Congratulations graduates!

My baby sister graduated from high school on Thursday. She wasn't hard to miss among the mass of blue and white clad graduates, she was the only one with the sketch pad and furiously moving pencil. Her row was passing candy back and forth, which I thought a smart idea, and Sidnee even answered a text message I sent her. But really, graduation isn't for the students, just like a wedding reception isn't for the couple. It's for the family. It was trippy to think she's officially an adult now. It was also strange to talk to my friends. They all have kids now (except me of course), but for whatever reason it was wigging me out that night. My brother's friends are starting to come home off their missions and Shay only has about 6 months left. Weird.

Horses can be a pain in the butt

So today, after it stopped raining, I decided to walk up the hill and pick through the piles of junk and see if I could find anything interesting. I did find an old license plate from 1935 (very cool). I also discovered that I'm more out of shape than I thought. Meh, who cares. By far the most disgusting thing I found was a giant collection of rock chuck turds in an old piece of machinery. It was far and away the largest collection of doo-doo I've ever seen (and that includes the pile of bunny poop we had when we had a bunny. We no longer have a bunny. Many years ago the dog got a hankering for a bit of bunny and ate it). You would not believe the amount of poop I saw. Gross. So I walked further up the hill, past the fence keeping the stinky cows at bay and sat under a tree and read for an hour or so. Once I came down, I followed my dad around while he set up some kind of fence for the horses around a pasture. Then me and Sidnee were supposed to get the horses into the pasture. Four of the horses did what they were supposed to (though they were brats about it) but Zack's colt ran around for who knows how long evading capture. I thought it was quite funny and enjoyed myself, but my dad (who has had a crappy week anyways) was really frustrated. It is supposed to rain all weekend (booo) but then get sunny (yeay) so I want to keep walking up the hill to read. Mmmmmm.

Cumpleanos Feliz.....

Sidnee turned 18 today. In three months I will be 26. Rather depressing actually. And I noticed lately that the more I try to just be myself and not do or think or say things based on other people's reactions, I get ridiculed more. Retarded huh? How many times do we tell people that if you're yourself, other people will like you more than if you tried to be what they wanted. That is not true. When you are yourself people like you because you aren't as stressed and you're happier, but they don't like you better than if you were trying to please them, because (hello) if you're doing whatever makes them happy, then they are obviously happy and like you. But then deep down you don't like yourself. It's all so retarded. And most people don't even reach the point where they are truly themselves. They have been playing a part so long, they eventually believe it's who they are and then wonder where this underlying depression is coming from. But I have soooooo reached the part where I could care less about what other people think. I mean, I've always been the type of person who marched to the beat of their own drum and that's why I've never fully fit in anywhere, ever. But there was always a part of me that looked at all these people getting the dates and their college degrees and the jobs and I thought, well if they are getting all of this and I'm not then I must be doing something wrong. I let other people do the thinking for me and at the same time, still tried to maintain my identity. And as the scriptures say, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." So now I'm not just marching to the beat of my own drum, I'm dancing to it. So what if being myself means other people don't like me and I'm constantly getting dirty looks (and boy how I attract them)! So what if being myself means I don't get dates (it gets annoying when you're nagged about this)! I don't want to date people who are looking for a clone to date anyways (and boy do those clones rake in the dates). And the next time someone harps about why I'm still single, I'm going to tell them the Lord hasn't found anyone good enough yet. ((Can you tell I'm a little tired of being reminded about my marital status and tired of people telling me how weird I am? If I counted how many times a day people told me I'm weird and gave me 'that look', I'd have to start using the toes and fingers of other people.)) So the more I try and be myself, the more I irritate people.
Anywhosits, I've been having some seriously whack dreams. They fall into two categories. One, they are about people in Bozeman attacking me (verbally or physically) and I'm always mystified as to why. And if I try and convince someone in the dream that so and so is a complete jerk, they don't believe me. For example, the other night a certain person (who shall remain nameless) was being a witch with a capital B, but every time I tried to tell someone, they just got mad at me for lying. Two, dream people who bear no relation to anyone in reality are trying (literally) to kill me, usually because I'm trying to do something noble, like save babies. We're talking about violent dreams here people. So vivid that when I get on Facebook, I blur my vision so I don't see certain profile pictures of certain people because they abused me so terribly in the dream. Thoughts of returning to Bozeman were the only things keeping me going recently, but now it terrifies me. These dreams are so horrible, I'm afraid to go to sleep at night. (Come to think of it, I've been afraid to go to sleep so many times in the past three months it's amazing I've gotten any sleep at all.) Then again, sanity is overrated.

um...yeah...okay

The other day Olive was telling me how she was too afraid to drive in California traffic when she first got here and one day she needed to go to the store, but it was right during rush hour traffic (if 1950 traffic could be called "rush hour"). Anyways, she asked her husband to take her because she was afraid of getting into an accident. He threw her the keys and told her to go herself and that she'd be fine. Just before she left he added, "But don't take the dog."
Then today they had a special stake conference. Not entirely sure why they called a stake conference to tell ppl the focus is changing from "Proclaiming the Gospel" to "Gathering Israel", but I digress. Elder Trythall, a member of the Seventy, spoke and told a story of when he was the mission president of an Eastern European mission. Apparently, there were two teaching elders who brought two investigators to their district leaders to be interviewed for baptism. They left the investigators in the apartment and went somewhere else outside to give them privacy. (Something like that.) Anywhosits, the teaching elders noticed that the interview was taking a really long time and they were worried that something was wrong, so they go back upstairs to the apartment. Inside, they couldn't see the investigators and the district leaders told them they were outside on the balcony discussing marriage. The district leaders, in the course of their interview, had discovered that the man and woman weren't legally married and that in order to be baptized, they had to be legally married. After the district leaders finished chastizing the teaching elders, the teaching elders said, "Of course they aren't married. They've never met each other. They're from two different cities." Elder Trythall said the part he liked best about the story was that the two strangers were out on the balcony actually discussing marriage. He said, "So think, how great is your faith next time you get a hard assignment?"
Thought these were kinda funny and thought I'd share...

"Pow" was the fourth Rice Krispie elf--apparently he sucked

My body thinks it's time to quit. It wants to sleep in without worrying about getting pills or cleaning spills or constant driving driving driving. It wants a vacation from life. The weather here has been nice, and I'm sure I'll be missing it when I'm freezing my butt off in Ideehoe, but I am willing to make the sacrifice. I'm getting a little worried about Bozeman, however. Have I mentioned that already? I had a nightmare that everything has changed too much, that I've changed too much, and that I won't fit in anymore, that the parade of life has marched on and I've lost my spot. In the dream everyone was like hyper and uberly (almost obnoxiously) outgoing and I was standing there watching everyone in everyone elses' faces and no one was paying attention because they were too busy trying to be the center of attention. Then the ward split into two groups: one popular and one unpopular, and I was obviously in the latter and for whatever reason was stuck having dodge balls thrown at me. I hate dodge ball, have ever since elementary school. You know you weren't popular because they threw the balls really hard at you. Remember Heads Up Seven Up? You wanted to be the one picking people because you could pick the guy you were secretly crushing on and he would be FORCED to look at you. On the flip side, you always dreaded getting picked by the smelly weirdo who picks his nose because then you know he LIKES you! Shudder. And remember reading the valentine's cards and candy hearts and making sure the person you liked got the best ones and the people you REALLY didn't like got the worst ones so they wouldn't think you liked them? Heavens, children shouldn't be analyzing relationships that early in life. On a lighter note, I dare you to find someone who didn't witness a recess wedding ceremony with a dandelion bouquet. The two who got married in my elementary school got sent to the principals office. Lame administrators.