Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

"Nuggets," I like to call them. Those simple, unabashed moments of clarity when someone says something to you and it finally pokes through at the right moment. We're not all always ready to accept things, you know? We have to be at a certain "point," people say. Pencil-ended as I was on Friday, my dear friend said something that felt monumental to me. And even that sounds dramatic.

Let me also relay to you that "nuggets" don't necessarily denote anything spectacular. We're not talking just epiphanies here. For instance, there was a moment I realized that the scary test of the Emergency Broadcast System wouldn't, in fact, be beeping if there were an emergency. I used to sit in anticipation— face to the TV screen, wringing my little pink hands and listening to the long drone of that too-loud alarm. Clearly, I was waiting for them to instruct us on the emergency I'd need to hide under my bed from. Then there are the many billboards and signs that I see daily but never stop to comprehend fully. For the record, Steak 'n Shake has nothing to do with any type of new-rock dance crazy from the 50's... they're talking MILKshakes, not BOOTYshakes. Perhaps it's just the strange phenomenon of hearing something so often that you never even stop to consider what it actually means. Or my IQ is just slightly high enough to enable me shoe-tying and teeth-brushing capabilities. Ha.

Anyhow, this friend of mine—so wise in the world with such brightness, like the contagious kind—she says to me... "Life is too short to spend it with people that make you feel bad." And something finally sounded to the right parts of me.

Short, sweet and something to digest this snowy Sunday. I hope, at least, a few of you out there are at the "point" where you can gobble this up. Do yourself a favor in 2012... be near the people that make you feel great about you. Chances are, you're an awesome person and you spend way too much time comparing/envying/letting other people dictate your self-worth. And this is no damn revolution. We KNOW we shouldn't. But we do it anyway. So just don't.

Easy, huh? (:

In with the... ew.

I've been trying to figure out a good way to introduce the year. I feel a plague of pressure from this post, the first post of 2012. Everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by those raw, new year's hopes: Special K displayed on every endcap; hard-to-pass-up sales on silky, sweat-proof gym clothes; and a newborn "healthy options" section on the menu of every local restaurant. Honestly, it's as if weight loss is at the heart of every new year's mission, and while that is how I began my "healthy" lifestyle, it's overwhelming. I keep catching myself sideways-glancing in mirrors and shiny windows, wondering if I need to lose more weight or what I should be wearing to hide my love handles.

Where once December 31st meant getting sloshed and recovering with free Sheetz coffee the next day, the further from 21 I get, the more I feel like I'm slipping into this thing called "adulthood." I don't like it. These days, the new year is kind of depressing—the saying goodbye to what (already) feels like an old friend, or enemy (depending on your relationship with the past). Am I already becoming this crotchety? Listen to me! For instance, yesterday as I drove through suburbia, I spotted a few kids playing in the yard, and turned to Tash:

"Wow. That's something you don't see... ever. Kids playing in the yard. Do you? When I was younger, they kicked our asses outside for the day. We got to eat and piss."

Then I stopped.

Twenty-six can't be old yet, can it? I mean, I bought anti-wrinkle cream last night—thinking preventatively, of course. I spent literally 45 minutes in the aisle at Target. I kept walking away with something, coming back to pick up something different, going away... back again. At one point, I left the aisle with nothing. I'm sure if the employees were eagle-eyeing the cameras at that moment, they'd have thought I was insane or trying to steal shit. (I have this strange guilt/paranoid fear of clerks suspecting me of theft. What is that?) 

And to really push this new year into overdrive, I've got Facebook friends posting the "countdown to the apocalypse" daily. Not with an "end of the word" intro... just the number, ominous, and luckily at this point, three digits.

I'm not saying I'm not ready for a fresh start. I'm just saying this year feels funky already.

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