Today I went to the North Point Mall.  Saw the most gorge coat at J.Crew… on sale for J.Crew’s standards anyway :( but still to expensive for me…

anyway when I was at Sephora two teenage girls were standing close to me trying on makeup…

Girl #1 ”yada yada yada… and then he texted me!” 

Girl #2″Who???” 

Girl #1 stops and looks at her like DUH!  “Stupid Butt Face!” 

girl #2 ”OH! okay… and???”   she totally knew who Girl #1 was talking about now…

Ha ha ha!! i love code names!

me and my best friend Sharla had some code names in high school too…

Like for Sharla’s number one crush

Code name: “Nathan Kessel”

Real name “Nathan Wessel”

and then there was “Female Joe”

see I had a boyfriend named Joe and there this girl who was a couple years younger than us (like when we were seniors she was maybe a sophomore) who looked just like him!!!

  SERIOUSLY!  like one day Shar and I were in the hall and we both saw her at the same time and Sharla and I just stopped and looked at each other and mouthed at the same time “Female Joe!” 

Also I worked with “Short Man Syndrome Man”  at Eastgate Pharmacy.  It was this pharmacist that I TOWERED over and I was like 17 and he was like 50 so he hated me.  and yelled at me all the time.  and made me cry a whole bunch. 

Also at Eastgate there was “Ash hole”  just this girl named Ashley who i hated.  She was “SMS man’s” favorite pharmacy tech.  They tag teamed picking on me. 

“Guido” is my sister Stephanie’s ex.  I have a really hard time not calling him “Guido” to his face.  

I know there’s more… I’ll have to add them in the comments when I think of them.

Who has a code name in your life??

Well its been 10 years since you’ve graduated High School. You are pretty much where you thought you’d be. Married with children. well… Minus Ed Bundy.

but here’s some things I think you should know.

1. Don’t go to the library every lunch hour your senior year to look at that Norman Rockwell book. I know you want desperately to look depressed and artsy and cool at the same time. But no one will notice that you are EVEN in there while all your friends are having a good time at the lunch table hanging out.

2. Remember when you invited that guy (Andrew Munroe) over to watch a movie (while your parents are gone) your sophmore year and you thought it would be hilarious to answer the door in your mom’s lingerie? Don’t do it. It will only freak the H out of him.

3. Remember when you were in love with that stoner kid who always had the blond hair in his eyes and he always came into Eastgate Drug to buy penny candy and then one day you came into work and someone had busted the drive through window and stole stuff and the cops came and you told the pharmacist that you thought it was the stoner kid because you had a “gut feeling.” Then you added maybe it wasn’t just a “gut feeling” but probably the “spirit” telling you who broke in. well It wasn’t the spirit… you are just being dumb.  If it was the spirit it would have told you it was a 40 year old drug addict that will be eventually caught. 

4. Remember when you got on that Trampoline on Senior Night and Jeff Schow and some other guys get on.   so you lay in the middle and shout “Break the egg!!!!” ?   uh they are going to jump really hard until you fly into the air and bounce off the trampoline and hit your head on the ground. and they will laugh really hard and you will lose some mega cool points.

5. You will go on a date with a really nice guy (his first) Please SHELLIE DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING 

a) (at Perkins) pour salt on your arm and then put an ice cube on the salt to burn yourself

b)  then do it to his arm.

c) reenact that herbal essence commercial on the way home. 

 i know you saw some older cooler girl doing it.  i know you think it will look as cool.  but it won’t!!! TRUST ME ON THIS!  and the silence that will fill that long car ride home will be as close to the walk of shame as you’ll ever come. 

6. Remember when S.C.M touched your B over your shirt and you freak out and cry and go to the bishop that night. Good job! A bit on the dramatic side but it will keep you on the straight and narrow.  Also remember that time when you were making out with him in his room and you swear you see an eye in the doorway looking at you guys.  Heads up.  It’s his step mom. 

7.  Soooo remember that time when you borrowed that hair piece from Brandy Maughan and you always put it on right before you went into seminary because you wanted to look HOT with LONG CURLY HAIR so that Ray Ball would fall in LOVE with you.  He won’t.  and you’ll see a picture of yourself a couple of years later with that hair on and realize you looked like a poodle. 

8.  You and Sharla will put on some dresses that you find in her mom’s closet and have the bright idea to go dance in the moon light with sparklers.  You guys will have fun doing that…. just don’t go to Smith’s at midnight for a candy run while wearing the dresses.  You’ll run into Logan Hall and Nate Meikle.   The hottest guys at Hillcrest. 

9.  Sharla and you will go house sit for her boss and their dogs will poo and pee all over their cream carpet and after you clean it up there will be huge stains everywhere and You guys freak out and use bleach and it turns the carpet  bright orange and you freak out again and try to re stain  it with dirt/soy sauce/ and other items from their fridge… just clean up after the dogs the first time.  Don’t use the bleach.  Its not your fault their dogs throw temper tantrums  by peeing and pooping everywhere. 

10.  Remember when you joined track because you wanted your ex to fall back in love with you but then you ran around the track once and got shin splints so you quit that day.  well guess what babe!  Now you love running!!! and you are good at it.  and you would have been good at it then too.  don’t give up because you are afraid of failing!!!  because although you tell yourself you want to join track to get his attention… really its because you’ve always wanted to be more athletic and sporty. SO JUST DO IT!

Shell- I know you have braces, and fugly hair, and you’re a little chubby, and say weird things sometimes and you beat yourself up over and over and over for all the things you did and didn’t do.  But guess what -    You were also really funny, and smart, and you got AMAZING grades, and you had lots of friends and a great family.  the one thing I want you to know is that the future you will have is because of the person you are right now.  And you will love your future.  and You’ll  even come to love your past.  

love- your older self. 

A couple of months ago while I went to Barnes and Noble to read (celeb magazines) and sip on a peach Italian soda.  While I was walking toward the cafe I noticed this book and picked it up because it sounded interesting since I’m a sucker for love and also for history.   What I really love about men from the past is they could write things like

‘Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved…’ -Beethoven

or

‘I awake consumed with thoughts of you…’ - Napoleon Bonaparte

i mean not to be completely cheesy and stupid

but

sigh!

 I think love letters (and letters in general)  are a dying art form now that email, twitter, and facebook are such a great/fast/easy way to communicate.  But I’d like to share with you a great love letter that I received when I was 15 and even after all these years it still puts a smile on my face :) 

notice all the smudges of ink?  Thats because for a lot of years when I read this I would cry and cry and hold it to my face and be all dramatic :)

if you have a great love letter I think it would be awesome if you scanned it in and posted it and then my next post we’ll share some linky love and then we can all go to each others blogs and feel like we’ve just read a Jane Austen novel.   

love,

shellie

In HS I dated this guy named Joe.  I was madly in love with him.  and also we worked at rival Pharmacies.  He was on the westside @ Hiway Drug and I was on the eastside @ Eastgate.  It was like romeo and juliet.  One day while passing Hi-way Drug  I noticed that they were advertising “T-SHIRTS for Sale”  in huge red letters on their marquee.  So I made my girlfriend pull over and  I decided to pull a little prank.  I grabbed the letter R from the word “Shirts”  and ran to my friends car and we drove off.  Then I gave the foot tall red letter “R” to Joe for a present. 

i wonder how many old ladies stopped in that day for some “special tea”  :)

I went to Girls State in Summer of 1998.  Summer before my senior year.   Girls state is an opportunity for HS girls to learn about government.  You go away for a couple of days to the capital of your state, stay in college dorms, attend classes all day, and learn about how to fold flags the correct way and how to burn them if they touch the ground.

So we were split up in cities and each had mayors and council members and such.  When we weren’t attending classes we would chill at the dorms.   90% of the girls that were attending Girls State was basically a huge sampling of all the weird girls that were in each high school.  The debaters, the saxophone players, the girls who believed they were fairies.  You get my drift.

I didn’t really fit in the “weird” category at my high school.  I was like funny/goofy with a hint of coolness.  But at girls state that inner weirdo in me was JUST ACHING to break free.  Day one I was fine and laughing to myself seeing all the weird girls do all the weird girl things.  Like talking Klingon to one another.  Day two I read a poem to my city as a “spiritual” thought before we broke for class.  Day three:  Our city was in charge of the “spiritual” thought for the morning devotional for all the girls (over 300) at Girls State.  I was chosen to read the poem. Compliments of… you guessed it…

Day 4:  All the girls in our city were sitting in the hallway in the wing of our dorm.  A couple were showing off and singing a little.  I got the big idea that I too should sing.  I first walked into the stair well and practiced.  (For the acoustics of course… that’s what those kids did in that one Jack Weyland book)  Man I sounded amazing.  I walked back into our hallway which was lined with all the girls from my city.  I announced that I too would like to sing.  and then belted out the only song I knew acapella… No I’m not going to tell you what it is… but it wasn’t jewel… some other famous female singer in the 90s.  and guess what they loved it!  Thats the great thing about weird girls… they love weird things…  it was like giving candy to a baby.  They just ate it up.

That only fed the inner weirdo in me even more.  So since the talent show was the next night I got to work on writing the most amazing poem in the world known to man.  I wrote it about the girls in my city giving each one a part… I designed it like this… On the stage all my girls in my city would be behind me and I would start off with a couple of lines…  and then each girl would come up and deliver a line I wrote specifically for them and then I finished it by saying something like “For we are the future”  I give all the girls their lines and they were all in! Yes!  We even had it memorized and practiced a couple of times!!! Complete with dramatic pauses and dramatic sighs.  Then during the talent show comes our cities turn to perform.  One girl sings, one girls plays the saxophone, one girl recites a debate speech or something.  Then the grand finale … my POEM!  We get up there… I say my lines… the girls one at at time come up to the microphone to say theirs… I finish up with my “We are the future”  and for added drama even cried a little with the last delivery.  It was so beautiful.  All 300 girls stood and cheered.  It was the best moment a inner weirdo could ask for.  Then as they were all sitting down I noticed someone that looked familiar in a way.  I looked closer.  I almost blacked out.  Oh my gosh I totally forgot that their were two of us from my high school.  Me (non weirdo goofy funny girl) and Audra Rose (Totally Normal Smart Cool Girl)  NOOOOOOOO! myself told myself and then punched inner weirdo self in the throat!  why????? You’ve ruined everything!   you have now just lost your hint of coolness. I spent the rest of my summer feeling like a complete retard and my whole senior year avoiding Audra Rose.

Last night I had a dream that I was in High School again.  and that my boyfriend was Zac Efron.  Which is really weird because I have never even seen a High School Musical movie.  I guess I did see Hairspray but that was a year ago and only once. 

However I have to say it was an Awesome dream!!! I was so in love with him and he was so in love with me.  and we ate a brownie together in a break room of sorts. just the two of us.  and I was laughing and he was laughing.  and then we did a little kiss over the table and Zac still had a little brownie on his mouth.  He was just sooo Cute :)

then as we walked down the hall to go to class he made me walk behind him.  So that no one would see us together. 

Then I woke up. and felt really sad. and was mad at my self conscious for having low self esteem around Zac Efron.  :( wah wah wah

what did you dream about last night?

Back in high school I thought it would be real cool to not wear my bra. Like I was some rebel that wanted to show my independance. I was a free woman. I don’t let anything inhibit me! I can be strong and proud. I don’t need the MAN telling me What to do! Okay honestly I don’t know why I thought it would be cool… probably I saw something on Friends.

So for about 2 weeks I went bra less about anywhere and everywhere. But then I didn’t want anyone to know so I wore sweat shirts. Every day. and I slouched a lot. No one ever knew.

Last week when  I was going through my old poem diary’s  (yes there is more then one)  I would love to post more of them but somemost  of them are way lame.  There is this one I read to Chad that was so over the top dramatic they he said he couldn’t listen to anymore of it.  :)  But anyway reading all those reminded me of something that happened in high school.

My best friend Sharla and I were in a drama class together.  It was called Children’s Theater.  The whole premise for the class was to learn and perform children’s plays at local elementary’s.  So this one semester the theme was Shel Silverstein poems put together in a sort of play.  You know Shel Silverstein right?  Where the Sidewalk Ends?  The Light in The Attic?

So my personal poem that I was starring in was “I have a hot dog for a pet”

basically it was a silly poem about… having a hot dog for a pet.

I think my teacher hated me. 

Oh and we were suppose to say it in kid voices.  My kid voice (I found out this later) sounded like I was a retarded Irish 3 yr old kid.  So in rehearsals I would perform my poem and everyone in the class would laugh and laugh.  and I would just beam with pride on the inside. ” I am so funny! I totally nailed this !!!” well Sharla later admitted to me that I sounded really goofy and they weren’t laughing at how funny I did it but more like snickering how retarded  I sounded.   well I aim to please.

So one day while at a local Barnes and Noble, (Idaho peeps– the one on 17th street right by that toys r us… right across from the Grand Teton Mall) Sharla and I ran into a girl from our class named Mary.  She was totally goth.  and totally cool. So cool.  Like black hair and white face.  But in a cool way… not in a loner loser way.  (One time she sang this Jewel song in a talent competition and was So amazing.) So anyway Mary was there for a poetry reading.  and she asked us if we wanted to join. 

Let me paint the picture for you.  15 mopey people sitting around in the cafe with  plaid shirts, and doc martens.  sipping coffee and looking all serious.   then there was Sharla and I.  I wish I had a picture to post of us from High School but I’ll just tell you we were bright eyed with rosie cheeks (with braces to boot!)

So the group starts their poetry reading.  One by one they get up there and read their dark mysterious poems.  Probably stuff like

my soul is dead

I have black wings

Satan wants to marry me

fire is his eternal ring

They kindof go around in order of where they are sitting to go up and recite their poetry.  So then it gets to me.  and I’m like “Uh I don’t know any poems”  (the whole time wanting to shoot myself for not bringing some of my poetry diaries!!! I would have so blown these peoples minds away!!!)  and Mary as cool as ever says “recite one of the poems from class.” (and me being “typical me”… will do anything someone tells me to do) “okay”

 so I stood up in front of everyone, get into character, put a smile a mile wide up on my face, and in my retarded 3 year old Irish kid voice recite.

  I have a hot dog for a pet, 
The only kind my folks would let me get.
He does ’smell sort of bad and yet,
He absolutely never gets the sofa wet.
We have a butcher for a vet,
The strangest vet you ever met.
Guess we’re the weirdest family yet,
To have a hot dog for a pet

 after I was done I looked around.  everyone was looking right at me. Seriously all their eyes were as big as saucers and I think a couple of them had their mouths hanging open in disbelief. 

Basically I killed the somber serious mysterious moment they had just spent the past 1/2 hour creating!!!!  I slumped back to my chair feeling so dumb!  and then Sharla went up and performed one of her poems.  yeah she had a little kid poem too. but Mr. Coffman didn’t hate her so she actually had a really cool poem (and she didn’t have a retardo kid voice to go with it.) (that probably helped)  So she came off looking like peaches and cream. 

I think it lasted for 1/2 hour more.  I don’t remember.  I blacked most of it out after my horrific performance.  On the way home I turned to Sharla.

“Did I just recite “I have a hot dog for a pet?” in there?”

“yes”  she said laughing

“oh my gosh I want to die”

thats when she told me how “funny” my kid voice sounded….  and the thing was no matter how hard I tried to not to do the accent… I couldn’t!  It was like engrained in me!!!!  everytime I performed it in class or at the elementary schools everyone would just laugh and laugh… :(

and that is my Hot Dog story!