Sex and Salt Lake City

Viva la Vida / Coldplay

i’m really bad about going to bed on time. i need at least 7 hours of sleep to function like a normal human being during the day but lately i’ve been stretching that to the limit. last night i went to bed bordering on midnight. and it is all my friend natalie’s fault too.

natalie is adorable and reminds me of beth, if beth were slightly older, answered her phone, and didn’t get into world war III fights with her boyfriend. natalie is also a night owl. i am, by nature, a night owl but because i need a job to have pretty things and awesome hair i cannot be a night owl. i have to be in bed by 10PM reading a book because being an adult sucks.

anyway. every time i hang out with natalie i stay out WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY later than i intend to and can’t bring myself to leave. ever. a part of me thinks that i can be a hip twenty something that stays up all the time and the other part of me, the one that somehow drags herself out of bed with less than six hours of sleep, knows better. unfortunately the part that knows better exists in the early daytime and not the late evening when being enchanted by natalie and our gossip.

so now i have a problem. i either need to learn how to excuse myself from natalie presence at a reasonable hour or get a job that allows me to stay up later… i don’t like either of these options. so i’m going to go pout about it some. and then maybe stay up late talking to natalie.

whatever, i do what i want.

I Kissed A Girl / Katy Perry

when i’m doing laundry i get a paper to read and inevitably wander to the Letters to the Editor section. so that i can get a good healthy dose of stupid. there were two letters this sunday bemoaning the fact that we need more senators FOR drilling oil in America. It is the reason, they claim, that America is brought to their knees by other country’s stranglehold on our oil prices. It is the only way to win our independence, they cry.

ah, yes. you, there in your 10 miles to the gallon SPORTS utility vehicle driving to work thirty miles there and then thirty miles back.   you sitting in I-15 traffic because it is two minutes faster than the commuter rail. you and your inability to ride public transportation because of its expense but have the audacity to complain about oil prices? and you feel that if we start more drilling in alaska this will solve all of our problems.

brilliant. you must have gotten a degree in republicanism to come up with that one. you have got to be FUCKING kidding me.  americans need to learn to stop wasting energy.  we will win our INDEPENDENCE when we stop this ridiculous DEPENDENCE on OIL, from other countries AND our own.

Defying Gravity / Wicked

when i went to high school i had the opportunity to meet an amazing person named Sarah Burchett.  Sarah was honestly nice to everyone, i never heard her say a mean thing about anyone or treat someone with anything less than respect.

Recently, Sarah had a lemon sized malignant tumor removed from her brain.  I hate it when people say that someone doesn’t deserve this, as if someone else does.  but honestly, she doesn’t deserve this.  and she is, by all accounts, upbeat and positive about this.  She has yet to fail in showing me that every day in this life is a gift, every person is a friend, and every life is precious.

For all of you in Salt Lake on Saturday July 5th, there is a fundraiser for Sarah and her family at the Woodshed (60 East 800 South) starting at 7PM.  Please find it in your heart to attend and show Sarah that she is not alone in this.

Sixteen Going On Seventeen / Sound of Music

Aiden has Step 1 of the boards today.  Months of freaking out and in eight hours it will be over.  I’m keeping all of my fingers crossed that everything will go ok.  With all of the studying, I can’t imagine how it could go poorly, but his nervousness is rubbing off on me I guess

popularity is a lot like driving in the suicide lane. any minute a car can slip slightly over the double yellow and you are racing back to the curb lane, praying that you keep your life and car intact. or worse, a car can come out of nowhere and knock you out of the game entirely. you just never know. is it safer to keep as far away from danger as possible? or is the speed and thrill of the fast lane worth it.

for some reason, kelly, an extremely popular stoner, deemed me worthy of friendship.  one day, after practice, we were both without a ride and were talking like two normal people.  the next day she came over to my locker and started talking to me as if we had been friends forever.  “party at the pit this weekend.  you in?”  I casually (or hoped so) nodded before i even realized that i had a) never heard of the pitt, b) had no clue where it was and c) had no idea what drug or drink i would be expected to partake in once i arrived.

a small part of me was afraid that this was a trap until i realized, momentarily, that my life was not a John Hughes movie.  high school, my high school, wasn’t like that.  sure we had groups, people you generally hung out with, but it wasn’t strictly defined.  we didn’t have rules, unwritten or otherwise, about who you had to sit with, who you could talk to, and how you could be labeled.

for instance, in my group of friends there were a handful of lacrosse jocks, a couple of stoners, a couple of alcoholics, nerds, drama geeks, and a dancer or two.  it wasn’t that kelly shouldn’t have asked me, or that it was a big deal to the greater population.

it was just a big deal to me, the geek with friends i didn’t really know, with a life i didn’t think i really wanted.  it was a chance to hang out with the “popular” crowd doing things that popular kids did and being able to go to school on monday knowing what the pit was, where it was located, and partaking in whatever happened there.

so i didn’t tell jane.  i didn’t know exactly if i was supposed to invite people, and figured it was a bad idea.  i also didn’t know how jane, who was comfortable in her role of being my best friend when no one was around and then acting like i was a lost puppy she had taken in when others were, would react to someone else wanting to hang out with me.  i didn’t tell anyone in my group really.  i just wanted to see how easily i could slip from one group to another… see if anyone would really notice.