Celebrity Crush

    We live in a society that puts an incredible amount of worth upon actors and actresses. Think of when you read a magazine. We're so fascinated with these people who perform in movies and TV shows, we read about their trips to the grocery store. We look at pictures of them grabbing their morning coffee. The average person is just short of obsessed with at least one celebrity. However, this is only natural when they're portrayed as characters that we admire so much in stories. This is where the term "celebrity crush" comes in. Every person has had an irrational crush on a celebrity at one point or another.
    This trend has been going on since the beginning of pop culture. For the girls, there was Elvis, for the guys there was Marilyn Monroe. In my parents day, there was David Cassidy and Farrah Fawcett. Most girls of this age fantasize about men like Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper, James Franco, or (one of my personal favorites) Joseph Gordon Levitt. It's easy to see why these actors are so dreamy. Besides their dashing good looks, they are portrayed in romantic comedies as the all-around good guy who will make you laugh and bring you breakfast in bed. In action movies, they're seen as heroes who will brave any danger to protect you. However, there is one celebrity crush of mine (and I am sure that I am not the only one), that I will absolutely never understand.
    Here I am, sitting watching Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, seeing as Johnny Depp frolics around in black eyeliner and dread locks, and I can't help but wish I was Penelope Cruz, his leading lady. If you think about it, there's really nothing attractive about this man. He's a forty-something year old guy. He's portraying an unwashed, borderline homosexual pirate wearing more jewelry than I even own. What is it about this guy that makes girls swoon at the sight of him? Is it the pirate accent? Maybe the captain's hat. Or perhaps there's just something positively irresistible about the life of piracy, the spray of the sea, and the mystery of mermaids. Whatever it is, it's enough to make me (and just about every other girl who's ever seen the movies) to overlook Johnny Depp's lack of sanitation in depicting Captain Jack Sparrow.
    Apart from Captain Sparrow, all of my celebrity crushes starting from childhood are relatively normal when compared to other girls my age. Everything started with The Beast from Beauty and the Beast. After he turned into a prince, it ruined everything. The Beast was so sweet and wonderful. Then, for the longest time, it was all about Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. When he serenades the audience with Danke Schoen, my heart would just melt. Ever since 10 Things I Hate About You and 500 Days of Summer, my go to celebrity crush has been Joseph Gordon Levitt, with his boyish smile and good-natured characters.
    Every girl has her irrational love interests in different actors. For instance, my little sister has recently has acquired a thing for Keven Bacon and Tom Cruise. My other sister's first crush was on Link from the Legend of Zelda games. I have a friend who wanted to marry either Neville from Harry Potter or Harry Osborne from Spiderman for the longest time. Some may say having these crushes is weird or stupid. There's obviously no possibility for a relationship with these characters that we've built up in our heads to be so perfect. However, I see these crushes as healthy. It gives a girl hope that a guy out there exists who will fight of Gaston for you. A man who will help you ditch school and bring you on a joyride throughout Chicago. Even a ruggedly gay pirate who will fight off Black Beard is better than nothing.

Take Pictures, Capture Moments, Preserve Life

    So very often, when I go out on any kind of occasion, no matter how insignificant, I'll grab my camera to bring along. Sometimes I will end up taking hundreds of pictures, other times I won't shoot a single frame. However, I hate if there is ever a moment when I have something I desperately want to take a picture of, and I'm found without my camera. I've been like this for years, ever since my Mom gave me disposable cameras to toy with as a child. Every once in a while, I'll get in the mood to look at old pictures from my childhood, and reminisce about how easy life was back then. Today just happened to be one of those days. However, I thought to myself...what if my house went up in flames? I know that's an awful thing to be thinking about, but seriously. My Mom has dozens upon dozens of photo albums that piece together my history. If they were all lost, there would be no record. Nothing to pass on to my children. So, I decided to start the very long and ongoing task of scanning in the best and most important of these pictures, starting from when my parents first married, up until the digital age when all pictures started being kept on computer files.
   There's something so soothing about looking through childhood photos. Maybe it's because I can look into my eyes as they were once carefree and full of possibilities. Perhaps it just brings me back to some of my fondest memories. Regardless of the reason, they never fail to make me smile and feel a wave of serene contentedness wash over me. I feel so lucky that my parents documented how I changed over the years. From when I was a baby and I looked like a sack of potatoes, through round faced toddler-hood. I can watch as my face matures to look more like my Mother's every day.
   My parents were like me, they would document any occasion. From trips to Disney World to trips to the apple orchard. From when they got a new cat to when the new cat got stuck inside my Dad's shoe. These are the little moments that would have been lost in history if a camera had not been in my Mom or my Dad's hand. So if you ever see my carrying around my big and clumsy camera on a seemingly ordinary day, keep in mind that I am just trying to preserve my life. I know for a face that I will never again look the same as I do today ever again. Each day I grow older, I change, and moments pass that will never come back. I love reliving moments of my past almost as much as I love looking forward to moments to come in the future.

 Me and a Chicken

Possibly My Favorite Picture of All Time

My Dad Loves My Mom

Blow Out The Candles

     So at this point, anyone who ever reads this blog probably thinks I've either met an unfortunate demise, or decided to completely just stop posting. However, believe it or not, none of the above apply. Unless you consider finals, ACT studying, and summer college program applications qualify as an unfortunate demise. Regardless, I've written about high school angsty stress way too much on this blog, so we're just going to consider that implied at this point, and move on.
     Something I would like to talk about is an upcoming event that should be marked on each and every one of your calendars. In just four short days, it will be the day of birth of the incredibly talented and beautiful author of the well-known blog with at least 12 followers, I May Claim To Know. Yes, it's true, this upcoming Wednesday, I will be turning the crazy and wild age of seventeen. (P.S. all of the above was very sarcastic). Birthdays in general can mean something different to you depending on what age you're turning.
     When you're as young as just a few years, each birthday feels like you're centuries older. The holiday means smashing your face into the birthday cake with your favorite Disney princess or Pokemon on top. As you get older, into the years 8-14, the day means it's all about you. Your birthday means everyone does as you say and does anything to make you happy. Then, in the years 15-18, it's all about the milestones. At 15, you get your permit and you're feeling like you're the coolest teenager alive. At sweet 16, you get your license and you feel as if you're unstoppable. You can wave goodbye to your parents as you're rolling down the driveway, feeling the first waves of true independence.
     I'm turning 17, which at first, I wasn't too impressed with. What real life milestones are there when you reach this age? It's just smack dab in the middle of driving age and adulthood. However, when I thought about it, I came up with a few perks of the old age. First off, I will have had my license for a year, which means the inconvenient laws such as "Only one person outside of the driver's family is permitted in the car while they're driving" and 10 P.M. curfews, are lifted. Also, 17 means I can officially and legally see an R rated movie in theaters without being accompanied by an adult...or a friend who is over 17 to buy my ticket.
     Other than these random tidbits of widened freedom, there are more subtle changes in who you are. At 17, it finally seems like you're grown up. This is the age at which you'll be filling out your college applications. The age in which every thought that consumes your head is "how should I be spending my time in order to look best to my college of choice". The future lying straight out in front of us, but 17 is the age in which we must begin choosing which paths to follow. It's a scary time; that's why as this birthday is slowly creeping upon me, I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness. My youth is slipping before my eyes, and I'm powerless to stop it. I will never be able to return to the carefree days of childhood. I cannot recapture the middle school days of being able to mess up and have it not feel like it's going to destroy my entire future. My teenage milestones are mostly past me.
      I realize that in the grand scheme of life, I'm very young, and that should be something to treasure while it lasts. But I can't help thinking about this birthday and feel a bit of regret. Wishing I could have done it all over again, being truly young. That's why with this birthday, I'm going to do my best to live this year so that at my eighteenth birthday, I won't feel any regrets. Every decision I make, whether it's colleges, majors, activities, etc. Each and every one will be made in regard for what's best for me. That is my birthday resolution.

Warning: Hilarity Is To Come

     So this is going to be the most non-blogpost-like blogpost ever. But I have a few issues I would like to formally address.

1. With the next few weeks come finals reviews, and then of course, the dreaded final exams week. So this means that my blogposts will be few and far between for the next few weeks. I do apologize, but I really need to focus on studying for my exams, in addition to ACT prep.

2. My dear friend, Tia, started a blog recently on Tumblr (I realize I'm saying this on Blogger, which is probably some sort of treason), and it is possibly one of the funnies things I've ever encountered on the world wide web. And this isn't just some silly advertisement for her blog, it's just legitimately hilarious. So if you like Harry Potter, look at it NOW! Just go to www.voldemortsfavoritethings.tumblr.com

The premise is: photoshopped pictures of Voldemort, showing you his favorite things in life. She posts several times a day, and it's basically the highlight of each of my days.

3. Meet The Robinsons is a wonderful and fantastic movie; if you haven't seen it...see it. I first saw it on a airplane ride to London, England with my sister. We had a list of around seven movies we could watch, and once we weeded out the R rated movies, we had already watched all of them, but Meet The Robinsons. We thought it looked silly from previews, but we figured..."ehh, why not?" And it was fantastic. That's one of my favorite memories. 

Once again: www.voldemortsfavoritethings.tumblr.com

Enjoy.

Drive

     Not everyone can be born a genius. But, to those of you who are born geniuses...I hate you just a little bit. Not seriously, I don't hate you. But I have always envied those kids in my class who get the same or better grades than I do by doing less than half the amount of effort I put in. I'm one of those people - as much as I shouldn't do this - who is constantly comparing myself to others. Not in an "oh I have to be better than everyone" way, but just for the sake of comparison. I am my biggest critic and my biggest fan. If I do something wrong, I beat myself up about like none other. But if I do something good, I feel on top of the world.
   Very recently, a wise friend of mine told me straight up that I had to stop comparing myself to others. If I'm not happy with what I do, that's my own problem. But I should not be upset about not doing as fantastically as the girl standing next to me. This came up in relation to ACT scores. I took the test for the first time, no classes, no studying, just a dry run at it. I did okay, not as well as I was hoping for. So naturally, I made myself sick, comparing my score to everyone else who took the test, making myself feel worse and worse.
   So after a couple of days of feeling awful and guilty, I start to get fired up. Perhaps I'm not a born genius. If you put a super complicated math problem in front of me, I probably won't be able to solve it with as much ease as some people. But one thing I do have, is determination. If I want it badly enough, I will work, and work, and work at it. Does that mean I'll automatically get a 36 on the ACT just because I work on it? No. But it does mean that in the end, after I've taken the test for the last time, and I send in my final score to college admissions offices, I can be proud of my score. Not because of whatever number shows up on my transcript, but because I'll know in my heart that I did everything in my ability to get the best possible score I could deserve. I get this drive and determination for perfection from my parents, and while it can sometimes be a curse, I believe it to be one of my best qualities.

Oh No! I've Lost My Wisdom!

     If you are a truly unlucky soul, like my sister or myself, you have, will, or might get your wisdom teeth ripped from your gums at sometime in your life. When I heard that I had to get my wisdom teeth yanked out over a year ago, I thought "pshh, no big deal!" I had had plenty of baby and adult teeth pulled in my life, this would be no different....right? WRONG! My wisdom teeth were impacted, I never even got to meet the little guys, they were trapped beneath a thick layer of gum tissue and nerves. This means, that I had to be put under anesthesia to get those suckers out. Back in January, when I got them pulled, was my first time being put completely under, my first IV, and the first time I have been that sore, for that long.
     You may be wondering why I am writing about this, seeing as I got my surgery almost a year ago. Well, this morning, the day after my brave sister's birthday, she got her gums torn open to free herself from her big honking wisdom teeth. Let me tell you, this is one of the least fun processes....ever. I remember from when I got mine out. When I woke up, all I remember was that I was crying, really cold, and in a ridiculous amount of pain. Now, if you're about to get your wisdom teeth out, I am not trying to freak you out. It's different for everybody.
     But, instead of dwelling on the bad part of getting these pointless teeth pulled, I would like to focus on the good. For instance, the food. At first, you may be thinking to yourself: "the food, are you kidding me? You can't eat anything solid for days!" And while this is true, once you ponder it, you realize all of the super delicious food you get to eat. For the first few days after getting your wisdom teeth out, you'll live off of smoothies, soup, pudding, milkshakes, ice cream, applesauce, deliciousness! Another great thing about getting your wisdom teeth out, is that you're in pain.
    Now before you go ahead and start thinking I'm crazy, allow me to explain. My sister and I are very similar people in the way that neither of us like to do nothing. We like to be productive and never have a lazy moment (her more than myself...I can be somewhat  lazy). If we're watching a movie, we're studying, drawing, writing, reading, or at least doing something while we do so. However, when you get your wisdom teeth out, you're in such pain, that all of that other stuff, just kind of drops away. We no longer feel guilty for not multi-tasking. It's a time when we can actually relax, and give ourselves a few days to do nothing.
    To contradict what I just said, you actually can get something done right after you get wisdom teeth pulled. Don't you just hate when dozens of movies come out onto DVD, and you just never have enough time to watch them all? Being in extreme oral pain gives you that opportunity you've always wanted! In conclusion, if you're getting your wisdom teeth out, I would do the following to prepare yourself.
1. Stock up on foods like soup, pudding, applesauce, ice cream (for milkshakes), smoothie ingredients, anything soft and/or liquid.
2. Don't freak yourself out, focus on the fact that you'll have a ton of relaxing time!
3. I suggest on taking Advil before your appointment, just as a precautionary measure. Trust me, you'll want it.
4. Dress as comfy as possible for your appointment, changing clothes will be the last thing you want to do afterwards. I suggest just wearing pajamas. In addition, I advise against wearing any makeup, you'll cry your mascara down your face (at least I did).
5. Make a run to your local library or Red Box to stock up on all of those movies you've been dying to catch yourself up on. Oh and probably rent some good stupid-chick flick-romantic comedies, because let's be honest, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts being silly and adorable in Pretty Woman can basically fix anything.
Follow these simple steps and you'll be good to go!

Story Time

*This evening, a friend asked me to tell him a story. Little did he know that I get really into my stories. So now I am going to share my story with you.*

      Once upon a time, there was a baker. This baker made everything: cakes pies, muffins, you name it. But when you stepped into his bakery, all you could smell was his gingerbread. The scent of his warm spicy gingerbread wafted out his door throughout the kingdom. The Christmas season was upon them. This was, of course, a busy season for the baker, what with all of the orders of fruit cakes, gingerbread, and the like. But on the eve of Christmas, the king had a demand unlike all the others.

    The king wished to impress his wife with a gingerbread house exceeding any he's made before. One big enough to live in, and so delicious that it couldn't be lived in for long. One with a chocolate roof and a candy cane chimney. In return for this gingerbread castle, the king would make the baker rich beyond belief. He would make sure that the baker and his family would live in comfort and luxury for the rest of their lives. And the baker would be the official kingdom baker for years to come. But if the queen was not pleased with the gingerbread castle, he would be condemned to the dungeons for eternity.

    Since the baker was used to a modest life with times of financial struggle to support his wife and children, he eagerly agreed to the terms of the delicious endeavor. So he began construction of this luscious palace. Hundreds of pounds of gingerbread dough formed the walls. The chocolate roof had to be lowered on by a crane; made of the richest chocolate available. The windows were lined in pretzel and red licorice smothered in frosting held together the gingerbread bricks. It was the grandest palace the world had ever seen.

   The baker worked through the night, fastening the chocolate turrets and furnishing the entire castle with white chocolate furniture and even a full set of white chocolate orchestral instruments for the royalty to enjoy. He was just putting on the finishing touches when the king officially summoned the baker to his private living quarters. The baker was led to a grand dining room and sat on one end of a table set for at least eighty. The king and queen seated next to each other on the opposite end. 

    The king's voice echoes through the tall room, "the time has come. Please escort my queen and myself to my grand gift." So the baker stood and brought the royal couple out to his masterpiece. He unveiled it with more pride than any other treasure he had baked. The queen looked the palace up and down. She crossed the chocolate moat and entered through the gumdrop lined doorway. She analyzed every inch of the castle, tasting bits and pieces here and there, letting no emotion seep through her face.

    When she was done, she faced the baker and uttered one simple work: "denied". And with that, two large guards grabbed the weak baker by each of his arms and dragged him to the deep dark dungeons. At first, the baker simply didn't understand. He had created a masterpiece, used the finest ingredients, he put his heart and soul into the gingerbread wonder. But the queen was a selfish and unyielding woman, unwilling to compensate the baker for his work. When the baker's family was informed of their father's imprisonment,, they were distraught. What were they to do?

     So they did the only thing they could think of. They hoped and prayed to the spirit of Christmas. "Please!" they begged, "Please let our beloved baker return to us!" The next day, in the depths of winter, the sun shone brighter than ever before. It glared and cast brilliant warmth over the entire kingdom. The greedy king and queen were enjoying their gingerbread castle, lounging on the white chocolate couch with marshmallow cushions, when all of a sudden, the king felt a drop atop his forehead.

    At first he thought rain might be seeping through the roof. He wiped his forehead and looked at the single drop. Alas, it was some of the richest chocolate in all the land. Then, all of a sudden, the drops fell harder, harder, and harder. The king exclaimed and the queen shrieked. It all happened so quick, there was no time to escape. The rich decadent chocolate roof collapsed, and the entire palace fell to the ground.

    The king and queen were no more, and everyone was now free of their oppressive rule. The baker was liberated and the kingdom rejoiced for a full seven days and seven nights. He returned to his family, and was given what was promised to him. A life of quiet luxury, surrounded by his family, friends, and his bakery.

The End