The only certainty is bad grammar – Page 25 – Too personal for the internet.

Why my boyfriend is super awesome

Published: January 23, 2013 / Updated: January 24, 2013 Crystal medium

Title: Why My Boyfriend is Super Awesome.
By: Crystal Lindell

So ya, I have a super awesome boyfriend.

First of all, he’s really cute. I especially like when he wears his black button-up shirt and jeans, but he also looks equally attractive when wearing a hoodie, or a Bulls sweatshirt.

Second of all, even though he doesn’t quite like Taco Bell as much as I do, he does like it lot and I can’t really blame him seeing as how nobody in the world likes Taco Bell as much as I do.

Third of all, when I tell him I got a new exciting jewelry organizer on Amazon.com and that it totally changed my life because it freed my bathroom of clutter and helped me find long-lost earrings, and then I post a picture of said jewelry organizer on Facebook, he goes on Facebook and writes “Wow” in the comment section because he knows it will make me smile a lot.

Ya. He’s pretty great.

We’ve been dating for a little while now and stuff. And he makes me laugh whenever he brings up any of the 1,000 inside jokes we share. Also, he calls me every morning to say good morning and every single night before I go to sleep he tells me, “Sleep like an angel.”

I mean, ya, sometimes we argue or whatever, but we always talk it out and move on in like three seconds. It’s the talking it out that I truly love. Nothing lingers. Everything gets said. And sometimes, when I do that girl thing where I’m silent, but in my head I’m all, “He better ask me what’s wrong or I’m going to drive over and punch him,” and then he says, “What’s wrong?” and then I say, “Nothing,” he always knows something is actually wrong and then he makes me tell him and I love that.

He give great hugs. He plays Words with Friends really well, and even scored 536 points once. Also, he’s awesome at predicting which team will win football games. In fact, he’s so awesome at it that one time he won like $3,500 from a national contest for who could pick the most NFL games correctly during the season. He beat like 1 million other people to win that contest. True story.

He takes me to baseball games, and musicals, and lots and lots of movies.

He tells me I’m pretty, and that I’m beautiful, and he even says those things when I have no make-up on and I haven’t washed my hair in 48 hours and I’m on a mission trip.

Oh! And, of course, he’s a Christian. Duh. He goes to church every Sunday, and he prays before every single meal and when he got me a Pandora bracelet for Christmas he got me a Bible charm because he knows how important God is in my life.

He gets excited when I succeed. He laughs whenever I make a joke. And he always knows when to bring me flowers.

So in conclusion, I have a super awesome boyfriend. How lucky am I?

I totally got through to KLOVE! Here’s how it all went down.

Published: January 4, 2013 / Updated: January 4, 2013 Crystal humor, im cool, long

It all started on Jan. 2. I was driving into work for my first day back after a week-long Christmas vacation, and there were only about three other people on the highway.

There I was jamming along to Klove when the morning show hosts started talking about the station’s 30-day challenge. Basically, they say that listening to only Christian music for 30 days will change your life. And I love KLove, so I was like, I’m going to try to call them and tell them that I totally believe in the 30-day challenge.

So, I dialed them up (I have their number memorized). And let me just say here that I have in fact tried to call them about 458 times in the past and have never, ever, ever gotten through to a live person. They’re a national Christian radio station and at any given moment about 40,000 people are trying to call them.

But for some reason, this one time, a human being actually answered when I dialed the number! They were all, “This is KLOVE” and I was like, “Woah. Did I dial the wrong number? How? What? I’m so confused.” And then, out loud, I was all, “Umm, ya, Hi! I was just calling to talk about the 30-day challenge.” And the dude was like, “Ok. Please hold.”

And then, in my head, while I was driving down 55 North, I was all, “OMG! OMG! OMG! I got through! What the heck am I going to say? This is crazy! OMG! I wonder if I’ll actually get to talk to Craig, Amy and Kanklefritz! Dear Holy Sprirt, please be with me and give the right words to say!”

About five minutes later, while I’m jamming to the hold music, I suddenly hear, “This is Crag. Amy. And Kanklefritz. What’s going on?

And I was like, “What? Umm, Hello?”

And they were like, “Yes, go ahead.”

And I was like, “Woah. Hello? Really?”

And they were like, “Yes, go ahead.”

So I did. I started babbling on about how I love listening to KLove on my commute and that it totally changed my life and helped with road rage on my hour and a half commute to my full-time job, and that I’m a part-time youth leader in the Chicago suburbs and I always tell the youth that what you put in your brain really does affect you and that I was skeptical about Christian music at first but now I love it.

And then the hosts were like, “Woah there, why were you skeptical?”

So I was like, “You know, because Christian music has a reputation for being boring.”

And they were like “WOAH! BORING? WHAT? Do you still think it’s boring? Do you think we’re boring? Now we’re all self-conscious.”

And I was like, “No. No. No. I LOVE you guys! I listen to you every morning!!! I don’t think that at all anymore!!!”

Then one of the hosts was like, “Uh huh. Sure. Ok. Well, you said you’re driving to work, where do you work?”

So I told them I work at a candy magazine. That’s when things go crazy. They got all excited and asked me if there were chocolate rivers in my office, and I was like, “Sure.” And they asked whether I burp my way to to the top of an elevator every morning like in Willy Wonka. and I was like, “Yes, every morning, while I listen to Klove, I burp my way to the top of an elevator. How did you know?” (You can listen to all that in the YouTube video on the top of this post).

I seriously talked to these guys for like five to seven minutes, and it was so awesome because I really do feel like their my friends because I hang out with them every single morning.

After I hung I was just so freaking excited and I was kind of hoping they would play the conversation later that morning. So I listed until the end of the show, but no go.

I thought maybe they would play it the next day, but I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t want to get my hopes up, so I didn’t really tell anyone about it except my boyfriend and one of my friends.

I figured, even if they didn’t play it on the radio, I would still always have that conversation for myself.

Then, bam, at 7 a.m. the next day my uncle Randy from New Orleans calls me. And I knew. I knew that he must have heard the conversation on the radio. And he had! He was all excited and he said they had only played half of it, but they were going to play the second half after a few songs.

And I was like “OMG THIS IS SO COOL!”

So I quick turned on the radio and called my mom to let her know. Except she already knew because randomly, my grandma’s radio alarm clock was set for 7 a.m. to Klove and she had heard the first part of the interview and called my mom.

And so we all listened, and it was seriously so cool and I love KLove and now I can totally cross this off my bucket list.

As you may have noticed, I recorded what I could of what they played on the radio, and made a little video (see the top of this post). Enjoy. 🙂

I can’t believe Heather B. Armstrong is getting divorced.

December 17, 2012 Crystal Uncategorized

I know it’s not really any of my business that Heather B. Armstrong is getting divorced.

I know that I don’t actually know her (even though we met that one time), and that we are not actually friends, and that it has no bearing on my life whatsoever. I also know that any desire to learn the details of her divorce, no matter how well I justify them in my brain, are purely out of desire to know. For my own, selfish sake. I just want to know.

For those who do not follow Dooce.com, Heather is pretty much the blogger who all the other bloggers in the world want to be when they grow up. She writes about her life, and makes about a $1 million a year doing so. And, she writes books on the side like other people knit on the side, she has two beautiful daughters and I truly, truly thought she had the perfect life.

And I don’t mean “perfect” in the sense that nothing bad ever happens to her, because her books are mostly about bad things happening to her. (See: It sucked and then I cried: How I had a baby, a meltdown and a much needed margarita).

I mean “perfect” in that she had everything important. A great, tech-savvy husband who treated her as an equal, a way to make a living a writer on her own terms, and a community of support on the Internet that she could turn to no matter what was happening to her.

And then, a few months ago, she got separated from her great, tech-savvy husband. And she has recently announced that they will, in fact, be getting a full divorce.

For some reason, the news was devastating to me. If Heather B. Armstrong can’t keep her marriage together, what the heck hope is there for the rest of us?

I think what makes the news even more stunning is that Heather has decided not to share the ins and out of the decision. Which makes perfect sense on a human level. But after reading about everything that’s ever happened to her over the years, it makes this news so much more striking. What went wrong? Why did this happen? Can a marriage really dissolve that quickly? Without anyone noticing until it was gone?

As a child of divorce, I though that I understood what really happens to a family when parents split up, but I have to say that during my last four years a youth leader, I have come to see first-hand how completely tragic divorce is for everyone involved. For the parents, for the kids, for everyone. It’s tragic. And I would not wish that on anybody.

I know they had their reasons and that most of us will never be privy too them. I get that. And for them, the reasons were surly tragic enough to warrant this tragic outcome. I am not judging in the least. But I am saying extra prayers for their family right now.

I’m also, slowly, starting to see, that really, nobody out there has the perfect life. Not even Heather B. Armstrong.

Which makes it a little easier to live my own life, I guess. All of us are struggling after all, bearing our crosses and slaying dragons on a daily basis. And it is that common struggle that bonds us all as equals. And makes it so important to do as Jesus commanded, and “Love One Another.”