fucking mice.

I am, like, really bad at this.

Anyway.

I flew to Missouri for Thanksgiving. While there, Liz and Zeb found a nest of "infant" mice underneath this Korean Hutch we've had for a hundred thousand years. They saved them: pink, blind, hairless, squeaking, and squirming, in a glad bowl for me to take care of when my mom and I returned from grocery shopping.

So, what did I get stuck with doing? Dumping the bowl of infant mice, that Zeb was so proud of saving, out in the front yard. And when I close my eyes I can still picture them squirming as they tumbled out of the bowl onto the cold wet ground. I hope they didn't take too long to die. I sat in my room cringing at the thought of what I had done.

Why my sister needs an Xbox....

"cause black ops, fable 3 and rock band 3 are all coming out and I can't fucking take it anymore."

-Samantha 

a poem: but not by me

It’s good to feel you are close to me in the night, love,

invisible in your sleep, intently nocturnal,

while I untangle my worries

as if they were twisted nets.

Withdrawn, your heart sails through dream,

but your body, relinquished so, breathes

seeking me without seeing me perfecting my dream

like a plant that seeds itself in the dark.

Rising, you will be that other, alive in the dawn,

but from the frontiers lost in the night,

from the presence and the absence where we meet ourselves,

something remains, drawing us into the light of life

as if the sign of the shadows had sealed

its secret creatures with flame.

-Pablo Neruda

Thinking: The Ridiculous Edition

Sometimes I sit down and all I can think is MY LIFE IS RIDICULOUS. 

Thinking: The Relationship Edition

I think I have an inappropriate relationship with my laptop. I went to sleep with it at the foot of my bed and woke up four hours later with it between my knees. Sexy.

If my face itches am I going to die?

This is the part of my blog where I am going to talk about shit that gives me low self-esteem and how I try to combat it.

In high school I was fat, awkward, and had braces. My saving grace was clear skin. I might have a slight, tiny zit every now and then, but nothing compared to the painful blemishes a lot of my friends were dealing with. That, apparently, was not to last. The past few years have been complete hell on my skin. I've tried every different over the counter product I can get my hands on, with little or no results.

Once I got comfortable enough here to open up and lament my fate to my co-workers/roommates/friends, Micah mentioned that I should try this stuff his mom got for him when he was hiking the AT (Appalachian Trail). In the spirit of nothing left to lose, I gave it the ole college try. It's a four hour spot treatment for zits you already have. I used it and had pretty positive results, but it wasn't PREVENTING the outbreaks which is ultimately what I was working toward. I decided to try to find a face wash that had the same active ingredient the spot treatment had in it, and Marisa suggested I try the face wash she uses, which contained benzoyl peroxide, the ingredient in question.

I purchased a bottle, brought it home, and immediately began to use it that night, on the same schedule I used my previous face wash: twice a day, once in the morning, once before bed. The following afternoon, after two washes, my face was rough and itchy. Like....clawing my face off itchy. Like message everyone I know to ask if I my itchy face might result in my death itchy. By the second night, the third time I was washing my face with it, my skin burned when I applied it. I consulted Dr. Wikipedia and learned that a few of the less common side effects of it are itching, burning, swelling, and sensitivity. I read on to see if there was any risk of my face peeling off. I could not discover any concrete evidence pointing toward total facial destruction, but I decided to cut down to using it once a day until my skin develops a tolerance for the benzoyl peroxide. You know, just in case.

My face itches less now, but it's still red and rough right under my eyes. I feel like that will fade. The best news, however, is that my skin has cleared up CONSIDERABLY. Like, I don't have massive exploding zits on my face, and this is the time of the month for them IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

So, this is a picture of me and my much clearer skin (and my incredibly silly hair).

Yeah. That's what's up.

Bekah and I made a pact the other day to start blogging more regularly. It's not so much that I think I am a profound or prolific writer. I don't have a message I need to get out there. I just need to talk. I need to vent. And the Lord knows I need to share waaaaaaaaaaay TMI on a regular basis, and I find that the internet really facilitates that exchange. So, with that said, I am going to start trying to blog twice a week. 

Bekah was talking about the future in her entry from last night, and I think that is a pretty good jumping off point. I am not sure what the WHOLE future holds for me, but I know what I want from the immediate future. I want to make this work here. I want to get healthy, and it IS doable. I want to be the best friend and co worker I can be. And, I want to spend more time working with the horses because I am kind of obsessed with them. I mean, how can you not love this face?

Exactly.

That reminds me, I want to try to feature more pictures. Which means I need to learn more about my camera so I can take the best pictures possible. (I feel like I've written these exact words before.)

On that note, I am going to take a nap. We had a group of military kids in today to do horseback riding, wall climbing, a hike, and then pumpkin carving/decorating. Yeah, I am EXHAUSTED. And I love every second of it.