quirks

Sometimes I do strange things. Those around me make me aware of this. I laugh.
Eccentricity #1: Last night, in order to ease Mom's troubled mind, I decided to try to find my passport, along with a few other carefully hidden [lost] items. I’m darned good at finding little special places to hide things; in fact, I’m so exceptionally good at hiding important objects that I tend to forget where I’ve put them. So last night, I set off to look for my passport. This turned into looking for my lost inking supplies, journal, and scriptures. Yes, naughty me. But this task proved to be tricky due to the fact that most of my things are packed away, and being the minimalist that I am (ha, yeah, only selectively), I stored the boxes in the tightest spot manageable, with no easy way to access them. I had spent hours and hours on this project weeks ago, getting them to be as compact and unobtrusive as possible. They were crammed into the very back of a long and slender closet, so I had to kind of squeeze past all of my clothes and was behind the door. My mom came around the corner and saw me and gave me this look and asked, “What are you doing?” Not wanting her to know that I was looking for my lost passport, I said “hiding”. Then this whole rigmarole ensued and I started laughing my head off at the ridiculousness of the situation, my mom looked on quizzically, chuckling now and then, while I shoved myself even further into the closet and taunted, “try to find me.” This was a very awkward and inane experience. She left me just in time so that I could try to find my cigar boxes the only way I could with them being packed so snugly: I smelled them. I started at the bottom and worked my way up and down the boxes trying to detect the faint tobacco and woodwork scent they gave off. I zoomed in on a box and then wrangled it, and myself, out of the space (a task in and of itself) to find that I had chosen precisely the right one. Fantastic. So after much ado, I recovered one frivolous cigar box collection out of the four rather important items I initially set out for.
Eccentricity #2: My mom came into the room again and there was a dollar on the floor. She threatened to steal it, and as she reached out to take it, I hid it. Quickly. Under my foot. I was so proud of my stealth and quick thinking only to be crushed by mom saying, “I can see it”. So I put both of my feet over it. [Cue second absurd situation.]
Eccentricity #3: I was looking for treasures at D.I. Coincidentally, this too was with my mom. Just before leaving, I found this globe. It was just a volleyball-sized Earth, strangely top heavy, with the old U.S.S.R. dominating Asia. The North Pole was a bit scratched up, missing a proper stand, and since it was obsolete, I started to set it back down. That was when I discovered it was magnetic. I giggled with joy. I fixed it to anything and everything I could get it to stick to. I still do. And I still giggle.

conundrum

I went to the dentist again today. This time was just a check-up and cleaning. I liked it. I actually enjoyed going, sitting in the chair, and having them inspect my teeth. I loved when they scraped at my teeth and carefully poked, prodded, and flossed. I don’t know why.
I even liked taking x-rays and looking at how my teeth fit together. We even took one of the full-sized x-rays that show all of the teeth together, instead of just the little localized ones. They were all beautiful. It was like a little life history of my teeth. It showed the steps of growth, decay, and correction. I started thinking back to my dental childhood and the experiences with different dentists, remembering that I didn’t always dread it. In reality, I usually enjoyed it, and was fine the procedures.
The dentist asked me all sorts of interrogative questions and was really surprised that I never had braces. He told me I had beautiful teeth about a dozen times.
The only part that got to me this time was the sandy, mystery-flavored substance that they polished my teeth with, but only because it tickled. Yes, my gums are ticklish.
I was even content when we were talking about my wisdom teeth and how we should probably take them out just to be safe, even though we didn’t need to right away. He told me I was lucky not to have one on the bottom left. In actuality, I felt lucky to have the other three.

lavish attire

The other day, someone asked me what my wedding dress is going to look like. I'm not getting married, therefore, I don't know what it will look like. However, she had me discuss it at length with her, and I decided one thing. When that day comes, I think it will be an elegant ivory color. It will be simple, and it may even be calf-lengthed. I look like a giantess in floor length dresses and I have nice legs.

More discussion on this genre of gowns to follow.

faulty romance

The problem with reading things like "Bridget Jones's Diary", or watching films infused with sugary sweet love stories, is that you get sucked into the pseudo-dramatic, hyper-romantic irony of the stories and inevitably you fall in love with a Mr. Darcy. This dilemma wouldn’t be too bad, being on Cloud 9 all the time, except that this can only happen in Fantasyland. In real life, wildly mysterious, charming men like Fitzwilliam Darcy simply do not exist. Minds get pumped full of these ideas that somewhere out in the cold and lonely world, their perfect match is doing perfect things to make their serendipitous meeting perfect. The victims of these far-fetched desires become oblivious to how tangible relationships work, getting wrapped up in their own personal soap operas, and ultimately rejecting potential suitors because they don’t say that cinematically faultless phrase that is so longed for. Expectations shoot sky-high, and when the realization comes that these charismatic, witty, and thoughtful men are only figments of the imagination, all of those overfed hopes come crashing down. This results in the typical “bitter-against-everything-remotely-romantic-and-thus-will-spoil-anything-that-smells-of-love” idea.

So really, at the end of the day, what is the point of sappy, sentimental stories? Maybe they give fleeting bliss, a short-lived state of elation, but eventually that feeling wears off and the longing needy side rears its head. Maybe it’s fun to get this romantic high now and then, but maybe it’s good to keep your feet on the ground once in awhile too. For me, I think I’ll keep that hope in the back of my mind, but instead of expecting some knight in shining armor to come in and sweep me off my feet, I’ll be happy to get along in life, living my own, real life to its fullest. And if my Mr. Perfect-For-Me comes waltzing in at some point, I’ll be happier if instead of shining armor, he’s got a less ostentatious set of threads on.

And now, I’ll happily continue to go from listening to the likes of “Eleanor Rigby”, “The Scientist”, and “Cry me a river”, and then “Brighter than Sunshine”, “The One I Love”, and “Return to Me”, and I’ll have no qualms about it.

Que será, será, right?