I feel like celebrating Frugal Fun Day may have been cheating because too much of what I already do is frugal fun. It's impossible to have expensive fun every day but you should have fun every day. And that I did today. 

Our frugally fun entertainment was playing Dominion with my old friends. It is one of those games that looks nerdy but is not. This presents a question: who decided which games are "cool" and which are "dorky." I am willing to stand and say that I don't think there is inherent coolness in tackling people for a ball for four hours straight. However, I think that Dungeons and Dragons is a very entertaining pastime (decided from the one time I played it) and if that makes me a nerd then, why? Am I the only one baffled by this?

Celebrating world smile day was a self-revelatory experience. 

I consider myself a pleasant person, friendly even. And according to the personality quiz I took online I am "naturally social," despite being an introvert (learn about your personality here).

However, it turns out I am not as smiley as I thought.

Today my goal was to smile at absolutely every person: people I walked past, grocery store workers, people driving by in cars, all of them. I didn't think it would be too hard. I just thought it would be a matter of choosing not to pick out a new song on my ipod as I walked past other persons. I was wrong. 

It was unnatural and near to awkward roughly 57%* of the time. Now, I'm willing to admit that at least 14% of these encounters were awkward due to the fact that I have become a social hermit because that I have been living in my parents' basement and the only time I even see a human my age is when I hang out with my engaged amigos (not even exaggerating here). Therefore, the introvert inside me has reclaimed her territory making me 78% more socially incapable. However, this 14% that's a result of my social hermitation does not account for the other 43% of awkward smiling interactions. What I have to conclude is, I don't naturally smile at people as much as I think I do. 

Which is a sad thought to me. It's sad because I genuinely (but possibly naively) think that it makes other people's day just a bit better (probably a 3% improvement). At any rate, Everyone smiled back. Some even added a "hello."  What I definitely know is that smiling at other people makes my day better. Who knew that that study that said if you smile you will feel better was actually true? Maybe it tricked me into being happy or thinking that I had more friends or to think I was confident (turns out, when I see a hot guy I usually peek at him but quickly avert my unworthy eyes from his hotness-a practice that was against the rules today). 

The moral of the story is that, I'm going to work on smiling at people more. 

Hopefully, I will eventually celebrate World Smile Day every day.

* please note that all percentages presented in this piece are estimations as I like the idea of quantifiable evidence more than I like actually quantifying evidence

As children, my sister and I would forgo the classic reenactment of "The Hills are Alive" for the less popular sitting-on-the-stairs-inching-up-while-singing "the sun has gone to bed and so must I" whenever we saw a flight of stairs. 

As adults, my sister and I do a complete two-person interpretation of any of the Les Miserables songs. For instance, a classic reproduction of "Look Down" must have a bed or couch to function as the set piece that Gavroche looks down at his "patch" and each of us has our parts memorized and access to the necessary props (I'm Eponine, she's Marius, and we take turns being Gavroche because he's our favorite).

We may or may not wish we were in a musical at all times (see here)

Today, in honor of Broadway Musicals Day, I purchased tickets to go see West Side Story this weekend! West Side Story is on my list of top five favorite musicals. I mean, it's a Sondheim-written Shakespeare-modernization with a hot dramatic medley and balleting gangsters. Each of those elements in and of itself is enough to make me crush on a play but put them together and I'm in love. And I have always wanted to see West Side Story in real life and see if the director decides to be true to the original version by doing such things as having them sing "Officer Krupke" after they witness their friend's murder (which why did anyone conceive that as an appropriate song placement in the first place?)

So this, the day I make this Broadway musical dream come true is a good day indeed!

What's your favorite Broadway musical? Comment below.

This has been a heck of a week.
I got asked to an interview and 12 hours later I was on the road rushing out of state to it, I got offered said job, and turned it down. I nannied two kids, one cat, and one dog while their mom was in Hawaii and cleaned up animal poop more times than I would like to recollect. During the day, I cleaned an apartment that was so dirty (someone actually poured or dropped soil onto the floor), and had to turn down two substituting jobs because I was just too busy. Honestly, for a university graduate living at home, all of this is a miracle. However, for a blogger celebrating holidays daily, it is a little less so. 

In other words, between spending several hours solo in a minivan mentally preparing to sell my skills to a potential employer and trying to get children to do their chores, homework, and bed on time, the celebrations were just not number one priority. 

The weekend was welcome.

In an effort to atone for my lack of daily holiday observance, I celebrated all the weeks holidays in the weekend.

First thing Saturday morning I whipped up some carrot cake pancakes with cream cheese syrup to celebrate 

National Pancake Day.

Also, I don't know what actually constitutes a "better breakfast" but to me it means "more healthy." Soooo, I counted the carrots in the pancakes as the healthy part to honor National Better Breakfast Day.

(I don't know why they're on the same day. Note to self: check what holidays are already celebrated on a given day before adding a holiday to it)

Then, whilst cleaning, I listened to some one-hit wonders on behalf of 

One-Hit Wonder Day.

From this experience I learned that they are one-hit wonders for a reason. I mean, I like nearly zero of them. But I may have the Just Dance choreography memorized for "Take Me On" and maybe I repeatedly listened to "Somebody I Used to Know" on repeat (I would not be unhappy if Gotye got ousted from the One-Hit Wonder Club).

Hug a Vegetarian Day was easily celebrated as I live with my favorite vegetarian (fun fact: she may have once gone on a date with a boy who thought that communism and vegetarianism were the same thing. This does not compute).

I also was able to celebrate Carfree Day by walking to church on a most perfectly warm autumn day. It was an excellent opportunity to ponder as I prepared to receive inspiration and make promises to God and then reflect as I returned home. 

Flannery O'Conner said, 

"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."

For that reason exactly, I haven't known what I've thought for quite some time now. I unexpectedly ran out of journal space when I was in California this summer and I'm so picky about what book I write my thoughts in that I had to order a new one off the internet which I didn't get until after I got back from New York weeks later. 

So I have been forever behind on my journaling. 

But I am incapable of moving on from something until I write about it. I can't just skip writing about something that was important to me but at the same time, you have to be in the right mindset to write about it. It's much harder to accurately describe a tragic experience when you're feeling chipper. Therefore, it can be hard to catch up. At the same time, I'm unwilling to completely let things go until I've let them go onto the page. But above all, I can't make sense of things until I've interpreted my complicated thoughts into concrete sentences. 

It's a very complicated life to live, the life of a journal addict.  

At any rate, thanks to Dear Diary Day, I managed to hunker myself down and get myself all settled straight on the journal writing front. I now will be free to discover what I think when I need it because I'm all up to date and ready to go.

Also, here's some cute pages I worked on because I am obsessed with cute journal pages.