Quote of the Day

"Children who have trouble finding God in their fathers often have trouble finding a Father in their God."

I heard this quote in my human development class, and it ardently reminded me of how very lucky I am. My Mom is the bomb and I say that all the time, but I think I often forget to mention how amazing my Dad is.

Aren't my parents foxy?

I have never had trouble finding righteous qualities in my father. He is the most reverent, patient, forgiving, honest, humble, gentle man I have ever met. (That's not to say he is a wimp. He's also a very manly man.) He has never raised his voice in anger at any of his children. I have never known him to have ever held a grudge, and I've never heard him speak poorly of anyone who's ever wronged him. He is constantly working to better his home, his life, his family and himself. I love and respect my Dad very much. He works soooo hard for his family and I know he does his best to keep us out of harm's way. He is a great example and an excellent dad, and an awesome person in general.

I am so lucky that it has been so easy to find God in my father, because in turn it has not been hard to find a Father in my God.

So

After 7 years together, my purple Mary-Kate and Ashley blow dryer is starting to spew sparks at me. Oh the memories we had together. I used to wake up at 5:30 in the morning in high school to do my hair curly. And there she was, like a lavender dream with detachable diffuser, at my service. I need to get a new one. That is all.

Fall Folliage Photo Shoot

One day, I was walking home from school and I realized that it was an awesome autumn evening. So I took some pictures with my phone. Shazam.

A small ridiculous victory.

"Joel, I am not trying to be a jerk, but I don't add people on facebook unless they really are truly my friend. I'm not sure you remember who I am, but you were extremely rude to me and my friends in high school."

"hahahahahahahaha oh wow... My bad, hopefully one day you'll realize it was JUST high school!"

"Oh believe me I do, but I haven't seen you since then . . . and its not so much for me, I could care less what you said to ME in highschool.. but you picked on people who couldn't defend themselves, people who were shy and awkward. People who didn't have the confidence to tell you to shut up. I gladly did it for them, more than once. Call me crazy, but High school was hard for a lot of people, and you made it 1000 times worse for the least fortunate. Me? I really don't care. I've never been angry at you for anything you've said to me. Its how you treated all the other people you didn't think mattered that formed my opinion of you. Maybe some day that opinion will change. Maybe you're a different person now. But most likely you still don't care. I'm writing this fully expecting you to laugh at it. I forgave you a long time ago, and forgot you because you're right, it was just high school. I haven't seen you since, and i'm not sure why you are still trying to add me."

The moral of this story is... If you try to add me on facebook to bolster your friend count, and you aren't my friend, and I've denied you 3 times... There is probably a reason, and I'm probably going to have to explain myself so that you stop trying. I am not trying to be hard with the keyboard. Facebook is where I keep in touch with my FRIENDS. Not a place for bullies who try to look awesome by having 10,000 'friends'. That is Myspace.

Call me a creeper...

But I really like this one song. It's called "The Garden" by Mirah. I understand if no one else does. I won't be offended. It's kind of crazy and reminds me of a circus. It also reminds me of one of those greek circle dances Uncle Jesse used to do with all his greek relatives on Full House. Like I should dance around and break plates while I listen to it. But then there's that little bell and its back to the circus again. I heart it. I have no problem being the only circus freak that likes it. Opa!

Mouthwash.

So... I'm just brushing my teeth you know? Just minding my own business. And we all know how I love mouthwash. So I go about my routine, and I almost swallowed my mouthwash again. Not familiar with the history? See it here. Anyways. AGAIN! I almost swallow my mouthwash.. so I hastily try to spit it out, and it came out my nose. That is correct. Mouthwash out the nostrils. Actuallt just my left nostril. It didn't really hurt, but I hope it didn't make it to my brain. I don't think my brain needs to be cleaned. But hey, I'm breathing free and clear.

Oh Mommy.

So... We found out on Sept 23rd that Mama Booth has cancer. I may have alluded to it in the past, but here I am just coming right out and saying it. I hate it. I hate cancer. It's not so much that I'm feeling "oh poor me!" but more like what the deuce does cancer think its doing, trying to take down my Mom.

She is a rock. She's the one being bombarded, and she's not even scared. She's handling it like a champ. I'm the one who isn't handling it well, but I'm doing my best. I'm not angry with deity or anything like that. I'm angry at cancer. If cancer were a guy, I would unapologetically knee him in the crotch. If cancer were riding a bike, I would poke a stick through the tire spokes and laugh as it hit the ground. Even if cancer were a puppy, I would punch it the face. Its okay to hate a disease right? I'm pretty sure its okay.

I don't know how many of you know my mom, but she is a saint. She's selfless. She's hilarious and I hate that I'm not going to be in K-town to take care of her when she's sick. That is my biggest problem with the whole situation. She has angelically raised 5 little girls for the last 25 years and been there whenever any of us needed her. Now we're all scattered all over the place and it's not fair. She deserves to be pampered. I know I'll never be able to pay back my parents for all they have given me in life. I would do anything they asked me to do, but I'm not even going to be able to do anything for my mom while she's sick.

Every time I think about it I get that blasted little pinching feeling in my nose right before I start crying. And then I usually start crying. I'm such a freaking baby. Its not fair. And I'm not saying its not fair to me. Its just not fair to my mom. She has always gone out of her way to make other people feel comfortable, to cheer them up when they are sad and nurse them back to health when they are sick. I just wish she could still have a houseful of daughters to wait on her.

This blog is probably not going to be funny.

So avert your eyes if you don't want a peek into debbie downer's diary.

As some of you know, I've been wrestling with anxiety and depression since high school. When I do tell people, I usually apologize. Not everyone can handle getting the "D-bomb" dropped on them. I choose carefully who I let in on that little secret of mine, as some people think that anti-depressants turn you into a crazy person. My counter attack? Two words, Tom Cruise.

Anyway. Every couple of years we have to switch the medication up because my body builds up a tolerance to it, and it slowly stops working. For some reason, this year I've already switched meds 3 times. It's been kind of, nay extremely frustrating. When I start taking new meds, I'm usually a wreck for the first week, and then I gradually begin to feel like my old self again as my brain sorts out the new chemicals.

As much as I've willed it lately, my new meds just are not doing it for me. So on Sept. 25th when I had a check up my doc wanted me to try out some new meds, because I was obviously suffering physically from the anxiety overload.

When you have an anxiety disorder, your body can sometimes be running in full on panic mode all of the time. Its like the story where the neighbor see's the guy across the street working on his car, and for some reason the jack slips and the car falls on top of him. The neighbor runs over, and manages somehow to lift the car off the ground all by himself so that his neighbor can escape. During the nano-seconds before reacting, the neighbor's body goes into fight or flight mode. His breathing and heart beat speed up, his muscles tense, and all non-immediate survival functions in his body quit what they're doing so that he can use his muscles in their fullest capacity. Usually, the fight or flight chemicals are only supposed to be released when you're in physical danger. But, they can be released when you're really stressed out. That's why my body freaks out when my meds aren't working. I have a chemical imbalance that induces stress. So my body is always in this sort of fight-or-flight limbo. It interprets my stress as something threatening in the environment, and it adapts accordingly. My hair stops growing. I have trouble getting to sleep. My digestion comes pretty close to a standstill, and I lose my appetite. All these non-immediate survival functions get the signal to cut it out because there's something else I should be worried about. After a while, naturally, in this state of stress I just become completely exhuasted. My body knows its tired, but it doesn't know that I'm not in danger, so persists in survival mode. It can last for a couple days or a couple weeks.

When I'm that exhausted, it leads to depression. There are things I know I should be doing, but I just physically can not do them because hello. For the last some-odd days I haven't been eating enough or getting enough restful sleep to even do day-to-day activities. All you can do is just sit there and breathe because your body thinks you're constantly in danger and has burned itself out. And it pisses me right off, but I'm too mortally tired to do anything about it.

Thank heavens for modern medicine. Most of the time, when I'm taking the right meds it puts my anxiety trigger back into check. Sure, my palms get sweaty before a test and I get stressed out when I have a big paper due, but that is healthy stress. That's the kind of stress that motivates me to get going, because I know that after the test I'll feel better, and after the paper is turned in I'll have a huge burden lifted from me. Stress is a normal part of life. I love normal stress. Its the monstrosity of an anxiety disorder that ruins my day.

So hopefully this explains why I've sort of disappeared off the face of the planet lately. Most weekends I go to Kaysville to hang out with my fam, and most days I can make it to my classes but then don't have any energy to do anything else. I'm not avoiding you, I don't hate you, I'm just doing the best I can until my darned brain stops imagining a car is about to fall on me.

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

This is a trailer I found on youtube, but it contained the F word, so I recorded it on my phone in two parts and muted it so that I could share it with you hahahaha. But it is awesome. Some people just have amazing editing skills. Enjoy.

Statements

There have been a few things I have wanted to say lately. So here they are:

1. Cheddar Quakes are cheeze-puffs from the heavens. They are ricecakes, yes, and I redact any previous statements involving the terms "rice cakes" and "worthless" and "pseudo food" being used in one sentence.

2. I am terrified of Tom Cruise. If I were to see him on the street, I would run the other way as fast as I could. He's loco. Don't even get me started.

3. Cancer sucks. I would like to punch cancer in the face. Also, Mama Booth is fearless. Seriously. I'm not sure what cancer was thinking when it decided to pay her a visit, but its about to get blown away. My mom is the bomb.

Quote of the Day

"I'll let you in on a little secret, I've been very looking forward to this moment, very very much. I have been steeped in anticipation. Toby has been cruisin' for a bruisin', for 12 years, and I am now his cruise director, and my name is captain bruisin'..."

The ABC Game...

So, my family is hilarious right? Right. Especially when we are all packed into our mini van. Over the weekend we all piled into the mini to take Nicole home to Logan after the last session of conference. We started out all cheery. We were planning on driving up through Snow Basin the "back way" to Logan so that we could see all the pretty fall leaves.

Malfunction #1... I got extremely carsick and almost had to yack on the side of the road. Seriously. I have never been that carsick in my life. So naturally, Mom and the sisters bust out some leftover halloween candy (ya, its not even halloween yet but we like to buy the combo candy bags) and the mini was filled with the smell of whoppers, reese's, almond joys and heath bars. The smell brought tears to my eyes. Such was the extremity of my carsickness. And we were just getting into the "scenery."

Malfunction #2... All the red leaves were gone. They were all dead. The red leaves were going to be the main attraction! They pulled a Lindsay Lohan and didn't even show up on set. (Perhaps they ran away with their lesbian lover.) Anyhoo. No red leaves. Only yellow ones, which were okay I guess. Whatever. It was still kind of pretty. But a major let down.

Malfunction #3... We got a flat tire as soon as we got up to snow basin. Which MEANS we had to pull off on the side of the road and all pile out of the mini in the chilly mountain air so dad could put on the spare. Luckily, we had brought one coat, found a dog blanket in the back of the van (just back from the laundrymat, but still gross) and another quilt so we didn't have to freeze while we waited for dad to do the tire changing thing. Just imagine: 1 tire plus 1 nail minus air plus Dad on the ground minus the red leaves plus 4 Booth girls (minus Tami) plus mom on the side of the road = ridiculous.

While trying to stay warm we learned the following:

1. That huddling in a circle is warmer than being individually wrapped in blankets

2. Mom thinks my deoderant smells like pesticide.

3. One of the Booth girls hadn't brushed her teeth that day (nor probably the night before).

4. Taking a huddled picture with all 5 of our foreheads touching produces a nasty double to quadruple chin effect on all of our necks.

Malfunction #4... we had to drive all the way back to Ogden before we could head toward Logan. It wasn't safe to drive the windy mountain road with the spare tire. So while we were in Weber (Ogden?) canyon, we hear this LOUD series of pops and scrapes and everyone freaked out. But no, we couldn't pull over because we were in the skinny winding canyon. After a few minutes Dad found a good place to stop. While Papa Booth was investigating we sat there in the shoulder watching giant trucks haphazardly whiz past us, missing our van by inches. Once Dad was safely back in the car, we found out we forgot to latch the cord that usually holds the spare tire back in place. So what we heard was the bouncing and dragging of the metal hook. Oops. And then off we were.

After the abismal, 2 hour prequel to our journey we finally made it to I-15 and began our drive to Logan.

Now that it was darkish outside and the leaves were ugly, we were left to entertain ourselves without any visual stimuli. We resorted to a family favorite, the ABC game.

One person thinks of a category, and we go around in a circle naming things that fit into that category starting with each letter of the alphabet. Sounds pretty tame and pretty lame right?

Example:

Category: Animals
Answers: Alligator, bird, cat, dog etc.

Here's an example of how OUR family likes to play.

Category: Things You Don't Want To Find In Your Chili
(Sidenote from Mom: "and it can't be anything ridiculous, like you can't say 'a buffalo' or anything like that. That wouldn't fit in your chili.")

Answers: ants, barf, cat hair, disease-causing bacteria (jackie's), e-coli, fungus, etc.

Category: Things You Don't Want to Step On Barefoot:

Answers: Anchovies, banana slug, cat poop, dog poop, an echidna (apparently some spiky creature. Go dad for being so educated), a fetus. Seriously? Nicole said fetus. She is a horrible person.

Category: People You Don't want to Carpool With

Answers: (I can't remember the first few, but here are some of some good ones) Abba, Bozo the clown, Richard Simmons, Osama Bin Laden, (can you imagine what would happen when you were late?) Nancy Grace, and many, many more.

We went through the entire alphabet for every category. Here are some other categories worth mentioning:

Ridiculous things you could say instead of swearing.
Something you wouldn't want to have as a pet.
Something you wouldn't want to birth. (And for dad, something you wouldnt want to "pass"...)

It was a great time. We are disgusting, but exremely creative and awesome.

Some of my favorite quotes from the evening.

"Kristin, remeber when I got car sick on this same drive? I barfed up tons of whole ramen noodles on the side of the road. "

"Woah.. double chin city!"

Nicole: "You guys are gross."
The Rebuttal: "You're the one who wanted to birth it out. We all wanted to poop it out!"

"Blegh what is that pesticides smell??"

Something that Perturbs Me.

So there are a lot of married girls at BYU. And there are also a lot of semi-awkward returned missionaries at BYU. I have noticed that sometimes guys who aren't quite back in the swing of things socially tend to give most of their attention to non-threatening girls. You know, the ones who they would never plan on dating. Like... their sisters / cousins / married friends. And on occasion (but not all the time) married girls give a lot of their extra attention to non-threatening guys ... like the awkward newly returned missionaries. It bothers me when married girls (and yes I do mean girls, like, the ones who are 19 but have already been married for a year) flirt with awkward returned missionaries and vice versa. I don't know why either party feels like its okay.

Yes, young man, you are awkward and don't know how to approach girls you are interested in. That is no excuse for practicing your flirting with girls who are married. Yes, young lady, you are married and therefore do not spend a lot of time with guys other than your husband. I understand this. However, I really don't think that flirting with awkward guys is the answer. You are married. You are not in high school. So stop it. Both of you. Its driving me BONKERS.

That Giant, Awkward Stage

Most kids go through an awkward stage. You know. That stage where they are no longer cute but haven't really grown up yet. I had an extremely long awkward stage, and I was a GIANT!! These pictures recently surfaced on the internet to my dismay. My 5th grade teacher added facebook, and posted the epitome of my awkwardness for the world to see. Okay not the world just her friends. Anyway. Rather than wait for these to show up on some gossip site (when I'm famous) I figured I should just publish them now and be done with them. They are good for a laugh.

First up: Halloween, 6th grade. We dressed up like army girls. This night was pretty fun, minus the fact that my friend's DAD tried to pressure me into smoking a cigarette. Seriously. Her dad. He was our adult supervision while we went trick-or-treating. From left to right: Jessica Souza, Kristen Hattendorf, Miss Fannion (now Fastert), Sammi Fuentes, Kelli Robinson, and Moi, in all my awkward high waisted mom-khakis glory. For the record, I still to this day have never smoked a cigarrette.
5th grade. Behold my center part and giant glasses. (Yes, the very glasses which were stolen from me one fateful day.) That black dot on my arm is just a pre-digital photography anomaly. Not a giant mole. Here I am, same day. Contrary to popular belief I am not handicapped. I was just a loud mouth. I was always talking. Talking during a picture can give the illusion of mental retardation. Its true. Though there is not reasonable explanation for why I was so large. You would have never known I was 10, and that I was actually in the G.A.T.E program. You know. For gifted kids. Hahahahaha! Really. You probably could have fooled.. well... anyone. Please note my hiking boots and brown socks. Thank you.Here I am again, probably mid sentence. Notice my right hand, most likely preparing to put bunny ears on some unsuspecting classmate. Tony Carasco, center in the back row, twisted my arm at 5th grade camp until I had a hairline fracture. He almost had to be sent home for being a bad kid. He subsequently asked me to be his girlfriend. I said no.
Yes, that's me in the very back next to Miss Fannion. We were the same size. But she was like... 15 years older than me.
Oh, the class picture!! Please open the picture in a new screen (if you can), so that you can locate the people I'm about to mention. It will be worth it. Notable faces to look for:

Me. (Top right corner)

Tony Carasco. (Far right column, 2nd down). The arm breaker.

Shavon Morris, the bully. (4th column, 2nd from the bottom). She actually tried to fight me one day. She pushed me, so I pushed her back. She said "touch me one more time and I'ma knock you out!" So I calmly shoved her into a mud puddle. Don't mess. After that she tried to buy my friendship with clothes she had stolen from Forever 21 at the mall. Ink tags were still in tact. I declined.

Wais Hamad (rhymes with rice). First column, 4th down. He was a perv. He asked me every day if I was wearing a bra.

Kristen Hattendorf (2nd column, 2nd from bottom) and Samantha Fuentes ("top" of the 6th column). My BFF's forever. Together with Kelli Robinson (far right, 4th down) and Elise DeWitt (top of the 3rd column), we thought we were the spice girls. I was Sporty Spice, Kelli was Scary Spice. Elise was Posh Spice, Kristen was Ginger Spice, and Sammi was Baby Spice. Yes, Sammi was a brunette, but she was pretty much the leader of the pack. We did not question her authority.

Jessica Souza. (bottom row, 3rd from the right.) She would tell us she could cast spells on people and move things with her mind. She started hanging out with us in the 5th grade. She was the new kid. Also, her grandma was a lesbian and creeped me out all the time. When she came to visit for grandparent's day, we were talking about how the school lunch hot dogs were green and purple, and the buns were always frozen and stuff like that. She then gave us a priceless piece of wisdom. "There's nothing worse than green weenies and bad buns." Thank you Jessica Souza's Grandma for ruining my life.

Michelle Zimmerman. (Bottom right corner) She introduced me to the world of toaster strudels at her 5th grade sleepover birthday party. I am forever grateful.

Rebecca Wynne. (bottom row, 2nd from the right) I'm pretty sure she COULD cast spells on people.

Miguel Rosales (bottom left corner) and Stephen Sokolowski (bottom row, 4th from the right). My loves. They would walk me home from school almost every day so I wouldn't get kidnapped and stuff. We are still homies. Here we are at their graduation. Left to right: Steve, Me, Eric Santos, Joel Decosta, and Miguel Rosales. (Eric is the only one below not in my 5th grade class picture above. He was kind of a little pervert. Can you tell?)If you are in my class picture, and I didn't name you, don't be offended. I just can't think of any good stories right now. At least now no one can google you, right?