Category: Uncategorized

Retraction: All the Women I want to be.

Posted on by Sierra

Caution: Thanktimony ensues.

Thanks to the admonishment of a certain General Authority, that caused me and my General Conference Buddy to go into fits of giggles because of the irony of it all, I am currently printing a follow-up blog to my post “All the Women that I am Not.”
            This General Conferencer suggested that we stop looking to the media to define our self worth as women. I wonder if he read my blog.
            So here it is, the list of women I actually ought to try to be–All the women (or actually a very small but important compilation) that actually matter:
Jess–whose style and beauty pretty much floors me on a regular basis, and who could take an Econ test better than the professor that wrote it.
And Kristin: Who is already a better mom than most mom’s in the whole world, even though she doesn’t have any kids yet. Who makes self sacrifice seem second nature. 
This girl, Kelsey– Who not only put in service time in India, but actually continues to serve those sweet kids on this continent, despite a monstrously busy schedule.
This girl, Amanda, who is full of stories and life, who gives generously and won’t let people push her around.
This fine lady, who bravely pursued a big girl job in California.
These girls, who might be mad at me for including this picture, but who constantly bring life and color to dull situations, or who are the life of the party even in really fun situations.
Miss Chloe Noelle, who has struck the delicate balance between hilarity and sensitivity, whose dulcet tunes lull me to sleep at night. Who has helped me distinguish the difference between Cool-Lame, and Lame-Cool, and Sugar Pee and Water Pee.
This little wordsmith who is small in stature but mighty in writing. 
This talented mother, who gives great advice, manages a loving and crafty home, and makes the best desserts you’ve ever eaten.
This hilarious sister of mine, who is one step away from being a published writer, and no steps away from being an accomplished couponer.
This lady who taught me everything I know, and who knows everything, and who is always right, and who can do everything in high heels yet.
And I guess it would kinda like to be like me. I guess that would not be so bad.

All the Women that I am Not

Posted on by Sierra

            It has recently come to my attention that the media has ruined my life. I have this warped vision of who I should want to become. And the thing is, that I genuinely do want to be these people. The thing is that I sub-consciously have tried to infuse elements of their awesomeness into my own “lame-cool” personality. So here it is, the list of all the people I want to become.
I want to be the girl who: 
Is nerdy cute, kicks total butt, and saves the day way more often than Harry Potter.
Who has men eating out of the palm of her hand, and who is so spoiled by affection that men won’t be mad at her even when she has done something truly heartless. I also want to be a little bit heartless, painfully beautiful, and just quirky enough that it’s not weird, but totally endearing.
Who leaves strong men powerless, and does so without mercy (If you haven’t read Keats’ poem, here’s some ear candy for you).
I want to be the girl who can say everything she needs to say through dance.
And the girl who talks REALLY REALLY fast,  and who has charming emotional issues. 
And Shakira. Because who DOESN’T want to be Shakira?
INSTEAD: I have come to the startling realization that I am not so much tall, but short and squatty with depressingly small fingernail nubs, whose nerdiness is less charming and moreso overt and obnoxious, who word vomits rather that wit battles, and cares DEEPLY about hurting people’s feelings, and with absolutely ZERO ZERO ZERO rhythm or dancing ability. This. is. not. great. 

But maybe that is exactly who I should WANT to be anyways.

Mock Disaster Day

Posted on by Sierra
I’m not the squeamish type. That’s not to say, that if someone on Fear Factor were to eat a cow eyeball that it would not send me dry-heaving to the toilet (I have very sensitive gag-reflexes), but usually I can handle the poke from a needle just fine. I don’t have to close my eyes during the surgery on Grey’s Anatomy anymore, so I figured I could handle today’s Mock Disaster without getting woozy. And, actually, I could handle it, though I understand that some people (BOY people even) are the squeamish types and can’t stomach all the fake gore, and need the restorative properties of juice to calm their troubled nerve system.
            So what, pray tell, is a Mock Disaster? Mock Disaster is a chance for us in the theater department to flex our make-up muscles and recreate all the enchanting bodily injuries that natural/ human induced disaster can create. Today we did an earthquake, so after visiting the make-up department (I was rather disappointed with my make-up artist. I wanted the rebar through my arm), we clambered into a dark warehouse and spread debris around us and recreated death and destruction.
            This wasn’t all purposeless, though, let’s be honest, a bunch of theater kids probably would have done it just for fun anyways. It was actually for people in triage training pass their certification tests to become EMT’s. Today, medical personnel approached my “lifeless” body, and carted me out of the abandoned warehouse on a gurney, took my pulse and deduced that I was only faking dead (true) and then located my husband/boyfriend/ baby child Timmy. The EMT training people only made me break character once, and it was when they suggested that my mock boyfriend/husband whisper sweet nothings into my ear in order to revive me, and then I just had to laugh. But even when they almost gave me CPR, I was ready (and… maybe a little willing [not true]).
Here are just a few pictures of my experience today.

In the make-up room getting prepped. Good thing there was juice nearby.
If you think we had it bad, check out the girl in the back. Man oh Man. (Also, I am extremely disappointed with how my arm turned out. I didn’t do it personally.)
She got the injury I wanted, and she was very happy about it.
            Truth be told, it was actually kind of a fun experience, even if I had been a little bit squeamish, but it wasn’t hard to picture my brothers and sisters on the other side of the world who probably wish that they were incurring a “mock” disaster. I can’t imagine the horror of not really knowing where your husband/baby/wife/friend is, or whether or not they are ok. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to listen to triage come in and mark you for Immediate Removal, and then have to wait in your own blood for twenty more grueling minutes. While lying in my own little pool of mint-flavored blood-colored corn syrup, I said a little prayer for our friends in South America, and I hope that all those brave EMT’s pass their tests and save someone’s life because of it. 

Pimp my blog

Posted on by Sierra

I am looking to, how would you say, Pimp my blog, but I find myself woefully limited by stupid computer-related disabilities.

Also, I am tired of sifting through horrendous Free Blog Template websites.

Does anyone have any reliably good template websites which feature A) dinosaurs, B) starry, indie, classy but not grown up looking blogger backgrounds?

Where did you get yours/ how did you do it?

What are your favorite blogger applications?

Please help me pimp my blog. Whoever leaves the best suggestion, I will dedicated an entire post to how grateful I am to you.

Thanks friends!

Shark Muffins

Posted on by Sierra

I find that often I am kept awake at night, perplexed by the question: “What is the opposite of a shark?”
Fortunately I have been blessed by dear friends, the Shelby-Russell family, who have been able to successfully answer this question for me.
“Why Sierra,” they would say in the most matter-of-fact, plain as day, but still ever-so-Shelby sweet way, “Clearly, clearly, the opposite of a shark is a muffin.”
There’s a simple logic in this. I submit to you my proposal of agreement:
  • Sharks are rather pointy and angular, where a muffin is much more round and has no harsh lines.
  • Sharks live under water; muffins live on land.
  • Sharks are predators; muffins are prey.
  • Sharks have teeth; muffins have blueberries.
  • Sharks are living; muffins are (dead?)
  • Sharks are mean, but muffins are so nice!
Now, before you raise your outcry that muffins are so completely opposite from a shark because they are in entirely different genres of things, realize that I judge people based on their ability to accept this crucial life principle or not. Recently I have had a friend go as far to suggest that every relationship has a shark and a muffin. The muffin is inherently feminine, nurturing, and sweet.
This brings me to the startling realization: In relationships… I have shark-like tendencies. I don’t cook. I’m all for watching “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” instead of “Baptists at our Barbeque.” If I want to hang out with someone, I am not afraid to ask them to hang out with me. Also, I have sharp incisors.
So dear friends… Which are you? A shark or a muffin and why?

Cupcakes are so “in” right now.

Posted on by Sierra

I am a huge sucker for Raspberry Artificial flavoring, so any place that can indulge my unnatural desire for the sweet succulence of processed Raspberry is… good.
Currently typing is a little bit difficult because my fingers are a little bit wobbly weirdy at the moment. This is because I am on a sugar high. This is because I ate a cupcake for breakfast. This is because the cupcake that I got last night was so huge that I couldn’t finish it in one sitting. Even though they gave me a fork with which to carve into the massive cupcake—a chocolate cupcake was topped with none other than a Raspberry glaze and a dollop of cream cheese frosting bigger than my face—I still couldn’t finish it. In my opinion, that is exactly how a cupcake should be.
This is why I have come to be the newest advocate for Provo’s newest hotspot: The Cocoa Bean.
They have THESE:
Not only do they have cupcakes, but they have RASPBERRY VANILLA ITALIAN CRÈME SODAS. So in one night, I got to combine Raspberry with chocolate AND vanilla. Finally, I truly believe that Provo really is Happy Valley.
I am literally, literally, quivering with joy right now.

Let Them Be Innocent

Posted on by Sierra
           I don’t understand the hate.
           
            When I was in fourth grade, we had the coolest janitor. He was an enormous black dude named Jerry and everybody loved him. He was the kind of guy that had smile wrinkles around the corner of his eyes and kept candy in the supply closets to give to kids as we walked past him in the hallways. He was just that awesome.
            One day I sat in a group of fellow fourth graders, underneath the coat rack. I was tangling my arms in the sleeves of the dangling coats and pretending to listen as we read “Trolls, Tales, and Tommy-knockers,” aloud, when Jerry poked his head inside the classroom from the outside door and said in a most un-Jerry like and threatening tone, “Hey. Don’t open this door to anybody.” Then he locked the door with a resounding click, a click heavier and denser than Magnetite or iron.
            As fourth graders, we postulated what this might mean in whispers.
            “Maybe it’s a flood!”
            “But he said don’t open it to anybody.”
           
It was then that the early dismissals started. Students began to be called out of the classroom in droves until there were maybe three of us left by 3:15, each of us starting to suspect that maybe there was something our teachers weren’t telling us. Finally we goaded our teacher into giving us the news.
            “A bad man with a gun went into a local high school with a gun today. Only one person was shot, but he is going to be just fine.”
            It didn’t explain the early dismissals, but it put my juvenile mind at ease. I was able to walk home in relative peace, never mind my police escort to the bus and put Jerry’s concern wrinkles out of mind.

            When I got home, I encountered a rather grimmer reality:

            There were two bad gunmen. They were teenagers. It was suspected that the number of victims was in the 200 count, and there were 15 confirmed dead. They were teenagers too. It was 1999. It was my hometown. It was Columbine and in fourth grade, I didn’t understand the hate.
             In eleven years, I still haven’t forgotten the footage of people running from the building or falling, wounded, out of windows. I haven’t forgotten the mounds and piles of flowers and cards and candles that coated the walls of Clements Park. I haven’t forgotten Columbine. I think we all took a vow at those candlelit vigils that “we are all Columbine.”
            And even though I haven’t forgotten, today I remembered rather forcibly the memories that eleven years have not let me forget.
            A gunmen today came to my middle school. MY middle school. He opened fire on the students with his rifle, and, bless because of my seventh grade math teacher, he was tackled before he could inflict any fatal wounds. My middle school. My neighboring high school. My hometown.
            I wish everyone could remember Littleton, Colorado the way I do. Late night street hockey games with the neighbors, building tree forts in the valley, crisp summer nights, and youthful bliss. People instead associate my hometown with hatred and school shootings. I don’t understand.
            I am 21, and in all my years, I still don’t understand what could cause such hatred that could cause a 32-year-old man to open fire on a bunch of innocents. I don’t understand what kind of hatred could drive two teens to open fire on their fellow students. I don’t understand why we continue to hate and treat others with so much contempt that they feel compelled to kill.

I don’t understand and quite frankly it makes me sad.

            Just let them be seventh graders. Let them be innocent. Let us be fourth graders who don’t have to confront such a bleak outlook of humanity at such a young age. I will never understand.
I will never understand the hate.

Lemme “tell” you…

Posted on by Sierra

Ok, yes—I admit it: I am one of those “Insert I-Pod Headphones in Ear, please don’t talk to me, you slightly recognizable stranger” kind of people. I hate small talk. I hate being forced into conversation with your visiting teacher and/or grad student professor because you accidentally fell into the same step as them on the way up to campus. I much prefer relationships to mutate organically.

I am also a creature of routine, so I like my schedule and I gravitate towards the familiar. So despite my distaste for bonding with people over small talk, clinging to my comfort zone has allowed me to always have a rather intimate relationship with my tellers at the bank. A strangely intimate relationship with my tellers out of the bank. (Take your mind out of the gutters, folks. Not that kind of intimate. Gross.). For whatever reason, all of our banking small talk about credit card protection and bad addition on my deposit slips usually creates long-lasting bonds that I have come to cherish.

Let’s see, first, at 1st Bank, there was Nancy. She was blonde and soft-spoken, and for some reason the Line Gods always deposited me right at her telling station whenever I went to make a withdrawal from the savings account I wasn’t supposed to know about in high school.

She was later replaced by Forrest, who grew so tired of my incessant whining about 1st Bank’s policy shift to supply their valued customers with generic suckers, that he purchased me my own VERY special bag of Dum-Dums for every visit (“Why yes, I WILL take two butterscotch and a mystery flavor, thanks!”).

Then came Nick with US Bank inside of Target. After a year-long flirtation with Nick, I decided it was time to pass him off for best friend approval, and pointed him out to Chloe while on a Target shopping spree—Only to discover that he was staring right at us as I had my pointer finger elongated in his direction. And when my bosses demanded the next day that I get a change order from US bank, my conversation with Nick went like this:

Nick: Hey, I saw you here yesterday,

Me: Wait, really?

Nick: Yeah, you and your friend. You were right there. (At this point, Nick whipped out his pointer finger to indicate not only WHERE he saw me, but also WHAT he saw me doing.)

Me: I wasn’t here yesterday. Oh! You know what, it must have been my twin!

Nick: Your twin?

Me: Yes, my twin.

Nick: (Disbelievingly) And what’s your twin’s name?

Me: (Retardedly) Uhh—Sienna.

Needless to say, this embarrassing freshmen-year-old lie abruptly ended my intimate teller relationship with Nick. Fortunately, Nick got promoted weeks later.

And fortunately, teller Kort from Wells Fargo got promoted as well after a series of awkward interactions involving crepes and concerts that never happened. (It is here that I should like to include a brief interjection from Bethany who stated, “There is something ironic about someone named Kort, who doesn’t properly court.”)

But I do not dislike Kort, mostly because he has led me to my newest teller relationship with Mari. Mari has a diamond ring the size of a baby Orca. Her husband didn’t call her until five months after their first date. I know this because Mari loves me and I love Mari. Mari listens sympathetically as I supply her with gossip about her former co-workers, and she, in turn tells me—with all of her teller wisdom—why boys behave the way they do.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is exactly, except to say that, if you are ever my teller at the bank, I will gladly take my headphones out for you.

Watch your back, Chloe

Posted on by Sierra

College Co-Eds do silly things. For instance: College Co-Eds wake up to steal Christmas trees out of the boy’s dorms at four in the morning. College Co-Eds make a utility closet into an “Angry Room” where they can go and place their reasons for being angry on colorful little post-its for all to see. College Co-Eds hang mariachi band memorabilia on the doors of unsuspecting boys.

But recently, me and my fellow Collge Co-Eds have done the craziest thing of all: The Facebook Fast.

Recently we instated fasting weeks, where for one week only we give up something in order to make us more disciplined, better people. One week we are only going to wear mascara and no other make-up in order to boost our self-love for our natural beauty. One week we will forego our dessert consumption. One week we will stop listening to our I-pods on campus, thereby shutting out the world and eliminating the “Go Away” signals we are intentionally sending to innocent conversationalists.

But this week… We decided to give up facebook. Oh the horror! My roommate, Jessica, personally changed my password, taking any element of free agency out of my decision.

Now, for those of you who have read my blog, you should be semi-familiar with one of the main characters of my life. Her name is Chloe Noelle. I daresay she is my partner in crime for 99 percent of my ridiculous college Co-Ed antics. One time, she got a gummi bear stuck up her nose. I love her dearly.

But not right now.

Yesterday I got the semi-ambiguous text message from Ms. Skidmore. It went like this: “Haha wow, you weren’t kidding. That’s some poofy hair in that picture my dear!” When I inquired further, she told me that “Those pictures Jennifer Munson tagged of you. Little Sierra!”

Jennifer Munson, bless her heart, saw me through my ugliest days and loved me anyways. But tagging pictures of my eighth grade, poofy-haired, gangly arms, brace-faced self on facebook constitutes as a big violation of our friendship contract, if you ask me. Quickly I got on the internet to survey the damage, only to realize that Jessica, my roommate, was holding my password hostage. I had no defense against the incriminating pictures of me on facebook!

Come to discover this was all part of Chloe Skidmore’s wily devices to get me to back down on my ridiculous facebook fast. Alas, and thank goodness, there are no eighth grade pictures of me (as of yet) on the internet, and Chloe did not succeed at making me break my fast.

But Chloe Noelle, rest assured: “Eye’m watching you.”

Did you know?!

Posted on by Sierra
I have big news for all you English language enthusiasts out there: It’s called the Interrobang. Do you know how exciting this grammatical innovation is?!

Probably not, because I did not even know about this amazingly resourceful punctuation mark until my grammar class today (and by-the-way, can I confess here and now my sublime love for my English grammar class here and now?! Ok, I will! I love my English Grammar class. Never before have I been surrounded by a sea of students who care deeply about the function of an participial phrase. Furthermore, I have never had a professor, an intelligent bad-A grammarian, instruct me to break every preconceived English rule I’d ever adhered to in my life. I love this class!).

Anyways, the interrobang. In this aforementioned grammar class, the eager pool of students, bum cheeks barely clinging to the front of our chairs we were so enthralled with the occupation of an adverbial clause, enthusiastically asked questions about how far we could push the English language to express ourselves. Then one inspired student asked perhaps the most important grammatical question that has ever been asked.

“So, Professor Ostenson, if we can break all these punctuation rules for the sake of expression, what about those who want to use both an exclamation point and a question mark?”

It was then we learned about this useful device. You guessed it. The interrobang.


This device was invented for the sole purpose of solving the grammatical quandary about whether or not it was acceptable to conclude a sentence with two punctuation marks. Those “?! nay-sayers” fear no more. This little tool should send the English-loving blogger community into an bed-wetting/ blogging frenzy. Finally English language enthusiasts have invented a tool so functional that excitement and curiosity can be expressed with just one symbol!

Readers, we have an exciting future ahead of us. A future that will include an interrobang button on our laptop keyboards. A future where Microsoft Word doesn’t underline our “?!”‘s in squiggly green. A future that snidely side-steps you grammar nazis and says that expression is more important than your grammatical correctness.

Before I conclude, allow me two parting thoughts: First, I would like to issue a formal thanks to whoever came up with the term “interrobang.” I, too, think of grammar as something that might bang. The only more appropriate term I could invent for this new punctuation mark is perhaps the “interrosmash,” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as smoothly, so well done “Interrobangers.”

Secondly, I want to leave you with this enigmatic question:

What comes first, the question mark or the exclamation point?

“Depends on which one is stronger, the question or the exclamation.”–Jon Ostenson.