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(I do apologize for that creepishly unnatural picture.)
…Because sometimes, I tend to go overboard seeing the good in life, and completely ignore the bad…and often, the truth.
…Because I’m feeling raw, naked and vulnerable. Except not, on the naked part.
…Because sometimes I become desperate for a breath of fresh air, for a real realness, for something refreshingly honest and uncomfortably true…
…And because deep down, I’m a freak,
…I’ve decided to write a list of 25 things I’m not proud of. I’ve done the Facebook 25 Random Things About Me tag thingy, and looking back, I see that I just tried to create the image I wanted people to have of me.
And I realized how excessively lame that was.
So in the spirit of keeping it real, and gutwrenchingly honest…. here ‘goes.
* 25 Things (I Don’t Want You To Know) About Me *
1. I like to call myself an optimist, but sometimes I do get bogged down in the not-so-good things in life.
2. Sometimes, I give myself permission to wallow in self-pity.
3. I lose my temper with my siblings more than I’d like to admit.
4. I eat cake, brownies, cookies…sweets of any kind for breakfast. Whatever’s in the house. I have no self-restraint.
5. I worry too much about what people think of me, and impressing people.
6. I like Barbra Streisand. (Well, her music.)
Wait a minute – why am I ashamed of that? Come on now, embrace diversity! Broaden your horizons, as my dad would say.
7. My reading list last year consisted of fluffy, meaningless chick-lit novels.
8. Sometimes, my sense of humor morphs into that of a twelve year old boy, and I take pictures like this. I’m not proud of it. Not at all.
(Please don’t freak out. It was just my knees, I promise.)
9. Once, when I was 12 or 13, I painstakingly pulled the cooked-chocolate fudge frosting off my mom’s Chocolate Cherry Cake, and ate it. Then I lied about it. For weeks. No one in the house was allowed to have dessert until someone confessed, and so my web of deceit grew and stretched until it overtook my every waking moment.
Eventually, I confessed. Everyone already knew, I was completely mortified and have since blocked it from my memory.
10. Sometimes I don’t brush my teeth at night.
11. This is a picture I took of myself, posing prettily in front of the window.
This is the real me:
12. I often feel insecure and self-conscious about my looks. Namingly, my pointy, crooked nose and pointy, crooked chin.
13. I’ve tried “fasting” from the computer/internet, and I don’t think I’ve made it through an entire day yet. How humiliating.
14. Being single and content is something I struggle with sometimes.
15. I like to pretend I’m more independent than I really am.
16. I’m really bad at managing my time.
17. The whole reason I started liking biographies was because I wanted to seem impressively intelligent.
18. In order to save money, my parents try to line-dry all our laundry. I’ve been known to save up my dirty clothes, wait until my dad’s at work and my mom’s at the store, and wash it all. And dry it in the drier.
19. I went through a toe-sock phase.
20. I go through a lot of phases. Trying to break myself of that.
21. I like to say that I run, but when I went running on the beach with a friend the other day – not even for a mile – I almost passed out. Literally.
22. I’m thin, but I’m wretchedly out of shape.
23. I suck at Algebra. Royally.
24. I’m very careless with things, including other people’s stuff.
25. My relationship with my mom is not all that it could be – all it should be – and I know a lot of it is my fault.
So there it is. The horrible, the bad and the ugly. I’m so bare, I feel as if my very spleen is on display. If you’re reading this… it’s your turn.
Don’t leave me here, alone and shivering in the dark, stripped of all my pride and finely-tailored exterior. Come join me! The water’s fine!
Unmasked and probably unread,
Abbie.
…Every little step she takes!
Thanks to this year’s dance recital, 2 songs will now be repetitively running through my head for the next 11 months: One from A Chorus Line, and another song that I like to call, Ode to the Ridiculously Catchy Tune, that I danced to years ago. That’s when it was originally burned into my psyche, and every year since, another class dances to it and it’s ingrained even deeper.
Yes, it’s true. I danced. I took somewhere around 8 years, allowed chronic laziness to convince me that it “wasn’t my thing”, and quit at the pesky and ill-informed age of 13. Now, due to my tendency toward clumsiness, I wish I hadn’t quit. But no, I had to go and be a malcontented middle child.
There’s me in 1996. Look at me – I look like I want to stomp off that ridiculous white sheet and punch someone. Or at least…verbally abuse someone.
Madness! This is driveling, babbling madness!
(Every single one of my old feather headpieces is yours if you can guess that movie line.)
Contrast the above, if you will, to this:
This little girl is a true dancer. I was merely an impostor in a tutu, annoyed by my rowdy classmates and dreadfully shy.
But she’s a ballerina, all right. Here she is this year:
I can’t decide which I love more, the frizzy hair – (hey, dancing’s hard work!) or the pointy elbows.
Dainty. Confident. Joyful. This girl’s my idol, dadgummit!
Here she is on stage:
Third from the left, gettin’ her jazz freak on!
Watching the jazz dances always makes me want to bust a move. But I restrain myself. For the sake of the masses.
Next, the graceful ballet waltz. (Paige on the far right.)
I can’t get enough of the classical ballet dances. Sigh. They’re just breathtakingly graceful.
Last, but certainly not least: Tap! Woohoo!
I love watching tap. It’s just plain happy. Just think about it…
Shirley Temple
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson
Fred Astaire
Gene Kelly
Old Broadway shows
Happy Feet, for pete’s sake!
It’s just so old-school, awesome. And I can’t resist it’s charm.
Speaking of Fred Astaire and old-school awesomeness…
This little gent stole the show with that bow-tie and cane of his.
And I’m sorry, but there is something absolutely, positively, irresistably cute about a bunch of three-year-olds in green tutus screaming Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star at the top of their lungs.
Take a look at that little gal, third from the right.
She stood there, hands on her hips, through both of the dances her class performed. She just made me grin. I loved it. And I felt a strange kinship with that little girl. *See picture #2.*
Although, make no mistake, I was never brave enough to actually do something that would cause me to stand out like that.
Not knowingly, anyway.
Now, I must backtrack. Because, mid-recital, something happened that I believe validated every one of Paige’s ballerina dreams.
She won the Jr. scholarship award for 2009!
(That’s half a year’s tuition free!)
Here she is with one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, her dance teacher. Who, by the way, is a mere 75 years old, and still going strong.
Yes, you heard me. 75. She started teaching dance lessons when she was 12 years old.
When I was 12 years old…I was obsessing over nacho cheese with my friends, and saying very sophisticated things like “Mondo-coolio to the tenth power!”
Wow. Major, embarassing flashback there.
Let’s divert the attention back to this awesome lady.
Paige decided to write a book about her. So a few weeks ago, she brought in some interview questions, written neatly on notebook paper and bound with yarn.
So her teacher brought that little book out onto the stage when she called Paige’s name, and told the audience a little about it.
That dadgum little girl brought a collective “Aww!” from the whole audience.
Myself included.
Meanwhile, both of my parents were beside me, bawling.
And I can’t really blame them. Because, for heaven’s sake, look at the adoration in the tilt of Paige’s head as she gazes up at her beloved teacher.
Look at the devotion of this amazing woman to each and every one of her students.
Look at their relationship as they giggle with each other on-stage.
It almost makes me want to start bawling. (And only partially because I was a socially-maladjusted little twerp when I had my chance.)
This remarkable woman teaches so much more than the art of dance. And the impact she has on the lives of her girls - my little punk sister among them – is the most profound legacy she could ever leave.
And that, if I may say so, is mondo-coolio. The the tenth power.
I’ve been thinking and considering and pondering and tossing in my sleep at night and pacing the widows walk and scratching my noggin over this possibility.
Wait – we don’t have a widows walk. Darn. Never mind the pacing part.
I’m thinking about making this here blog public. There. I said it. And I think you should know that just thinking about another living soul reading this vortex of lunacy is sending me straight into a 5-minute leg tingle fit. And 5-minute leg tingles are generally reserved for snake sightings or discussions of other people’s bodily pain.
But I’ve been writing here for almost 2 months. Every day, I have to log in just to see it, because I have it set as private. Mainly for 3 reasons:
- I wanted to be sure I’d actually stick with this blogging thing. My track record in the field of continuity is…uh…not so good.
- I enjoy writing for me, myself and I. And whenever I get lonely here, I just imagine I have an audience. But then I feel like a moron and I beat myself about the face and neck with mozzarella cheese sticks.
- Did I have a third reason? If I did, I forgot it.
Suffice it to say, I’ve dipped in my big toe, and the water’s pretty fine. So I think I’ve decided to go whole-hog and jump in…all the way up to my ankles. Because after all, I know a total of 2 – maybe 3 – people who have any interest whatsoever in reading about my pathetic, insignificant and highly weird life. And one of them is my grandmother.
I’ve never been much of a swimmer. I’m more a dog-paddle type of girl. But I’m willing to give this thing a try! I think. Maybe. Possibly. Probably. If I feel like it tomorrow.
Love,
Me. Olympic Swimmer Dog Paddler Extraordinaire.
P.S. No, the above picture is not a self-portrait. My ankles aren’t that skinny.
I was sitting in bed, reading my Bible this morning when something outside my window caught my eye.
I squinted.
I tilted my head back and forth to get a different angle.
I stood up and peered out my blinds.
Then I ran to get my mom’s binoculars, smuggling them back upstairs because I’m always plagueing her about “spying on the neighbors”. Sure enough, it appeared that someone was digging up the tree we’d planted between our front property line and the neighbor’s yard that borders it. I was a little shocked. We always get along perfectly with the Johanssons* – why in the world would they send someone to dig up our future privacy-barrier little tree? Did they hate us that much, just because we’re antisocial, reclusive homeschooling freaks of nature?!
I ran into the library where my mom was at the computer, and opened the blinds.
“Hey, we planted a little tree between our house and the Johanssons, right?” I asked as I peered out anxiously. The figure was a little blur at the edge of my clear vision, but I could see him, alright. I’d caught him in the act.
“Yes,” my mom answered. “Why?”
“Because some guy just dug it up.” I announced. I didn’t try to break the news gently. There’s something sickly appealing about being the grim, callous bearer of bad news. And I fit the roll perfectly in my cookies-and-milk print pajama pants and my army-green tank top. If only I’d thought to lace the binoculars around my neck and pull on some combat boots.
“Some guy, as in, your father?” My mom lifted an eyebrow.
“What?” I wheeled around to peer out the window again. Sure enough, the figure could very well be my father. The skin tone was about right. The height. The way he moved. “But why would Dad dig up the tree?” I questioned, sensing my grim, callous exterior beginning to slip.
“I don’t know.” Mom turned back to the computer, most likely to hide a grin. “But he was going to plant my new weeping willow there.”
“Oooh.” Light dawned. “He must have dug the hole, put the tree in it, and taken it back out because it wasn’t deep enough. Or something.” I nodded to myself. That made sense.
Then I felt like an idiot. Kind of like I did last night when I splattered salsa all over our pastor’s wife’s white pants. And at her own birthday party, no less. But thankfully for me, embarasssing episodes like these happen with relative frequency. So I’ve learned not to really be embarassed by them. Of course, sometimes that’s hard. Like when I’m slinking out of the room and my mom’s giggling behind me…
“Some guy. Heehee! Some guy’s digging up our tree!”
Excuse me.
I’ve got to go chase down my pride. It’s been shredded and thrown to the winds, lo these 17 years of my existence. If I’m not back in 3 months, eat a piece of cake in my honor. And perhaps pull out your binoculars and spy on your neighbors. It’s what I would do.
*Not neighbors’ actual name.
