What We Can Learn from Twilight

What, you say? Impossible! Nothing can possibly be learned from the Twilight books.

Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, I believe something can.

It all begins with glittering vampires.

This often ridiculed attribute of Meyer's take on the vampire does, in fact, go along with her own rules. If vampires are basically enhanced humans, then so too is their skin enhanced.

It's an intersting fact that human skin, when healthy, also reflects light. When you are tired, or malnourished, or just dry, it doesn't.

Dead skin cells, even when moisturized, must be sloughed off to make room for healthy cells that properly reflect light. Since the vamps in the four-book series are always technically healthy, they always have skin that reflects sunlight.

So what can we learn from Twilight, folks?

Exfoliate. Always make sure to exfoliate. It does a skin cell good.

The Weird Left Zombie Leg

I'm not near as flexible as I'd like to be. One arm carries some sort of damage from an injury that I got about seven years ago. Both legs act like rebellious teenagers. The right one sticks to the rules and doesn't ever go out of its way to stretch unnaturally. The left one, which also has a fussy knee joint, breaks all the rules. I can even stick my left big toe in my mouth, if I wanted to. I don't though. Can never equals, should, does, or want to.

That's the one I have shoved up against my desk right now, my Doc Marten boot hovering above my knee and close to my right hip while my left knee is actually above the keyboard. It's a weird situation. I tried actually putting both heels against my desk, but a rolling chair kinda makes that hard. I'm actually sitting basically with my left leg in my lap. My weird zombie left leg, just sitting here, not looking or feeling like it's even attached.

Can you tell I'm having an ADD type of morning? 

Rare Sunday Post!

So yeah, it's Sunday. I don't often have time on the weekends to post, usually because I end up chillin' in our living room, looking in the general direction of the television and snarking about whatever the heck I feel like. But I feel a little inspired. I think.

And really, I'm thinking it to myself "Okay, Amanda, it's Sunday. You're not working today. You've got a novel to finish, maybe some other posts to do ahead of time because of your weird work schedule and superhero-compromised attention span. How about some productive stuff, okay?"

And I'm all "NO I MUST BE AWESOME TODAY."

Really, I don't know where it comes from. My body works backwards or something. Friday night, I got 8 hours of sleep. I usually average about 6-7, and function. Heck, I functioned through most of college on 5 hours of sleep a night. But 8 hours should make me feel like...okay, I'm out of analogies since I don't know many un-stupid female Marvel characters and most DC characters bother me. Bottom line is, I should feel ready to run a freaking marathon, but all I felt Saturday was sorta tired. Like "oh, that 8 hours...that was nice. Let's do that again." If I get a normal amount of sleep, I have this weird hangoverish feeling (and I don't drink, so...yeah) and I just end up sleeping more. So basically I've wired my body to actually run better on less sleep.

Case in point. I had to open last weekend. I work at a museum, and my only full days are Fridays and every other Saturday. I have to leave my house about 8:20 to get downtown. I usually get up at 7:15 to give myself enough time. So last Thursday night, I was winding down, about to prepare for bed, when my brother, innocently enough, said "Let's watch Ironman 2."

I had not seen this movie yet, and I wanted to, but I had to get up early. So my brain took half a second to be all "Eh, I better no-YES WE WILL WATCH IRONMAN 2."

I rolled into bed at 2 AM and got up at 7 ish.

Now most people would feel sorta gross and just not good after 5 hours of sleep. Me? All I could think of was seeing how high in the air I would be if I stood on the lobby desk at work to clean off the mysterious smudge 12 feet up. Actually, the smudge was a bonus, I just wanted to feel really tall. Then the thought entered my brain that "I wonder what would happen if I jumped off the counter onto the floor." This continued for quite some time.*

Last night, I got to bed sometime after three and got up at like 9:35 to get ready for church. I don't want a nap. I want to be awesome. I should be writing away, but I am far too ADD to not want to be doing something like knitting upside down above lava. And this is how I normally am, mentally anyway, because most nights I go on Cracked.com and get into the "open seven tabs at once" trap.

When I'm in a really really really really really really really good mood, and I'm feeling all "OMG I WOULD BE AMAZING CREW MEMBER ON A SPACE FREIGHTER" then I don't get much done. Seriously, when I'm feeling that awesome, I have weird daydreams. The apocalypse version of me is an engineer that fixes stuff UPSIDE DOWN and saves the day.

And then I usually end up tripping up the stairs.




*Pesky customers never let me get time to do it. Dang.