That's More Like It

My #1 concern of the day is that Kelly's guinea pig, James, is being a complete bully to my guinea pig, Jim. She says they are playing. I say they are not. I think that Jim is having a crisis, that he's possibly "coming out" of his pink igloo castle, and that James is a big homophobe. Or it could be that James is taunting Jim about his dry skin, or his un-cool hair. Anytime Jim is eating on the cabbage kabob, James pushes him out of the way. He chases him and won't leave him alone. Today I yelled "James, you a******, leave my Jimmy alone!" and he did. He knows what he's doing. Hrrmmph.

In other news, yesterday I had to draw some pictures for Kelly for her to analyze for school. I drew a tree, a house, and a person. My crayola drawings indicate I have depression, sexual frustration, tension, and that I need attention. That about sums it up.

The quote of the week comes from my property book, talking about whether or not an implied warranty is a tort or contract concept or maybe a (wait for it, wait for it) "freak hybrid born of the illicit intercourse of tort and contract." I don't even want to THINK about torts and contracts having intercourse and producing a freak-hybrid love-child. If any areas need to be having intercourse, it's property and contracts, all those dang real estate contracts and clauses and stuff. Still. That was a visual I could do without.

Now I am going to do something of substance. I just had all these things swirling in my head and I knew I needed to get them out once silent, moving lips began to accompany my inner monologue. My sister calls me out on that one. Frequently.

A Very Cliche Blog and Then Some

The amorphous "they," as my high school English teacher always put it, were right: the grass is always greener on the other side.

I've been on Spring Break about 72 hours or more, if you count the weekend, and at about hour 64, I ran back to my OneNote program and broke open the Civ Pro binder for a little outlining fun. Yeah, it really is a have-to, unless I'd like to make my time after break a little more chaotic, but I've pretty much determined that I have to stay busy to keep from thinking too much. Not that I think about anything of substance, but if I don't keep a check on myself, my imagination runs away from me. And let me tell ya, my imagination is active. And no, I don't mean like that, pervert.

Have I already been over how that Britney Spears' song "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" is how I feel about life in general right now? I took my sister to the hospital today for some blood work. The check-in lady and the male nurse both referred to me as "mom." My sister is almost 14! I was not even wearing my mom jeans, thank you very much. So I look old enough to have procreated, but I have not undertaken that crucial step which would enable me to procreate, if you catch my drift. Which leads me to my next point.

It shouldn't bother me, but it does. I feel like I see on Facebook 100 girls a week getting engaged. They're all my age or younger. Don't get me wrong; I'm in no way mature enough or even school/career-wise at the point where I could be in a relationship of this magnitude. I just feel like my growth in that area of my life has been stunted. Always. What does it say about me that the two "serious" relationships I've had have been with guys who later came out of the closet? I try to make light of it as best I can, but there's no denying that at the end of the day, it bothers me. I think I run straight men off because I'm over-eager. I see something I want and I go for it. I'm slowly learning that's not the way things work. I just get so angry at myself that I have the desire for non-platonic male companionship, especially when I don't have the time, especially especially when my heart is set in a certain place and I know deep down that that desire will never come to fruition. Just like Charlie Brown said, nothing ruins the taste of peanut butter like unrequited love.

Ok, please don't mistake that as a cry to the male population for a date. Just something that's consistently on my heart that I had to get off my chest. Forgive me if that was a little too personal.

Alright. I vow to enjoy Spring Break to the fullest until I run back to Memphis and start the same old song and dance again, claiming to be miserable with the endless work, while I secretly enjoy it.

As I Lay Brief-Writing: My Faulkner Stream of Consciousness Blog

You're right. They're all stream-of-consciousness. So be it.

I'm tired of establishing that immigrants do not have a well-founded fear of persecution for the purposes of this brief.

I wish I could unsubscribe from certain Facebook statuses, mainly the ones by college-educated people who misuse my beloved apostrophe on a day-to-day basis. I also hate when people don't proofread. It takes a literal second.

Today I realized I'm am pop-culturally irrelevant. I was running to Soulja Boy's "Crank dat" and realized that I don't remember how to "superman dat hoe." This is Memphis, for cryin' out loud! I also received an email that one of my friends would like to keep up with me via Twitter. I first thought it was either pornographic or something for hummingbirds. Then I saw that people updated Facebook via Twitter. I still don't know what it is exactly, but I think it is technologically related.

I'm ELATED to be in Knoxville in a few days. After rendezvous-ing with the fam and babysitting my little "babe" Stephen, I'm going to spend as much time on UT's campus as possible. I would like: sweet-potato fries on Wine Night at Sunspot; to skip down the pedestrian walkway and jump all over the UT seal; get an escort to the new SK floor in Laurel and scream down the hallway; do Sudoku in the Daily Beacon in the ampitheathre; Facebook on a computer in The Commons; eat greasy pizza at Smokey's; pass Wayne Chism on my way into Humanities; have myself surgically removed from half-court of Thompson-Boling; drink a SoCo and Lime at Half Barrell; and yes, even take the 90-something steps up The Hill. I miss that place like nobody's business. So...if anybody wants to help me make those dreams come true, you know how to find me.

Ok, back to the brief. I have nothing more to say.

I Know This Much Is True...

...if Spring Break doesn't hurry up and get here soon, I'm gonna lose it. I can't wait to have this appellate brief done and turned in, and I CAN'T WAIT to go home for a week!

While I'm open to hanging out in Memphis after I graduate to work here, or moving elsewhere for that matter, I love Knoxville so much and wouldn't object one bit to going back. Maybe that's unadventurous of me or whatever, but right now I'm doing the things in life that I always wanted to do and I've not rearranged my life for another person, so I can sleep at night. I guess right now I just miss my family and the close friends who know me best, so I feel I could live close to them and be happy as a lark in the future.

I'm ready for sunshine and weather that is consistently warm. I look pasty, like dough or something. I want to put on a skirt and a t-shirt and go on my happy way.

Today I drove around Germantown for a while instead of doing work. I went to Marshalls and bought some shorts and a new lunchbox. It has insulation and it's pretty. There's a laptop case at BestBuy that matches it. It was great. Then I made my weekly trip to Super Target. Also fantastic. I bought some new highlighters so I'm ready to get down to business tomorrow. Yuck. I also got to catch up with my soulmate Chad Elmore on the phone, so all was well. I then ate a 99 cent cheese pizza (it's just so good it's sinful) and Facebooked my happy little heart out.

This blog makes me feel like a more public version of Bridget Jones. I love her. Just the way she is. I think I'll go watch that movie now, since my weekend ends as soon as I wake up tomorrow.

Until then, blog-o-sphere.

I Caved

After fighting for 14 beautiful hours, AmyPratt went back to being the Facebook stalker that she always was. I spent my time in class looking over the shoulders of my peers for a glimpse of the mini-feed. I was in the library, wondering what would happen if I missed an engagement, a birthday, a STATUS UPDATE for Pete's Sake?! I just couldn't leave those things to chance.

I logged on and instantly stopped shaking and hallucinating. There was life coursing through my veins again. You may say I'm weak, but I know I won't ever have to fight myself again. I won't ever have to sort through garbage again. I will never have to steal from my parents again.

Through my plight, I learned that law school is still super important, and that you should always do your homework. It's also okay to be dramatic, as long as you limit it to 10 minutes at the end of the day.

My name is Amy, and I'm a facebookaholic.

Facebook Free, Day 1

I deactivated my account at about 9:30 am after sneaking a peek at status updates. I've been Facebook free for about 13 hours. It's torture. Was I really that obsessed with the 'book? Apparently so. That is undeniably sad.

It was bound to happen. The blog had to change. And like Barack Obama says, "yeah, it's time for a change." So I made good--no, better--on my promise to revamp the blog in 6-18 months!
Instead of "The Essential Memphis Experience," I switched to the current name of "The Essential AmyPratt Experience" because I find I'm usually splitting my time between the sides of the state, and I don't talk about Memphis all that much, and since I blab about myself all the time anyway, why not take self-absorbed to the next level? I decided to morph my name into one word as well, as people have been calling me AmyPratt, one word, since the ripe age of 5. I used to hate it, but I've decided that if/when I marry, I'm keeping all my names. It's just who I am, no offense to marriage or chivalry or anything else like that. I'm just a double-namer.

Sometimes I think blogging is ridiculous, because you come across as a little self-absorbed in thinking that people actually want to take time out of their busy lives to read the crap that you write; however, sometimes you just have to share the inner-workings of your mind, and I'm not forcing you to read or to care. So, I continue to take up space in the blog-o-sphere with my obnoxious picture and one word name.

In the spirit of Lent and all that is holy, I decided to quit the Facebook for 40 days and nights. Never before in my life have I observed Lent, and let me be honest in saying that my quitting Facebook is for my own intents and purposes, but why not join in the season of sacrifice and see where it might lead?

If you know me fairly well, you may have noted that at times I tend to be a bit, well, dramatic. Anytime my parents and I had a "discussion" about my behavior, it always ended in my sobbing and my mom scolding "Oh stop being so dramatic!" I've learned in recent years that I'm a passionate person, which more often than not turns out to be a bad thing; I get something on my mind or in my heart, and I go for it in full force, hence, the dramatics.

Facebook gets me all dramatic sometimes. I log on for a quick peek at status updates, which leads to my noticing something about somebody I don't like on somebody's profile, which leads to stalking the wall-to-wall, which leads to me shouting "who does that hussy think she is?!" which leads to Googling to see if the "hussy" is prettier than I am (since her profile is private, of course), which ends with me sending dramatic text messages to my girlfriends and realizing that I wasted an hour and a half of my precious time. Lather, rinse, repeat. Rational people just don't do such things.

I think it's just silly for me to stress out over trivial things that are probably just all in my head. It's stupid to get mad at people because they don't return your wall post or respond to your chat invitation. I left Middle School almost 10 years ago, so it's probably time to shake that mindset. It's also pretty sad that there have been nights when I've done less than satisfactory work for school or skipped doing my daily devotional because I'm too tired from all my cyber stalking. Who knows what result this little experiment will yield, if anything at all. I'm just trying to gain a little perspective and get my priorities in line. Lord knows I'm a mess.

So, here's to priorities, perspective, and passion (but with fewer dramatics).