THERE ARE PEOPLE LIKE ME!

For as long as I can remember, I have had this weird thing where I think that inanimate objects have feelings and I have the potential to hurt those feelings. I thought that I was the only person in the world who felt this way about inanimate objects, but I was reading old posts of one of my favorite blogs, Hyperbole And A Half, and discovered that Allie Brosh herself also has this issue along with many of her commenters! I no longer felt so alone in the world.

I told my mom about Allie's post (my mom also really enjoys Hyperbole And A Half), and she told me a story about a woman who she used to see shop in a grocery store in her hometown who would only buy dented cans, boxes and other damaged items because other people had rejected them, and she felt bad for them. At this point I REALLY began feeling sane again because for one, I don't binge buy dented cans to make them feel better and for two, my disorder mostly associates to stuffed animals, clearance movies, old trinkets in my room, and pillows and blankets. Okay.. that last part made me start questioning my sanity again.

When I was born, my mom made me this baby blanket that I called "Blanket", and my grandmother made me a pillow that I called "Pillow". I was a real creative kid, I know. I carried Blanket and Pillow with me literally everywhere I went. If mom or dad took me to the grocery store, Blanket and Pillow came with. If they took me to the gas station, Blanket and Pillow came with. Going for a walk? I couldn't forget Blanket and Pillow. In fact, I drug them around with me so much that one day, Pillow just disintegrated. He (Pillow and Blanket were both male... I wonder what THAT means), just one day vanished into thin air and I never saw him again. I actually made a little pillow disintegrate before the age of four. What did you do with your life by that age?

This is me at a young age chewing on a bear's face. Pillow is kicking it in the corner and Blanket is keeping me nice and warm while I chew on the bear face. 

Here I am using Blanket as a cape. I am also wearing dog face ear muffs and holding a licorice string. I remember parts of this day and I remember being told to "calm down" multiple times.

My mom actually reconstructed Pillow for me to make Pillow 2 for Christmas one year.

This is Pillow 2. It looks just like Pillow! Jeez oh man, my mom is good. 

Blanket was still going pretty strong at this point. None the less, within two years Blanket began falling apart. I did some shoddy sewing jobs on Blanket, but it was no use... he was also falling apart. My mom tried to help by suggesting we make another blanket to wrap around Blanket with a zipper so any time I missed Blanket I could just unzip the less than satisfactory blanket that was suffocating my real Blanket and he would technically always be with me. My mom only brought this up two times because each time it sent me into a psychotic fit and I would spent hours crying holding Blanket telling him I wouldn't let them tear us appart.

I have managed to make him last until now, but he's very fragile.

See all of the falling apart-ness of Blanket. You can see his guts. I'm not pleased about it. There's also a hole in the middle. I'm afraid that if I sleep with him every night he will fall apart even more. I think he understands this and knows that I can not love him constantly.

Honestly, I think I would have gotten over my quirk at some point in my childhood, but the movie Toy Story and my mom prevented that. When my mom took me to Disneyland, I found large stuffed animals of Woody, Buzz, Jesse and Bullseye that of course my mom had to buy me. One day, we returned to the hotel room and the Toy Story stuffed animals along with my stuffed animal gorilla George (who still travels with me everywhere I go) were in different positions like they had been playing all day long. My eight year old heart fell out my butt. My toys came to life and played with each other while I wasn't there which meant they were fully capable of understanding when I rejected them! After this point in my life I made every effort to be holding every stuffed animal that I owned and Pillow and Blanket while I slept because they might be sad if I neglected them.


Later on, my mom informed me that she asked the Housekeeper at the hotel to move the stuffed animals when she came to clean the room. I think part of me though still believed my stuffed animals feel emotions and to this day I struggle to get rid of stuffed animals or little pieces of crap I've collected throughout the years.

Here I am with Blanket, Pillow and George. 

I blame Toy Story and my mom if I am every featured on that show hoarders.

Simple Grammar Mistakes Make Me Want To Slap Your Mother

I was going to write about cats today, but someone commented on my Facebook status, and I needed to share it with you all and then discuss the mess of a comment this was.

Jewel Christensen

I kind of like when it's rainy and cold out side and I'm home alone because I can wear just the most ridiculous things. They are warm and no one is around to judge me. =]

33 minutes ago ·  ·  · 

• • 
    

    Benjamin Gerald Wollschlager Y u home alone? You're way to cute 4 that
    

    14 minutes ago · 
  • 
    

    Jewel Christensen Does it count as being home alone if I talk to myself? ha.. just kidding.. or am I?
    

    about a minute ago · 

After reading Mr. Wollschlager's comment I presumed to rock back and forth on the floor, crying in the the fetal position while hyperventilating. There are two reasons this comment sent me into a state of mental shock and panic, and I will lay them out for you now.

Hitting On Someone Via Facebook Status Is Creepy:

For all of you fellas who read my blog, I just want to tell you right now that FACEBOOK IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE PLACE TO INITIATE FLIRTING..... especially if you do not know the person, which is the case with Mr. Wollschlager and myself. If you do know the person, occasional flirty comments are fine, but initiating conversation in this manner tells me, "Hello, my penis is desperate for attention and I would like you to be his friend." Also, hitting on a girl via their Facebook status (at least for me) tells them you assume she is a big pile of slut bag. Let's be real, what girl with any bit of self respect will just give her number to a guy who hits on her through her Facebook status. In all honesty though.. this isn't my biggest problem with the comment, because I know how to get rid of creepy guys (as you can see with my comment... feigning schizophrenia works quite nicely).

If You Are Old Enough to Have a Social Networking Site, You Are Old Enough to Use Proper Grammar:

Okay. I am not going to lie. I make small grammar mistakes. I'm pretty sure that unless you are my speech and debate coach from high school or a college professor who is supposed to know proper grammar, it's fairly common to make simple grammar errors. HOWEVER, one of my biggest pet peeves in the whole wide freaking world is when people misspell words on purpose. The words "why" and "you" consist of three letters. If you are too lazy to write those little words out then I think you need to examine your life closely. The same goes for replacing words with numbers. Numbers are for counting. Letters are for spelling.

Also, "the" is spelled t-h-e, not t-h-a. Little, not lil, and don't be afraid of the -g at the end of progressive verbs (going, seeing, etc.), they will not hurt you. I don't care if you are white, black, asian, hispanic or purple, the words are spelled the same no matter how you say them, and you look like a jack ass when you spell them like you have "swagger". Especially if you are a white girl from the north west who owns more than three pairs of cowboy boots. 

Now, with all of these shortened words, my commenter actually spelled out "you're" and used the proper word! I think this is where my head exploded. For those of you who are unaware, there is "your" and "you're", and each has a distinct meaning. My commenter lost it again though with "to" when it should have been "too". There is also "two". Just save the world and your college professors some time, and learn that each of these has a distinct meaning too. Finally, the biggy: their, there, and they're. Three. Distinct. Meanings. LEARN THEM. 

Okay. I just had to get that out there and vent about the lack of basic grammar skills on the internet now-a-days. I apologize if you were really looking forward to reading about cats, but I don't know how you would have known I was going to be writing about cats because I didn't tell you, and you should probably put your mind reading tools to better use. But I do promise I will write about cats in the near future. Possibly tomorrow... we shall see.

PS: Just because I wrote about grammar does not mean I want to be corrected on my grammar or to have people tell me that my comma is in the wrong spot. I'm not a grammar expert, but the things that usually drive me nuts are things that we as human beings learned about in the second grade or so and aren't super complicated. Thanks guys you all rock and I know your grammar won't disappoint me!

This Is A Post For My Friend Trevor

     My friend Trevor's birthday was yesterday and he was the person who inspired me to start a blog so I decided to make him this!

     It's a cake! So Happy Birthday Trevor! I hope you like your cake. I decided to make it pink because who doesn't like a pink cake?! 

     Okay, I will actually do another post today though, I just wanted to do this. 

If I Told You All That I Wrote This In My Underwear, Would You Still Feign Interest?

     I'm still struggling with my insomnia like no other. Part of my problem right now though is that I have terrible joint pain, and my knees just like to be all like, "Fuck you Jewel, we don't want you to sleep, we want to to stay awake until five in the morning and suffer until you go insane. MUAHAHAHAH!" That was this morning.

     I literally tried everything to make myself go to sleep. I tried listening to soothing music. I drank warm milk... which was just disgusting and reminded me why I don't drink milk in the first place. I downloaded an app on my iPod called SleepPillow that plays white noise, and I tried listening to the crackle, crackle of a fire because all of the water ones just made me have to pee, but no. All my body could think about was the radiating pain from my knees and the fact that earlier in the day when I was googling "how to be an awesome blogger" and didn't have blogger typed out, my search bar assumed I was going to type either, "ninja", "waitress", "person", or "aunt". I do kind of want to be all of those things at an awesome level, but for a moment let's talk about being an awesome blogger.

     So, around four this morning I decided to google how to be an awesome blogger, and of course many things came up. One of the most common things people said was to encourage all of my readers to subscribe to my blog. I've always felt like I would be such a piece of shit for "encouraging" people to subscribe to my blog. So, I think I'm just going to say, if you enjoy what you read and feel the urge to receive updates when I write new things, you should subscribe! But do this upon your own volition and not upon my encouragement. I think if I only got subscribers because of my encouragement my insomnia would just become more severe. 

     They also said that you should be providing some kind of service to your readers. Well I just want to apologize right now because I am most definitely not providing any kind of service to my readers. At most I am distracting people from work/ summer school, keeping people from playing outside (except when I encourage people to go climb shit... GO!), and I don't have a third point.... oh! I don't give away stuff. If you ever expect to get free shit from my blog, I must destroy your hopes and dreams right now and tell you that my blog will never give you free shit. I'm sorry.

     After reading all of these "How To" articles on being an awesome blogger, I realized that they did not know what kind of awesome blogger I want to be. Then again, neither do I. I suppose I am still developing my "blogger" style and who I want to be known as on the inter-web. BUUUT, what I do know is people are reading this blog and I would love some feedback via comments. If you don't want to leave a comment there are those little boxes that you can check if you find what I have written to be funny, interesting, or cool. YAAAAY! 

     This doesn't feel like a proper ending to a blog post... how about I tell you all how I ended up getting some sleep. My doctor prescribed some emergency Lortab for my joint pain in bad situations when I can't sleep and walk etc., so I decided to take some of that. Before I fell asleep though, I was definitely high and watching Ghost Hunters. Best. Morning. Ever. Okay, now you all know that I am a dork and I am wondering if I should be sharing my love of Ghost Hunters... but I don't feel like deleting that so... let's just see how this goes.

     Maybe I'll do a real post later today. 

The Guys Who Pronounce It Douché

     During my first semester in college, I discovered a specific breed of college goer whom I like to call "The Guys Who Pronounce It Douché". So who is the guy who pronounces it douché? This is the name I have given to that uber pretentious guy that is in at least one of your classes. For me it was intro to film.
     Spotting the guy who pronounces it douché is honestly quite easy. He usually tries to make himself look like he just rolled out of bed,

and after an hour and a half of tugging and teasing he'll spend another two hours trying to look like he just picked up the first twelve things that were lying on the floor and layered them in a haphazard manner.

He also probably wears non-prescription glasses because they make him seem intellectual and picked up smoking within the first week of school to make himself seem like much more than an intellectual.

Now he's an intellectual bad boy that reeks of tobacco and whatever shitty cologne he stole from his dad before heading to college. The Guy Who Pronounces It Douché usually also has one or two friends who are about two steps away from being Guys Who Pronounce It Douché, but they aren't quite there yet and are still able to have real conversations without sounding like a complete douche (and that is douche... not douché).

Oh, and don't forget the tattoo of Moliere on his bicep... classic.

     So what is there to be done about The Guy Who Pronounces It Douché? Not much. I think awareness is really important. So the purpose of this post is mostly to spread the word about The Guys Who Pronounce It Douché. Don't be fooled. They're hiding in your classes, they're playing shitty acoustic guitar in your University Center, and they're growing at a rapid amount. Beware.

LOOK AT MY DOG'S FACE!

     I hate my current sleep schedule. Has anyone noticed that all of my posts this week have been being posted around one or two in the morning? That's because I am virtually nocturnal right now. I don't know what it is about summer, but once I'm out of school something in me says, "you don't need to go to bed, you don't have class in the morning! YAAAAAAAAAAY!" And then I'm staying up until three or four in the morning and not getting out of bed until three or four in the afternoon (yes... I can sleep for twelve hours.. I don't know why and neither do doctors).
     So here I am tonight. Normally I wouldn't really care because I like having some alone-time when it's dark outside... something about being alone when it's dark outside, but not actually being alone is nice. That way I know if a scary rapist or some rabid zombie or a dinosaur got loose, my mom or dad could take care of it. Plus I always have my dog, Ralphy, with me and he's a boss. He might be slow, but you wouldn't want to mess with him in a dark ally. But tonight... well this morning because it's no longer night... goddamn it. Okay... this is what I am trying to say. At six twenty in the AM I will be donating plasma to get money. Phew. That was hard. My ADD goes crazy around two in the morning.

See what I mean... ADD.

     SIX IN THE MORNING!!!! This is the second time that I have had to sign up for a six AM slot to donate. The first time I just didn't go to sleep before hand. It seemed to work fine. Then I just came home afterward and slept until one in the afternoon. I think I'm just going to do that again. The issue is that it's really boring at two AM. Even my dog is being boring. He is currently laying on my bed (more of it than me) attempting to SLEEP. What the hell dog? I bought you to entertain me. ENTERTAIN ME DAMN IT. He doesn't read... so this pointless.
     LOOK AT MY DOG!!!

Don't be fooled by those sweet eyes and his calm face, he's a monster.

I don't know if he actually likes when I play with his face. For arguments sake, let's say he does.

He likes to be held. But I'm over it... get off me NOW.

     So here's my goal for today: I am going to stay awake until I go donate, BUUUUT instead of returning to my warm bed that loves me and wants to hold me, I am going to force my eyes to stay open and possibly do some palates or some stretching. Maybe I will clean my car. Who knows! The day has so many possibilities when it begins before 3PM! So until I get in the shower to go donate plasma and save lives before 7AM, I am going to draw you guys some pictures. 

     UPDATE: Ralphy got off my bed and I no longer feel like I will soon be crushed by my dog. Also... I'm considering sleeping for an hour.. This is a tough choice. I'll let you know how it goes later on in this day.

Haunted House

     Last May, my friends and I used to frequent our Friday evenings in our friend Nick's back yard with his bon fire pit, roasting marshmallows, flirting with the cute foreign exchange students, telling stories and being teenagers. It seemed like every time we all got together for a bon fire, we always ended up discussing a haunted house that was about five miles away from Nick's house and we would debate whether or not we should go explore it or not. After many Fridays of chickening out, we finally gathered up enough courage to go take a look.

     I was one of only a few of the group who had not already been to the supposedly haunted house yet, but those who had were absolutely terrified of it. My best friend Nicole said that you can see things moving around in the windows and hear weird noises coming from the building. The others backed her up. I, being absolutely intrigued by ghosts, was PUMPED (I'm probably the girl that either would a) be killed in a horror movie for going to investigate a noise or b) be the fucking boss of kicking ghost ass).

     We went into Nick's garage and dug around for some ghost hunting gear and found some flashlights and... well just a bunch of flashlights. Oh, and Sandy's (the hungarian exchange student) camera. I guess I couldn't expect to be up to par with TAPS from Ghost Hunters on SciFi (or however the hell they spell it now... losers), but I felt we were doing pretty well.
     After gathering our ghost hunting materials and bundling up in sweatshirts because spring nights in Montana are pretty frickin' cold, we piled into two cars and started driving to the house. Along the way I kept asking if houses were the house we were looking for, but Nick assured me that this house was the scariest damn house I will have ever seen in my life. I was skeptical... until I saw the house.

My soul peed its pants.
     We got out of the cars, but about a third of the group chickened out on the spot. We still had a good six people though to go exploring. I was ready. I wanted to see some ghosts. I wanted to see if this was just an old, creepy house, or if it was really and truly haunted.
     Surrounding the house were tall trees that looked like they hadn't had leaves on them in almost half a century. The grass was up to my belly button, crickets were chirping, and as it turned out only about half of the flash lights we brought worked. We decided to all hold hands as we walked towards the house because only two of us weren't really "afraid" of walking towards the house of death and doom.

     We had to walk around to the back side of the house because the front was not accessible due to extreme rotting of the front steps and such. I had to admit, the place was even creepier up close. It's not a place I would choose to hang out at for my birthday or a bar mitzvah. While we walked around the side of the rather large house, we noticed that all of the windows were broken out. When you shine the flashlight in the windows, the house seemed alive... it was not natural.
     People were starting to feel on edge and as we approached the back there was a large amount of red paint smeared across the wall that in all honesty resembled blood. My friend Cody and I certainly did not let the opportunity to make our friends more scared go by.

     While we were standing in the grass gathering up the courage to go into the house, something horrifying happened...

Rapture Vs. Birthday

     As many of you are aware, this past Saturday was supposed to mark the beginning of the rapture. This past Saturday was also my nineteenth birthday... so that rocked. I actually hadn't begun hearing about the rapture madness until two or three days before when I was watching Chelsea Lately and she began discussing the subject. According to Harold Camping, the man who made the prediction, only 3% of the world's population would have been taken to heaven on my birthday and the rest of the world's population would spend five months suffering through plague and earthquakes and terror and eventually go to hell. I have always been extremely skeptical about these "end of the world" theories, but there's always that little voice in the back of my head that says, "what would happen if shit really went down?" So these are my interpretations of my birthday vs. The Rapture.

Nothing Actually Happens And Life Goes On As Expected (Most Likely)

5:59...

6:00...

6:01...

Rapture Happens and I Convince Jesus To Take Me To Heaven

Rapture happens, I attempt to persuade Jesus into postponing, but Kanye West Interrupts me. 

     

The Cough Syrup

     Sometime this March I came down with a terrible case of Sinusitis and Laryngitis at the same time... life rocked. Even though I was slowly dying from my ailments, I was determined to go to my classes. I called my doctor and asked if I could come in and get something to help me make it through the day.

     I drove to her office an hour before my first class started, and she took a look at me and prescribed some super-make-you-feel-better-immediately cough syrup that would take care of most of my symptoms. However, she also told me that due to my smaller stature and the fact that I had not been eating properly while being sick, the cough syrup might cause some interesting side-effects. I wasn't worried though. I had never really experienced bad reactions to medicine before and I just wanted to go to class.

     I went to the pharmacy, got the super-duper cough syrup, took the prescribed amount, and drove to the University.

     I was slightly early for my first class and decided to go grab a coffee. While I was standing in line, I began to feel kind of light-headed,

 but I just figured it would go away once I drank some coffee.
     I am usually a pro at ordering coffee, however when I approached the counter on this particular day, my mouth could not form proper words.

Somehow I got the coffee I wanted and began wandering around the open, grassy area of my college. I was lost in a circle and literally could not find my building (it is visible from EVERY point of the open area).

 I ended up e-mailing my professor from my cell phone telling him I was having a bad reaction to some cough syrup and would not make it to class. I don't think everything was spelled correctly because he never looked at me the same after that day.
     While I was wandering and drinking a coffee I tried thinking what I needed to do. I knew that I had sociology and ballet and they were in the general same direction...

 so I started walking.

     I don't exactly know how, but I ended up in the business building where my next class was. I looked at my cell phone and saw that I still had an hour before the class started.

 I slowly worked my way to the lower level of the building

taking one stair at a time

 until finally I made it to the bottom.

Most buildings have some kind of lounge area, so I began searching for a big room with couches and people sleeping since that's what the lounge in my building looked like. I came across a room with some awkward space age looking chairs with people sitting with their computers.

I was not convinced that this was a real lounge because it did not look like the one in my building. I decided to ask a young man in a suit if this was the lounge, but I still was not forming coherent words and said something along the lines of, "Eees lonj?"

    After figuring out that this was indeed a lounge, (just not as superior as the one in my building with lazy boy couches and coffee tables) I collapsed in a chair... or five chairs and began staring off into space.

     I felt like I had been lying on the chairs for about an hour but it had really only been five minutes. I decided to change things up a bit and sit up while staring because lying down made me feel like I was floating, and that made me feel like my life wasn't going in a solid direction... I don't know, I was tripping on cough syrup.
     Something about sitting up caused this little voice in the back of my head to begin talking to me. The voice told me that if I studied my spanish at that exact moment in time, I would inevitably be the best spanish speaker in the world.

     I whipped out my text book and began trying to understand adverbial clauses and when to use the subjunctive or the imperative. I believe it is this study session that inevitably lead to my future struggles with this subject in spanish grammar to this day.
     It was eventually fifteen minutes before my class started and I worked my way upstairs to prepare myself to take notes for an hour in Sociology. However, when I ran into the guy I sat next to, he informed me it was a test day.
     After staring at him for quite some time and then explaining the cough syrup situation, he suggested asking my professor if I could take the test at another time. I began searching for my professor.

     When I found her I began explaining in great detail and with large words that my mouth was not at the capacity to pronounce at that moment in time.

She told me that if I wanted to take the test on another day I would need a doctor's note and I just didn't want to go back to the doctor again because the last time I did she made me drunk. So I decided to take the test.

     I got a 96%.