GUILTY PLEASURES

I have a number of guilty pleasures! They range from bad TV, internet celebrities I follow, eating too many cupcakes while my boyfriend isn't looking, to things I say, and clothing combinations.

Here is a list of some of my guilty pleasures!

☆ Charmed - I love that silly show! It's so campy, the acting (at least by the extras and guest stars is usually TERRIBLE! The plot is nonexistent and the dialog is ridiculous. But I love every minute of it. It's so bad it's good!

☆ Cupcakes - This might seem like it doesn't belong but the reason it's a guilty pleasure is I usually eat WAY too many. My boyfriend isn't a health nut or anything but he lost 100lbs this year so he's at least much more health conscious than he used to be. He eats a lot of veggies and lean meat and doesn't want me baking cupcakes all the time because they're too tempting for him to have in the house all the time. He also doesn't like it when I eat too many sweets. We butt heads about this all the time because if I could I would live off cupcakes and candy! Sometimes I sneak cupcakes when he's not around or already asleep. I feel bad about it sometimes but cupcakes are IMPORTANT damnit!

☆ Jeffree Star - I almost never agree with his attitude, especially when he's talking about how he's better than everyone else or telling other people to suck it, but I love him! I have no idea why. Maybe it's because he's a sparkling Glamazon, or because he's a pink haired freak much like me, only he's got a lot more people making him look good than I do. Maybe I just love pretty things. I've always had a weak spot for gay boys in makeup. Whatever the reason I can't seem to stop watching him! I don't like his music and I don't really even like HIM... But I love him. It's weird!

☆ Scene Hair - I LOVE SCENE HAIR! Oooh man it hurts to admit that but I do. I love big, choppy, brightly colored scene hair. The bigger the better. When I got my hair cut over the summer I wanted choppy layers that I could tease up if I wanted. I don't straighten my whole head, just the bangs, so it's not actually "scene hair" but it's close. I've had candy colors in my hair since I was 14 (10 years!) so that's nothing new. I just love the way scene hair looks. It's funky, it's versatile, it's cute! And my hair looks cute with a scene inspired cut!

☆ Hostess Orange Cupcakes - Even though I bake now and make my own awesome orange cupcakes I still love the orange Hostess cupcakes! They don't have any ingredients that you could actually pronounce... In fact I don't think they're actually food but they're so GOOD! I could eat 10 of them in one sitting. I used to buy them almost daily from the gas station on the walk to classes while I was in college. NOM NOM NOM!

☆ Christmas TV Specials - Smurfs Christmas special anyone? I LOVE Christmas specials. It's funny because I HATE Christmas music. I don't even really like Christmas besides getting gifts and seeing family... Hell I don't even really like the family part. My family is NUTS. But I love the TV specials. When I was younger I would be glued to the TV during Christmas break watching all the specials from Smurfs to Scooby-Doo to freaking PAC-MAN! All of it. I love it! I even love the stop motion animation Christmas specials like the Nutcracker. Although the beginning of the Nutcracker would always scare me. The part where little boys and girls who stay up too late get taken away. That would freak me right the fuck out! It still gives me the willies a bit.

☆ ANY Horror Movie - As long as it isn't a slasher flick (with a few exceptions) I will watch it and enjoy it. Sometimes the worse the horror movie the more I love it. The Silent Hill movie? LOVE IT. (Arguably the Silent Hill movie wasn't "bad". It was just going in the same direction of the bad dubbing that the games are victims of. The dialog was stilted and rigid just like in the games and I'd like to think it was done on purpose!) The second and third Resident Evil movies? Ooooh yeah I watched them. They were terrible but I still watched them more than once! I even BOUGHT the second movie! The first RE movie was pretty bad ass though. No complaints there. I'll watch just about ANYTHING with zombies. I love zombies. I'm scared to death of the actual zombie apocalypse. My boyfriend and I have had very serious discussions about what we will do in case of zombies. We've got a plan all laid out and it isn't your average "Go to the ammo shop and load up with guns then hole up in the country" kind of plan. We have PLAN plan! We're gonna SURVIVE that shit! Also we have sworn that if either of us is bit we will kill each other. If he gets bit by a zombie I have promised to pull the trigger and he'd do the same for me. That's real love!

☆ Plaid With Stripes?! - Well not necessarily those two together but I have been known to mix polka dots with stripes and other clashing patterns. I love to wear my floral print leggings with my pink boots that have a doodly map of France printed on them. I love to mix prints that wouldn't/shouldn't go together. I LOVE to clash. It's so much fun to break the rules of fashion and do your own thing. It's gotten to the point where if I'm not clashing in some way I feel uncomfortable! :3

☆ "Where did you get that?!" "Oh this? ...I made it" - I know it's not kosher to brag but when someone asks where I got something I made myself I can't help but blush and feel special when I tell them that I made it myself! The look of amazement on their faces is so priceless and it gives me such a boost! There was a particular time when a woman at my retail job was looking for a specific hat and I just couldn't find it for her. I was wearing a hat I had crocheted the night before. She asked casually "What about that hat (meaning mine), does it come in solid colors?" and I had to say "This hat? Oh... It didn't come from here. I made it." She looked astounded and it really made my day! Having something unique that you just can't buy in the store is priceless.

That's all I got for right now! How about you internets? Anyone want to share their guilty pleasures with me? Everyone has something they love but are just the littlest bit embarrassed by! Charmed is a big one for me. I have a lot of trouble declaring my love for that show because it's so BAD! I kept my Charmed watching secret and would get all sketchy when someone asked me what I was watching! Come on! Share with me!

LAME

Gotta finish this hat! It needs a second ear flap and maybe a brim?

My cute little babies!

Some stuff I've been working on. Cupcakes, mini pies, afghan, hats... Also gratuitous cute animals picture!

I know I've been really slacking... I've let everything slide, from my resin pieces to work for my portfolio so I can apply to grad schools. I've been wallowing in this unhappy mire. It's not OK. Success doesn't come because you were sitting on your ass and it's time I realize that and get my act together. It's hard, I know, but sometimes you have to do the hard thing. The problem for me here is this: Just because I know how to fix the situation doesn't mean I'm motivated to do it. There is a possibility that I'll continue to sit on my ass and do nothing but make hats and work on this granny square afghan. While I'm still being productive it's not in the areas I should be. I need to be working on resin, I need to be coming up with new designs for jewelry. I need to work on pieces that I can actually be proud of and call art so that grad schools will want me. I want to be able to make a living from crafting and arting, not folding clothes and answering questions about return policies or if we have a public restroom (we don't). I want to be recognized for my hard work and talent, not my ability to sell gift cards. I want my life to matter. Right now I feel like it really doesn't. That sounds really angsty but it's true. I feel like I have no purpose, no meaning right now and it really depresses me.

I don't want much from life. I want to make a living off creativity. I want to be with Jon. I want to maybe squeeze out a couple kiddies and have a family. I don't need to be married, rich, kept... I just want to be loved and happy. So I guess it's time to try and make some of that happen for myself. The kids will have to wait until Jon and I have stable jobs and a steady income. I need to be out of school before I even think about having kids for real. It would be too much to have a new baby while still working on my MFA. Not to mention the fact that I usually work with some pretty toxic stuff (resin, oil paints, solvents) so that would be a bad thing to expose my pregnant self to.

What I'm saying is I want to work for myself. I want to be my own boss, make my own rules and be whoever I want to be without these 8 hour chunks of my life being taken over by The Man.

DILEMMA

I had this friend in college who turned out to not really be my friend. There are a lot of reasons why I stopped talking to her but the biggest and most important one is that she was exceedingly manipulative. She used everyone she came into contact with in some way or another. She used me for money and validation mostly. I think she saw me as this weak girl with a low self image that she could take advantage of. She used me for money, she used me for pot, she used me to feel better about herself.

Once I finally stopped taking Prozac and woke up from my stupor I realized what was actually going on pretty quickly. Without the fog of an SSRI in my system I realized that she had been kinda awful throughout our entire time being friends. I wasn't about to subject myself to that crap anymore.

The final straw was an incident with a mutual friend that wasn't really important at all. It was the WAY my ex-friend handled the situation that made me want to walk away. I realized that she was the kind of person with no morals of her own. She would mold herself to suite the situation and the people in the room at the time. If the people in the room thought doing this one kind of thing was wrong or bad so did she, but as soon as those people left and she was with a different group her values changed completely. I am of the opinion that it's never OK to hit someone. Not ever. She is of the opinion that it would be too much trouble to get involved if a friend is being abused or if one friend hits another unprovoked because it's not "her business". That kind of bullshit doesn't sit right with me or Jon.

Speaking of Jon, he saw a lot of what happened between this friend and I. Let me say that Jon isn't the kind of person who sides with you just because you're his friend/girlfriend. If you're fucking up he's gonna let you know no matter who you are or what relationship you have with him. That's one of he reasons I like him so much. Honesty matters to me! In this case Jon was on my side because I was in the right. My friendship and loyalty were being abused by this girl and he didn't think that was OK. Not just because I'm his girlfriend but because you shouldn't treat people like I was being treated. Not ever. You just don't do it. So I cut all ties with this girl and never really looked back. It wasn't a malicious thing towards her, it was about saving myself from future grief. If I had stayed friends with this girl and continued to let her abuse our friendship that would have been MY fault for not getting out while I could. So I did.

Now she's sent me this message of Facebook demanding an apology and wanting to know why I "dumped her for my new boyfriend". It was a very telling message. This girl still thinks the world owes her. She thinks that I owe her my life for being friends with me. I don't think I owe her a thing, and if I ever did at any point that debt would have been paid after the hundreds and hundreds of dollars I spent keeping us stoned for the last 2 years. I'm not exaggerating either. Pot costs $$, she didn't have any to spend on pot. She sure as hell expected me to share mine with her though. She would go on and on about how she would repay me next time she bought weed but she never did. When she actually had pot it was the gross kind that gives you headaches. But I wasn't about to not share. I had weed and I didn't want to sit at home like a jerk and smoke it all alone. That's not fun!

It turns out I would rather not smoke at all than be taken advantage of like that. Anyway, I digress. The bottom line is I don't owe this girl an apology for finally sticking up for myself and realized I deserve more than to be used and abused in the guise of friendship. I'll never apologize for dropping her like an old bag of moldy tangerines.*

*I will make you cookies if you get that reference.

SLACKER

I haven't been doing much of anything out here. It's like being marooned on a deserted island. I see about as many people as you would see on a desolate little island in the middle of the pacific and there's about as much to do. So I sit, I read, I do stupid stuff online. I ran out of pink yarn so I can't finish the scarf I was working on. It's too hot to cast any resin. Thank goodness for the Harry Potter books or I'd be a pathetic blob of pudding sobbing on my bed.

It takes so much WORK not to go totally nuts. Being bored is getting on the express train to Crazy Town. Having nothing to keep you occupied while you worry about stuff you can't do anything about isn't healthy. I've had way too much time to think about everything and that leads to doubting myself and other people in my life. Most of me knows that it's temporary, it'll be over forever once I get to Boston. There's this little part of me that keeps saying that I'll never get there. This little, evil, nagging voice keeps telling me that things will be different between Jon and I. That I can't trust him. I keep having to fight down this feeling that he's sick of me. I don't know if it's because having a relationship over the phone is one of the hardest (and worst) things to do... Or maybe I'm sick of myself - and feeling like this - so I expect everyone else to hate my attitude too. I know I haven't been easy to listen to. I know it's hard to be Jon in this situation. He can't help me at all accept by finding us a house, and he's working on that.

I just can't shake these yucky feelings that everything is wrong. All I can do is hope that I'll feel better once I'm not in Moab Utah anymore.

CROCHET

I'm learning the ancient and awesome art of crochet! I've learned how to chain, how to single crochet, and double crochet. I learned how to start an amigurumi ball and if I just kept going with it I could probably finish and amigurumi ball. I understand the CONCEPT of decreasing but I haven't tried it myself yet. It's the neatest thing I've learned in a long time! I've been experimenting with making circles different ways and sizes with different stitches. I learned that by increasing the circle way more than you need to you end up with ruffles! That's really good to know. I bet I could make a circle with ruffly edges now.

I have this problem though. I want to do EVERYTHING. I want to be able to crochet any shape I want at will, I want to be able to make awesome resin jewelry, I want to design and sew clothes. I've always been the kind of person with a lot of interests and one medium has never been able to satisfy me fully. I always want to know more, do more. That all takes TIME though and I hate being a beginner! I get frustraited and have no patience for myself and the time it takes to actually learn something. The upside is that I know how to do a lot of basic stuff in a lot of different media. The drawback is I don't really know how to do much of the fancy stuff that takes years of practicing that one medium until you know EVERYTHING about it. Of course, if I keep up my dabbling eventually I'll have enough experience in all these skills to do the fancy stuff. But it'll take me twice the time it would take someone who was just focusing on that one craft. I'm ok with that though.

I think crocheting is a great thing for me to learn. My mother and her mother (my grandmother) are both master knitters. I tried learning to knit on several occasions but it never stuck. Maybe because knitting is too structured. I think crocheting will stick with me because it's more free flowing and intuative. Most of my understanding of craft is intuative so that works for me. Now I can cary on a yarn craft and not feel like an ass for not being a knitter. I just wish someone had taught me when I was little. Imagine the strange concotions I could whip up with that kind of experience! I'll get there though. I can just imagine four years from now I'll be able to crochet all kinds of things and I'll be amazed that I was ever an akward beginner! I hope XD