Cougar tendencies

Um..how adorable are they? 

Forget how young they are.

According to an Entertainment Weekly interview, they are not clean cut. They drink! They date older women! The horror!

Maybe it's because they're British, but I am all for One Direction.

I swear I'm not creepy.

Plus, I know I'm not the only one out there!!

Stuff you should read, according to Alex

Y'all.

Have you read this series?



No?

READ THEM NOW. NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!

Don't be fooled by the "young adult" classification you will find on them; these books will satisfy anyone.

There is action, blood, danger, political unrest, AND A LOVE TRIANGLE.

[And maybe I've cried an unacceptable number of times over aforementioned love.]

I'm in obsession mode right now as I read the last book in the trilogy.

Have any of you read these? Obsessed as I am? Want to discuss Team Peeta or Team Gale??

Scenes from a high school journal AKA what the hell was wrong with me

Being forced to clean out your childhood room is a sure fire way to discover cringe-worthy items that make you question whether your teenage years were actually just a mild form of torture.

 Prime example: high school journals.

Your eyes do not deceive you. This freshman year journal does ineed have BSB on the cover. Holla!

Let me dazzle you with some excerpts from the life and times of a 14-16 year old Alex. These were shared with my Fab Four girls over a bottle of Moscato, and let me tell you, the Moscato was a necessary choice.

[Names have been changed to celebrity monikers to protect the innocent]

"I AM THE CLASS PRESIDENT!!! I BEAT THE POPULAR KIDS!!!"

"And when I stand near him, he stares at me. Maybe he thinks I'm pretty just like I think he's hot. Yeah, Matthew Morrison is so hot."

"Info on Matthew Morrison:..." [and I proceeded to list out every bit of information that I had stalkerishly obtained about him].

"Yesterday Maegan and I devised code names for Matthew Morrison and Michael Vartan: the marmoset and the polar bear, respectively." [don't lie, you know you had nicknames for guys in high school]

"Sooo yesterday I did something totally out of character for me. I cassually said hi to a guy I like. Oh my gosh." [OH MY GOD, REALLY???]

"Well, the marmoset spoke to me. Guess what he said?? 'EXCUSE ME.' AAAHHH!!" [don't worry, I know how pathetic this is]

"Marmoset stepped on my shoe on Monday." [shoot me now]

Maybe there's an entry in which I cut out a picture of the "polar bear" into the shape of a heart and taped it in my journal. Maybe.

"All of my friends are silly like me, but this is my less 'dirty' group." [this is incredibly ironic to me today, seeing as how I sometimes have the humor of a 14 year old boy]

"I can't stop thinking about him. Every thought I have is of Michael Vartan." [I crushed real hard, y'all]

"The Marmoset is now the Baboon. Someone said his nickname too loudly when he was close by."

"I've decided that I want to go to Yale and major in film studies." [HA!]

"Ugh, Nic Cage has been giving me the most masturbatory looks. I"m afraid he's gonna ask me out again. Geez." [yeah, I described looks as masturbatory. Points for me.]

"The lifeguard is really hot. He was squirting us with water guns. He's really hot. Ha. I said that once." [I was so eloquent]

And then there are many pages dedicated to the crush I had on Ronnie's now fiance [yep] and how irritated I was when it became obvious that he was totally in love with her. So in a round about way, I am reponsible for their engagement. We can't help but laugh at this 8 years later.

Actual journal page. This is pretty quality, as it both laments having an unintelligent Chemistry lab partner AND has a drawing of a squirrel. You wish you could have been my friend in high school.

 

So after perusing those little gems, please join me in a big ol' "WHAT THE HELL?!"

 

First of all, can we say boy crazy much?? But mine was a dangerous combination: boy crazy yet boy INEPT.

Don't worry, one of those celebrities up there [who also had an animal nickname] went on to be a boyfriend for a couple of years. So I guess I eventually did develop [novice] flirting skills.

 

Second, I cannot get over how incredibly immature I was. I know I was just a freshman/sophomore in high school, but man. What makes me laugh is that I thought I was so cool, sophisticated, and mature. But I'm pretty sure someone possessing those qualities would not excitedly write about a boy she had NEVER TALKED TO stepping on her shoe at school. Shit.

Third, thank GOD the friends I talk about/experience my embarrassing life with in these journals are still my best friends today. They loved me as a dork and they love me now [still a dork, let's be honest].

Finally, as horrifying as some of these finds were, I can't help but miss the SIMPLICITY of those times. Sure, I may have thought that having a huge crush on a guy who barely knew I existed was a big damn deal and would probably damage me for life. False. 15 year old Alex, there is much worse out there. I think we can all appreciate the carefree ways and lack of responsiblity those early years in high school brought.

What I have learned:
I'm still weird.
I still can't flirt to save my life, so thank goodness I don't have to.
I still give people nicknames.
I still stalkerishly obtain information about people if necessary.

High school journals, thanks for the laugh. And for showing me that in the end, I think I turned out just fine.

Loving Zack Morris

I'm fairly confident my mother was convinced I'd grow up to be either a spinster or a lesbian.

[Not that there is anything wrong with either of those lifestyles. Hell, both of those choices would have freed me from any male related drama I have encountered in my life thusfar. But I digress.]

As a child, I had quite an adverse reaction to the male species. As an uptight six year old, those rambunctious hooligans were just too primative for my tastes. So while the other little girls gathered in groups and giggled over how cute Billy was, I stood there with my arms crossed, a look of disgust plastered on my face, and informed them that they were too young to be so boy crazy.

Yeah, I was that girl. In elementary school.

Once, in Kindergarten, a fellow classmate named Jesse told me that he wanted to see me in my bathing suit. What could have possibly brought this up whilst learning how to glue and cut in a straight line, I have no idea. But needless to say, I was horrified.

Then, in the 5th grade, one of the most popular boys in our class asked me to "go around" with him. This occurred while walking down the stairs from our school's library. Want to know what my reaction was? I screamed [literally], "EWWW GROSSSSSS!!!" and ran down the stairs back to our classroom. I was in such a state that my attempt to sit huffily down in my chair led to me actually falling out of said chair. But that's beside the point.

This extreme distaste did not only exist within my general age group, but included adult males as well. Doctor holding my hand to prick my finger for a blood sample? Gross. You get the picture.

My point in detailing these embarrassing antecdotes is this: While outwardly displaying nothing but hostility and disgust for all things boy, I was inwardly pining over one.

Zack Morris.

I lived for coming home to watch Saved by the Bell. Maybe I kissed the TV every time he appeared on screen. Maybe.

That blonde hair, those blue eyes, his popularity! What was there not to love??

I hated Kelly Kapowski, of course. The behavior of of automatically not liking the girl who has your dream guy starts at a young age, I tell you.

Perhaps I was too young to realize that Zack was not and would not ever be real. But that's ok. He was so much better than all the driveling dummies I had to go to school with [seriously, that's how I thought of them].

Funny thing is, with the exception of my very best friend, I never told a soul about my Zack Morris obsession. My poor mother, who told me it was more than acceptable to have boys as friends and that maybe I should try it, probably would have been comforted in knowing that I did indeed find a tiny bit of interest in a boy [albeit a fictional one}. But this was my own secret to harbor.

I like to credit Zack Morris [yes, I know he is a real actor with a real name, but I prefer to refer to him by the name in which I know him best] with teaching me that guys were not necessarily evil on earth. Who cares if because of him, all my first true loves were celebrities? You have to start somewhere!

Did I ever end up having a cute little elementary school boyfriend? Hell no. Did I have one in middle school? Negative. But you know what, I am more than ok with that. At least by the 8th grade I had my first real full-fledged crush on a guy! Did I ever really speak to him? No. Did I blush every time he spoke in class? Yep [he's married now, p.s.].

You can stop worrying about my social development now. By high school, I was a completely normal, horome-controlled girl. I had more crushes than I could even keep track of. One of them even turned in to a serious relationship [my first].

So thank you, Zack Morris. Guys can still be infinitely dumb sometimes, but at least I know that they're not evil and their "cooties" aren't going to kill me.