If I could fly, I wouldn't.

The 30-Blog Challenge continues! This is a test of endurance, not speed...

Day 10: Something you're afraid of.
(or, "Something of which you are afraid...")
Clearly it is not alienating my few readers with unnecessary grammatical corrections.

I am afraid of falling. Many people describe this as a fear of heights, but I do not fear heights. As you already know, I have been at least 7,500 feet above sea level (the top of the Grand Canyon), and it was really not frightening at all. I have been all over the mountains of West Virginia and was not scared at any point because of my high elevation.

BOO!

No, what I fear is falling from said heights. There was one point during the Grand Canyon visit where we were taking a picture right on the edge of the rim, and I really just couldn't take standing that close to certain death-by-smashing-into-rocks. I ended up in a sort of posed half-kneel like they make you do in softball team photos. It made me feel safer...

I have tried overcoming this fear, especially because it is currently prohibiting me from riding awesome water slides and I am tired of missing out. I've made it 2/3 up the stairs in a very slow-moving line to go down a giant slide at the nearest water park, and I turned around and walked back down. I did the theme park walk of shame past over a hundred people on a cramped staircase, and I did not care because I knew that if I finished that climb, only death awaited me. I have also chickened out from rappelling 10 stinking feet because I couldn't trust the rope and harness to hold me.

But! I have made progress. I can now climb a rock wall without panicking, and then rappel back down with ease (I think the starting on the ground and not going unreasonably high helps a lot). I have always been okay with riding airplanes, and I am going to conquer my fear of falling off of a water slide platform this summer. Pray for me there, because I'm still partially convinced that this might be the death of me.

Jayne & Michelle: BFF!!!

Day [9]: A favorite picture of your best friend.

 

A wonderful day in the life of me and my best buddy, Adam Baldwin.

So this is me and my best friend Adam Baldwin. We've been best buds for basically forever. Since, like, high school. In fact, he got his role on Chuck basically because of me. Because of my awesome connections with NBC. If you're really nice to me, I may get you on a TV show, too.

I really love this photo because I think it really epitomizes my relationship with Adam. We're just so chill together; he's one of those friends around whom I can really be myself. This is also a great photo because it's so unique to just us. That's our secret handshake. No one else ever shakes hands with me or Adam that way. We invented it. In fact, I think that we invented that handshake completely. I don't think it was ever done by anyone ever before we did it.

I also love our expressions in this photo. Adam's just says, "I am so glad to be here with my best friend at her super awesome gigantic house party that I helped plan and made a seven-layer dip for. She is just the best person ever." And my face is like, "Yeah, my party is really awesome, and my best buddy Adam being here just makes it even more awesome."

It's pretty hard being best friends with an awesome television star because he's always out of town and working and stuff, but we make it work.*

...

Okay anyway, here is the picture that actually came to mind when I read this blog's topic:

 Costumes fom left to right: Arkham City Harley Quinn, Skyrim warrior, David Tennant Doctor, the TARDIS, Archer, Brock Samson, Steampunk pimp, Steampunk man, Roy Lichtenstein painting, Katniss Everdeen, and The Amazing Owl Wizard. Costumes not pictured: Photographer

I chose this photo because I don't have any one best friend. Not all of my best friends are included here, but this is quite a few of them. This was at Wizard World Comic-Con in New Orleans. I love this photo because it has so many of my friends in it, and it really showcases what a bunch of nerds we are (which I really, really love about us).

Another reason this is a favorite photo of mine is because that was a really excellent day. It was incredibly fun to get dressed up together and meet Adam Baldwin and see Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno and the Walking Dead kids and the Boondock Saints (from a distance) and so many more awesome nerdy icons. My favourite part, after meeting Adam Baldwin, was the Artist's Alley. I got some really lovely prints (links to the artist's sites coming soon) and some sketches, and I was so excited! I also got rather sick to my stomach from eating convention center food... Oh well!

*If you believed any of that, I am amazed.

Aliens landed!

Day 8: A place you’ve traveled to and where else you want to travel.

When I was in Jr. High, my sister got to go to Europe. Stinkin' awesome. And, I think, because my sister (and my mother) got to go to stinkin' Europe, my awesome aunt & uncle invited me to go with them and my cousins to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. It was definitely awesome. We went to Meteor Crater (where aliens probably landed, according to the gift shop), M&M's World, the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, some tourist traps along Historic Route 66, stayed in the Luxor Hotel, and, of course, went to the Grand Canyon.

Highlights: Inside the Luxor you can see how the walls slope in to the peak at the top of the pyramid. It's a little bit dizzying and off-putting, but the elevators have to go kind of sideways, which is cool. My cousins and I went swimming in a pool with columns that had big fountains at the top of them, pouring into the pool.

This looks a little dumb in retrospect.

The height made the water falling kind of painful, but no so much that it was impossible to swim with. We would hop back and forth between the pool and the hot tub, certainly guaranteeing a future illness.

In M&Ms World, I bought 2 pounds of M&Ms. I got black, white, grey, and neon blue M&Ms. We went to the Petrified Forest the next day in a rental car with okay air conditioning, at which point my giant bag of M&Ms melted into a giant, chocolate/candy-coating lump. That was an odd greyish color. Kind of like this, but worse, and in greyscale. It was highly unappetizing and I chipped off hunks of M&Ms for the next couple of months so I wouldn't waste them (gross, I know).

In the Petrified Forest, we took a lot of pictures and considered taking some petrified wood, but we didn't because it was apparently illegal or some silliness like that. You know, preservation and whatnot. Pshaw.

On Historic Route 66, two tourist traps stand out in my mind. One had some big ol' teepees that you could...go into. And stuff. I have no idea what that was about. Another had 2 giant piles of colourful, broken glass. Like big hunks of it.

Now a part of your balanced breakfast?

We bought some glass pieces...and you know what? It was a fun experience to not get cut to bits while digging in a pile of glass!

We also saw some place with rock drawings. I can't remember what or where it was...=/ I'm bad at this!

Finally, the Grand Canyon. The 2 things that stand out to me (apparently I can only remember 2 major details about any one place) were the look of it when I got there and watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. A lot of people are amazed by the scale of the Grand Canyon and stunned and such by its beauty. I thought it looked like a very pretty and realistic painting. It was very nice, and it spanned the horizon and was, you know, pretty. But the sun rising on the Grand Canyon: that was lovely! That was just breathtaking, peaceful, and lovely. It just crawled down the rocks, turning everything to shades of red and gold. I loved it.

In the future, I want to visit Europe. Like...all of Europe. I want to see Vienna and La Scala and go all over Germany and stop by Russia, as well. I'd love to visit Ireland and Wales and England and...and... Just all of the things.

I would love to see buildings older than my nation and the places where influential composers lived and worked and performed. I want to hear their songs performed now in those same places where they were performed so many years ago. I want to eat delicious food and learn new languages. It's just...it's the birthplace of Western culture and art, you know? ARGH. I want to see all of it.

Frankly, I love going to new places and I love the traveling it takes to get there.

Raindrops on Roses...

Day 7: What Makes You Happy

I consider myself a generally optimistic and happy person, so there are a LOT of things that make me happy. I love being happy! I cry faster from happiness than I do from sadness. Even being happy makes me happy. Here are some things that make me happy (in no particular order):

>When things work out the way you hoped they would.

>When things don't work out the way you hoped they would, but then you find out that God has a better plan for it all.

>My God, Jesus, and His holy presence in my life.

>My friends and family and spending time with them.

>4 AM conversations.

>Blankets.

>My dog, Penny and the way she barks and wags her tail and responds so intuitively to so many things.

>Animals in general.

>MUSIC. I love music so much! If I had the choice to breathe oxygen or breathe music, I would choose music.

>Making up dumb songs about the things I'm doing.

>Movies and theatre.

>Meeting new people.

>Teaching.

>Asking God to grant me a glimpse of the way He sees the world or the people around me, and when He lets me.

>God loves me. And God never loves me, or anyone ever created, any less for anything we ever do.

>Faith, and the fact that I have it.

>Thunderstorms.

>The sea.

>Days when it's 90 degrees and humid outside.

>Learning something new.

>Being able to understand someone else's views without having to adopt them as my own.

>Reading, and everything related to it.

>When my hair does just what I want it to, or something cooler, without any real effort.

>Being barefoot.

>Smiling and hugs.

>Seeing familiar faces.

>Perceiving the world around me.

>Making lists.

There is so much more, but I don't feel I have room in one entry to list everything that makes me happy. There's a universe out there, and a Heaven, and there's too much to list that makes me happy!