I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away. I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is…

I’ve finally done something cool.

For once in my life, I have engaged myself into a trend that is actually cool.

For once in my life, I have done something cool to my hair.

And putting sun-in in my hair in sixth grade with a girl from school and getting grounded for doing so does not count.

There’s this new craze that’s all about feather extensions.

I’ve been hearing about it for at least a couple months now and I finally decided to be brave and get some feathers stuck all up in my boring brown hair.  Now, I’m fine, fresh and fierce with my fancy flying feathers.  Oh em gee, that was probably one of my most successful almost-alliterations.  That was a fuck-ton of f’s up in that sentence.

Also, the birds in my backyard and I have something in common now, so that’s pretty sweet.  I’m sure it’s not long before I sprout some wings and fly far, far away from here.  I’ll fly all the way to Hogwarts and become friends with the post owls in the owlery and if Hogwarts won’t take me I can fall back on being a post-owl/weird flying girl with feathers in her hair.  Clearly I have my life all figured out.

Anyway, it took like three whole seconds for Wen to put the little metal bead/clipy-thing onto my hair and to seal it with the three feathers I picked.  Picking my feathers was the thing that took the most time.  In fact, I changed my mind like 4 times.  I was originally going to be a pansy-ass scaredy cat and get all brown tones but then I was like, wait, you should get a light colored one so it’ll at least show uppppp. But then I saw a black and white one and was like Dude, that is MINE.  And it was Wen who told me I needed to have the purple one because that way I have something fun, awesome and colorful but it’s not so overpowering and it still will blend in a little bit.

So, yeah, I ended up choosing a black and white feather, a two-tone brown one, and a purple and black one.  As you can (kinda) see here: I took a picture to show you how it’s clipped in my hair.  I should note that I got all three of my feathers clipped in the same metal clip thing, but Wen really tried to get me to put each feather in separately all over the place.  I was much too chicken-shit to actually do that, so I clipped them together in the same place, somewhere it would show when I pin my “bangs” back.  It goes in this metal bead type of thing, and it holds the feathers and a tiny, tiny section of hair and then gets tightened so it can’t move.

See?

You can hardly tell!

It’s super cool!

The other thing that’s cool about these feather extensions is that they’re supposedly super low maintenance.  I can wash my hair just like normal, and blowdry and flat iron the shit out of my hair like I normally do.  They curl right along with the rest of my hair, too; I tried it out today.  Wen and what’s-her-face who owns the salon I popped into today to have them done told me that they last for a really long time also.  The lady who owns the salon had two in and she’s been wearing them for six or seven weeks and they looked fab.  So, if and when I’m ready for them to come out, I’ll just pop back in and they’ll take my feathers out for me.

Except, fat chance because if I lose my feathers there goes my plan of flying away to Hogwarts and my future as a post-owl.

Here’s what they look like when I don’t do shit to my hair:

Ps. How awkward is this pic of me?! Lolz

Peach out, lovers.

There’s gotta be a heaven somewhere, can you save me from this hell? Can anybody out there feel me? ‘Cause I can’t seem to feel myself…

When closing arguments began, I had no idea what I would decide. I was dying to know what my fellow jurors thought of everything we had heard. Throughout the four days we were in court, we couldn’t speak to each other about anything relating to the case. Every minute spent together in the jury room was filled with small talk. I couldn’t wait to actually be able to talk about the case, ask the questions that had been haunting my dreams, and finally wrap my head around all the facts.

There was one minor hiccup once all was said and done by the attorneys. There were thirteen of us. Only twelve would go back to the jury room and deliberate. I hoped to high heaven I wouldn’t be the one to be dismissed. How disappointing it would be to sit through the entire trial and then simply be released, to be thanked for one’s service and dismissed with no other words. I would have been pissed. But, as it stands, that didn’t happen to me. The juror in seat three was released.

The judge read us our instructions and then we filed back into our ever familiar jury room.  I took my regular seat and waited to see what would happen next.  First thing was first: we were going to order some lunch. And I was to be the one to record everyone’s order due to my neat handwriting. (I always knew I’d be good for something!) Ordering lunch was a feat in and of itself but we finally got it under control. We called Mike, our court officer, and gave him our order.

That was when deliberations began. During the time it took to figure out what everyone was eating for lunch, we had also decided our foreman. Rather than picking the woman who has sat on a jury every two years since 1985, we went with the man she nominated, who sat in seat number four. We decided to tackle the lesser charges first, and then discuss the big one. It didn’t take long at all to go around the table and say “guilty” to the first count of furnishing alcohol to a minor (Brianna).  We then did the same thing for the second count of furnishing alcohol to a minor (Monika).

To begin our discussion, we went through each of our witnesses and judged his or her credibility. In doing so, we got to hash out all of the details of the case.  We tried to come up with our own timeline of events; we tried to figure out exactly what happened. We tried to determine what seemed to make sense. It was seriously difficult.  That’s when we all started to agree upon all of the holes in the story. We all seemed to have the same questions and a couple of our own theories.

The element of personal injury to the charge of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree needed to be met. While there had been a 2 millimeter “laceration” noted in the medical records of the victim, the sexual assault nurse examiner couldn’t rule out other causes of the injury, nor could she determine how long that injury had been there. The fact that there was no physical, DNA evidence anywhere could have been overlooked had the story made any sense at all.  The personal vendetta theory that the defense had been working on started to seem more and more likely the more we went over what the witnesses had testified. And don’t even get me started on the 9-1-1 tape. We listened to it at least 7 times. I could probably quote it, verbatim.  The worst part: all of it was a fabrication; the victim’s friend/girlfriend had called 9-1-1 and pretended to be the victim. And when questioned on the witness stand by the prosecuting attorney, who was livid, she didn’t have an explanation for her actions.

All in all, we couldn’t convict him of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree because we all experienced reasonable doubt.  It’s such an interesting concept, one that I didn’t even really understand until I felt it.

When we reached our verdict, I wrote Mike the note (“We have reached a verdict”) since we weren’t allowed to speak to him. Another juror called down to his office and told him we had the note ready. Then we waited a few minutes and were called back into the courtroom.  The judge asked our foreman if we reached a verdict and then he read what we had decided.

I still can’t believe I did this, but when our foreman read the verdict, I was looking at the judge.  Can you believe that? I was looking at the judge, rather than the defendant. I thought to look at him, to read his facial expression, after we had moved onto the lesser charges. I missed his very first reaction to the “not guilty” verdict for criminal sexual conduct. By the time I looked over, he looked relieved. He was shaking the hand of his attorney and he looked… thankful. In my head, I decided he was on the verge of tears because he was so relieved.

As soon as he finished reading our verdict, we were shuffled back into the jury room one last time. We waited only a few minutes before the judge came in and talked to us. She seemed to agree with our verdict, which made me feel even better about the choices we had made. She spoke candidly to us about the case. It was really awesome.

Obviously, I think you all can tell that I really, really loved my jury duty experience. I feel like I can honestly say that it is probably one of the most important things I have ever done, and I just know I’ll never forget it. And, just for the record, I think everyone should sit on a jury at least once. It’s an amazing experience!

where you lead, i will follow anywhere that you tell me to if you need, you need me to be with you, i will follow where you lead

I don’t know if any of you guys watched Gilmore Girls, but I’m totally wishing that was real right now.

I just really loved everything about that show.

I feel like I’m a little bit Paris. Completely out of her mind and always just a little bit too much.

Right at this minute, I am facing a conflict.

You know those times when you know what you should do but it’s totally not in line with what you want to do? Like, you know the right path to walk down but the one on the left has balloons and puppies and people cheering your name? It’s really enticing, and it looks like a whooooole lotta fun. So you look at that fork in the road and think, Yeah, that looks waaaaay better than that regular, responsible “adult” decision road. That’s where I’m at right now. I’d rather deal with puppies and alcoholic beverages and cute boys rather than waking up early, no cute boys and responsibility any day of the week.

It’s times like these that make me feel like I need a life coach.

Remember when Paris had a life coach? Okay, so I don’t necessarily want the life coach she had, but it would be nice to have someone right there whose sole purpose was to help me make choices. And build me a craft corner. And tell me how funny, pretty and smart I am all the time.

How does one get a life coach? Paris only got one after she literally lost her shit and went a little crazy…. I don’t really wanna go that far….