Are You Surreal?

The struggle is surreal.

Since graduating high school I have never not been working, not unless I was on vacation or sick. So the past couple weeks have been pretty bizarre. There was a time for wallowing and feeling oh-so-sorry for myself, but I'm fortunately past that now. Liar. Okay, so I'm mostly past it. 

The resume has been updated, the portfolio polished, and applications submitted. There have even been a couple nibbles so far. I had an interview just a couple days ago and it lasted ONE HOUR. This guy had so many questions, some of them pretty bizarre, but I can now safely say I prefer a longer, detailed interview to one where you're shuffled in and out before you can get your bearings. 

Here's just one of the questions I was asked: 

Let's say your shot with a shrink ray and thrown into a blender... What do you do? 

Uh... was this a scenario in Antman? Is there anything else in the blender I could climb out on? Like a banana??

Hmmm... No.

Okay... I would probably stand on one of the blades so that when the blender is switched on I'd be jettisoned out the top... Will that work?

Actually, I don't know why I asked that... I read somewhere that they ask that in interviews at Google... 

I felt great about the interview, but the tricky part is that I'm not sure if this job is what I need right now. Like, I know I need a job ASAP, but I also need to find something close-ish to home that will pay the bills and be flexible enough to let me finish school, which is still at least one year away. Oi. This job would definitely pay the bills, but it's a full time position and I would potentially be working in Lindon. That's in Utah County, folks. Far away from home and not conducive for commuting to school and back within a reasonable time frame. 

BUT... the job is a straight-up design position. No more glorified receptionist work for me, thanks. No more promises of maybe using my design skills to take on other projects. If I get the job, my official title would be Lauren Waters: Graphic Designer. Scary. But we'll see if the company even makes me an offer. If I don't get the job, I think it would be due to my lack of professional experience. I tried to represent myself and my work as effectively as possible, but even if the answer is No I think it would be more of a Not right now instead of a Never gonna happen.  

We'll see, we'll see, we'll see... 

For now I guess I need to get comfortable with the possibility of jumping into an honest-to-goodness design job ahead of schedule. So much ground left to cover, but if I wait until I feel I'm ready I may wait myself into just another job at just another company. And while waiting often feels safe and familiar, I'm getting tired of waiting.

The Conjuring 2

About 11 hours and 50 minutes ago I saw The Conjuring 2 with my sisters and brother-in-law. This was at 4:00 pm, Friday which would make the current hour 3:10 am, Saturday. I fell asleep pretty easily a few hours ago, but details of the movie have floated back to the surface of my consciousness and now I’m addressing you from the relative safety of my own bed (AM I SAFE??) in hopes I can overcome these spectral visions and drift back to sleep. Or wait for daylight. Whichever comes first.

Don’t ask me why, but my siblings and I have been on a bit of a scary movie kick lately. Not the grossly violent bloodbath kind - the eerily suspenseful, mysterious kind. They’re fun, provided you’re not keen on getting a full night’s sleep for a few days afterward. We watched the first Conjuring movie a few months back and it scared us so miserably we couldn’t wait to see the second. I don’t understand, either.

Even though I'm clearly paying for it now, watching a scary movie in a crowded theater is exciting. You gasp and shriek in unison with each terrifying scene and for the rest of the movie you’re anticipating the horrors waiting around each darkened corner. SO MANY DARK CORNERS. And while you wait, you giggle. You sit there giggling because you know something’s gonna happen and after it’s happened and you’ve jumped 3 feet out of your seat and overturned the popcorn bucket sitting in your lap, you laugh. You laugh right out loud at yourself for being so scared. You laugh at the woman in the third row who manages to scream a little louder than everyone else. You laugh at the grown man gasping behind you. You laugh at the thought of dozens of adults sitting in a dark room waiting for what is essentially the boogeyman. It’s more funny than most comedies, really. 

Except that comedies usually don’t keep you up at night. There’s nothing funny about recalling the details of a horror film while sitting alone in a dark bedroom. Demons disguised as nuns? Possessed children speaking in tongues? Furniture getting thrown around by some unseen (and extremely unhappy) entity? Turns out these things scare me a lot more now than they did 12 hours ago.

As spooked as I am this very moment - and I’m SPOOKED - The Conjuring 2 is no match for the last horror movie I saw in theaters. That honor goes to The Ring. I remember seeing it with a couple of high school friends and it was so fetching scary we fought over who would have to sit alone in the back seat of the car on the way home. I lost... Thanks, guys… When I got home I did what any mature teenager would do - I slept on my parents’ bedroom floor that night and every night for about a week until I graduated to the living room couch. 

So while The Conjuring 2 did not linger quite as much as The Ring, I kinda wish I was asleep on my parents’ bedroom floor right about now. Because I just don't think my roommates would be as accommodating. 

POSTSCRIPT: There was a silver lining I failed to mention. For some reason Patrick Wilson picked up a guitar and sang “Fools Rush In" about 3/4 into the movie. It was nice. And it made me wonder, why doesn’t he sing in ALL his movies?? Like, if they can make it work in something like The Conjuring, then surely it could work in basically ever other movie he’s been in. 

Patrick Wilson: Singing Ghost Buster

Default

If something bothers me to the point of anxiety (as things often do), I usually default to one of two different modes. The first is Project Mode during which I will simply smother the anxiety by employing my energies elsewhere. I'm sorry, brain. I can't deal with this right now so I'm going to distract you with a project. It's always easier to dismiss the big problems I can't solve and find the little ones I can. And so the bigger the worry, the cleaner my bedroom. My bedroom is immaculate.

The second default is Fix-It Mode, where instead of avoiding a problem I will dive right in and obsess over a solution. After all, dissecting a problem and examining all its bits and pieces will surely help me fix it, right? I can fix it! Wrong. Because for every [insert problem here] I try to fix, I usually find 5 more. And some things just can't be fixed by sheer willpower.

These practices of total avoidance or immersion have served me well (or not so well) in the past, but they've been a bit less effective lately.

So what's happened lately? Nothing, really. I'm shouldering many of the same worries I've carried for a while, they're just a bit heavier. Most of these worries revolve around an elusive sense of self/purpose. While others seem to be settling into a comfortable routine, I have this frantic feeling of just getting started. The landscape of my future isn't clear and let's face it, I'll be 30 in a couple weeks and I kinda hate it. Because it feels like I should be somewhere I'm not. However, this is not some cliche meltdown. I realize nothing significant is going to happen at the stroke of midnight on my birthday; I just wish I had a better sense of what's coming next. It's not turning 30 I'm worried about, it's the years that follow and where those years lead. 

Fortunately, going back to school has given me the strongest sense of purpose and place that I've had in the last few years. When I'm there, I know what I'm doing and frankly, it's easy to switch on Project Mode when you have actual projects assigned. Whenever I start drifting, I can just pull out an assignment and let it take over. That's healthy, right? As long as it's not excessive? And as long as I'm not ignoring any real problems that need addressing??

So while I'm learning more about who I am and what I'm capable of and while things really are progressing, sometimes I worry they're not progressing quickly enough. Or that they should have all been worked out by now. Whatever that all means... sigh... 

Girls' Night In

Well, last night was a bit of a bust, but at least it was a fun bust. My sisters and I made plans for dinner and a movie, but never specified what we wanted to do for either. Since we couldn't all agree on dinner, we ended up getting takeout from 2 different restaurants. Picking a movie? Forget it... Instead of carting a bunch of random DVDs to my sister's house, we opted for the blue-ray player. You know, so we could spend half the evening researching and arguing over movies on Netflix. Except when we arrived at my sister's and set up the player we realized the remote control had been left at home. Useless.

So Lauren was sent on a quest to find a movie. A quick trip to a local Redbox resulted in 2 random picks: The Best of Me (James Marsden?? Well, okay.) and Woman In Black 2 (because it seemed an ironic choice for our girls' night). Neither were high on my list, but the selection was pretty limited. And I just haven't worked up a desire to watch the final Hobbit movie yet... 

So we watched Woman In Black 2 first. All of us had seen the original and decided the sequel was much less creepy. Except that possessed rocking chair was back and anytime it started rocking and creaking on its own (which was about half the film) I had to plug my ears and look away. There's a rocking chair in the room next to mine so I don't like thinking about it. 

Next up was The Best of Me. We just needed something to dispel any bad juju that lingered from the first movie, even though I really don't care much for Nicholas Sparks. I feel like I was run over and left for dead by whatever bandwagon people jumped on when The Notebook first came out. But let's not dwell on what is probably Sparks' masterpiece compared to last night's viewing selection...

Trademark Nicholas Sparks Movie Poster Format

The Best of Me is about high school sweethearts who are reunited after 21 years when their friend passes away. You don't know much about either of them except that Dawson (James Marsden) recently survived a major explosion on an oil rig that jettisoned him into the ocean where he bobbed like a cork for 4 hours, contemplating the meaning of life. Then there's Amanda (Michelle Monaghan), a woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a wealthy, self-absorbed, golf-playing alcoholic. Because of course. The two are soon confronted by their shared past - a story which unfolds in a number of flashback sequences as they clean out their deceased friend's home.

Which brings me to my biggest gripe of the entire movie. Young Dawson - who had more screen time than older, handsomer Dawson - was played by an actor named Luke Bracey who is shown here next to James Marsden...

Double take!

They could be twins, right?? No, they could NOT be twins. I don't know who was responsible for this casting, but it didn't work. I felt like I was watching a movie about 2 different people instead of younger and older versions of the same person. This photo doesn't even do their differences justice - it was so distracting!

Anyway... The movie played out more like a Hallmark Hall of Fame feature with its gag-inducing cliches, but it still had about everything you could expect from Nicholas Sparks. Whose movies really are just big budget Hallmark Hall of Fame features when you think about it. I'll admit, there were a couple moments I couldn't help but go "Awww..." but then there were also little gems like this one:

You want me to fall back in love with you? How do I do that if I haven't ever stopped? 

Terrible...

But despite its overwhelming predictability (I called the ending about halfway through), there was a little last minute twist that took the story to a new level. A ridiculous level, but at least it was somewhat unexpected. If you want to know what it was, just ask.

So that was our girls' night in. A takeout shmorgasbord, a horror film we watched from behind our fingers, and a chick flick we openly mocked but still enjoyed... for all the wrong reasons. 

Projects

My bedroom looks like a ransacked flea market in an abandoned prison cell. I've moved boxes, books, and furniture around to the point I don't even like my own stuff anymore. Which is why some of it either went straight in the trash or up to Savers. 

Phases completed: Walls de-wallpapered and (disgusting) carpet torn out - except for one last patch. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it was. If you ever remove wallpaper in your own home, make sure you have patience to spare and help if you can find it. Moving on... Here are the many phases that remain: purchase laminate, commit to a shade of gray (not Christian Gray) for my walls, rip out baseboards, patch and paint walls, install new floor and baseboards. Oh, and choose new light fixtures... And paint furniture... And buy new hardware for furniture. Now that there's absolutely no going back, the "before" photos I took last week are looking pretty good.

Throughout this project - did I mention I'm remodeling my bedroom? - I've entertained myself by watching my sister's newly purchased Gilmore Girls DVDs. If you're out on the road, Feeling lonely and so co-old... It's a complete set. I'm halfway through season 3 (the Jess season!), so hopefully by the time Rory graduates from Yale and rejects Logan's marriage proposal to cover Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, I will have finished my ambitious project. 

3 1/2 seasons to go...

A Migraine Story

I experienced my second-ever migraine on Sunday morning. Katie burst in my bedroom about 5 minutes past time-for-church o'clock and impatiently asked if I would please move my car since I was parked behind her. (Which I did to provoke her, of course.) From my pile of pillows I peered up at that righteous, freshly-showered, well-dressed sister of mine. 

While Katie rolled her eyes impatiently, my eyes throbbed painfully in their sockets. So I shut them once more and told Katie she could just take my car instead. 

"Are you coming to church?" 

"...No."

"Are you coming to choir?" Uh-oh...

"Nuh-uh."

"Why?"

"Because... I see spots."

"SIGH... Where are your keys??"

I rolled over and groped around blindly for the purse next to my bed... Grope, grab, dig, shuffle, jingle, jangle... 

"Here." Toss...

Door shuts. And somehow, Lauren falls back to sleep...

I couldn't tell you much about the rest of the morning, but when I woke up again a couple hours later, my heart was pounding and the words "Quarter Quell" were racing through my mind... Yes, a nasty migraine might be easily explained if I were subconsciously participating in The Hunger Games all night long. But given my sister's attitude that morning, I doubt my dream self volunteered as tribute on her behalf. 

...

Kryptonite

Things are rather grim at the moment. The following is an exaggeration, but the melodrama makes me feel better...

The air conditioning is spewing very little air into my bedroom and I don't much like how loud my trusty box fan is when turned up to its highest setting. It's what I imagine riding in a fan-propelled airboat on a bayou would sound like. But the cool-but-noisy vs. still-but-sweltering debate is a no-brainer: cool-but-noisy every time. 

Last night I woke up in a fit because I was too hot. Pillows, blankets, PJs, hair, etc. - all uncomfortably warm and heavy and terrible. A sleep-tantrum ensued and I kicked every offending article from my bed. Lost my cool because I couldn't keep my cool. 

A lesson on Kryptonite (as outlined on Wikipedia): 

Superman is most vulnerable to Kryptonite... Exposure to Kryptonite nullifies Superman's powers and immobilizes him with pain and nausea; prolonged exposure will eventually kill him.

Substitute "kryptonite" and "Superman" with "heat" and "Lauren" (respectively) and adjust the pronouns... There... That about covers it. (It will kill me.)

DISCLAIMER: Hot weather related whine-posts will continue through September at the latest.

SNOW

Yeah, that's about right... 

"Remember, we're in England - land of good manners..."

Emetophobia

Emetophobia: an intense, irrational fear or anxiety of or pertaining to vomiting.

Hello, Monday. It doesn't seem possible, but once again I am SICK. This time with a very nasty stomach bug. The kind that leaves you pounds lighter after 24 hours. 

Even at my very sickest, I pride myself on my ability to... um... hold my cookies instead of tossing them. I've only thrown up (oh, those cookies!) about 3 times in the last 6 years or so. And before then my all-time record was 8 years. 8 whole years! I'm very good at willing my body into resistance when it comes to... y'know... 

Most of the time, this resistance technique works. Last night it didn't. I stubbornly delayed my misery for a few hours, but soon realized the only way I'd feel better is if I stopped fighting it. 

That was way, way, WAY too much information. But can I just say - as far as being sick, I am so, so, SO over it.

The Wee, Small Hours

I am blogging right now at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am. Why up so late/early?? My family and I watched a movie of my mother's choosing earlier Saturday evening - a movie she remembers being thoroughly creeped out by when she was younger. I was fine during most of the movie. It was very dated and we all laughed at the hokey hairstyles and outfits of the early 1970s. Even so, the story was pretty grim. Then it took such a dark turn at the end I thought I was going to be sick. My mom called the movie creepy, but it was the most disturbing things I've seen in a long time. Maybe ever. The movie is called The Other (not the Nicole Kidman movie) if you're interested, but I wouldn't recommend it... I give this movie an F. F as in There's no FREAKIN' way I'm ever watching this again.

So while I wait for daylight, I'm trying to think of more cheerful things. I even watched 2 other movies - Star Trek: Into Darkness and Penelope - to create a sort of movie buffer between myself and the evening's earlier viewing selection. That worked briefly. I've gone over my notes for my Relief Society lesson tomorrow. That worked briefly as well. The trouble occurs when I actually close my eyes and try to fall asleep. I know there's nothing but nightmares waiting for me there, so wide awake it is.  

Think cheerful, Lauren...

I'm getting excited for fall. This current cooling off has me seeing warm hues of red, orange, and gold. If I could find a place where the weather is in constant transition between summer and winter, I would never leave. Even the rain has perked me up. And guess what? There's a word for that! Thank you, Pinterest.

Speaking of fall, I'm finally right in the thick of the semester. My tuition is paid so there's no going back now! I miss my leisurely weekday evenings, but at least I have Friday thru Sunday. This past Friday I co-hosted a party for a friend who recently returned from an internship in D.C. We knew we wanted to have a themed party around a specific movie and that we wanted to dress up fancy. We debated Disney, Jane Austen, Downton Abbey, The Great Gatsby, and various superhero films. We finally settled on a Captain America party with everyone wearing 1940s dress. We had old-timey music, strands of paper lanterns, mocktails, appetizers, and fondue. Because when it comes to Captain America... 

...We most certainly fon-DOOOOOO!! And if you fon-DON'T, you're crazy.