Hello my faithful blogowers. My have things been busy! My computer died, so I've been using my little sister's computer. However, she is always gone with State FFA and takes her computer with her, so my access to the outside world is limited. That sucks. My other little sister had her baby and I can't seem to get enough snuggle time. By the end of August I'll be in Bozeman again and I'm both excited and nervous. Excited to be back among friends, but nervous that they way things have been so difficult will continue and my last refuge of sanity will be tainted. By Daneesha's wedding is on the 18th and I am very excited for it! Hopefully my computer will either be fixed or replaced by the time school rolls around.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Family reunions are such awkward affairs. When we were children they were great fun. The cousins would come over to play with and grandma would have Pepperidge Farm reject cookies and plenty of Feature Films for Families to watch. As we got older, however, it got less fun. Now that most of us are in marrying age, it's just downright awkward. There's nothing much else to do but talk, which gets old after the first 45 minutes, and then you just sit there making polite sounds and waiting for it to be over. Then there is the joy that comes from introducing your future eternal companion to (dum DUM dum) the family. This particular brand of awkwardness is short lived, as the family members usually spend a great deal of time peppering the intended with questions about who they are. However, it makes things a bit more difficult for the other cousins who have yet to find their own intended, because there are the inevitable looks and pointed hints about what's taking you so long. Not to mention that family reunions are in Preston, the barnacle on the butt of Idaho.
I felt my sister's very pregnant belly the other day. The baby was squirming around so it looked like a scene from Alien. Felt absolutely disgusting. Then the baby girl got the hiccups. THAT was adorable. The entire belly shakes. My sister hates it because it hurts, but the idea of a tiny baby with hiccups is so cute...She's certainly taking her time getting here...the naughty little mooch.

Stupid Insects

My friend Caleb is serving a mission in the Philippines and his last letter mentioned they had resolved their cockroach problem. Cockroaches are so disgusting. The spawn of satan I tell you. During my high school trip to Mexico, the hallways of the hotel would be covered in cockroach carcasses in the morning. COVERED. Every morning. When I lived in Hawaii, I was in the room alone one day and noticed a cockroach the size of a small horse was sneaking around. Since it was obviously far too big to squash with a plastic flip-flop, I found the hale's can of aersol poison. I chased that cursed thing all over that room, spraying it every time it landed somewhere. This was not a silent chase of death. I squealed and yelped every time it came near me. Next door I could hear our two Samoan neighbors laughing. No doubt they were laughing at me, the pansy white girl who can't handle one little cockroach. The flying devil finally hid in some little crack where I couldn't get at it. The room was one big fog of poison, so I left for a bit so I didn't asphixiate myself. Come to find out, the cockroach was giant because it was going to be a mommy. Instead, me and my roomate had to deal with the hordes of tiny little cockroaches crawling over everything.
We never had to deal with these in Idaho. The closest we got were those spindly legged Box Elder bugs, the ones with the red-orange lines on their black wings. I hate those things. They covered the granparent's house and always threatened to sneak inside or swarm you. The houseflies DID swarm you, or so it felt. There were alway so many in the house it looked like the ceiling fan was black, instead of white. You quickly learned to sleep with your entire body under the covers and the make sure there weren't any holes the flies could crawl in. To this day I can't sleep unless my head is covered.

Aa-choo!

So Memorial Day evening I went back up to Driggs with my mom. This week went by so fast, considering all I've done is sleep in and watch old cartoons on Boomerang (the greatest channel ever). Yesterday I babysat for Natalie again. Her and Roger drove to Salt Lake to pick up their daughter from the airport and I stayed with their son. I was there until 4am but luckily Dawson was asleep by 10pm, so a great deal of time I was sleeping as well. My nose was ridiculously stuffy while I was there and by the time I went home, I knew I had a cold. So I feel like crap. Fitting, considering the weather, which is also crappy. The stupid thing about a cold is that I'm starving, but can't taste anything and nothing sits well on the stomach. Bleh. C'mon immune system! Fight!

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.