I love.

I love how I feel super dorky in these flowered capri pajama pants. I love how cold and sweet this orange peach mango juice is, and how cute it is in the little clear plastic cup I have on my desk. I love Bananagrams and how when I close my eyes, I see tiles and they just start making words on their own, and words appear in my mind and start rearranging into other words, and it makes me feel like I have this mega vocab brain. I don’t love a lot of things tonight, I’m feeling a little melancholy again, but I’ve decided that I want to immerse myself in lovely thoughts, so I’m going to use my blog time to do that. And I hope you’ll share some of the things you love lately? Even the silly things?

I love my in-window air conditioner and my new socks that are so many colors, vibrant and earthy. I love my newfound style and how comfortable I often am. I love the nights where shuffle seems to do everything it’s supposed to and all of the songs sound kind of sweet and possessing pretty melodies. I love how tumblr can be mundanemundanemundane and then suddenly you find a gem and it makes your night. I love how I can make myself laugh with the stupidest shit like saying, “I don’t have any arms” because I’m too lazy to type out, “I don’t have any pictures with my arms in them.” I love how loud that darn sunchips bag at my mom’s house is and how sneaky I have to be when getting out the Triscuits past bedtime. I love Jon & Kate Plus 8, even when it’s sad and they’re fighting. I love pizza from our favorite restaurant, hot and greasy, needing so many paper towels. I also love it for breakfast.

I love cheese and sparkly beverages and sandwiches. I love hair mousse and dress shirts and scrunchy sweatshirts and new belts and sexy underwear and hair clips. I love red headphones and loud music and dog walks and perhaps even school sometimes. I love cherry chopstick (except not when kissing a girl) and blue sharpies. I love this blog and the people who take the time to comment and the way I feel when I’m done writing it, like I’m helping sort myself out in this crazy world full of crazy people and their crazy happenings. I love pulling pranks on people. I love my friends and my family and I really love my dogs. I love all animals. I love owls and drawing and reading.

I love Owl City, just like I did last summer. I love how inspirational and optimistic every single one of his songs are. I love how each of Adam’s songs can remind me of some specific memory from last summer, random ones and silly ones and sad ones and every one in between. I love how he probably still is my favorite musical artist because we’ve been through more than The Shins and I have. I love how Vanilla Twilight literally causes me to scream the lyrics out loud and The Saltwater Room still sparks much discussion of which version is better. I love that I will always think the Ocean Eyes version is better because of that one second where he basically cooes, “ohallthetime.” I love that that is so obviously the song of the day.

I love this post, although it was actually quite hard to write. I love that I don’t care that it was almost a full hour of pure blog concentration. I just love it.

lettin’ the love shine through.

Oh, lord. I know, guys. I fail. I don’t even… I can’t even explain it, really. The second day? I forgot. Just completely forgot. I got home at literally like 11:45 and didn’t even think about it. I realized it the next day and was going to explain and then I didn’t. Same with the next day. And then suddenly, break was over. I just never really got a chance to sit down and type it all out, even though it was swimming around in my head. Guess I’m not really doing BEDA? Fail. So bad.

But now it’s Sunday night and my break is over, and I am so completely not looking forward to school tomorrow. My spring break was amazing. Like, completely and wholly amazing. I can’t even explain, so I’m not going to, as I’m sure that all of my explanations of how much fun “living” is is probably beyond annoying. So I’ll stop. But just… the world? Beautiful. Never really realized the extent of it before.

I’m slowly following more people on my phone. (Twitter, I’m talking about, what I am talking about is Twitter. That was a weird sentence.) I started following Nora (my best friend, in case, for some reason, you don’t know that) on my phone about a month ago. And then the other night I started following Michelle, Zach, and Hayleyghoover. Don’t ask about that last one. 😉 Okay, her tweets basically make my day. I love it.

But anywho, back to school. I’m just not looking forward to sitting in a hard chair all day and having to pretend to listen to teachers reteach the same things we have been learning for weeks. I basically only like math and lunch, and I don’t want to go back for the rest of it/ It’s basically just a waiting game. Waiting for math, waiting for lunch, waiting to see my friends in the hallways, waiting for the end of the day. I hate waiting.

—

Well, it’s basically about twenty four hours, and the beginning of that blog is almost completely irrelevant, but I wanted to post it anyways. Besides, I can do an update sort of thing for the first day back, and it’ll all come full circle! Yay!

To give you the reader’s digest version, my day was completely amazing. I just… I woke up this morning when my alarm went off about thirty minutes early (so I could have some time to hit up the snooze button a bit… you know), and my iHome actually worked with the iPod and it started playing a really pretty song and I just started smiling. At 6am, smiling a big toothy grin, and I suddenly felt so at peace. I watched half of a 7th heaven episode before I jumped in the shower, while listening to this kickass mixed CD my friend Maddie made me.

(Other details of my amazing getting-ready-part-of-the-morning-time are that I had a waffle, smiled while tying my shoes, and was actually early to school for once.)

Once I got to school, I got to see my friend who I hadn’t seen for two days (wow, scandalous, right? whatever, we have detachment issues, apparently) and my other friends who I hadn’t seen since before that, and it was just a smiley morning. The school bit sucked, but lunch was smiley and math was smiley, and it was actually a great day.

Of course, something had to bring it down, so I was feeling slightly down after school and such, so my afternoon/evening was a bit of donkey butt, but then I talked on the phone with my friend for like an hour and fifteen minutes and I don’t know what it is about phone calls, but they always make me feel better. But the end, it’s just… goodbye weight on my chest, you seem to have evaporated! I love it!

Man. Sorry this is so long, and if you read it, I think you are super fly, and I really appreciate it. Because I feel super happy right now, and I’m trying to let the love shine through, and I hope it’s working?
Boy oh boy, I should go to bed. 😉

wrinkled chins and bouncy postscripts.

I totally just realized that there is a compartment in my messenger bag that can fit my iPod perfectly. I mean, perfectly. I got so excited that I had to IM anyone that was online this information. And now I’m telling you, lovable blog. Because we all know that you care so much. xD

I want to share a really amusing, yet scary photo with all of you. I was talking to my best buddy Zach on Skype earlier today, and he was making fun of me for something or other, and so I took a picture of my face. You know, to document the horror and pain within. Enjoy it, bitches.

Yeah. It’s called, “attractive.jpg”, naturally. Let me point out a few things about this photo. First of all, what the hell is my hair doing? It looks like I have two hairy leaves sprouting from my head, or something. Second of all, notice my chin. It’s all wrinkled, and creepy looking. Third of all, look into those eyes. Isn’t that the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?!

In other news, I went through and read all of my Google Reader feeds today, and now when I check it, it tells me that I have nothing unread. This makes me very happy. It took about two hours, and while it was fun, it was very exhausting. I promised myself that I was not going to let it get to that point ever again. I’ll check it in the mornings, when I get home, and a few times a night, just taking a few minutes to look over what I’ve got. Honestly, I brought that pain upon myself.

I mean, I am loving school right now. I love being busy and being able to write myths for English and edit photos for Graphic Communications. I love laughing with my friends at lunch and strolling the halls with the Associate Principal as he screams, “Doctor WHO?!” in a really loud manner. I love smiling and waving and high-fiving friends in the hallways as I strut down them with Owl City or Billie Piper in my ears. I love all of that, and I’m having a really good time. But what I don’t love is how I seem to have to sacrifice my online stuff to have a lot of that. The truth is, having fun at school and trying to stay positive just takes a lot of effort. So, when I get home, instead of reading feeds and watching videos and emailing friends, I just want to collapse in front the TV and rest up for an hour or so before it’s time to start my homework. And then it’s time for bed. Just .. where does the day go?!
This is just something I need to work at finding a routine for. I made it all work last year, when I did BEDJ and read feeds and watched videos and all that. I just need to find my rhythm. And then I will be SET FO’ LIFE. Well, maybe not life. But for a while.

In other other news, I just found the pen that matches my owl quote book! Yay for finding things that escape under the bed!

PS. I just love it when I sit down to write a blog entry, feeling rather content with life, not too excited or bouncy about anything, and then by the time I’m done, I feel all excited and happy and giddy about life. YAHOOOOOO!

the list.

At the end of July, one commenter (of the fine Marina variety) suggested that I do something to involve the readers a little bit more. Naturally, I thought this was a brilliant idea but I couldn’t think of anything. Until a few days ago. I was, of course, in the shower when I thought of this. What is something I really enforce on this blog? Or at least think I do? Love. That and happiness and optimism and all that. And I’ve done several posts on that whole “appreciate the little things” philosophy I have. So, I thought it would be a good idea to get a list together of all of the little things that make us happy. So if we’re ever blue or down or just in the need of some awesome, we can check it out and get GRINS! It’ll be like a little project, that we can do together.
What do you think? If you guys think it’s a stupid idea, I won’t make it it’s own page tomorrow. I really want it to be something we do together, instead of me writing and you guys commenting. I’m quite excited about this list!

These are the things I have written down in the past few days, just for an example.
-blue shampoo
-kiwis
-juice boxes
-sharpies
-music
-fur
-picture frames
-hugs
-peppery drinks
-mechanical pencils
-farms
-pots and pans
-mohawks
-whiskers
-album art
-cherry candies
-tv shows
-instant messages
-vegetarians
-pony tail holders
-camels
-doctors
-santas
-bicycles
-black and white photographs
-eskimo kisses
-shaggy rugs
-bearers of the loins
-that’s what she said jokes
-ears of corn
-nerds
-organs
-presents
-magical schools
-elbows
-small towns
-yogurt
-sunrises
-macaroni

The basic format of the list is that everything is pluralized, meant to signify that all of the things make us squee. 🙂 And I didn’t make anything specific, like with proper nouns or anything. For example, I did “peppery drinks” instead of Dr. Pepper. And instead of Hogwarts, I did magical schools. I don’t really have any reasoning for that, except it seems it would appeal to more listers if it’s not specific. You know?

Alright guys, so what do you think of this whole “list” business? Cheesy? Corny? Stupid? Lame? Cool? Neato? Pathetic? Desperate? Funky? Junky? Sexy? Homely? (I have many more adjectives under my belt, you better just tell me yours before I go into word overload. ;))

the small things in life.

Today was one of those days that I would consider pretty normal without thought, but upon processing, it was pretty amazing. Because of the little things. Today was pretty much the usual, albeit a little bit stressful in the later hours, but as I sat at my desk thinking of what to blog about, I realized that today was spectacular. There were these little fun things that just made me smile. Simple things when strung together to make a beautiful light of a day. For example, I was tidying up my room today whilst listening to Monkey Business by the Black Eyed Peas. That album came out in 2004, and I haven’t listened to it since then. Pardon me for saying this, but it’s actually kind of brilliant. I mean, “My Humps” isn’t exactly the most creative song in the world, but it’s catchy?

Another amazing thing was this really bad poem I found in a folder whilst straightening my bookcase. I wrote it in May, and it sounds a bit depressing, until you get to the last line and realize the humor. Or … attempted humor. 🙂 Take a looksee!
here I sit,
amongst my peers,
questioning my fit,
when it becomes clear.
my nose is touching the paper,
my eyes are scrunched in thought,
for I am different,
yet exactly the same as I,
do not watch The Odyssey.
I know I’m probably the only one who thinks this is funny, but basically it’s about how much of a nerd I am compared to the people in my English class. Yet I’m not so much of a nerd because, like them, I’m not watching the class video. It kind of goes with what I thought about a lot then, giving yourself and label and feeling you need to live up to it, 100%, completely. I mean, obviously the poem was not good, even for a freeform the structure was all off, but I wrote it once and stuck it in a folder. Give me a break! 😛

I also hung out with Nora today, who just got back from New Orleans. That was very fun, and it made me happy. 🙂 See, it’s all of these little things that you may do on an ordinary day. You put them all together and it’s like magic almost. Your day means something. Whether it’s because you have a strawberry Popsicle after a long bike ride or because you write the perfect line for your new story, it’s the things that make you happy that matter. No matter the size.

It’s time for a question for all of you. I hope you take the time to answer, spread the love a little bit. What is your favorite way to look at life in a happy, optimistic way? Or, in other words, if you have a bad day, what do you think yourself feel better? Or something you do? I have this routine where if I have a bad day, I’ll turn off my computer, pop in a Scrubs episode, and watch it until the humor and subtle life lessons of the show wear off on me. It’s an excellent method, if I do say so myself. 🙂

The super awesome song of the day is Union by the Black Eyed Peas. Before you make a COMMENT about my uncharacteristically R&B song choice, realize that I am open to all genres, YO. =]

DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to preach my optimistic ways to anyone. I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m trying to tell anyone how to live or how to think. Thank you!

pretending I don’t have blogger’s block.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am back at my dad’s house. This makes me happy for several reasons. The first and most importantly being that I am allowed to leave my room after 9:30pm! No more constrained bladders, my friends. I am also happy about this because I won’t have to do the unusual amount of chores that seemed to haunt me and steal my soul in the week I wasn’t at my D’s house. I am seriously emotionally exhausted after all of that. Not to mention physically exhausted after being dragged out of bed at 9:00am this morning for “Saturday chores!” *slams head on desk in agony* But it’s okay! I am at my dad’s house now, with my glass desk and spinny chair and I am BLOGGING. *cracks knuckles* What to talk about?

I think I would like to tell you guys a joke. You guys know how much I like to be corny and cheesy and lame, right? It’s like my crack. Nah, that’s optimism, remember? (And it seems that “what is your crack?” is the longest running joke on this here blog. Woohoo!) But anyways, onto the joke!
What is the father of all corny jokes?
POPCORN.
Get it? Popcorn? Coz it’s corny … *crickets* Oh, get a sense of humor you guys!

Earlier today, I was feeling a bit of blogger’s block. Which, let me tell you, is not a fun feeling. I did many things to get the creative juices flowing. I drank some Diet Dr. Pepper, I yelled Marco style, I even cranked the Owl City. Nothing seemed to be working! So I texted my good buddy Michelle, complaining in a rather whiney manner about my blogger’s block. And she gave me SUGGESTIONS. But I am going to save one of them for a super special blogpost coming up in the near future. (I do realize that I say I’m going to do something and then I seem to never do it. But I do eventually! I mean, the worm video? Took three months, but CHALLENGE COMPLETED, yo!) So stay tuned for that awesomeness.

Okay, so seriously? I am very unhappy about the disappearance of the new wordpress smileys. I thought they were absolutely adorable and I wanted to kiss them all. Especially the evil grin face. Now it’s just this: 😀 And I do not appreciate the obvious fail that is that smiley. Rawr.

The song of the day is Em and May by Craig Cardiff. I was listening to this song while watering plants outside of my grandfather’s house for cash (twenty dollars richer, yo! Can you say first Owl City album?) and remember thinking, “aha! I must list this as the song of the day!” Seriously. The aha and everything. Do my a flavor, readers, and say “aha!” out loud to yourself. Now, say it again with GUSTO! It’s so fun, right?
Please tell me if you actually did that. I’ll be your best friend.

early morning CRAZINESS!

It is 6:57am and there is no one on Facebook chat. Not that I’m looking for anyone to chat with, per se, but where are the early risers? The ones who finish getting ready at 6:30 and then has an hour to kill? Well, that isn’t even me. I schedule I time between when I take a shower and when I have to dry my hair to do one thing. My favorite thing. Yep, you guessed it. Check my email! Email is probably the most amazing thing ever. I love email. But anyways, I have this scheduled time, where I as long as I am dressed and ready to dry hair and brush teeth by 7:10, I can have the time in between to do computery stuff. And after I had finished replying to a thread, I noticed something. Chat (0). How sad. Does no one else have computer time in the morning? Or am I just so big of a nerd that I can’t go 12 hours without checking my email?

In other news, it’s FRIDAY! This particular Friday means a lot of things. It’s my second to last Friday of the school year. Tomorrow is SATURDAY, and I can sleep in to ten! Oh, how I love my sleep. The bed at my mom’s house is so comfortable and I just squish around in the covers and grin because I love it and cuddle with Lucy. (Lucy is my dog, pervs.) I am also wearing a super cool shirt today. IT HAS DINOS ON IT. I cannot explain to you how cool this shirt is. 10 points if you know where it’s from! (And shut up, Firefox. I get it. “DINOS” is not a word in your amazing dictionary. STFU) Um, why else is FRIDAY so exciting? Oh well, Ashley finishes her junior year of high school today! W00t for the BRAND SPANKIN’ NEW SENIOR! As of later, of course, it’s still 7:04. Woah! 6 minutes! OH, my shoes come today. Remember those? Yeah, I got them. As a summer shoe. WOOOOOO! If you follow me on twitter, you’ll understand how excited I am to get these shoes. I’ve been tracking their every move. WOAH, I just checked and they are so close to my house that I can’t even tell you where they are! PWN!

I have a feeling in my bones that today is going to be a good day at school. One of those days where things just go right, the energy is happy, and smiles are plentiful. Why do I feel this? Come on, ladies and gents, say it with me…”BECAUSE I AM A FREAKING OPTIMIST OF SUNSHINE!” Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly like that, but hey. Readers know best. Maybe if I believe it’s going to be a day filled with smiles and umbrellas, it will happen because of MY ATTITUDE. Oh, the gloriousness of an optimistic attitude. Better than anything you’re smokin’, I can assure you that.

Oh! 7:09. Gotta motor!

Hehe, dinos. And sorry about that loon in the picture. Unfortunately, her and the dinos, they come in a package.

so, you have a cute face.

Hi, I think you’re cute. Yes, you. You, with the face. You, reading my blog. I think you’re cute.
I am quite obsessed with Google Reader. Not only is it my second most visited page (after email, of course. I am obsessed with email. I am cooler than you.) but I’m obsessed with having it just right. I change the order of my feeds constantly, based on how I’m feeling that day and the content. Last night I moved Johnny Durham’s blog up one in the list, and moved Max’s down one, just because he hadn’t posted in a while. I switched OfficeTally and PostSecret just now. I have a problem.
So, so, so. What have I been up to lately? Well, baby cakes, thanks for asking. I appreciate that. My answer is: 32 Ways to Make You Smile by Backseat Goodbye. Amazing. If you love feeling happy/optimisic/insipred as well, listen to it. Optimisim is my crack. What is your crack?
Yeah, just realized I repeatedly typed “crack” (doh! there I go again!) on a school computer. G’darn it. Special IT man, I love you, please do not suspend me or call my mom because I’d really like to watch The Office finale tonight. ❤ (by the way, if you haven’t clicked that video [JERKS], its a video of Jim and Pam from The Office and it’s…gah. THE FINALE IS TONIGHT AND LAST WEEK PAM LOOKED SO PRETTY IN HER (admittedly, prom) DRESS, GAH. Okay, no more Office squee.)

By the way, bloggehs, I am going to be adding a page (!) in the next few days on this here blog. You know, one of those things at the top under my glorious header? So yeah, it’ll be fun.
I don’t like these short paragraphs. No more.
OH WAIT LOL

Okay, actual content now. I am feeling really sentimental lately. Yesterday, Nora gave me an index card that said “BFFs” on it with our names. It made me squee a little bit. And then Beth said some stuff. But nevertheless, innocent little friend acts like that make me feel gooey inside. ❤ And this morning I read a blog post of Ashley’s from last night and it broke my brain. Between the mentions of me (still makes me feel cool, by the way) and just the happy optimism stuff. Did I mention that optimism is my brain crack? Just, everything about that. The lists, the mention of LMNT (I think you’re fine, you really blow my miind), gah, everything. Made me wanna hop a train and hide on top of a lampost. And last night my grandparents came over, and the dinner we had was great. My two grandparents (Papa from Mom’s side, Nana from Dad’s side, parents divorced. You see, right?) made awesome conversation and I didn’t even talk much, I just sat there with a smile on my face. Life sucks but people rock. HUGSIES TO YOU ALL.

This is sexy.

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optimism and a BONUS!picture.

If you know me at all, you know that I’m a naturally optimistically person. I have to be. I get bummed/sad/hurt very easily so it’s really important that I find small happiness. And I’m kind of bummed right now, just because it was my teacher’s last day today and I’m just sad and in a funk and whatever. So here we go.

My Favorite Things Today

1. Saying “what’s up dog?” to my dog. It’s literal. I love using phrases in the way that, say, grandparents may think they are used.
2. My best friend. She isn’t really a thing, I suppose, but you know you have an awespme BFF when you spend your night listening to a mixed CD of all the songs that have ever meant anything in your friendship. Especially when the theme song to this is played.
3. Random questions that pop in my mind. “Do people who work at the post office read postcards? The dude who delivers the postcards to PostSecret must have a blast on his lunch break.”
4. Videos that load really quickly. Or just, videos of cute boys.
5. ARMY PANTS.
6. Warm weather. It was about 80 today. (Okay, I know this is an optimistic list, but – wait. An optimistic list? Do you mean that the list is optimistic or that it’s a list of optimistic things? The last one, okay, go on. But I must complain about HOW FREAKING HOT IT IS. I am wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts and roasting. Fans, where are you?)
7. Winning a competition in Earth Science. Our group is very geniusly smart. Mwuahaha. (Conceited much?)
8. Pizza Rolls. I just love them. They are good. What can I say?
9. My scanner. I like to do drawings and doodles and other paper creative stuff that it’s really quite fun to scan them into my computer so I have an electronic copy. For example, the Wizard Rock CD for my teacher. (She loved it by the way. :)) I was able to share that stuff with you guys. And it was a lot of fun. And I was able to show you how much I like doing creative projects. Hehe.
10. Obligatory end of list shiz: …making optimistic lists to post on my blog. *blushes*

Blog, I just want to thank you for making me feel better when I’m down, making me feel creative when I’m not, and making me feel loved when I’m not. ❤

PS. I’ve always thought optimistically. See the following picture for proof.