These days I find it mildly entertaining that as a kid growing up in a rural, speck on the map, don’t blink when you drive through ’cause you might miss it kind of town, where the majority of its population listened to either country or rap music, I was defiant in convincing myself that I liked nor loved neither.
I had my moments as a younger kid– I loved Paula Abdul as a child, which is neither here nor there but lent its hand to future rap and R&B phases. Eventually the peer pressure of older brothers, or one inparticular whom my entire childhood was spent trying to be like, took over and I vowed, “Never again. Not even if ordered.”

Country was a different, more understandable story. I didn’t even know what it really was until I was much older; all that I knew existed was stuff like Billy Ray Cyrus, who is pretty much the Chamillionaire of country.

But now, at certain times, it seems like the two forms of music that I suppressed liking the most as a kid, are the ones that I find myself listening to and reveling in the most these days: country and rap. What a combo.

It’s becoming more and more evident to me that I led a drastically different childhood than most of my peers, and that that plays an imperative role in how I perceive the world around me. Not in a better or worse way, per se, but just different.

My mom was adopted into a very restricted household that was very oppressive, so when she had my brothers and I she made sure that she raised us differently… And oh boy, did she ever! I love my mom to death, but sometimes I wonder if, where she had little or no freedom growing up, maybe she gave us too much freedom.
My brothers and I were pretty much raised on horror movies– they were our Disney. While my gradeschool friends were hustling to the theaters to see Aladdin, we were being escorted by our dad to see Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Until just recently, I never realized the correlation between being raised on horror movies and having a heightened sense of fear; I just thought it was normal to be afraid of certain things. Certain things? Okay. But everything? Even that which doesn’t even exist…?

I’m quite possibly one of the most irrationally fearful people that I know. I’m 23 years old and still afraid of the dark. Sometimes, if I’m walking alone somewhere, I feel like I’m just waiting for something horrible to happen to me. Like when you step out of a movie theater in the middle of the day and have become completely disoriented from having sat and stared at 12 feet of action and violence for the past 120 minutes– that’s my life, almost always.

I’m overly suspicious of all strangers; I think anything will give me cancer; I’m terrified of most wildlife; I will never be the first to swim in a lake, river or the ocean; Fires of any kind, contained, candle lights, and so forth make me nervous; Anytime the phone rings during the holidays I’m positive someone is calling to tell me someone else has died; I can’t sleep in a room with mirrors or dolls facing me; Wide open spaces, uhm, let’s not even go there…
It wasn’t just my mom’s allowance of horror movies that did me in, either. No, let’s not forget my dad’s parental wisdom– when I once asked him if monsters were real, he responded with, “Only if you believe in them.” What the heck kind of talk is that for a little kid? “Only if you believe in them?” Well guess what, I do!

Of course, by no means do I intend this to be a guilt trip for my parents. Being terrified of the world has it’s perks– I’m always aware of my surroundings, for example, and since I’m giving every stranger the evil eye I’ll surely never be a victim of kidnap. I’ll never lose a limb to extraterrestrial goo because I won’t stick my hands in strange, dark places. And I certainly will never drown in a lake while being pulled under by the dead body of former campground alumni because I wouldn’t be caught dead (hah!) alone at the campsite in the first place.

So, I pretty much have life cut out for me. I just thought I’d let everyone know that there is a reason why I am the most inexperienced, stubborn person you’ll ever meet– I’m just scared, that’s all!

While supply shopping for my new classes this semester I decided to do something with all the inks my mom gave me over the break. It figures the one thing I have in abundance just so happens to be the one thing we don’t have to pay for in Printmaking.

Anyway, I did some extracurricular shopping and picked up lino blocks from the student bookstore. Holy crap! I was wondering why this stuff was so cheap, and it’s now evident in my cramped wrist and throbbing fingers. I thought it’d be fun to pick up some plexiglass and do some block printing at home this weekend, but I’m gonna need a lightsaber if I want to finish cutting this print by the end of the school year. Looks like I’ll be putting in an extracurricular order to Utrecht in the near future…

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This weekend is chock full of exciting plans to see and hang out with various friends I haven’t seen nor hung out with in a long, long time. Here’s to hoping for a great semester…

I was able to enjoy my perfect curls for a grand total of one hour today before being blasted by hail during an entire walk home from the market. The sad part is that I never saw it coming– one minute the sky was blue, there were some clouds and lots of sunshine, the next I was hit with gusts of wind so hard that I got knocked into a fence. I’m actually amazed I didn’t fall flat on my ass. The wind also made it impossible to make use of my cheap-o umbrella, so I got to hide behind a hedge and watch the traffic go by until it all went away. When I got home my curls were… Well, anything but, and my bangs were in a borderline goth state that Lydia Dietz would envy.