A portion of my Wake Forest Application.

On the application for Wake Forest University for students applying for the Fall of 2010 there are some of the strangest essay questions I have ever seen.

About half way though the "Thoughts" part of the application it says, "Your Top Ten List"

Top Ten what? Favorites, ambitions, colors. Who knows. I suppose the challenge in this one is that there really isn't a guideline. It's your top ten whatever.

So I decided that I would make mine a top ten list of things I wanted to do with my life.

Here goes. Now these are in or order of importance. Well, they are in the order I thought of them in...but that doesn't really mean anything.

1. Spend some time in the Peace Corps or with Teach for America.

2.Expand Backpack Club so that we are able to help at least 1,000 students.
(Come on. I think that's possible. I've got how many years to do this in? Well, unless I get by bus, but that's not something I need to lose sleep over.)

3. Adopt an American child.
(I know that international adoptions are amazing and yes, I'd adopt every child who needed a home if I could but really, think of all the children in your own country, in your own town, in your own community who need a home.)

4. Have a career where I'm actively helping people and improving the quality of lives everyday.

5. Have an art exhibit entirely of my work.

6. Teach free dance classes to children who can't afford them.

7. Go on a dig in the middle east.

8. Save enough money so that all of my children can go to the colleges of their dreams.

9. Learn American sign language.

10. Always remember that everything is a learning experience.

Sometimes...mommies like mommies.

So I'm sitting on the couch, watching Under the Tuscan Sun with my family. The scene in the restaurant where Sandra Oh's character and Kate Walsh's character (the lesbian couple) announce that they're having a baby just passed.
Now, many times has my family watched this movie but my nine year old sister is getting to the stage where she can pick up on a lot more than one would think.
Gina: "Wait...are they both going to have babies?"
Mom: "No, just one of them, but they're both going to be it's mommy."
Gina: "How does that work?"
Mom: "Well you see..."

So now here I sit paying more attention to my mother trying to explain homosexuality to my little sister than to the movie.

Honestly, I never remember having a conversation like that when I was younger. I suppose I grew up just always thinking that some boys liked girls, some girls liked boys, some girls liked girls, and some boys liked boys. I grew up knowing both gay and straight couples. The dinner parties my parents would hold always had Brent and Ryan, Jolene and Grace, Kurt and Nancy, and some other random couples. Perhaps it depended on the drama in the work place but aside from those three couples, all others were just strangers. It never crossed my mind that anything was too different about our guests. It didn't matter. I didn't care. I had no need. I was just the cutie in the tutu that everyone loved. My mind was not yet tainted with the bull shit of too many rude people in our culture. Yes, I was raised Catholic but...how do I put this? We're a little...unorthodox.

Kelsey Wild

So about 2 years ago I came across this singer, Kelsey Wild on myspace. (Yes, I know, no one uses myspace anymore, I don't either, like I said it was 2 years ago.) She was honestly a friend of a friend. However, it's myspace friends of friends so... Well anyways, I absolutely fell in love with her music. The first 4 songs I was able to get (downloaded from myspace of course. remember when you could do that?) were Meaningless, Fall Down, Let Me Go, and Lightning. "Meaningless" became one of my favorite songs and still is to this day. Last year at my dance studio, in our teacher Lexia's class we frequently did improv. Like, legit, one person gets up infront of the class at a time, the music comes on and you dance. It took everyone a while to really get comfortable but before long it had become the best part of our week. We wanted nothing more than to dance every worry away infront of each other. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be able to do that outside of my own kitchen. Anyway, "Meaningless" was a song that I put on one day as my ipod was often the source for music in that class. It almost became the theme song of our improv. time. Everyone found a way to make it their song. Everyone heard something in it that they could connect to. I felt rather awkward about it at first because honestly, I thought it was rather suggestive but apparently I was the only one who thought so. Everyone else heard something else in it. I suppose I was the only one who heard it that way. Hum... Well, once again, ANYWAY, I've recently found a new(ish) piece by her and suprise, it's incredible. It's called "Drunken Sailor" I would try to explain to you what I've gotten out of it and what it means to be but I can't say I'm up to that challenge tonight.




How incredible.

Well, I'm off to finish editing photos from dinner with Julia and Jenn, Christmas Eve at the Covey's, my family's christmas, and our trip to seaworld. I promise to get some photos up here as well as the rest on facebook soon!

My "Before Graduation Bucket List"

1. Spend an entire day (until I'm so exhausted I can't see or think the concrete looks like a great place to take a nap) at the Ringling Museum taking pictures of the gardens, random people, and soaking up all of the knowledge I possibly can and learning to better appreciate some the artists I'm still rather confused with.

2. Enter a photo into some sort of competition or exhibition. We've been members of the LBK Center for the Arts as well as many other places like it since we moved here and I've never taken the opportunity to do anything like that.

3. Take a class at one of the many art centers that I happen to be a member of.

4. Go to at least one dance convention. I'm craving this so badly. I'm thinking The Pulse and Jump. I love Jump and have always wanted to go to a Pulse convention and unless I find loads of free time in college...this is my last chance.

5. Go to a drive in movie. Put your dirty minds away now, that's not what I do at drive in movies. There used to be a drive in theatre in a town about 30 minutes from Dubuque and for 4 dollars your saw a double feature and pretty much camped out in your car for an evening. It was so much fun and you always ended up meeting some rather interesting people.

6. Sell jewelry at a craft fair. Unfortunately I have a feeling it'll conflict with a Saturday dance class but...maybe I'll find a Sunday one. It might be hard for me sell my hand crafted jewelry but, I'll find a way to overcome that fear.

7. Not do any homework for an entire weekend. Yes, that includes Friday afternoon and evening.
8. Read 5 books that are not required for any of my classes.

9. Get a mani pedi...yes, I've only had one in my life and it was over a year and I half ago. It's just so hard for me to commit to sitting in a chair for more than an hour accomplishing nothing. (And yet, I sit here and blog...the hell with my priorities, haha)

There will be more to come as I think of more.

Cocoa, yoga, and Wiis.

I'd forgotten how much I truly love hot cocoa until this very moment. It all started this morning. Gina had come into my room and woken me up around 7:30...yes, for too early for a day with few plans, begging that I make her a cup of cocoa because her throat was killing her. Because I'm me, I began an argument with her that if her throat was in fact killing her, cocoa would not be the answer. However, because I'm the most amazing big sister ever (well, not always) I rolled out of bed and made my into the kitchen to make to poor, dying child some cocoa. Of course I had to test the cocoa. You know, make sure it wasn't poisonous or anything and the one sip...it did me in. So, once I got home this evening I decided to make my own cup. All mine. So, I'm sitting here, drinking cocoa, blogging, and attempting to organize my schedule for next week. It's looking super fantastic, let me tell you.

So, I've found the most amazing yoga studio. It's Body Heat on Fruitville. They have hot yoga, power yoga, and music yoga classes. The instructors are incredible and the studio is adorable. I took a power yoga class tonight. The room was about 95 degrees (I was next to the thermostat) and for the hot yoga classes the room is 105 degrees. It was hard, but so much fun. Definitely requires a different kind of strength and control than dance though.

This evening my mother bought a Wii. I never thought I'd see the day that my family purchased a video game system. She bought it with a Wii fit and supposedly that's all it'll be used for but...who knows if that will always be the rule.

I need to find a way...it won't all fix itself.

So I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that...all of this nonsense, I'm not going to wake up one morning and have it cleared up, gone, fixed, better, perfect, not a problem anymore.

For some of them I need to push them away. Get them as far from my happy place as possible. Not just pretend they don't exist, but make them non existent factors.

Others, I need to resolve. Make amends. Work on fixing. Heal. Find good in. Over look bad. Get rid of bad.

But some, I need to ride out. Hurt a little more. Find ways to fully understand why it's wrong or doesn't work. See to the bitter end. Fight my way out. Discover it's flaws. Make a scene.

Or maybe...maybe, I need to just let it all go. Forget salvaging, find new? But what if the second part doesn't work? And I'm left with nothing. Maybe nothing is better than "terrible somethings"... I don't know.

Wow, I just made loads of progress. Ok, I didn't.

Excuse me while I rant.

With my birthday coming up and my L.A. trip canceled...yes, don't get me started, my parents have decided that it would be a great opportunity to finally invest in the camera that I've been wanting for about a year and a half now. However, according to my mother, Mercury is in retrograde so it's not a good time to purchase an electronic or start something major like for instance a relationship. Well, the relationship nonsense has nothing to do with me but for the love of God, I want my camera. However, I guess if I wait and then something bad happens with the camera, she won't have anything to blame it on. She's nuts. I love her dearly and I actually believe in a lot of her madness but too much of it gets in the way.

So I'll try to do with this with out dropping any names but we'll see how it goes.
First of all, I'll never understand how people can demand so much respect when they have such little respect for others. Also, how people can carry on like nothings wrong after doing (or not doing actually) something that not only screwed over a couple people but also hurt them. I must say that while I've been losing respect for someone throughout this year, whatever was left just got flushed away. Nice one...thanks.

Oh a happier note. My seventeenth birthday is Saturday. Initially I was going to be on a plane but, who knows, maybe it would have crashed (sorry, not so light.) Friday night will be my first EVER birthday party and I'm rather excited. Nothing beats sitting around a hot top Japanese cooking table thing (yes, my vocabulary is lovely this evening) with your best friends, eating sodium saturated food, fumbling with chopsticks, and laughing about god knows what. Well, we actually do that almost every Tuesday only with tacos and without the chopsticks.

I had an absolute blast in class tonight. Not only was it amazing because I really needed to dance, for sanity reasons of course, but I honestly feel like I just got it tonight. Not all of course but I was picking up choreography better than I have lately. Both the across the floor combinations (which are always complicated and intricate in Melissa's classes) and the center set combination I actually picked up just fine, could work on the details, and even began to find some accents and stresses. Super cool....well I think so, haha.

The Adventures of Cat Sitting.

So as I probably mentioned already, I'm cat sitting until Sunday for the Covey's and well, the job that should be oh-so-simple quickly became a complicated mess this afternoon. For starters, I rushed over to their house at about 11 today as I was on my way to work and it was raining bears and hippos. Yes, not just cats and dogs, bears and hippos. Before I drove the entire length of their driveway (which is quite a lengthy one might I add) I got out of my car to check their mail, yes it was only 11 and I should have known that their mail probably wouldn't be there but I checked anyway, and to my surprise...no mail. However, despite that fact that I had used my rather adorable umbrella, I was soaked...yay! So I drive all the way up to their house and scamper inside, hoping not to get any more wet than I already was. I walk inside, greeted of course by the smell of sage (everyone's house smells like a different plant to me, mine smells like eucalyptus, Julia's smells kind of like grass...whatever) and wander into the room that despite the fact that I've seen humans in it before and have even hung out in it myself, is pretty much their cat's lair. Great, the food dish is full, the water dish is full, and I'm too short to see in or even bring down the litter box...ok then, back out into the storm.

Once I got off work, which was absolutely lovely as customers trudged in soggy and cranky all day, I stopped by the house again only this time it wasn't raining bears and hippos, it was raining elephants and dinosaurs. Seriously. Fortunately though, my trip to the mail box was worth it since their mail had come. I bolt to the front door and quickly find the key and let myself in where it's dry. Their cat, who had been no where in sight that morning, greeted me in the foyer and like I hadn't ever been their, led me to his lair. I put more food in his dish, measuring out their specified amount, half a mini plastic Halloween treat pumpkin bucket thing, refreshed the water dish, and strategically got the litter box down. Wondering where they kept the plastic begs, I ventured in to the kitchen, checking in places I thought most logical for them to be. As I began to feel like an epic failure for discovering no bags I went back to the cat's lair and lone behold, a long bag holder was hanging on the kitty condo...ok, so maybe I was an epic failure. I scooped the kitty poo into the bag, tied it up, and thought, good, just need to throw this away and I'll be out. Here's where the fun begins. Now, being a cat owner myself, I knew they must not throw the poo away in the kitchen garbage, that's crazy, so I go into the garage. After about three minutes of searching I come to the conclusion that there is no garbage can in here, well not one meant for this type of waste. As mentioned before it's raining like crazy outside but of course, that's where I go next in my search for the kitty poo receptacle. What do I find? Nothing. So, in my utter frustration I double bag the poo, put it in the back of my car, and head home where I plan to thrown it away in one of our outside garbage cans. Oh the things I do to keep animal feces out of the kitchen.

So, as it's raining harder than ever, I pull into my garage and dispose of the kitty poo. As luck would have it, my mother had just gotten home as well and was watching as I took an awkward looking Publix sack out of the back of my car and tossed it into the can. She then gave me strange look and asked me what was in the bag. "Cat poop from the Covey's" I responded of course. She gave me an even stranger look and replied with "Lauren, are you doing them a favor, or taking stalking to a whole new level?" I couldn't decide whether I was irritated with her or if I wanted to laugh but my response was sarcastically put. "Yes mom, I'm stalking the Covey's by stealing their cat shit." Oh the bond my mother and I have. Hahaha. What a day. Hopefully that was as difficult as cat sitting gets. Ironically, about an hour later, James responded to my text message in which I had asked him where they dispose of the kitty poo. He informed me that there was a trash can outside by the driveway...I probably passed it in my search.

The crazy fun that is having short hair.

Well in the 14 hours that my hair is been seven inches shorter, I must say I've become very fond it. Also, I continue to discover more examples of how much guys truly don't care about girly things.

Him: "Hey, did you cut your hair?"
Me: "Yes, a good seven inches actually."
Him: "Oh, it's very... ... noticeable."

Wow, amazing conversation if I do say so myself.

Reasons to love short hair:

1. You use a lot less shampoo, conditioner, and styling products.
2. The time spent blow drying, straightening, or styling in general is much shorter.
3. When I dance, it moves a lot more than my long hair did. (which is just fun)

Between girls day out with luch at Epicure and sprinting in the rain to girls night out eating tacos and hanging out at Starbucks, today was a rather lovely and calm day. However, once morning rolls around, I'll be back at work as well as practicing the art of cat-sitting. Oh the things I'll do for my friends. haha.

Recitals and rain.

Well, as Lexia did a lovely job of explaining...recital, especially Friday night, was a hot mess, but of course, it's all over now and I must say, the fifth time was a charm as Suday night's show was by far the best. For starters... booties, boobies, and cooches OH MY! I think in the dressing room I heard "who has the butt glue?" about 174 times. But of course, that's just one of the many highlights. I commend Kelly beyond measure on her solo as she flawlessly danced almost her entire solo with siver streamers wrapped around her entire body. Funny that that would happen to her for her legs are sooooo long. My solo wasn't an epic fail but I still feel that it could have been better and suppose no matter what we'll all always feel that way. On a funny note, during a quick change on Saturday I smacked my forehead on the corner of my metal makeup case. I haven't laughed and cried that hard in so long...seriously. To make it even more hilarious though, it happened about two mintues after Melissa had been telling me how much of a mess I am (we were talking about my multiple allergies and other random bad things). I must say though, smacking my head and having this cute goose egg might just be worth the laughter and tears that eveyone got to experience. Leave it to me lighten the moment.



Lexia's taken some AMAZING photos of the show and I can't wait to see the rest of them. Finally I might have some good pictures of me dancing. That woman is a beast on so many levels. Her photography for one thing then of course her choreograhpy and...she not only looked and my grotti, incredibly painful foot, she fixed it. Who would know to put orajel on your foot and second skin on your foot and wrap it up with some tape but her? It didn't bother me for the rest of the show. Thank God she'll be there in L.A.!

Both my car and bedroom highlight the insanity of last weekend. Glitter, the herpes of arts and craft, is scattered throughout my car, my dance bag, and tattooed into the floor of my shower. Costume pieces remain the hamper I'd thrown them in Sunday night, and my makeup case has yet to be sorted through. I guess it just looks like too big of a project to do during my "unwind and relax" time.

It's been raining all day and all I've wanted to do is curl up in my room with a book or maybe just sleep. I was getting my hair done and my hair dresser was going on and on about how the weather was making her want soup. I love rainy days. It kind of ruined my plans to go to the beach but...oh well.

Appendectomies, vegan cupcakes, and febreeze candles...oh my.

So as my world has been more than somewhat altered in the past few weeks, I've found myself using almost every moment as a learning opportunity. Embracing change and finding peace and joy in my moments alone as well as discovering the unique relations between myself and several of my acquaintances has been the breath of fresh air that my life has been desperate for.

Unfortunately, in the midst of my revelations, I discovered that my wonderful friend Emma was in the hospital after having an emergency appendectomy on Wednesday. The news was rather frightening but I know that she's a trooper. She's still in the hospital and very sick but the doctors are working hard to figure out what exactly is wrong. I just hope that she gets better and that they can find a way to make her more comfortable while they get to the bottom of it all. I know from experience that few things are scarier than being in a hospital no matter how sick you are or what the circumstances are and that she's longing to be back in her own home. Friday afternoon I sent her flowers after searching for over an hour for something a little more unique. Emma enjoys those out of the ordinary things as well as being able to nurture something so I was hoping to find some sort of tree or orchid but between the fact that I couldn't find a plant that didn't look like it should belong in a funeral home and the orchids (plus delivery) were out of my price range--thanks to my oh so copious pay check--a cute arrangement of roses and daisies was selected and found their way to her hospital room via Teleflora and her lovely parents.

I've always been one to enjoy spending time alone but never have I realized the pure serenity in it. I'm noticing, more than ever now, how quickly things, people, and feelings can change and taking it all in can be an experience in itself...let alone dealing with it. I'm one of the most non-confrontational people out there and I had the first honest argument of my life the other day. While it was about something that truly upset me, the fact that I was fighting with a best friend made it even harder and actually rather sad. The whole ordeal began though text messages and the combination of the issue being discussed and the fact that I'd found myself in a ridiculous fight with my best friend made me want to cry. I eventually threw my phone onto my passenger's seat and just went over to their house to finish out the debacle. Not fun. I guess I could chalk up the whole ordeal to a learning experience but I'd rather just not be in those situations.

So as I eat a vegan cupcake, inhale the scent of my favorite febreeze candle, and pray to something that one of my dearest friends gets better soon, I shall remember to keep an open mind in this ever changing realm we call life.