Lists of Various Sizes

Things that make me happy:

• Sunflowers
• Cold sheets when I first get into bed
• Bendy straws
• Hanging out with my grandparents
• Slurpees
• Pens that don't bleed all over the page
• Camping trips with my family
• New notebooks
• The smell of old books
• Baking/Cooking
• Walking to the park
• The noise my dog makes when she's happy
• Elephants
• Getting mail
• Buying people presents
• Baseball games
• The smell of freshly cut grass
• Long talks with good friends
• Meeting new people
• Rain
• Old furniture
• Taking pictures
• Ice cream
• Shopping trips with my mom
• Summer barbecues
• Indiana Jones movies
• Switzerland

Names I really love:

( I started a list trying to help Becky pick baby names. I kept these ones to myself)

• Sadie James
• Ellie May
• Aiden Robert
• Brighton Alexander
• Jeremy Scott
• Brooks Davis
• Maggie Lynn
• Peyton Marie

Things that scare me:

• Elevators
• Falling of the side of a cliff
• Really tall man-made structures
• Ordering pizza over the phone
• Dying from an allergic reaction
• Zombie movies
• Losing the people I care about
• Getting lost in unfamiliar places

Books I want to read:

• A Clockwork Orange
• Sometimes A Great Notion
• Electric Kool-Aid Acid Trip
• The Road
• Anasazi Boys
• In Cold Blood
• Cold Mountain
• Dharma Bums
• The Things They Carried
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Shoeless Joe
• The Stand
• Mystic River
• The Jungle
• Atlas Shrugged
• Don Quixote
• Les Miserables
• Paradise Lost
• Lord of the Flies
• Superfreakanomics
• The Sun Also Rises
• The Plague
• Beyond Good and Evil
• As I Lay Dying

(There are at least 100 more, however this seems like a good stopping place. Feel free to add suggestions)

Songs I've Listened to Way too Many Times:

• Time After Time
• Shoulda Been a Cowboy
• Tiny Dancer
• Car Underwater
• Defending You
• Hey Jude
• Lover I Don't Have to Love
• Mood Rings
• Bleeding Mascara
• Fishing in the Dark
• Strawberry Wine
• Real Good Time
• Summer Skin
• Get It Faster
• The Runaway

We're going to try this honesty thing...

I haven't been writing much lately. I know a lot of it has to do with not dealing with things. If it's all in my head, then I can convince myself of whatever is necessary to get through the week, or day, or miniature crisis I'm dealing with at the moment. It's harder when the thoughts are on paper. Things become concrete and real. Even after I've torn a page out of my notebook or deleted something from my computer screen, the ideas and feelings are still there. I let myself put enough importance in the thoughts and feelings that they made it to paper. Then I'm committed. That's dangerous.

Someone famous (I'm thinking it was Mark Twain?) said that writers are liars. I doubt there is a statement closer to the truth. I spend so much time manipulating characters and plots that it's become easy to do the same in real life. I've taken conversations out of context and imagined motives for people's actions. The result is a world so far from reality that it may as well be a fairy tale. Wonderful people have become villains. I like it that way. It serves my purpose and I've become accustomed to basking in the the bull-shit.

Example A: Guy at party.

We meet. He tries to impress me by slurring extremely ridiculous pick-up lines. I'm bored so I happily play along. We make out. He falls asleep. I leave with no real expectation of ever seeing him again. A few days later we exchange an impersonal text message which relieves our collective conscience then go on with our lives.

... Rehashing the details over coffee with the girls : He becomes the charming guy who spent all night chatting with me and was polite enough to get me drinks. The kissing was full of butterflies and fireworks. And he MUST be interested, after all he did text me the next day.

Exaggeration. Manipulation. Bullshit.

However, it keeps me from having to dish about my possible real life romance and the problems that have arisen because of my lack of commitment. There is no lecture from the girls about missing out on my "one true love" and they have enough gossip to last them a few weeks before they come back asking for more.

In reality... the guy was just someone I knew from a mutual friend. He was drunk and looking for a quick hook-up. I was one of the only single girls at the party. The flirting was just formality and his conversation skills were lacking. So, I let him kiss me so I wouldn't have to hear him talk. The text message was just a way of covering his ass because we have some of the same friends and he wouldn't want me to ruin his chances with the other girls by complaining that he's a jerk who kissed me then never called.

At least that's what I tell myself...