Why I have a hard time wearing heels...

Ok, so a comment on high heels. First of all, I am 5'10''. Recently, I have been trying to become more comfortable wearing heels. It's going ok so far. In the past, I avoided heels on the whole, because I already was used to being taller than a lot of people, and I thought, why add more height between us? :-) I dated a guy once who was exactly my height, so wearing heels made me taller, and that's another reason I never really got into them. A recent guy friend of mine said to me, "I'd date a girl who was older than me, but I couldn't date a girl who was taller than me." I respect that, and up till recently, I pretty much agreed (that I'd want the guy to be taller). I can't deny, as a girl, ideally, you want to be the shorter one... it promotes that feeling of feeling delicate, secure.... etc. But, now, I've come to decide, I want to just be comfortable being my tall self. I don't want to worry about slouching (a common thing us tall people do, often subconsciously) or not wearing heels. And I don't want to turn down guys because of a slight height difference. I can still be delicate and secure. And for the record, overall, I really do like my height. It's the way God made me :-)

Self-Tanner Disaster

I just have to say something about this whole self-tanner thing. Here's lovely picture of my arm, which, after spraying on some self-tanner, made me look like I had a skin disease :-) I sprayed it on a couple more times... and it blended ok, but I still got more comments than compliments, since it was probably surprising to see me go from "whoa" white to "whoa" tan. I even had someone pull me aside and say "did you have some problems with self-tanner? A quarter cup of lemon juice and some salt. Rub it in with a loufa. I got that from the movie, "The Wedding Planner." Haha, she's a friend, so I appreciated the advice, but I'm thinking I might just chill on the self-tanner for a while. Go ahead and chuckle! :-)

Weeding Out...

As I'm in the last week of my Shakespeare class... I'm of course planning ahead to the rest of the summer and what I'm going to do in my small breaks before I leave for Spain. One thing that is definitely on the list of must-do's is to move. I'm moving out of my apartment at the end of July, and then I'll have a couple weeks to finish my other two summer classes, unpack and re-pack, etc. before I leave for the semester!

Moving is not one of my favorite past-times. I've done a lot of it in the past five years, between the dorms, home, and apartments. I guess that's the bane of the college student's life. And it is kind of fun... to switch things up and have new experiences in a variety of living situations. I have some good memories from apartment life... from coming home from the BYU football game to a floor of suds (we put liquid dish soap in the dishwasher) to decorating different apartments on an extreme budget. I'm sure I'll have many more memories to come... but it'll be nice to bring my stuff back to my parent's house before I leave, so that I can go through the stuff I've collected over the years and do some major weeding out...

Which brings me to my topic of the day. I am not the most organized person on earth, and I can't deny that I have that part of me that hates throwing things away. It's not that I love clutter... rather, it's that this clutter somehow serves as a storage for memories. It's strange how while digging through an old pile of papers from freshman year of high school, the memories flood back, of what I actually did in my classes, of notes from friends, of my soccer schedule, my church activities, birthday cards... and a year of memories I had forgotten about comes back to me. The idea of throwing away the things that capture my history seems like a loss, like I'm losing the memories, too. However, I know that life isn't about the stuff accumulated, and it's rare that I actually go back to dig through this old stuff. But knowing I can, that is somehow a comfort.

However, I know I won't always have my parent's house to store my never-ending boxes of memories. I'll need to widdle it down to the most important ones, and let go of the rest. I don't want to open a storage unit for my old papers, clothes, stuffed animals... it's time to put what I really want into a book or a couple boxes and either give or throw away the rest. I know I'm sentimental, but I don't want to become the old lady whose house is so full of junk that there's not enough space in it to live and create new memories.

So, a shout-out of empathy to the pack-rats of the world, and a call to action...

I'll let you know how it goes :-)

Grazing in the kitchen...

So, I've been basically living off of a family-sized bag of Nacho Cheesier Doritos the last three days. I bought it for institute, and since not much of it was eaten, it became the staple of my meals for the last three or so days. I think it's time to make a trip to the grocery store. I have a lot of yogurt, Raisin Bran, frozen meat, and canned corn, but unfortunately, these ingredients don't make for a semi-normal recipe. I have noticed, however, that I lost 2.5 pounds this week. Perhaps I should market the Doritos diet, kind of like all the cereal companies who say "Eat 2 bowls of our cereal a day and lose weight." Um, no offense cereal people, but I don't think anyone who replaces their meals with a small bowl of wheat product isn't going to drop a few pounds.

Basically, the moral of the story is: eat normally. Though I've been "living off the land" here in my apartment, I've had to resort to less-than-traditional meal combinations, such as half a can of olives and a cup of yogurt (eaten separately of course... I'm not that crazy). I guess I am inspired to know that I can go for a period of time without a home-cooked meal, so my survival instincts are intact, but somehow, that seems unnecessary.

I think I'll go to the store now.

Well, here we go folks. My very own blog page... we'll see how this one goes :-) Exciting (well, that's debatable, I guess) excerpts from Lauren's life to come!