Sleep and I have a very intense love/hate relationship.

Dreaming is lovely. Dreaming only happens when you're asleep. I like to dream.

However, I can go to bed at a normal hour and still wake up at 3 in the morning, wide awake, only a few hours of sleep under my belt. 

Unfortunately this means that around noon, I start to get sleepy and crave the five hours my body missed feels it deserves.

Now that I'm working, this is especially difficult. I don't want to spend my entire time away from work sleeping or thinking about when I can let myself sleep. That's not a life. Not a fun one anyway.

I've decided that sleep is stupid.

I want the option to sleep, but only to dream good dreams. In all other cases, I want to be able to stay awake and never sleep again.

Sound fair? Good. 

The first day on the job went well, by the way.

So I'm sure you've all heard the phrase "Spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them" as told by parents who hope that their children will not grow up to be arachnophobes like themselves. But somewhere along the line, a spider dangles from a web right in our faces, and we FREAK out because the thing has FAR too many legs. So spiders are more afraid of us? I know this NOT to be true.

 Last summer, in the wee hours of the morning before going to bed, I decided to 'tidy' up my room a bit. I lifted an object that needed putting away from my floor, when a very large spider scurried over my fingertips, and under a napkin that was strewn on my floor. I squealed and grabbed a shoe, pounding the napkin to a pulp! I then flipped the shredded paper with a pen, and there it was. A spider laying in the fetal position, legs in the air. My napkin was in tatters, so I didn't have anything to pick it up and throw it away with, so I left it there until further notice.

I went about cleaning up my room. And because I'm paranoid, I'd continuously peek over to were the spider carcass lay. Still there. All is well. But on my fifth glance. Wait, what?! Where? Where is it?! Ew! Get of the floor, get off the floor!!

A few hours later, I finally decided that I should sleep, justifying to myself that a severely mangled spider was nothing to worry about. He'd probably crawled off somewhere to die, right? So I went to bed without a worry. Yet the next morning I woke and noticed this small insistant itch on the top of my right foot. I had a spider bite! Are you kidding me? That spider had it in for me. He waited in the shadows until I was asleep and he could sink his teeth into me. Low blow spider, getting a girl while she's sleeping. 

Over the course of the next two months, the spiders were out to get me. I'd see nearly five a day, most of the time in my room. I came to the conclusion that I had killed these spider's mother and they wanted revenge. The only thing is...they were all different species of spider. That's when I realized: I had killed the Angelina Jolie of Spiders. She had an overabundance of children and they were as diverse as could be.

I hate spiders.

But spiders are generally detestable. People don't judge you for hating spiders, because most everyone you meet hates them with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, just as you do.

People judge you a bit when you tell them you are afraid of dirigibles. You know, those large blimp like things? Zeppelins, airships, whatever you want to call them. They used to fascinate me, but somewhere in my life I developed an irrational fear of the things.

*Shudders* I think on some level I've always been a little terrified by them. When I was little, there was this cheesy anime movie 'Kiki's Delivery Service.' I LOVED that movie. But there is a dirigible crash in that movie, and the giant floating thing above the city always gave me chills. It's just kind of escalated from there.

I'm very glad we live in an age where these things don't fly around anymore. However, they seem to be a popular trend in movies lately. Tonight was Institute and after our lesson we watch the movie 'UP!' Adorable movie. I have no idea how it ends. Why is that? Because the villain flies around in a dirigible! (Very fitting. He was the most terrifying villain I've seen because of his choice of aircraft.) I tried not to make a big deal out of it, I would simply not watch the screen. Wow, the looks I was getting from people. I don't know WHY my mind is repulsed by the blasted things, it just is! What happened to the concept of not judging people? "Judge not lest ye be judged!" C'mon people! We're at institute! At least pretend you understand that principle of the gospel. I left the room and didn't finish the movie.

It's an irrational fear. I don't understand it. If I did, I would try to explain. I actually quite like this strange quirk in myself. I find it quite funny! However when you are trying to flirt and look adorable, people staring at you like you are a mad woman with a big ol' zit on your forehead doesn't make you feel too flirty.

Romantic comedies will be the death of me. 

(This is, of course, an exaggeration. No one has ever died from watching a romantic comedy. Someone might have died while watching a romantic comedy; but to my knowledge, cheesy lines and overly unrealistic love affairs projected on a screen have not caused a person's heart to stop beating permanently.)

What I mean by this is: while I am watching a romantic comedy, I laugh, I cry and I enjoy myself. 

Until the end. 

Something about watching a guy profess his love for a girl after three dates really annoys me. That never happens. (Except at BYU.) I find myself a little bitter as the final credits roll across the screen, thinking things such as "Yeah, that's totally unrealistic." "What they don't show you is the terrible break-up that's going to happen in a few month's time." "I hope they get married and have ugly kids." 

Of course I know that it's all fictional. And maybe this is what bothers me the most. Life is not like it is in the movies. Is it just me, or does everyone feel like this after watching the too perfect happy ending wondering why Hollywood does this to the world? 

I'm usually able to make myself feel better by reminding myself that I am watching a significant amount of time crunched into an hour and a half. So though it may seem like they just end up together, they didn't. They had problems. I mean, did you miss the cliche blow out in the middle? "Oh no! There's been some kind of misunderstanding and when we figure things out we'll be happy forever!"

I'm sounding like a total skeptic here. I'm sorry. I'll move on. Today I watched two romantic comedies that, while I was sad at the end, made me think of a bigger picture. Something to look for outside of the ridiculously corny "you complete me" nonsense. 

The first of these was from the movie "Hitch." This movie is hilarious and so far fetched in so many ways. But aside from that, 'Hitch' is constantly telling people to put themselves out there. Good solid advice. What have I been saying in most of my recent posts? Be social, dang it! This movie is just reiterating that fact.

The second was from the movie "Penelope." A girl born with the nose of a pig is able to break the curse and gets a cute, perfectly proportioned nose because she loves and accepts herself just the way she is. True, the love interest loved her just the way she was, but that's not my point. Or maybe it is. If you love yourself, someone somewhere will also love you for you. This also makes you more confident, and apparently that's attractive. Who knew?

So, in addition to my already standing goal to be more social and put myself out there, I am now going to try really hard to love me for me. (Maybe once I accept myself, my butt will miraculously be transformed into a cute, perfectly proportioned butt. Here's hoping!)

When the water heater dies while I'm in the shower. Even worse, when it dies four times.

When I am trying to sleep and a song pops into my head and I can't remember all of the lyrics. I've found that when I a song gets stuck in my head, if I can go through all of the lyrics, it will go away. If I can't remember the lyrics, I'm screwed and will eventually get out of bed to check the lyrics.

When a favorite character in a TV show disappears. They just drop off the face of the show. Like West from season two of Heroes. I loved him. His character was mentioned a few episodes ago. No word for two years, and all of a sudden they bring him up.*

When my house is silent until I start to make a video. I push record and it's like a marching band is parading around upstairs.

When a person pulls into the center turning lane in order to get into traffic. I hate when people do that.

This has been a list of five things that bother me. I'm sure there will be many more posts of this nature in the future!

*Also, are they ever going to explain why Libby was in the hospital with Hurley? They killed her an episode later, and I don't think THAT question will ever be answered. Stupid LOST with it's plot holes and addictive quality.