Quick trip turned mini-vacay

Kyle and I set out on our journey to San Antonio on Friday afternoon (about 5 hours later than planned) in Mitch (an 8 and a half hour car trip turned into a 15 hour adventure...). It was my intention to stay until Saturday morning and make the trip back solo, stopping off in Shreveport to spend some time with my parents.

But seeing as how we got in so late, it made sense to just stay an extra day, get some sleep, and leave early Sunday. Then came Jazz Alive, a weekend festival in the park downtown. It was fantastic fun with lots of tastiness at the various food booths and great Latin music (yeah, I was confused too seeing as how it was Jazz Alive, but fun nonetheless...). This was followed by The Lion and Rose Pub at which Kyle's theatre buds from SA wanted to get together to see him. FANTASTIC bread pudding, beautifully authentic decor, and a lovely little story in the back of the menu. But you know theatre people...and when there's a show going, no one gets bail til the clock is in the a.m. So we stayed pretty late, and upon pondering the situation it seemed best to sleep in and drive home on Monday. It was a tough decision, having to weigh band practice with some good peaceful sleep and the sound of the waterfall flowing into the pond in the back yard, but I'm safest on the road when I'm not tired. So today was another sleep til 3 day with a big family dinner, and some quality couch time.

Couch time I'm enjoying now, comfy and cozy, in San Antonio, and I'm planning to get to bed at a decent hour, but I make no promises. After all, I did remember to pack Zombies in my overnight bag...

Days 5 with the new dental buddies...

...and going strong. Eating is still an interesting experience, and while smoothies are much easier on the teeth, all that fruit is not so easy on the stomach. I'm looking at it as an excuse to eat a LOT more Hawaiian sweet bread than necessary :p But I've noticed today that the only part of my mouth that's all that sore is the inside of my right cheek where it keeps getting caught when I smile big or laugh and try to talk at the same time. (A hard habit to break, I'm finding) My teeth have stopped "itching" for the moment which is nice. I'm sure it'll come back as my wires change and when they introduce the rubber bands, but for now it seems my challenges are limited to learning how to eat and brushing more gently. I managed to grind my teeth in my sleep so hard that a bumper popped off at about 5 this morning, so I'll be investing in a mouthguard after work today to wear when I sleep. I figure popping that in is a heck of a lot easier than taking the time to wax every bracket at night so we're killing two birds with one stone. wooT. 

Hugs!

Braceface!

Yep, that's me! As of about 10:15 this morning, I was sent on my merry way out into the world with a mouth full of metal. God willing, in 18 months, my center teeth will be all lined up, my bite will be all lined up, and I won't have that little gap on the left side of my mouth for my tongue to poke through in pictures. wooT! In the meantime it's really not all that bad. Other than having no desire to talk (I'm serious. Laura Michelle actually has no desire to speak. Write it down, I doubt it'll last long), no clear idea of how to chew, and a list of food no-no's in my wallet, life is basically the same. When we started getting costumes for "Cell Block", I didn't picture myself ever saying this, but I can only hope that when Saturday night comes, the audience will be too busy looking at what I'm not wearing to notice me spitting on them during my  mini-logue. :p

A thank you note

I've been listening to Relient K today. They're a fantastic Christian rock group. I love their lyrics. When I was younger I had this vision of printing the lyrics to my favorite songs and wallpapering my room with them. It's still tempting, and at least one whole wall would be Relient K. It doesn't matter what mood I'm in or how my day is going, they're always a good choice. I can jam to them, I can cry to them, I can sing along, I can dance-all good things! So I'm jamming to an album I hadn't listened to until today in my office, and I'm deciding it just might be my favorite yet, and it kind of creeped into my head, "Thanks, Kyle."

It's been almost a year since Kyle packed his things and made way for Texas, leaving me happily in the arms of a better man. Most of the time the only things I say about him or the former us are fairly deprecating, and most of the time, I'm being pretty honest. For a long time afterward I couldn't figure out why I'd been so stupid. I was pretty upset with myself, but somewhere in the last few months I got to a point where I started to see things that were obviously part of God's reason for letting me stay "stupid" about the situation for so long. Things I learned, things I found...I wouldn't have had Cadence. I wouldn't have Puck. I wouldn't have half of my favorite albums on my iPod-including Relient K. I wouldn't have had Guenevere or Mitch. I wouldn't appreciate the closeness of family as much as I do because I wouldn't have been estranged from them for so long. I might have had a much happier final conversation with my brother, but then who grows from fluff-right? I wouldn't have my job at Strauss. I wouldn't have Mikey. And none of those things is in any way insignificant to who I am or how I live. They're all very important pieces of my life, and I got them by being stupid.

Now, I don't plan on purposely going out and being stupid and expecting good things to come of it, but it did  make me think about other things that I regret or am disappointed in myself for. I'm afraid of failure, always have been-that Type A obsession with success. I think it really helps to see regret for what it is: silly and a waste of time you could be spending happy with something else. If I'm not going to waste time regretting a failure, it's a lot easier to not be afraid of it. Because it's that disappointment that I'm really afraid of-the lingering regret over something lost with no consideration for what's gained. Every time I get angry, I learn something about myself. In retrospect, I have a lot of people to thank that I spent a lot of time being upset with.

I have a hundred and some odd channels now...

...and what's on repeat in my head? Serendipity. The scene where Jonathan is reading his own eulogy that his best friend wrote in lieu of a best man speech. All about being an ass and throwing out all reason to follow your heart and find your destiny.

Does it really work that way? I mean, can you be the kind of person who does that and ever find another person who does? Doesn't that whole "opposites attract" stuff get in the way? So if you're running around throwing out reason to follow your heart and find that your destiny is someone who won't even throw out an old sock for love...how can that possibly be right? There's a movie whose name I can't think of for the life of me right now that talks about how every relationship has a giver and a taker. And while most Hollywooded philosophy is a load of hopelessly romantic crap, that bit really does seem to be true. We wonder why divorce rates are so high in America. Because Americans accept the fact that a giver must settle for a taker just long enough to fall deeply in love and get married only to realize just what a shit deal the giver got. They resent the other person for being what they are and resent themselves for being so stupid. And they turn themselves into the taker by giving up the marriage and taking back their lives and learning how to be a little selfish. The taker resents the giver for resenting the taker when the giver "knew what they were getting into"...when really, neither party took the time to get to know what they were getting into.

My generation is labeled for hasty, stupid decisions. My generation is labeled correctly. This is why our parents and grandparents dated for years and years before getting engaged. This is why our parents and grandparents had long engagements. It wasn't to give them time to back out. It wasn't even to give them time to get to know one another. They've got a lifetime to do that. It's because at some point, the giver has to become a little bit of a taker and the taker has to become a little bit of a giver. And THEN you have a relationship. THEN you have a marriage. THEN you have a life together. You can't milk a calf...I don't think. You can try, may even have fun doing so for a while, but you're going to fail and move on to a full grown cow that's more satisfying in the milk department. Unless you're really stupid and you manage to move on to a bull. All grown up. Still no milk. 

It's not really anyone's fault. You can't blame either party. If you're always given everything, how do you ever learn to do anything other than take? And if you're never given anything, how do you know when it's okay to take? You've got to teach each other, help each other, listen to one another, throw some reason out to make room for one another. Sometimes, you've just gotta be an ass.

Theme Song

I'm currently enrolled in English 102 at ULM. We have several essays to write over the course of the semester. The essay at hand is an analysis of theme relating to a movie. My essay will discuss the theme of American Beauty.

My blog will not. My blog is going to catalog the thoughts that have been fizzing around upstairs for a few days concerning theme. But not movie theme. Life theme.

Lives are stories, just as any book or movie or play. In turn, most forms of entertainment are simply portrayals of life, whether there's really much of a plot or not, whether there's a moral or not, whether the characters are very well defined and developed or not, whether they burst out in random song and dance...or not, and they all have themes. Some undoubtedly much more sophisticated than others, but themes nonetheless. And while there are a great many differences between life and a movie, the biggest one is that your conflicts can't be solved and summed up in an hour and a half to three hours. Every scene is meant to accomplish something.

Our lives are millions of trillions of scenes, each meant to accomplish something and further the understanding of the theme. So how do you get 22 years in and still not know what you're furthering towards? It's as if we live more of a CSI episode, and the true beginning of the story isn't revealed until the end at which point the in-between makes lots of sense. Until that final scene with the great (and amazingly cheesy) closing line, you know your efforts to understand completely will be fruitless.

At least a four dozen times throughout my little life, I've stated with great conviction to some loyal friend, "This is like a theme song for my life!" But if Newsies' "Santa Fe" is the anthem for my life, I'm in trouble. (I'm currently comfortable with a Bayside meets Relient K theme. God help me if that's the end all be all of theme songs!) I think we all have a set of "scene songs" that we pull out to commiserate with or reminisce with of a time when it was a veritable outline of our own experience. But if I had to pick one, ONE to sum up my entire life-what would that be?

Forget the movie. What's MY theme? What's MY plot? Where's MY character development? I couldn't write that paper if my life depended on it. It depends on my life. And that depends on the paper Someone else already wrote for me. Vicious cycle.

A Whole New World in a whole new light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9-CS2v8wcc&feature=related

Do yourself a favor and click. I'm not savvy enough to embed the clip, but you've gotta watch it.

Bleeding Love is pretty fantastic as well...and Part of your World...