Subscribe! (And the first edition of Weekly Time Wasters)

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This week’s Time Wasters

This is where I share what I did all week (hint: nothing productive).  Mostly this will consist of a hodgepodge of fun and (hopefully) interesting links, maybe a video or two, or anything I can’t stop talking/raving/thinking about.

HelloGiggles is one of my new favorite websites.  Founded by internet sensation Molly McAleer, reality TV producer/writer Sophia Rossi, and the ever-adorable actress and singer Zooey Deschanel, this website is more about sass and optimism than anything else.

This photo of Rupert Grint.  Because I really like the idea that the Harry Potter kids, you know, love each other and will be bestest friends forever.

The Happy Feet 2 trailer.  Seriously.  If you can watch this without smiling once, I don’t think we can be friends.

Aaannndd…I think that’s it for this week.  I waste my time in lots of ways, but I’ll save some links for later.

Ta-ra!

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Sometimes I wish I were five…When Harry Met Sally edition

I get canker sores like nobody’s business.  If I have a glass of orange juice, I will pay dearly for the next week  with a welt on the inside of my cheek, the back of my tongue, the underside of my lip.  Wherever it ends up, it is guaranteed to be a spot that will be hit by every single chew, every spoken word, every subtle expression.  It’s always there, always pulsing, never letting me forget that it’s lying in wait to take all the joy out of my next meal.

I have one now, and I’m a little bitter.

When I was little, however, my affliction was bloody noses.  Much like my canker sores, they would arrive at the most unwelcome of times, and far overstay their unenthusiastic welcome.  One in particular ruined a playdate with my then-very-good-friend, a fellow kindergartener named Casey.  We were at my house when the bloody nose struck, which was unusual because we didn’t often play at my place.  We had cats, and Casey was incredibly allergic to them.  Casey was allergic to cats, into playing tag, and together we would pick on our little brothers and wrestle in the grass.  Casey was also a boy.

How adorable is this?

At the age of five, this didn’t matter at all.  The only difference between boys at girls at that point (at my school, we didn’t get into the boyfriend/girlfriend thing until around the fifth grade) was that girls occasionally had ponytails and the teachers yelled at us for hanging upside down on the monkey bars when we were wearing skirts.  For obvious reasons.

Casey and I were great friends.  We played blocks in school and roller skated together at various birthday parties.  I went to his house often, and he was the first person to try to explain the logic behind hunting to me (at five years old and animal OBSESSED, I was horrified).  We even talked on the phone, our little kindergarten selves, about what I’m sure were very important and intellectual matters.

Then the first grade happened.   Suddenly everyone was aware of the “girls rule, boys drool” (and vice versa) mentality.  It hit me like a brick–I hadn’t received the memo everyone else seemed to have read over summer break.  Precocious girls of six and seven were beginning to smuggle makeup into school, shoved inside their Trapper Keepers.  Wearing pink was considered “babyish”.  And Casey stopped returning my calls.

In high school I feel in love with When Harry Met Sally, the movie starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as adorably neurotic almost-friends, almost-lovers who meet time and time again over the course of their lives.  And I learned the quote Collegiate-Aged Harry so eloquently says over greasy diner food to his new acquaintance: “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”

Now, as we all know (if you’ve seen the movie), Harry and Sally do in fact become friends.  And then the sex part gets in the way, and then they fall in love.  So I’m not entirely sure what the movie really does other than prove Harry’s initial thesis, but I’d like to pick the part in the middle and focus on that.  The friend part, I mean.  As little kids, we have no idea that there’s any difference between us.  Boys, girls, black, white, whatever.  Then, as we begin to learn about the world, we start looking at each other differently.  We notice blondes and brunettes, short and tall.  We notice that someone talks funny, or dresses strangely.  For a long time, we focus on those differences, and we may or may not be able to be friends because of them.  We lose that childhood innocence and we become wise to the ways of the world.

But I like to think that once we become “wise”, we become educated as well.  I like to think that we will be able to see those differences not as hindrances, but as points of interest.  That being different doesn’t mean being separate.

I may have gone a little off-topic there, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad that after the divisive days of grade school, I was able to have guy friends again. It’s nice that now I can hang out with guys with no pressure, with no one singing K-I-S-S-I-N-G in the background (of course now that I’m married, people do that a lot less anyway).  I’m glad to have guy friends that are just as close as girl friends, and I’m glad to be one of many proving Harry’s line of thinking to be incorrect.

But I do miss the innocence a little.

Sometimes I wish I were five…and wearing fairy wings was totally fine.

Have you ever found yourself on the verge of making some major adult decision, such as:

Should I buy the generic cream cheese, or can I really afford the name brand?

Do I really need to take out the trash this week?

Do you think anyone can tell that I overslept my alarm and totally didn’t have time to shower this morning?

…and while standing there, you think, “Man, wouldn’t it be great if I were five years old again and didn’t have to worry about any of this BS?”

I think that—literally—all the time.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I do enjoy being an adult.  I like the independence of paying my own bills and the ability to have a glass of wine with dinner.  I enjoy having conversations with my parents and relatives as equals, and I like having a basic life plan.  But sometimes I just want to say screw it and, instead of inquiring about so-and-so’s new house at the neighborhood barbeque, put on a pair of fairy wings and take off running into the yard.

My cousin Lexi as an awesome fairy.

Seriously, how awesome was being five?  When I was a kid, my best friend was a girl named Annie, whose mother was an artist.  She would kick us out of the house some days because she was “creating”.  When this happened, we were banished outside for what seemed like hours.  But as kids?  No problem!  Outside was where we learned to use our imaginations to create vast landscapes to accompany our playtime games of school or house or personified cats who climb trees and hiss at passers-by.  When it rained, we covered our skin with mud and played day spa.  (“Oh dah-ling, I am just so relaxed. Aren’t you?” This may also be where I began learning to fake accents.)  When the sun started to set, we chased lightning bugs, calling them the source of all magical power.  When the streetlights came on, it was time for me to go home.

The days that Annie’s mom let us in the house were perhaps even more inspiring for young and wild minds.  She was an artist of all mediums—a painter as well as a sculptor, a sketch artist and  an interior designer.  My parents still have a clay figure she created, a man with a snowflake face and billowing clouds of tulle wrapped around his body to signify gusts of winter wind.  Once inside, we could play trophy wife with Annie’s extensive collection of dress-up clothes (“Oh dah-ling, you’re simply stunning!”—maybe I just learned one specific accent) or put on a puppet show with handmade puppets.  For a period of time, Annie’s mom ran a sort of art school, where we were encouraged to paint and glitter and cut and paste to our imagination’s content.  Once, or perhaps several times, we made papier mache masks and fake casts, and walked around feigning injuries neither of us would ever really experience.

In my mind, the ultimate example of pure, unabashed, five-year-old glee happened at one of Annie’s birthday parties.  Her mother dressed us as fairies, complete with wings, and took us to a friend’s house outside the city.  Along with several other little girls, we were let loose on a beautifully landscaped estate, looking like tiny woodland nymphs.  Sometimes I still drive past the place when I’m heading in or out of town, and I remember little ballet-slippered feet running over tiny bridges and past perfumed lilac bushes, stopping to grace the fish pond with their glittering presence.  I remember thinking that maybe my wand really will make that flower bloom, or make that cat speak.  I remember running, breeze in my hair, feeling that overwhelming bliss.

I really like being an adult.  I like my freedom and the fact that I no longer need a car seat.  But sometimes, when I’m driving down the highway by myself at night, I roll down the windows and throw my hand out into the night, letting the wind in to whip through and destroy my hair.  I’ll turn the radio up—Van Morrison if I can find the CD—and I’ll let myself give into that bliss, that sweet joy of freedom and innocence.  And I’ll pretend I’m wearing fairy wings.

Because I totally need two blogs.

This is my new blog to serve as a sort of creative outlet for me, which I think I might need in the coming months.  I know it seems ludicrous to try and keep up two blogs while managing my first year of law school, but I will probably post two or three times and then die in a swamp of homework I have faith that I will need the break every once in a while.  So, there’s this blog for creative writing and reminiscing, and my other blog for real-life happenings and updates.  And there you have it.  Happy reading!

–Bonnie