a hole to stick my head in now, please

I slobbered on myself yesterdae. Dan thought I should have been embarrassed about that, and so I proceeded to explain to him how I don't really embarrass that easily.

Fast forward about 3 hours and I found myself having one of the most embarrassing experiences that I've had in a while. There's this rope swing in Mona (some of you are familiar with it) that people have been hyping up for a bit now, and last evening I finally had the opportunity to go. I was pretty hyped up myself. It wasn't very warm outside, and the sun had already gone down when we got there. Lon starts hypothesizing about the worst case scenario. "If you dropped right there close to the shore, you'd break something," etc. Linwood and he weren't even going to swing. But I didn't drive 30 miles down there for nothing. Everybody went before I did (except Linwood), giving me ample time to completely psych myself out. So I finally climb up in the tree and stand on the little wooden platform for about ten minutes straight (much to the annoyance of everyone there), continuing to psych myself out. My arms are like little twigs, and so I was very doubtful of their ability to hold the dropping of my whole weight when I stepped off that platform. Everybody else had done it and been fine, so I finally just went for it, and basically fell straight into the water. I couldn't, or didn't anyway, hold myself on that rope past the low point of the swing, and that's where I fell in. Yeah, it was about three feet from the shore. The water was only about five feet deep there, but I guess I went barreling in at enough of an angle that I didn't hurt myself. Maybe nobody saw the mortifying plunge . . . But my head emerged to the sound of everyone cheering for me, that wholesome thing that people do when they don't want one of their peers to feel too overly stupid, which of course just ensures the feeling of stupidity. I crawled to the shore and slinked over to where my towel was. People continued swinging, and the nite attained normalcy, again. Well, for everyone else, I spose. I remain quite disconcerted. I refused to pose for the picture because it was not a moment that I wanted immortalized in any way. (I know that posting this on my blog is counterbalancing that. Overly, probably. Oh well. You see how much I trust you people, to read this and still be my friends?)

I think it really is something I could probably do, but I had just completely wigged myself out, and everyone was watching. People were talking about going back on a hot, sunny day sometime. I feel a need to go again and redeem myself. But then there's always the chance that I'll flop again. And I'm sure that nobody else could give a rat's behind if I "redeem" msyelf or not. Ah, the things we do to try and save face.

I recognize that there's really no need to be embarrassed, cuz I was there with a group of really great people, and they won't think any the less of me. But, I unintentionally exposed a vulnerable side of myself that I wouldn't have necessarily chosen to show those people. And, unfortunately, that can't be undone now, and there's really no telling how much this small and singular event will effect certain people's perceptions of me, irreversibly for the rest of time as we know it. And that is really what I regret.

All Around

"I think the world's keenest desire is for beauty, and that our knowledge of how to achieve that is the various forms of behavior and expression that we apply a single word to, which is love."

--Barry Lopez

Hairdon't

Well, I've always kinda turned my nose up at the girls with the stripey hair. You want highlights, why did you do stripes instead? Well, due to circumstances somewhat beyond my control, I have now become one of those girls. Naturally, I'm not very happy about being a stripe-head. Perhaps I'll come to terms with it someday. But until then, I would have preferred polka dots, or at least zig-zags.

Plummeting

I went sky diving this last weekend! Can you even believe it?! I still kinda can't. I had emotionally removed myself from the reality of it (in order to prevent an extreme amount of excitement and nervousness that could have potentially interfered with my functionality), and then it happened. Before I could even think twice, I was out the door of that plane, and speeding to the ground below, even though it didn't seem to be getting any closer. We jumped at about 12,000 feet of altitude. I screamed. Maybe that's a little too girly, but I really just couldn't help it. Jay (my tandem experienced jumper) wrote "NICE SCREAMS!!!" in my skydive log afterwards. I got to pull the rip cord at about 5,000 feet. The parachuting was cool cuz it was slower and we twirled around and checked out the beautiful earth below us. The landing was smooth and easy. The only problem I encountered was my dang sensitive ears feeling like they were going to explode from all the altitude change.
Love is the next great adventure now, Ryan said.