The Roommate Influence

Having lived with roommates for the past six years, I have come to wonder about the kind of impact these wonderful girls have had on me.  I am a slightly different person than I was six years ago. Okay, maybe the change has been a tad bit more than slight.  I'm not as quiet as I used to be.  It's probably a little bit easier to get me irritated now than previously.  Surprisingly, I'm actually more dramatic now than I was in high school.  Most of these changes have probably come about through my interaction with female roommates.  Perhaps the biggest impact my roommates have had on me over the years is best observed in my speech patterns.  It's a well-known fact that when you live with someone over a long period of time, you tend to pick up on some of their behavior.  For example, I once worked with someone who had a limp and, after four months of working with her, I found that I walked with a slight limp whenever I walked beside her.  Weird, right?  The same thing can be said for speech.  There are certain phrases that people employ more than others in their daily speech patterns and, because of their frequent use, they stand out for the rest of us to pick up. I have incorporated many of these phrases into my own speech. 

Here are a few examples.  I'll have to omit some of these little gems as I'm not entirely sure how appropriate they are for the general populace. ;)

"I'm so bitter!" - This phrase is particularly useful when someone has really and truly deprived you of something fantastic or has insulted you beyond words.

"MY LIFE!" - This phrase is applicable in so many scenarios.  If you just managed to figure out a crazy formula on Microsoft Excel, you can proudly and happily exclaim, "My life!"  If you're annoyed that Microsoft Office always auto-corrects when you don't want it to, you'll find that shouting, "MY LIFE!" into your empty bedroom tends to quell your frustration.  If you're irritated that the only guys you ever seem to attract are the odd ducks, you can say, "My life," in a whiny voice.  Really, this is such a great phrase.  It is by far the best and most far-reaching one I've picked up.

"I'm so in love with him!" - Yeah...this is a sentence that doesn't always mean exactly what it sounds like.  It can but not always.  My old roommates (and I) will sometimes throw this out during any stage of the dating/relationship process, ranging from the initial meeting to married life itself.  When this phrase is adopted during the initial phases of flirtation/dating, it's just a girl saying she is interested in a guy in a completely over-the-top and dramatic way.  Saying you're in love with someone just makes the hum-drum single life seem more interesting and exciting.

"Stop. Just stop."  If someone is engaging in supremely annoying activity and you are experiencing mounting levels of frustration due to this person's behavior, employ this phrase when complaining about it to your friends.  For example, "Man, I have this really weird stalker and I can't go to a single regional church activity without him finding me and giving me random notes.  Everywhere I go, there he is.  Every time I change my direction to avoid him, he changes his so he will run into me anyway. Doesn't this guy get it?  I mean, really?  Stop. Just sto-op."

"Crapnaggit!" - This exclamation doesn't require too much explanation other than it's just an edgier way of saying "dagnabbit."  It's for those moments when you're particularly peeved but not peeved enough to swear.

"Dude!" - This is a word I never EVER said in high school.  My prim-and-proper, quiet little self wouldn't allow it.  Now I find myself saying, "Listen, dude," "You're driving like an idiot, dude,"  "Dude, I can't believe you just did that!" all the time.  I don't overuse it like some people do, but I definitely say it more than I want to.

"I look like Satan right now." - For those moments when you wake up, look in the mirror, and wonder how the heck your hair got so frazzled during the night.  For those moments when you just worked out and you are hotter than Hades (in a bad way).  For those moments when you get emotional during an inspirational scene in a movie and later find black streaks of mascara all around your eyes.  (Other variations I've heard while roaming the halls of previous apartments include, "I look like Satan's wife," or "I look like death.")

This is what I have coined The Roommate Influence.  When you live in such close proximity with others, the buck never stops with you.  Supposedly, I have passed along a few things myself, like "I'll be honest," and "I almost died."  So if you have the option of choosing your roommates, choose wisely.  In six years, you could be a completely different person.  :)

3 Signs You Are Still Young

I turn 24 in a couple of months.  I felt old when I turned 23 but 24 seems...even older.  Imagine that.  Most of my roommates and friends got married when they were 20.  Some of them have kids.  A few of them have two children already.  People I used to babysit are now in the singles' ward with me or on missions.  I feel old sometimes.  Before everyone over the age of 25 who may be reading this rolls their eyes and quits reading, let me assure you that I know I'm really not that old.  In fact, a number of things have happened in the last few months to remind me of just how young I am.

1. At the bus stop the other day, I got into a conversation with a total stranger.  We watched a hawk swoop down from a nearby tree limb and pick up some unsuspecting critter on the ground.  Somehow this little observation of the circle of life got us onto the topic of horses.  She lives on a farm out in Oakley and has raised horses since she was a little girl.  Her favorite horse, the one she has had since she was in her 20s, is getting on in years and starting to slow down.  When I asked how old the horse was, she replied that it was 25-years-old.  I don't know much about horses or their average lifespans but I figured that 25 was fairly old for a horse.  "Wow, that's an old horse!  Older than me!"  The lady kind of chuckled and then starting reminiscing about her younger days.  That's when I realized that if you are younger than the oldest horse, you are still young.
2. We had a meeting about health insurance at work about a month and a half ago.  As we sat in the conference room, a projection of all the employees' names and birthdays appeared on the wall.  1955, 1960, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1977...1989.  Yeah, I got quite a few comments about being the baby of the office...and how I wasn't even alive when Reagan was president...and how I am the same age or younger than some of my coworkers' children.  I chose not to bring up the fact that when I make oldies playlists on iTunes or Spotify, Journey songs go in there right alongside the tunes of Simon and Garfunkle and the Beatles.  If your earliest memory is after 1990 (heck, if your earliest memory is after 1980), you are still young.
3. When I turned 23 in Provo, I felt like a dinosaur.  Many of the girls in my ward were four years younger than me and still in their giggly, boy-crazy stage.  When I moved back to California and went to church for the first time, I found that I was in the middle of my ward's age spectrum and actually closer to the bottom than to the top.  When you are rubbing shoulders with people in your singles' ward who graduated from high school seven to ten years before you did, you are still young.

(DISCLAIMER: If your situation does not fit any of the above criteria, that does not mean that you are not young.  It just means you are older than me. :) )

Unusually Chipper

Today started out like any other day.  I showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, got my lunch together, dried my hair, brushed my teeth, and headed off to work in the usual fashion.  I sat down in my seat at the front desk, turned on my computer, checked my work email, and took care of the usual morning duties.  While sorting through some of the documents in the scan folder that needed to be filed, David walked in to the office.  I said what I thought was my usual morning greeting and then looked up to find David staring at me.  "You seem unusually chipper this morning," he said.

Somewhat bewildered by this, I brushed it off and proceeded to do my work.  Like every other day, I plugged my earphones into my computer, turned on Spotify, chose one of the playlists I've created for myself, then put an ear bud into my right ear, leaving one ear unhindered should someone ask me to do something or if the phone should ring.  After a few minutes, I realized I was swaying back and forth in my chair and snapping my fingers to the beat of Frank Sinatra's At Long Last Love.  Standing in front of the microwave, I was humming to myself while waiting for my food to heat up.  I walked down the hall to the server room with a little more spring in my step than normal.  David was right.  I was a little more chipper than usual.

What could account for this change?  I thought to myself, "Well, you are almost over a really bad cold.  The fact that you can breathe again would make anyone happy, right?"  While I was happy that I could take a deep breath in without doubling over in a coughing fit, I didn't think that was the reason I was unusually chipper.  I thought to myself, "It's Friday.  You can go home tonight and read a book or watch a movie late into the night and then sleep in tomorrow morning."  While the thought of a Friday night snuggled up on my bed reading topped off with a decent night's sleep sounded awesome albeit pathetic and anti-social, I didn't feel that this was the reason I was especially happy.

You know how they say people get depressed during the winter?  I've always thought that was kind of ridiculous.  How can the weather affect someone's mood?  Heck, people must be really emotionally unstable if they can't handle a few clouds in the sky.  Being the vain, prideful person that I am, I have always thought myself above such moodiness.  Well, as it turns out, a key part of the definition of being female is being moody and I, unfortunately, am not immune to this weakness.

With this realization came the answer to my question.  The reason I was unusually content today probably lies in the fact that as I was walking to the bus stop yesterday after work, I could smell the scent of the blossoms in the trees.  I looked into the distance and admired the contrast between the green of the rolling hills and the blue of the infinite sky.  I even welcomed the sound of the bees buzzing among the flowers as I walked along the pathway.

When I reached the bus stop, I struck up a friendly conversation with a total stranger.  I let a desperate-looking young mother go ahead of me in the check-out line at the grocery store.  I couldn't stop smiling as I walked to my apartment, watching the color of the sky change as the sun went down behind the hills.  Who knew the coming of spring could have such an impact on me? 

I have been sufficiently humbled.  I freely admit that I am yet another moody female :)

Pros and Cons of Being Sick

Cons

• You feel like your throat and your ears drums are about to explode every minute of every day.
• Eating becomes a necessary evil.
• You have to chug a glass of Alka-Seltzer Cold Medicine every few hours.
• Each sniff or swallow produces searing pains throughout your brain.
• You walk around in a daze because you are simply not capable of any serious brain activity.

Pros

• After getting off work, you feel completely justified laying on your bed for the rest of the evening, putting in movie after movie until you fall asleep at 8:35 PM.
• In a medicine-induced stupor, you come up with amazing ideas for novels.  (I plan on publishing two books by the end of this year, as a result.)
• You feel okay about putting off doing your homework or exercising because too much mental or physical exertion is detrimental to your already unstable health.

An Uncommon Name

I have been at Cal State East Bay for six months now so, today, I thought it was high time to obtain a student ID card.  I went into the administration building and gave the middle-aged woman behind the counter the necessary state-issued photo identification card.  I nonchalantly looked out the window for a minute to see if the wind had picked up outside when I heard a rather audible intake of breath which quickly drew my attention back to the lady behind the desk.  She was looking at me incredulously.  I saw her hand come out to grasp mine in a hand shake.  In the split second before my fingers touched hers, the thought occurred to me that this woman was going to excitedly exclaim that I was the 750th student to come to the counter this quarter and that the debt-ridden, mismanaged state of California was somehow awarding me with $500,000.  That rather ridiculous notion left my head quickly, however, when, instead, she excitedly exclaimed, "Your name is Celia!  That's my name!  You are now the fourth person I have ever met that has the name Celia!"  Having never come across another living, breathing human being with my name before, I was also quite enthused by this news.  What I thought was going to be a quick run-in to pick up a simple ID card ended up being a thorough discussion on both the benefits and the woes of having the unique name of "Celia."  We listed all of the different names we had been called throughout the years (Cecilia, Cecil, Sylvia...).  We talked about its pronunciation and she nearly convinced me (not really) to start pronouncing my name the Spanish way rather than the English way.  We stewed over the idea that the name Sally is supposedly considered an English equivalent for Celia (to which my Dad commented, "You are not a Sally.").  We discussed how Celia comes from the word "celestina" which means heavenly (as already stated in my blog description to the right of this post).  After contemplating together the life of Celia Cruz, "La Reina de la Salsa," I left the office feeling slightly deflated that my wild thought of winning $500,000 did not come to pass, but I also found myself inexplicably satisfied with the encounter.  While it used to bother me that my teachers never pronounced my name properly in school and that my name has bred nicknames like Seal throughout the years, I am pleased that I have a unique yet not overly abnormal-sounding name.  It stands out without being over the top.  It commands a certain level of attention.  It has a nice ring to it.

My name is Celia.  Not many people in this world can say that, and I find that kind of cool.

(I am using this image strictly as a visual.  I am not suggesting that you read this book.  I have never heard of it, let alone read it. :) )

I'm an 89er!

I was born in 1989.  Maybe that doesn't sound too remarkable to you right now but after some explanation, perhaps you will understand and wish you were a fellow 89er.

Though I am only 23, I have the privilege...nay, the pleasure, of saying that I have lived and breathed during four different decades/eras.  Let's go through the greatest characteristics of each one, shall we?

The 1980s
With my infant-eyes, I saw my older siblings wear the neon colors and thick scrunchies of the 80s.  While I can not say that I was entirely aware of my surroundings during this time, the effects of the era definitely carried over into my early childhood.  As the youngest child out of six, my formative years were spent watching "tubular" 80s cartoons my Dad had taped off the TV and playing with some of the "totally awesome" cast-off toys of my older siblings.  If you didn't have a popple or a glo-worm (or, in my case, a glo-turtle), you seriously missed out on some good times. 

I would often watch my brother play Super Mario Brothers and Simon's Quest on the original Nintendo that you had to blow into every time it stopped working.  And you might just be an uncultured swine if you have never witnessed the original versions of Strawberry Shortcake or if you have never seen a single episode of Rainbow Brite.
http://youtu.be/Q4nsALgnx2g
http://youtu.be/CfjgH8LZCPE
(The 80s...it was a strange decade.  After watching those TV shows again, I kind of wonder how anyone came out of it as a reasonably normal human-being.)

The 1990s
Though I was technically born in the 80s, I am most definitely a 90s kid.  I was making my way through elementary school at the height of the boy-band era.  (In case you are wondering, I like the Backstreet Boys more than N'Sync.  That isn't to say that you won't find me rocking out to "It's Gonna Be Me" any given day.)  I became aware of fashion when the cool thing to do was roll out of bed, throw on the baggiest flannel T-Shirt you could find, and head to school in hopes of being the grungiest person in the class.  Once in a blue moon, we kids looked semi-decent.  I felt especially attractive when I wore my extremely fashionable hat that had the flower smack-dab in the front.  Wouldn't you agree?

I showed off my Polly Pocket collection at a Show-And-Tell in 2nd Grade.  The boys and my teacher didn't think it was all that exciting, but the girls in my class thought it was "all that." I so had this exact one!

Girls with colorful Lisa Frank folders and erasers would pretend they were the Spice Girls during recess.  We would wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch Nickelodeon, making sure to watch the forbidden shows (Power Rangers and Rugrats) when Mom was not home.  My Tomagotchi was Salem, the cat from Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.  My sister Brittany was so accommodating whenever we wanted to use her Easy-Bake Oven..."As if!"  (Haha, I'm kidding, Brittany.  I just wanted to throw that phrase in there somehow.)  The 90s...another interesting yet awesome decade.

The 2000s
In the early 2000s, I headed into the awkward years of middle school with the lyrics from songs by the Dixie Chicks, Michelle Branch, and Avril Lavigne in my head.  I wore my jean overalls to school for as long as the fashion world would allow and thought I had hit the pinnacle of greatness when I finally managed to get my hands on a visor.

I think I kind of lost my grasp of popular culture during this decade but that doesn't mean my friends didn't try to pull me back into it a time or two.  I reluctantly took part in the viewing of the cheesy yet melodious phenomenon that was High School Musical.  I thought it was so cool when I was able to upgrade to an MP3 player after carrying around my old-fashioned CD player for years. I got my first cell phone when I was a junior in high school and, with it's tiny screen and limited uses, I hardly picked the thing up.  I went from writing my papers on my sister's old once-revolutionary iMac to writing them on my beloved Mac Mini which still serves me well to this day. 

I graduated from high school and headed off to college where methods of communication included some face time, Facebook, texts, and the sharing of YouTube videos.  The 2000s...my, how the world has changed over the last decade.

The 2010s
We are now a couple of years into this new decade.  I think we have yet to see what its defining qualities will be.  However, the trends I am noticing are these: This is the age of the iPhone and the age of social media.  In fashion, girls are looking to the 1940s and the 1950s for style tips.  Music still draws upon the techno age of the 1980s, but we are also starting to see a rise in popularity of music that is a little more "folksy," (yes, I just made that word up) getting some inspiration from the songs of the 1960s.  Beyond that, I have no idea where the next few years will take us.  Twenty years from now we will, no doubt, look back at these years and wonder, "What the heck were we thinking?"  I know I look back at the 80s and wonder how the mullet was ever cool or how the Grunge-look ever made it into popular culture in the 90s.  So what will be the defining characteristics of the 2010s?  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

So, though my lifetime is like a drop of water in the bucket of time, I have actually been privy to quite a number of eras/cultures and events.  It's amazing to think about all the things that have happened and changed in the last 23 years.

See!  Don't you wish you were an 89er too?  :)

Celia's Crafting Tips

Tip #1:  Avoid crafting alone.
I have found that when I craft by myself I have less motivation to finish what I have started.  When you have others around working on the same or similar projects, it is much easier to stay focused on the task at hand.  (And when you finish, there is already someone there to admire your handiwork :).

Luckily, I have a few sisters who love crafting as much, if not more, than I do.  My sister Brigitte and I were able to do a project together before I left Utah and it was lots of fun! 

Tip #2:  When in doubt, use scrapbook paper.
Scrapbook paper is an invaluable tool in a wide variety of projects.  Half of the crafts I have pinned on Pinterest seem to involve scrapbook paper.  Here are a couple of things I have made in the last few months that use this wonderful product.
JOY Letters

Use your wood letters to trace the outline onto the scrapbook paper.

Cut a little bit inside the lines that you've drawn.  (You do this so that you'll have a white wood border on each letter.)  Then use EXTREMELY watered down brown paint to apply VERY THINLY (with a paintbrush) along the edges of your cut-out letters.  This gives them a nice aged feel.

Paint your wood letters white.

Sand the edges so that the wood shows through.

With a paintbrush, use watered down glue to apply the scrapbook paper to the letters.  Then use your paintbrush to apply the rest of your watered down glue over the top of the letters.

After everything is dry, dress your letters up with buttons, ribbons, etc using a hot glue gun.  The finished product!

Flower on Canvas

This was my inspiration.  You can find instructions on how to achieve this awesomeness if you follow this link: http://itsdoable.squarespace.com/blog/2012/1/23/its-doablethe-flower-wall-art.html/

Here is the one I made.  I didn't really follow the instructions to be honest; I just looked at the picture and made my own interpretation.

Tip #3: If you don't want to use a stencil but you also want to have good-looking letters on your project, try this:  http://pureandposy.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-to-paint-near-perfect-letters.html
This is a link to my sister's blog.  I used this technique on one of my projects and it allowed me to pick out the fonts and sizes of letters I wanted.

The only thing I did differently was use transfer paper.  If you like making crafts, transfer paper will be a good thing to get.

 

Just place the transfer paper between your design and the surface you want the design to be transferred to.  You might want to tape it in place.  Then, using a pencil or a ball-point pen, trace the outline of your design.  Your design should be transferred to the wood/fabric/whatever other surface you're using.

Then all you have to do is paint inside the lines.  It's really awesome to see your own designs come to life!

Tip #4: Use Google to search for design ideas.  It's amazing!
While working on my most recent project, I found that I had left a little too much empty space in one of the corners.  So I typed "corner designs for pages" into Google and looked at the images that popped up.  So many good ideas!

For a Christmas present, I painted the lyrics to my sister and brother-in-law's song on wood...but I left a little too much empty space in that one corner.

So after typing "corner designs for pages" into Google, I picked this design from the large number of designs that came up with my search.

Using that design as a guide, I was able to draw my own design to fill in the empty space.  The finished product!

I'm no expert by any means but maybe these tips will help you out in some of your crafting endeavors.  Happy Crafting!