Fear

Alright, I hate to lay this on you guys, but my youth leader asked us to write about our fear and I thought this would be a good outlet. Especially since I have no followers. Nice and safe right? Ha! Right. Except for the fact that my own personal fear will be displayed on the internet for all eternity.(Muahahahahaha.) But how bad can it be, right?
Alright. Here we go.
For the past... while I've felt like I'm moderately good at a wide variety of things, but not really good at one specific thing that I'm like, "I want to do this for the rest of my life and I think I could do it." Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things I'd love to do. I would love to dance or sing or act or write for a living. But lets face it, none of these things are very practical. And dance has a HORRIBLE shelf life, especially ballet. Also, I'm terrified that I'm not good enough to do any of these things professionally and that I'll be shot down the second I try and end up working at a grocery store the rest of my life. Personally, I don't want this.
Really, I have plenty of people telling me how talented I am, and there's always those people who tell you that you can do anything you set your mind to. But, a) nobody wants to insult anybody these days, so how do I know that people are always telling the truth about my talent? and b)sometimes, no matter how much you want something, you don't get it. Have you seen some people on American Idol? Some of those people think they're God's gift to the world. Others of us know that they are sadly mistaken.
In addition to all of this, I have always wanted to be a person that stands out and makes a statement and can get a point across. And yet, every day-even when I'm just trying to find something to wear for the day- I am faced with the cold hard reality that I am not one of those people. Mostly because I'm so deathly afraid that people won't like me, which, frankly, is something I SERIOUSLY need to get over. But really, I don't do much without asking myself what people will think of me.
Alright, now I'm just getting off topic. But really, that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that if I make a statement and be different and support something I believe in that people will hate me. And I'm afraid that I'm just not good enough at anything to go into it professionally.
Whew. Okay. So, this is me making a statement now.

Puppy Pilgrimage

This past weekend I, my parents, and my best friend Ashlee made the four hour voyage to Farmersburg, Indiana to pick out a cocker spaniel puppy that we will soon be adopting. Why, you may be wondering, were we willing to drive that far just to visit puppies for an hour and forty-five minutes? I'm kind of wondering that too. But we did. The trip there wasn't actually that bad. Especially since Ashlee and I had a deck of cards, a computer, and Inception- which we never did end up watching. A bummer, seeing as I still haven't seen it. Anywho, as is expected on any car trip with my mother, we stopped to use the restroom about once every hour, but I'm used to that by now.
We reached the breeders' neighborhood in pretty good time and commenced looking for their house. It was a neighborhood pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It probably used to be nice, but had ceased being so a good twenty years back.It also has the unfortunate burden of having a Fifth Street and a Fifth Avenue within about eight small blocks of each other. The breeders' house is off of Fifth Avenue. So, we're driving down Fifth Street, going "Where the heck is this place?" We then called the breeder- Susan- and got directions to their house, in the slightly nicer part of town.
Finally, we got there and were greeted at the door by a very quiet man in his late fifties or early sixties. He lead us into the living room where we met his wife, Susan. The house smelled overwhelmingly of perfume, but it was enough to deal with. She then lead us into the garage which they've converted into their puppy palace. I almost gagged as I walked into the room, the smell of dog was so strong. Even the little incense burner on the washing machine didn't help unless you were standing directly next to it. I'm serious, the smell was so bad that even when you got used to it, if you took a deep breath, you got the full effect again.
Susan then opened the lids on the cages the puppies were in and we forgot all about the smell. They were so cute and TINY! Our last three dogs have been golden retrievers which means when we get them they're about the size of a fat cat, and weigh about seventeen pounds. These guys were just a little bit bigger than my hand.
Although before we even saw the puppies we were bombarded by the mother dogs, begging for attention.
We all held some puppies for a while. One of them, a white and tan spotted dog, fell asleep on Ashlee almost instantly and stayed there for the rest of the visit. I had less luck, but I finally found a dog that seemed to enjoy my company. She was a cutie; brown and tan spotted. They called her Marilyn because of a little spot on her muzzle that looked a bit like a beauty mark.
But, it didn't matter what dog I liked because the instant Mom picked up a little black and white one, she was in love. He was her dog. We stayed and talked and played with the puppies for about an hour and forty-five minutes before thanking the breeders one last time and then climbing reluctantly back into the car.
The drive back was... well interesting. The exit to get back on the highway was blocked, and we ended up having to drive forty-five minutes out of our way. We stopped at Subway for lunch, where the poor employee must have been new, because the looked thoroughly confused. I should have said my order slower, but oh well. He's got to learn one way or another. Five hours later, we dropped Ashlee off at home, and I immediately lay down and conked out in the back seat. We got home, had Chipotle for dinner, and then I made cupcakes for a party the next day. Then, I went to bed. It felt SO GOOD.

But you want to know what the best part is?
We're doing it all again in three weeks when we go back to bring the puppy-Toby- home. Maybe at least this time I'll have a cute puppy to sit on my lap.