Love Letters and Judgmental Senior Citizens

Growing up can be scary. Yes, its "turning a page in your life story" or "finding a deeper meaning or purpose with your destiny" but when you are fidgeting in the unforgiving wooden desk and preparing to take a test that could alter your future...its just scary. Like many other scary things though (mystery meat stew, the near-death experience between turning off the light and landing in bed, deleting important files accidentally) there is a bright side.

College, for example. Now thats a whole can of worms I'm not going to try and pry open in this blog post (perhaps in the future) but it is rather like training to be a ninja. Only a lot less awesome. From birth you are trained in by special teachers to know everything you must know to be a competent human being and student. You read, study, test, and then cram constantly in preparation for (DUH_DUH-DUUUUHHHH): The Test. Whether you call it the SAT, the ACT, or MY WORST NIGHTMARE, every teenager comes to it. Its time to put all of your experience to the test and you are suddenly wishing you hadn't spark noted that one lengthy tome in Lit. Class. (Not that I would do that. *cough,cough* >->). The sad part of my ninja analogy is that instead of gaining the honor of the silver dragon warrior (or whatever it is ninjas get), I get a piece of paper with my name in curly writing. And it doesn't even get you free food. But oh well.

So now that I've completed that ordeal, I was expecting rejection galore from colleges. For some reason when I think of a college board I imagine a scrubbed oaken chamber with two rows of grim old men who smell faintly of talcum powder. I see them sneering my grades, my essays, even that kindergarten drawing of a mentally unstable cat. I feel enraged just thinking about that imaginary room. HOW DARE THEY JUDGE ME!?!

But I was pleseantly surprised. Universities of this and that have been sending me emails constantly with titles such as "We Want You To Attend Our College, Hannah!" and "So Glad I Discovered You!" and "Very Impressed With You, Hannah!" and "Hannah, You're Extraordinary." I'm not even kidding, those last three are actual emails from universities. As flattered as I am, I must pull my self from this lovesick daze of flattery and be reminded that they only want to take all my money. (Hahaha...only I have no money...). Plus most of them are Catholic schools in the middle of the desert. Why?

So this is a message to all you young things out there who are similarly scared of the future and rooms of judgmental old men: One day you too will take a big test and receive loads of flattering fan mail from universities. Just wait.

Laughing Hedgehog,

-Hannah

Lipstick, High Heels, and Bullets

Tis' the season to dance and freak out about finding a dress. Yes, Fall Formal is coming. Your friends are going and it sounds like fun so, sure, why not? You sign up. A few weeks later it pops up, surprise!, like an unexpected guest at your door. You realize all of those "Oh, i'm sure something will work out"s...yeah, they aren't working out. Whats a girl to do?

The reason i'm bringing this up is 

1) I'm going to a dance tomorrow night

2) Its kind of planking on my mind right now and pushing out all other reasonable thought

3) This is so UNFAIR!

Why, you ask, is this at all unfair? Maybe this comparison of what a normal guy does and a normal girl does getting ready for a dance will help:

Girl: Sign up, pay, arrange rides.

Guy: Sign up, pay, arrange rides.

(So far so fair- but wait)

Girl: Spend weeks searching for a dress, shoes, and purse that match and are just the right level of formal for the event. Thrift, borrow moolah from parents, occasionally have dressing room breakdowns. (C'mon girls, everyones had one.)

Guy: Look under the bed for their nice pants. Take out the dress-shirt they stuffed inside their drum. Retrieve leathery shoes from their pet's cage. Wash all of the above if the more industrious gentleman.

Girl: Begin preparing for the dance hours before they leave. Shower, blow-dry, curl or straighten hair, shave legs (unless its No-Shave November), defy gravity and natural science with hair-spray and bobby pins to keep their hair's intricate updo in place. Apply foundation, toner, blush, bronzer, cover-up, primer, eyeliner (wet, gel, and stick), a few hundred coats of mascara, lipstick, maybe even false eyelashes.

Guy:Comb hair. Shave.Maybe shower.

Girl: Wear a dress, 3 inch heels, and hold a clutch that all match and that you can dance in. The whole ensemble must be sexy yet modest, glamour yet not over-the-top, sparkly yet not glaring, and posh yet not overly formal. 

Guy: "Mom, can you help me with this tie?"

Do you see what I mean now? Sure, guys might have to drive or buy a corsage now and then, but girls feel a social pressure to look like super models. Not to say dressing up for a night on the town isn't fun, it is, its just uncalled for when men complain about how long it takes the women in their life to get ready for events. Give us a break, guys. You've never walked a mile in 4 inch stilletos, now have you? 

So to all those guys: Tell your girlfriend she is gorgeous. Hold her bag while she gets punch. Dance with her even if you feel like a fool and would rather eat broken glass and milk for breakfast. Appreciate her. And, above all, don't infuriate her. You would be surprised how many beauty products can be used as weapons or how sparkly rhinestone clutches are just the right size for a taser...

Just Dance,

Hannah

YOU GOIN' DOWN, JIMINEY!

Tonight, Jiminey Cricket dies.

Well, not the actual animated Disney character from Pinocchio (though he was mighty annoying as well). No. This time it's his all-to-real cousin, the cricket who lives in our basement. Specifically, in my bedroom.

It was about 11:20 and i'd just gotten home from a long run. Exhausted, short-changed on sleep, and with a lot to do the next day, i collapsed into bed. I was just drifting off to sleep when a cricket with a megaphone from somewhere in my room yelled, "Hey Baby! You looking fiiiiinnnnneeee tonight, yeah. I'm here, what are your other two wishes? I've never seen an angel without wings before. Yeah, you like that baby?"

(This gif hypnotizes me...)

Obviously the cricket wasn't actually talking to me, but I took the liberty of translating its booming, disruptive mating calls he sounded off. Every few minutes. ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Do you know how hard it is to sleep with someone yelling cheesy pick-up lines at you all night in cricket? Very. And thats why i'm training to become a ninja cricket assasin: bringing sleep to humans everywhere.

Tonight, when the sun goes down and the crickets come out, that crickets going down. I am going to pin-point his location, prepare myself with a hefty math book (Really, what else are they good for?) and assassinate that cheeky little monkey.MWAAHHAHAhhahaHHAHHAHAAA!

(...I wonder how biblical and morally upstanding it is to be planning murder on a Sunday morning before leaving for church? Oh, well. Maybe God will smite the cricket before I get home with a lightening bolt or an avenging angel and do the job for me.)

 Cricket Intent,
-Hannah Hoo
(p.s. sorry for the blue, slight glitch)

Dentures, Oompa Lumpas, and a few Ninjas

You really start to re-evaluate your social life when you look forward to orthodontics. Suddenly that schedule book seems to look really empty when the most exciting thing planned for the evening is to put in my dentures. Not LITERAL dentures, but- well,lemme explain.

My long and sordid history with my orthodontist began when I was 9 and hasn't stopped yet. Apparently my parents bestowed me with naturally messed-up teeth so i've been correcting their twisted ways with braces, retainers, and this torturous looking steel device called a "Mara". My teeth, now straight and dazzling(ish) look pretty great except for weird shaped stains from my toothy past. Getting back to the dentures. They aren't actually dentures, more like...clear plastic teeth slipcovers. Basically it's this tray that I fill with bleach gel every night and sleep in. After a month or two of this my teeth should be pristine and white as the snow falling outside my window right now. Supposedly. Except I hope my teeth don't fall out, too.

 Anyway, this is what it looks like: 

Sad, I know, considering this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me lately. Getting bleaching trays. It's better than nothing, though. At least now I can complete my scary early-morning look. I wake up, groaning and grumbly trying to walk upstairs with my hands out (Frankenstein-style). My eyes are rolling around trying to stand the light of day and my hair is an alarming, quivering mass. If my sisters weren't already wary enough, I growl, reach up into my mouth, and rip out the entire top row of my teeth. Ahhh, I love the sound of fleeing munchkins in the morning. 

Here is a list of fun things you can to with bleaching trays/dentures:

-Scare people, obviously.

-Spray paint them gold (after you're done with them) for instant gangsta smile bling.

-The above, only with a bedazzle-er. 

-When you'r somewhere you're not supposed to be and someone walks use the old "Lost My Contact!" cover-up except with your see-through bleach tray. Then, when you "find" it, you wave it around triumphantly and then pop the fake/inviable tray into your mouth. It will not only distract the person but probably make them avoid you for the rest of their lives.

-Fill them with Jello and make sweet...teeth-flavored molds. Or not. That'd be kinda weird.

Come to think of it, something more exciting than my dental life did happen today. My older brother, Jonmark, is home from college on Spring Break! He looked like he was about to take a little snooze on his waffle tonight because of the recent "Bataan Death March" he went on. Before you start figmenting outrageous and creepy ideas as to what that might be, my brother is in R.O.T.C. So it's a military thing. In his own words it was, "A three day marathon with weights on our backs through the desert." Again, I admire the military, but I think i'd rather become a Math Teacher than join it. Considering that "becoming a math teacher" is somewhere in the top 10 worst things that could happen, #2 being Death, this is a serious statement. I can barely make it through one of my brother's war movies, let alone a 27 mile "Death March" with a 45 pound pack! 

He was one of the survivors when they returned from the wasteland, but his skin did not get so lucky. He was as red as the strawberries he heaped on his waffle at dinner. And, in a true man/older brother fashion, instead of just letting us admire his redneck (literally), he HAD to take off his shirt and display his sunburn. If he just so happened to also expose a hard-earned new set of muscles, well so be it.*sigh* It's a hard life being in the military.

I couldn't spare a moment to admire his muscles because I was too busy laughing at the mental image of a bunch of muscular oompa lumpas running through the desert in camo and military-grade boots. I know you want to giggle. Just let it out. Right now. you'll regret it if you don't! If you don't giggle than my ninja minions will pounce on you from the ceiling where they lay in wait. Ha! Made you look. ...but I got so paranoid that I looked up too. So Ha HA! Made us both look! 

Live Long and Laugh,

-Hannah