"I'm getting upset!"

This past Thursday, I babysat my three-year old niece while my sister attended BYU's forum by Condeleezza Rice. My niece and I hung out at BYU's Bean Museum where she most enjoyed the playroom, a display of ducks, and a picture of a buffalo that was, she informed me, actually a gruffalo.

Afterwards, we had lunch with my sister and brother and then talked for a bit before my sister dropped my brother and me back off on campus. The conversation turned into a discussion of Rice's talk. My niece quickly became bored as everyone's undivided attention was not centered on her. She dealt with her boredom at first by demanding chocolate: "MOMMMMMYYY! I want some CHOCOLAAAATE!"

When her pleas went unheeded, she changed her tactics. Rather than trying to turn the tide of the conversation, she decided to end it instead. "Everybody STOP TALKING!! STOP TALKING NOW! STOP TALKIIIIINNNG!!"

When I asked her why she needed everyone to stop talking? "Because I'm trying to sleep, and it's too loud!"

I laughed a little. She looked stern, and, after unsuccessfully asking me for some chocolate and for help stopping the conversation, put on a pouty face and said, "I'm getting upset!"

"You're getting upset?"

"Yes, I'm getting upset!"

I gave her some chocolate.

It's rough to be three.

Conundrum II

Thank you for your thoughtful answers to the conundrum below.

Although my thoughts have turned bloody of late as a result of your suggestions and my rising irritation, the offending fly continues to live. I keep missing it with my newspaper. Dang Daily Universe.

I occasionally wonder if there are two flies, but that may just be paranoia.

Perhaps the next step is changing my shampoo to a less appealing scent.

In other news, I now officially have four signatures on my thesis prospectus. (YIPEE!) Four down, two to go.

Conundrum

Here's a moral conundrum for you all to ponder:

What would you do if a) you were being driven crazy by a fly who took up residence in your house two days ago and is especially attracted to the scent of your shampoo (and therefore flies around your head constantly), but b) you are afraid to KILL anything because killing things, even little things like flies, typically leaves you feeling guilty and traumatized for days on end?

And, let's say, you've already attempted to get it to just fly out of your front door.

Of course, this is a purely hypothetical question, not based on a real situation, and meant only to provoke thoughtful discussion. Let me know what you conclude.

Identity crisis

Recently, I've come to a stark and disturbing realization about myself.

It's rather surreal when you discover that the person you thought you've always been is not actually the person who you are, and that the person who you actually are is a person you don't really like and might even disdain and definitely wouldn't room with if given the option.

If that was a little foggy for you, perhaps this highly legitimate psychological diagram will help:

You see, I've always identified myself as someone who squeezes from the bottom of the toothpaste tube. I've held this delusion about myself to the point that I've often become irritated with siblings/roommates whom I assumed were squeezing my toothpaste from the top and thus indirectly ruining my life--or, at the very least, my morning routine.

Squeezing from the top is illogical and annoying (hence it's an indication of a stubborn, slow-witted personality). There's no way around this fact, even though there are hoards of people on Facebook trying to convince themselves otherwise.

Imagine my horror, then, when I noticed one morning that my toothpaste tube (which I don't currently share with anyone) was squeezed real tight right around the neck. At first, I refused to believe the evidence, but the next morning, when I caught myself actually squeezing the toothpaste from the top, I had to accept the truth.

I belong in that odd Facebook group full of people in denial. I am part of that stubborn, slow-witted demographic. I am not thrifty or logical as I so long believed. And the fact that I'm 25 and only just discovering this simply serves to confirm the sad truth about my dim wits.

Yes, I squeeze my toothpaste from the top. The only time I squeeze from the bottom is when I have to because weeks of squeezing from the top have trapped all the toothpaste at the bottom. Once I let the toothpaste escape from where I've consigned it to, I start squeezing from the top all over again.

I don't even know who I am anymore.

Nightmares

So when I'm stressed, I tend to have a lot of nightmares. These nightmares usually involve being stalked, kidnapped, or attacked by criminals, or, when things are really bad, they involve getting poor grades.

Last night, my nightmare was of the stalked/kidnapped/attacked variety.

In my dream, two scruffy-looking men from Louisiana were chasing me. Why Louisiana? No idea. But in my dream, I remember saying, "Oh no, it's those guys from Louisiana"--as if that explained everything.

I'm still not sure why they were chasing me, but it seems I had some sort of top secret insider information that the person they were working for wanted. (Why is it that everyone is always working for someone?) And these people wanted that information and then they wanted to hurt me. Badly.

So I wanted to run from them. Obviously.

They were chasing me at night, and we were all ducking in and out of the shadows of my apartment complex. For those of you who don't know, my apartment complex looks freakishly like a prison, which makes it a good setting for a nightmare.

Or a singles ward.

But I digress.

I could describe every excruciating detail of each terrifying moment of the rest of the dream for you, but my descriptions would not begin to encapsulate the FEAR and HORROR that I felt in the dream. So I'll spare you the details.

Let's leave it at this: It was scary enough that my HEARTBEAT woke me up at 2:30am and kept me awake for at least another twenty minutes. And the mere MEMORY of it prevented me from enjoying my usual morning nap on the bus.

I know, bad, right?

Googling "nightmares" this evening led me to a helpful (?) website on how to get back to sleep after a nightmare. Apparently, I should try to "neutralize" the nightmare by imagining a different, more pleasant outcome. This website contained specific suggestions for how to deal with nightmares in which you are being chased. If you are being chased, it says, you might imagine that "you turn and face the pursuer, only to discover it's a cuddly teddy bear just having fun."

I have no words for this answer, but perhaps it will help some of you.

Best of luck.

I'm just going to stop snacking before bed.

So . . .

when you spend about two and half hours a day on a bus and another eight hours a day sitting at a computer screen working on a website, funny things happen to you. Trust me. I know.

One thing that happens to you when you're in this situation is that the things that wouldn't be funny to you in real life are REALLY funny at work. And life only gets funnier when you COME HOME from work because all that pent up energy has to come out in some way. And it may or may not come out in hysterical laughter over nonsense.

Just sayin'.

Today, for example, when I was at work engaged in my typical daily clicking, sorting, and editing of linkage covering 40 years of LDS.org content, I came across this beautiful poster and, in my desperation for any kind of stimulation or entertainment, thought it was awesome:

I mean it's about punctuation for goodness' sake! How could I not be entertained? Especially in my fragile state of mind?

On a completely unrelated note, the best headline to appear in any news source today was surely the headline for this story.

Okay, you've reached the end of this random it's-Friday-I-just-got-home-from-work-after-a-long-week-and-my-brain-exploded moment. Run along now, children.