TP

Today I asked my mom if she would trim my bangs for me. So I brought her the scissors and the comb and as soon as she started, both my dad and my little sister, Jillian, started throwing comments into the air that were ridiculous. The hilarious kind of ridiculous. So I would laugh, and naturally my mom couldn't cut my hair with me in that sort of state.

My mom told them to leave the room. It was getting out of hand. But Jillian kept talking, and I finally said, "If you don't listen to Mom, I'll toilet paper your room." My parents were confused at how I would even come up with a threat like that.

Long, long ago, a friend and I would toilet paper my two brothers' room. I'm not sure why. But we would. Kind of frequently.

I hadn't remembered that prank until today. I felt all devious and nostalgic. Then my mom finished my bangs, and I carried on with my day.

Later, I went downstairs and into my bedroom. Guess what was strewn over everything.

I Am & I Am

I am seventy-three inches long. I have bad posture, long fingers, and a smile that shows my gums. My hair is blonde and shoulder-length short, and I have size eleven feet.

I am afraid of the dark, I hate keeping secrets, and I tend to care what people think about me. Sometimes my thoughts filter through in either blog or facebook status form. 

I long to accomplish something, anything, and everything. I will alter my mindset to please others, to a fault. I constantly long for adventure, life, and love. Smiles melt me and genuine laughter makes me grin. I cry when others cry, and I am terribly impatient. 

I find people amusing, confusing, and purely wonderful. I like to read when I have a book in my hand, but otherwise I'd rather read the world through my camera lens. I dissect songs, bands, and singers, consequentially causing me to find unbreakable adoration for people I'll likely never meet. I eat for fun, and I hate cleaning until I start; then I can't stop.

I sometimes get headaches when I am not listening to music, and I love reading people's blogs to read into new people's lives. I want to write a book, but I'm too distracted to get started. I hate making decisions, both big and small, and I am unintentionally flaky. My weaknesses are well-shot photographs, cheesecake, and clearance clothing. I have a collection of light bulbs and some blog drafts that will never be posted, and I am never on time. 

I can't ever keep my blog posts or stories short and sweet, I never initiate hugs, and I love the smell of cotton candy, vanilla, and waffles. I find life's insignificants to sometimes be the most significant. I think life has the potential to become a piece of poetry or a work of art. I hate staying up late and I hate sleeping in, but I can never seem to do otherwise.

I am self conscious, mostly obnoxious, and sometimes reserved. I am sarcastic, passionate, and lazily determined.

I am emotionally driven, and I find it hard to throw anything away that is attached to a memory. I am a follower of the rules, and I am inconsistent.

I'm 

Bethany.

Entrance

My uncle got me this new job.

He brought me a security card. The unlock-door kind.

"You just hold it up to the box, and it unlocks the door."

It sounded simple enough. But I was still afraid that I wouldn't be able to get it. The next day, the door was propped open with a dustpan. I was relieved that I didn't have to use the security card. The day after that, It was just me, the door, and the card.

I scanned the card, the light turned green, and the card made a beeping sound. I'm in, I thought. I went to turn the handle, and my worst fears were confirmed. The handle wouldn't turn. So I scanned the card again. And again. And again. And again.

And again.

The handle just would not budge. So I ran to the main entrance [Who am I kidding. I walked to the main entrance.] And went through to the factory. I told my boss and my uncle that the card wouldn't work. My uncle said to just try it one more time to see if it would work.

So today I pulled up to the building. I was purposely a little early, in case I had to walk around to the main entrance again. I scanned the card. I turned the handle. Not really, because the handle wouldn't turn. So I scanned it again, and again, and again.

Irritated, I scanned it one more time and pulled the door open. It ended up that there was zero handle-turning necessary.

So I went about my day stacking planners, etcetera.

Later on, I kept hearing a buzzing noise. The you-got-the-answer-wrong on a game show type of noise. I wasn't sure what it was.

Even later on, I heard the noise again, and a couple moments following, I saw a group of employees walking up the stairs by the scan-card door.

And then I realized what the sound was. Every time someone scans their card, the game show buzzing noise follows.

No wonder I got a strange look from my cousin when I walked in today. Because everyone had to hear the buzz buzz buzz buzz of me trying to make an entrance.

And, boy, did I make an entrance.

Profession

Yes.

That's my job.

I have other pictures on my phone.

Better ones, compositionally.

My phone was having issues exporting.

I'm making planners in an assembly line. Six and a half hours of picking up the stacks, putting them into the vibrating slot that straightens them out, checking to see if the hole puncher worked correctly [not the three hole kind, mind you], and then placing them into a neat pile on a cart.

Occasionally if the machine gets jammed, I have to open it, stick my hands into potential death and rip the paper from its jaws.

You should be jealous.

Because I am. And I already have the job. That's saying something.

Yesterday I was told that I can listen to my iPod. [It's really loud in there.] So today I may have some sort of entertainment and ear-break from the droning machines.

When I walked into my house at almost ten last night, my dad asked if I found myself a career choice.

I definitely found myself a career choice.

Checklist

• Phone: Check. 
• Job: Probably more than probably Check.

Short

Short on dough equals short on cell phone.

For those of you reading who also occasionally throw a text to me: Sorry.

For those of you reading who do not occasionally throw a text to me due to a lack of possessing my phone number or otherwise:

Pity me.

Because I'll be in a corner for a while.

Just a little while.

Hopefully.

Life Examination

Today, I stepped back from my everyday perspective and examined my life, even though I knew it would be a difficult feat to check off on my mental To Do list.

I decided a number of things, including [but not limited to] the following:

• I want to write a book. The details are quite less than existent, but I just know that I want to write a book. And have it published.
• I want to sell decor. Flat art, if you will. Photography, paintings, etcetera; in the wall-hanging form. 
• My blog needs a header. A real one. I'm working on it in my brain. But it needs to come into existence. Soon.
• MGMT's "Kids" and Weezer's "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" are basically the same songs. Well, the chorus of the latter, and the instruments in the background of the former. 
• I'm lucky I have a pay-as-you-go phone. However, unlucky because of the fact that I may not have a phone in a couple days, due to my lack of employment
• I lack employment. And out of the like, 286 jobs to which I sent my resume, I had better be lacking in the unemployment category soon.
• I may chop off my hair next haircut around. Chop off. I've wanted to for quite some time, and I just might talk myself into it.

Seamstressless

There are plenty of ideas in my brain,

the design kinds of ideas.

But in my brain 

there's no knowledge of sewing.

Somethings, Otherthings

I can't handle it. I wish I had money. For this. How simply wonderful would that even be?

          My heart is melting.

Read this. I've already written chapter eight. And you probably haven't even read chapter one. And Kiyna's already working on chapter nine. [Ehem. Right, Kiyna?]

Also, photo shoot on Friday. I think it will be a grand event.

And I think this is a fitting song of the day.


And finally, here are some recents:

Almost Drafted

Sadly, my haircut today was not enough adventure to satisfy my brain taste buds. Although, I do feel slightly accomplished for chopping it off. It's much shorter than I am used to.

But adventure is brewing someplace else.

Neither Blogger nor Facebook is taking me to this "someplace else," however much I enjoy reading into other people's lives.

School's up in the air, employment is a laughable situation, my decisions regarding the future are entirely unmade.

Today I [re]realized that I belong quite elsewhere.

I thought, "San Francisco." I thought, "I could have been a nanny in San Francisco." I thought, "I could have been preparing to be a nanny in San Francisco. Before the end of this year." I thought, "Too bad I didn't get that nanny job in San Francisco."

But why San Francisco? I don't know. It just felt like it could have been a swell decision. Like a satisfying or effective or right or free-spirited or new or different or fulfilling act could have been set into play. Plus, the opportunity was blaring right in front of me.

And since that didn't work out, I obviously have to work with what I have. That's something called Life.

Pity this post will end up in my drafts, likely. If not, I welcome you as warmly as I can to my sphere of thought.

Pity I'm not offering something more visual, like a photograph, or something. I'm only offering a stream of words that had no use except for bubbling on the stove top.

I promise I'll have something posted soon that contains something for the right cerebral cortex of your brain to enjoy.

Hopefully that "something posted" involves adventures of someplace adventurous.

Tell Me Something.

How is it that I set up a hair appointment
And I write three o'clock on the calendar
And I put it into my phone as eleven o'clock?

Good thing I have eyelids,
Otherwise I wouldn't be able to blink as much as I am right now.

Because blinks are fluttering off my eyelids
And my hair still isn't cut.

Beneath the Estimated

It's funny how things turn out.

It's funny how things don't turn out.

Sometimes my indecision morphs into fickle-mindedness.

Sometimes my fickle-mindedness repeats itself, quite generously.

But then I just sift through everything, and I smile.

But sometimes a frown peeks from behind my lips.

It's funny how things turn out.

It's funny how things don't turn out.

A Fourth, Part Two

So you know in the cartoons, when a bear disturbs a beehive, and the bees swarm the bear and chase him all over the place? My cabin was like that.

Minus the beehive, minus the bear, and minus the bees. But then, plus mosquitoes.

It was ridiculous. I would look down and they were covering my pants. Sometimes I thought I was wearing a swarm of mosquitoes. They'd buzz all around me, smacking their little straw lips. And they buzz in my ears and I hated it. Because, hey, I don't know how to speak mosquito.

I was destroyed. Death by West Nile carriers. Even when I had bug repellent on me.


Oh, and also, how do you feel about ticks? Because I am scared of them. And one night I went to take a shower [yes, hot, running water at my cabin; a recent and lovely addition], and I announced to my family, "If I find a tick on me, I'm going to scream."

So as I was preparing to take a shower, I looked down and the cutest little arachnid was crawling upon my clothing. Cute, meaning disturbing. Arachnid, meaning a fellow named Tick. Clothing, meaning my underwear.

Yes, it is true.

And so I died. Twice.

And the tick died. Once. By being flushed down the toilet.

Goodbye, Tick.

A Fourth

On Sunday evening and for the first time this summer, I tagged along with my family and began trekking up into the ridges which were caused by years of movement across the earth's crust. In other words, I went to my cabin for a few days.

The car I rode in was a little Nissan. And the dirt road leading to our cabin doesn't really care for small cars. So we stopped at the main gate of the property and waited for my parents to come so we could hitch a ride in the truck.

At this gate, however, was a new little friend. A little puppy sort of friend. Just lying in the shade. Sadly, said puppy did not seem to be in the greatest shape. We knew that it was likely a sheepdog puppy. Because there are sheep roaming around the mountains. With dogs herding them. But this puppy was basically acting like it was starving. It was pathetic and heart-wrenching. So we waited with this puppy [a female which my older brother considerately named Li'l Brudder], but the truck to pick us up was nowhere in sight.

And so my older siblings contemplated. And decided that we would venture on the rest of the dirt road in the little car.

But Li'l Brudder was still lying pathetically and motionless by the gate. So we did what any law-abiding citizen would do; we stole the puppy.

But don't worry. The puppy promptly received food and water. And more food. And then it still wouldn't move. But my parents weren't too happy with their children running around like puppy bandits. So we drove down and returned the baby canine to its mother. And to the sheep. To my dismay.

And when we dropped her off, she even stood up for the first time. All by herself.

And you know that movie? Fox and the Hound? When the lady leaves the fox in the middle of the road and drives away? And it's the saddest thing ever? 

It wasn't like that at all. 

Because Li'l Brudder has her own family. And she's a sheep dog. So please. Dry your tears.

Pertaining To Yesterday [Carnivaled]

Parade

I went to a parade today. I sat on the road behind a line of kids and I just watched. And I snapped pictures. There were only a few floats. One float had a beauty pageant winner and the runners up, all dressed in pink gowns. They waved to all the onlookers, smiling. Occasionally a firetruck would crawl by with little kids inside. They would wave to rest of the kids, proud that they were in the parade. The children watching would stare back at the wavers, imagining themselves in their shoes. 

More floats went by.

I remembered that I was on a float, once.

I had forgotten.

A man from church was in charge of a float for the city parade. He asked if I wanted to be on it, along with some other kids. Some of us would dress up like pioneers, others would sit on beanbag chairs and read. It was a reading float.

Funny someone would want me to be on a reading float, considering the fact that I can't recall what the last book I read was.

So we were supposed to wave to people. Which I'm sure was an intimidating thing for me to do. But I waved to people. Because I was on a float.

At the end of the parade, we were driving back over to the parking lot. There were some people along the way, so I waved to them. Common courtesy. If you're on a float, wave to people. It's in the contract.

There were a couple girls who were a little older than me. Pretty girls. I waved to them as we drove by.

They gave me a look, made fun of me using the word 'stupid', and I'm sure I turned red.

But it's fine. I'm shrugging about it. I still remember who one of the girls was, though.

She's probably a parade groupie now, seeing how much fun it can be to stand on a float and wave to people.