boo

a couple of weeks ago, i went to a football game with a friend and her family, including her 16 year old niece who quite obviously thinks i'm lame. which is totally fine because i am kind of lame and also she's 16, so the eye rolling and the cringing kind of just comes with the territory. i was thinking about how hard it is to be a teenage girl- how much time you spend worrying about embarrassing yourself, how HUGE the little embarrassments feel and how generally inhibited you have to become just to feel like you can survive. i really don't feel like i was ever myself with my friends until the summer after my freshman year of college because i was so terrified that they wouldn't like me. 

and i was a pretty well-adjusted kid.

as an adult, i have the opposite problem. i live alone and tend to go unchecked in a lot of ways and the challenge is to stay on the right side of social norms.

here, i'll give you an example.

halloween is coming and i freaking love halloween. i love dressing up and going to any and every party. i don't care who's throwing it or who's invited, i am in. so this moment comes when i'm picking out my costume and i'm like, "oh my gosh! i'm going to get my dog a costume! i'm going to get him that 'star wars' at-at costume because that would be hilarious! AND then i could dress up as princess leia! OR!! you know what would be so funny? is if i dressed up like ziggy and then i dressed up him like me!... wait..."

i don't want to be the teen girl who immediately puts the kibosh on the first thought because it's like so totally lame and i can't believe i even thought about dressing up my dog for halloween because people will just think i'm like so totally lame! BUT i also now have to guard myself against fully letting loose, because frankly the end of that rainbow is me on some sort of freaky, hoarders reality show ("these are my 79 dogs all named after a child i never had!").

thank you for your time.