Birthdays

Yesterday was my birthday.

I have this odd relationship with my birthday and the festivities surrounding it. The last "real" birthday party I had was my tenth, the summer before fifth grade. Then there was a random surprise party my mom threw me when I was twelve which was great, but I think she mainly threw it because it freaked her out how cool I was with just celebrating with my best friend, my family, and a movie at home. She felt bad and like I was missing out on something.

There are few things in this world that I dislike more than being the center of attention. In fact, the only thing I may dislike more is when people jaywalk or cut across perfectly manicured grass. But, I digress. Positive attention, negative attention, I don't care--I simply don't like it. Parties--especially where I'm the guest of honor--just aren't for me. I shudder to think about the day I get married; maybe I'll elope. Just joking.

As much as I dislike attention, I still like to know that people care and haven't forgotten about me (or my birthday). Basically, I'm a stereotypical girl. This is where the relationship that I share with my birthday and the festivities that accompany it gets complicated. The line between a celebration or acknowledgement being too over the top but not quite acknowledgement enough is a very fine line.

I don't think anyone quite understands this weird hangup/relationship with attention as my best girlfriend and roommate for the past three years does. My boyfriend's empathy on the subject is a close second to hers. But really, that's an irrelevant piece of information. I kind of just wanted to brag on them (hi, best girlfriend and boyfriend if you ever read this! *waves*).

This summer I'm in Los Angeles for an internship, which is also where my boyfriend lives. Clarification: my boyfriend lives in LA not in my internship. I'm not sure if it's possible for someone to live in an internship since that's sort of an intangible thing (I mean, the word itself is intangible. Internships definitely have tangible duties like learning how to use a Keruig coffee maker). Anyway, back to the topic at hand. There have been probably five or six years in my life where I haven't been at home on my birthday, so being in LA the day I turned twenty wasn't exactly excruciatingly painful. Sure, I missed my family and friends back home like crazy, but I had friends here to make up for it in some ways, you know? But for the most part, these are new friends, and so for my birthday I was a expecting a movie night and take-out with my boyfriend. Seriously! And I would have been happy as a sitting duck (or is the phrase "sitting cow"? I always get the two mixed up) with that. But when I got to his apartment that evening, I was surprised to find his front door locked. Suddenly, it opened to ambient cricketing noises that made me feel like I was back in Georgia, little pin pricks of light projected on the ceiling that were stars, a red and white checkered table cloth on the floor with a picnic basket full of vegan deliciousness, two French baguettes and a bottle of wine.

He'd thrown me a surprise picnic for my birthday!

Later, some friends came by for cake (another surprise! I'm really easy to surprise, a fact my dad pointed out via FaceTime the next day. The boyfriend agreed). This little party toed that weird little line that I carefully monitor and walk on; it was the perfect balance of attention/not attention for my taste.

Oh, it also rained! Water droplets from the clouds actually descended upon West Hollywood! This, I've learned after a few months of living here, is a rarity. So naturally the rain garnered more attention than the day celebrating my birth. Which was great!

And, it was a great way to start off my twenties.

Planning my Mid-life Crisis

Life. The future. What's ahead of us. And how are we going to turn out? All such loaded questions and terms, full of unknowns and what-ifs. It's And really, those are all extraordinarily discrete. In fact, the future itself--something we try to harness and grasp--is really essentially notional and quite abstract. Yet, it--the future-- is something that we imagine our entire lives. From the time we're wee babes we start dreaming of what we want to do when we grow up. Once we're a little older romance, or a notion similar to it, enters into our minds. And now our dreams for the future are shaped not only around what we want to be when we grow up, but also who we want to marry, where we want to live, the kind of cars we want to drive, and what we want to name our children. 

The future is abstract. It's a scary unknown that we try to shape and mold to our liking. Luckily for us, it's also pliable. We can shape it into what we want. We can decide that when we grow up we want to be an archaeologist, that we want to marry the person we love, that we don't want children, and that we want to drive a Porsche, but will probably always be driving that reliable old Honda in the driveway (sometimes there are things in life that you've just got to accept). 

The word "future" is such a loaded term. It can mean so many things. It's wonderful and knows no limits in the fact that we can imagine it to be whatever we want to and that we can mold it to shape our liking. It's also unreliable, uncertain, and scary. With the snap of a finger and in the blink of an eye it can change unexpectedly and something wonderful and exciting can suddenly be overwhelming and crushing. 

Earlier tonight my boyfriend and I were sitting around, having an old movie night. I'd picked The Lady Vanishes, an Alfred Hitchcock film from 1938. Somewhere along the way in this early-twentieth century comedic thriller though, we got stopped paying attention and quietly started talking about other abstract things. We talked about our childhoods, the first time we'd smoked (cigarettes, of course...), similarities between our parents and why they act the way they do, and things we wanted to do. He told me about how his sister had gone backpacking in Europe while she'd studied abroad and I'd mentioned how I want to do that but I don't know when I'll have time. "Maybe I'll just do it when I'm seventy," I said with a flippant laugh. 

But then I got to thinking: what if I did do that when I'm older? Who knows where I'll be or what I'll be doing, or if I'll even be alive when I'm seventy. Or forty. Or even tomorrow for that matter. I know what I hope to be doing tomorrow, in twenty years, and in fifty--but will those hopes and dreams come to fruition? Or will they slowly lose their significance, fade into the background, and eventually vanish from our minds just like our Alfred Hitchcock film did tonight? 

The future scares me. I wish that for just one moment I could get a glimpse of what my life will be like when I'm forty. Where will I be living--Georgia, California, Indiana, somewhere else completely? What will I be doing--will I be a professor, working at a museum, a librarian, or something else? Will he and I still be together? Will he still be here? Will I? 

Most of all though I just want that glimpse so I'll be reassured that everything I'm doing is going to eventually be worth it and that in twenty or more years, I'll be happy. 

Happy, however, I am beginning to think is something that we strive for all of our lives, yet we never really truly reach. Or else, it's an intangible idea that we want to make tangible and can't and so we think we haven't achieved it. It's like nirvana. But I suppose that's an entry for another night.

Anyway, tonight's talk and future planing instilled in me this sense of urgency: there's all of this stuff I want to do that I haven't managed to even plan time for yet! Hence, I am already planning my mid-life crisis. I've already started making a list of all of the things I want to do that I'll do when it comes. Interestingly enough, this mid-life crisis list is scarily similar to my bucket list. And, in that sense, if you really think about it, it's a life list.

I'm probably not going to get that glimpse into the future that I want so badly. I guess I just need to accept that I'll probably be driving Snowy the Honda Accord for a while (I hope at least, the future is such a scary thing . . . I hope and pray nothing happens to that car). So what can we do? Just keep trudging forward, I suppose. Keep molding and reshaping our dreams and remember to always keep the volume of those dreams loud enough that they never vanish into the background. Sure, the future is abstract, pliable, and absolutely terrifying, but in a way, isn't that what makes it so endless and amazing? 

California Crafting

I'm in Los Angeles for the summer working at a museum (and hopefully Barnes&Noble too, because the whole unpaid internship thing is for the birds . . .) and visiting people, including my boyfriend. On Wednesday I'll have been here for three weeks. The time flies and way too quickly too!

I could write about what's going on at the museum or cool stuff that I've been doing or some of the amazing food I've been consuming (because let's be honest, food is what life is all about, right?), but instead I'm writing about crafting. Go figure.

A few nights ago I was at my boyfriend's apartment watching a movie (or was it season four of Arrested Development? the quality of which is in serious question...I can't remember,  regardless, it doesn't matter) when his dad came in suddenly with three flower pots with various species of cactus in them. "You should take these," he said. "You won't have to water them," he said. "And the story of how I happened upon them is remarkable!" he said. We have yet to hear this amazing, remarkable tale of how these cacti were acquired.

Well, the boyfriend wasn't (and still isn't) the biggest fan of the plants. He said that he didn't need them, had nowhere to put them, and that the flower pots were ugly. The flower pots weren't ugly. Well, one of them was because it was zebra patterned, but the other two were normal. Observe:

I pretend to be crafty. I like to do crafts. But to be honest, most of the time the endeavors I pursue turn out catastrophic. For example: a few months ago I decided to try and make a snow globe as a gift for someone. The snow globe itself turned out decently--until a friend shook it one too many times and what was inside starting floating. Trying to fix the snow globe didn't go too well--I ended up getting epoxy cement and rubbing alcohol in my eye and spending the rest of the night with my head in a bowl of water, effectively "irrigating" my eyes so as not to end up with permanent damage. Or with an epoxy cement rock in my eye either.

So, while I may not be the best at crafting, I really enjoying it. And it comes from the heart, and that's what matters, right? Anyway, I decided to take the ugly pots and make them my own. But what can one do with semi-ugly flower pots?

Why, decoupauge of course!

I decided to use LA themed postcards (which I found at the Farmer's Market on Third & Fairfax for fifty cents a piece!) for the ugly zebra print flower pot and paper napkins for the other two pots. One set of napkins had different sort of old fashioned hipster looking bikes and the other set had zen looking elephants. Both sets can be purchased through World Market.

Notice the bicycle tire in the background. Well played, eh?

Next I set out to find Mod Podge. Which, apparently is only an East Coast thing because no one that I came into contact with had ever even heard of the stuff, which I thought was a staple among crafters. So instead, I made my own by mixing two parts glue and one part water. It worked decently, I think. Next, I just cut out the postcards and sort of collaged them onto the awkwardly shaped flowerpot and then did the same for the other two normal shaped flower pots as well with Elmer's All Glue. And I learned that when decoupaging, kindergarten rules come back into play: one dot IS indeed a lot. The next step was to then apply the Mod Podge to the flower pots. I did this using a sponge and tried to just apply a fine layer so that it wouldn't get all gooky or look bad. I think that I used too much glue when first gluing the paper to the flower pots and it kind of showed through, so next time I'll be using less glue. Also, be careful because the napkins rip very easily, which is frustrating. I applied three coats of Mod Podge to each pot. letting it dry for about twenty minutes in between each coat.

 And this is what I ended up with. Three flower pots full of character! :)

And the best part? I did this craft for under $25! The napkins were around $9.00 together, twelve postcards were $6.00, homemade Mod Podge was $2.50 (only because I had to buy the glue), and the sponges I used to apply the Mod Podge were $4.50.

My advice for anyone pursing their flower pot decoupaging dreams              would be to make sure to decoupauge flower pots that don't have plants already potted in them. I broke a few petals that way . . .

And of course, the pots (and my hard work, I might add!) are still hidden in the kitchen and not on display in the apartment. . .grumble, grumble. . .

Reading

The best gift you can give a person is the gift of unconditional love. I think that's what someone said one time. 

But right after that, the greatest gift you can give is the one of reading and knowledge. 

Seriously, a book is the best gift in the entire world. It's an adventure that can fit in your pocket (or purse). It's a friend you can turn to. It's a story that never grows old. 

Reading is one of the great joys of life. Right behind napping. And, we should probably throw eating in there too, because seriously, who doesn't enjoy eating? 

Only lately, I find it hard to. Enjoy reading that is. I've been so starved for pleasure reading lately that I devour it as soon as it's handed to me, like a homeless and starving man eating his first meal in years. Literally, that's how I've felt while reading the last two works of fiction that I read. 

I like to read though provoking books--at least, I think they're thought provoking, others might disagree. Oftentimes though, these thoughtful, provocative, insightful story lines are often quite sad, and between the pages of my found friend, I often encounter disease, destruction, and death. 

A common theme/sample story line is as follows: person is living life, person is thrown some sort of terrible curveball, person either overcomes obstacle, dies, or does both, end of story. 

This bothers me. Why is it that to be remembered or revered in our society, one must first die? Why can't we celebrate and commemorate the living as well? For that matter, why can't we simply appreciate the normal lives as well as the extraordinary ones? 

But, I digress. I just finished John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. And what a lovely book. Although, I'm sure my boyfriend who sat on the couch next to me while I read (and sobbed) on Saturday night would disagree, it was beautiful and brilliant. Really, to simply say it's a "lovely book" is jipping it. I remember beeing barely a hundred pages in and already feeling like I was living another life, like I was friends with Augustus and Hazel Grace. I was on the edge of my seat, flipping the pages ferociously, glancing at the clock as the morning passed, knowing I need to go but being unable to tear myself away from the saga of their lives. 

TFIOS is about living. It's also about cancer and dying, but to steal a line from the book "dying is simply a side effect of living . . . there will come a time when we're all dead . . ." And that resonated with me. I don't know why really, I guess it's just that in the last year my whole perspective on dying has changed. It used to be this abstract concept that I knew existed, but never really thought about it effecting me, you know? It was something that eventually happened, sure, but that eventually was far off and something that didn't need to be addressed anytime soon. 

Lately, things have happened in my own life though that have made me realize that death is a lot closer than we may realize at times and that our own morality is a lot more frail than we could (or would like to) imagine. And that's a scary and heavy thought. But it's even scarier and a harder pill to swallow when you're not prepared for it. Not only prepared for your own morality, but also accepting and prepared for the morality of others. That's advice from someone in my life I respect and love very much--"you gotta prepare or you'll go crazy". I'm not sure it's possible to prepare as much as that person makes it out to be . . . but I'll give it a shot anyway. 

This next part is going to sound selfish, but this whole new perspective I'm talking about? I'm not so sure it's a great thing. It makes me feel like a jaded, pessimistic, and defeated person. And also, it's made it extremely hard to enjoy a book like TFIOS. There was a time where I would have once gobbled this book up like it was my last meal or like a toddler eats a melting ice cream sundae (see how I'm tying the food in with the reading from earlier? Both essential to life, I'm telling ya), now I can only gently sip on it, just like Hazel Grace sips and sucks on those ice cubes at one point in the book, reading something like this is difficult now. 

At the beginning of the book we first meet Hazel Grace who originally had thyroid cancer that since the original diagnosis, has spread to her lungs. She instantly made me laugh with her dry wit and dark humor. She acts so blase; yet (thanks to the nature of reading) we as readers are allowed a raw insight to her mind and we realize she's actually dying inside (okay, maybe not the best choice of words right there . . .). 

There's this line in the book where she states that she doesn't "want to be anyone's grenade". Hazel Grace doesn't let very many people in. She constantly is shutting people out and not allowing anyone to grow close to her, so that when she finally does "dip out", her death will hurt the least amount of people possible. That resonated with me. 

We all feel this way at times, don't we? We work so hard our entire lives to please people and make the people we love happy, sometimes at the sacrifice of our own happiness (think of how you want to please your parents or teachers growing up). Then, we grow up and suddenly we're allowed to make our own decisions and such and . . . well, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming as we start realizing the full implications of our decisions and how much of a domino effect each aspect of our lives can have on another. I think we all try our hardest to keep those dominoes from falling and knocking into a grenade. Whether we're dying or not (although, Hazel Grace is quick to remind us we're all dying technically), one of the main goals in our human lives and due to our human nature is to not hurt the people around us that we love the most and hold dear. 

Then, the book took a turn. The entire time I'd been mentally preparing myself for Hazel Grace to kick it. But this is suddenly when we learn that Augustus' cancer (that was eighty percent curable and remission) is back. I wasn't prepared for this at all. Darn you, John Green! But, it's great that Augustus' death snuck up on me so quickly that I barely had time to prepare because in my opinion--regardless (and contradictory to a previous statement about preparation)--that's life. You can't adequately prepare for it. It'll never be enough. Life will still best you every single time. 

This real, resonating feeling . . . I think that that's exactly the sort of feeling a book should leave you with. After finishing, one should feel a rush of excitement  a satisfying feeling of being full and content. Even that feeling of confusion, sadness, and of lost innocence (which sucks at times) all all important and necessary. A good book should linger, the lessons it taught should stag with you forever, just like the memories of a tantalizing meal stick with taste-buds (and you waste-line) forevermore. 

The Inedible and The Incredible

A few days ago I stumbled upon this great blog--it's called The First Mess--and it's all about vegan/vegetarian cooking, cooking with what's in season, just great food in general. And the woman who writes is a great photographer, because all the food looks incredible! And edible, it looks very edible too. Or maybe, it just looks so good because it's all natural. Regardless, you should (I'm just going to assume there's more people reading this than me) all go check it out!

But anyway, I found the blog on the night that I'm assigned to cook at my apartment. My roommates and I all take turns cooking--it's cheaper and we get to try new things! I'm known for trying weird experimental things, so when I came home with a recipe I found on The First Mess for chocolate vegan pancakes, it wasn't really a surprise.

Now, I've never made pancakes before.

And, my first time making them was quite an adventure. The first one (or two) turned out terrible. I mean, they were still tasty, but it looked inedible instead of incredible.

The third time I tried, things came out much better. And I learned that you have to let your griddle get hot enough or else, well, you end up with the first two things I tried to serve my friends. I hid them on the bottom of the pancake pile but eventually, they were discovered. My boyfriend called and wanted to know how they were turning out, and when I sent him pictures, he told me that Worst Cooks in America was still auditioning for next season, thanks boyfriend (Worst Cooks in America is kind of a running joke because we have a friend that is/was on there this season--go Alina Bolshakova!).

But when my roommates bit into the pancakes, it was heavenly. There was moaning and they immediately jumped up to get more--talk about flattering! It made me feel so good.


So, what I'm trying to say here, I guess, is don't give up on things, even if they look positively dismal, such as my first couple of pancakes. Because second (or third) chances are always worth it. And it's always possible to turn the inedible into incredible.

Saving Humanity

The drive and ambition to want to do big, important, life-changing things. . . I used to have that. And I still do in some areas, such as school--I'm like a Spanish Conquistador fighting with the Incas when it comes to schoolwork and academics. Okay, maybe that's a bad simile. But I work hard and take hard classes and keep my grades up and  do extra-curriculars and I'm participating in internships. Seriously, I don't play around, and I'm getting into an awesome graduate school. I am. I am. I am, I'm a-telling yaaaa!

Okay. Rant over. Maybe I have drive when it comes to academics, but I also have a little anxiety and something else--stubborn determination?--too. But anyways, I digress. 

When I was little I wanted to be a doctor. Or a scientist. My kindergarten teacher once called my parents saying that I had said in class that I wanted to prove that gravity wasn't what held us down to the earth. In fourth grade I came home and informed my parents I wanted to be a college professor and have my PhD in history. Then there was the time when I wanted to be a pediatric oncologist (this was the direct precursor to "PhD Dixie") and just be an amazing doctor and help kids feel better. 

But somewhere along the way--and I'm not sure where--I lost the drive and desire to do most of this. I discovered that hospitals are scary and that the law of gravity is already pretty much set in stone. I found out that how much I hated science and math, and to be honest, I wasn't really that good at either subject. And so, the drive to want to become that person slowly dissipated and those dreams slowly started to slip away. .

But lately, I've been feeling them again. We all have people in our lives that we seen in pain and that are sick and that we want to help, and lately, I've not been able to get those people off of my mind. I just want to help them! And that desire has me all nostalgic about my childhood dreams of being a doctor or a scientist (although, I don't think disproving gravity would really help anybody, now that I think about it). 

I don't have the answers and this blog post is more of a rambling mess of inner thoughts than anything. I don't know what I'll do, but I do know that I love anthropology and history. I love museums. And I love and am thankful to the people out there who didn't lose their childhood ambitions of becoming a doctor or a scientist die somewhere along the way on the road to adulthood. So, I suppose I'll get the PhD in studying humanities, and leave the saving humanity up to others, eh?

Side note: I wish I could somehow gain some of that drive that people who want to cure cancer and such posses and apply it to laundry and cleaning dishes. Because that is an area where I lost drive and desire and ambition in my life, and never gained it back. . . 

No Bones About It . . .

I am in love.

Don't worry, you don't need to run the other direction. I'm not about to gush about my boyfriend or talk in great detail about how much I love my dog (and how much he loves me back, I know he does, okay?).

Nope, instead I'm going to gush all about my love for anthropology/archaeology and history. Basically what I'm deciding to do with my life. Beware: nerd moment(s) ahead.

A few days ago I was sitting in my archaeology class and it hit me that I would honestly like to grow up and be just like her. She clearly loves her job and her enthusiasm about anthropology and archaeology is contagious.

Recently we were talking about bioarchaeology. Think of the stereotypical scientist digging in the dirt for little pieces of bones and you basically have a bioarchaeologist. So we're discussing antemortem injuries and talking about this recently found skeleton that had a lead bullet lodged in its spine but didn't die until a number of years later during the Bubonic Plague. Then someone brings up lead poisoning and all of a sudden Dr. Birch launches into this story about the Franklin expedition and what the bioarchaeological record taught us.

For those of you who don't know (I didn't) the Franklin expedition was an exploratory expedition through the Canadian Arctic (Dr. Birch is Canadian). After a short time these four explorers were shipwrecked. Luckily, they had enough food supplies to last months because the food supplies were canned. This is possibly the earliest example we have of humans using canning as a way of preserving food. BUT guess what the tin cans were sealed with?

Lead soldering.

So, eventually by trying to simply stay alive, these unlucky explorers sealed (or should we say unsealed, rather) their fate and eventually lost their minds from lead poisoning  Years later an archaeological team found them buried in the snow, miles from their ship, in a tiny little row boat with the finest china that they'd brought and a baby grand piano.

Lead isn't the only dangerous metal found in ancient times. Iron and copper were among two of the top culprits. Dr. Birch told of us about a conference she went to one time in Ireland where they speaker did an experiment to show how detrimental weapons made of iron and copper could be. To illustrate this the speaker took a grass beach mat, you know like the $1 ones that you use to lay on the sand? Well, he took this and then rolled it up and soaked it in water. Once this is done the grass mat actually has the same density as human flesh (isn't that neat?!). Next, he took two weapons--one a copper weapon and one an iron weapon and cut through the grass mat to demonstrate the abilities and effects of pre-state society weapons.

Okay, so the density of human flesh part might be kind of morbid, but we all have our things that we think are cool, yeah?

Similarly, I think the absolute world of my history professor. He gets so excited and worked up--in his own weird and reserved way--about history. He loves relating history to film and inspiring good, scintillating discussion--such as an in-depth conversation that started off about post-World War I women's fashion and ended up being an intense discussion about androgyny, Emma Watson, homosexuality in the trenches, and the "bromance" of today. I think this is the reason I enjoy his class so much.

For example, we recently watched the movie M by Fritz Lang. A quick (and probably terrible) synopsis for those of you who haven't seen it: post World War I Germany, a vicious murderer on the streets snatching up little kids, he's caught and convicted by the underground criminals. That's it more or less. Peter Lore plays the murderer.

Now, how we related this to our history class is that there's a line where Peter Lore claims he "can't help" killing. Could it be leftover PTSD manifesting? "I don't know, but possibly..." in the words of Dr. Soper.

Basically, I love the class because it gives me an excuse to watch all these cool, old films without feeling guilty and like I'm wasting time.

Although this semester is proving to be a difficult one, it's one that I'm enjoying immensly. And, I've realized, it was one that I sorely needed. This time last year I couldn't get far enough away from history. I had completely lost my passion for it as a discipline because of one bad class. Note: the professor was amazing, it was the actual class that sucked. But now, here I am and I've changed my major back to history again! Or added it back, rather, along with anthropology.

So things are good and golden and peachy at the moment. I'm re-inspired and happy. I'm in love and now you all know. Oh, and he's also in love, but that's a different story...