Old Cemeteries

I love old cemeteries.  There's a pioneer cemetery near my hometown that my mom and I used to visit.  It's kind of sad though, like everyone just forgot about all of the people who were buried there.  Some of the headstones are so eroded by time that you can't even tell there were ever words on them.  I just feel like it's important to remember the people who are gone, even if I never actually knew them, or even had a chance to know them, since they died long before my grandparents were even born.

The oldest graves are behind this rusty wrought iron fence.

Lots of the headstones have poems engraved in them.

This is the tallest monument in the cemetery.

another poem and some lichen

The children's headstones are especially sad.  This little girl was only 3 months old when she died.

This little girl wasn't quite 2 years old when she died.

I think this is the most recent headstone in the cemetery.  They don't bury anyone there anymore.

This was a really big and elaborately carved headstone.  Apparently the family was wealthy.

Thankfully this cemetery doesn't have any weeping angels in it.  Another reason I like old cemeteries is that there usually aren't any other people there.  It's quiet and peaceful.

My Experience with Fashion

I had no concept of personal style until I was in college.  I sort of experimented with style my freshman year of college, but I really figured out what I liked to wear during my sophomore year of college.  Perhaps it was because I had so much free time when I wasn't going to class because Disabled Services wouldn't take to me to class for one trimester, and then so much free time again when I could walk again but had seizures almost daily so I took a hardship withdrawal from my classes.  Maybe it was just because I was actually growing up.

But this is not about that.  Not really anyway.  This is more about what I wore before I had a style.  Up until I was maybe 12 or 13, most of my clothes were either bought by my mom at yard sales or hand-me-downs from my friends, family friends, and my older brothers.  My family was poor because my dad lost his job at the plywood mill four days before I was born after it went out of business because of environmentalists and spotted owls.  Most of the clothes I wore at home were boy's clothes.  I wore mostly girl clothes to school until I was in high school.  It made sense for me to wear boy's clothes as play clothes growing up.  I was one of those kids who would play outside all day until dinner during the summer (when I wasn't reading books).  I had two older brothers and I was a tomboy.  I loved climbing trees and fences, playing sports and made-up sports, and playing in the dirt after my mom's garden was done and we were allowed to.  When I was playing outside, I wore what my mom called my play clothes, which meant boy clothes that I could get grass stains on or rips without getting in trouble.  I wore girl clothes to school, especially in elementary school, before I figured out that I didn't care what other people thought of me, and when I pretended like my favorite colors were pink and purple so I would fit in with all of the other girls in my class.  Coincidentally I was very popular in elementary school, the most popular girl in my grade (of 20-something kids total).  Of course, that was before kids decided that it wasn't cool to be smart and helpful.  One of the things that I remember wearing to elementary school was a pair of dark purple overalls with a white heart print turtleneck underneath.  Another thing I wore was a hot pink tee shirt with a flower print and Tweety bird on one of the sleeves.  (There will be pictures on this post later, when I am not feeling too sick to scan and upload pictures, which in my room is much more complicated than it sounds.  It involves me holding my laptop balanced on the back of my desk chair.)  Anyway in middle school everyone joined cliques and decided that it wasn't cool to be smart, which meant that all of my friends from elementary school disowned me and I was left in the group of kids who didn't belong in any cliques, which is where I remained through high school.  I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else, because they were real friends.  All of us were unique and different and didn't only like each other because of the fact that we all enjoyed the exact same things, like the kids in cliques.  When I was in 8th grade my grandpa died of stomach cancer.  I think that's when my depression started.  It was accompanied by apathy.  The good thing about this was that I finally stopped caring what other people thought of me.  I started wearing guy clothes to school sometimes, because they were more comfortable than my girl clothes.  I had this one hoody that had belonged to my older brother.  It was dark red and had tribal graphics on the sleeves and a really cool dragon.  It was my favorite.

By high school I wore a mix of guy clothes and girl clothes.  I also had this weird thing until about two years ago where I refused to wear skirts or shorts that were above my knees.  Because of the guy clothes as well as the fact that I never had a boyfriend or even a date in high school, most people assumed I was a lesbian.  I didn't care what they thought of me, but I was also tired as just being "one of the guys".  I have always had mostly guy friends and by high school, I was tired of them not looking twice at me.  I was also a late bloomer who didn't hit puberty until I was 14, which didn't help.  It also didn't help that I was year younger than everyone in my grade.  To put that in perspective, I hit puberty when I was a sophomore in high school.  That year, my mom took me on a shopping spree at a thrift store.  I bought all new clothes.  I had gone from a size zero in jeans to a size 3-5 and also gotten taller and less scrawny, so I needed new clothes because my old ones no longer fit.  I bought mostly striped shirts.  I also bought flared leg jeans because I didn't realize that they looked terrible on me.  I bought one tight v-neck t-shirt and this pair of jeans that I still don't know why my mother let me buy them.  Probably because she knew I would only ever wear them once.  They were really tight fitting and had a very short zipper and then a leather tie that laced them up instead of a longer zipper.  That is a bad description.  Anyway that is the outfit that I picked to wear the next day of school to attempt to impress my crush.  He was in my chemistry class, my wood shop class, and my P.E. class.  It actually wasn't on purpose either.  He had shaggy dirty blonde hair and we were actually good friends, but he was another guy who just saw me as one of the guys.  I had met him the previous trimester in advance algebra when we sat next to each other.  I helped him with advanced algebra and the next trimester, he helped me with chemistry, the first class I ever struggled in.  Seriously that dot method thing and valences and stuff just whooshed over my head.  He was in the grade ahead of me and he was the class clown, but he was actually really smart.  Nobody ever beat him at chess and we always had random conversations about stuff like real life Peter Pan syndrome.  Anyway I wanted to make him notice me as more than just one of his friends, so I wore the tight outfit.  He came up behind me in wood shop and then when he saw that it was me, he went "Whoa, Jessi!" and then was kind of speechless, which made me happy.  What didn't make me happy was that my shirt was too short and I had to keep on pulling it down all day.  It really didn't help that the leather tie on my jeans kept loosening itself so I had to run into the bathroom all day to retie it so nobody would see my underwear.  So that was the only time I ever wore those jeans and I started wearing tanktops under the shirt, which was actually one of my favorites, despite having three-quarter length sleeves.  And as far as the crush thing, my crush never went away even though he started dating a nerdy looking new girl who somehow got accepted as a popular kid right away.  (She was actually really nice though, so I couldn't hate her.)  I had to learn to be happy with just being his friend.  And I decided that wearing clothes that I wasn't comfortable in just because I was trying to impress boys was not a good idea.  My freshman year of college, I started wearing too-big girl clothes, as well as occasional guy clothes, some normal girl shirts, and skinny jeans.  I vetoed the too-big girl clothes sophomore year after I realized that with my short haircut and guy clothes, I looked like a guy or a potentially homeless person.  Especially since I didn't wear makeup.  I started wearing mostly girl clothes, with the occasional guy's black guitar shirt because they were cool.  I started wearing makeup when I was in my wheelchair, because it made me feel more self-confident.  It made me feel pretty too, instead of just like that girl in the wheelchair.  When I dyed my hair black, I started wearing more bright colors, because my black shirts with my black hair were just too much black.  That's when guys started checking me out and making me feel uncomfortable, like the stranger on the Ave who tried to hold my hand and asked for a bite of my sandwich.  Now that my hair is brown again, I get creeped on much less, which I can really appreciate.  I have also discovered my own fashion sense, a mix of tough and feminine clothing and accesories, sort of a better version of sometimes wearing guy clothes and sometimes girl clothes when I was younger.  And sometimes I actually make a conscious effort to look good when I get dressed, which I never did until last year.

Dealing with Mean Girls-Part Two

Luckily for me, the mean girls just ignored me in high school.  There were plenty of them too.  I had my small group of friends and everything was pretty good.  In college, I had an interesting experience.  Maybe it's a little bit of an exaggeration to say that I accidentally joined a cult.  See for yourself.  Well, I would have linked to the post about that, but I appear to have deleted that post.  I'll provide a summary of what happened.  I met two girls.  They invited me to have a Bible study with them, but it was basically them asking me questions from stuff in the Bible and telling me that my answers were wrong.  I started going to church with them and hanging out with other people from their church, because they were really nice people.  This was while I was in my wheelchair, so I wouldn't have been able to get out at all if it hadn't been for them bringing me to game and movie nights, which involved having to have two guys carry me up their stairs.  (All of their houses had stairs to the main level.)  The two girls I had met first texted me every day to say "Have a nice day" and to ask me how I was doing.  They brought me groceries so I wouldn't starve to death, since my wheelchair was too wide for the line to get food in the dorms.  They started saying some things that I don't believe, and that it does not say in the Bible.  They twisted the words in the Bible to fit what they were teaching.  The final straw was when we had a Bible study and the campus pastor told us that people will claim that the church was a cult, but rest assured that they are not.  Whoa, major red flags.  So a few days later, I informed the two girls that I would no longer be attending their church.  There were some things that I didn't personally believe.  I made it very clear that I was not saying they were wrong.  I said that I hope we can still be friends, and they said that of course we can.  I sent a private Facebook message to my other friend, Jessica, who I knew they were also having the Bible studies with, as well as another girl who the same thing was happening with.  I explained why I was leaving and told them all of the things that didn't match up with what it says in the Bible.  I also said that at the Bible study we had, they said they aren't a cult, and no other church I have ever been to has felt the need to tell me that.  Jessica agreed with me and also left the church.  She's my best friend now.  The other girl did not agree.  And apparently she told the original girls what happened, because one evening I had to go to the hospital (I don't remember why exactly, but it was an emergency) and after the doctors fixed whatever was wrong, I received a phone call from a very angry one of the two girls.  I told her I was in the hospital.  She started screaming at me and was very mad.  Yes, I did imply in the messages that it was a cult.  No, that was not a good idea and I shouldn't have done it.  But that does not give them the right to call and scream at me when I'm in the hospital.  I hung up on her.  This was quite a while after I sent the Facebook messages and the two original girls, who had claimed we could still be friends, had been ignoring me ever since I told them I was quitting their church.  I would see them on campus and say hi and they would pretend I didn't even exist.  There were about 30 people total from the church who I had become pretty good friends with, and they all turned against me after that.  Sure, I said something I shouldn't have, but that doesn't mean that they get to pretend I'm non-existent.  I apologized and told them that I had overreacted, but they wouldn't hear it.  The worst part was that they had acted like my best friends, but obviously they were faking it.  After that, it takes a lot more for me to trust people, since i've seen how two-faced people can be.  So I don't have very many friends now, but the ones I have are true friends.  And that's what's important.  When it comes to friends, I'll take quality over quantity any day.

A Chaotic Jaunt Down Memory Lane

I have a third follower! Welcome, LaceyRee.

When I was about three years old, I tried to eat a handful of gravel.  I had had rock candy for the first time the day before, and in my mind all rocks were candy, so I tried to eat some. To my disappointment, it wasn't candy. I managed to scoop up quite a bit of dirt with the gravel and I was trying my best to crunch up the gravel but it hurt my teeth. That's when my brother, who is two years older than me, looked out the window and said, "Mom! J is eating rocks!" My mom ordered me to spit them out, and then I started crying, because my mouth was full of dirt and my teeth hurt and there wasn't any rock candy. I learned my lesson though. Only parents know which rocks are secretly candy.

A couple of years later my brother and I were playing outside and we decided to pretend we were cows. We got down on all fours and made mooing noises and ate grass. My mom asked us why were eating grass and we responded that we were pretending to be cows. Then my mom told us that there were little bugs on the grass that we were eating and we couldn't see them because they were too small. That cured us of eating grass. It actually didn't taste bad, much better than dirt and gravel.

A few years later, I was in second or third grade, and some of the kids in my class and I decided to have what we called "Gross Eating Contests." I was the only girl, and I always won. The object was to eat either the grossest thing on our lunch tray or the strangest combination of foods. To start with, I could win by just eating the nasty green beans that were cooked to death. After a while, the boys got braver and ate their green beans too, so I started eating my baby carrots with ketchup. I actually thought that tasted really good back then, but now I can't stand ketchup. The day that I was declared the Gross Food Eating Champion of All Time, I ate my entire orange peel. That was actually really disgusting and there was no way the boys could compete with that. We quit having the contests after that, partially because it took up too much of our recess when we actually ate all of the food on our tray.

I have always gotten along way better with guys than I do with girls. We just share more of the same interests: sports, climbing trees, arm wrestling, video games. I still like all that stuff. Anyway, most of my friends in school were and still are guys. I actually have about 10 female friends right now, and that's kind of weird for me. I have about thirty male friends. Anyway, in fourth or fifth grade, the guys started having suspicions about if I was actually a girl. This was based on the fact that they had never seen me cry. I always just laughed whenever I got hurt, and I still do actually. So they decided that if they could make me cry, they would believe that I was a girl. I was, and still am, very competitive. I'm really tough and I wasn't about to let them make me cry, no matter what. And believe me, most guys would have been crying. At one point, they almost broke my thumb. I actually believed that they were going to break my thumb, since they practically pulled it back until it touched my wrist. It hurt really bad, but I didn't cry.  A different time, we were wrestling outside on the pavement and one of them slammed me flat on my back on the pavement and knocked the wind out of me. He felt really bad and it hurt but I didn't cry. I guess they just quit trying at some point and started believing me that I was just a really tough girl. Of course, none of the teachers ever saw any of this stuff happening. I was really little in elementary school, leading to nicknames such as Small Fry and Little J. I was also really strong. When I was in third or fourth grade, I started doing 10 push-ups every day. I got behind for a little while, but I kept track and I made them all up. One night, I did 200 something push-ups. My mom was a little worried, I think. She told me that I didn't have to do them all at once, and I could spread them out over a few days, or a week or something. She didn't want to discourage me from exercising, but I was about 10 years old. I didn't mind, I did my 200+ push-ups in one night. It took me about two hours. I still love exercising. Now I hacky sack for about 4 hours a day, at least when I'm not sick.

I don't think I've ever cried from pain. Like I mentioned earlier, I always just laugh. The more pain I'm in, the more I laugh. I punched a brick wall once while hacky sacking, don't ask how, I'm not sure. My knuckles were bleeding and I laughed so hard, then kept hacky sacking. I tried to ollie once on my friend's skateboard while I was wearing flip flops. This was stupid for two reasons. First, I had given up learning to skateboard about five years earlier because I couldn't even learn the most basic trick, an ollie. Second, when ollying, you should wear shoes that have some grip on them, because you slide your foot up on the skateboard and turn it sideways to get in the air (or something). My friend was determined he could teach me to olly, and I was wearing flip flops because we were going white water rafting and killing time before that started. I did everything exactly the way I was supposed to, and I probably would have successfully ollied, if I had been wearing shoes. I slid my foot up and sideways, and my flip flop slipped when I turned my foot sideways and my toes scraped against the grip tape. For those of you who don't know, grip tape is kind of like super coarse sandpaper. It's the stuff on the top of a skateboard. So I basically sanded my toes. They were sliced open and I was dripping blood everywhere, but I was laughing so hard. I managed to get a bandaid and then I wrapped the wound with duct tape after having it bandaged, because that way the water wouldn't soak in. Then I went white water rafting, and it was a blast. My best friend broke her foot though, so she didn't have quite as much fun.

This has been a chaotic jaunt down memory lane, brought to you by the letter J. Thank you for flying with me, and please put your seats in the upright position. Single file line, please.

Never run with scissors

This post is not about running with scissors. However, it is about scissors. Now that that's clarified, I'll tell you my two true stories about things that I did involving scissors as a child.

Super Scary Scissors Story 1:
I think that I was two or three years old and this is my earliest memory ever. I was at church, and all of us kids had gone upstairs for our special children's church. I was the youngest and somehow an adult thought that it was a good idea to let a toddler try to cut paper with a pair of scissors all by herself. I was a pretty smart kid, and I had seen people use scissors before, so I knew what they did: they cut paper. In my young brain, scissors were magical devices that only cut paper and nothing else that might get in their way. Armed with this knowledge, I proceeded to cut my piece of paper. It was a normal sized piece of paper and I had little child sized hands so it was somewhat difficult to hold, but I managed to get a good grip on it finally. This is what happened.

In reality, I only cut one of my fingers, but it was bleeding immensely and the adult who let me use scissors somehow managed to look surprised by the fact that large amounts of blood were coming out of my finger. I'm not sure what was worse, the fact that I was in a ton of pain, the realization that scissors aren't magic at all and are in fact evil, or the fact that the pretty white paper I was trying to cut never got cut and instead ending up covered in my blood spatters. It was a pretty deep cut, but I got a bandaid and my mom yelled at the horrible grownup who let me use evil scissors, and today I still have all ten fingers. I even use scissors from time to time :)

Super Scary Scissors Story 2:
I was in kindergarten when this story took place. I was sitting at the kitchen table doing whatever homework I was supposed to be doing as a kindergartener, probably coloring or something. I was bored, and there was a pair of scissors on the table. Having overcome my fear of evil scissors, I picked them up and decided to cut my hair. I later realized that this was not a good idea.

I got my first big kid haircut after that. They had to cut it pretty short, and the lady didn't have any magazines with pictures of kid's hairstyles, so I got to pick a grownup hairstyle. My hair ended up kind of like this.

(That's not an actual picture of me)

Except for that it actually looked more like this.

(Also not me)

Now that I'm an adult, I can use scissors.