Borderline Personality Disorder

• black and white thinking? (thinking in extremes; thinking things are either all good or all bad?)
• fear of abandonment?
• frequent displays of inappropriate anger?
• uncertainty about identity?
• intense and/or unstable relationships?
• paranoid ideation?
• suicidal threats?

It might be BPD.

According to www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com/understanding-bpd 

a "personality disorder" is this:

Every person has a personality: longstanding ways of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about their environment and oneself. However, when these traits are inflexible, maladaptive, and cause significant functional impairment or subjective stress, they constitute as a personality disorder.

I was doing field work on the relationship between people with BPD and Baptist Churches. Why? Well, from my experience with one particular Baptist Church, which I've been attending for about half a year now while also attending other churches of different denominations, I've come to a few conclusions, some more obvious than others:

• strictly conservative
• if you are not tithing, you must not love God
• The modern idea of "the only strictly male job is as a sperm-doner and the only strictly female job is as a wetnurse" is wrong, because men and women have roles they must fill; women should not be leaders

So, this Baptist church is very controlling, right? Well, I am a liberal, and I have a good sense of self, so this system is very---not for me. But what would it be like for a person with BPD? Having rules, having limits, having them be told who they are and where their place is in the world? Well, according to most of the BPD symptoms I've bulleted above, it might seem like a very cozy and relieving system...

Inside of a Dryer

 If you have ever wondered what the inside of a dryer looks like...here you go. The belt that spins the barrel broke (I'm guessing it's the black skinny one looped around the barrel?), and my dad had to take the dryer apart, so I thought, this is a good photo op because it doesn't happen every day. Yes, that's my cat, Misty, snooping around.
My dad has bad luck with trying to fix things. It's because the things that break at our house are usually really random. This means when he calls auto shops and such, they usually have no idea what he's talking about and can't help him. Luckily, he didn't have too hard of a time finding a replacement belt, but that wasn't the case with the emergency break to his Toyota, which broke around the same time as this. He kept trying to call for the replacement of an individual cable inside the handle, but every store said they could only sell him a whole new break system.

Okay, so sometimes, it's bad luck, and sometimes, my father just has weird requests. Our backyard slopes, and we wanted to put an above-ground pool in. So, we worked on leveling the ground with a shovel and an "action hoe" which cuts through weeds. We have a crabgrass invasion, which is the worst kind in my opinion, because they are so stubborn to remove. Anyways, my dad thought it would be good to just fill the uneven area with sand. He called numerous home improvement stores to ask what kind of sand is good to use under a pool and no one could help him. I was laughing internally because the people on the other end of the phone must have been so confused or thought he was joking. Anyways, he didn't want to take the time to sneak some from the beach (like I suggested) and after looking on line he found out some people ask strangers to take their dirt off their lawn (like if they had a pile left over from construction work) but my dad didn't want to have to ask his friend if he could borrow his truck to remove dirt off of someone's lawn, so we ended up just dealing with the aches and pains of hacking up crab grass.

Date at Corner Bakery

 So I had a date yesterday night with my bf at Corner Bakery on Clark Ave. I've only been there for their delicious coffee cake, and I never knew they had actual food. It was the first time him and I have been alone together that didn't include seeing a movie afterwards, so, it was very pleasant. Of course, it felt a little high-end, and we've experienced that before--that feeling you aren't supposed to be here--but the servers were really nice and the feeling went away. All this food, minus the water bottles, was about 15 dollars, which is a good deal in our eyes.

 We were unsure about what soup to get, and what we really wanted was some clam chowder, but he went up and asked, and they had chicken noodle, so we were appeased. We almost got the cheese and broccoli soup, but then we remembered what it had tasted like at Subway, so we decided not to get it this time. The chicken noodle soup was delicious, and the bread was good too. It was in a big bowl too, which we hadn't expected. Subway has delicious sandwiches but their soups (broccoli cheese and chicken noodle) both have weird after tastes. I've experienced it at two different locations.

Panini had tomatoes, Swiss cheese, ham, and lettuce, and the bread was toasted lightly. The picture shows that I am a faster eater than him. Also, if I ever do blog about other restaurants, I plan to comment on the bathrooms too, because some great restaurants have awful bathrooms, and this is a big deal  for some people. At Corner Bakery on Clark Ave., the girl's bathroom is good haha, and clean. Anyways, so we shared an iced tea mixed with pink lemonade. The caffeine apparently hit us hard (I never drink coffee or iced tea).  Eventually we were drinking our soup through straws, but that might have been caused by just being happy together on that fine evening.

My day with Alexis

So I spent September 1st with a close friend of mine, and this is a list of what we did:

• At 11:30, she picked me up and we went to the Los Cerritos Center mall
• We went to Macy's Mens shoe department on the first floor and "did nothing" for ten minutes (it was my homework assignment I'll explain later)
• We went to see Bourne Legacy in theater room #8 (I'll comment on it)
• We ate lunch from the food court; Sbarros, and ate outside the entrance to the mall and talked about pets (I'll comment on Sbarros)
• Went to Barkworks; now there is an open tank where you can pet the animals 
• Went to NEXT because she's never been in it
• Went to California Basics because I've never been in it
• Went to Sidecca because I love that store 
• I had a gift card to Godiva's Chocolatier and I bought a milk-chocolate covered strawberry bouquet for us to share (it is four strawberries for 12 dollars)
• We ate it near Kwik Stop which is near the kiddie rides that big kids always get stuck in
• Then we spent about seven minutes trying to locate her Lexus in the parking lot near Stacked and Bank of America haha
• Came back to my house and we watched a new premier episode of Doctor Who with my dad and brother
• Showed her the website Geekologie.com because of some cool spider pictures
• By this time we were tired but anyways then we went to Ohana Hawaiian BBQ on Clark ave
• Came back to my house and played cards with my brother, and then she went home around 9pm

      Sbarros restaurant is really good but at Cerritos Mall there is no restaurant just a place in the food court. So it is a bit too greasy and tastes slightly like outlet mall food. I've concluded this from three trips to Cerritos.

     Bourne Legacy was good. Didn't see the last one but I could still follow along. I didn't like the really open ending, and it seemed as if the newer modal (the Asian guy) of the Strong 'n' Smart ppl wasn't introduced properly.

     So my homework assignment from Sociology class was "to do nothing for 10 minutes and observe how people react to you doing nothing" We couldn't fidget or daydream or anything. I thought it would be more challenging but the time flew by. We got a few odd looks from the customers, and there was one cashier who was watching us and one customer who kept staring at us with an alarmed look.