It's that time!

Here are my addresses for my mission:

MTC Address--

Sister Tanya Milburn
Canada Edmonton Mission
Provo Missionary Training Center
2005 N. 900 E.
Provo, UT 84604

AFTER NOVEMBER 16th:

Sister Tanya Milburn
Canada Edmonton Mission
8925 51st Ave Ste 305
Edmonton, AB T6E 5J3
Canada

I can only email my family, but if you want that letter to be forwarded to you, you can get a hold of my mom. If you don't know my mom or know her well enough, never fret! I will send her updates to post on this blog, so the benevolent stalkers can still know what I'm up to because you know it gets crazy in Canada!

My address might change when I'm in Canada, but if it does it will be posted. Just look for the "address" label on the right side and it will show you the most recent one.

Lastly, If you want to send me YOUR address via facebook or email (tanyamilburn@hotmail.com), I will keep it with me, and at some point write you a letter.

If you write me, I will most definitely write you a letter back! I guarantee it. (Is anyone else thinking of those old Burlington Coat Factory ads?)

Anyway, I love you all! Thanks for being my friends!

we didn't start the fire

I have seen this quote come up a fair few times on blogs, tumblrs, or pinterest (<--new love, by the way.) But you know what I say to this?

NO. Just NO.

How about: Look like a woman; Act like a woman; Think like a woman; Work like a woman--in whatever way that means to you.

Or even better and more universal: Look like yourself; Act like yourself; Think for yourself; Work with your whole self.

I think the part that irked me the most was the "Think like a man" line.

Think like a man.

What does that even mean? What does that even mean?!

My sexism detector is going off like crazy. All jokes aside though, reading this "mantra" is very troubling to me because quite frankly, this quote, behind its delicate salmon font, is internalized misogyny.

["Oh here we go, Tanya is getting all uppity..."]--I know some of you are thinking this.

It is not better to think like a man (if you are not a man). It is also not better to think like a woman (if you are not a woman). I think it is best to think like an individual.

I started to delve into my views on feminism, patriarchy, gender, etc., but I'll save it for another blog post because it could take...awhile.

Simply put, I think men and women do think differently because their brains are different. In development, the brain goes through masculinization or feminization based on the sex and the hormones to which it is exposed. (There are many disorders where this process can be disturbed, but this is what typically happens.)

Anyway, there is no right or superior way to think, contrary to what this quotation was implying. My thoughts and ideas are just as valid as a woman--and more so because I'm a person.

And I still don't know what it means to think like a man--because I'm not a man; I'll never be a man, so how can that even be a goal? Is it because they're stereotyped to be more logical? I beg to differ; anyone can use logic. Is it because they are stereotyped to be less emotional? I think emotions are the most human thing we possess. So someone please explain what it means!

I honestly don't get it.

I am capable of creativity, genius, humor, and brilliance all on my own, thanks.

And for all of the eye-rollers, I leave you with this:

"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that distinguish me from a doormat."--Rebecca West

a middle class problem

My parents have three cars. We currently have three people living at home. Easy math; everyone is satisfied.

But...

One of our cars broke down a couple days ago, and my dad has been unsuccessful at fixing it himself. (A for effort though...) This means we only have two cars between three people. Not so easy math.

Now we have to compromise and coordinate. Ugh.

confession time

I can internet for a long time.

Not. Good.

I blame the fact that I'm trapped at home without a car. Save me!

boots

I finally found a pair of boots to wear on my mission.

The challenge was sifting through all the pairs with heels. Does anyone believe in cute, flat shoes anymore?? I seriously hate boots with heels.

If you're most likely going to wear a certain shoe for cold weather, that means there will probably be ice at some point. And the last thing you want on your shoe is a heel at that point.

So I don't get it.

orgullo

I'm getting pretty fancy fancy with this blog thing--by Tanya standards of course.

changing it up

Don't worry! You're in the right place! I just changed my blog design because I couldn't stand the tacky book background anymore.

Now everything is clean and simple.

I'm still blog-tarded though.

AND I want you all to know that I spent hours last night going through over 300 blog posts just to add labels to them (at the bottom). That way you, or probably just I, can look up blog posts according to a subject. I realized that most of my posts with the label "being vague" almost always had the label "dating" as well. I guess that kind of takes the vagueness out of it, but oh well. You know that you are successful at being vague when you, as the author, can't even remember what the post was about. That happened a couple times...

you heard it here first

I have a lot of time to dream up random things.

My latest: I want to do stand-up comedy (like, once--not as a life career.)

When I'm home by myself, I find myself turning everything into a joke. And then I imagine how I would tell it in front of an audience. I may or may not have even practiced in front of a mirror. (Gosh, I need to get out of here....)

Anyway, maybe when I'm a grad student, I'll try out for my school's stand up comedy troupe or entertain a church party.

Note to self: This could all go horrible awry...and leave me crying in shame. But I could check it off the bucket list!

Another pet peeve

I also hate when people misuse the word "ironic." Don't think Alanis Morissette is the only one...

Han(d) Solo

(I know you can probably derive some inappropriate joke from that title, but let's take a leap out of the gutter, shall we?)

The other night I did my first face painting gig by myself. All summer I would do balloons or paint with the clowns I work with, and eventually I was just with another assistant/partner in crime. However, this time I was 100% on my own, which made me kind of nervous because here's the thing:

I'm the girl who in fourth grade tried to draw a horse, and my own mother couldn't decipher what it was. I'm the girl who could only draw a picture if I did that thing where you draw a grid on it and then replicate the picture square for square. I'm the girl who chose to write the paper over the "artistic" option for school projects. Basically, I've never been artistic, but I've been working really hard this summer to change that.

And I do alright now--with face paint, that is.

So anyway, I went to my first birthday party for this Vietnamese girl. (Seriously, Asians have the cutest kids.) The minute I knew it was an Asian party, I knew it was going to be an Asian party. Here's the thing about Asians, they always seem to know all the other Asians in the area. For example, this whole party was Vietnamese. And they all spoke Vietnamese to each other. Guess who doesn't speak Vietnamese? Me. Guess who felt like an extreme outsider*? Me. I think I was just worried that they were talking about my face painting skills.

Everything went okay, and I think most of the kids were happy (except the girl for whom I drew a panda. That was just bad. How am I supposed to remember what they look like?? It's not like I'm Asian!**) I was about to leave when the mom insisted that I have cake. Then she insisted that I eat the extremely authentic food they prepared. I actually ate pork for the first time in over five years because I was so afraid of offending them. (I'm sorry vegetarian gods!) I even had this soup that I had to slurp really loud to show my approval.

Needless to say, I was there for an extra hour and a half just eating Vietnamese food and trying to make conversation. They had fun saying Vietnamese things to me and laughing because I didn't understand. Smile and nod; smile and nod; smile and nod...

It was a noche muy cultured.

*I'm not implying that they didn't have the right to be speaking their own language. I'm not one of those "This is Amurica!" kind of Americans. Rather, I desperately wished I could communicate with them in their language. Rosetta Stone? Don't mind if I do!

**That was pseudo-racism, I swear. (It's hard when you don't know who is reading this.)

tarde

Sometimes I want to communicate everything.

But I wonder:

Is it sometimes too late? Even if you have a million things you can say, should you say them? Maybe all your dwelling with only come out as desperation?

Are some things better left unsaid?

jungle gym

I have been going to the gym pretty frequently since I moved home and got a membership. You'd think that I would be in really great shape by now, but you'd be wrong. I'm only in great shape on the inside. You see:

Four years of cheap, lame college food x the unlimited options of Mom's grocery shopping=

I'm going to eat whatever the hell I want.

So that's how that goes. I exercise enough to keep the obesity at bay. I'll be in Canada soon, so I'll need the extra heat storage. And after that, I'll be an even poorer grad student with cheap, lame food again, so I'll enjoy this while it lasts.

So the gym...(I like how I can never stay on topic.)

It has a fair amount of diversity, but I have a certain list of:

People I Don't Trust at the Gym

Girls that wear make-up

Girls that wear their hair down

Girls that have the majority of their breasts hanging out of their sports bras. (Isn't that what sports bras are for? To lock those things down and out of sight??)

The die-hard elliptical users

The die-hard steppers

Men who grunt

Men who only work out in front of a mirror

The hot yoga snobs

This means that there are really only a few cool people at the gym. I'm one of them, of course.

self-reflection

I'm a weird person. I do a lot of weird things. I have a strange sense of humor. And I laugh at my own jokes--sometimes by myself. (But I quickly shut that down because funny people don't laugh at their own jokes. I blogged about that here. And I want to be a funny person.)

Can you work on being funny? Or is it just inherent? I feel like you can work on any other quality like patience, kindness, assertiveness, etc. I don't know about funny though. Maybe you have it or you don't. I just don't want to be a 40 year-old spinsty, and all people can say about me is, "I don't know why she's alone. She's so...nice." Bleh. I feel like "nice" is the last resort quality when people can't think of anything else to describe you. I'd rather be funny.

Funny is actually a funny word if you keep saying it to yourself.

One time a guy was talking about a girl he was trying to date, and he said she was "too independent." (Ugh, this isn't the 1950's...) He also had a problem with the fact that she was funnier than he was, so he couldn't impress her with his (non)-humor.

He was lame, but it made me think. Do boys not like girls to be too funny?!?

Anyway, like I've said a million times before, I'm really weird. I hang out a lot by myself these days, so I have a lot of time to be really weird. (i.e. singing in random voices, impersonating singers, spontaneous interpretive dancing to a song, talking to myself, laughing to myself, then trying to make my laugh more feminine sounding, making weird faces in the mirror, modeling in front of the mirror, etc.) That's just by-myself-weirdness/narcissism. I have around-people-weirdness too, but it's a little more mild.

Sometimes I'll be doing a weird thing, and I'll think to myself, "Wow, would you ever do this in front of another human being?"

And I hope one day that I can. I hope one day someone will like that I'm weird. Actually, I hope he will love that I'm weird. I'm still waiting on that though.