Almost midnight . . .

I really should not be writing in my blog this late. It's dangerous.

Half an hour ago I was so awfully hot in my apartment and now I have goosebumps. Gosh. My body is exemplifying my apparent fascination for never being satisfied.

I'm beginning to realize that people tend to read a lot more into things I say (or write in the case of this blog) than I intend. Either I'm exceptionally more spiteful or more naive than I think I am. I can't really decide which.

ACTUALLY, I think I just have an odd sense of humor . . . I remember when David first spoke to me he commented on my sarcastic . . . ness. This is how our first facebook conversation went:

David: I got your message.
Me: No way! Really?
David: Ah. Sarcasm. I love it.

That's pretty much word for word.

Anyway. I wasn't angry in my last blog entry, but one of the comments made it seem like I came off that way . . . Let me clarify.

Yes, truthfulness is relative.

I am not feeling remorse. I was attempting to use satire as a way to make readers laugh. I am holding absolutely no anger. I don't think I need to forgive anyone because . . . Um, I was never mad? Or, ah, felt they did anything wrong? I can't forgive nothing. In case you're going to say "yes, you can!" I will respond . . . OKAY! I FORGIVE YOU!

Sure . . . To continue:

The chocolate I wanted had absolutely no relation to all the jazz about truthfulness. I just wanted chocolate. Not as a way to stifle sadness or anger, it was simply a detached thought.

I WISH people wouldn't leave anonymous comments! Because I don't know if it's just the same readers coming back or what! I might start deleting nameless comments!!

Grr.

Naw. that's an empty threat. I like comments too much. Even if they don't make sense and needed to be proofread.

That was a joke.

I'm sure there must be something in the scriptures about saying stuff plainly. But that's beside the point. As my mama said, that's what my dad's culture is like--bluntly honest. Is it right? Ah, not really. Guess it depends on who you ask. is culture a good excuse for ANYTHING? No way, Jose.

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Just wanted to reiterate. Some people will understand the joke to which I'm alluding to and laugh. Some people will understand and be vividly offended. Which you are says a lot about what kind of character you've built up!

Some people won't understand. Period. What does that say about you? I won't even touch that.

That was another joke. Don't be offended.

I think some people should stop reading this blog. It tends to make them angry which kills brain cells and makes them stupider. If you keep reading, by the time you're 47 and 1/2 your head will be completely hollow.

JOKE.

I have no hard feelings.

If the person who left that comment is actually some stranger from Indiana, I apologize. Email me your address and I'll send you a gift basket.

No I won't.

Ahem, to continue . . .

As our good friend whose name starts with a "D" always says . . . NOBODY IN THIS GENERATION CARES ABOUT PRIVACY! That's why you have a facebook account. Because you secretly want people up in your grill.

Hey, I use FB too.

My last entry wasn't directed at anyone. It was about the world in general.

I'd protect my family to the death. Gr.

Hey, cool thing! My sister (Catia) is taking fencing lessons. Isn't that totally hardcore?

Maybe that's not the right word . . . but cool, huh?

Um, so anyway, to conclude . . .

Well. I should sleep. Gosh, it's cold! I have this weird thing where none of my body can be hanging off the bed and feel the air . . . I freak out. I have to be all bundled up. When I was a kid, I believed something evil and invisible lurked in my room, but it could only have power over me to EAT ME when the lights were off.

Kidding, just kill me. Not eat me.

Anyway, I knew that the Lord would never make my death by evil darkness completely inevitable and He would always have ultimate power, so I convinced myself that after I turned off the lights I had ten seconds to run, jump in my bed, and completely cocoon myself in blankets before IT could touch me. I'd literally count to ten out loud. And sleep with the blanket over my head. After the ten seconds were up, I'd "command" the evil-ness to go away in the Lord's name. My parents always taught me that the Devil couldn't stay if Christ was present.

No joke.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm STILL a kid. I still have my teddy bears.

Heh, heh.

So . . . where was I going with that . . .

Oh! So I'm on the couch. Meh.

AH@!!$#$%&Y$#!@$#@!!!!!

Someone shoot me!

No, please don't, I actually wouldn't appreciate that one smidgit.

I have nothing to do.

I'm not the kind of person who enjoys down time. Even for a day. Maybe ten minutes is okay.

But really? I like the whole I have two hours to go and be back from the gym, an hour to get ready and eat, be at work fifteen minutes after that, after work have to go grocery shopping . . . etc. I mean, after a busy day watch a movie or something, but alone?? Heck no. KILL ME PLEASE!

I'm so bored.

Yes, yes: me, me, me, I'm, I and all those other self words I tend to use so much. I'm so terribly selfish.

I have learned a very important lesson! Heed well my words, oh thee of . . . pure intent!

Couldn't think of anything cooler.

This is a very important principle! One I think (there's the "I" again! So sorry!) IMPERTINENT for everyone to be aware of!

Here it is . . .

When you hear/read/sniff/catch wind of/assume is inferred the words "BE HONEST," do not for one moment think you understand what they mean! For the phrase "BE HONEST" does in fact NOT mean the spewer of these words wants you to (heaven forbid!) tell the TRUTH (except in very rare cases).

You're a stupid face if you even THOUGHT along those lines! (Don't worry, I'm a stupid face too. Oops--again with the "I'm!" Selfish, selfish Cassi!)

"BE HONEST" actually means "I want to give you a lecture and feel high and mighty about myself. Please grovel, agree with everything I say, and we with both put on false smiles, hiding our feelings for later. This way, years down the road, we will have something to talk/argue about!"

Makes perfect sense for all you SANE people out there.

No.

No.

No.

NO!

Don't ask people for honesty and then be angry when you receive it!

It is my personal, newly acquired belief that there simply some people in the world who enjoy the feelings of anger coming over them in a fight. After all--nothing bonds people together better than a common enemy!

Although I would like to suggest to all my readers out there . . .

When you decide to be angry at someone, first of four little letters: WWJD.

If that doesn't immediately pacify you, you are of the devil!

Kidding.

But seriously, before you decide to go out of your way to make another person's life difficult (yes, gossipping counts as going out of your way), try to put yourself in their shoes. What could they have been thinking when they did the atrocity that so infuriates you? What is their reasoning or motivation? Is there a reason? If the answer is no, then they are either a stupid person or had a stupid moment. Give them a break! If the answer is yes, why not attempt to discover said reasoning and try to relate? Maybe you can end up loving each other.

Also, I believe there are certain instances when, if a person has made you angry, you should simply forgive and forget. Not shelf it for later hashing.

Like . . . someone who's mom just died should be cut a break for egging your house. Or someone who's under a lot of stress from a recent move. Or a lot of other things.

Anyway, rambling! Need chocolate.

I Am So Sad

For once, my title is going to correlate to my entry.

UMKC no longer offers a musical theater degree.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

I feel like my whole world kind of just came to a standstill. I was doing so well: I got the apartment all unpacked, spent hours scrubbing every surface in the area . . . I mean, you could lick my toilet and it's probably cleaner than our dishes. I was loving it. I even finished all my thank-you letters.

Now . . . there's all this drama going on and even with that I was peachy and happier than two peas in a pod because I was here . . .

I've been communicating with the school about the musical theater degree and they just emailed me to let me know that as of LAST WEEK they did away with the degree. They have music or theater. It's impossible for me to do musical theater.

It's hard to explain . .

I dance.

But I'm not a dancer.

I sing.

But I'm not a singer.

I act.

And I am definitely one of the best actresses out there. But it doesn't feel right without the other two. MUSICALS are my passion. I don't like regular theater. So I don't know what to do. I suppose I should start looking into other schools and see what my options are, but I'm just so depressed. I don't know if there is another school I can go to. Which means I can either settle for normal theater (which I don't think I can) or not go to school.

I'm going to go call my mom.

Eeps, Ipes, Opes, Oops! One Jumps In And Goes Ker-PLOP!

You are correct. My title is from the game Down By the Banks. Of the Hanky-Panky.

You never had a childhood if you don't know what I'm talking about.

What am I saying? I still love playing that game!

Anyhow, it is almost three in the morning on Tuesday the 31st.

I am pretty much all packed up to move to Missouri! All that is missing is some dirty laundry, a few t-shirts for me to wear these next couple days, and all the make up and products I'll need.

I learned to make eclairs . . . !! Not to took my own horn, but they're one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten in my life. Took some serious self-control to not eat all hundred or so.

Speaking of self-control and food . . . if my calculations are correct, I have gained two and a half pounds in the last week in a half. Which was my goal, but gosh, it's depressing. I know I'm now still only fourteen and a half pounds, which is about where I was at during first semester last year, and I know that during first semester I thought I was oh-so awesomely thin at that weight, but now I just feel fat, fat, FAT!

It's horrible. Sigh.

Plus, I'm having some pretty bad bloating which I know makes me look even worse. On the bright side, I think I'm about to start my period, which is good because that was what I was trying to force into existence with with the whole gaining weight.

Great. Now that I've invited you all to share all the finer, more personal details of my life . . .

I'm so excited to move to Missouri! I'm excited to fill all my blank pictures frames and finally have my OWN apartment. And have a job as a waitress! Hopefully.

I need to become more regular on this blogging thing if I ever expect to get famous and win the Nobel peace blog prize.

So . . . Who wants to hear about Puerto Rico?

I knew you did!

Well too bad!

It'd be too long for a measly blog entry. Maybe I'll publish a book. Sufficeth to say, it did not quite go quite as I had expected. Not exactly my favorite place in the world. But I realize that most of that is because of my weird, eccentric, view on health and eating. A city of hot dog vendors and frying oil where I can't run down the street to Walmart without getting shot or raped or both (in either order) just doesn't do it for me. I am sure going to miss that about Utah when I move next Monday . . .

Which reminds me of a story from my childhood . . .

Once I had this friend named Alyssa. I thought we'd be bffs FOREVER. Then she had to move to California. So my closet-poet-secretly-super-emotional side decided to write her a letter about how much she's changed my life and stuff, but I was too much of a wuss to give it to her because it made me feel like a baby. A few years later, at EFY, we were both forced to share our testimonies (something I find extremely difficult to do, with the whole displaying emotion other than excited happiness) during which I confessed how much it'd pained me for her to leave, and discovered she'd been exactly the same way.

Poo. I love that girl. We don't really talk much, but when you have a good friend you kind of always consider them one of your best friends even if you're so detached you now feel slightly awkward around them. Haha.

Love you Alyssa (if you're reading this)!

Now, I LOVE confrontation, but when I confront someone, I smile and play the whole I'm-above-this-obviously-because-it's-not-phasing-me-one-tinsy-bit role. But I feel angry SO MUCH! And sad and a whole skew of other things. And I feel it a lot. I used to always get mad at people for not knowing when I was upset and rushing to fix things, but now I realize . . . that no one ever knows. For instance, for a few days while we were in Puerto Rico I had . . . some really low self esteem days, just because of the whole not-being-healthy-stress stuff. One night I totally broke down and cried for hours, but no one else knew. No one. So when they were getting on us for not wanting to drive hours to some place to hang out with the family, I wanted to scream LEAVE ME ALONE, CAN'T YOU SEE THAT ALL I WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW IS BREAK THE T.V. SCREEN WITH ME HEAD? I NEED TIME TO RECUPERATE AND FIX MYSELF!

But I didn't. And I was mad they didn't know. Did they know I was mad? Of course not. I didn't show any sign. I didn't say anything.

When we finally got back from Puerto Rico I wanted to write everyone an email about how wrong everything was while we were there and what they did wrong. But after letting it cool for a while, I realized . . .

All I had needed to do to fix things and make them better was show a little more emotion and opinions. And if I had a crappy time because I wasn't willing to let people see how I was feeling, well, that's my fault. Not his. They wanted to be all out there and I have a good vacation and I just wasn't quite in sync.

Oh, gosh, this is getting too long.

Peace out, yo, my non-existent readers!

If this totally doesn't make sense, forgive me! Now that I'm finished, it's almost four in the morning!

Nasty Pinecones

My life this entire summer has been pretty much pointless. A few days ago someone backed into me while I was parked either at work or the grocery store.

I think it was at work because I pulled through into my parking spot at the store, so there was a whole spot behind me and only an idiot could accidentally hit me . I suppose it could have been at home but I was only there for about half an hour before I went to David's place and then I was only parked THERE for five minutes before we went outside and saw it.

I feel pretty stupid for not noticing it when I left work because it's kinda really . . . big. When I left the grocery store I never walked around the back so if it happened there I'd feel better about myself.

Anyway.

I think it was a guy. In a truck. With a hitch.

A guy because most truck drivers are guys. A truck because most cars I see with hitches are trucks. A hitch because the hole in the left side of my bumper looks like something a hitch would do. They also pushed a dent into the right side below the trunk. The trunk will still close and stay closed, but there's a small gap that might be a problem should we have any bad rain or snow.

Unfortunately, it's not my car. It's my parent's. David was telling me that he can't imagine my parents forcing me to pay for the damage since it wasn't my fault. But it wasn't their fault either.

The car was in my possesion, and the occurence would never have happened had I not come along because it would have been in a garage. So part of being an upstanding, responsible daughter is paying for the damage to be fixed. And that's what I plan on doing.

I wish I could get it done before my family comes home from Portugal in 1 1/2 weeks, but I won't have the money by that time so it's impossible. I'm not excited to see my mom freak out. I'm also debating whether or not I should tell her now or wait until they're back from vacation. If I tell now, it might ruin her day, and that's not cool for a vacation. But if I wait until later, she might feel like I was trying to hide it from her. So I don't know.

The most irritating thing is that I'm working 40 hours a week at a call center earning 10 dollars an hour or less, wishing I could scratch out my eyes every second I'm there. I also have another on and off job writing articles for an online company (when the work is there) and then I recently started working for chacha as a guide to bring in extra money. My whole life is work. And now, because someone had to be a dishonest idiot, it's gone. Every little penny I have earned and will potentially earn this summer will go towards fixing this car, and that might not even be enough. It almost me want to cry.

I did file a police report. As a formality.

When I imagine the person who did this to me, I'd like to think of him as the rough, gangster, destined-for-jail type. But really? He's probably a normal kid, like me. Maybe it's really a girl. If I destroyed someone else's car, would I stick around to pay for the damage?

Yes, I would. But it'd be really hard/tempting to just leave.

So I don't really hate the dude. I just feel sad and tired and overworked.

Gr.

Two days ago I decided I didn't like the tip of my left pinky finger.

After reaching this decision I then tried to remove the offending area by slamming down on it with a very dull knife.

Now the ironic thing here is that I had been previously warned about this knife. . . Some nonsense about dull knives being more dangerous than sharp, new ones.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get even half way through my finger. Almost, though. Almost there.

So the real story is that I was getting ready for work, chopping up an apple, and somehow my left pinky finger got in the way so I cut myself.

I wasn't joking about it being almost half way through my finger.

I managed to procure two butterfly band-aides from my work's first aid kit and a fistful of normal band-aides so that's how I survived my 8 1/2 hour shift yesterday with my finger half way off. I tried to stop by Target to get butterfly band-aides but they didn't have any. How weird is that?

Anyway, after work I saw some little market on the way home and managed to find some butterfly and special finger bandages there. When I got home, I tried to clean the gaping wound but there was so much extremely dried blood that it hurt to try to peel it off. I also couldn't quite get each side of the cut to touch with the butterfly band-aides, but it was close.

This morning when I was in the shower, the steam and random water splashes cleaned the dried blood off quite thourally. I was stupid and curious so I pulled apart the edges to see exactly how deep the cut way. Ouch! But yeah, almost halfway through.

Sooooo I stuck it back together with butterfly band-aides, put People Paste on it (a miraculous substance that cleans, disinfects, draws out any infection, and can act as a replacement for stitches in a crunch. Love it.), and covered that sucker up.

I feel pretty hardcore. Gr. Maybe I'll try to finish the job today.

After it stops throbbing.

Gr.

Agua

Upon reflection of the last few months of my life, I have decided it might benefit my readers if I were to share some of the nuggets of wisdom I have recently gleaned:

Boys don't always eat double the quantity of food that girls eat. The quality, however, is usually different.

Drinking dirty tasting water = massive headache.

There is not way to make fluffy oatmeal cookies.

Having more than multiple big goal will ensure failure of inadequate accomplishment of at least one of them.

Facebook is a great tool to help you get even more behind with obligations in the most amount of time possible. Even when you only log on to reply to necessary messages.

Eggs actually taste good when cooked correctly.

People cook eggs with butter.

Brownies from scratch are simply not as scrumptious as the packaged kind. Unless anybody has an amazing recipe they'd like to post for me here!

Diamonds are not impervious to dirt.

Now just a fact I'll like to share: I'd rather die than ever get a good whiff of sulfur again. David and I hiked to these hot springs yesterday intending to swim . . . but I was having trouble just standing by them. GACK!

Leave me some comments with tidbits of wisdom (both serious and funny) you've figured out over the course of your life!

I LOVE YOU (most likely)!