Big Brothers

I really hope my future first born is a boy. I think every first born should be a boy, in fact. Why is that? Because every girl deserves to have a big brother.

I have five little brothers (some of which are actually cousins, but they will forever be brothers by my reckoning). I also have five little sisters (again, some of which are cousins - we're an abnormally close family). This position has helped shape me into a little bit of a premature mother (at least in my mind). I'm protective of them. I feel responsible for them in some ways, and I miss the days when the younger ones were small enough for me to coddle and dote on.

I like being older. I really do. But there's one thing I feel like I've missed a lot - a big brother. And it's not because I didn't have one. Because I did. I mean... I do. I have an older brother, but we've never had the kind of relationship I think a brother should have with his younger siblings. I remember idolizing him as a little kid. I played with things like HotWheels, Ninja Turtles, dinosaurs, and Monster Trucks because he liked them. I wanted to be just like him. But that didn't last long. By the time I'd started school, he didn't want anything to do with me. In his eyes, I was an ugly little freak. He never had a kind thing to say about or to me. We've never really talked at all. He had his pond to fish from, I had my books to bury myself in, and we just didn't acknowledge each other. (I was glad when he stopped acknowledging me since I had fewer bruises that way.)

I guess that lack I've felt with him is the reason I adopt my close guy friends as surrogate brothers. (I did the same thing with the families of my closest friends when my own family was in the throes of divorce.) I have one particular guy friend that I feel like I can always go to for advice or venting when I'm frustrated. There really isn't a topic that I feel would be too much to discuss with him. He teases and banters with me. He puts me through the tortures of tickling. We play fight. He compliments the things that he knows I feel self-conscious about. He bullies me into having a healthy social life when I'd just let myself be a hermit. We fight all the time and I've never worried that we wouldn't still be friends at the end of the day for it. I just feel like I can relate to him and depend on him exactly the way I always felt like a girl should be able to depend on a brother.
I have other friends as well that'll tease me the same way, or offer to beat up the guys who upset me for whatever reason. (Not that I'd ever let them do it. ^.^()) It's nice feeling important like that. It's fun being able to adopt new 'big brothers.'

Anyway, that's just what's in my head right now. I'm very glad that I have such wonderful friends who look out for me and make my life so much richer. I'm grateful to finally have someone I can call 'big brother' - even if it took me 19 years to get him.


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Quote - "Men always believe they are in control of everything around them. When they find out there are not, they think they have failed, instead of learning a simple truth women already know," Aviendha (WoT)
Music - "Wonderful," Everclear
Mood - Playful

Freaked out. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional.

Let's find out what's on my mind, na?

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I'm like Gollum. I both hate and love the ring, just as I hate and love myself. What is my ring? Men who dance. Not just dance. Men who dance divinely.
I love dancing with a man who can make me feel like I can waltz - even though I know I can't. I love men who not only spin their partners - but who know how to do it with so much flair and finesse that the entire song becomes a pattern of complex twists and dips. This is a great thing for me because I know how to spin - and as long as I keep spinning I don't have to worry about my lacking footwork and the basic steps I don't know. I just really love dancing with a man who's good enough at what he does to make me feel like I can dance too.
So why do I hate it? Because nothing makes you feel quite so clumsy and pathetic as being unable to even follow a basic step when you're paired with someone so much more skilled than yourself. After stepping on a few guys' toes and sitting out for a few minutes to watch the people who obviously know exactly what they're doing and look good doing it, it's so easy to become self-conscious. And once that one blow to the esteem lands on a weak spot, all the others just start pummeling you from all sorts of sides. Funny how something like dancing well (or poorly) can change your perception of yourself as attractive (or not) in a matter of minutes. Go figure.

.....

I got to see my second family today! I've liked to think of my friend Calli's family as my own surrogate haven through my growing years. They've provided a wonderful example in a lot of ways for the kind of family I hope to have someday.
With four children ranging from the mid-twenties to late teens in age (plus a father whose work periodically takes him overseas), it's been a few years since I've seen all of this family together at once. Today when I popped by Calli's place, I discovered that the parents and youngest daughter had come to visit with the other children (who all happen to be here at the Y - for the time being). It was such a strange, happy sight for me - seeing them all together under one roof again. It makes me hopeful for similar reunions that could be in my future - half a lifetime down the road from now.

.....

I need a babysitter. I swear I'm too scatterbrained to keep myself alive most days. What was my mother thinking letting me out of the house (let alone the state) without an escort?
I consider any day in which I remember that I need food before 2 or 3 in the afternoon a pretty dang excellent day. It's not like I'm worried about my weight and try to eat less or anything ridiculous like that. I love food way too much to ever even consider it. I just... forget that I don't really benefit from food until I take time to... yanno... eat it.
I spent 2 1/2 days combing my apartment for my wallet this week. As all the girls have been packing and scrubbing all week, I figured it would turn up eventually and didn't get too worried. After all, there were a lot of messes it could've been hiding in. But by Thursday night, I'd realized I was in trouble because everything had been packed and cleaned. My wallet was -still- missing. I started trying to retrace my steps of the past week - and it's dreadful scary how little of the week I've been living in I can actually remember. o.O Made some phone calls, did some stressing... No wallet. This morning I got a call from Calli, informing me that I'd left my wallet at her place Monday night. ...Oh, yeah. I'd kinda forgotten I'd even been there (for 6 hours) until she mentioned it. So around mid-day I took a break from the final cleaning that was going on and went to retrieve the wayward wallet. Mission accomplished. Yaaaaay!
So... a few short hours later, I'd managed to finally eviscerate the final dregs of evidence to suggest that any human being had ever lived in our apartment, gave myself a satisfied pat on the back, and closed the door... And then started wondering what I'd done with my keys. >.< In case you're wondering, the keys were also, eventually, found. (Hours and hours later, after a bit more stressing.)
I wonder if my constant state of oblivion is more stressful for me because of the trouble it gets me into or my mother because of the worrying she knows she has every right to do? Hmm...

.....

My mother did not raise me to be a mooch. Whilst the wallet was missing, I had offers from friends to help me pay for things I needed. My roommates took their kitchen supplies (including the microwave) and left me without the means to cook anything but cold cereal for myself, and I had friends offer me warm food as a result. They were so anxious to be helpful - and persistent. I'm glad they were because it enabled me to get my work done and gave me a warm meal when I needed it. But I still felt bad about it. Guilty for being needy, I guess. I feel like I have to return the favor, and I don't like being in debt. Heck - I won't even ask for rides to the grocery store from my friends or roommates. If I need something, I'll walk the half hour it takes to get there just so I can do it myself. I hate being a burden to other people.
This mooching also applies to simple things like company. I don't care how many times a friend says 'You're always welcome to visit/tag along/eat/whatever,' or 'Consider yourself invited to anything you'd like to go to.' I refuse to take up that open-ended offer. I used to have a very bad habit of forcing my company on people who didn't really want it, and I didn't realize it. I try so hard not to do that anymore, and I won't invite myself back into that situation. So thanks, but if you really want me to participate, I'm going to need a more specific invitation. Them's the brakes.


.....

I am so bleeding tired. That's all, folks.


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Quote - "Your mom." Thanks, Manly Man ^.~
Music - "The Rose," Bette Midler
Mood - F.I.N.E.

The Dress

So I have this dress...

It's a beautiful thing - my shade of green (emerald, that is), elegant, and perfectly wonderful. Very likely the best DI find I've ever made - and that's an impressive statement. I love the way I look in it, and I love the way I feel in it. How do I look and feel? Lovely.

So this morning as I was getting ready for church, I tried it on - just for the heckuvit. My roommate exclaimed "You look like an elven princess!" In response I laughed and made to go change into something else, but she talked me out of it.

So roughly an hour and a half later, I scampered my way up to church in this lovely little number. Once I was inside the building, I put my shoes on, then walked into the room where we hold sacrament meeting. And thus we have reached the point wherein I realized the magnitude of my error.

There were... EYES... on me. I saw girls gushing at me as I walked past them. I reached the row where my roommates sat, and Richard blurts out, "You look like an elvish princess!"
...My roommates swear they didn't tell him to. I'm not sure that I believe them. At any rate, it wasn't the last time today I got that comment. I can't tell you how many compliments I received today. Exquisite, beautiful, wow, gorgeous, I love it, wow, pretty, WOW... I heard them all repeatedly.

...
......
..........

I am -never- wearing that dress again.

It's the WEIRDEST feeling ever - walking into a room and having people stop and stare. I have no problem with having every eye in a room on me when I'm on stage, in a costume, pretending to be someone else. That's totally different. When it's just me, though, it's unnerving.

Besides, I know it shouldn't be so hard, but I always feel awkward accepting compliments from people. It makes me feel snobbish. Conceited. Pompous. All of the above. I'm in a synonym-ic mood tonight.

And perhaps worst of all, it would seem that that dress gave just enough incentive to Super-Awkward-Geek-Boy-Whom-I-Have-Been-Striving-For-Weeks-NOT-To-Encourage. Oh, yes. The one with B.O. that smells like onions. (I would know since he sat next to me during one of the meetings today. >.<)The one who thinks that just because I'm a gamer girl he can prattle on endlessly about the most inane aspects of games I've never heard of and couldn't care less about. (He tries to make it philosophical and applicable to actual laws of science. >.< Do you WANT to make me cry out of sheer boredom?!) He's one of those that's starting to feel the age gap between himself and the other singles in the ward and is getting desperate. The boy who will invite himself over 'to be social' and then just sits there and forces conversation out of us while my roommates and I TRY to suggest kindly and subtly that he should go because we have things to do. But does he go? No. He just sits there as we go about our business. So then I end up HIDING in the back rooms until he decides he's ready to go - which can be a -very- long time.

On a totally unrelated note, as I've been sitting here in front of my laptop, I have had the misfortune of sharing the room with a couple that will be married within two days' time. This is a most severe punishment that should be reserved for only the most despicable criminal offenders in this corner of the galaxy. As they've exchanged their... farewells for the night... I have attempted to drown them out by snatching at whatever song I could find in my head. This is usually reasonably effective since I'm pretty easily distracted by my own mind and tune out a lot of things anyway - whether I mean to or not. ...However, we just finished watching Enchanted. "I've been dreaming of a true love's kiss..." wasn't QUITE what I needed at the moment. Thanks, irony. Thank you so stinking much.

...And this is why today was a 'Why me?' kind of day. -____-() I suppose it really wasn't a terribly -bad- day. I just feel like whining. Oh, woe. Alas and alack.

I'll put up another post soon about something muchmuchMUCH happier. It's very happy stuff indeed. But it must wait because I have refrigerators to scrub for tomorrow's cleaning checks. Mm, scrumptious.


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Quote - Jess: "You're talking to a ~boy~?"
Me: "Yes, well... 48% of the world's population is male. Chances are fairly good that I'd have to communicate with one every now and then."
Jess: "Well, at least we're still winning."
Me: "Mmhmm. If we could only get their mothers to stop feeding them when they're young, they'd die out a lot faster."
Music - "How Does She Know," Enchanted
Mood - Unfortunate

Public Service Announcement

Boys are blockheads. That is all.


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Music - "Poison," Alice Cooper
Quote - "Reality continues to ruin my life." ~Calvin and Hobbes
Mood - Peeved

My Will Is As Strong As Yours (even if nothing else is)

Sooooo.... Before I get on with the rest of this post, I want to make sure it is understood that I do not believe that violence is ever the best way to solve a problem. (I do, however, acknowledge that sometimes it is the only way.) Also, the only place that it has amongst family and friends is in the form of play fighting. Never in real conflict or punishment.

That having been said now, I used to enjoy play fighting as a kid. I got into it just as much as my brothers and cousins did. It's been years now since I've done so. Even though I still like to talk tough, it's purely out of amusement because it's just that - talk. I know full well that I could never make good on the threats I spout off at my guy friends because it absolutely goes against my nature. I hate hurting people. I really am too afraid of hurting someone unintentionally to even try (beyond swatting half-heartedly at a boy when teased). I have fairly good reason for it - I'm a klutz. I have on occasion hurt people without meaning to.

Last night, Nam-Allirog and I started horsing around over a bracelet he stole from me. As ever, I was fairly cautious about my display of tankish force, since I had no real desire to hurt him and just wanted my bracelet back. Within a few minutes, he started turning it into a sparring match - the boy loves sparring and will take on any opportunity to do so. I decided it wouldn't hurt to play along for a bit.
After a few minutes I determined that he was enjoying himself way too much for my pride's sake, so I started trying a little harder to make contact when I swung. After about fifteen minutes of this, I realized that even when I did land a hit, he didn't even feel it. No matter how hard I connected, it didn't phase him at all. I -couldn't- hurt him. So I finally just let go of every reservation I had and really started trying to deck him. I punched and kicked and even tried biting once (I really do fight like I did as a kid.) I fought with everything I had, and it was annoyingly obvious that it didn't make one bit of difference. I could hardly hit him, and even when I did, I seemed to hurt my own hands more than I did him. To make it worse, he was going so stinking easy on me - stopping every time I tripped or he hit harder than he'd intended so I could recover, and he fought one-handed (with his non-dominant hand) the entire time to boot.
Within a half-hour, my hands and arms were really smarting and I was wearing myself out, so I stopped trying to hit so much and just played defense. He and I both knew I couldn't keep up much anymore, and he kept trying to convince me to try bargaining with him instead of bruising myself up further. I've got one heck of a stubborn streak, though, and it was in full force by then. More than an hour after the sparring began, I kept insisting that he was just trying to talk his way out because he was about to break, and it would be silly for me to surrender when I was obviously winning.

Our audience through it all had been Sir Tim. Roughly an hour and 20 minutes after it all started, he decided that it was time to break things up. Of course, the fact that my arms were too stiff and sore for me to do anything but try to block and dodge wasn't about to convince me to surrender, so the behemoth picked me up as easy as you please (never mind my flailing and fighting against him too), slung me over his shoulder, and toted me back home. >.<

It was all in good fun, and we all enjoyed it. It's not something I'd be anxious to do often, as I -am- a little bit bruised up now. Nevertheless it was fun to be a rough 'n rowdy tomboy again.

But the big deal about it is - it's made me very keenly aware of just how defenseless I am. If I'd ever find myself in a situation where I'd really have to fight to defend myself, I'd be so powerless it'd be laughable... in a very not-funny kind of way...

I go on a lot of late-night walks. It's a habit I've enjoyed for years - it allows my body to do something automatic so that I'm mentally relaxed. It gives me time away from other people to talk aloud and sort out the things in my head or vent. I never think twice about walking myself to a store or the library or a friend's house after dark, and have always shrugged off the idea of using the 'safe walk' system. I don't like bothering people unnecessarily.
No one's ever really bothered me. (The one recent time I can remember a couple of guys making me nervous, I was hiking with a nice big walking stick, so they kept their distance.) I've just always assumed that if the need ever arose, I'd be able to manage on my own.
I'm now realizing that that may be a very stupid assumption for me to make. Maybe I should start considering alternative meditation methods. Or else find my own Mr. Miyagi to teach me how to wax on and wax off...


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Quote - "There are only two forces in the world: the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit." ~~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Music - "She Walked Away," Barlow Girl
Mood - Getting Things Done