From My Brain to Yours

My relationship with horses for the past 10 years has been... complicated. I have nothing against them, but there are certain things about horses that have always raised some red flags for me. But, for the sake of fairness, I'll list some pros and cons. Good Things About Horses: Horses are tall. Horses are fast. Horses have names for all the different speeds that they walk at, which is awesome. Personally I feel like trotting is the sweet spot; then again, I don't love riding horses so anything faster than a trot gets a little scary. I respect the gallop, though. This is something I'd like to implement in day-to-day life and apply to human speeds (think "hey, would you canter over here real quick?"). Horses can run the barrel pattern. Horses will let you dig into their feet with a pick and get out all the gunk. This is a lot of fun and very satisfying to do (except that picking up a horse's foot is scary and difficult). Bad Things About Horses Horses are bigge...

Around 90% of the time that I think about someone's eyes (which is about 0.01% of the time in general), I just assume their eyes are brown. Unless the person in question is ginger or super blond or something, I guess. It's an interesting thing, because I know that people with blue and green and hazel eyes do exist, I just truly do not think about (or notice) them at all in my day-to-day life. I know of five people for sure who have non-brown eyes. 1. My mother. My mother has hazel eyes, and I know this because I have my dad's brown eyes, and my whole life my mother has told me how beautiful and coffee-brown they are. So of course that means they must be different from her own. Also, my mother, being my mother, is one of the easiest people for me to visualize. I can see her eyes in my mind right now if I want to. They are hazel. 2. My brother. I know my brother has hazel eyes, because next to my sister he is the person I have paid the most attention to in my life. Also he is...

Recently, I've come under fire for some of my comments regarding height, specifically some of the things I've said on twitter about short people. Let me explain. First, I'll dive into what may be the root of my prejudice: bitterness. To understand my relationship to height, one must first know my genetic background. My maternal grandfather was six feet seven inches tall. I grew up hearing stories of my giant of a granddad, the man who could shuffle a deck of cards with one hand. My mother is a reasonably tall woman, standing at 5'9", just as her mother did, and she would tell me growing up, routinely, that I'd be taller than her when I was fourteen years old. I wholeheartedly believed her. When I was thirteen years old and 5'6", my pediatrician informed me that I would grow anywhere between one and three more inches. I was very excited to be 5'9". Unfortunately, what I did not account for is the fact that the other side of my family, while ful...

I think my ideal hat is definitely No Hat.  But if I had to wear a hat, I wouldn't want the hat to be pointy. I feel like the natural shape of my head is simple and exquisite, and I don't want to make any extreme changes to that.  I don't love the idea of a brim, but my dad makes a good point when he talks about it being a good way to keep the sun out of your eyes. If I'm wearing a hat anyway, I might as well choose one that would provide a useful service to me. My hat also would have to be heavy enough that I couldn't forget it was there; what's the point of wearing a hat if you're oblivious to it? On the other hand, I don't want a hat so large it hurts my neck. If I had to wear a hat, it would have to be visually interesting. I'd want my hat to really add something to my outfit. Since geometric shapes are pretty much out of the question, the best way to maximize visual impact is likely by choosing an exciting color for the hat. Based on all my crit...