Girls Who Are Friends

What I miss the most about being a little girl how much pure love, joy, and affection there was between me and my friends. We would hold hands, hug and kiss fiercely and not just when saying hello or goodbye, sleep in the same bed, talk for hours on the phone, play with each other's hair, and LAUGH until our stomachs hurt all without an ounce of being self-conscious about it.

I still want those things. I wonder if other women do, too. Whenever I have the urge to do any of those things with a girl friend, I'm worried they'll think I'm being needy or hitting on them. Maybe I am needy, but just for some good old-fashioned girl friend bonding.

Maybe that's why women want little girls. So we can have someone's hair to play with and hand to hold. Someone we can hug and kiss fiercely anytime our spirit moves us who will hug and kiss us back just as fiercely. Maybe I should roll up to my parents' house and ask my mom to lay her head on my lap so that I can play with her hair. She would probably think I'd just been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Book Review: Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins

I'm not sure how this book became popular (Oprah selection? Soon to be made into a motion picture?), but I'm glad it popped up on my radar. I love mysteries and suspense thrillers and it's not as easy to find ones written by female authors.*

The story is told from the viewpoints of three different, but variously connected, women. And what disasters the three of them are. I love flawed female characters. Either I can relate or they make me feel better about myself or give me insight into a type of life I wouldn't have otherwise given thought. I think it makes me softer and more forgiving. Here, there's the drunk, purposeless, cheated on, barren divorcee (Rachel), the former mistress turned stay-at-home mom (Anna), and the one who Rachel watches from the train and is neighbors with Anna. 

Bar Books

Books I’m Reading While Studying for the Bar 

I’ve always been a voracious reader. It was an escape from my scary household when I was a kid. I loved character driven fiction and read a novel a week starting in late elementary school. I loved disappearing into the worlds fiction created in my mind.

But then law school sort of broke my imagination. The time before law school (BLS), I did my best to read books that wouldn’t be turned into movies or, if they were, before they became movies. I would never even see the movies. I read plenty of books that hid in dark corners of libraries and would never be turned into anything other than dust collectors. Bur during law school I don’t think I even read in bed before lights out during the semester. However, once the first set of finals came around, I was frozen with panic and I turned to my old friends – books. Oddly, I found that I could only read books that had been turned into movies that I had seen. My study schedule for finals: study for 30 minutes, read made-into-a-movie fiction for 30 minutes, nap for 30 minutes and repeat, while nursing a single sugar-free Red Bull for 18 hour periods.

I am now studying for the bar exam 7 years after graduation. I’ve already passed one, but had an urge to take the one in the state where I now live. Every few years I like to throw my life into upheaval and I think taking the bar is a manifestation of that. I have no reason to take this bar and no need to pass. I have a job that pays well. *knock on wood* I have no hopes of practicing at a firm or really elsewhere. I can’t imagine a scenario where it would make me more money than I already make. But at least it’s productive upheaval. It’s requiring me to focus and concentrate and I’m learning really just for the sake of learning.  If I pass, it’ll be the greatest accomplishment of my life so far. If I fail, it will be so devastating that it might just break my upheaval/self-sabotage habit.

Studying now, I find myself back needing to read to calm my stress. I don’t follow my 30-30-30 cycle or having to read books that have been turned into movies anymore, but I do read before bed and when I wake. (Reading in bed in the morning is my favorite time/way to read, but it’s the most time-consuming and tends to send me into anxiety-dom because I “waste” time reading when I should be doing something else.)

Books I’ve read/re-read since I started studying for the bar a month ago:

Beauty Break I

I'd like to take a timeout to post a little something about my new skin care routine that has done wonders. This post is not sponsored by anyone or anything and I purchased all items with my own money. I decided to write it as I'm 35 and was carded at dinner the other night and I think it's because of my new skin are routine. I haven't been carded in about 5 years.

I had beautiful, downright poreless skin until I was 18. Then some terribly upsetting things happened in my life and my body reacted poorly and has never really recovered. I spent the next 10 years trying to get my horrible cystic acne under control. I took pills that turned my skin blue. Had to use 15 products every morning and every night that made the skin on my hand peel off in sheets. Took birth control that made everything worse. Finally, the acne settled down by about 90% once I stopped trying to control it, but by then my skin was a wasteland - scars, huge, clogged pores, sebaceous filaments/milia. My skin was oily up until the last year or so. Then it was all of the wasteland things and dry. It's like my pores are clogged with sand.