Cake Wrecks

Sometimes there just isn't a whole lot to do at work, which is great for my homework load. But there are days when I don't feel like doing homework, so instead I spend some time at Cake Wrecks. This blog makes me want to laugh out loud--but since I'm at work, it's not really appropriate to guffaw and snort through my nose. Instead I cover my mouth and make quiet snarking noises with my head ducked behind the monitor.

Scrubbing Bubbles

Today I cleaned. It's Saturday, which means cleaning day. During the rest of the week our front room gets buried under books and magazines and papers and Wii motes and milk glasses and shoes. Jackets and sweatshirts hang off of every chair. I wash sinkloads of dishes, but I don't often get every last dish clean. Saturdays are different. Lysol, Palmolive, Comet, Windex--they all find their place in the limelight. They all come into the glory they were born for.

The most amazing miracle: cleaning out the fridge. Throwing things away, pulling out shelves and scrubbing away every gooey spot, every unidentifiable stain. Then I inventoried the fridge. Which means I wrote down every item on a piece of scratch paper and pinned it to the refrigerator door with a magnet.

Our bathroom smells fresh.

The kitchen floor isn't sticky.

The sink is Crest whitestrip-white.

I also opened most of the windows. It made our apartment pretty cold. Kegan watched the Blazer game wearing a sweatshirt and bundled in a quilt. But it was so worth it. Lately, every time I walk into our home it smells like stale, deep sleep and as though all of winter has been compressed into the apartment--and not the good side of winter like cinnamon and snow and hot chocolate, it's the bad side of winter like old coats and sweater sweat and dead leaves. But now, after several hours of letting the weird Utah spring breeze blow around, our apartment smells better. A lot better.

I might be writing this to impress you... nah. I think I'm just pleased to feel like I can LIVE in here again. If you need to use the bathroom or something, please stop by. It's very clean in there. Very soothing. You could bring some incense and do a little meditation. I wouldn't mind.

Virtual communication

Where did it come from? This need to have the whole world hear every heart-thing?

Early early

It's so easy to see every wrong thing.

What? Diploma for me? THANKS!

I'm graduating. Grad-U-A-ting, baby! MAN. I am so glad.

I'm in the computer lab in the JFSB... and it's very quiet... but I wish I could just break out into a wild dance with lots of shimmies and those embarrassing raise-the-roof moves that were so cool in sixth grade.

I could turn up the volume on my computer and bring up some Mika or something... Or maybe some of this or this.

Anyway. I'M GRADUATING! In August. Thank heaven.

T-shirt

So, I've been following a couple of fashion blogs, which led me to more fashion blogs, which led me to even more fashion blogs, which will yet lead me--on and on it goes.

Posted below are a few ladies whose fashion choices I am always eager to see. Do I know anything much about any of these women? No. Am I a huge fan of their movies? Watch any of their TV shows? Listen to their remixes? Nope, nope and nope. But I dig their style choices--well, some of them.

Alexa Chung. I have two pics. The first one because what she's wearing is super cute, and another so you can see her eye make up. She makes unkempt/hazy hair look good.






Rachel Bilson. Love it. (I "borrowed" this from frugal-fashionistas.com)



Leigh Lezark. Her hair--wish I had it; her clothing choices = sometimes funky, sometimes amazing.



Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. I know, I know, but seriously. And The Row has some great pieces. Plus, I've loved this ad for forever.



Olivia Palermo. Sometimes what she wears make me go "uck," and other times she's super classy.

Sittin' on the dock of the bay

Music is so distracting. I love it.

Except for that whole thing where it takes up my homework time.

Oh well.

Literacy

I could read my life away. I can certainly read days away. Sometimes I think I need to be careful that I don't do that--but then, I don't think homework/work/mysenseofguilt/people/LIFE will let me do that. So, really it's not something to worry about at all.

Something to worry about: the MASSIVE AMOUNT of Easter candy in my house and in my gut.

Wintergirls

Two weeks ago in my publishing class we had a panel of solid midlist authors come: Mette Harrison, Allyson Condie, Carol Lynch Williams. I asked them how they wrote characters who had some kind of medical condition (like Alzheimers or an eating disorder) in a way that felt authentic. They offered me some suggestions of how to do research, and then Carol suggested that I read Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson--which I just finished today.

Wintergirls is a narrative told in first-person by a girl who has anorexia. There are a lot of books out there about anorexic or bulimic girls, but rarely do you find a book that deals with them from the first-person point of view. From my position as a hoping-to-be-someday-in-the-future author, the idea of writing about such a disease from the first-person is intimidating. Like, super intimidating. And by nature, I think, the book is going to be intense. Wintergirls is very intense. I've never had an eating disorder. I've had/have a lot of friends who have. I know what it feels like to constantly worry about your body and always feel too fat--but I know that's not the same experience as actually starving yourself or binging and purging.

I think this book is brave. And I think it's really well done. It felt real to me. I felt like I was going a little crazy as a read it. It felt honest. It doesn't focus only on the main character's issue with eating, because I don't think eating disorders are ever just about eating. There's so much more connected. Like I said, it was intense, and even disturbing at times.

I don't want to put my foot in my mouth (I'm an expert at this. If you want to know how, just ask me sometime. I have an easy two-step method. You won't even have to think about it--I never do). But here's the deal: so many girls have eating disorders. And I think it's something that's hard to understand if you've never been there. Well, this book helped me understand a little bit. That's all.

Carol also said that we write what we know and we write what we're interested in. We learn and learn and learn and learn, and then we know.

I don't recommend this book if you're feeling depressed or emotionally/mentally unstable. That probably sounds way too strong. For a comparison: The Bell Jar made me feel like I was losing it a bit. That's just me.