life lately...

I haven't done (anything) one of those "Currently..." style posts for a while (okay, I only did one once, so it's not like I've been neglecting a life essential, but still) so I thought I'd let you all know what's crack-a-lacking! (How do you spell that? More to the point, does anyone say that anymore?) 

Listening to...

This song is just so cute and happy! (Plus, someone dressed as the Doctor makes an appearance. Obviously I'd like it.) I've also found myself strangely obsessed with everything Owl City... too cute. It's like a hug in music form. 

Wishing... that I had gum. I really want gum. I also wanted gum yesterday, but we did not have any. THE SADNESS. 

Drinking... matcha.

(from David's Tea, of course!)

For those of you who don't spend over 2 hours browsing online tea sale sites, matcha is powdered green tea that you whisk into a froth and drink with milk... mmmm. It's very sweet and light, perfect even when it's hot out! 

Feeling... terrified, traumatized, tired... why are there so many negative t words? This is the first time I'm mentioning it here, but on Monday I leave to go to Winnipeg for five weeks- I'm very excited about it, but it's bizarre to think that I'm going to be away for such a long time and then leave almost immediately after for university. Everything is happening so fast! (I say, reclining in the hammock and reading...) 

Reading... the short stories of Fitzgerald.

(go read it. trust me.)

So maybe I'm obsessed (and reading into them far too much) but I find their descriptions of evanescent beauty utterly relatable. I might not be pining over lost love but I still feel that sense of being a spectator in my own life that he manages to capture so well. (Can I just say I want to be him? Except minus the drinking and mental breakdowns?) 

Wearing... My aviators. All three pairs. 

And most definitely NOT my uniform. Goodbye, kilt of awkward lenght! Au revoir, polo tent! You, I will not miss. 

Making... this exfoliant scrub from Under Peach Trees!

(her photo, not mine- I doubt mine will be that pretty!)

The idea of cleaning with chocolate and coffee just seemed so luscious that I couldn't resist. (Plus, one of the coffees we have is revolting and this seemed like a good opportunity to get rid of it!)

Watching... Blogilates videos.

DO IT. Right now. I dare you. It's only four minutes long... but it might kill your legs. (Hopefully it does because otherwise I will feel pathetic. Honestly, I'm not sure whether to find the thought that the only thing I'm even watching right now is exercise videos pathetic or not...) 

So what's going on in your life? 

book lover problems

It's a fairly innocuous question, right? "What are you reading?" It shouldn't be that hard to answer... but it is.

I'm serious. This is actually a problem in my life right now. (Okay, so I could just stop reading in public... but then I'd have to Talk To People, which is an even bigger problem.) I'm never quite sure how to answer it. For example, the other day I was reading Save Me The Waltz. When I...

a) answer in a generic manner, such as "Oh, it's a romance", people inevitably ask for more details. I'm never sure why this is, because no one ever reads the books I do unless I have previously forced them to... so they never know what I'm talking about... which leads me to

b) give a detailed synopsis, such as  "Oh, it's a romance set during the 1920s and it describes all the facets of their lives and how he drank too much and how she wanted to be a ballerina", people's eyes inevitably start to glaze over after a couple of seconds and they sidle away with pretexts such as washing their llama. (Which leads me to wonder why they even asked...)

c) compare it to another book, such as "It's similar to The Great Gatsby!", people either don't know that book, so then I have to explain it too (it's a vicious cycle!) or, if they do know it, ask "How?" and I, being already frazzled by the resulting stress of choosing one of these answers, can't quite remember why I chose to compare it.

Sometimes by the time I've decided which tactic to choose, the conversation has already moved on and all my hard work was wasted. (However, at least this means I have less of a chance of making a fool of myself... so, again, pros and cons.) It's even worse when someone I don't know well asks me this, because then I also have to wonder: "Are we going to be friends? If so, I should probably moderate what I say now..." (And not confess my shameful obsession with Georgette Heyer's Regency romances...)

How do you answer this? (Or do you just not read?)

On a slightly similar note (the Tatiana-Wants-To-Avoid-People note) this is my current manifesto song.

This will sound like a typical Teenager Statement, but I really like most of Mother Mother's songs- the lyrics really Speak To My Soul. (I'm both parodying myself and being entirely serious.) Have you found any bands like that lately?

However, I love you all, especially those of you who have helped me with my S-Trip Scholarship. Thank you so much! For those of you who still want to help by supporting, commenting or tweeting, you still have a few days left.

Happy Thursday, blog ninjas!

books for sale!

Fact: volunteering at a library book sale is the best volunteer position ever. So maybe it's not quite as useful for humanity as starting a women's shelter or flying to Haiti... but hey, you get to help save (and read!) books... and in my books (ahaha, see what I did there) that's a definite bonus. (Basically, as thanks, you're allowed to take as many books as you want. SCORE.)

...and there were a lot of books.

(and this is only half the room!) 

Since there weren't nearly as many people, I basically wandered around straightening and... reading. (So, again, this is my dream job. Is there any way I can be paid for this?) Along the way, I found some pretty amusing titles...

• Cabbagetown Gang (obviously a group of tough guys who run around wearing cabbage-leaf hats)
• Cooking With Ferret (is Ferret someone's nickname, or does it literally mean eating ferrets? I was too scared to check)
• Farmageddon (here I imagine strawberries the size of nuclear bombs) 
• Start and Run a Profitable Gift-Basket Business (...but really though. REALLY.)
• Methane- Planning a Digester (...I don't even want to think what kind of instructions this gives)
• The Hamster Revolution (no need to worry about the zombie apocalypse- hamsters are demanding their rights! Or maybe it's zombie hamsters?) 
• ABCs for Angry Men (A is for Anger! R is for Rage! and so on)

Not all of my experience was fun and games, however. All of the remaining books (which was well over half) were set to be... recycled.

-insert horrified books here-

As someone who is addicted to reading, and who wants to be published one day herself, the thought of so many words being crushed is devastating. Perhaps they'll give new life to other stories... but the fact remains that someone's craft is being destroyed because it's unwanted... and isn't that every writer's worst fear? (Other than starving to death because you can't even get published.) My one hope is that, whatever objects they go on to make, those objects will be imbued with a certain essence de book- and will encourage whoever holds them to go find something to read, and fast.

the problems I (of my) face

Some days, you just realise that a thousand tiny annoyances are following you around like biting flies. (Which are a trial all on their own. Why do they exist? Shouldn't our blood have evolved to be poisonous yet?) Here are some of the things that have been bothering me lately. 

-My pores. There are so many words to describe them right now, and none of them are pretty. (Some of them even begin with p for added alliterative appeal!) Let's say... pestilential, puffy, pustulous... I think you get the idea. To conceal them, I applied a mud face mask... 

...and wore it all day to school.

Okay, not really.

But I wanted to. It would have been prettier than the reality.

-The weather. For a week, it was glorious and hot and summer and I just lolled about eating smoothies. Now it is raining and feels like summer's already over. Can't we at least have a thunderstorm? 

-My shirt. I love this shirt so much.

(source)

Mine is even more beautiful because it's a gorgeous, deep ocean blue! I just want to wear it everywhere and with every possible combination of the rest of my wardrobe. Last night I had a mini fashion show- very mini, because I was both sole model and sole audience member- and tried it on with almost all my bottoms (okay that sounds like I have different butt sizes to try it with but you get the idea right?) and it totally worked. Literature is a magical force...but I can't wear it all the time. So sad. (Although, if I did, the smell might begin to repel people after a while... hmmm... ways to be antisocial are always appreciated...)

-The ending of I Capture the Castle. This is one of my favourite books... but the ending has always saddened me. (No spoilers, I promise!) Usually, I'm fairly good at inventing alternate stories for characters I think have been cheated (I spend far too much time lost within the pages of books not to!) but I've read this one far too many times to change its story.

(source)

Just read it. Or watch it. Then we can have a deep discussion about it and I can cry. (Too many feels okay.)

-I'm choking. There has been an Advil capsule stuck in my throat since LAST NIGHT. How has it not dissolved yet? Can someone please explain this? All day, every time I swallowed something, I could feel it blocking my nutritional passageways. (Yes. That is a scientific term. Just accept it, as we say in Chemistry whenever we don't understand something.)

...and, just to cap it all off:  

(source)

(Garfield, you and I are soulmates.) What have some of your problems been lately? 

you know you're overthinking it when

I was never the type of girl who had imaginary friends. To be honest, even at five, I thought the idea was... kinda silly. (Why make up a friend when you could play with your Beanie Babies?... okay, so maybe my logic was a little faulty, seeing as it amounts to the same thing... but I was five okay?) However, the older I get, the more I find myself taking refuge in imaginary worlds and, if not pretending that their characters attend my every move, imagining that they do exist. (Somewhere. Parallel universes totally exist. Just watch Doctor Who.)

My thought process goes something like this...
-omg I love this character!
-why do they not exist in real life to marry me or to be my best friend
-...let's face it, I'd probably be too antisocial to hang out with them anyway (...while I'm confessing)
-BUT THAT'S OKAY, I can pretend
-next time I make cookies, I will totally make extra for them and eat them (calories don't count after midnight or when they are consumed for imaginary friends)

...I think we can agree I might be a little obsessive. My current read: Dracula. (I know. I'm a teenage girl reading about vampires. How very cliché.) Why do I love it so much, you might ask? Because of the characters. (Again, no, I am not in love with Dracula.) I find them very vivid; I can totally picture Jonathan Harker as that quiet shy kid in hipster glasses and cardigans who you later discover has a black belt in karate. Or John Seward as the know-it-all who everyone's in love with.

Something else I love is when I find an actor who's played in several shows or movies that I enjoy. Right now, Jonny Lee Miller tops that list (having played an antique dealer who kills vampires, Sherlock Holmes, and Mr. Knightley, a love interest in a Jane Austen adaptation... swoon) with Billie Piper coming a close second (Rose, my favourite Doctor Who companion, as well as Fanny, the main character in a different Jane Austen)... really, if the two of them were together in a show my heart might explode from fangirl excitement.

Does anyone else ever do any of these things? If you've read Dracula, what were your impressions?

Happy Sunday, blog ninjas!

varied readings

Some days I feel like my sole purpose in life is to turn off the lights.

I don't even mean this in a deep, metaphorical way. I literally mean that I walk around my house (and at school too!) turning off the lights that everyone else has forgotten to turn off. (My second purpose is tripping over invisible objects so that everyone can laugh at me. I also minor in closing windows that everyone else has forgotten about.)

With all this stress, it's no wonder that sometimes I just like to curl up with a nice book. (Okay, make that always. If I could spend my entire life eating- I actually have a batch of these brownies in the oven right now!- reading and drinking tea, I would be perfectly happy.) Here's some of my latest picks!

1- Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens.

I mentioned this book in another recent post but, since I'm still loving and reading it, I thought it deserved another mention. Charles Dickens is one of my favourite authors for several reasons, but top of the list his lovely prose (one of the many reasons I was born in the wrong century is because I actually enjoy reading long descriptions!) and his carefully drawn characters- what other author has a character constantly described as a steam engine? (That sounded better in my head... and on the page.)

2- We The Living by Ayn Rand.

This book... just thinking about it again makes me feel sad. It's one of those stories that you start and that you know it's going to end badly, but you keep reading on the off chance that the characters will be drawn out of their deep pit of despair. (Does anyone else do this?)
...Needless to say, this was not a book I'd recommend if you're already feeling down. (Or happy, because then you will feel down for sure.)
But I figure, if I'm still thinking about it a week later... it's a good book.

3- This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This book makes me even more excited to go to university! It's filled with descriptions of their long discussions of literature and their sumptuous all-night parties... so it might be wish fulfillment, but a girl can dream, right?

And... that's that! (Yay for classic literature!) What have you been reading lately? )And if you liked my selections, feel free to friend me on Goodreads or Twitter to see what I'm reading next!) Any tasty recipes to go along with it?