Why I Know I'm Going Crazy:

Today the walk home from campus was great. Temperature was just perfect, it's a Friday and the weekend can officially start, I could smell the hints of fall in the air (or maybe that was just Brick Oven...) nothing could stop the day from satisfactioning me.

Or so I thought...

Just when I'm at my peak of enjoyment I realize there's some crazy person walking right behind me even though there's a whole open world within which they don't have to invade my personal space! Now I'm a bit unnerved by this stranger gettin all up in my back bumper, but I know I've been in the same position where two people's paths sort of converge and you're suddenly walking almost arm in arm with a complete stranger. So I try to distance myself by picking up my pace, and what do you know, I hear this person's footsteps match exactly my cadence so they're still right on my tail!

So then I'm all, "K, Alexandra (my inner monologue is always very formal and uses my full name), this person's obviously in a hurry, you need to outsmart them by sloooowing down." Perfect, can do! It's already hard to text and walk at the same time, much less do it all at a faster pace, so I gear down to an absolute crawl and can anyone guess? The person slowed down to an identical crawl, steps matching mine to the very beat.

Well now this stranger's outsmarted even my inner monologue, and I have no idea how to get them off my back. After emitting a few audible huffs I finally make this huge dramatic gesture by stepping all the way off the sidewalk as well as turning to face the perpetrator (kind of like a glisse-half-pirouhette if you will) and what do I see?!!!

(picture added solely for dramatic effect)

Nothing!

There was not a soul there. This whole scenario was all in my head.

So now I'm freaking out and imagining me like Bruce Willis in the Six Sense, and wondering which of my friends are going to believe me when I tell them I have a connection with the "other side," and then I realize my backpack's unzipped. Unzipped so far that every time I take a step the contents slosh back and forth to make it sound like a step on the sidewalk right behind me.

La Vie En Rose

As I keep getting older, I keep expecting the fun to drain out of my life. Sad mentality, but it's how I feel. And as this is my third year out of high school (where, as everyone who watches MTV knows, the end of your youth is had) I imagined that I would have to spend this summer in a suit and penny loafers doing adult things like taxes and Mavis Beacon.

But I was so happily wrong!

This summer has definitely been one worthy of looking back on. I've spent most of my time in a swimsuit or my chacos, I've made friends in small towns,
(Note the beautiful St. Bernard that was too gorgeous I had to pull my car over to make his acquaintance, and luckily it was captured on camera)

I made the rope swing in Mona my byatch (even though I incurred 3rd degree rope burns, massive bruises, smatterings of broken blood vessels and two lungfulls of pond water), I've danced my face off,

I've gone topless almost everyday, I've indulged in multiple Harry Potter Festivities,


I've crawled my way up to the top of a mountain, and I survived swine flu and being a gospel doctrine teacher (I don't know which one was harder on my system).

Most of this was made possible by the fact that I didn't have a job or school most of the summer, but I'm going to attribute most of the awesomeness to just the common euphoria of summer. I've been born and raised in Utah, home of the 2002 winter olympics, but I think I've come to the conclusion that winter isn't really for me. I'm sick of wrapping yourself up like you're last night's leftovers before you venture anywhere outdoors. And finding things to do that are inside unless you want to lose a favorite extremity.

I want to live in a place where shoes are only worn to church. Where no one cares about their hair because it's just going to get wet from beach/pool/lake/sweat. And the night air reaches the exact temperature of the outside layer of your skin so that you've reached a temperature homeostasis with the world.
An endless summer.
Because summer's too pleasant to be miserable, too hot to worry about anything, too warm to be in a hurry. Summer's like one of those friends who you love so much, and you know they love you too, but they never come around often enough. And where I live they only come around for three short, but glorious months. So please Summer, don't go now. Sit back down and have another otter pop with me. I'll even give you the pink one!

Coming Of Age In London

Seeing as my dear friend Jordyn is about to turn twenty and leave the safety of her teen years to enter into true adulthood, I have been thinking a lot about the future. And I don't really like it. It scares me to be as old as I am. I don't like that I can remember things that were ten years ago, and I don't like that kids who I baby-sat are getting their licenses, but I especially don't like that in a few months' time I will no longer be a teenager and I'll end up being one of those people that tell you that they were once your age not too long ago, and then the recipient of the lecture just rolls their eyes as I fix my dentures and pull up my panty hose.

But instead of lamenting my fear of growing up, I decided to take affirmative action with where my life is headed, so I'm devoting this post to a list of things I'd like to do before I'd die.

Please note that this list is provisional, and subject to change.

1. Be in a Britney Spears music video. (I know everyone says she's past her glory, but the classics never die)

2. Raise a lion cub (I might settle with just petting one, after I thought about how big lion poop probably is) so I can have a "Christian the lion" experience. If you haven't seen this on youtube, I highly recommend it. It changed my life.

3. Make a fat-free croissant and fat-free bacon. Or just live long enough to see it done.

4. Find evidence of a mysterious phenomenon (i.e. Bigfoot, Lochness monster, UFO etc.) and be published in the National Enquirer.

5. Eat at Beto's (your finest 24 hr. burrito supplier) and not regret it. Just once!

6. Make an ice sculpture like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

7. Become cultured enough that I no longer am entertained by low-budget and low IQ reality TV shows. They get me every time.

8. Come to be unashamed that I really love baked beans, carrot cake and corn bread.

9. Perfect the Angelina Jolie Sexy Scowl.

10. Yield more raw power than Oprah herself.

I know those are some pretty lofty goals, but at least I have 6 months before I really have to start thinking about them.

I wish I could say the same for Jordyn.