Quotes: A Personal Obsession

I love quotes. I like reading what other people have said or written. It’s like a free pass into how they view the world. Below are a few of my favorites:


"She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. And birds fluttered around her, writing 'yes' in the sky." - Monique Duval

"When you're a kid, they tell you it's all... grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better." – Dr. Who

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” – Paulo Coelho

“Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free.” – Paulo Coelho

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.” – Einstein

“The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or the others crazy?” - Albert Einstein

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that." – Albus Dumbledore (JK Rowling)

"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." - Albus Dumbledore (JK Rowling)

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. (The Beatles, from the song, "The End")

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller

“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it...” - Wilfred Peterson

“Show me a day when the world wasn’t new.” - Sister Barbara Hance

“If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.” - Audrey Hepburn

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” - Ansel Adams

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.” - Charles Dickens

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” - Lewis Carroll

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.” - Marilyn Monroe

"Dreams cannot be tamed. Dreamers cannot be ruled." – Paulo Coelho

“I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.” – Walt Whitman

“I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” - Vincent Van Gogh

“When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.” - Taylor Swift

"No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett

Is There An App For That?

Sometimes I strongly consider deleting my Facebook.  And not just because then I could say I did.  Oh no, there are a bundle of reasons.  Hence, my need to create this list of things that I wish Facebook had an app to allow me to block.

Annoyance Number 1:  People who feel the need to compare all celebrity deaths to military deaths; the most recent case, Whitney Houston.  For weeks after her death my news feed was inundated with photos of her next to a fallen soldier with messages about the difference in media coverage of their deaths.  Here is the thing though; the two deaths are not really comparable as far as the media is concerned.  Whitney Houston was famous.  Most soldiers are not. Whitney Houston died as a result of an unhealthy lifestyle.  Soldiers die fighting for their countries.  It is clear to me that the more honorable death is that of the soldiers, but the one that is going to “sell papers,” is that of Whitney Houston.  It's just a fact of life.  

Annoyance Number 2: Recently, it seems like my Facebook news feed has been blown up with political and religious agendas.  I understand that it is an election year but seriously, I’m just over this.  You’re pro-life?  Okay cool, boon for you, we all get to have our opinions but I don’t want to see your creepy fetus photos every time I log into Facebook.  They do nothing to change my opinion on the subject.  All they do is make me angry / annoyed that you have chosen to use a social media site to try to force feed your opinions on me.  Save it for real life conversation.  The same goes for those of you who don’t like Obama, are angry about gun laws, think America is screwed if a republican gets elected, etc.  I’m not saying it’s not okay to post an occasional political comic or something, I just am sick and tired of having the bulk of my Facebook be political.

Annoyance Number 3: Games.  I’m not going to play your game.  It does not matter if you send me one request or 1000.  All your subsequent requests are doing is moving you higher up on the list of people I want to punch in the knee.

Annoyance Number 4: All of these photos telling me I have to “like” them or I don’t A) Believe in God, B) Have a heart, C) Care about issue "X", D) Believe in fairies, whatever.  I’m pretty certain God does not monitor my Facebook that closely.  

Annoyance Number 5: People giving me way too much information about their lives.  Case in point, girls giving a play-by-play of the birth of their child.  I do not want or need to know how dilated you are.  I understand it’s a big event and I’m happy for you but I really don’t need the details.  When the baby is out and clean I will happily read its length, weight, etc.  Until that point though please keep it off my news feed.   

Sleep Deprived

So, it’s been a while.  Sorry about that.  Although saying I’m sorry almost seems presumptuous.  Like I assume people are checking my blog daily and lamenting the lack of new posts.  I am so not that cocky…

Anyway comma I thought I’d write about my past couple of nights.  I believe some sorts of shenanigans are afoot.  Both nights I have glanced at the clock and seen that it is far later than I anticipated.  When it happened this weekend, it was not such a big deal.  But when I looked up from reading my book last night to see it was almost two in the morning I got a little concerned.

My alarm was set to go off at 5:47a.m. (Because I wanted to get to work early because I’m poor and need the hours).  And suddenly, I realize I need to be awake again in less than 4 hours.  

Now if you know me, you likely know that I used to pull this kind of crap all the time.  I never slept at night.  But now that I am a more functional adult member of society it is no longer prudent of me to sleep until 10 or 11 in the morning.  I get up early (usually).  I go to work.  I try really really hard to go to my early classes (although I miss them more than is desirable) but still!  I can’t run on so little sleep.

And then, as if my lack of sleep was not enough to contend with, it dawns on me that my contact solution needs at least six hours to stop being peroxide-y.  And so, for the second time in my life I intentionally went to sleep with my contacts in.

Now today I am a little riddled with guilt.  I feel like my eye doctor knows.  He totally knows. 

Final note, my sincere apologies if this is not funny, I am quite sleep deprived today. 

Short Story 2: Pure Fiction

Pure Fiction

By: Kyley Shinead Eagleson 

Father,

By the time you read this, I should be long gone and living under a new name.  I know I’m supposed to do this in person but I’m also supposed to ask for forgiveness, and I have no intention of doing that.  So I say we forget the technicalities.

Firstly, I must tell you Father I have most definitely sinned.  I need to tell you a story and I guess the best place to start is the beginning…

Over the next few days stories will probably start popping up in the newspapers about a man who’s gone missing, a man named Richard Slone.  He’s 79; lives lived in that big white house on the outskirts of the city.  If I had to guess, the police will hope that he just wandered off somewhere and that they’ll find him soon, confused, just sitting at a Denny’s in a few days.  That’s not going to happen though; he won’t be at a Denny’s or at an IHOP, or even at Mama’s Waffle House in town; so don’t try to look there.

His family will come in from California after a few days.  Well, he’s just got the one son.  He never visits.  But he’ll come in for this.  I’m sure he will.  You should give him this letter; it might help him to have it too. 

I was Mr. Slone’s caretaker.  I lived with him out in that big white house, making sure he took his meds when he should, making sure he didn’t wander off to Denny’s.  It would have been two years next week that I’d been with him.  He was a character, I’ve got to give him that, he was a real character.  But I’m off topic; I need to get back to my story.

I woke up yesterday morning and went down the hall to help Mr. Slone get up and ready for his day, same as I’d been doing every morning for almost two years.  Slone was a former military man; he liked consistency and a schedule he could count on.  I’d never been that kind of person but I could appreciate his need for order so I went with it.  

Downstairs I set to work making his breakfast while he sat down at the table.  As the eggs sizzled in the old frying pan Mr. Slone pulled his kit towards him and started getting it ready to check his sugar; same old routine.  He was running a little high already so I went to the fridge and got out a new bottle of insulin.  Rolling the vial gently back and forth between my hands to warm it up, I walked towards him. 

If you’d told me five years ago that someday I’d be shooting up into an old mans arm, I’d have laughed you into the next county.  I’ve tried everything, acid, crack, heroin; I never even thought about it.  It was a compulsion.  I never planned to live a long life. 

I learned in rehab that most junkies are looking to escape from something.  But me, I just had to know what it was like.

But back to the story, I’m still not sure where the idea even came from, maybe I watch too many crime shows.  All I know is one minute I was drawing up his usual insulin dose and then I just kept going.  Slone was a little needle shy so he never watched me inject him.  Never saw it coming.

It happened pretty quickly, in a relative sense, a couple hours.  He was fine for a while and then he wasn’t.  He got sweaty and confused and he couldn’t speak, it was like he couldn’t find the words.  But then he just nodded off.  It looked like he was sleeping but I knew he wasn’t.

You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this Father, honestly, I’m wondering myself, all I can tell you is that it seemed like someone else needed to know, I guess you’re just lucky.    

Now this is what I need to ask you to do.  The police aren’t going to be able to find the body, but I’m going to tell you where it is.  When this all gets going, call in and tell them to go to the Kirkwood Cemetery.  There is a woman buried there named Regina Zimmerman.  She died a day before Mr. Slone, but she was buried a day after him.  They had no shared connections in life, but now, well now they share something kind of important.      

Like I said in the beginning, I’m not asking for forgiveness, all I’m asking for is your help in getting some closure for the others involved. 

Thank you,

            Finn W. 

Decoupage Two

Decoupage

A few years back I learned how to decoupage.  I got really into it and now my room is littered with boxes, frames, etc.  Additionally, I have boxes and boxes of things I have cut out from magazines.  All this being said, I have been thinking recently that I would like to do something different with this sort of art.  Below is my first attempt at this.  I'm calling it digital decoupage.  I hope you enjoy it!

Short Story One

I'm in an intro to creative writing class this semester.  Below is my first attempt at a short story.  It's fiction but draws from real life.  I should warn you, it is not a comedic piece.  That aside, I hope some of you enjoy it. 

- - - - - 

Myra

By: Kyley Shinead Eagleson

When I was a kid, my grandma’s attic was the most magical place in the world.  It was like someone took Hogwarts and Narnia and rolled them into one.  You could find anything up there, seriously, anything.  Like, you know those giant condiment jars they put a pump in at school?  The ones that hold an entire gallon of ketchup?  Well anyway, Grandma had one of those full to the brim with buttons.  To this day I doubt if any of them match, but she kept them anyway.

Every day I took two different busses, the morning one from home to school and the afternoon one that took me to grandmas.  Her house smelled just exactly like you’d imagine, like baking things and cleaning supplies and cinnamon.  Except for the attic.  The attic always smelled like dust and something else, something that I now know was mothballs.  Even today it still smells like them.  Mothballs are the smell of magic; did you know that?

~ ~ ~

Sometimes we’d play games like dress-up and grandma would put me in an outfit she wore as a kid.  The clothes were so crazy; I still can’t believe people wore them.  The best though was when we’d do hide-and-seek; the attic was the best place to play hide-and-seek.

Some days though we would just sit and read together, those were usually the days when grandma was tired.  I’m not sure if she ever knew that I didn’t mind those days at all, I loved escaping into the fairytale world just as much as she did.  I wish I could remember for sure whether or not I ever told her that.  I guess it’s not really that important, we both loved the written word though, Grandma used to say that books were the one thing she’d always overspend on.  She could go years wearing the same old shoes, but hardly a day passed that she didn’t come home with a new book for one of us.

I started my collection when I was 11.  I’m 24 now and I have so many books that they literally line my walls.  Dad blames grandma, he always jokes that she’s the one who infected me.  Mom thinks it has something to do with our eyes though.  They look so much alike that she figures they must work the same way too.  That’s why we both love to read.  At least I’ve got that I guess.

~ ~ ~

“Geneva!” my dad yells up the stairs, “lunch is ready.”

I stand up and swat at my legs to get the dust off my hands before heading down, two steps at a time, like I used to.  In the cupboard next to the plates I see one of grandmas “no-no boxes.”  Those boxes were like her signature.

They were just old blue diaper wipe boxes that she’d drawn angry faces on and the words, “no-no,” but they worked.  I always knew to stay out of them because that was where she kept her medicine.  Today though I take the box down and open it; I see the old bottle of Xanax, pop the top off and take one.  I think she’d be okay with it.  I’m pretty sure she would understand.

We eat our sandwiches in silence; it’s just that no one really feels like talking.  When I’m finished I rinse my plate off and head back up to the attic, ready to go through more boxes. In a back corner I find a small trunk and open it, it’s got more books in it.  I recognize a few of the titles but most of them are strange to me.  At the bottom of the box I come across one with a blank cover.

Curious, I open it and instantly recognize my grandma’s handwriting; I’d know it anywhere, loopy and carefree, the writing that left me notes saying where the cookies were after school; it’s dated April 3^rd, 1941.  Doing the math quickly I realize it’s from when she was about 16 years old.  I pack up the books in the trunk to take back with me; the journal goes in my pocket though.  About an hour later I can’t stand it anymore so I go downstairs and get in my car.  I crank up the music as high as it will go, belting out Half Breed by Cher as I drive.

On my way home I pull over at a secondhand store to pick up an old silver mirror.  I got the idea while I was still up in the attic.  After spending a few minuets looking around, I find the perfect one.  It’s small, about the size of a typical photo frame, with delicate filigree flowers around the boarder.  Totally my grandma’s style, and mine too.

Back at my apartment I put the mirror next to my favorite chair.  Over the next few days I read through my grandma’s journal, discovering things about her that shock me, things that sadden me, and things that make me love her even more.  I never knew she had a lover before grandpa, or that her parents were so strict that they made her give up a child she had before she was married.

I sit in my chair with her journal and a big mug of tea.  Sometimes while I’m reading it all gets overwhelming so I stop and look up at the mirror.  If I look really closely at my eyes, just for a moment, I can almost pretend she’s still here.

Friend Fail

So to preface, I should say that I am kind of awesome. 

This past weekend my friend Octavia came to visit me in Indianapolis.  We had tickets to see Jimmy Fallon.  It was super fun.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.  This is the good part of the story…

I am so not a “morning person.”  When made to wake up before I want to I am usually somewhat dazed, confused, and even more clumsy than normal.  Additionally, my brain and body both seem to move in slow motion; meaning I say things before I think them through and it takes me forever to actually get ready. 

This morning was no exception.  My alarm went off at 6:30 and I stumbled out of bed, over to my desk, and shut the noise off.  I then stood thinking to myself, “Self, there is someone else in your room that you are supposed to wake up right now.”

And that’s when things got confusing.  I could not, for the life of me, remember who I was supposed to wake up.  I stood there squinting in the darkness trying to make out the shape of the other person in my room, to no avail. 

And then my mouth, which got ahead of my brain, said, “Heather, you need to wake up.” (Heather was my roommate for two years so, I mean, really this was a reasonable guess, just not the right one, not the right one at all.)

Then in my head I think, “Doh, nope, that’s wrong, that's 100% wrong, Heather lives down the street, that was so the wrong name.”  As Octavia laughs and says, “That’s okay Kyley, I’m awake.”

“Hi Tavia,” I say, “I’m going to go shower now.”

(Side note, I then sat waiting for the hot water to get warm for like 30 seconds before I realized I’d turned on the cold tap, seriously, NOT a morning person)

Yeah, I think it’s good that Tavia and I have been friends for so long because that was just an epic fail.  On the plus side, Heather thought it was funny.

A Day in the Life: My Hair

Talking to my roommate last night:

Me: My hair is getting too long.
Roommate: Cut it.
Me: No, it’s not long enough yet.
Roommate: *confused look*
Me: To donate, it’s not long enough to donate yet.
Roommate: It is totally long enough to donate!
Me: No, if I cut enough off now I’d look like a pudgy faced little boy.
Roommate: So you’re definitely going to donate it?
Me: Yes, I haven’t in a while.
Roommate: Your head is like a farm. Hair is your crop! You are both farm and farmer!


And she’s the one always saying she “worries about me.” She’s just as strange, just saying.

A Day in the Life: Body Wash

So, I've decided that in order to increase the rate at which I update my blog I'm going to do little "A Day in the Life," posts. These will basically be little things that I do / have happen to me that I find funny / interesting but that can't really be expanded into a big post. / / / ...

So, without further ado, A Day in the Life: Body Wash.

This morning in the shower I finally used up the bottle of body wash I've been using (this is a big deal for me because I usually grow bored half way through and change to something new). As I was rinsing the bottle out so I could put it in the recycling something on the label caught my eye. The name was "Daily Moisturizing Foaming Bath," no wash.

I flipped the bottle over to look at the instructions and they were, "Shake well before use. Pour into running water for a lightly foaming bath."

Awesome. So, after spending months forcing myself to finish off this bottle of "body wash", I learn it was something I probably should not have been putting directly onto my sensitive skin anyway. Epic fail self, epic fail.