Be my slave.

Isn't that how it works when you have surgery? Crutches really makes it fairly difficult to carry anything, and so I get to spend the next two weeks completely useless. Which is fun, but also means I am going crazy with boredom.

I was hoping that I would say lots of funny things when I was waking up from surgery, but unfortunately all I did was ask the nurse if her job was boring. And all my blog ideas seem to have disappeared with my pain killers. Or maybe they were removed with my ankle bone. That is yet to be determined. So until then, I am sorry for slacking on writing every Tuesday, I promise to find something exciting to write about so you can have something new tomorrow!

Baby snake in backpack.

(Sorry this is a day late...)

In one week, I will be a gimp. In preparation for my two weeks on crutches and then month in a walking cast, I have been hiking like it is my job. Which I wish it really was, but it is more likely that I will end up doing a corporate office job than being paid to wander around having small attacks of emotion and happiness upon seeing.....

dead baby snakes?

It seems to have died from a tail injury. Sadly for snakes, they are not like geckos that just grow a new tail and continue on their scurrying type of life. Instead, they die and are then used as props for people like my mother, who held her red apple, along with the dead baby snake, right next to her face and asked if I was reminded of that certain Bible story. If only all children had such real life experiences to make the Bible "fun AND educational!" then they would have definitely kept up with their faith. Following the quick intermission for a quick skit on Eve and the snake, the snake was then \ put into a backpack, on my t-shirt, so that it wouldn't get crushed. It's afterlife was probably far more interesting than its very short living life; it rode in a backpack, then in a car, then in a hand and onto a desk to wait for its first victim. However, my father was less than terrified by the adorable, three inche long green baby and it was then placed on the kitchen counter and then made it into Emma's hand as she said "Wow, this really looks real... EW IT IS REAL."

And today there was another case of "pelletitis" and another squirrel fatality was counted in the battle between the Lichtenfels/Robins and the Squirrels. It is days like these that remind me why I love being home, and why I love that I am only here temporarily. I have found it very trying for any sort of relationship when I bring someone to meet my family. Because dead baby snakes and dead squirrels and elk antlers and back straps hanging in the garage are just normal occurrences.

The dead baby snake is now in the freezer where Margaret is keeping it for three months until the fall when she can use it as prime brown noser material for the first day of science class. After 27 types of pets, a few too many types of dead animals, and an ongoing war with squirrels, I am bordering on positive that bringing friends/boys to my house before the five year mark in a relationship is just a very negative idea; not only for the relationship sake, but because at the rate things are dying around here, it may be in their greatest life expectancy interest to stay far away.

21 Letters

Timed tests. 60 minutes to regurgitate what you memorized last night at two am. Or 55 minutes if your name is 21 letters long and filling in the scan tron is the most difficult part of the test.

If I become president of the United States, the first thing I will do is require teachers to handout their scan trons five minutes before the test so that those of us cursed with obscenely long names have time to fairly fill in our bubbles without being penalized for our parent's mistakes. Why should we be victims of shorter testing times simply because our forefathers has some unpronounceable name from Europe when they arrived which became a long alphabet soup last name?

Also, I would like to express my irritation that, when picking my middle name as Ann, my parents did not at least go to the extreme and add an "e" to the end. Go big or go home.

Life Lesson: Don't wear shorts to drive.

Leather seats and shaved, lotion legs (sorry boys, I can't relate to your hairy ones) are not a sexy combo. In fact, they are a slimy, sticky and sweaty combo that is anything except attractive. Let it be known that driving in shorts is a poor idea. Unless you have cloth seats.

Also, can I just ask what the deal is with people loving leather seats? Not only does it make you feel about as sweaty as a body builder working out in the Sahara, but it burns the absolute life out of your legs when you sit down on your seat on a sunny day.

I suppose the only benefit to a boiling hot seat is if you were on a date and were able to say.... "Are the seat heaters on, because your ass is so hot."

Which I invented while driving with my mother. It can't come as too much of a surprise that she constantly asks us where she went wrong and how she creates such strange children.

Regardless, I find leather seats to be a very anti-hotness invention in the form of actual heat. How are we supposed to sexy our way out of tickets if we have to wear pants all the time to avoid ass scalding and sweating?

Amen, sister.

http://thesinglewoman.net/article/124

My ego's the size of Alaska.

Yesterday, I had a startling realization that I might be a bit overly confident. That might be due to a few events:

1. Cute boy sitting by me in math class

2. Hot black boy sneakily asking for my number

3. Being told repeatedly by my father that I am a princess/gorgeous/beautiful (which might seem highly ironic if you read my blog post from yesterday.)

Regardless, a certain event yesterday reminded me that not only am I not allowed to yell in a Ron Burgundy fashion: "Hey everybody, come and see how good I look!" but also: my intelligence is most definitely disappearing the more and more math I try to learn.

I was driving to King Soopers and was going to make a right hand turn at a stop light. After pulling up right behind the car sitting in the right hand turning lane, I noticed a guy who was probably about 27 leaning out his window staring at me. Now, because I am obviously so strikingly gorgeous and breathtaking, this was one of those "Oh haha look at you creeper, watch me roll up my window and turn up my music" moments. Even after shooting him a nasty look, he continued full on window leaning staring at me as they pulled away and turned left at the light. It was as everyone else pulled past me that I questioned why the car in front of my wasn't going anywhere. And as the alleged creeper drove off, I realized that it was not my drop dead looks that had him staring, but his utter disbelief that I was sitting in a parking lane, behind an empty Chevy, waiting to turn right. Now, I tried to play it off like "Oh la-di-da I am waiting for my friend who lives here..." and once all witnesses had left I pulled back out, made the right hand turn from the one of two lanes on that road, and left with an ego now about the size of Rhode Island.

"Police were contacted by two people at Yampa and Seventh streets who asked if two margaritas was enough to get them drunk."

-Steamboat Pilot and Today

Fact: Men lack tact.

One absolute fact of life is that men, in general, do not understand the extent to which any comment made about a girl's appearance, personality, or life is usually obsessed over for hours, days and months. Or, in my case, years.

I was probably six years old when it started...

"You have a honking nose... just like me."

"It is going to keep growing and you'll have a huge nose in no time!"

Oh the joys of growing up the daughter of Tom Lichtenfels, who in his deepest of hearts I believe has a nose complex to rival a Greek. Now, he meant all of his teasing in a totally harmless, "I am so hilarious even if I am the only one that thinks so" kind of way. Yet at six years old I was determined that sooner or later my nose would grow larger than my head and I would be forced to live in the woods, in hiding and shame.

And the nose was only the start of it... apparently, and to my poor mother's misfortune, I was also born with a head in the 98th percentile. I didn't really understood what that meant, but was aware that only 2% of the baby population had been born with a head bigger than mine. Add that onto the fact that I weighed seven pounds and 19 inches long...... I was, without question, a giant headed skinny stick baby. And I stayed that way until I went to Spain and finally grew into my huge head and tiny bones. Now I am the proud owner of an ass and no longer get asked if I am 14 and/or going into the eighth grade. However, if I look in the mirror, I don't a slight issue with my body except my obese head and nose.

Okay well that's a lie. I did get over the huge head issue after accepting that I would always have to buy the XXL ski helmets; that issue was easily avoided by refusing to wear one. And as for the huge nose issue, I realized that despite his best efforts to tease me into horror, my nose is actually very normal sized. And anyway, since when do noses get sized up? Unless you have one that is just utterly unavoidable, and in that case I am very sorry for you. But luckily, that is not me.

I think when it comes down to it, the whole tact behind "Honey, of course you don't look fat in that." is the extent of the male population's ability to spoof, bluff or sneak their way through those awkward and sticky conversations. But perhaps it is more that, similarly to my father, they just get immense joy out of giving us women shit without realizing that we will probably literally stare in a mirror for an hour wondering if our chin looks like a baby butt or our left eye brow is a quarter of a centimeter higher than our right one. Perhaps it is time we switched the roles and started informing them that it appeared as if they had gotten a hair cut, or maybe that is just a receding hair line??

Tick Tock Tuesday

Do you ever have those weeks or months where all of a sudden your days seem too short to get even a fraction of the things on your to-do list done? It was 11:30 last night when I realized I had failed, not only at writing a blog, but to even think about something to write about. Normally I have a few good ideas, and I have been thinking about a couple that I should write about but now, when I have fifteen minutes to waste before class, of course I cannot think of a single one. Instead, I have spent five minutes scrolling through pictures of Kim Kardashian and her soon-to-be husband. Doing so reminded me, once again, that you never know where you will hear what your heart needs. I read a book called Captivating, last summer, and it talks about how when there is a really beautiful sunrise, or when something random speaks to you, that is like a love note from God.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about vulnerability and risk. There is a certain comfort level in being single; I can do what I want, when I want to, and am perfectly happy taking long baths, reading, and drinking Mike's hard on the couch while watching Bones by myself. But in the book, they talk about how true happiness comes from allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Isn't that kind of a strange concept? That risk is what actually brings satisfaction? But if I look at my life, I believe that to be true. My greatest fears, risks and potential failures for the most part resulted in a feeling of living to the fullest. So as I was stalking Kim, I read that her engagement ring has the bible verse John 3:18 which says "Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."

Of course, in the midst of returning to the States, returning to school, and the start of summer I have been caught up in the whole complexity of growth. I wrote about this before, from Spain, but the ideas of change, vulnerability, risk and growth never seem to be settled. And as I have wasted so much time trying to figure this out, I realized that maybe it is really as simple as just living love through actions. Maybe it is not about what I think about to write each week, or what I say. Because really when it comes down to it, the whole actions speak louder than words phrase is so true. Perhaps they took that snippet of wisdom from the Bible. Regardless, I was reminded that sometimes, even during the most embarrassing of internet stalking, you read what you needed to hear. So for today that is what is on my mind. Emma graduates this weekend, and so until then, when I will undoubtedly post a long and sappy story about how sad I am that we are old, I hope you have a truly beautiful week :) XX