The Five People You Meet In Forest Park

The other day I went for an eight mile run. Directionally challenged as I am, this 8 mile run turned into a 9 mile trot turned into a 10 mile death-slog. But that's just two extra miles, who's counting, right? (the answer is my knees. My knees were loudly, angrily counting)
Anyway, this extra 20 minutes or so (don't judge me) of unplanned slogging afforded me the opportunity to do some people watching, which is something I often enjoy doing in Forest Park, despite seeing prettymuch the same people every time. (And of course I'm not talking about specific individuals, I'm talking about stereotypes, because I'm coarse and insensitive that way)

If you happen to be in Forest Park anytime soon, here's the friendly faces you should look for (actually, you shouldn't need to actively look, because you will be surrounded.

1. The Roller-Blader

Somehow, Forest Park seems to have become the motherland to a roller-blader revolution. And I'm not talking about kids, or even teenagers out messing around and having some 8-wheeled jollies, I mean full grown adults who regard this early 90's novelty with the utmost seriousness. One can't help but notice the hardcore rollerbladers as they glide down the bike path with fancy footwork preformed at dizzying speeds, their flailing arms swiping dangerously close to you at upwards of 15mph.
Another noteworthy fact about these enigmatic figures is that they only exist while in motion.You will never see one come to a stop (and I have no idea how they do it. Like, do you just kinda stop moving and wait, or...?) Nor will you ever witness one putting on or taking off their skates, nor waiting at a crosswalk, or skating to the bathroom, or doing any such "human" activity. However, if I DID catch one in such a state I'd have millions of questions: "How do you stop?/Have you ever stopped?" being the first, of course, but perhaps more importantly, questions like "Do you tell your friends that you're a hardcore roller-blader? Do you race, or... skate-dance or something? Are your skates from this decade? How many children and small animals have you unintentionally squashed?"
These are the questions that plague me.

2. The Watcher

As a female runner I have attracted a lot of unwanted male attention (I could omit "runner" from that sentence, but let's save being a creep magnet for another post). Typically this comes in the form of catcalls or rude gestures from people on the street or, most often, people passing by in cars. The park creeper, however, is an entirely different species, set apart from these commonplace creeps by his frigid silence and his palpable gaze. We call him The Watcher.
The watcher speaks not a word. He can usually be found inexplicably standing motionless beside an empty bench, covered in facial hair and holding a large, dirty bag. Even if he spots you first, you will be able to tell the moment his eyes are on you. Methodically, the watcher appraises your hair, then face, neck, shoulders, chest, torso, pelvis and so on until he's mentally violated every inch of your squirming uncomfortable body. As you pass the watcher (because your path will inevitable lead you to run within mere feet of him) you will wonder if you're about to spontaneously cumbust under the white hot intensity of his inappropriate stare. As you pass by you'll continue to feel his gaze sliding over your sweaty butt as if it were a fat sticky tentacle.
Ugh.

3. The Chatty Cross-Walker

Just as the Roller-Blader only exists in motion, the Chatty Cross-walker only exists while standing at a crosswalk, and only in the middle of a very intense, very important workout. It may be confusion / curiosity that spurs the cross-walker's rampage, or it may be loneliness, but whatever the case, the cross-walker sees you as a susceptible target for their barrage of unnecessary questions and pointless stories. The cross-walker somehow manages to attach themself to you like a superpowered magnet, rooting you to the crosswalk and entrapping you in their poisonous web of frivolity. Many a brave runner has watched their hard-won Personal Record perish in this cage of wasted words. Should a similar fate befall you... God rest your soul

4. The Baby 

The Baby lurks around every corner. Under every shady tree. Between every young married couple. Ever. The Baby lies in wait, preparing dangerous levels of brain-melting adorableness for whatever fool winds up caught in it's tractor-beam of cute. There is no way to avoid The Baby, nor any way to counter the googly-eyed, heartwarming, thought-dissolving effect The Baby will have on you. When encountering The Baby, your only option is to submit yourself to basking in it's glorious baby-ness and hope to God you'll be able to keep yourself from touching it's angelic, pudgy little face... because that's pretty creepy of you, man.

5. The Competitor

This person is probably using whatever mode of transportation you are. You will encounter them only when you are running/walking/biking/ice skating at a leisurely pace, simply enjoying the beauty that surrounds you, or perhaps the zoo animals, or the heartwarming sight of children on a swingset. Whatever the case, once you become lost in a sweet daydream brought on by the lovely environment of the park, The Competitor materializes just beside/behind/ahead of you.
The Competitor carries within them an aura which will rip you from your pleasant reverie and strike you with an instant, impossible hatred. As you gradually quicken your pace to match/surpass the competitor you will find yourself slowly consumed by an irresistible competitive urge. No matter how hard you try to ignore the competitor, and slip back into the land of bright green grass and singing birds; the competitor is always there, just a bit too close, watching you from their peripheries, goading you to fight them, race them, defeat them, DESTROY THEM
And you will probably kick their needlessly-competitive-attention-whoring butt, but as a result you'll get all sweaty and tired, and you'll probably end up running out in front of a car/person at an intersection and feel like a dweeb, and in your embarrassed confusion the competitor will pass you again and start the idiocy all over again...

~Alicen

Dumb red-light Camera
You're taking all my money
You are such a poop

A Bit of Perspective

I am nineteen years old. I’m in school. I live with my parents, and they pay my cell phone bill, among other things. I am terrified of the day that I will no longer be covered under their medical insurance.

A friend of mine is about 9 months pregnant. She expects the baby in just two and a half more weeks. Shit. That is horrifying. It’s utterly terrifying to me, that I can have peers who are married, engaged, expecting…That those things could concieveably happen to me

But she is so excited! She posts pictures of her ultrasounds and her baby bump. She can’t wait for her daughter Nevaeh to arrive, and she invites the world to join in her joyous expectation.

This isn’t about fear, or mistakes, or regret. This is about a new, innocent person. This is about something beautiful and precious. This is about humanity, and love that nests deep in the human soul. This is about life.

Someday I hope I'll be mature enough to see it that way.

~A


Two Serious posts
in a row! Sometimes I like
to just contemplate

An Unhilarious Post About My Life-Party Philosophy

Today, I was taught a lesson in unnecessary enthusiasm, and it was beautiful. It began when my uncle came to visit me at school. He lives in Vermont now, but today Scott Trade flew him in for a job interview (cool, right?) and since his flight home wasn't until evening, he had some time to come hang out with me on campus. We got lunch together in the student center, then explored a bit, and we ended up in the theater.
This was (Today) right after auditions and callbacks had commenced, and before cast lists got posted (which is tomorrow) so I was feeling a little insecure about my place/lack thereof in the department. Besides that, I know he has some friends in the arts community, and as a kid he had taken me on backstage tours of the Muny (it's a huge deal in St. Louis) so I was a little wary of what he might think of my school's high-school-cafeteria-turned-theater.

To my surprise, though, our facility absolutely delighted him. He was so happy, just to see me in that environment. Without even knowing whether or not I'll be able to preform on the stage we were touring, he lit up and talked about how proud of me he was!
This was such a different attitude from the one I'd been mired in all week - fretting and fussing and hopelessly struggling to measure up to expectations I wasn't fully clued-in to. What a reality check, to step back and just appreciate what an incredible thing it is to get be educated in this environment at all. To tell the truth, I'm a little embarrassed to think about how self-centered my attitude has been all throughout audition week. That gratitude is refreshing.


The reason I named this blog "Lessons in Unnecessary Enthusiasm" is because I have a tendency to get overly excited about what are considered "small things." If people are in a position where they have to say something they like about me, it's usually that I've got no reservations celebrating the little victories, or happy coincidences, or everyday beauties that people normally don't take time to appreciate (it's that, or "you're nice"... depends on the person).

The way I see it, though, the only way to live joyfully is to turn your cluttered backpack of a life upside down and shake it with everything you've got in you until every single lucky penny, and half-birthday, and secret smile sits on your floor- ready to be lifted up and made it's own confetti-covered float of that day's parade. I'm sure there are people who disagree (either with that thought, or with the convoluded analogy I used to express it) and that's okay. If they ever wanna join my life-party philosophy, though, I'd celebrate their entrance.

Today was a great reminder though, of how important it is to celebrate what we have already. No matter what sort of crap you might have going on, there is something wonderful to be grateful for. Thanks to my Uncle and a few other lovely people for reminding me of that today.

~Alicen



Sorry for having less giggles and more typos today. You may expect better of me when I'm less stressed... which is code for never. You still get a haiku though:

Got so much Homework
Why am I not doing it?
Cuz my dog insists.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Boobs

[Disclaimer: I have many beloved male friends and family members who seem to operate under the assumption that everything I do and say is about/targeted at them. This is untrue as a rule, and also, this particular post is not about any of you. It is not about anyone specific. Got it? (Actually, I do reference an ex-boyfriend pretty specifically, but I'm fairly certain he wouldn't read my blog if you paid him.) If you can't handle me talking about a generally less flattering aspect of male anatomy without assuming I am referring specifically to you, then you are only allowed to read the first three paragraphs... the three that follow this one, that is.... That being said, I do hope that my crude humor isn't enough make any of you beautiful people doubt how wonderful your bodies are, because I love them all. Disclaimer over.] 

Today I read a super "edgy" blog. It was super in-your-face, and was all about "uncomfortable truths" (they were relatively convenient though, so back off, Al Gore) and being all in your face about all the grimy hidden corners of that person's life. Reading it, I thought "Hey! I could do that! Maybe if I talk about all the "uncomfortable truths" in my own life people will think I'M edgy!"
So here we go. Uncomfortable truth: I'm a Junior in college, and my boobs are smaller than yours were when you were in the 8th grade.

I still fit into most of my old training bras. Most of the bras I wear from day to day though are whatever the smallest adult size at Walmart/Kohl's was that day, which is typically a 34A, all of which hang off of me in much the same way that they would if someone had wrapped them around a cylindrical pillar, or a brick wall- and by that I mean the cups keep their shape, despite being totally (or at least mostly) empty.

It's typically hard for me to not blurt out everything I am thinking at any given time, which means that rather than try to hide the tiny-ness of my boobs in ruffly shirts or push-up bras, or feign ignorance of how tiny they are like a normal insecure person might, I have a tendency to talk about boobs all the time. All day every day, my poor friends have to tiptoe around trying not to ever bring up cleavage or bras or curves or workout clothing or anything at all that could lead me to the topic of boobs, because then I'll feel compelled to make some self-deprecating (but at the same time, hilarious) joke, and then they will feel compelled to stifle their laughter and say things like "Oh, you're exaggerating" or "Don't say that, I think they're cute" or some such joke-killing nonsense.


This insecurity was worst, though, during my Junior year of high school; for that was the year my boyfriend had bigger boobs than I did. For a while, I was understandably jealous of my boyfriend's abundant cleavage. Why should he get what I so desperately wanted, when he couldn't even appreciate it?!? Once I really got the chance to examine them, though, I came to appreciate not having his boobs (notice that I said "not having his boobs", not "not having boobs") because despite our respective boobs being alike in their weirdly flat nipples, mine, though BARELY existing, somehow managed to maintain a more feminine shape. And by that, all I really mean is that they lacked the sort of sideways droopy quality which is the man-boob signature look. His were still bigger, though. Darn.

Manboobs are becoming a real epidemic in this country though, and not just in the people you would suspect (when I picture man-boobs, I tend to imagine a man who could conceivably consume another, smaller, adult human over the course of a day). However, as someone who surrounds herself with a lot of unathletic types, I am able to do extensive anthropological research in the field of man-boobs, and what I've discovered is that though obviously they are made of fat, the man-boob has begun to creep across the entire male bodytype spectrum!
That's right, menfolk. Whether you are 3inches around, or 30 feet, no one is safe from the man-boob phenomena.

You may be asking yourselves; how could this be? Well never fear, cuz I looked it up! Turns out, the reason man-boobs develop isn't explicitly fat, but MALNUTRITION!! Shockingly, while our beloved scrawny male friends are hiding from the sunlight pirating Game of Thrones and/or playing Pathfinder, their diet is dominated by greasy processed meat full of  hormones, cellophane-packed sugar/salt items, and to wash it down, a frothing two liters of poop-colored sugar chemicals. Yum.

...And when I look at it that way, I feel like we should be thanking our lucky stars that the what's come of it is just some harmless man-boobs and not, say, giant hairless tails, or people shooting carbonated fructose out of their armpits, or something.

But I mentioned how tiny my boobs are, right? Seriously, when I go to the gym I often get mistaken for an adolescent boy. By people I know. I wish I was kidding.

~Alicen

Skiing through the trees
Is like a big puzzle maze
Solve it quick, or die

I Know You'll Read This, Dad.

"You should put that in your blog"

"Are you going to write that in your blog now?"

"Am i going to see this in your blog tomorrow?"

Ever since that last post about the Christmas tree my father has ensured that this blog is all the family can talk about. Not any other post, just that one.
Just in case anyone else out there interpreted that post (which by the way, is the transcript of a REAL conversation that REALLY happened whether you remember it or not, dad!) as he did, allow me to make it clear that the conclusion was meant to portray that once I understood why we didn't buy a Christmas tree, I decided to be happy with our porcelain tree, and that, ironically, while my dad was coming around to my idea of needing a tree, I was coming around to his idea of the tree not being what's really important. Kind of an "Our Town"-y vibe, I thought. (which is probably why you didn't get it, dad.) Also, the Haiku at the end was not meant to portray the lack of Christmas atmosphere at my house, but rather how I was unable to focus on the happy Christmas season while I was focused on finals!! I was hardly even in my house that week, so regardless, the atmosphere shouldn't have affected me much.

Instead of read it that way though, my dad skims it, thinks I'm not only portraying him as a piece of white trash but as a Grinchy piece of white trash, freaks the heck out, runs out and finds a Kmart tree on sale for 50$, and carries it through the door over his head like a victorious hunter bringing home that day's kill, only to throw it down and immediately make it clear that he wanted no part of assembling or decorating it. (Incidentally, when he went to pick it up, he scratched off a lottery ticket at the front of the store that won him exactly 50$. I say that because I know he'll construe this information as me saying that the lottery ticket is the only reason we have a tree, and I hope that will annoy him)

I starting writing this in the hopes that it might quell some of the relentless quoting and misquoting of my own words that makes up 45% of interactions with my father... in writing that, though, I realize that surely, no matter what I write, If I mention him at all I'm only adding fuel to the fire... So while I'm at it, I might as well do this:

Guess which facts are true and which are false about my dad:

1. My father's wardrobe consists primarily of cut-off T-shirts and gym shorts from the 80s, (many of which are pink)

2. My dad habitually eats  horseradish and BBQ sauce. Plain.

3. If you see my dad without a 40 in his lap, it's only because he's standing up

4. Every conversation my father has with his younger brother begins with him saying "Hey baby" (without the "H" sound in "Hey")

5. I've never heard my father use the word "have." It is only ever "got" or "ain't got."

6. My daddy's real real proud of the '88 camaro we got up on blocks in front of our double-wide. Makes 'im smile so big you'd think his las' toof'd fall right out.

(1. True ("primarily" could be a slight exaggeration)  2. True 3. False, he typically prefers regular sized bottles 4. True 5. Semi-false, he cleans up his syntax if we aren't alone. 6. I hope you liked that one, dad)

~Ali

So much crankiness
Nonstop time with family
Unleash "The Moser"