givemetheusual

For some reason, deciding to have a baby, being pregnant, and now facing birth happening anytime between now and the end of August keeps making me think of the fragility of life and how close we are to death at any moment. At first this seemed paradoxical to me; why would birth make me think of death? However, they are connected in many ways. Imagining myself going through the phases of parenthood makes it easier to imagine myself aging. I obviously would have aged even without having a child, yet I'm familiar with the rites of passage of childhood and how old parents typically are when their child graduates from high school, for example. The predictability of children's lives up until they are 18 or maybe even through college makes it easier to imagine the passage of time. It is strange to imagine myself being at their high school graduation with grey hair! Also, the process of giving birth involves so much of the fluids of life - blood, tears, sweat - which also empha...

Broken relationships  So this might be an unusual Valentine's Day post. A couple years ago, I finished going through a year of intense group and individual therapy class and learned that I had been loving people who I shouldn't love. That's right: there are people you *shouldn't* love. This concept flew in the face of everything I stood for. Didn't every spiritual leader and book of scripture tell us to love everyone and forgive everyone, even our enemies? Well, yes, and guess who's included in "love everyone." ME and YOU. I have to love myself as much as I love others. You have to love yourself as much as you love others, and invite people and things into your life that improve your quality of life (in the areas you value). If they are doing that too, then you'll end up in relationships that help both people live their values. So what do you value? That's the core question to answer. Because if someone repeatedly makes i...

Recently, a few memories have reminded me of how awkward pre-teens can be. Perhaps it's the surge of hormones that drives girls to try to kiss cute boys despite the obstacles of braces and headgear, or it's the Red 40 dye in Swedish Fish that leads young, sweaty boys with the promising starts of BO, facial hair and acne to feel as confident as Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We may never know, but here are a few memories to jog your own. Either these will make you feel better about your level of awkwardness, or you'll find that I'm another friend with whom you can commiserate. The Halloween Costume In Fifth Grade, crushes at school started to take on just the faint aroma of real attraction. It wasn't like I even knew the words to describe this, but I was aware that some girls just had what it took to get the boys really obsessed with them. We were all starting to wear training bras and put on lipgloss and there was an extra layer of heady anticipation before Halloween t...

My story About four years ago, during a summer of intense stress, I found myself staring at a bowl full of yellow turmeric powder at 3 am. I was about to pour water into the powder, mix it into a paste, and spread it all over my hands and legs. It all started out with getting eczema on the backs of my hands and the backs of my legs. The eczema began as annoying and quickly became unbearably itchy, to the point of keeping me up into the wee hours of the morning. The patches of itchy skin became inflamed and infected, eventually, like little maniacal monsters intent on driving me to the edge of insanity. Which is where I found myself at 3 am this one night. This bright yellow turmeric paste was a last resort as an eczema treatment because although it works really, really well, it also permanently stains anything it touches. Skin, clothing, bed sheets, carpet. You name it, it's yellow. If you have ever stained your clothes with yellow Indian curry, it's because the food conta...

In the future, a few survivors of nuclear war gather in an underground hideout and desperately wrack their brains, "Is there any way we could have prevented this nuclear war?" They decide that with their engineering and programming skills combined, they might be able to transmit messages to past generations and warn them in an attempt to avoid nuclear war. After years of putting on protective suits, crawling out of the bunker, and spending tedious hours sifting through rubble, the small group of survivors gathers enough supplies to create an artificial intelligence that can transmit messages to the past. They name this robot God because of legends they heard as children about a man named God who used to send messages of peace to humankind.  They set up streams of automated messages and also write hundreds of personalized messages constantly in the hopes that someone, anyone in the past will listen and take their advice. After sending billions of messages per day for a m...

When I got the fever flu in April, my dad brought me his iPad, already logged into Netflix, and pulled up Parks & Rec . There's nothing like seven seasons of a tv show to keep you company while you're down and out. I think I watched two full seasons in a week, and don't regret a minute of it. Needless to say, I had a lot of time to think about the show and came to the conclusion that it is particularly good at is celebrating the differences between people. Leslie and Ron are perfect foils for each other--Leslie is hyperactive, talkative, and bulldozes anyone or anything in her way on the quest to make the government great, while Ron is stoic, silent, and zealously committed to being a stick-in-the-mud to slow the government down. They butt heads but also tease each other, and in rare tender moments, actually help each other reach their goals (Ron always gives Leslie the best advice in her moments of crisis, and Leslie always gets Ron the best presents, including autom...

Welcome to my worst date awards! All of these happened a while ago, and my sister recently reminded me of them. Perhaps I blocked them from my memory. Note: If you happen to be featured in one of these worst dates, never fear! I actually still genuinely love all the people these stories are about, and in a strange way, these are some of the best dates I've had because they were so interesting and funny and awkward! And a lot of the awkwardness could have been avoided if I had been smarter. Let's all celebrate our weirdness! Yay! Cabela's During January one year, I had a terrible fever but for some reason was too scared to cancel a date. I thought it would seem "mean" or something (classic people-pleasing behavior). So this guy I barely knew picked me up, and told me he had a surprise date planned! Then he took me to Cabela's. I now know hunting sometimes actually helps promote the health of an ecosystem, but at the time, I was an extreme environmentalist ...