Happiness is... Re-imagining Dr. Seuss!

I honestly never thought of the book like this. I believe that this is the way it was meant to be viewed. Dr. Seuss was supposed to be different and imaginative and anti-main stream. As a kid, the same boring main stream people read the books to you... You don't really get the true message of this book that way. Like, sure, they say the words, but you know that they are the ones who just want you to be like everyone else. But  seeing it like this really made me realize just how wrong that was.

This video is so inspiring to me! It really makes me feel like my dreams can come true! Like I can be who I want to be and dress how I want to dress and go where I want to go!

Happiness Project 2012

It's been a while! Nearly a year!

I have decided to dedicate this blog to my Happiness Project!

The Happiness Project

I have tried a few times to start my Happiness Project, based on Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, and even got a group together, but each time things happened which made me put it on hold. Usually, it was moving (I moved quite a few times in the past few years. It was basically so much that as soon as I got all the way unpacked, I'd have to start packing again). I am now pretty securely moved into my father's house, and I hopefully won't be forced to move for a long time! Being settled somewhere is going to be so very nice!

I got my little group together again, and even added a few new faces, and now we are ready to start our Happiness Projects! We started a little late, so we're just going to rush through January.

I have been super motivated since starting! I finished unpacking at my dad's house, got it all clean and decorated, started my back exercises again, started learning to cook again, started being more responsible at work, and started some new classes!

I'm going to post my progress, notes, and inspiration here as I work on my Happiness Project!

Of Car Accidents and Gluten

Wow. Our lives are just so interesting all the time.

Just a week ago, I got a lumbar epidural for my ruptured disc I received from a car accident back in June. This morning, my boyfriend got in an accident. We now have no car because my dad's car just got repossessed so he took the one I had been driving, and now this. Thank goodness I don't have class this week. That gives us a little more time to figure things out. And thank god I wasn't in the car! That would have screwed up my back even more, not to mention how much more complicated my case would have become! Can't we just catch a break sometime?

I can't wait to go buy myself something
like this once I get my paycheck!

In other news, I have decided that, now that I finally have health insurance, I'm going to try to get officially diagnosed with Celiac. I'm certain I have it, as my mom has it. I display the same symptoms, but to a smaller scale. I went off gluten for a year and a half to try to avoid such a fate myself, but in order for them to diagnose me, I have to actually be eating gluten. So as of Sunday, I have been eating gluten! That first purchase was hard! I felt like I was buying drugs or some other illegal contraband.

"I'm not ready, I'm not ready!" I cried! "I can't do it!"

My boyfriend bought it for me. He held it in front of my face until I told myself to "just do it," and took a big bite. Since then, I've almost been acting like a drug addict. I haven't told anyone at work yet, so when someone brought a bunch of pastries for everyone to share, I snagged a ton and hid them in a drawer, scarfing them down ravenously every chance I got. I've calmed down a bit, now that it's been a few days, but I still can't wait to go eat everything I haven't been able to for so long! I feel so free!!

I saw the scariest thing last night...

And it kept me up until 4:30 this morning.

Here it is: "Where The Wild Things Are child actor Max Records stars in Ruairi Robinson’s Blinky™ — a sci-fi short about robot helper who experiences a less-than-helpful malfunction," as described by thedailywhat.

Blinky™ from Ruairi Robinson on Vimeo.

I saw the video at around 6:30 last night, thinking I was going to take a shower after I finished. Oh no; I spent the next couple of hours just trying to get it off my mind. It didn't work. I finally had to shower because my boyfriend would be getting off work soon and picking me up. Then entire time I was in the shower, I was freaking out, checking behind the curtain every minute or so, and jumping every time the steam caused the curtain to so much as twitch. And so began my night of terror.

I somehow survived the shower and shortly after, my boyfriend came to get me. I showed him a couple of nice videos I'd watched that evening, and then he scrolled down to that and as he was scrolling past it, I commented that it was so scary and I was really freaked out. He of course had to watch it, then. I ran into my room, saying I would not watch it again, just trying to block it out with music and picking up the nearest manga to distract me.

He finished watching it, and of course began asking me to "play with him" and counting down all night. I kept telling him to stop, saying that I wanted to try to forget it, not remember it for the rest of my life. We went back to his house and watched some stuff on Netflix to try to get it off my mind, but as soon as the lights were out, I started freaking out again. I tried to calm myself down, reminding myself that it wasn't real and that Josh could kick its ass anyways, but that didn't matter. The movie kept flashing into my mind, and even Josh's comforting embrace couldn't relax me.

I decided I was staying up all night; there was absolutely no way I could sleep. Josh went to bed, but I stayed up watching some anime and then The Prince of Persia. I had to go to the bathroom really badly, but I was petrified to go out into the hall by myself, and I wasn't about to wake Josh up to walk me to the bathroom. That movie ended and I turned on The Princess and the Frog. That made me feel a little better, along with going on tumblr a bit, so I was finally able to force myself to go to the bathroom and lay down to sleep with the happy movie playing in the background.

I got two hours of sleep. They really should put disclaimers on these things. I mean, I know I'm a little bit chicken, but still! That was just terrifying! Agh just thinking of him counting down makes me shiver! All I know is that my boyfriend had better knock it off today!

And to end on a lighter note- look at this cute video from Chatroulette! I'm sure this made her week!

Ants.

I hate ants. I always have. In junior high at lunch one day, I was sitting on the blacktop curb with my friend talking, and at the end of lunch we looked down (we'd been staring up at the mountain/hill the whole time) and found we were covered in ants. It took me an hour to brush them out of my hair. I didn't even go to class.


And we didn't even know until we looked down! You don't feel them at all! And they aren't like other insects... I dislike spiders, yes, but generally there's only one of them at a time. Ants just keep coming and coming in thousands!


My great irrational fear is that they will cover me and get inside my orifices (my mouth, nose, ears, and other places) and eat me from the inside. That scene in the latest Indiana Jones movie? I was screaming in the movie theater. I couldn't help it. I could not stop screaming for the entire scene, as much as I tried. If you haven't seen it, the scene is comprised of massive killer ants in the jungle coming from everywhere, covering everything, and just completely ripping through humans, tearing them apart limb from limb (here is an image gallery with screenshots of the scene). The embodiment of my greatest fear.



Yes, that is a massive swarm of ants underneath her.

Which brings me to this lovely article I read today on Cracked.com: 6 Reasons We Should Be Way More Scared Of Ants.



Like many of you, I was not previously aware of Argentine ants. This article is well worth a read.

You might be thinking, Hey, no big deal, I'll just step on them, like I do to other things that are smaller than me. They're just ants, like any other ants. But they're not. Argentine ants are special. Special and evil and powerful. They will wait for you to go to sleep, then climb on your face and bite you, (yes, that is a thing they do).They're coming for your family by way of your nightmares and they need to be stopped.

Basically, as their name indicates, these ants originated in Argentina, where they were previously kept in check by wars with other species of ants. In the past 100 years, however, they have made their way around the globe, via us, and are now messing with the ecosystems, putting several species in danger of extinction. 

Unlike other ants, they don't fight among colonies; when one colony encounters another, they just join forces. This has created a super colony in Europe that covers 3,700 miles. And that's not the worst part.

While supercolonies aren't specific to Argentine ants, Global "mega-colonies" are. In 2009, Insectes Sociaux reported that three different supercolonies -- one in America, one in Europe and one in Japan -- were actually different branches of the same colony. Scientists gathered these ants from all over the world and put them together, and whenever they got near each other, they "recognize[d] each other by the chemical composition of their cuticles" and started "rubbing antennae together."

And according to this pest control website, regular poison does not work on them! "Do not spray any repellent spray pesticides around Argentine Ants. Spraying will not kill the queens but will increase the egg laying and will only compound the problem." ;A;

I'm so freaked out! I keep imagining that I'm feeling them crawling all over me! I'm going to have nightmares for a week! We need to do something about this awful breed of ant!

It's officially spring!

It's so nice and warm outside! I wish I was out there running around, but I'm stuck working in an office.

I'm not so sure what to do with myself lately. This always happens whenever I move. I have a hard enough time trying to figure life out, being twenty-one, but adding the uncertainty of moving all the time does not help. I had just started settling into a routine before I moved, and I'd been there like four months. Now I'm all off-kilter again.

We're slowly getting things unpacked, but it's hard being as busy as we are. It's only been a week, though, so I guess it's not so bad. It's been very nice being able to just go home for lunch! I got used to that in a snap! But what's not going to be so easy to get used to is sleeping away from my boyfriend - living away from my boyfriend. We've been "living together" unofficially for more than a year! But it's too expensive for us to get a place together -- even a studio. So I'm living with my mom, and she doesn't want him sleeping over.

I need to talk to her about that. He's been taking care of me from day one, when she was never there; he stuck up to his family for me countless times when I had to live with them for a while. I understand when my brother stays over, but a couple times a month shouldn't be too much to ask. I haven't been getting restful sleep at all, and my boyfriend hasn't even been getting sleep. And what's even harder is the fact that I work all day and he works all night. It looks like I'll only be able to really see him on the weekends in the morning now.

We've been lucky for last weekend and this weekend; he's had Sunday completely off work! Like I mentioned in my last post, we went to Disneyland last weekend, and this weekend we'll be going again! I'm so thankful for that! But usually he works Saturdays and Sundays, so we'll only be able to see each other in the morning. I'm glad that he has hours, but I'm going to miss him.

I can only hope that we can make it through this next hard period in our relationship, and hopefully by next year or so, we can live together. If we've made it this far, we can make it through anything!

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As a side note, I've been hooked on this site lately: Fuck Yeah Nouns. It has the weirdest results come up for things! Just type in Harry Potter and see what comes up...

Rekindling the Flame

Disneyland, Tangled, reliving those precious first days, movies, lap-sitting, tummy kissing, cuddling, boba tea, teasing, laughing, playing, dreaming. It has been a wonderful weekend. I feel more in love than I have in a long time. <3