Flaws and Imperfections

You know when a phrase or body signal catches on like a plague for either a few days or the rest of your life? Here are some things I've found that I like about myself but know other people would find random and weird:
-putting the clasp part of my necklace charm in my mouth(relieves anxiety and gives me something purposeful to do)
-folding my left or right arm around my back and grabbing the crook of the opposite arm's elbow(I've found a lot of kids do this)
-saying "laughing my ass off over here"
-making the sound of white noise at the end of a joke or funny sequence(developed from watching the asdf movies and the lazer collection of course)
-scrunching my nose up while I'm grinning to express humorous distaste or to just look funny
-spilling various drinks on myself in numerous ways(I do not do this on purpose)
-taking my sandal off and spinning(using the heel part) it around with my big toe
-pinching my nose when I sneeze
-chewing on the clip part of pens and mechanical pencils
-making faces when I'm reading a book or watching a movie
-wiggling my ears

Cliff's Yesterday

My first time at an amusement park, and I must say, even with the disgustingly spinny rides (such as the Sidewinder and the Tilt-a-Whirl), it was actually very fun.

My brother and I on the carousel (which I affectionately dubbed the kill-your-self)

My brother and I in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl

My brother and I on the Tilt-a-Whirl (ours hardly spun)

Me on the Musik Express

On the Galaxi - not as scary as it looked

Far right in the green on the Sidewinder

Going up on the Cliffhanger (yes I probably felt sick)

Birthday Baby!

It's my baby doll Sunny's twelfth birthday today! (Hope she doesn't look it ;) ) She doesn't like to admit it, so we'll make it her first birthday again. Tons of pictures the past few days; here are some of them!

bathtime baby

playing peek-a-boo

hiding from me

yogurt mustache

itchy baby

making an escape

sharing my drink

Summer Blogging

Now that school's got out, I have *nothing* to do. Summer Diaries is kind of a way to see what I do and don't do over the summer, and mostly I do nothing. Well, I get some halfway decent pictures of myself to add to the diaries. Here are the pictures I have so far that have been put in my journal.

May 24th, after cleaning my room

May 25th, reading the Night Circus

May 26th, being a tourist in Old Town

May 27th, drinking a glass of water

May 28th, texting on my crummy phone

May 29th, after a Taco Bell run

So yeah. Nothing to do; you can see my life is quite eventful. Actually, I've done two things on my bucket list now, "eat a Doritos Locos Taco" and "sit outside on a clear moonlit night", which actually turned into "taking a midnight stroll", where I actually was found by my dad. Not fun. He wasn't mad, but it kind of ruined the whole thing.

Joe J-Joe J-Joe

 And now allow me to introduce to you the great Jolen Ryder Marcus - a.k.a. Joe!!!!!!

Movie and the Mall with My Friend Malcolm(not his real name)

I went to go see Contagion today with my friend. It's eerie, to see the collapse of civilization and to see humans go into chaos because of the paranoia. The disease was destructive. Fast and powerful. Once you got the symptoms, you died almost instantly. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, six people were dead. It was really sad to see the six year old boy die. It was really torturous to watch his mother die. My friend was being pretty obnoxious in the theater, vigorously rocking back and forth in his chair and then looking at me to see if I was distracted by it. I was, but I wouldn't let on. I didn't look at him unless he wanted to directly make a point of telling me something having to do with the film. He was also texting in the film; like I couldn't see the bright white light. Jeez.
    After the movie we went to eat at a restaurant called Johnny Rockets where I got a grilled cheese and he got a Philly Cheese Steak. He started spinning a quarter on the table and then putting his finger on it to try and have it stood up under his finger. Sometimes he got it. He let me have a quarter to spin and the first time I tried to get it stood up it actually worked. We were at the restaurant with his mom and little sister, and him and his mom were getting in some sort of playful bicker. I just kept my eyes down. Then he was sliding his chair back and forth on the tile because it slid really easily. I shared a glance with his mom, who completely understood the obnoxiousness of his actions. He was joking about sliding the chair out of the shop but then the feet of the chair got caught on a slightly upended piece of tile. He called it the Anti-Theft System, and when I managed to slide my chair around these tiles he was amazed at how I had gotten around the "system".
    We departed the restaurant and I wandered over to the piano that was playing itself. I hit a couple of keys and his little sister giggled about what I was doing. Then we wandered over to a coin donation bucket, the one where you put a coin in and it spins down into the hole. We put coins in and tried to catch them before they went down. We were cracking up so much my lungs started to hurt and it was difficult to breathe, and even with that obstacle I still laughed whenever he did. I stated "Every mistake we make, more money gets donated" and he was cracking up. His little sister faltered more in the coin-catching than we did, but I did a lot towards the end. We used up all of my change and then went to his mom for more change which we played around with and eventually donated(with him and I, it was an accident; with his sister, it was on purpose- she insisted we let coins just "go down"). It was for the Simon Youth Foundation. A sign had advertised it with the shocking statistics that "every 29 seconds, a student drops out of high school". When we went to his mom for change, his dad said "You guys donated like a million dollars" and we only laughed more.
   In his dad's truck on the way back him and his sister were fighting over some plastic snake and then he put lip gloss and what I thought to be make-up of some sort on the arm rest in the front seat. His dad said "she(me)'ll be offended that I'm putting on lip gloss; but she's a girl. She can never have too much lip gloss" and I was shaking my head "no" because I don't even wear chapstick if I don't have to, let alone lip gloss or any other type of make-up.
   He was singing along to some Usher song(his little sister was too, it was cute) and then "Wake Me Up When September Ends", which his dad joked was "such a sad song". I kind of thought it strange when he looked right at me(but those times were rare, since I was in the front passenger seat and he in the back left-hand seat and I tried not to look back unless I was really intrigued), but it happened a lot during the mall time and it didn't bother him, so I guess it doesn't bother me.

Why Is It That When Someone Smiles at Me I Don't Smile Back?!

Honestly, even if it's this guy who's way older than you who looks to have been staring at you for a while, all I do when I catch someone smiling at me, I just sort of walk by. Like adults, they smile at you all the time(well, some of them do). Kids just make weird faces at you. And babies don't know what to think. But when someone smiles at me I just get all freaked out. Sometimes I can manage more than a grimace back, but most of the time I just stare, deer-in-the-headlights like. Like this guy at Whole Foods, (Dan, we'll call him, though I know his name), he's really nice and he's so awesome I'm going to put him into one of my stories as the awesome uncle, but I turn around after we check out and he's smiling at me, and it's really kind of freaky. I was like "creeper" though I could have smiled back and made the entire situation end. But I didn't. God, I always realize these things too late.