My Important "Twenty-Something" Experiences

My birthday is tomorrow, everyone!  Now that I'm about to turn 30, I'm looking back on what I did with my twenties.  Have I done all the "twenty-something" things that Society and The Media and Mindy Kaling have taught me to do in that decade?  In honor of my last day of being 29, here are 29 things (in no particular order) that I've done that I think qualify:

1. Lived in a major U.S. city
2. Lived by myself in a (different) major U.S. city
3. Bought real furniture (okay...Ikea furniture mostly...but the fancy stuff...no LACK's or MALM's up in this hizz-ouse) and also a rug and throw pillows and a cedar chest
4. Hosted multiple legit dinner parties
5. Went speed-dating
6. Went to two real weddings as an actual invited guest (not like one of those Mormon "invite everyone with a refrigerator" open reception ordeals).  One was a Mormon temple sealing, the other one was a gay wedding...so I guess I have yet to attend a stereotypical bride-and-groom-walk-down-the-aisle-and-afterwards-you-eat-chicken-or-fish wedding.
7. Was a bridesmaid (twice, but only disliked the dress once)
8. Kissed a guy for the first time (okay...maybe this isn't a "trademark 20's experience," but better late than never!)
9. Got to be someone's first kiss (this was something I didn't think would happen in my 20's outside of some weird fantasy scenario where it's World War 1 and I'm a fancy French prostitute that all the young American GI's visit so they can "become men"...I swear this was a movie with Matthew Broderick)
10. Kissed a guy on the top of the Empire State Building*
11. Kissed a guy who was not currently my boyfriend (although it's less exciting knowing that he had been my boyfriend previously)**
12. Got my heart seriously broken...but later got over it
13. Moved to a tropical island following getting my heart seriously broken
14. Chose the "dream job" over the "dream guy" (who ended up not being the dream guy--quite the opposite, actually--so good call there)
15. Got dumped
16. Did the dumping
17. Made a determined plan to keep a relationship with a man platonic but ended up falling in love with him anyway
18. Met his parents and spent many major holidays and family events with his family and then took him home to meet my family
19. Got freaking ENGAGED!!!!!!
20. Pierced my ears (again...better late than never)
21. Felt the joy in rebelling against my father's wishes by putting holes in my body
22. Graduated college
23. Got a master's degree
24. Actually used the master's degree
25. Felt the overwhelming terror that comes from the knowledge that I still have to finish paying for the master's degree
26. Started a PhD
27. Went to multiple rock concerts (and by multiple I mean three...but my cochlear hair cells...)
28. Met my favorite artist following a rock concert
29. Spent more on a piece of clothing than on groceries

*Mindy Kaling definitely would approve of this one.

**This is making it seem like I've kissed way more guys than I actually have.  But according to Society, being in your twenties means kissing pretty much everyone, doesn't it?

Five!

My blog is five years old today--exactly.  It was just a coincidence that I checked today to see when my first posts was, and it was on September 13, 2010 that I wrote my "Obligatory Introductory Post."  I guess I should make my wooden anniversary toast-post by reflecting on my first post ever.  Here goes!

For one thing, I decided that food blogs with a million appetizing pictures are annoying.  Just give me the recipe already!  Okay, maybe one picture of the process and any illustrative pictures of difficult processes would be fine, but I don't need to see a picture of the dish from every angle as you tell the story about how you came up with the recipe and which of your nineteen kids you made it for.

I should also talk about this blog's namesake:  "Skeleton Song" by Kate Nash.  A few years ago I actually got to see Kate Nash perform live (although she didn't sing Skeleton Song...sad).  But I told you about how Kate Nash came into my life, right?  It's all because of my best female friend, the Tacy to my Betsy, the Ann Perkins to my Leslie Knope, LT.  She is basically the only person who I don't live near anymore that I'm still friends with...probably because she is the only person whose snarkiness matches my own.  But it was because she gave me a ride home from church one day in her giant boat of a car that we became friends and, less importantly, I got introduced to Kate Nash's amazing first album.

What else?  As you likely know if you know me or if you've read my blog, I graduated with that M.S. in Forensic Anthropology, worked as a Forensic Anthropologist for a little while, and am now in the middle of a PhD program doing research on something not nearly as interesting, but still public-health relevant.  But I'm still a bone lady at heart and I desperately hope to get back into anthropology once I have those magical three letters after my name.

Other things...I'm still a morning person.  Music and I had a little falling-out a few years ago, but we're on friendly terms again and I'm trying to do more music-related things (slowly), though my singing voice is a little out of practice.  Apparently I used to describe myself as "creative" and I guess I still am, though I perhaps don't have as much time or motivation to be when I was a wee 24-year old.  Now that I'm a crotchety soon-to-be 30-year old, I'm even more misanthropic, I imagine (though some think that I'm all talk and am actually a softie at heart).  I'm still torn on the cat/dog situation but am at least certain that I don't want to own either.  And open-ended questions are still the worst things on the planet.

So there you have it!  I've managed to keep a blog going for five years.  This last year has been tough, but I'm sure I'll have some more exciting things to blog about.  I am turning 30 next month, after all!



*I guess at some point I decided to try to anonymize my friends when I talked about them in here but apparently it was before I used her full name in the linked post.  Also if I'm going to get super meta and talk about that blog post in this toast-post, I should mention that we broke Gmail a LOT.  Our record subject line had over 1100 emails in it.

It's Going to Rain in Boston...

#semiobscurebuffyreference

Raining in Boston has become the new "Dawn's in trouble."  At least they're not predicting any giant hail this time.

My Sabbath

This is my second Sabbath-themed blog post.  I wrote the first over four years ago.

Recently, the LDS (aka "Mormon") Church has been strongly emphasizing Sabbath Day Observance.  I am actually quite in favor of this, especially since it's preferable to a lot of the other things the LDS Church tends to strongly emphasize (cough--traditionalfamilies--cough).  Over the past few weeks, I've thought a lot about what how I am spending my Sundays and what I can do to make them a little more special and sacred.  I don't go shopping or participate in "worldly" activities on Sundays; I often spend the afternoons/evenings with my boyfriend as we cook dinner together; I even try to watch less TV (my exceptions/foils include "The Great British Baking Show" or a really good SVU marathon).  There has been one small hitch in my aspirations to become more Sabbath-appropriate, however.

I kind of hate church.*

I don't think I always hated church.  I mean, I was never the type of person who would be like "Sunday is my favorite day ever because I get to go to church and feel the spirit and stuff!" (mostly because I've never been the type of person who...felt the spirit and stuff), but over the past few years, church has been difficult.  I don't know why, exactly.  Maybe it's because I don't fit in in my ward and it's hard to not fit in when you're in close proximity to a bunch of people who fit in really well (and the crippling social anxiety doesn't help much, I'm sure).  Maybe it's because the building is always too cold and I'm always starving by the end, and physical discomfort often fuels my rage toward most things.  Maybe it's a bunch of boring reasons that nobody wants to read.

I don't want to stop going to church (I've never actually skipped church and have rarely been tempted to do so).  The problem comes from staying at church.  I can usually make it through the Sacrament before the desire to escape overwhelms me.  Having a boyfriend to sit with in Sunday School has been really helpful, but after that, I am racing toward the bus stop to head home and feeling instant relief once I return to my apartment.  But with that relief comes the gnawing feeling that something must be fundamentally wrong with my spiritual self that I can't feel any peace during a communal worship service.

I fully understand that this peace probably comes from having the proper mindset during church or making efforts to have a positive experience.  (I'm sure this post will yield many comments like, "you get out of it what you put into it" and similar aphorisms).  But that advice only goes so far when the thing that is supposed to make you feel wonderful on the Sabbath puts you in the foulest mood of the whole week.

How can a positive church experience come from turning off my phone during church when sometimes, a text from my best friend in Baltimore is the only thing that makes me smile during Sacrament meeting?

How can it come from attending all of my church meetings when I feel more peace alone in my apartment cleaning my kitchen** on an early Sunday afternoon than I've ever felt in Relief Society?

And is going to church the best and only way I can feel close to God on the Sabbath?  Are more individual forms of worship preferable to hours of negative emotion in a congregation?

I'm writing this post for two-ish reasons.  The first is because I needed to write it down because if it's written down, it's real and tangible and I can understand it better than if I'm just thinking about it on the bus ride home from church.  The second is so other people can read it--people who can give me advice on what has helped them and people who feel like weirdos because they also hate church (of course, these groups are not mutually exclusive).

With that, I say happy Sabbath.



*Please note that when I say "church" I don't mean "The (LDS) Church."  I mean the building with the steeple where I go every Sunday with a bunch of other people.  This seems like a statement that was too important for a footnote, but I couldn't figure out where else to put it in the real text.
**Wiping the grease, gunk, and nonstick cooking spray droplets off of my stove often eclipses the Sacrament in necessity and frequency in my apartment.  Sometimes I have to do it two or three times in one day, and that kind of makes me feel like a traveling General Authority.

Plans

I've recently learned something about myself:  I like planning things more than I like actually doing things.  Actually, I really love planning.

Maybe because the planning is easy.  Spreadsheets and lists and Pinterest boards are easy.  I can make a list without even getting out of bed or putting on real pants.  But doing things?  Most often, real pants are generally expected.

Doing things also, more often than not, requires other people.  Other people whom you can't control and who don't tell you what you want to hear when you put forth your plans to them.  Or people who are instrumental to your plans and whom you know will be totally on-board and supportive but who have to respond to your emails first.*

So I keep planning.  And because I love lists so freaking much, here's a list of some of the things I'm currently planning:

• An informal "dinner party" for my boyfriend, his sister, her husband, and their four adorable children.  Thankfully I have lots of experience cooking for my picky sister, so finding something kid friendly that has very few tomatoes (because my boyfriend is a bit picky, too) shouldn't be too hard.  
• The rest of my graduate career.  This one is a little less fun than a dinner party with a chubby baby, but involved lots of hardcore table-making.  I optimistically set myself to defend my (yet unwritten) dissertation two years from now, and I'm sure the laughter I will receive upon presenting this to my adviser will be epic.
• A Fun Family Weekend in Pennsylvania in August.  For anyone who knows the Winks, the phrase "Fun Family Weekend" will probably be met with much skepticism and/or yet more epic laughter, but this will be the big "introduce the boyfriend to the parents" trip, and therefore we have to pretend we like doing things together.  So we'll probably go to the zoo.

I also plan to try to blog more.  Or to feel really bad about it when I don't blog as often as I'd like.  I hope to squeeze one more post out in July...so stay tuned.


*#gradschool

The Qualifying Exam Saga

The reason I haven't blogged lately (among other reasons that are more fun that I'll blog about later) is that I've been pretty preoccupied with my doctoral qualifying exam.  I call this post "The Qualifying Exam Saga" because it is a saga, as long as saga is defined as something that takes way too long and sucks out way too much of your energy.  There are also Buffy gifs, because of course there are.

I turned in the first draft of my written qualifying exam back in March.  The beginning of March.  That was a long time ago.  And then, two weeks later, the committee told me that I needed to rewrite the exam.  That was lame.  And many of my attempts to figure out what the problem was were unfruitful.

I finally got some feedback that was sort of helpful, and set out to write my second iteration.  And I wrote, and wrote, and wrote.  For months.  Without a deadline.

I finally got a deadline--May 29.  Ample time to write a new proposal about bunions.  Yes, bunions.  I was able to get really excited about it, although nobody else could really understand why.

I turned in my second go-around of the written.  It was beautiful.  There were charts, pictures, and tables of abbreviations!  Thankfully, I passed.  Time for some very moderate celebration at being one step closer to not getting kicked out of grad school.

Couldn't celebrate too much, though, because that was just half the battle.  The real scary part was the oral exam.  I had to give a 25-minute presentation about my proposal, after which I would be grilled for 45 minutes.  After lots of practicing in front of classmates, friends, my acting-coach boyfriend,* I was finally ready to do the real thing.

I got through the oral without tripping over any words or forgetting any slides!

The questions were not hard at all, which was kind of annoying because I had prepared for much harder questions (for instance, information on all the statistical methods, and the stats expert on the exam committee wasn't even there!).  So I ended up giving them anyway, just to let everyone that I had prepared and knew all of the things.

After answering all the questions, I went out of the room while they deliberated...and, as all of you know who already know me from Facebook, I passed!!!  I was lucky to be congratulated by so many of my friends.

And also, so happy to be done!

*Yes, I have a boyfriend now.  Like how I slid that in there?

Evil and Evening Gowns

In the fifth season of Buffy, Dawn comes to the realization that, because bad things happen because of her, she must be evil.  She confides this to Spike, who gives this reply:

In case the picture doesn't show up, he's saying:
"I'm a vampire. I know something about evil. You're not evil."

Now, don't get me wrong: Dawn is The Worst.  So much so that everyone would have totally been fine with her doing that thing that Buffy did at the end of Season 5 instead of Buffy.*  But Dawn is certainly not "evil."  A 14-year-old girl who happens to have Circumstances in her life doesn't really fit that bill.

As much as I'd love to keep talking about Buffy, I'm now going to write about the thing that inspired me to write this post:  Lindsey Stirling's Billboard Award dress.  If you'd asked me two weeks ago who Lindsey Stirling was, I would probably have said, "isn't she that Mormon girl with the violin?" because that was all I knew.  Now I know her as the Mormon girl with the violin who wore a really controversial dress to an award show.  And not even the fun kind of "is this blue or black?" controversy, but the kind that calls all of the Mormons With Opinions (MWOs) out of the woodwork.

Now I'm not going to talk about lines or lining or whether you can wear that kind of dress with garments (although you totally can, and also I defy you to find one endowed Mormon woman who hasn't done some strategic cap-sleeve tucking at some point in her life) or even the definition of "modesty."  I am going to talk about the definition of "evil," though.  I looked up the word "evil" on Google.  It's defined as "profoundly immoral and malevolent."  The MWOs have said that even though the dress is fully lined, the fact that the nude fabric looks like skin gives off the "appearance of evil."

I think "evil" is one of those words that gets thrown around too liberally by some people.**  How can a dress be "profoundly immoral and malevolent"?  At worst, a dress can be a bit trashy-looking, but evil?  How can that even be applied to clothing?  I guess if you were wearing a t-shirt that said, "I worship Satan and enjoy eating babies on the weekends," you'd probably give off the appearance that you were a little bit evil, but an evening gown that fits well***, covers everything, and is appropriate for the occasion is anything but evil.  Clothes are not evil, and moreover, the (female) human body is not evil.

Again, this is not a post about the definition of modesty.  If you didn't like the dress or thought it was "too sexy" or wouldn't want your teenage daughter to wear something like that to prom, by all means, have that opinion, but for heaven's sake, stop calling it Evil.

(And for what my opinion is worth,  I thought she looked Amazing.)



*I can't spoil too much because my boyfriend reads this blog and he's only part of the way through Season 2.  Oz is just barely a werewolf right now.
**Another one is "apostate," but don't get me started.
***There's a difference between form-fitting and tight, by the way, so everyone who's all like, "Oh my gosh, she's got a female body under there! Call out the National Guard!" can just chill.