Happy Birthday Tayva!!!

Acrylics.

In 2006, I got acrylic nails put on for the first time. I hated them.

But let's just say I'm a sucker for second chances...I can't stand the idea that if I didn't give someone or something just one more chance, I might have missed out on something I would end up really liking.

Then again...if something doesn't impress me on the second try, it's out the door, basically forever:-D

I got acrylics done again two days ago. Exactly one day later, I had them taken off.

All I can say is, 'Wow...that was one short-lived phase.'

I never plan to wear acrylics again.

BAM, BAM!!! Take that, Europe!!!

I have made a decision about what I'm doing when I get out of high school.

On April 17, 2010, (give or take a couple days), I am moving to Italy. I am thinking somewhere in Northern Italy, but at the moment Florence and Rome are the two major cities on my list.

Whenever I tell people I am doing this (especially people at work), they ask, "Why? Why does it have to be so far away?" I am always surprised at what a negative reaction I get whenever I tell people I want to see the world. I always thought traveling was a good thing...I always thought experience was a good thing. But here is the answer to that question, 'Why Italy?'

It's really very simple. I want to go to Europe. I have tried learning Italian in the past and loved it. My friend went to Italy, and she says the people there are friendly and warm. Italian food is delicious. Venice, one of the two most romantic cities, is there. The drinking age is only 16. And what in the world is cooler than being able to say that you lived in Italy??? Okay...so maybe there are cooler things...But not to me.

As flippant as that paragraph may sound, I have been seriously looking into this. I have been browsing rooms for rent on sites that advertise apartments...Deciding which city I want to move to, and even invited my mother and sister to come along for a month and help me settle in when I move. My mother is also going to be looking at apartments with me. I am saving like crazy...Right now, for a car. As soon as I buy my car (which should happen next year around the time I turn 18, if not before), I will save up for Italy, so I can have a foundation as well as extra euros when I get there:-D

I am sooooooooooo excited!!! I can't wait. I have always known I wanted to travel, and I knew I wanted to live in Italy for at least awhile...but it wasn't until my friend Sunnie came back from a visit to Italy and France that I decided to make a plan. To get serious about it. With a vague outline of what you want, you get nowhere. I have a solid plan now and I know what I want. I am YOUNG! Now is the time to do these things!!!

Europe won't know what hit it;-)

Being Who I Am.

A much admired coworker said to me today, "You know what I love about you, Kendra?"

I looked at him.

"You are your own person. You're different. Not like everyone else." He went on to tell me that that was what first attracted him to his girlfriend...that she was different than other people, and didn't care what others thought.

I have always known that that was an attractive quality to me, and that it was supposed to be an attractive quality to other people, but I didn't know that it WAS an attractive quality.

I wish I could be even more like that. I have my own sense of humor...my own likes and dislikes...and that shows. But I care too much what other people think about me. Even if it's just because I have a need to be on top, I want other people to know how wonderful I am. That sounds really conceited, but it's true. I just want people to think I'm spectacular and as shrewish as this sounds, to be superior to them. It bugs me to death when people think I am somehow lower than they are, and I go out of my way to prove to them that I am not.

So when my friend said that to me, it got me thinking...and I came to an important realization.

It really and truly honestly does NOT matter what they think. There are some people whose opinions I am never going to change. Mr. Jerkface is always going to think I'm an innocent, naive little twit. Mr. Dud is always going to think I'm jealous of his girlfriend and desperately want to be with him. Mr. Tyrant is always going to see me as nothing more than another female for him to dominate. All of these are idiotic assumptions, and not worth the time it takes to fret over them!

My friend at work is a very, very special person. I haven't known him for very long, and already he means a lot to me. He is one of those people whose opinions count...and he seems to think a lot of me.

I have friends that love and care about me. I have family that live with me day in day out and still like me for who I am. I don't need to prove to the chauvinistic pigs that I'm good enough to be a man. Their opinions mean ZERO, and they are no longer going to bother me:-)

I am my own person.

Forgiveness - Hogs

I just watched a special on 20/20 about forgiveness. There were some very amazing stories about how people had forgiven horrible atrocities committed against them, or someone they loved. I caught the tail end of a story about a woman who forgave a man who raped her, and told him so. Now, to me, perhaps because I have an intense need to be respected, rape is about the most terrible wrong that can be committed against a person, because it shows a complete lack of respect. It is indignity at its worst...a complete disregard for another person's comfort and feelings...This may seem crazy, but I think of it as something worse than murder, because it is something that you have to keep living with. Something you have to strive to overcome daily. Sooooo...when I heard that this woman had forgiven him, my first response was defensive. I thought, 'What a weak woman...to actually TELL a man who had disrespected her in the worst way possible that it was okay!'

I sat with a narrowed brow as I critically took in the other stories. A woman who forgave a man who killed her pregnant daughter. A man who invited a judge who convicted him of a crime he didn't commit to his wedding.

Finally there was a story about a Jewish woman who had been taken by the nazis at a very young age. They had wounded her arm and drained her of her blood so that they could take note of how much blood a person can lose and still live. It was what this woman said that got me thinking...When the interviewer asked her how she had been able to forgive the nazis, she said in her beautiful, thick accent, "I asked myself, how would hating them help me? Would it make my life better?"

I thought about that. See, I have actually written a section on forgiveness in a new Christian book being published soon. I have had the same thought as the old Jewish woman before. "How does hating this person help me?" I have had the strength, in the past, to overcome the worst wrong ever committed against me. But somewhere along the way I lost it. I, the 'expert' on forgiveness, sat on the couch feeling extremely irritated that these people would actually forgive these sick, heartless people. But after I thought about what the Jewish woman said some more, I realized that by forgiving someone, you don't tell them it's alright. You don't say, 'it's okay, please do it again'. You make a choice for yourself not to hold it inside and let it fester up and hurt your life. You make a choice to move on and not let this person hold power over you; and you have to make that same choice everyday...because as you can see from my experience, it is not a one time decision. I have easily become bitter again.

As hard as it may be, I hope I can muster up the strength to be like the beautiful old Jewish woman, and say, "How is this helping me?" Because...it has nothing to do with the person who hurt you. You will never stop hurting until you let it go.

"The naive forgive and forget.

The stupid neither forgive or forget.

The wise forgive, but do not forget."

Now that I'm done with my serious blog, let me move on to the hogs...

My friend came over tonight and informed me that she was hog hunting. I went out into my backyard there were a bunch of country boys gathered there yelling in very thick accents and before I knew it, this huge, HORRIBLE squealing sound came from where the boys were...It was a hog, weighing about 300 pounds, and almost a match for all the boys put together. Every once in awhile after laying almost silent for awhile, the hog would get a second wind and start trying to run away, squealing horrifically all the while. More than once I started running away because it scared me so bad! Hahaha. It was interesting. I feel as if I've seen it all now...

Okay, I haven't seen it all. But that was definitely an experience!

Half the fun was seeing all the testosterone driven boys holding the squirming pig down. It was better than any movie.

Life is Good.

I realized just recently that I don't blog very much anymore, and whenever I do blog, it's about work. WORK for gosh sakes! How BORING.

So I decided to change that and start blogging a lot more and blogging about things that might actually be of interest to other people. Well...not that my life and all my little extracurricular activities are really going to be of interest to anyone else, but at least I won't be blogging about how annoyed I am about such and such at work.

Sooooo. Update on my actual life.

This past weekend I went with my friend Bella (who is a ballerina) to visit a college with her, which is a Christian college for the arts. Bella is a senior and has already applied and been accepted into the college. She hasn't made her final decision about it yet, but it's her second choice for college, and she has a few scholarships there.

This particular college is a school that I've been interested in for awhile, since my friend Tallulah started attending a couple years ago. So I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited when Bella and her family invited Kaitlyn and I to go with them for Bella's dance audition!

Tallulah is no longer in school because she was going for theater, and she was offered a job as a professional actress. But she still lives in town, and five minutes (on foot) from the college! So I called her the night before and asked what she was doing that weekend:-D She practically screamed my ear/her head off, lol...It was awesome! She invited my friends and I to have dinner with her after our trip.

Bella, her sister, Rachel, Kaitlyn and I had SOOO much fun on the trip there! We formed about 500 new inside jokes and had tons of fun doing it! Bella and Rachel made a couple of CDs of mutually loved music to listen to on the drive. We got to know them a lot better as well, which is always a plus! They are some of our really good friends now.

By the time we got to the college, we were all really excited. Bella's mom checked us into a hotel, while I called Tallulah and got directions to her house. Within about 10 minutes we were in Tallulah's kitchen, laughing and talking and letting her get to know our new friends.

She made us a fantastic dinner comprised of a really good salad with poppy seed dressing (which I'd never tried before and really liked), and curry and lentil soup. It was splendifferous!

We couldn't stay very long that night because we were all tired from the trip, but we made plans that while Bella was at her dance audition the next morning, Kaitlyn (my sister), Rachel and I would go to Tallulah's rehearsal with her.

The next morning, Kaitlyn, Rachel and I woke up to a dark room. We tried to turn the lights on, but the power was completely out at the hotel! We were pannicking. There was no way to get a shower, and they weren't expecting the power back on until after we left!!! That was interesting. We went downstairs and ate breakfast, then returned to our room to make an attempt at getting ourselves pretty in the dark. I think we did a pretty good job considering our circumstances:-D

Rachel's mom came back to the hotel soon after we had finished primping and took us about 3 minutes down the road to the theater where Tallulah works. We watched Tallulah and her coworkers perform a play, which they did amazingly well. All the actors were very dramatic and seemingly not afraid of what people thought of them. They were completely in character and very good at what they did...which is perhaps why they are professionals:-D

Right after the play, and congratulating Tallulah on a job well done, I kind of freaked out and had a spaz attack because of the stress in my life right now. I started talking about how I wasn't getting my schoolwork done and how I didn't make enough time for school and how since I started my job it had been even more stressful...At that moment, for whatever reason, something in my brain totally clicked and later on I called mom and asked her to have the computer out of my room by the time I got home:-D (Since she did that, I've been having a lot better luck with my school and have mostly used this computer for educational purposes:-D).

After Tallulah had organized an impromptu re-enactment of the fight scene from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' with her co-workers specially for us, we left the theater and walked to the college. It took about 10 minutes to get there, and it was a lovely walk. The weather was good, and it was just nice to be with Tallulah again:-) When we got to the cafeteria, we sat for about a half hour and talked and just hung out and spent time together.
That's Tallulah in the middle. Kaitlyn is on the left, I'm on the right:-D

While sitting in the cafeteria, I met a lot of Tallulah's friends. One guy that I met had taken the creative writing program that I'm interested in and he said he really liked it and that he had learned a lot about himself through the class. All her friends were very nice...very artsy, as well:-D I like artsy people. I want to be artsy. I hope I'm succeeding.

Soon Tallulah had to go back to work, and so we said our goodbyes. Bella and her mom returned from the dance audition (which she apparently did very well on) and we went on our tour of the college. The campus was very nice and our guide gave us some good insight as to what living at the college is actually like. She was honest too, lol...She talked about how the football players were 'not the brightest bunch of students'...we were all laughing! The dorms were also very nice, but it might just be the idea of living so independently that is so appealing to me:-D Of course, there is also a pretty fountain in the middle of the campus that always has classical music playing around it. It was beautiful!

It wasn't a very large campus, and so it wasn't a very long tour...but by the time we left,I was inspired. I resolved then that I would reallllllly buckle down and do my schoolwork. That I would prioritize and neaten up and organize my life and focus a lot more on my education. Work is a last priority. (Sorry, work!) So far I've been doing pretty well with that resolution. Having the computer out of my room and refraining from myspace has been a HUGE help. There are also plenty of scholarships that I'm researching and planning on applying for. Man, I have so many essays to write this year! It's a little overwhelming, but I'm also wildly excited to do these things!

That night we stayed at Bella and Rachel's house. We watched 'No Reservations' with them (which is a fantastical movie that we saw in theaters awhile ago). The next morning, they made us a very healthy but very, VERY good breakfast of bagels with cream cheese and homemade strawberry jam. The weather was beautiful, and we had a picnic outside. What a good memory! It was amazing. The whole rest of that day was good.

Needless to say, now I am back home, and back on earth, but things seem to be going pretty well:-D I love the positive changes I'm trying to make in my life right now.

Something else to blog about that has nothing to do with my job would be the ballroom dancing classes I am taking! I didn't think I was going to take the class because I didn't have a partner, and I wasn't really up to asking someone to dance with me...but about a week before the class started my friend Daniel texted me and asked me to be his partner. We've been having SO much fun dancing together! The first week we got some of the steps down and it wasn't too bad, but I wasn't amazingly eager for the second class. But last night we danced and learned a lot of new steps. We learned the waltz last night, and Daniel and I got so good that we were able to dance on beat to a very fast-paced song. My heart was beating pretty hard at the end of it, too! It was GREAT fun, and I can't wait for the next class! Something else to look forward to is that not only are we learning these things really well, but the co'op we're involved in will be having a high school prom/dance/formal thingy at the end of the classes at a really nice hotel, and we'll be able to use what we've learned while all dressed up! It's going to be soooooooo much fun!

Life is gooooood.

Satisfied.

Okay, update on the job.

I completed my training a little over a week ago and we opened the restaurant. First, I was hostess. Then, I was FC (which is the person who arranges the food and makes sure everything is right, yada yada yada), and then, I waited tables for the first time at the restaurant. I made 13 dollars off of six tables. Yeah. Only thirteen dollars. Sooo...I was a little discouraged. That was a Sunday, and I've heard that 'church people' are notoriously bad tippers. It turns out that this stereotype is pretty true. I got quite a few people who came in and left me a dollar for a tip.

I thought this was just because I'm not good at waitressing...but I was wrong about that:-D The next time I went to work, I made $50. The next day I learned how to be a cashier (which is actually kind of fun and really easy). Today, I brought home $60 in tips.

I love my job. Every time I go, I am learning more and making fewer mistakes and getting better, and bringing home more $$$$$$$$$!!! Everything is set-up a certain way so I don't have to wander around and ask one of my coworkers if a customer has a question. Everything is precise. I KNOW which tables are mine and I know that if I turn a ticket in, the cook will be able to read it because the abbreviations are, of course, set. It's very nice and a definite confidence builder to be able to do my job. I just like KNOWING what I have to do, and being able to do it. I'm realizing just how sloppy things were at my last job now that I work here.

The atmosphere is also a lot happier. We have these nice little T-Shirts we wear and we can get them in different colors. We don't have to dress all formally and we can wear jeans and sneakers! They always play Christian music which is nice because in the middle of a rush, if I go to the bathroom to escape, there is some really encouraging music playing to calm me down. My bosses are pretty relaxed...I mean, of course they're authoritative, but they're also pretty nice. I get discounts on things I'm not supposed to get a discount on and if I do something wrong, they're just like, "That's okay, we'll fix it." It's nice to feel secure in that way.

I also get to press a lot of buttons and fun stuff like that, haha!!!

Man. I'm so glad to have a real job where I don't have to whine and complain about not getting enough hours! I was scheduled for five days this week, furreeeal!