Sunburn

Three weeks ago I began a job. It's pretty much just that, a job that will help me survive until I get another job that hopefully pays better and requires less energy. No one told me that being an adult came with such difficulties as CAR PAYMENTS and BILLS. If someone had told me that when I was a teenager, I'm pretty sure I would have refused to become an adult and retreated back to the land of high school for the rest of my life.

Alas, such information was not forthcoming, I think that's part of the trick played on you by parents in order to get you out of the house... Jokes on them though, I just moved in with my grandparents instead!!!! (If anyone knows of some cheap housing and would like to be roommates, please send me the information, I will love you forever!)

Back to the job, as part of this job, actually, the entirety of this job consists of me being outside, in the sun, for 2-8 hours a day. However long it takes me to give up from exhaustion and heatstroke. Because it's summer. And we seem to keep having a streak of 100 degree + days.

Me being the brilliant person that I am, decided two weeks ago that since I was outside all day anyway, I might as well get a nice tan from it. So I decided to start wearing one of those light runner-type shirts that lets your shoulders get exposed to the glorious sunlight.

The day started off well, nice and cool, a few rays of sunlight trickling through the trees and me outside enjoying it as best I knew how. Alright! I thought, Now I'm going to get a cool tan and look so great at my brother's wedding!! Such happy thoughts, too bad I forgot that most of my ancestors are from England and France and Switzerland and other places that don't get a lot of sunlight...

Three hours later....I believe I'm getting a bit sunburned, why yes, I do believe that I'm a little redder than I should be....You can probably guess where this is going. By the time I got back to the car, I was fried. Redder than a lobster and a lot more tender too. Needless to say, I wore normal shirts the rest of the week, had to keep those sunburned shoulders covered.

You know what happens when you get sunburnt? Tan lines. Lots of tan lines. Know what happens when you put sunscreen on your face and neck but not your shoulders and then you start to sweat a lot? More tan lines in weird rivers down your shoulders, it literally looks like a river of white decided to run down my arms. It's quite embarrassing, but still fun to show people.

One day later I went to an improv workshop and decided to randomly trustfall at someone. I think I hurt all the way out to the car and walked like a weird hunchback trying to take the pressure off my shoulders. Kids, don't get sunburned. It causes cancer, just like the entire state of California.

We probably shouldn't go into a week later when I was FINALLY starting to heal, and I came in from work one day to find the entire burned area of my shoulders and upper back was blistered. Like, gross bubbly blisters that were barely under the epidermis. Probably the best part of the entire sunburn was when I decided to slap my hand down on the blisters and they splatted. Everywhere.

Now it's just really peely and itchy and peely some more. I'll survive, but I've got some wicked tan lines to show for it. However, my brother's wedding is coming up in 9 days soooo....there's only one way that I know of to really get rid of tan lines...

Everything Shall Happen at Once

From henceforth today you shall read the rant of the Everythings. Things that clump shall stay clumped, and empty space shall be nothing but open space. Everything shall happen at once, or not at all.
(Law of Everthings chapter 2, section 4.16)

If Chaos was a picture, this is what my brain would look like. 

I have decided that the universe is rather lazy, and likes to clump everything together to save effort. Especially along the time-continuum of things. Haven't you noticed that nothing will happen for ages on end, you'll have weekend after weekend free of anything social or even important to do, then suddenly three of your friends will call and invite you to paintballing, hiking, or a show all on the same night. At the same time. You haven't noticed that?

Okay girls, all the single ladies that read my blog. That's at least 3 people, right? Anyway let's talk about dates. How often has this scenario happened? You'll go weeks, months, even years without a date (heck, I went 2.5 years at one stretch) then suddenly you'll get asked out. Not just by one gentleman, but two. If you're lucky, three or four, even a fifth will express interest in you. And all within the same week. Sound familiar? Why does this happen then? I'm not really sure, I have some ideas, but this happens time after time so it's not a coincidence, there's some law actively governing things here.

Don't believe me yet? Well let's move on to pets.

How does this apply you may ask? Well, think about it. You probably went 3-4 years, heck, maybe even a decade without a pet of some sort in your life. Then, you decide to get a bird. Or a dog. A small dog. Suddenly, within 3 months you have become home to a petting zoo that consists of a dog, two cats, several birds, and all the neighbors asking if you can tend THEIR animals on the weekend. After years of petlessness, you are overcome with animals. Something fishy is going on here.

What about friends? It works this way too. You'll move to a new place, or even stay in an old one, and you'll  seem to have no friends that can stand being around you. Maybe no one knows you yet, maybe all your friends are busy or can't stand the sight of you and need a break. So you'll go a month or two spending Saturday night lying on the couch and trying to eat potato chips off your chest. Then, you'll either decide you've had enough of couch crumbs or your friends will forget why they were avoiding you and contact will once again be made. You'll have something to do every night of the week, sometimes five or six things and you're swamped. How does this happen?


Here's my explanation. The Law of Everythings clumps things together so that the most action takes place on the fewest amount of days. Don't ask me why, but it's as recurrent as Newton's Law of Gravity. You'd think this law would allow events to be spread out over time so you could handle the most amount possible. Not so.

     My explanation has three parts. One, life is like a floodgate. You either shut certain aspects completely out or you become entirely waterlogged with those occurrences. This may be a trick of the mind, but once you become aware of a lack of something in your life, you open yourself up to receiving it. Not the world's fault your life floodgate only has off and full blast.
     Second, sometimes you put off some sort of aura or personal bubble that people aren't welcome in. This applies especially to Laws of the Median involving other people. You bounce people off your bubble and then one day without your conscious mind realizing it your psyche carefully flips the reverse switch. Suddenly it's like people haven't seen you before and can't get enough. This would also explain weird trends in popularity like Beiber Fever.
     Third explanation is that we suffer from the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon on a much larger scale than we realize. This phenomenon explains that there is tons of information in our world. Such a large scale of sensory information that our brains block quite a bit of it out to keep from being overwhelmed. But, once you notice something, like how there is an arrow between the E and the X on the FedEx trucks, you notice this everywhere. Your brain becomes sensitized to the information and you can see the other occurrences of it. This explains the other half of the phenomenon that's not people related, but more you or other thing related. It's actually a rather interesting phenomenon and I recommend reading more on that.

Anyway, the reason for this introspection is that I was offered three different options for the first two weeks of May. Once is that I'm going to watch my aunt Roberta while my Grandma goes to Israel. Two is that I was offered a rather full-time job of working with the PTC (a 6-week run that starts the end of April). Three, I was offered a volunteer opportunity to stage-manage the Farmington summer play, which starts with auditions the first week of May and would require almost full-time attention every evening until the show opened. So, I can only do one of those things adequately. I haven't had a job for three months now, and suddenly there's a possibility for three of them? All starting within 4 days of each other? Yep, that's the Law of the Everythings at work.

Think about it, and I'll bet you can identify things like this right off the bat in your life. Currently this law is quite frustrating to me, although at other times it can be awesome. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your day and see if you can find a FedEx truck just for kicks.

No Time Except the Lunch Hour, and more Bruises

Part of being an adult is that you work up to having no time for hobbies
Perhaps I'm generalizing here, but I used to love to read, run, bicycle, hike, play mild sports, do theatre, and pretty much anything that was new and sounded fun. Now I have time for my job (it's not a career, but a job) and whatever I make time for. Right now, that's a theatre show which is currently crowding out a social life, exercise, writing, sleep, food...yep, that about covers it.

I have a new bruise from rehearsal though, which is kind of cool. I was working on a new dip with my swing-dancing partner because we had one that required me to lean most of my body out over the edge of the stage, let go with one hand and pray I didn't hit the floor before his teenage muscles realized that they were supposed to be holding me up. I decided to do something else which ironically resulted in the injury (trading falling off the stage to falling onto the stage, I guess one is marginally better) It was supposed to be a simple dip down in which I would bend my knees, go almost horizontal with the ground, and all he'd have to do was keep me from hitting the stage. Of course, the first time we practiced he didn't realize that if both of our arms were extended, I would go down with a resounding thunk.
"Okay, you ready?"
"Sure"
"Just keep your arms tight while I go down and then pop me back up."
"Sure"
"Okay" *thunk*
And voila, lovely black and blue shoulder blade! I call the condition my swing dancing partner has, jell-o arms. He puts absolutely no tension into his muscles, preferring instead to let me lead his flapping arms where they are supposed to go, which only creates a problem when that's supposed to keep me from spinal injury. I suppose jell-o could be nice to land on,  but it makes a terrible spotting tool.

Anyway, I digress, two subjects at once. Point being, I will be either living at work or on the stage for the next two weeks, neither of which is necessarily a bad thing. If I wasn't a responsible adult, I'd have my day free instead of working to support this strange theatre habit which my non-existent retirement fund begs me to quit. It's okay though, I'm still young and fairly stupid so I'll either figure out how to mesh the job and hobby to become career...or I won't.