deep down inside, i don't think people are evil.

note: this image was taken from abundancetapestry.com

Do you know that feeling when you're just having a truly terrible day? You end up doing things like wandering around Wal-Mart and buying ten packages of no-fridge-needed pudding. Or staring at walls super intensely.

And then sometimes, people are truly just good.

They let you go first at a stop sign, even though really, it's their turn, and you both know it.

They smile.

They let you borrow money, so that your stomach will stop making an ulcer.

They write on your wall on Facebook and adorably refer to themselves in third person.

They tell you they love you.

They pick up the pen you dropped.

They see you from inside a store as you walk by and quickly hold a sign against the window that says, "You're pretty."

What's embarrassing is, when a random stranger does one of these things, it suddenly makes you become absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. The fact that someone out there cares, even just the tiniest bit, suddenly turns your horrible day around. You are left standing there, in tears, just because someone was kind. Someone cared. Someone smiled.

So smile, okay? Because just maybe, you're making someone else's life suddenly worth living again. :)

Love,

Lizzy ;)

lizzy's brain fights itself on another pointless issue

Look! Another internal monologue!

To Work Out More or Not to Work Out More, that is the question...

I already ran for an hour today. Should I work out again? I feel like I should work out again. I am all jittery and anxious because what if I get fat because I didn't work out enough? But what if I'm just being compulsive? Then I should rebel against my compulsion so that it doesn't get to be all compulsive-y. But what if I am being compulsive about not being compulsive? WHAT IF THE WORLD IS AN ENDLESS VORTEX OF COMPULSION ABOUT COMPULSION???

Also, I have to be, like, awake by 11:30 am tomorrow, and for some reason this fills me with intense and crippling fear because WHAT IF I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO WORK OUT BEFORE THAT?? Also it just fills me with fear for absolutely no reason except that being responsible for anything before about 10 pm fills me with fear. Actually, just being responsible for anything ever fills me with terror. It's like I can't comprehend possibly being able to accomplish anything and so anytime I tell someone I will accomplish something, it becomes an internal war zone where I try to accomplish the thing while living in almost paralyzing anxiety about not being able to accomplish the thing. It's even worse if there are 2 things, and I don't even want to think about 3 things. Now I'm thinking about 3 things. Oh no.

Also my phone keeps being like, "YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE!!!! ANSWER IT!!! NOW YOU HAVE 2!! NOW YOU HAVE 4!! NOW YOU HAVE 25!!" at the same time that my email is like:

1 NEW MESSAGE.

2 NEW MESSAGES.

9 NEW MESSAGES.

359 NEW MESSAGES.

1 BILLION NEW MESSAGES.

SO MANY MESSAGES YOU WILL NEVER EVER BE ABLE TO ANSWER THEM ALL AND THUS WILL IMMEDIATELY FAIL AT LIFE.

:)

Love,

Lizzy ;)

beer garden

I began my very first hostel experience today at 2 am.

The story of how it came to be 2 am when our plane arrived at 8:30 pm is a joke in and of itself, so we'll just say that we walked for a really, really ridiculously long time and I'm not sure how my arm managed to remain attached to my body for the 5.5 hours in which I dragged 75 pounds of luggage up and down stairs, in and out of buses, in and out of a train, in and out of the metro, and across broken beer bottles (and beer bottles that become broken) on a scary, scary street. Also, my Swiss Army Knife once again came in handy. I became some sort of secret ninja warrior and carried it pointing straight out in front of me the whole way. When cars slowed down, I actually baton twirled my Swiss Army Knife with my fingers. This in and of itself seems like a bad plan, but trust me, in perspective with my plan that included deciding to navigate an unfamiliar bus/train/Metro system in a country I've never been to before, with a dominant language I don't speak a word of, at night...

I am more awesome than words can ever describe.

Somehow, we actually arrived at picturesque "Tiber Camping Village." The first thing I saw was a sign that said "CEILING BEING RENEWED!!" in large, urgent letters beneath something in Italian that had more i's and z's than seems necessary in any situation. It was confusing because as far as I know the sky doesn't have a ceiling, and how do you even renew a ceiling in the first place? This sign was posted in random places every few feet along the pathway. I became actually quite taken with it. It was my friend that said, "There is an Italian hostel with people that sort of speak English (kind of) soon (maybe) in this general direction."

Tiber Camping Village is right by the Tiber River in Italy. I think when people were building Tiber Village, they basically were like, "Let's put every type of thing that humans can inhabit possible in this area!" So they put tents and trailers and motor home hookups and little trailer-like things you can rent and female dorms and men's dorms and mixed dorms and shared rooms and possibly a single private room. This makes for a strange conglomerate of extremely courageous and foolish families, really old and clinically insane people, and drunk twenty-somethings.

Still, I am a fan of Tiber Village because it includes a bed, and I can't tell you how concerned I was that we were going to have to go and sleep in some bushes last night. Although I should mention that this bed is a bunk bed above another bunk bed and beside another bunk bed, which is beside a wall that emits a persistent, unending, and irregular sound like rusty robots fighting. They never quite manage to kill each other, though. Every few minutes there is a silence that makes me think the sound is finally over, but then it starts up again. I think it is actually louder when it starts again. It's like the rusty robots are mocking me in my attempts to sleep.

I'm especially happy that Tiber Village has a small and exorbitantly priced market from which you can buy food, hot showers, and the internet.

Tiber Roma has a few perks that I couldn't even have thought up to ask for, however. The first of these is a "beer garden." If I was having some sort of acid trip/dream in which I was somehow imagining a "beer garden," I would imagine trees and bushes that grew beer. I know this is irrational, but what on earth is a beer garden? I will tell you. It is a bunch of picnic tables in a wilderness that includes nature's many wonders like mosquitoes, flies, fire ants and man-eating venus Flytraps (just kidding) in which people drink beer. A lot of beer. I don't think they ever stop drinking beer, actually; I'm rather concerned about alcohol overdose. There's a man lying here who has been here since yesterday and I don't think he's moved. Someone once tried to check his pulse, but they were pretty drunk so I don't know if their reading was accurate. I was going to, but I don't want to touch him because I have a phobia of getting AIDS. Even though I don't do anything that could possibly give me AIDS.

Anyways. So as my first hostel experience, I think that Tiber Roma is exactly as....unique as everyone says. Except for the maybe dead guy. I think he makes it even more unique.

This week is going to be fun.

Love,
Lizzy ;)

PASTA

So I really, really, really like sugar. France has a really, really, really lot of readily available sugar in millions of delicious forms. Can you tell where this is going? I assure you, you are wrong.

Well, at first you're probably right. I have been eating A LOT of sugar and fat here. And I gained weight, because the world is stupid like that. This is very uncool, so I was like, "I should probably stop eating so much sugar and fat." Naturally, that wasn't enough, because I'm me. I needed to make a documented plan in writing to accomplish this. I'm exercising plenty, so I decided the best plan was very simple: Eat Less.

I started counting calories, and set a daily calorie allowance. This allowance was reasonable and healthy, but it did require me to cut down the calories I eat on a daily basis by a considerable amount. I've done this many times in the past, and usually it is not particularly dramatic/does not involve caveman behavior. The key word here is "usually."

My brain apparently now rebels against cutting calories. I've been rather mean to my body and been like "NO CALORIES EVERR!!!" several times, and so it was like, "NO" when I said we should cut calories again. My body is quite sure that cutting calories=starvation=death. So as the days went on and I kept this calorie deficit running, I started to get hungrier and hungrier.

Today I was starving all day. I was starving for hours and hours. I distracted myself with exercise, which made me even more starving (it seemed like a good plan in my hypoglycemic mind). I just needed to hold out until dinner...maybe I'd drink the ocean...saltwater is really nasty and I think I just swallowed a plastic bag...but there, now I wasn't so hungry anymore...why was the world glowing?...Istanbul...monkeys...

Eventually, it was FINALLY dinner time. We were having pasta.

Emily took the spaghetti noodles off the stove and told me to get my pasta out of it. This is where everything got kind of intense. I saw the pasta. My brain was like, "YOU NEED TO EAT THAT PASTA RIGHT FREAKING NOW." I was like, "Okay, chill, I'm going to put some cheese on it." My brain was like, "NO. EAT THE PASTA. EAT IT!!!! EAT IT NOW!!!!! OMG YOU NEED TO EAT THE PASTA!!!!!!"

Now, if your brain was doing this to you, you'd just give in and eat the pasta too. So I just started eating the pasta. The plain pasta. With my hands. My roommates hadn't even gotten it out of the pot yet. Luckily I'd somehow gotten the pasta in a bowl (I have no memory of this), because shortly after that, I ate so vigorously that the pasta somehow slid out of the bowl and onto the ground. This was probably because I was sort of swallowing the pasta (to bypass chewing, that obviously takes too long) while walking down stairs. I know this sounds like a fun challenge, but before you go try it, you should know that it has significant downsides.

My brain, crazed by hunger, started screaming, "IT DOESN'T MATTER!! PICK IT UP OFF THE GROUND! EAT IT WITH YOUR HANDS! EAT THE PASTA! EAT THE PASTA! EAT THE PASTA!!!!"

My life wasn't in danger, but you wouldn't have known that from the way I ate that pasta. I picked it up off the very dirty ground and, fully aware my previously plain pasta was now seasoned with Dirt and Soil Mix, started shoving the pasta into my mouth. My roommates stared at me like I was some sort of wild animal. I was some sort of wild animal. A deranged one. Possibly a deranged wildebeest that has been fed only silicon memory chips for seventeen weeks and then been injected with speed. And then been given pasta.

After several mouthfuls (mmm..crunchy dirt flavor), I managed to put the pasta back into the bowl long enough to try to put cheese on it. This was a bad plan because my brain was really, really, really fixated on eating the pasta. There was never anything as important as eating the pasta was at that moment. My entire existence was dependent on eating the pasta. And eating the pasta RIGHT FREAKING NOW. You think I am exaggerating. I assure you, I am not.

I ended up sort of shoving the cheese around in the dirty pasta with my hands because I couldn't be bothered to get a fork and then continuing to down the pasta like I hadn't eaten in several years and pasta was the most amazing food known to man.

I finished the dirty pasta. I'm still under my calorie limit.

And I'm still hungry.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Love,
Lizzy ;)

PS-Yeah, back earlier than expected...but don't expect any sort of regularity, I'm very busy and only get the internet in one inconveniently-located room here in the French Riviera and may end up eating my computer. Is plastic low in calories? But when I get back to the U.S., I promise I will have many great posts because you guys, this is like the craziest adventure ever. It even beats the one time when the break pads turned into eggs and rotted.

DON'T PANIC!

panic! at the disco. photo unrelated to this post. but a good band.

Hello, all two to three people who read this blog.

I am the kind of person that cares about individuals, so I'm going to give you some difficult news. Sit down. Get a drink. And whatever you do, don't panic.

I am going to be gone for the next 3 weeks.

Okay, there. It's out. Are you okay? STAY WITH ME! IT'S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT! TAKE OFF ALL YOUR CLOTHES AND PUT YOUR FEET UP! (this is what I learned you should do when someone is going into shock. Thank you, Girl's Camp.)

I'm going to be driving around in a giant bus (I'm not driving, sorry, I hope you didn't go into shock again. A bus driver will be driving. Or maybe the bus will drive itself; that would be cool. But probably a human will be driving the bus. A human that is not me. Do you understand now? Good.) to see the countryside of Western France, and then I'll be in Nice for a week, and then in Rome for another week. So I think internet access will be spotty at best until I return to the Etats-Unis on June 21.

Hang in there. I've got some great ideas saved up for you for when I get back!

Love,

Lizzy

Dear Grocery Store: I Hate You. Here's Why.

Dear Grocery Store,

In case you didn't know, I have paralyzing social anxiety (see Grocery Store pro/con list). This means that I usually live in my room, terrified to venture outside to talk to people or purchase vital substances like jewelry and sometimes food. People that know me in real life will probably be surprised to read this. "But you're so outgoing!" they'll say. They clearly have never been to a grocery store with me. I avoid visiting the same store twice because getting to know the cashiers means they will notice what I am buying. Then buying tampons will be awkward, and they will look down on me for needing 3 bags of chocolate covered marshmallow koala bears and a 6-pack of diet Coke on a daily basis.

It is even worse when I live in France, a country full of spite and hatred. Is French not your first language? You are clearly an idiot!! How did your two-week old brain NOT know that it needed to learn French rather than the language everyone around you was speaking?!

Today I succumbed to near-starvation and went to the grocery store to buy a sick-pack of diet Coke and some bread and cheese (I bought the koala bears yesterday, and I happen to know all 4 cashiers AND the manager, so I had to switch it up before they started refusing to support my sugar habit). It was all going fine until I got in line. The guy in front of me mumbled something French. I laughed "knowingly," because 90% of the time that gets me out of trying to understand whatever it was they said.

Of course, the other 10% of the time, the person stares at me blankly like I am high or possibly a sociopath because what they said was, "I'm homeless and my grandmother just died and I'm a persecuted minority in my country and I have a severe life-threatening medical condition that you are personally responsible for." And there I am giggling quietly while becoming suddenly fascinated by an invisible, but clearly enthralling, thing that is the opposite direction of their face.

This particular incident was part of that 10%, because my laughter did not satisfy the man. So I had to ask for clarification twice, but thankfully there were no R's in the sentences I used to say, "Sorry, I couldn't hear you." So he didn't know I didn't speak French natively!! I was winning!! Eventually I got that he'd said, "You have beautiful eyes." "Thank you," I said, as quietly as possible, because that DOES have an R in it. "You don't have to thank me, it's just a fact," the man said creepily. I giggled idiotically some more to avoid having to respond.

The man finished paying for his Red Bull and said, "Au revoir!" "Auvoir," I mumbled rapidly. The man looked surprised and laughed. "Ohvwah!" he mimicked my accent, "I like it. What country are you from?" "The United States," I said, as though admitting I was a Nazi in a past life. Admittance of American nationality is in and of itself is grounds for lifelong hatred, you know. I ended up having to repeat it several times until I was shouting, "ETATS-UNIS!!!" at alarming volume. "But I'm not American!" I joked in French, attempting to redeem myself.

Things get hazy here because I'm not exactly sure what happened. I think the cash register thought this was funny and started going along with my joke, saying, "It's not like that! Haha." The man was laughing too. But really I don't know if they were laughing AT me or WITH me, so I said, "You French, you're all mean," hoping this would either A. Make me look cool for understanding I was being mocked, or B. Sound like a joke because I understood they were joking with me.

I haven't the slightest idea whether I in any way succeeded, but I walked home feeling like a complete idiot and my cheese tasted like garlic and failure.

And this, grocery store, is why I hate you. Please find a new way to provide me with diet Coke and glucose.

Thanks,

Lizzy ;)

gymnasts, pirates, and VELOCIRAPTERS! LOL!

this was taken at Disneyland Paris, inside a pirate cave, with the prompt being "Look like a pirate!"

There aren't really any velociraptors in this post. It was mostly a joke, I'm very tired. And when I am tired, I am virtually drunk. Seriously, just ask the guy on the RER train who was cracking up at us as we staggered into it last night at 1 am. Nothing says, "I'm completely wasted!!" like shouting, "Why is everything so funny right now??!" through tears of laughter. The effect is even better if, due to your staggering inability to walk in a straight line and simultaneously being on a vehicle moving at 200 mph, you've actually fallen on the ground of the train and said something really strange like, "OMG, it's the ghost of Mickey Mouse!!"

Anyways. I am now getting to the "gymnast" part of this post. At one point in my life, I was in really excellent shape. Then I stopped doing colorguard, and things sort of went in a.... different... direction. One time this really uppity gymnast was all, "Hey, let's go run around that lake." And I was like, "No." And she was like, "Come on, it will help you get back in shape." I became very aggressive and defensive and pulled out my evil eyes. "I AM IN SHAPE!!! I RUN TWO MILES EVERY DAY!!!" I extrapolated. "Well, you don't look like it," Ms. Perfect Gymnast Champion of the World sneered. This is a scarring event I will never be able to forget. It is burned onto my memory, like the actual scar that I burned onto my hand once while I was ironing. Also the scar from where I burned myself making cookies that one time. And the scar from when I poured boiling water onto myself in an attempt to stop burning myself on a hot mug.

My brilliancy amazes even me sometimes.

You know, I feel like when I sat down to write this, I had some sort of point...

Love,

Lizzy ;)