A Great Day at BYU-Idaho.

I finally figured out what career I want to pursue.

So allow me to introduce myself. 

(I was blonde when this picture was taken.)

Brooke Taylor, future attorney at law. When I grow up, I'm going to get the bad guys sent to jail. 

After a good french class (I'm finally beginning to remember everything I had forgotten) and an incredible devotional, I broke my no-sweets resolution by getting cupcakes with Rachel. Our moms were best friends in college and we were each other's first friends. When she started school here last semester, it was the closest we'd lived to each other since we were two, so she gets to be the exception to my avoidance of refined sugar. And I just LOVE every time we get together. She's sweet and straightforward and makes me want to be a better person. (Sorry, guys, she's also taken.) 

five and twenty

My friend Nikki tagged me in a Facebook thing, saying to post 25 random things about you and tag 25 more people. I can't bring myself to do that kind of post there, so I'll do it here!

1. I've known Nikki since 5th grade. She's incredible and I'm glad we're still friends!

2. Last semester I told my parents and grandmother that I was engaged to pull a prank. My mom flipped out, my grandma just laughed (she knows me too well), and my dad was totally excited. That scared me. "Dad, I'm too young to get married!" "No you're not." "But you're supposed to the one most opposed to me getting married before I'm 25!" (Seriously, someone get that man's head checked.)

3. My most favorite guy names ever are Seth, Thomas, Sam, Andy, Dan, Scott and Dean. (Dean was recently added to the list and Sam's moved up to the "most favorite" list from the "really like that name" list--see #4.)

4. I'm addicted to Supernatural. (Thanks Chelsea!) Attractive young men fighting evil? How can I resist? I like Sam best--six feet, four inches of oh-my-goodness! And his teeth are so white and he's such a good guy! (As of the end of season 2, anyway.) But Dean (six feet, one inch of oh-my-goodness--and that jaw!)--I totally get the overprotective older brother moments. I do the same thing for my brothers...on a much less life-or-death scale, of course. They take their turns as my desktop picture.

5. I totally want to learn the dance from the Bad Romance music video.

6. I've been reading the same novel since March and I'm not done with it yet.

7. (I'm pretty sure I overuse parentheses.)

8. Helena from A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite Shakespeare character. I can relate. At one point I had her first monologue memorized. "Call you me fair? That fair again unsay, Demetrius loves your fair!" And so on.

9. I think I may be a tad more of a feminist than I'm comfortable with.

10. I'm trying really hard to come up with positive things for this.

11. My brother Dallin is my very best friend.

12. I'm going to have a hard time picking bridesmaids because most of my best friends are guys.

13. However much I deny it, I know I'm gonna get married someday.

14. I finshed writing a song on Thursday that I started when I was sixteen.

15. I have a love/hate relationship with film photography.

16. Today, my dream job is Supreme Court Justice.

17. My favorite conference are the ones that mention history between 100 AD and 1800, and the ones that talk about democracy. (Like Elder Cook's today!)

18. I would have a really hard time dating a guy with the same name as my dad or brothers. (Chris, Dallin, John, Jared, Noah. Especially Dallin.) It would be weird.

19. I love playing matchmaker.

20. My favorite part of Vogue is the perfume samples.

21. I have a soft spot for cute asian boys in skinny jeans.

22. Quelque fois je pense en francais.

23. I'm writing a memoir about my summer. I can't do more than a page at a time because it makes me cry to think about it for too long.

24. I can't believe I have family I've never met in person, or have only met once. (I'm lookin' at you, Texas Taylors!)

25. I just found out that I have a ride home for Thanksgiving!

Rainbow High

I made my family watch Evita with me last night. There were awesome songs that weren't on the soundtrack my family's had since the movie first came out...so I did some research on iTunes and found the COMPLETE soundtrack. Right down to people yelling in the movie theater at the beginning. When there's almost no spoken dialogue in a movie, you might as well put the whole thing on the soundtrack, right? Right. Madonna was a great casting choice.

So besides the incredible music, I love Evita because Eva Perón was a fascinating person. She's not an ordinary Cinderella story at all. You can't put her into just one category. In Evita, her husband Juan is given the line "she is a diamond."  She was more than just an actress, a philanthropist, a politician, a woman of questionable chastity. She's certainly not the saint Argentina believed her to be. She was tough as diamonds, but not as durable. I agree with her own description of herself: "I am a rainbow." She was colorful, larger than life, not what she seemed, and fleeting. (She only lived to be 33.) I'm going to do a little more research to find out more about who she really was. I told a friend a condensed version of my quest: I'm trying to figure out whether she was a dumb gold digger who was brainwashed into being her husband's puppet or a brilliant gold digger who knew exactly how to get into power.

By You, I Mean Me.

 

image via 

 

Have you ever had one of those days that drugs you up, knocks you down, and sticks big needles in your arm? You know, those days when your hair won't do anything and staying awake is a struggle and your plans all fall apart?

(Okay, I went out of my way for the needle, but the fact that I'm still bleeding seven hours later is a sign that the world needs better phlebotomists. I volunteer myself.)

But the thing to do about those days is to:

1. Belt out any old 80s song that comes to mind (Livin' On a Prayer, Alone, and Love is a Battlefield all work very well). 

2. Call your best friends in California because it's the next best thing to a real hug from some people you're incredibly lucky to have the privilege of knowing.

3. Go on an adventure with your roommates because you're out of shampoo and your roots are starting to show. You might not be able to find the right brand of hair dye, but that pot of daffodils is even better. They're a celebration of Spring!

4. Read a TON. Read scriptures, read good novels, read the textbook assignment for class tomorrow. 

5. Try something new, crazy, and potentially harmful. You might discover that your computer screen can double as a dry erase board.

Because you know what? Just because things aren't going your way today doesn't mean that this is gonna be forever. Crap like this may have happened before and it might happen again, but you can totally handle it without becoming a madwoman. Maybe you can even handle it with a little maturity and grace.  It's all for the best. And just think--it could be worse! What if you had the ability to feel awkward? Adding awkward to all the other weird going on would have been far too overwhelming. So maybe today wasn't so bad. It was just flippin' weird. But that's okay because you're kind of flippin' weird too.