7 Things .... Also Day 1/30 Days of Truth

So, Sara from Sara Swears Alot tagged me in this 7 things challenge. Here is my vlog.




Day One: Something you hate about yourself.

Just one thing? I don't think I could narrow it down, I hate alot of things about myself. Since I have to choose ONE thing, I will have to say that I hate that I'm a procrastinator. I should major in procrastination because I'm so good at it. It's not even that I'm not focused, or disinterested. I just don't do things when I should. Probably just bad timing. Assignments, bill payments, applications, balancing the checkbook: these are all victim to my procrastination. And trust me, I've tried to be better. It just doesn't happen.

Thirty Days of Truth (1) Something you hate about yourself. (2)Something you love about yourself. (3) Something you have to forgive yourself for. (4) Something you have to forgive someone for. (5) Something you hope to do in your life. (6) Something you hope you never have to do. (7) Someone who has made your life worth living for. (8) Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit. (9) Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted. (10) Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know. (11) Something people seem to compliment you the most on. (12) Something you never get compliments on. (13) A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.) (14) A hero that has let you down. (letter) (15) Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it. (16) Someone or something you definitely could live without. (17) A book you’ve read that changed your views on something. (18) Your views on gay marriage. (19) What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics? (20)views on drugs and alcohol. (21) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do? (22) Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life. (23) Something you wish you had done in your life. (24) Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter) (25) The reason you believe you’re still alive today. (26) Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why? (27) What’s the best thing going for you right now? (28) What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do? (29) Something you hope to change about yourself. And why. (30) A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself .

Unsuitable For Children (Pt 3)

The following is both a blessing and a curse. I think it's a blessing that even though I'm smaller than most people, and a girl, I can drink almost anybody under the table. My liver doesn't feel the same way. But who really cares about that guy? (Okay, secretly, I do). 

3) I drink too much. 

My dad just got back from a trip to Mexico about a week ago. Being a good daughter, I went to visit him after school on Monday. While I was there, he showed me home videos of our cousins drinking excessively, and it was finally proven to me that the "Alferez Gene" exists. 

The Alferez Gene, is what my mom, friends, brother and I all attribute for the heavy drinking on my dad's side of the family. It is the explanation of why someone who is 5'1, 130 lbs can drink an entire bottle of tequila by themselves and still not be drunk. But it only works if they're an Alferez. If you're not, and you attempt this, I may visit you in the hospital. Do you like flowers and/or balloons? 

Anyway, I was watching these relatives just downing beer after beer. My dad said that they were all out of beer, so he went to buy more. Sadly, they only had 40's (40 ounce bottles). No problemo! Dad said he bought 500 pesos (about $50) worth of 40's. 

This got me thinking of the first time I legally bought alcohol. I had been 21 for about 4 days. One of my best friend's, Mariel, and I share the same birthday weekend (my birthday is March 27th, hers is the 28th). We decided we'd throw a party for our birthdays when we all returned from spring break. We had a theme, a location, Facebook invite, decorations. Everything except the booze. I took the opportunity to take my first trip to Woodman's (a grocery store with their own liquor store. Commonly in Northern IL and WI). My other friend, Claire, and I went in got a shopping cart and started filling it up. Claire filled up the seat part of the cart, I filled up the rest. My tab was about $200. I had bought everything. Gin, tequila, vodka, rum, mixers, cups, blackberry schnapps. You name it, it was in the cart. About 50% of the booze was used for later parties during that trimester. Not to mention, at the end of the year, I still came home with alot of booze even after giving it away to underagers. 

I went to a school with a bar on campus. Once I turned 21, I was there half of the time I was awake. Luckily, there were no kids there. Most of the bar tenders already knew what I liked to drink. I'd give them $20 tips for knowing me so well. 

Downtown Appleton is an alcoholics' heaven. Every other establishment is a bar. Dear God, why am I an Alferez?! Needless to say, our Friday nights began at happy hour in the Viking Room (campus bar), continued down College Avenue, and ended Sunday morning with a horrible hangover. 

I'm trying to decided which drinking story is worse, and by worse I mean best. The first time I got drunk in college, my 22nd birthday party, or the day one of my sorority sisters visited Claire and I in Chicago. They all end in puke. Want to hear all three? Yeah, I know you do. 

The first time I got drunk in college was when my dorm neighbor threw a party. I don't know how, or why I let myself drink THAT much. We were all next door pre-partying for a frat party ... dancing and just having a good time. I remember drinking alot, and downing everything I was given. Then I started drinking whatever my friends were leaving in their cups. The inevitable happened. I had to go "break the seal". I just needed to go bad... I didn't care if I had to pee every 3 seconds. My bladder just couldn't hold it any longer. The bathroom was two doors down. Lily didn't make it. I puked right in front of the lounge.  I still walked to the bathroom to empty my bladder. Then our RA found out that I had puked (the evidence was on my shirt), and she sent me to bed. That night sucked. Well not really. I escaped from my room, went somewhere else with my teddy bear, and I think this was the night I met one of my future sorority sisters while she was a prospective student. 

My 22nd birthday was ha-ha funny. $30 got us an open bar at some club in downtown Chicago. My friend from high school also worked promoting the club's events so as a gift he got me and my guests bottle service for the night. Uh, bad idea. First off, before clubbing, I went out to dinner with some friends, and I had a few drink there. By the time I got to said club, I was already tipsy. I had a couple of drinks with my two early bird friends. My friend Diana came, and she brought like 10 of her friends. When they got there, I started drinking more. Then we started taking shots. It was bad. I got tired of dancing so I started drinking from the bottle I had gotten as a gift. I drank about 75% of a full size Grey Goose bottle. All. By. Myself. It was about 1 am, and I went back to the dance floor. 

Now this is what my friend Sierra told me, so I'm not even sure it actually happened this way. I was supposedly dancing with some sketchy looking guy, and she could see the look of disgust in my face. She came up to me to save me from this guy. So this guy told her he wanted to take me out, and my friend said NO. She pulled me away from him, and they started arguing... while they were arguing, I ran to the nearest trash can and puked. It was time to go home. I woke up the next day on the couch, I couldn't even move, talk, open my eyes so I called off of work.  

That wasn't as bad as the day Claire and I went to meet our friend Amanda who was visiting with her friend Katie. So, Amanda's friend Katie is from Chicago also. Claire, Amanda, Katie and I all went to the same school. It was Katie's birthday so she was in town visiting her family. We met at one of her favorite spots because Friday night is $5 Long Island Ice Tea pitchers. Another of Katie's friends joined us there. We were all talking, joking and drinking, having an all around good time. After about the 3rd pitcher, I said "Katie what is your favorite shot, because I'm buying because it's your birthday!" she answered, "anything". I voted tequila. I bought 5 shots of tequila, and in honor of Katie's birthday, we downed them. Without lime. Without salt. Without a chaser. Then we decided to get another pitcher. According to Claire, the decision was unanimous that we had to have a 5th pitcher so we could say that we each drank one. Bad idea. 

On our way home, Claire and I had trouble walking. Which, I mean, I have trouble walking while sober, so imagine drunk. We walked back to the L which was closed for the night. Our last option was to take a cab. I was so drunk (read: hot) that I was stripping in the backseat of the cab. Apparently also moaning and looking like I was going to die. Claire was a little less drunk and said that the cabbie kept asking "Is she going to be sick?" while I answered "If I'm going to puke, I'll tell you!". I did puke. But not in the cab (yay saving myself a $2.50 fee). After the cabbie left us a block from Claire's apartment, i puked in the sewer... then on my shoes, then on her steps. I spent the night at Claire's. I ended up going home early the next morning because I had to be at work later that night. Well, that didn't happened. About half way home, I started feeling like I was going to throw up again. I knew I had to. I was going to get off a few stops before my stop so I could puke in a trash can, but the feeling passed and it turned out I only had to burp. 

I saw myself in each of those relatives. Not only because we look alike (another perk of being an Alferez), but because being half their age, I drink as much as them just for funsies. I don't even drink at family functions ... but if I did I would be like every single person in those videos. Oh the Alferez Gene... what other shenanigans will you let  me partake in? Probably not more drinking ones.

Religion (Don't worry, I'm not trying to convert you to anything)

Here's a little assignment we had for my philosophy class. It was pretty interesting to dig deep down and talk about religion for about 4 pages. 

 ___________________

My family moved to the United States in the 1970’s from Mexico. My grandmother wanted us (her grandchildren) to be raised just as my father and his siblings were raised. They were raised Catholic, so there was no choice for my siblings and my cousins. We were raised extremely Catholic. We went to church every Sunday and on Holy Days of Obligation. We prayed before every meal and before going to sleep. I even attended Catholic school through high school. I spent 18 years of my life this way. I never really questioned my beliefs until I started going to college. 

I started my college career at a liberal arts school in Wisconsin. It was in a small little town that had a church/or place of worship for every bar in the area. When I was a freshman, I would still go to church every Sunday morning like I did back home. Except when the temperature was 30 below; then there was no way I was leaving my dorm room. Some of my friends who lived in my dorm would also go with me on occasion. After mass, I would call my grandmother and we would talk about what I had learned. This was something we had done since I was very young. I even went as far as being involved in the parish and had a “Prayer Buddy” - usually someone who lived in town, they served as your spiritual mentor and they would invite you over to their house for a dinner and they would make you a care package for finals week. It was either one of two things that made me part ways with my Catholic life. It was either declaring my major as Geology, or going to Easter mass my freshman year extremely hung over. 

The official story, meaning, what I told my parents, was that my Geology classes had opened up a can of worms and were conflicting with my beliefs. Although I had really strong beliefs, they just didn’t make sense with what I was learning, and decided that it wasn’t something I wanted to continue associating with. What I think really happened, was that I got so drunk on Holy Saturday and God got upset over this. He made me wake up late for church the next morning, and reserved me a seat right in front of the organ pipes and had no real concern that I had a massive hang over. This was something that I would never be able to forget or forgive God for, therefore parting ways with him. The 19 year old me would never admit this to her parents, much less her grandmother.

To say that the Easter Sunday mass fiasco was what made me lose interest in Catholicism, although comical, would be a lie. The truth is, I always had a problem with some of the beliefs that the Catholic church has and with they way that they handle scandals. Though my family has always been Catholic, they have also been very liberal. Many people in my family never married through the Church and some have even divorced. Two things that many Catholics would not be too happy with. My personal beliefs never matched up with Catholic teachings. 

My senior year in high school, we took an ethics class where we were taught about “controversial topics”. One week, our topic was abortions. I think I was one of the three people who were pro-choice in a room of 85 people. When we admitted this, we got looks of disgust from our classmates and we were not even allowed to explain ourselves or explain why we were pro-choice. Another week, we discussed homosexuality. Though this was more accepted within our class, I decided not to speak up and say that my aunt was gay, for fear that my comment would be taken as offensively as my pro-choice one. Then there were other things like “sex = procreation” and “sex = babies so don’t use a condom”. Things I think are ridiculous. 

Then there were the other things like all the accusations of child molestation, that I just couldn’t bring myself to go to church and pretend like the things that were going on in this organization were okay. I began to have a love/hate relationship with religion. I slowly started letting go of beliefs and habits I had. I stopped praying before meals (plus this was something that was really weird to do in the dining halls), stopped praying before bed, etc. I did not even feel guilty that I was not doing what I had been doing for my entire life. I felt liberated. I felt that I could believe what ever I wanted now. I decided to be an atheist. 

This decision made me feel empty inside. I felt that things were not going as I planned in life. A part of me believed that may be there was a God and this God was not happy that I decided to oust him out of my life (or maybe she was mad that I kept referring to her as a HE). There were days that I just thought about the possibility of a God, and the possibility that this was it. No God, just people who invented a being to feel better about where they would end up when they died. It was just a teeter-totter of emotions and beliefs. I knew that there was no possible way that this was it. Even if it isn’t God at the top of the totem pole, there has to be something. I came to the conclusion that I was an agnostic. 

Ever since I became agnostic, nothing really has persuaded me to be religious again. I like the idea of wondering what else is out there. It also makes me feel better knowing that I do not have to follow rules of a certain organization and that I don’t have restrictions on my life. Even still, I feel a connection to my former Catholic self. When I get married, I know I will get married through the Church, because that is what my family would want. I can settle for that if they are willing to provide an open bar at the reception.   As well as if I have children, I will probably baptize them as Catholics, as my brother likes to say, “just in case” Catholicism was the “right way”.  

I would like to say that the philosophers we have read in this class have changed my views on God. The truth is, they have not really done anything to change my mind on the subject. Though I do think that they make good arguments towards the existence of God, they still did not manage to convince me that they are correct. I feel that if anything, they philosophers we have discussed in class have made me feel more spiritual. Recently, I read a statistic that our generation is the most spiritual generation. I do not know if it’s entirely true, but I can see how there is some truth behind it.