, my yoga pants are currently guilting me to do some pilates or something. I'll do like 3 crunches. And maybe even throw in a pushup! Who knows? I'm all thinspired!  But look forward to a post about how I moved into a horror story. Or about my first date in college, whichever I feel like writing next. Kaybye!