Every day, I tell the website to remember me. I always click the little checkmark into place in the "remember me" box, and it never does. I get my hopes up everytime, but it still doesn't remember me like it promises to.

Taking naps at 3:30 in the afternoon can sometimes be confused as leaving your mind. I had completely bizarre dreams that were mostly black (I was driving around blind in the snow for a little while) and when I woke up, my arms were completely asleep, and my fingers were white.

I got up as soon as my arms would allow, and made a black cup of coffee and ate left over stirfry.
Then I read some more David Sedaris in a completely filthy living room. This is my routine now. School is almost completely over, and I read a. lot. now. Now I read a lot.
I sit and think about how my dream home (the one that only I live in) has no furniture, but it is practically sterile, and when I come home from work, I lie straight on the hardwood floor, because there is no dog hair. And in my dream world, I usually fall asleep there, but my arms work when I wake up.

In other news, I'm semi dehydrated, and feeling a little old.

I sat, with my feet up, at 6:39 a.m., alone in my kitchen. With one light on and a crappy cup of coffee I leaned my chair back on two legs and could just see some pink coming over the mountains. I watched it the entire time. That halo of pink. It last for two minutes, and then gradually faded into the blue sky. And I felt like no one but God knew about it, either.
I think a lot of people miss the sunrise.
Sometimes it's better that way.

another happy thought

And I realized, as Brandi said that she was done with Utah, with the whole North and West, and that she was moving to Tenessee or somewhere where she could drink, that the whole thing really was about moving forward. I let her teach me what she could. Even if it was all MLA and citations and thinking for myself. Even if she rubbed me the wrong way sometimes, I still wanted to tell her, "Good luck exploring the infinite abyss," (always my favorite line from Garden State). I realized, second of all, as I bounced out of class, handed her my last paper, and walked in sunshine to my house, that it was all just one big adventure. As my mom keeps cleaning our house to get it ready to move out of, that I am more than just a little excited that the end of this adventure is near, and the start of a new, HORRIBLE, wonderful adventure is just about to unfold. With gore, blood, guts, romance, fencing, fighting, new life, music (oh man-the music), leaving, coming and going, shouting, the hypocrisy and the hope, my hope....
Yes, it is beautiful, and it makes me shutter and smile.

Take your places on the battlefield. Damn the torpedos full speed ahead.

"Look, it's a penguin," he said.
"No, Noah, it's an egg," I answered him.
"No, it's a penguin, and it's French," he said, completely ignoring me as usual.

Its a funny thing that I got to sleep in til 7:47 this morning, and I thought I was going crazy. I figured that for sure, when I looked at my phone, it was going to say 11 o' clock in the afternoon.
I'm a bona fide worker now.
On the next schedule, she has me working full time for a couple weeks of it. That should be a nice cushion, I would imagine.
I signed up for the inVision retreat on Monday, having faith that God would somehow work it out with Debbie that I wouldn't have to work that Saturday. And either, they communicated really well, or she was just going to give it to me anyway. But I get to go! And I'm excited because the last inVision retreat got me really pumped up about what was going on in the church, and made me feel so unified with the other believers. So yeah. Win-win situation, there.

Side note: I'm almost completely sure by now that my parents are moving to Provo. They keep finding houses, and my dad has three job interviews. Something tells me that if none of these jobs work out, he'll just keep applying for more. This is Salt Lake and Fort Collins all over again. Except I'm older now, and them moving means I'll be out on my own.
And I think
I feel like
bring it on.

something similar to what we know already

My mind is being blown RIGHT NOW by the following things:
-a great pair of earphones
(I can hear everything and nothing at the same time. I can't hear the dogs barking, can't hear the doors slamming)
-A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen
(I sat on the edge of my seat the whole time I read it, and the twist at the end of the play ripped my heart out)
-Fiona Apple
-God
-photography

your parents were anxious, your cool was contagious

Suddenly I went from partying every night til 2 a.m. to being some sort of person who goes to bed early and gets up early and works for the man and has a schedule. Like I used to.

"Then followed a year of lonely convalescence that set him on a path of self-sufficiency that made him comfortable in a world largely populated by himself and his thoughts."
-Tom Smart Alex Colville Return

Sometimes I read that quote (I wrote it down a couple years ago from a book on how to paint water colors. ???) And I think that I live in a world largely populated by myself and my thoughts. Under my hair, speaking to mostly God. Especially on the days that I am working, and Alex isn't there, and nobody texts me because they are working. (Funny how that goes) I often find myself leaning over to plug in a vitals machine, or in a closet disinfecting IV poles with painfully potent alcohol wipes and entering into a conversation with God right off the bat, mid sentence, like we'd never stopped talking. Even when he is barely whispering answers to my questions.
"God, do I go to Provo..."
"God, is it wrong for me to give up the band?"
"God, what in the world am I doing?"
And then suddenly I am interrupted by a nurse who reminds me of a bird.
"DID YOU GET THAT BLOOD SUGAR IN 39!" He seems to be squawking at me. And then I am left midsentence again, to finish this conversation later.

Makes me wonder how other people spend the time in their head.

He holds Suiki down in the grass, and kisses her over and over to try to make up for hitting her on the back with a bat only a few minutes before, and I have to laugh. Then she squirrels away and he chases her again.
Ridiculous, like always.

Today was a much better day, simply because I woke up and went and met Lauren at Niche Cafe, which was wonderful. We talked for 2 hours, which is a lot longer than we usually do. But she fixed me, like she usually does.
Then, when I got home, there were three CD's waiting for me on the porch, and an empty house. And an empty house was never more appealing. I got a lot of homework done and listened to music.
All this running is doing me good, I think. It's been good for my back, and in general I feel stronger and feel like I sleep sounder at night. I haven't even had any bad dreams...

But I am reading too much Hamlet.
It hits me all over again. Every time.

For three or four minutes, today, time stood still.
It was the end of our shift, and I was at the front nurses' station instead of the back, talking to Alex, and they called the med-team to 2126.
So we walked to the back to see what was going on. It seemed like everyone from all over the hospital were there. The phlebotomist, the respiratory therapist, the pharmacist, nurses and doctors. They all crowded into the tiny little room. They told Ashley to call the code and Rebekah started doing CPR. Rebekah, who I talk to at lunch. A normal woman.
Colleen the charge nurse came out holding the hand of 26's son. Her voice was cracking.
Alex and I just stared into the room. I felt like this whole thing was a joke. This whole job, of working at a hospital. War is hell, they say. A hospital is also hell, I think.
"2:54," the doctor says, and walks out of the room. The med team leaves.
2:54. Does he mean time of death?

Friday night, I came into work, and I was actually really happy to be there. To take my mind off of things. I had a few really grumpy patients, but I also had 2126. I helped him to the bathroom. I laughed at his jokes, and I teased him back when he was teasing me. I sat on the edge of the counter, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed.
"I told my grandson, the best part of being in this hospital is that beautiful women take me to the bathroom," he said, and I laughed and blushed, "And then I told him that the worst part of being in this hospital is that beautiful women are taking me to the bathroom." Then I laughed again. I sat with him and talked, even though my vitals were going to be late, maybe. John and Lisa wouldn't notice.
"It's people like you that make this bearable," he told me when I walked out of his room that night. I told him he was going to be fine. I would say that 95% of people leave the hospital alive. Maybe even 99% by the time they are discharged from Acute Care. So the odds were that he would be fine.

"What happened Rebekah?" Alex asked.
"He died," she said. Easily. While she was rubbing her hands with hand sanitizer. Her face was red. I could never tell what Rebekah was thinking. She always looked the same. "Now wasn't that exciting?" She said picking up her clip board. But this time, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she was being sarcastic.
The only thing I could think was that I wished I'd talked to him about Jesus that night. I wished I'd stayed for five more minutes, and asked him what he thought about life after death.
"Today is a good day to die," Don said, referring to the sunny weather, making toast in the kitchen. At first I was mad at him when he said it, but it reminded me of that Dave Matthews song where he says that every day should be a good day to die.

Life is short, and there's one thing you can't do in Heaven. I hope I do it here.

Been reading a lot of E.E. Cummings lately. I skipped literature class the other day, but felt better by indulging in my own exploration of his poetry.
The first time I ever read it, I was very offended ("She being Brand", very offensive to me) but then I realized that he wrote a lot like I write my poems, when I feel like expressing myself in poetry.

I like to read it out loud, and delight in how vulgar but refined he is. Can I have that? Vulgar and refined? Can he be that?

I like to drink coke with ice out of a cup. But not a glass. And not the can.
Those are my conditions, I guess.

Last night Ben showed me some music videos on youtube that had been filmed and then run backwards. They were really cool to watch, because I thought the whole time about how hard it would be to choreograph it and have it look cool. It made me think, what if we lived our lives backwards? What if we'd seen the parts before, and knew they were coming up? Would that be less stressful? Even if you had to live through them, and you knew they were going to be bad, would it make it easier knowing the outcome, and slowly becoming younger instead of older? A hopeful life, maybe. You'd start with a broken body and wind up fixed by the end of it.

Heaven. I think about Heaven, a lot.