Balance & Overload

Last weekend, a good friend chastised me for being anti-social. He was right to chastise me, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed it. However, I do not know how to solve my anti-social problem. I don't try to be anti-social, it just comes naturally to me while I'm going to school. He thinks I'm wasting my college years by never leaving my house or the library. He thinks I have the potential to be a fun/cool person if I would just put myself out there. What a good friend. I can't decide if I want to keep him around or not...

My rebuttal: Believe it or not, I enjoy people, and I'm not completely awkward in social situations. I can meet new people and make new friends all by myself now, sometimes I even make people laugh. Can you believe it?! At the same time, I feel like getting my education is my main priority. I feel like I'm working in an increasingly narrow window of time to get this done.
Is that true?

His rebuttal: He tells me I am in the prime of my life and my college years should be filled with memories of good friends and great dates (do great dates ever happen?). He thinks I can't have a great time at college if I spend my Friday nights with my roommates watching chick flicks and embroidering handkerchiefs.
Well why not?

Lou's Grandma's rebuttal: We (being young women in general) will never get any prettier than we are right now. It's all downhill from here.
Please say I will somehow turn out like a good wine (not that I know anything about wine) that only gets better with age.

Ladies' (beyond college age) rebuttal: They tell me that I only think I'm busy now. Just wait until I'm married and have children. I'll only get busier.
So what you're saying is that I'm never going to sleep again, because I'm already running on only 5 or 6 hours of sleep (max) as it is.

So tell me your opinion on the subject through my handy dandy poll on the right. In the meantime, I'm going to spend my weekend studying for midterms and writing more papers. And no, I will not be doing anything social this weekend if you were wondering.

Not Your Ordinary Von Trappe Family Singers

I pride myself in the fact that I come from the best family in the history of this planet, and seeing as they are so great, they often star the leading roles in my midnight dreams. I will relate one that occurred recently:

I was back home in Arizona with my parents and my sister Ettie, and for some reason the Nazis (or some other frigtheningly awful group of villains)were coming to our house to take us away. One of my father's good friends was assigned to guard us so we couldn't leave. How we had no idea he was a Nazi sympathizer, I'll never know. Before I knew it, my whole family (brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, and nephews etc.) showed up at the house and was involved in the escape plans. It was very Great Escape-esque, but much less organized and much more chaotic. Somehow we came up with an entourage of bicylces and for some reason, I was assigned to be on the unicycle tandem. I will explain how said contraption works: A normal tandem is lined up vertically, but a unicycle tandem is arranged horizontally so it is basically a line of unicylces welded together. Maybe I should patent that idea...If my family can handle a unicycle tandem, anyone can. So here I was on the unicycle tandem while holding my youngest nephew who is just a baby, with two other nephews, Joshua and Benjamin, and one of my sisters. I know what you're thinking, "Wow, Kelly, you're really talented! You can ride a unicycle while holding a baby!" Well, yes, my dream self can unicycle with a baby, she gets to do all sorts of neat things. But, unfortunately, my seat was too high for me to reach the ground, so my sister's job was to keep us all balanced when we had to stop.

So my family escaped with several tandems and other bicycles laden with nieces, nephews, and the rest of my family. My dream ended before I knew if we actually escaped the Nazis (which I hope we did), but the whole family ended up singing "Edelweiss" while we rode our bikes (and unicycles) down main street. We sounded perfect. What other family do you know that can sing "Edelweiss" in perfect harmony while escaping Nazis on bicycles? If you ask me, the original Von Trappe Family should have thought about using bikes instead of hiking over the Alps.

B is for Blessing

I am a straight A student. I am bold enough to state that on a public blog. (Yes, I know that only my family reads it). I have never gotten a B in a class in the entirety of the 15 years I have been going to school. Well, alright. I did get a B the first quarter of freshman PE, but that was only because Coach Morgan didn't know I was on the soccer team (it wasn't for lack of trying). Once he found out that I was on the soccer team, I got an A every remaining quarter of the year. Oh, and I guess I did get a B my first semester of Theatre Dance in college, but I don't know how that happened because the teacher loved me....maybe I'll ask her about that one of these days....

The point being: I am a good student and I have worked hard to get nothing (mostly) but A's. I even got A's in physics and chemistry, but I owe that all to a higher power because I had no idea what was going on in those classes. Even so, getting an A in a class or on a paper feels very much like getting a huge gold star stuck to the middle of your forehead, and B's well it feels like the word "mediocrity" stamped on your forehead with permanent ink.

This week I have gotten three B's. One on my history paper, and two on different midterms. I'll tell you what, 83 is an ugly number compared to 93. But, those B's will not get the best of me. I gave on honest effort on all the work I put into that paper and those tests and if a B is what I get out of it so be it. I honestly feel lucky that I survived with B's. So this week, B is for Blessing. After all, it is better than having to wear a dunce cap and embroidering a glaring F onto all your clothing. Is that policy instituted anywhere? If so, remind me to never go there.

I Appreciate It

In this world of ups and downs, (aren't you glad there are jackalopes around?) I've come to appreciate more and more the simple things I see everyday.

I appreciate that a lot of girls around here go through a lot of trouble to look nice each and everyday. They wear high heels and skirts, and their hair is always perfect. I appreciate it because someone has to make the sacrifice and wear high heels, and it sure as heck isn't going to be me.

I appreciate that some people have the talent to hold enormous amounts of information in their computer-like brains. But sometimes I don't appreciate when they try to share it all in an entire class period.

I appreciate the fact that my American literature teacher can apparate. He is never late to class. Here's the definition for apparation if you've never read Harry Potter:

apparation- a magical method of transportation, and is basically teleportation, having the user focus on a desired location in his mind, then disappear from his current location and instantly reappear at his desired location. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.

I appreciate the that some people put in the effort to put fun things on their flip flops. Some people put ribbons, or scraps of fabric, while others put bunches of plastic grapes. That's effort.

I appreciate that my World Civ. teacher makes some reference to either The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Les Miserables, or some other popular form of media everyday without fail.

Really, BYU is like a carnival everyday...except instead of rides there are just mountains of homework...

Conference Weekend

For the sake of being quite clear, I got no homework done this weekend, but I do not have any feelings of remorse. Whatsoever. None. Zilch.

And this is why:

Friday was one of the happiest days of my life. I had the happiest reunion with my best friend, Marisa, and we may or may not have danced around my kitchen to "You Always Make Me Smile," and skipped around in a circle with Stephie and Lora when we were all together again. Then we spent the night trying to decide which flavor of Ben & Jerry's to get while Brent and Taylor chided us for taking too long. I don't like being chided when I'm deciding which ice cream to get. It's an important decision. But the answer to which flavor to get is always simple:
Everything But The...
It is, and I quote: "A Collision of Chocolate and Vanilla ice creams mixed with Heath Bar Chunks, White Chocolate Chunks, Peanut Butter Cups, and Chocolate Covered Almonds."
You can see why it is the obvious solution.

By the time we got to Lora's house, we were dead. Brent, Taylor, and Marisa had each gotten only a few hours of sleep as they had driven through the night from the Gila Valley to Provo, and I had only a few hours under my belt as I had stayed up until 3:00 am writing a satire for my English class. We decided Clue would be a good game to play, but five minutes in we agreed that it was taking too long, so Marisa skipped her way over to the Billiard Room (or was it the Ballroom?) and accused Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe (or was it the revolver?). Either way, the only accusation that was correct was that Colonel Mustard was in fact the murderer, and we were satisfied. After eating our ice cream and a short round of "Papa Loves Mambo" by Perry Como, Stephie and I went home.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we met back at Lora's and Brent, Taylor, Marisa, Stephie, and I left Provo for Salt Lake City. Why? Because we had tickets for General Conference of course. I followed behind Brent in my Honda Civic because I had no idea how to get where we were going. Brent is a speed demon. Emphasis on the word demon. Before we left, Stephie said the prayer and asked Heavenly Father to help us not get pulled over because we were most definitely going to have to break the law to keep up with Brent. Thank goodness he answered our prayers. I would have pulled us over if I was a cop. After only two near accidents, we traveled safely. Then we lost Brent. We got stopped at a light, and he sped on ahead. We weren't worried because we could just call Taylor who was with him to give us the directions of where they went. Oh, how our faith was in vain. The area we had parking passes for was full and Taylor, our once faithful guide and friend told us, "You're on your own." Oh thanks Taylor. Luckily we found a parking lot and between alternating running and speed walking made our way to the conference center, cursing Brent and Taylor the whole way.

Conference was fantastic, and we ran into several people we knew including a boy from our ward in Thatcher who is serving a mission in Salt Lake, an old roommate, a boy from St. Johns, and my sister's old roommates. It was great! I wish I could say more about how wonderful conference was, but you can listen to it for yourself if you missed it. My summary wouldn't do it justice.

The worst part of the weekend was saying goodbye to Marisa. We cried. Not just a few trickles of tears, but genuine alligator tears. Other than that, this was a beyond fantastic weekend which resulted in an ultimately boring post. Isn't it great how it works out that way?