I've been making things

Hey Tony....this picture reminded me of you. How long did you say that shot hurt?

I made the dress form myself, so it's a little lumpy. I've been thinking for the past few days that I needed to write something, but nothing much is happening. I figure pictures of what I've been making is a nice compromise. Wouldn't you agree?

Morning e-mails

You,

So I visited you this morning on myspace. That's what I can do when I think about you and I'm at a computer. I ran into your friend Annie. Merc, she is very, very cute. It looks like you two people get on quite well with one another. I hope things are still up to your liking.
How am I? I am recovering? I feel like I am recovering from some sort of emotional breakdown. You know sometimes I feel like those 'kept women'. You know the ones that have absolutely no problems, but still feel the need to medicate themselves with booze and pills. No, wait, they have unhappy loveless marriages and ungrateful children....nevermind. Yes, so I'm fine. Thanks for asking. And you? Tell me about your adventures. I saw your video. It was sideways.

A fairly decent amount of love,
Me

Marriage instead of Zoloft?

People who are looking to ease depression may have a new treatment option — marriage.
A recent study suggests that marriage provides a greater psychological boost to depressed people than to happy people, even if the marriage is so-so.
Previous studies have suggested that the psychological perks of marriage depend upon marriage quality — a happy marriage gives rise to a happy couple, and vice versa.
Other studies have shown that depressed people, who tend to communicate poorly and require more caring and support than happy people, also end up in unhappier marriages.
So Adrianne Frech, a sociology graduate student at Ohio State University, and her colleague, Kristi Williams, speculated that happy people would garner more psychological perks from marriage than depressed people.
To test their theory, they looked at a sample of 3,066 men and women who had been interviewed and tested for depression once in either 1987 or 1988 and then again five years later.
In the interviews, they were asked about the quality of their marriage (if they were married).
On average, controlling for differences in depression, subjects who had gotten married over the five-year span between the two interviews reported improved psychological well-being in the second interview—scoring an average of 3.42 points lower on the 84-point depression scale — than their counterparts who did not marry.
When they teased apart how marriage affected those who had been depressed at the start of the study to those who had been happy, however, they came across something unexpected.
The depressed who married scored an average of 7.56 points lower on the depression scale than the depressed who did not marry, while those who were happy and got married scored only 1.87 points lower on the scale.
In other words, marriage provided a much bigger psychological boost to the depressed subjects than to the happy subjects.
"We were surprised," Frech told LiveScience. "We expected the depressed to have worse marital quality and therefore benefit less from a transition into marriage."
The findings, to be published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, hold true even though depressed people do have unhappier marriages.
"The depressed benefit more from a transition into marriage despite their having, on average, worse marital quality," Frech noted.
The big remaining question, she says, is why depressed people benefit more from marriage than happy people.
It could be that marriage provides the companionship and emotional support needed to help alleviate depression, she said.

The trials of getting fit

Over the past six months, having returned to the states, ten pounds have returned to my bum. I haaate it. It makes me feel like a sloth. Because school is out I actually have time to go to the gym again. Yesterday on my way home I was almost attacked and killed by a man sized grasshopper. He crawled in through my driver's side window. I didn't notice him until he was perched right on the dashboard looking at me. Of course the light had just turned green and the b* in the bmw behind me beeped her horn in protest (alliteration here folks. yes....yes, you can applaud). I drove, my eyes transfixed on him and his yucky hyper-green, I can only assume slimy, bug body. Luckily, he decided to take a trip across the length of the dash towards the other open window. But to add insult to injury, he took a sizeable poo before he took his leave. Although I should know, everything, I suppose, is bigger in Texas. Dway, b'dway (correct, not correct)?

This morning I awoke to calves that didn't want to work, because I overworked them, atleast in their opinion, yesterday. I used the calf machine - nothing rigorous. Then I thought, "why do we even have that machine?" Which inevitably led me to think about the stories I've seen or read about men who get calf implants because they simply can't build, again, atleast in their opinion, enough muscle. Then I thought how they might think their legs look similar to grasshopper legs.

"Use this button to type in Hindi"....umm, okay, thanks?

Why does my blog think that I want to type in Hindi? I suppose I could start. However, that might alienate any remaining readers I have. Just a thought. Okay how shall I break down the updates of my life?
Work: School is, As alice cooper croones, out for summer. I am up for a long term sub position for a woman out on maternity leave in the fall. Honestly, I'm not too jazzed about it. It would be 10th grade world history. I'm confident I could do a good job, but I'm not excited about it....kinda feels like it would be a more of a chore than a joy. If I don't do that who knows. I may just skip off to Rexburg or Taipei. It's a shame so many choices are contingent on personal finances.
Love: I've done quite a bit of dating over the last 6 months. Nels might catagorize it as tearing through men like wild fire. The last guy I dated was a good guy, but after many attempts trying to make it work realized that it just wasn't gonna. He told me he felt like I would be settling with him and that I needed an intellectual, which he wasn't. He didn't know how to rhyme. Seriously. He thought fall and sign rhymed. It all came about via a game of hink-pink. Hink Pink was a game taught to me by one Anthony Brosnan back in high school. It a great game. You come up with two words that rhyme choose clues and indicate their sylabic content through variations on the title of the game ( hink-pink, hinky-pinky, hinkity-pinkity, hink-hinkity-pink-pinkity... et al) For example....hinky-pinky:....hilarious rabbit.........answer: funny bunny. Back to the story. So we were driving home from a movie at the fine arts museum and were playing this game (the movie was Brewster Mccloud, Altman, 1970. His clue was "to dive", and I honestly can't remember the second one now...anyhoo, the answer was fall and sign. I started laughing because in no way imaginable do these two words rhyme. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. He then tried to convince me that I simply couldn't be the authority on rhyming. He gave me another one and it was the same situation....the words in no way rhymed. It was, I suppose, the final deal breaker. Perhaps I should institute this as my initial weeding out process..... Can't rhyme, won't get my time. (FYI- that was me being cheeky;) Dating blows harder than a nor'easter.
Church: I'm still public relations specialist. I'm still a bit unsure as to what that invloves. I'm perhaps a month behind on my personal deadline of finishing that article and submitting it to the local papers. I need to do more interviews, but I can't seem to get the extra ummmph need to accomplish the task.
Other: I've been going through my bins from the attic. Clearing out the clutter. So far I've only gotten rid of artwork from ex boyfriends. One was a painting of a forest with a huge alien head in the foreground and the second was a sculpture of a pile of poo. Good move? Oh I take that back I've also gotten rid of tons of empty jewel cases. Yes, people, I'm gittin' er dun.

saturday afternoon heartache

I went over to the Chappell's today to watch afternoon conference. During the 'tell me everything about you in hopes that I'll eventually snag you or reject you as my wife' portion of the afternoon, I mentioned to someone that I have been listening incessantly to a band called Arcade Fire to which someone outside of the conversation said 'hey you know them. They grew up out here with us. They're Liza Butler's boys.' Liza Butler was a harpist who was in the same ward as us growing up. I started feeling terrible. My chest hurt. There was an ache that started and felt like it was burrowing a hole all the way through to the back of my chair. I've spent the rest of the day trying to figure it out. I think it's because I'm not acting. I'm not being creative. It made me want to move back east and get serious again. Am I just jealous and seeking the accolades of the world or is it more? After conference I went and bought a $36 t-shirt bra and a diet dr pepper, which seemed to dull it a bit.

In the teacher's lounge

I've been reading in the teacher's lounge for the last two hours at Caney Creek High School. Someone's microwaved lunch smells like cucumber melon scented Nair. I was nearly 30 minutes late getting here and after standing in the office for 5 minutes unaddressed the 'copy room' lady says to me mid conversation 'just calm down a minute' I turned around after signing my name on the sub sign in clip board and smiled as if conceding to her accusation that I was being impatient. She is condescending in her tone as she explains why she needs her subs here at 7 am sharp and why I need to put some money in the bucket next to the coffee pot when I grab a cup 'cuz she keeps it a' brewin all day for her subs out of her own pocket money. I began to feel rebellious and suffocated as I quickly realized when she used the phrase my subs I was included.
First period was World Geography. We watched a video on the Israeli/Arab conflict. The host mocked Christianity generally and Catholicism specifically when she came upon a young boy selling crowns of thorns. She placed one on her head as she smiled and asked him if he felt sorry for her. She bought one for herself and her sister. It was juxtaposed nicely with a later scene in which with the utmost reverence described a Jewish monument erected to honor victims of the holocaust. I was curious to see who she was, checked out the tape cover and found Lonely Planet was the culprit. I wondered if the teacher even knew what she was showing her students. I looked around at the kids. The majority of them were passed out unaware. I felt better.
Second period I helped Anna work on her poetry packet. Anna and the other 8 students in the class are dyslexic and basically used that time as a tutorial. Anna can't read cursive or spell stomach. She has long black gel stiffened curls and impeccably white Adidas that she keeps clean by using a toothbrush and hand soap. Her boyfriend's eyes are either green or blue depending on the color shirt he wears. First we worked on a diamante poem:

curiosity
agog, ardent
desire, pine, smell
eyes, shirt, hallway, class
sleep, study, dishes
black, white
boredom

We agreed that agog is a cool word. She thought it sounded made up. She's surprised at how much work we got done when the bell rings. Tonight I'm going on a double date to the county fair. It's been in the works for quite some time. The other guy is a childhood friend of one Joshua J. Marshall (whom I taught with in Taiwan- small world). He's down here teaching English. He's the guy that all the girls in the ward are tripping over themselves to get to. He's not my date. Two fast Sundays ago he wore a suit that he'd obviously gotten at a thrift store. It had clown like characteristics about it and meekly added had he known he was going to bear his testimony he would have worn a different suit. Anna went to the fair and said she had funnel cake, a hot dog and a coke rode the rides and didn't throw up. She asked who I was going with. I told her, 'a friend'. She laughed and said,' that's what we always say'. She told me I could ride the 'merry-go...no...what's it called.. the ferris wheel' with him. I told her we did that one time in Kemah and I didn't like it. It was too slow.