Look out fellas, this one's messy and hot.

Hey guys. It's summertime! Woo!

So... 

Ever since MTV shows like "The Jersey Shore" and "16 and Pregnant" have become all the rage among the youth of America (Wow, I sound old), I've taken note that the phrase "hot mess" has been thrown around a little more loosely in regards to females who don't quite have their life-shitake mushrooms together.

However, please refrain from being fooled by the fakes. For I, Nicole... Miss Goober Daisy, am here today to attest that I am a true and patented 

Hot. Little. Mess.

Alright so, for starters... I'm hot.

Literally. 

Most females out there would rather be warm than cold. I remember in high school, all the girls would complain in early spring when the boys would walk into a classroom and open up all the windows to get a cool breeze going. (You didn't know? The first day after the snow has completely melted off the ground calls for a pool party in the minds of teenage boys! Duh dudes.) 

Mind you, I attended a private catholic high school, where the school uniform for girls consisted of collared dress shirts, jumpers, and knee high socks.

 (for those of you who don't know what a jumper is... here's a visual aid)

(I got that picture from ModestApparelUSA.com

... Yea, yea, laugh it up. But you best believe I rocked that polyester.)

Anyways, the girls wouldn't be able to focus in class because the only thing they could think about was how to get the school nurse to write an early dismissal permission slip for frostbite. The boys however, would be loosening up their ties with their perspiring, hormone-driven heads hanging out the windows.

This differentiating temperature sensory characteristic only strengthens with age. To this very day, in the end of June during the midst of global warming, you can still walk into my parents living room and find my mother buried beneath 3 goose down blankets and my father with a turbo-charged fan blasting on it's highest setting, pointed directly towards his face.

Now, people have always told me that I favor my fathers characteristics, and this stands true for the temperature factor as well. I think that shadey trees are one of the greatest ideas that God ever came up with. And don't tell my girl friends, but when the boys would crack the windows in early March, I would think to myself, "God bless their hearts." 

Hey! Don't judge me! Have you ever worn a polyester jumper? Yea, I didn't think so. 

Try it out sometime, see how cool you stay.

Alright, so we've established that I'm hot. Moving on...

Secondly, I'm little. 

I'm 5 foot and 3 quarters of an inch tall.

Ok, point numero dos was almost too easy to make.

Now, my avid readers (Hi Mom!) have all probably gotten a strong sense that I'm somewhat messy and my mind is a bit chaotic. This is a characteristic that I fully accept, although I prefer the word "scatterbrained", which I sometimes stretch out a little further and lump together with "eclectic"... but hey, it's all to-may-toes, to-mah-toes, really.

Yes, I am messy. But, let's get one thing straight. It's not that I don't know how to clean, I never cried over spilt milk, I got busy and cleaned it up. I just prefer mess. Ok, maybe "prefer" is the wrong word, because if my mom marched up to my room and cleaned it as I blissfully napped in bed whilst she made my said bed, I would the last person to complain about it.

I can live in clutter. Yessss, that's what I'm trying to say! Whew.

Because I do gag whenever I see mold growing on old bread... so you know you won't find that under my bed. I'm not that disgusting. Geez, give me some credit people.

But, if I have three dirty bras laying on my bedroom floor and my bed is left unmade for multiple days, I'm not gonna throw myself in a state of panic. More than likely, what I will do, is fling another bra across the room at the end of the day and continue sleeping in wrinkly covers. Stuff like that is not worth putting my precious nerves and peaceful mindset in a tizzy over.

For all you neurotic neat freaks who are now imagining me looking like this...

I'm gonna tell you what I tell all my guy friends who still say "That's what she said." after every statement anyone ever makes and follow it with incessant and unnecessary laughter. I'm gonna tell you to get your mind out of the gutter! Because I don't live in one!

It's just that I am a normal girl. 

My personal space gets cluttered every once in awhile (Well, more like every few days, but who's keeping track, really?). I am forgetful. I can't cook to save my life.  I'm impulsive. Sometimes I don't have a speech filter. (And by some, I mean, all times, naturally.) I occasionally eat ice cream for breakfast. I have procrastinated on nearly, if not every important assignment I have ever had in school.

Moral of the story is, I don't do things the way I should. 

I do try, but my own dad will be the first person to tell you, I hate listening to good advice. I'm unconventional. I just do things my own way, I always have and I always will. It's a huge part of me as a person.

And that's ok with me, because when things get "messed" up in my life, I just learn to clean them up, just like I clean my messy room, and prepare for the next pig sty that I will surely end up making in the near future.

On Originality...

Ever since I was a wee baby tot,

I've felt like a square peg trying to squeeze myself into a round hole. Although conformity drives me absolutely bonkers, I feel myself succumbing to it daily. 

The thing is, we all do.

How many times do you first hear a new song and absolutely hate it, but then it gets played a few thousand times on the radio and the next thing you know, it's blaring from your phone anytime your best friend gives you a ring?

Take Vera Bradley handbags for instance... when I first noticed them becoming popular for girls to carry, I laughed and poked fun, because they reminded me of old ladies who hold each other up as they walk into church on Sunday mornings. I knew girls who brought them to frat parties to carry their beer in.

5 years later, I now own 5 Vera Bradley bags.

I think it's human nature to be drawn to things that other people are drawn to, no matter how ridiculous those things may be. Unfortunately, we live in a society that throws paper bags on famous people's bodies, then plasters pictures of it on the front of Vogue Magazine, and the next week, sure enough, brown paper bags are selling at your local grocery store for 20 bucks a pop.

This is the kind of thing that keeps me from getting sleep at night. Obviously, I have my priorities straight.

I suppose the underlying issue I have has more to do with people who live life un-originally. By this I mean, those people who only do things or act a certain way only because it's "in-style" to do so. Some of these people may be having an identity crisis, which is ok because for goodness sake, I have photographic proof that I've been there too...

However, at some point, you have to snap out of it and figure your life out.

We need a society with more people who are genuine. Being genuine doesn't mean that you're a modern day Mother Theresa, never have bad days, never wish life was easier, never think a negative thought about another person. Being genuine means that you know exactly the kind of person you are and you know what you stand for. And the people around you are aware of these things as well. Under whatever circumstances you are going through, your life's truths should remain constant. When you are genuine, you deny the temptations that make you stray for the morals that you live by. You know what's important in your life, and you steer clear from the things that pull you away from that. 

Now, if you plan on attempting to make a change in your life, to become more genuine, some of the people in your life are going to look at you like you're crazy. And there's no need to wonder because I'm telling you right now,  they'll be thinking it too. They also might begin to hate you. But hey, let 'em hate. In my opinion, if that happens... you're doing something right.

I know that I can be phony sometimes, so one of my main goals for this summer is to become a more genuine person. I'm going to smile at people and mean it, be happy for the people around me when they find happiness, cry when I empathetically feel someone else's pain, laugh when something is seriously beyond funny, and let other people know what's on my mind when they piss me off. I'm going to do all of these things, even if there is not another person around me who is doing so.

Because the thing is, when you live a genuine lifestyle, you live without regrets. And there's nobody who's living on this Earth that doesn't want that.