Adult.

Yesterday, I looked in the mirror and noticed I was an adult.

I was a kid and a teenager for a good 18-20 years of my life. I've just turned 22. In the past few years, I still frequently refer to myself as a "girl" or some other term that implies that I'm an adolescent of some sorts. But yesterday, I looked in a mirror and saw a full-grown adult looking back. I'm no longer that awkward, teenage girl trying to figure herself out, wondering how my features will change as I grow. I am done and grown.

I sometimes wish I could meet myself as a child just to let myself see what I'll look like. When I was a child, I remember after seeing pictures of my parents as kids, I wondered what I'd look like when I grew up. I wonder if I'd be happy or sad with the results.

I need to sleep more on this vacation. Things aren't making sense properly. I'm in Virginia with Mike for spring break. Maybe I'm noticing my adulthood because I'm meeting his childhood friends for the first time, and I'm not meeting them as a student or a kid. We are all adults with jobs (or a math teaching internship for me) and I'm not viewed as a child by them. Strange.

A Gaping Hole.

Recently, I have been referring to the upcoming months as "The gaping hole that is my future."

I do not like being uncertain of my future. From kindergarten to my senior year of high school, my plans were decided. In middle school, I said that I would be a math teacher, and I am now seven weeks away from receiving my bachelor's in mathematics education. My senior year of high school, I decided very early that I was attending FSU. I applied, was accepted, and never once considered attending, or even applying to, another college. Any time there was uncertainty in my future, I immediately filled it: I've worked at the same summer job for four years, attended college regularly, and made decisions early enough to plan accordingly.

Now, however, I'm about to graduate, and I'm not sure what will happen. I don't know if I can find a job. I don't know if I'll have to attend grad school. I don't know if Leon County will hire me, or what I can do if no teachers are being hired here, and I can't even plan ahead at this time. My future is a gaping hole of uncertainty, and I do not know what's going to happen or what I'm going to do. And that thought terrifies me.

I wonder, sometimes, where the time has gone. Time is a constantly perplexing thing; we are constantly changing, growing, moving, proceeding, spinning day by day, month by month, year by year. But the speed never makes sense to me. I feel like this semester is the longest of my life; I wait anxiously for graduation, but it feels like the end is no closer to arriving than it was a year ago. Every day passes so slowly that the weekend takes a small eternity to arrive. And at the same time, I wonder what happened to my teenage years. Where did the past four years go? I remember high school, and college, and I'm certain they happened, but I'm not sure how it flew by so quickly; just the other day I was moving into a dormitory, away from home for the first time, and here I am, about to graduate. I feel like every day is dragging by, holding me back from the future, while the months are flying by me before I have a chance to realize that they have passed me by, forever.

And suddenly, here I am, 22 years old, caught up in the ever-spinning wheel of time, moving through life at some indiscernible speed. I am aware, for today, of the paradoxical speed that my life is taking, but who knows about tomorrow, or the day after, or any other day. All I know is that, in a few years, this gaping hole of uncertainty will be a blur in my memory; this will be just a small transitional phase from one stage of my life to something bigger and better.

Horoscopes.

I have never been one to believe in horoscopes, although I find them interesting. The day to day predictions are most intriguing to me. "Jupiter has taken a turn for the worse, causing Neptune to get angry. Friends in your life will try to steal your money, but be careful. Your lucky number is 3052, and on a scale of 1 to 10, your day will be a 2.4."

I'm not trying to bash on anyone's serious beliefs, but horoscopes just weren't ever something I could really buy into. I remember in middle school I had a friend that seriously believed in the power of horoscopes, and one morning hers said she would hear unexpected good news. She assumed it meant her crush would confess his undying love and they would live together in middle school bliss. I promptly forgot about this horoscope and later that day dropped a note into her locker (which was quite common,) except I left it unnamed, planning on her being like, "Oh, is this from Andy or Cate?" Wrong. She had that horoscope on her mind, and upon realizing the note was from me, she was rather upset. I felt terrible for the remainder of that day, having hurt my best friend by forgetting about her horoscope and, in her mind, making a mockery of it.

Anyways, back to horoscopes. My birthday is March 2nd, so most of my life I've been a Pisces (I'm not sure if I've recently switched to Aries or something.) A quick Google search revealed these personality traits:

Imaginative and sensitive
Compassionate and kind
Selfless and unworldly
Intuitive and sympathetic
On the dark side....Escapist and idealistic
Secretive and vague
Weak-willed and easily led

Wow! Look at all of those things that describe me perfectly! It's almost like looking at a biography! The problem with these words is that, upon seeing them, it's easy to be like, "Oh, I can see how I am that!" However, when I was 8, I found a serious flaw in this logic. My sister, four years older than me, has a very different personality. Where I am an introvert, she's an extrovert. Where I worry, she has confidence. My brother is also completely different. He's funny and outgoing, but very practical and logical. Trisha's birthday is February 27th, and Dustin's is March 1st. We all have the same horoscope. So, those words apparently describe all of our personalities perfectly! Even 8 year old me knew that something wasn't right with that.

However, like fortune cookies, I will still always enjoy reading my daily horoscope and thinking about any slight chance of coincidental "truth" in it.

Fallen by Lauren Kate.

And the sequel, Torment.

As many of you know, my family is really into the show Jeopardy. We watch it together whenever we can. We play even if not all the family members are present, which means that when Dad is working late, I actually have a chance to win. (He's so fast at answering! It's infuriating!)

Anyways, you may have seen in the news that, at the beginning of this week, Watson played Jeopardy. Watson is a computer. Watson is also a total cheater and a jerk, but that's not the point. If you haven't seen the two shows with Watson, I recommend you watch them immediately. You will laugh, you will cry, etc. Well, after the Watson series was Teen Jeopardy. This is also fun to watch because teenagers have easier questions than adult Jeopardy. So I decided to watch Teen Jeopardy. And one category, Teen Novels, had a question about some book by Lauren Kate, saying in it the girl is in love with this being, and the answer was, "What is an angel?"

So, based on that clue I decided to give the book a try. I love reading, have my whole life, and specifically have a soft spot for children and teenager literature. Anne of Green Gables, Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and Harry Potter are just a few of the series that I love. Some are classics, some are new. Many of the recent teen novels are terrible (take Twilight, for example,) while others are incredible, such as Harry Potter or Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Extras. I knew going into the read that there was a good chance this book would be terrible; however, I decided to torrent the book online and go for it.

So, I read the first book, Fallen. And then I read the sequel, Torment. And this is my review.

From a storyline point of view, everything except the actual plot aside, the story was lacking.
From a writing point of view, the story was poorly written, and descriptive in all of the wrong ways. Stories shouldn't have to tell you exactly what everything looks like in two sentences; appearances should be revealed carefully within the events.
From a religious point of view, the story is atrocious and butchers everything ever.

Honestly, the first book made me think of Twilight: an unimportant girl who gets caught up in some crazy supernatural love triangle, unable to make up her mind between two guys and being completely oblivious to everything. I also felt like the author took many of the elements of the first book and created meanings for them in the second book that didn't follow, as a way of trying to create a more lasting storyline. The book is also in no way timeless: it is very much set in 2009, with the characters dressing like punk goth kids in 2009. The author also attempts to create intrigue and mystery by announcing unexplained events early in the story, like that the main character, Luce, is sentenced to some sort of prison and we don't know why. However, it's done gracelessly, leaving the reader knowing exactly what the author is trying to do. The love story is supposed to be one of the greatest in time, but there is nothing about either of the love interests that seems lovable. Both are completely unbelievable at every point of the book.

The second book went downhill. It's first flaw is that it is based on Fallen, which already was a storyline on the brink of crumbling. However, it seemed like it wanted to be esque; where the first book made the fallen angels seem like a few people here and there, the second revealed a whole community of Nephilim, part angel people. Luce gets sent to a boarding school of Nephilim where she realizes she is famous, though she never knew it, and wants to be treated normally. How original. She also gets caught up in an entirely new love triangle! Oh joy! The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader asking, "....What?"

The third sequel of the four part series comes out in June. I'll let you know how it is.

Food.

It has been a long time since I have posted a blog. In that time, I have written many blog outlines, none of which have made it to an actual blog yet. In case you weren't familiar, often times I will think of blogs throughout the day, write down the general idea, or the whole blog if given time, and type it up when I find the time. One of the problems now is that I seem to have so little time, what with starting my internship at a high school, trying to spend my remaining time with Mike, and trying to find time to spend with my friends.

Of the many random thoughts that cross my mind throughout a typical day, I often find myself thinking about food. Many of you know I am counting my calories. Not so much in a weight loss sense, since I have already dropped some pounds and continue to work out consistently, but more to keep myself in check from eating too many, and because it helps me to eat healthy overall. When Mike also decided to count calories with me, I had to invent many tasty, low calorie meals that someone so choosy as Mike would appreciate. Here are some of the kitchen adventures we have had:

Hamburgers. My parents bought me a tiny propane grill. As such, Mike and I went through an awesome grilling phase, which will return when the weather stops being deathly cold every day. (Seriously? The high is 38 in Florida? It's like I'm living in Canada.) With said hamburgers, I either ate Kraft Mac and cheese, made with skim milk and much less butter, or Mike ate said Mac and cheese and I invented a green bean sautee, from fresh green beans. Mmmm!

Yellow Rice and Chicken. I invented this in an attempt to recreate Pollo Tropical, one of my favorite fast food restaurants. It offers such healthy food! A classic stir fry of yellow rice, chicken, onions and peppers has become even MORE Cuban with the addition of black beans! So healthy and tasty. Even better when I made this meal at home and Dustin complimented it with fried green plantains, which taste like hash browns, only better.

Fake Asian. This is more like a category than a meal, but it's necessary because Mike and I seem to make lots of fake Asian. When I realized the ABSURDLY high levels of calories in Panda Express (a two-entree plate is easily 2100 calories, more than I can eat in an entire day,) I decided to invent my favorite Panda meal at home: Sweet and Sour chicken. I bought sweet and sour sauce, then used soy sauce, various other fruits and veggies, and a cheat recipe for sticky white rice. While I loved it, Mike only really liked it. So I bought Beijing sauce, his favorite. That meal tasted great! Then, in an attempt to be crazy outgoing, we made Crispy Orange Beef. I learned how to zest an orange, how to peel and grate fresh ginger, how to buy rice vinegar, and how to create an amazing Fake Asian dish! Mike learned how to bread and fry meat to make it crispy, something that all Southern girls learn around age 8. I attempted to make this meal a second time, doubling the recipe so we could take leftovers to work, but it was an utter failure in my mind.

Pasta. Again,vaguely broad categories. Mike has a homemade spaghetti sauce recipe. We recently decided to use ground chicken instead of ground beef, and decided it was a much healthier, yummy spaghetti experience. We also used rotini when we were out of spaghetti. However, we much more recently made said sauce into a lasagna. It. Was. Awesome. I had to call my mom, because, as many times as I have watched her and helped her make lasagna, I for some reason never remember the recipe. However, it turned out quite delightful, and left some tasty leftovers for us to eat for lunch and dinner the next few days, as well as a fun dining experience with our friends, the Wises.

This was my tale of homemade foods of the year. I just realized my last blog was also about breakfast; I am honestly hungry alot. I eat breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, another snack, dinner, and a snack. I stay in a decent calorie count, but I eat all the time.

Coming soon: New restaurants I have tried in Tallahassee and New Restaurants I Still Need to Try, Pool and Darts (with Leah), Dustin Sends Me Crazy texts, Black Holes, the Pledge of Allegiance, Mike got Robbed, Liturgical Church Services, and Interning at a High School: Why Did the World do this?