assorted candies.

"i am someone who is looking for love -- real love.

'ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't live without each other' love...."

I love this.

-SIGH-

I've been thinking about my New Years kiss.

This could really go one of a few ways:

 I could pick someone to represent the past and kiss them 'goodbye'

OR

 I could pick someone to represent the bright, welcoming future (<--- lol, how optimistic of me) and kiss them with hopeful anticipation.

OR

 I could drunkenly kiss a stranger, who presents nothing but my pseudo-sluttiness.

Why does everything need to have meaning?

 I am ignorantly, blissfully hopeful about 2012.

I just 'KNEW' 2011 was going to be AH-MAZING.

It was awful, there are no other words about it.

Just awful.

But I really believe 2012 will be good.

There are only a few ways it could get worse.

I need to really step up my goals. It's almost 2012 and I'll only have 3 years left 'til I'm 30.

I should have all of my goals done in that time. That is PLENTY of time to do what I need to do.

And it's almost Christmas.

It's that time of year and I'm feeling all confused about everything.

When aren't I confused?

What KILLS me is that my exhusband knows me so well,

he totally CALLED this bout of confusion coming.

Apparently I have feelings in cycles -- so he says.

I hate that he knows me so well, he can predict my feelings.

That annoys me.

Will anyone ever know me that well again?

Will I LET anyone know me that well?

I don't know but it's almost Christmas.

I'm excited about it.

"i bet this is hard for you..."

I am so exhausted with my life right now.

Like, mentally exhausted and physically exhausted.

When you give someone the power to break your heart, they probably will.

Sometimes I'm just a girl with a broken heart.
I'm not strong. I'm not awesome. I'm not amazing.
I don't have hope, I don't have anything -- except one small piece of happiness in my children.

Mostly I'm just a girl with a broken heart.
I don't want to talk about it (except that, obviously I am right now).
I don't want you to feel sorry for me. Please leave your pity at home.
I don't want anything.

It takes a lot of energy to be strong and I don't have it today.
I'm so exhausted with my life.

It's Pablo.
Let him remind me of hearts not broken -- let him remind me of love:

climbing on my soapbox.

It's finals week at school and I have to write a paper about abstinence-only programs (in school) and their effectiveness.

Abstinence-only teaches these (hormonal) teenagers basically that they should wait until marriage to have sex, condoms are not effective all the time in preventing anything (duh but even the effectiveness of condoms is downplayed to scare them into not wanting to use them so they "wait") and that they shouldn't even masturbate -- and, obviously, to wait until marriage to have sex.

Okay.
So. I don't understand what the big deal is.
Why are we still trying to tell kids to wait until marriage to have sex?
Is it preferred? Yes. Is it realistic? Absolutely not.

Who tells a bunch of teenagers that, not only can they NOT have sex, but they can't masturbate either? It's just completely unnecessarily.

Do you know how many people I know who waited until marriage to have sex? None. Not one single person. I don't have habitually slutty friends (haha!). These aren't back alley prostitutes I'm talking about here. All my friends are just normal people and (most) normal people don't always wait until marriage to have sex.

I can't believe these antiquated ideals are still being pushed on modern-day teenagers -- who see more sex in an hour of network television than any person needs, who have access to SO MUCH sex and information. Why are we pushing this on our children?
As parents, we have to be one-step ahead of our children if we want to prepare them for anything and abstinence-only is a step backwards. Far, far backwards.


Obviously it's not working for Texas, since Texas has the 3rd highest teen birth rate (and the 2nd highest REPEAT teen pregnancies) in the nation.
Yes, REPEAT teen pregnancies.

I can't even get INTO the amount of CHILDREN (ages 10-15) that are contracting STDs in this country. It's enough to make me want to throw up.

Clearly something isn't working.

I don't even want to blame the schools for this either. It's not for the school to say whether a student should be abstinent or not. Sex education should be teaching about all the different kinds of contraceptives, STDs, basic knowledge about sex, etc. without anyone's opinion on whether or not someone should wait until marriage. If people want to claim that marriage is a religious tradition, then they shouldn't even be pushing marriage on teenagers in schools either. Separation of church and state, people.

It's the school boards and the people who decide these things that really get me.
The same people who don't want to teach their kids about sex are going to be the parents of the kids that I don't want hanging around my kids -- who will be more educated about things than those kids and therefore filling my children's head with all kind of bullcrap that isn't true.


They will be the same parents whose kids either get pregnant or contract an oral STD (because that isn't sex, is it? (sarcasm)) or God-knows-what.
Hey, how about we actually prepare our children for something? Like, life.
We're not raising children, we're raising adults (and I'm pretty sure adults have sex and oftentimes contract STDs).
We should prepare them for everything, not just the parts of life that doesn't make us uncomfortable to talk about.

I'm climbing off my soapbox now.

you don't have to go fast, you just have to go.

I forgot my BITT goals. I'm not even going to front right now and pretend like I didn't.
I almost couldn't even help it and it was at that point that I realize it's going to be a BATTLE for me not to include 'romance' in my life. It's not apart of my goals.

I feel like it's mandatory we should go over my Before I Turn THIRTY Goals again:

• get my Bachelors Degree in public relations. That is what I've decided and it's going to happen. It really is a dream of mine for my family to see me graduate from college. It might sound silly but that's just how I feel. I am excited about it though.
• move to Austin -- that actually doesn't even have to happen. Can I exchange that one for something else?! I'm going to exchange that to "Move somewhere that I can find peace."
• Get a Honda Civic. I'm not worried about that one right now.
• Lose weight. Working on it slowly but surely.
• Find and marry Jake Gyllenhaal. Since I'm making changes to my goals, though, I would like to change 'Jake Gyllenhaal' to 'Jason Segel'.

My reasons for such a change? I'm glad you asked.
Jake isn't tall enough and also, he's very outdoorsy. Like, he likes to hike and bike, etc. I don't mind doing those things occasionally but I'm not trying to make them hobbies. I feel like he would also intimidate me. However, Jason Segel IS tall enough, he's really funny -- and SO creative. He isn't traditionally 'sexy' (like Jake) but he's very very sexy to me (and to many other women). He can rock the man-scarf like no other man in this world and once Constance and I start writing our TV Show (for Showtime -- or, at least, cable!), I figure that will be my 'IN' to meet him. Either way, I'm not working as hard at the tv show as I should be (since it's my 'in', after all) but I've started it. Jake or Jason, it's safe to say that I definitely have NOT made any head-way on that situation either.

(and for some reason, I felt my spiel about Jason Segel not only warranted an update to my blog but it also went off in a direction (and feel) that the rest of the post doesn't go and I'm just going to allow it...)

The 'I need to get out of this closed box so I don't suffocate to death and anything extraneous will just get in the way' list:

• romance.
• men.
• boys.
• sex.
• love.
• texting.
• dating.

I'm avoiding all of that stuff. Agreed? Agreed.
Unless and of course, if I'm romancing, texting, sexing, dating and loving Jason Segel -- my only exception.

 Anyway.
I made myself sad last night, and then again today. I went to the store to buy a book last night. I spotted my next big purchase, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. I picked it up and rubbed it against my face (okay, no, not really) and read the back. I was so excited.
Then I remembered the 20/20 Special that played some of the clips from the audio and I sat it back on the shelf. I can't even listen to her talk about him -- it breaks my heart. It really, truly breaks my heart and I cry. I can't imagine loving someone and losing them that way, watching them die. Sitting there, watching. How awful and heartbreaking.

Today, I was thinking about how I want that kind of love though. Not the tragic kind but the way she speaks about him -- if you've heard it, you know. I know it was only 4 months after he was assassinated but I believe her words, I believe how she felt. Loving someone like that makes a person so vulnerable.
I thought, "I can never love anyone like that because once I do, they will hurt me. I can't be hurt again. I just can't..."

My walls get higher.


And you know, even with all that, it's still going to be a battle for me -- even though it makes me feel stupid and I hate it, even though I don't believe in 'soulmates', even though I don't believe in the kind of love I would want, it's going to be a battle because I so very much want it to happen.
I know it's the romantic in me. Trust me, I hate it.

I have to find it in myself, like I already said. I have to find it with other people, in different ways.
I have to work towards my REAL goals and let life figure out that part for me because I can't.
I have my besties, my friends, my family, my girls and I also have a little magic so really, I'm good.

it's time to shake the world