Why Do I Suck at This??

Every since I was little, I've always had these grand schemes.

"My friends and I are going to make a swimming pool in the backyard out of a big cardboard box and trash bags."

"Yes, we SHOULD stalk the ice cream man."

"Here, let's see if we can climb out the bathroom window."

... my grand scheme as of a few years ago was to start this blog. And now I am slacking SO MUCH.

So, to make it up to my bajillions of followers who all wait patiently at their computers while I post nothing for months on end, here is a photo of me and my cat to make it better.



When I am more conscious than I am right now, I will post something legitimate. :)

Freaking LENT.

Okay, so, here's the thing...

When I was little, I used to be all about Lent. My mom and I would give up chocolate every year. I would inadvertently forget and eat a chocolate chip cookie somewhere along the line and have to pray for forgiveness, but mostly I did pretty well. Then Easter would FINALLY roll around, and I would eat half the candy in my basket before even making it to church.

After those first few years, I'd kind of forgotten about Lent. I'd say I was giving up chocolate, slip up by accident a few times, and then say "oh, what the heck" about three days in, give up entirely, and go eat a Hershey bar.

This year, I decided to go for it. I gave up Facebook. Now, I know that during Lent you're not supposed to be complaining about what you gave up, but I'm going to anyway. This is rough, guys. I can't talk to people when I should be paying attention in class. I can't stalk other people's lives and spend hours wondering why mine isn't as fulfilling. I can't procrastinate nearly as effectively. Life is tough.

This is only week one. Since Sundays don't count as part of the 40 days of Lent, I'm all OVER facebook this afternoon, but come midnight, I'm exiled for another week. Now, I suppose I don't NEED to hunt around on everybody else's pages all the time... but I definitely like having the option of getting on the computer and thinking to myself "Wow, that must have been a really fun trip you took. Your friends look so great. I really like that shirt. Why can't I be more like you? Where is my life even headed right now?! I hate everything." Just having that option is nice. But, since I'm complaining so much about how tragically difficult this is, I can't wimp out now.

Happy Freaking Lenten Season.

-Lauren

Happy Late New Year.

Okay, so, it is the new year (okay, 24 days into the new year) and I haven't posted anything on here yet, so I figured I should get on that. Of course, I decide to do this at 1:44 in the morning when I have made an overly optimistic plan to be up around 8:30 the following day. (I can tell you now that this is probably not going to happen.)

Some Fun Facts About My Life/Whatever the Heck I Feel Like Writing About, in List Form:

- I am now 21. I can legally drink alcohol. I also now have the freedom to go places and get carded all the time when I try to order something, which is what I am thinking will happen to me until... well... the day I die. (judging from the fact that I am still asked which grade I am in and I have to tell people that I am in the grade of college.)

- I am almost through every season of How I Met Your Mother that exists on Netflix. This is pathetic. I am pathetic. It is such a good show.

- The Drama/Theatre books section at the Barnes & Noble near my house seems to have disappeared. This is ridiculous. You people have 900 shelves of "I have a vampire boyfriend" novels, and you can't keep the tiny little area that had a couple of books on acting?

- A guy tried to friend me on facebook a little bit ago, and I have no idea who he is... but we have 12 mutual friends and almost all of his profile pictures are of him dressed as a pirate and holding giant bottles of alcohol and, in the case of one photo, a really large pencil. This makes me laugh every time I think of it, so I figured I would post about it here. His friendship request is still pending because I am not sure I need to be friends with random pirate man who dresses like that and goes to parties and events (yes, i stalked him), but I would also hate to never be able to flip through those photos again if I wanted to. And maybe I will meet him for real someday. And then I can accept his request. And continue to laugh at his pictures, one of which includes this man with his pirate costume from the waist up... and then he is just hanging out in some really cool zebra print swim trunks. Obviously, I can't reject his request just yet. We will probably get married or something.


That's all for now...
Lauren

Winter Break, Warp-Speed Showers & Angry Children.

1. Ethnomusicology/EfNOmusicology/When-the-&*%!-am-I-Ever-Going-to-Use-This-Information-ology (call it what you will) is officially OVER. I took the final, I did my stupid presentation on Bollywood in which I talked about this famous chick named Deepika Somethingorother who is the international spokesperson for Maybelline... and now I am done. This is a wonderful thing. Part of me will miss a FEW things about that class, but, overall, this is good.

2. I am about to take a shower in the theatre building. For those of you who haven't read my previous post, I SLEPT in this building the night before last. The amount of time I spend in here is borderline ridiculous. BUT ... here is the thing: our hot water heater at home is broken.

If you have talked to me for more than 20 minutes, I have probably informed you that having dirty hair is one of my biggest pet peeves. It drives me absolutely insane, and I feel like I might as well just not exist on the planet for the time that my hair is swimming in grease. (I know...gross visual, but accurate. I may be twenty, but my hair thinks I am still eleven.)

So, I like to wash my hair. But every time I get in the shower at home, it's like "oh, here is some hot water while you put shampoo in your hair but OH WAIT NOW IT IS GONE." and my shower turns into a mad dash to get the heck out of there asap.

SO... showers happen at school. This place contains hot water. Problem solved.

EXCEPT OH WAIT: Christmas break begins this evening so I will not be at school anymore. Our water heater will not be fixed until Tuesday. Everyone's excited about this.

3. Fun Fact: This week, I gave a presentation which included hand-made "puppets". I found faces for these puppets by google image searching things such as: "angry girl", "angry boy" and "Flo Progressive Commercial". Yeah. Thanks, Google.


That's all for now...

HAPPY WINTER BREAK!!!!!!!

-Lauren

I Do Not Live On Campus...But I've Been Creeping Around Here All Night Long. (the terror that is exam week)

6:04 am.
MY PAPER IS DONE AND HANDED IN.

handing in this paper involved a ridiculous amount of complications:

1. i don’t live on campus, so i decided to camp out in the theatre building to write my paper. in the middle of the night, when i had FINALLY finished writing it, i trekked from the theatre building to another building where they had a computer lab and a printer.

2. printed off the paper. needed a staple for it. there was no stapler in the computer lab.

3. back to the theatre building for said staple. the door to the theatre locked behind me when i left.

4. by the grace of god, a campus police man had come to let some other girl into the theatre building, so i got let in and could staple the stupid thing.

5. off through the cold to the building where my paper was due. it was locked.

6. i stood out in the cold for a few minutes until (again, by ridiculous magic) some kid happened to be walking out of there at 5:30 in the morning. he let me in.

7. i find my teacher’s office where my paper needs to go. it is behind a locked door. (SERIOUSLY?! I AM LITERALLY ONE DOOR AWAY FROM BEING DONE WITH THIS.)

8. i recall from half an hour ago that campus police unlocks random doors in the middle of the night.

9. my phone has 10% battery. it’s now or never. i call campus police and sound ridiculous, explaining to them that i literally needed to get into that corridor NOW to slip my paper in the envelope outside the door to her office or else i knew i would fall asleep right there in the hallway and never wake up again and miss the deadline and fail my class. i get put on hold while the lady sees if she can help me. i have to listen to elevator music while i try not to pass out on the phone.

10. the lady sends this guy over to unlock the door. my life is complete.

11. this is the same guy who unlocked the other building from before. he asked if i’d gotten my staple. we are sort of friends now.

12. I TURN IN MY PAPER.

13. back through the cold to the theatre building.

14. i am currently on a prop couch outside the faculty offices & i intend on sleeping here after i post this and then somehow making the hour drive back to my house. i have another final to study for today.

Sondheim, Wagner, Candy, Coffee, Cat.

On My Bed:
One cat.
One king size Kit Kat bar
One 20 oz. cup of Turkey Hill coffee. Irish cream and vanilla flavor shots. Vanilla creamer. Vanilla and chocolate powder in the shake-y containers. (I made this myself.)
6 Books. I have yet to open any of them.

Feeling:
Awake, but unfocused.

TIME: 11:11 pm.
Wish: It's a secret.

The Task: Finish this Paper.

Ready, Set, Go.

Red.

Soon, I will have red hair.
I've been wanting to dye it for awhile, and now I'm finally getting a chance to!

:)

It's So Hard to be This Sexy.

Hello, blog followers.

I have a really huge announcement to make!!

I have decided, after a lot of thought, to make a career change.

I am becoming a rainwater model.

I have realized, throughout the last few years, as, over and over again, I find myself trapped in the eye of hurricane without an umbrella, that I really feel the best about my appearance when I look like I fell into a swimming pool with my clothing on. The stringy hair that clings to your face, the rivers of mascara that drip seductively down your cheeks... this is when I feel as though I am putting my best foot forward and saying to the world "HERE I AM. LOOK AT ME."

So, I have decided to launch my modeling career by creating a book entitled "Sexy Woman in the Rain", which will showcase my most attractive moments. Hopefully this will lead to my big break.

Below is a sneak peek of this project. Enjoy!


i like this one because of how my hair falls over my one eye like that.


just a fun thumbs up for having such a good time.


try not to be jealous.


you can tell here that my self-confidence is soaring.


mmmm rain hair.

Small Children and Dance Class-- I Can't Get Enough. (aka My Life is a Joke)

Obviously, somewhere along the line, I had come to the conclusion that an entire summer full of dancing with young children, acting like a swan, and doing the hula was not nearly enough humiliation for me. Oh no-- I'm back for more. Except, this time, it's on the east coast and I am not a part of Caprice's lovely little folk dancing lessons... instead I am enrolled in Kristin's Modern C/Teen B class.

Let me tell you a little bit about this evening:

I am (obviously) in a class with a bunch of small children, some kids who look my age (and by "look my age", I mean that they are probably in high school) and this girl (Molly) who I was in a show with this summer and who knows all about my extraordinary dancing abilities.

These small children who are in this class with me are legit. One of them happens to be a kid I used to babysit...which is really awesome because I lap her in age and she is 900 times more flexible than I will ever be and sometimes her mom stands outside the door and watches.

So, okay... tonight, somewhere in the midst of "RUN, RUN, PIKE, BACKWARD ROLL!!!!!" I end up summersaulting into little Katie Lewis...yes, the one I used to babysit when I was twelve. Again, this is really great. Not only am I in a class with this girl, but I even went the extra mile to ensure that I smashed into her while showing off my many talents.

To quote Molly: "the pike was phenomenal... until you came down from said lovely jump and landed all over that 10 year old."


Watch out, Broadway-- the superstar dancer is back.

-Lauren

I Need to Stop Pretending Like Baking is a Good Hobby For Me to Pursue. (Part Nine Million and Four.)

I was inspired by this lovely little video here to create beet cake.

http://vimeo.com/24243147

look how calm everyone is during this process.
listen to the lovely music.
this is a baker's utopia where flour is kept in pretty little drawers and everything is in slow motion.

...I hate my life.

Here was MY beet-cake-baking experience:


I pour myself a wonderful glass of sparking grape juice (the classy i'm-only-twenty version of baking with wine)



I decide to cut the recipe in half after realizing that I do not have enough butter for a whole recipe. I am obviously far too lazy to go to the store to purchase more. This decision, however, leaves me with measurements such as "1.5 eggs" and ".125 tsp salt". My own intelligence astounds me.

I puree some slimy beets, add my 1.5 eggs, sift a whole bunch of random crap together, and do all of the other tasks that look as though they were completed with such ease and peacefulness in the absurd video above. This is what we have going on at this point:



I then go to get the mixer to whip it all together.

Here is what I find in the bowl that belongs to said mixer:



Excellent. A freaking tarantula.

I scrap the mixer idea and stir everything together with a knife. (At this point, why not?)

Right about now, I am wanting to swap my sparkling grape juice with a bit of this:



I then shove the beet concoction in the oven for about five years and wait for the thing to bake.

All I can say is: this had better be the best freaking cake I have ever tasted.

A More Serious Post Stemming From Some Very Late Night Thinking

i love theatre.

i do.

obviously… i am majoring in it.

however, there are other things i love too, that, for the past few years, i have forgotten about…and sometimes i feel like my life has become about “getting a part” or training to be the best i can be…which isn’t bad…but theatre cannot be my entire life. it isn't healthy. and i feel like things are missing from my life. things i used to love.

i forgot that i really like kids. [i pretend that they annoy me…but i like them a lot.] :)

i like to go car camping.

i like wearing friendship bracelets and t-shirts and gym shorts.

i like going to camp.

i like cooking with friends.

i like sleepovers.

i like creative writing.

i like softball.

sometimes, i forget about these things.

and a part of me forgot that i can still be of value even if i am not the most talented person in the room. fighting to be being the best all the time is not what life is about. it is not where my worth comes from, and, quite frankly, it is tiring and i am tired of doing it. theatre is not everything. and it does not define me. I am not Lauren: actor, singer, dancer— in that order.

I am Lauren, a person with a lot of interests that I miss exploring.

Home Alone Blues.

I AM SO BORED.

I have watched more than my fair share of TV, applied to be on a game show, surfed the internet until my eyes hurt, made crepes, got my hair cut and colored, and now am out of things to do.

I've always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was young. So... maybe I will do that now. I will be a writer. I will spend my days drinking iced tea (note to self: buy iced tea) and writing wonderful stories.

It's Party Time...?

So, my father is in California and my mother is in New York.

What does this mean?

I am home alone.



When is the huge party I am planning on throwing, you may be asking yourself?

Well, not tonight, because I have been otherwise occupied.

Let tell you about my thrilling day...

I spent the morning on the road. I (naturally) got lost multiple times on my way home. In fact, I had to pay the toll twice before figuring out how the heck to get back to my house. It felt like every time I got lost, I would magically appear in front of another toll booth (since technically, I stopped by four of them-- two times to get the tickets and two times to pay money.) By the end of this escapade, I was running very low on cash and found myself asking the elderly man at the booth if I was going to end up at any more of these because I basically had no money left and if I kept on getting lost I would not be able to pay the toll anymore...

[Again, please note that both of my parents are out of the state and would not have been able to help me had I been stranded alone at some toll booth in the middle of nowhere.]



So, okay, I survived and eventually made it home.

How did I spend the rest of the day, you may be wondering?

WASTING MY LIFE AWAY.

Tumblr, Facebook, Youtube...


[SO BORED.]



As of late, I have been eating chocolate Tootsie Roll Pops, drinking soda, unsuccessfully attempting to take pictures with my cats, and have decided to see what this whole Shark Week thing is about.






Maybe I should just go to bed...

It Is Now August, So Here is a List of Some Things That Annoy Me.

1. What temperature is it?!

It is summer. Therefore, you sweat your face off outside and you freeze to death inside. What does one wear in such conditions? I still haven't figured this out. Unfortunately, I feel as though the only solution is to wear summer clothing indoors but to then invest in a lovely snuggie, so you can go about your day as usual, without dying of the cold.


[they look so comfortable and climate-controlled.]

2. People on tumblr who blog about the same topics over and over.

I know, I know, "if you don't like their blogs, unfollow them"... but some of these people are my friends so I feel obligated. So I suppose I will scroll like a mad woman past all of the Harry Potter and Dr. Who postings. I just do not understand why you need to post, like, seven million of the same thing. We are all aware that you enjoy a little wizarding magic Harry Potter-ness, but we do not need captioned pictures of every single character over and over. For instance, I personally enjoy the sport of dance. However, I do not inundate others' blogs with multitudes of pictures of ballerinas because I know that one or two of such pictures gets the point across that I enjoy dancing. Done. Bam. Lauren likes dancing. We don't need this:


[AHH I LOVE DANCE.]

[DANCE IS FREAKING GREAT!!!]

[OMG IT IS MY LIIIIIFE. I AM SO INTENSE.]

[I LIKE DANCE SO MUCH I UPLOADED A PICTURE OF A SNOW GLOBE.]

3. Books on Tape.

Books on tape are impossibly obnoxious. Why can't you just read the stinkin' book?? I'm sure I hate them because, in my house, I do not listen to them, but my mother does so I am constantly hearing some random narrator man screaming from another room: "AND THEN SHE LOOKED HIM IN THE EYES AND ALL OF THE SADNESS OF THE WORLD FELL UPON HER SHOULDERS AND SHE SOBBED 'NO! I CAN'T GO ON WITHOUT YOU!!!'" and blah blah blah...

[Life is so hard...]


Welcome to August.
-Lauren

Having Friends is Hard.

Not that I am complaining, but here is the thing about having some friends...

You go places with them. Which means you spend lots of money buying food, because you go and hang out at restaurants or wherever else is open late into the night.

You come home late and you come home tired, but you MUST post the pictures of you and said friends on your facebook page so you can anxiously await the 20 comments that are bound to appear within the next hour or two, all saying "oh hahaha look at my face."

You come home late and you come home tired and you post you photos on facebook but then you still don't want to go to bed.

So you attempt to amuse yourself by stalking people on facebook and tumblr, listening to music, and finally just feeling the need to blog angsty things because the tiredness is getting the best of you and you break your "I am so intense, I have no emotions" shell thing you've been working with for the past 20 years, and here you are, alone on the sofa at 2:25 in the morning, being your young adult "life is oh so hard" self.

This, my lovely (and plentiful) blog followers, is the plight of having friends.

Or maybe it is simply the plight of being a girl.

Or the plight of being sleep deprived.

I'm not really sure.

-Lauren

3 Reasons it is too Freaking Difficult to be a Girl.

1. Society tell us to be tan.

So... I decide, following the idiot rules of society, to douse myself with this:



Yay. And we all know exactly what this is going to do. Yes, it will make me look alive and not like a freaking walking corpse... but it will also cling to my girl mustache and turn it orange. This is attractive. I could go to a tanning bed or something, but I would like to look like I'm 25 when I'm 50, so no thank you, dangerous light rays. So, here are my options: I either spend my young adult life ghostly white, or walking around like a big orange mistake. Thank you, society.

2. You have to try to match clothing.

This is not one of my special talents. I recently hung out with some friends wearing a purple tank top and navy gym shorts. Before I left the house, my mother asked me if I was going to actually wear that. I informed her that I was, but brought black gym shorts in the car with me in case I felt too mis-matchy. To save time and because I did not feel like changing my clothing in the car at the really tourist-filled parking lot... I kept the navy shorts on. I then proceeded to announce to my friends that I was aware that my clothing did not match...but it did not keep me from feeling like I had done a bad job of being a girl that morning.




(i'm in the back. you can tell because i'm the one in the purple tank top and i also look like i just crawled out of my grave, which is another great way to identify me in pictures.)

3. We are supposed to enjoy shoe shopping.

There are so many commercials with girls, like, rolling around in piles of shoes and throwing confetti and acting like it is something exciting to jam uncomfortable things onto your feet and try to teeter around and live your life.

Shoe shopping is not fun.



This picture is impossibly misleading. You cannot purchase love in the form of velvet pink stilettos.

While wearing the shoes in this picture, I would probably:

1. Complain about every five seconds. This gets old after about the second mention of the excruciating pain and wishes to take off the pink idiot shoes.
2. Take the freaking things off. This totally un-does the point of purchasing the shoes.
3. Whip out flip flops from my purse and wear them instead. Again, this defeats the purpose of shoe shopping and ruins your outfit (see #2 regarding mismatching clothing)

My idea of footwear?

1. None. Be crazy. Go barefoot.
2. Socks.
3. Flip flops.

There you have it... 3 reasons it is just too freaking difficult to be a girl.

-Lauren

Boring Post About My Life

I obviously have not posted in a very long time and, in an attempt to:

1. quell boredom

and

2. post something

I have decided to make this lovely and informative post about my life.

A Few Fun Facts About Right Now:

- I have to be out of the house in eight hours. This is supposed to include sleep. I hate my life.
- At 8 am I will be spending my life with many small children.
- I will then go to rehearsal.
- Sleep, repeat, etc.

I Hate Everything.

...especially my internet cord.

I wrote this whole thing... and the cord had come out of my computer (as per usual) before I pressed the "publish" button... so here I am, posting instead about how I hate the world and everything in it. :)

Things I Don't Have That I Used To:

1. a working light in the ceiling in my room.

2. a moment of quiet while in my room. Thank you, karaoke superstars next door.

3. my one toenail. yay. pretty pretty princess!

4. boring nails. they are now green, orange and yellow. yesss.

Someone Please Remind Me Never To...

1. Accept vodka from this creeper in the graveyard.


2. Dye a streak of idiot color in my hair ever again.


3. Kill any more of my pets.


4. Let your mom upload her pictures from her trip to NYC with her friends onto your iphoto. You never know what you will find.





That's all for now from going through my photos. :)