Its funny how when your classes are over, you really don't know if you'll see your classmates ever again, and so I said to Katie the other night, "Well, have a good life." Although this is a very small town in someways and it is quite possible that you will run into them again unless they move to Europe or California. But then, you could possibly run into them in Disneyland. It's happened before. I've at least seen Casey three times this semester on campus, and he'd been the one last year to tell me, "Okay, have a good life, and walked out of Building D on Murray Campus.
I was thinking about it during the last train ride with Luke, and how I probably wouldn't ever see him again, but I'd meet the same guy a few more times before I graduate. I'll have several more boyfriends to ride the trains with, or talk about Norma Jean concerts in Ogden, or be upset about Spanish with.
So....so long Luke, and Katie with the tattoos and there was Charles whom I had loved a year ago in ENGL 2500, or William that I went to the Art Barn with who was tall and had smart glasses, and I could never tell if he was all the way straight...
I will meet you again, or I will not meet you, and no hard feelings.

One day, as I was playing reruns of her in my head, rereading all the notes she'd written me in short and sporadic meter and thought, I wondered if maybe she knew she was crazy. That she'd realized long ago that it worked for her, whether or not a person could appreciate her the same way I could, because they would at least like her, if not love her the same way I do. Her hair kept changing color, and maybe I couldn't reach out for her, but she'd still be there with her eyes open wide and her laughter would wake me up after I'd been awake for hours.
Whether she knows still, that she is crazy, I don't really know and I'll quit caring. But I can't stop loving it from hours and hours away.

"Is this the way that my life was supposed to play out, Liz? The kid who paid his way through Princeton by working day shifts at the graveyard, and graveyard shifts at that Days Inn?"
-Jack on 30 Rock

For a minute yesterday, I forgot the word leg.
This is not as bad as 3 days of forgetting the word jar, but leg is a word you use a lot more frequently than jar.
I kept poking my leg, on TRAX, thinking "Pants? Pants. Pants." Getting frustrated cuz that couldn't be the right word. I started saying it out loud, hoping it would come to me. Pants. Pants? "When I wake up in the morning, I put my jeans on my....pants," I whispered. Nope. Wait, leg. The word is leg. I put my pants on my legs.

I'm doing a little better today now that I had so much sleep. But seriously.

"Well I think that we should all be a little suspicious of a person who does not have piles in their home."
-Judy

I live on fremont ave. that's the small duplex, you can even see it from the train. right there: with the green door and that's my blue honda civic parked out front. the man next door is gay. his name is harry and he teaches classes at the community college and high school but no one really knows he is gay.
He lives alone also, although I didn't always live alone. I lived with a man named James and he was handsome and we'd watch law and order together and make pancakes on the weekends but we don't do that anymore because one day he woke up and said that I wasn't what he always wanted out of life and he ended up going back to Pennsylvania in the spring and I looked into the mirror day after day reciting poetry I'd memorized a long time ago. I looked older but I still lived in the duplex.
I spent several evenings with a bottle of wine in my hands, consulting a good friend here or there over drunk conversations on a cellular telephone. The next morning I'd realize I was really going to be fine, and wrote down grocery lists in a little red notebook that would fit into the back pocket of paper denim jeans, sliding slightly off my hips now that I'd lost a little weight.
The sun would creep up later over the buildings and the shadows would make us colder than normal, but it was always alright on Fremont.
Staring at a baby: you don't have to stare back to them if you don't want. No one will know if you don't look that baby back into its eyes. It won't tell anyone, cuz it's a baby, I thought and then went weak in the knees, thinking of James and staring out that window instead of a baby.
And there's my duplex. Here's the stop, sorry, man, I've got to go, but call me later, okay Sara? OF COURSE, she replies, coughing into her coat and pretending.
She always pretends.
And I found out today that my gay neighbor Harry; his sister died. His mother was at his side of our house weeping, but I don't know Harry well enough to console either of them until she takes me into her arms. I make them dinner and she says,
"Lucy was a good girl, she was with a horrible slut of a man, but she was a good girl," and I've got to frown a little bit. I'm making them spaghetti and Harry is in the other room flipping channels, and I forgive him for not weeping over his sister, he is coping, I tell myself.
I pet his mother on the head, wipe her tears off a little bit and tell her something nice, something about love that I won't believe for a long time,
but that's how it is on
Fremont.

beautiful scandalous night

I was once a tired blonde waitress feeding three kids on my own. I was an old man driving a semi and knowing America. I was a secretary, a mistress sitting in an empty hotel room, being sent flowers and thinking sex was love. I was a 47-year-old surgeon cutting corners. I was once a lawyer looking out the window on the 13th floor and thinking I'd go back to Omaha one day.
And when I was done being all of these things you met me right where I was, and my heart was clean
like
bleach
white;
a young lady, cold but not unhappy.

You've been good to me.

wherever we are, we can't go back where we were

here's to calling it a night when you're waking up for the day, or not really being able to tell which is day and which is sleep.
here's to fake-falling-in-love, and falling out of real love.
here's to crash cymbals and other necessary evils.
here's to vitamins and head colds.
here's to cappuccinos in Orem and hearing Thrice at a Starbucks.
here's to waking up exhausted.

This is my ten minute break breakfast.

For about 3 or 4 days, I have forgotten the very word "Jar". I have forgotten what it is, or that there even was a name for it.
A "bottle" of paint thinner (turpenoid to be exact) broke or has been leaking in the cab of my truck, causing...fumes. Only I knew the shape of the "bottle" and it wasn't really a bottle. I was thinking it must be a glass, uh, can? I couldn't remember the word for it until tonight, as I was opening the door of my truck and smelling the turpenoid afresh that I realized it was in a JAR. What the heck.
Jars of jam.
Jars of clay.
Jars of peanut butter. Pears. Tomatoes in the root cellar in Illinois.
Why did I forget this word?
Maybe this is a statement on my condition of never sleeping.

I think one of Satan's big tricks is in making us forget that we know who we are.
I'm always walking around thinking, "I don't know who I am. Don't talk to me right now, I don't know who I am." I glance around the room, hoping for several smiles to put me back in my place and make me know that I'm really Rachel and that I have been for years and years.
Even standing on stage tonight (I don't get nervous. I'm just not nervous about playing very much) I suddenly forgot how to play Good to Me, even though we've played it 10000029i03 times, and then I'm like, "Well if I don't know how to play this song, then who the hell am I?"
But my identity is not all over the place. It is stationary in my relationship with Jesus, and in being a daughter of God.
Rock solid.

Audrey got baptized tonight which was pretty sweet, and we went over to her place (which is Sierra's house) and saw all of her cats.
And I think I've reached the end of a very long headache.

"I know that you would like-like to change me, make me softer:
tune your voice just like a baby. I'm using caution...
bet you wanted.
I wish you could wait to tell me in the morning."
coldwar kids

I don't really know what to do with myself when I am not at work, school, on campus, or in band practice.

Last night I got pho with Celisse and we went to Tony and Shannon's to watch Pride and Prejudice, and Audrey came over too. It just feels back to right. Back to normal.

And the snow, has been beautiful and doing brilliant things with the sky.

when I stopped running from Luke at the top of my lungs, I turned around and realized he wasn't chasing me. didn't have cigarettes in my bag, didn't have norma jean on my mp3 player.

and now I ride the train alone, I catch the 8:04 because I don't wait for someone who makes me smile.

status: 25 days left
weather: slightly warm
health: chest pains and droopy eyelids

apparently I write coherently but my theses are too vague. I get notes like, "Rachel, considering that this paper has such a terribly broad thesis and jumps around from film to film, you made it work quite successfully."
Maybe I need to make use of the writing center. I got style, I got pronunciation, but I can't figure out how to make a narrow thesis and use it for four pages...

"I've got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream."
-Fiona Apple

Handsome is somehow always a little friendly, and always a little rude. I think that's how I like most of the people in my life, but then it makes it harder to think of something to say to answer their questions.
He comments on how I am always there, every morning, making his coffee, and I think, at least I can be constant in one person's life, because I am not there for anybody really. I chase after someone who doesn't exist anymore.

I am going to California. I am going to do homework. I'm going to the gym.
There are little things to make us feel like we are not overwhelmed. Things that help me bite my tongue, and plant my feet. Things that keep my heart on defrost in the microwave, instead of letting it freeze at night out on the backporch.
It's gotta be the Bible, and it's gotta be So Sexy Shampoo that I can smell in her hair when I walk behind her that reminds me of the best days of my life.

"Tony! You came, I can't even believe it!"
"Well I told you that I would."
"I know, but a lot of people say that they will."
"Well this is at least my second favorite Starbucks." (Then he starts to count on his fingers) "Actually it's probably like, my 4th or 5th favorite..."

status: Thursday-26 days left.
weather: slightly less freezing than yesterday
drink: double tall signature hot chocolate (half SHC/half NF Milk), sub foam for whip, light caramel, sea salt)
sleep: four hours

Popping pills in the Marketplace (where Dr. Pepper is only 79 cents? What new mystery is this..) in my Starbucks uniform still, keeled over under my backpack. Five minutes till class.
Somehow my eyes are peeled wide awake; Kezar pops into the room in the middle of our quiz with a balloon, and starts sucking down helium.
"For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love," he says to a silent audience, like a chipmunk.
Class is over, "What did you say?" Nick asks me, and admits, "I'm sorry, I've been on mescaline all day." And then I pick a business man I can sit next to for 45 minutes, because they never want to talk unless its on a blue tooth. And it will be my pleasure to just not talk to you, you grumpy old man in a suit. I'll love you better for it.

of good medicine.

Tonight we went to see David Sedaris read, and it was fuzzy and warm and made my heart so glad. In general it was just such a good day, because I woke up and Lauren made me breakfast and we read our Bibles together for a little bit, before she dropped me off at school. I turned in my long paper on movies that are about underdevelopment in South America, and I met Alison's friend Saige for real and we sat by each other and watched a weird movie about a cow dying in Iran. Then I totally skipped Spanish class and met my parents, brother, and Jeremy and Aimee at RedRock and ate some very good hot wings.
(I'm leaving out the part where I left my phone in a bathroom, some girl picked it up and called my mom and I run back to the bathroom to see if it's still there--its not so I run to the Union and this dude says the chick will bring it back after her five o clock class--such an ordeal) But I had it, and then I left it in Jeremy's car for another two hours while we were at the reading. So at least 7 or 8 hours today I did not have my phone and it was like Heaven.

"To be lonely is a habit, like smoking or taking drugs,
and I've quit them both, but man was it rough.
And it just made me tired. Now I am tired."
-Jenny Lewis

Hannah and I got pizza last night and watched Bandits and a couple episodes of How I met your Mother. Today I'm gonna meet Alex at the gym, and eventually go to church.
I am very happy. Things have settled, and it's all downhill on a longboard from here.

where have you been all my life

I've been thinking about that a lot lately, at least, so much as I've been walking around this state with all my friends for years and years and never knew them. I wonder sometimes, what my close friends were doing a couple of years ago, before we met, and sometimes maybe we were walking along the same sidewalk, seconds apart, and never knew each other.
In the same movie theatre and had no idea that in later years we would share stories and laughter and take espresso shots together so much earlier in the morning than 95% of Utah could possibly be awake. True love, and where were you when I was hurting earlier on? How did I live so long before I knew you and you saved me from the horrifying melancholy tones of twilight, beyond, and the penetrating light of the stars that burn your souls from mountain tops.
(The answer is Jesus, but it's still an interesting question)

I don't know all the stories yet (well I know a couple of them, and it is constantly a puzzle I feel inclined to put together in my day-dreaming moments on the train, or when my English teachers are going off on the finer points of Yeats) but for instance, the other night I discovered Luke, (my TRAX "friend") and I had been at the same show at Boom Va in Ogden a few years ago. Fear Before the March of Flames had opened for Norma Jean I think, (I have since referred faithfully to this particular date as "The Very Worst Night of My Life") and I'd been in the car trying to convince Ashley that it was okay to go in, (she was nervous to see and be around Billy, they've since married and have their happily-ever-after) and she breathing fire, "DO NOT tell me to settle down, I hate that." (we were such different girls back then; drinking iced tan mochas and smoking prime times in sugarhouse...and I don't drink tan mochas at all these days) And she met up with Billy and I'd lost track of her, I was sitting on an effing chair in front of the merch table hoping some Merch dude wouldn't come and make me go away. I hadn't slept in over 48 hours because I was working graveyards and I'd played with Normandy on campus during the day, taking a short nap at Joey's house and just kept going and going. I saw Matt Nanes drifting in and out and in and out. I was crying because I had a cold, and I was genuinely thinking whether it was worth it to off myself in the bathroom at Boom Va or call a cab back to Salt Lake. In the parking lot later (it was so so so cold, I think it was late November maybe) at 1 a.m. and Matt Nanes volunteered to take me home "early". He was my hero that night. I thought maybe we should get married when we stopped at a gas station in Clearfield.
Anyways, Luke was there at that concert the whole time, and we probably ran into each other and didn't know it.
But thinking through this story I miss being 18 years old and everything being such a big deal for no reason at all except that it was so new.

And now I've been to the hardcore shows and gotten over the fact that none of my hair is bleached and that I'm a typically joyful person. I leave early and go to dollar movies and don't feel much regret over it, and all my friends are getting married so I don't have to even go to the Scream-o shows much. I have my own ideals from growing up across America and listening to Bob Dylan and Jenny Lewis. I have my own knight in shining armor who doesn't play guitar but maybe grew up in Ohio or somewhere midwestern but who still happens to wear designer jeans and drinks coffee much too much.

And I guess I'm going back to California for a little bit, which makes my heart feel slightly weightless. My face is permanently smiling today.

One thing that I love about these early Starbucks mornings is how I feel like I am making the most of my days. Seeing the sunrise, enjoying the world before everyone else wakes up.
Today we ran out of practically everything - like usual - and so Hannah let me go to another store to beg, borrow, and steal supplies. Also I had to go to Walmart with the company card to buy milk. I walked up to the register, all dressed in black, with 14 gallons of milk in my cart, and the company card was expired, but they somehow let me take the milk anyways. I was walking out the door when one of those creepy Walmart greeter guys chuckled at me and said, "Thirsty?" And I was confused because I'd forgotten about the 14 gallons of milk, and he had a cup of McDonald's coffee in his hand. I thought he was offering me some of his gross coffee, so I said, "Oh, no thank you." And then I walked out the door with 14 gallons of milk and realized what he was talking about and laughed.



It was a beautiful day of rain and mist, and the mountains are turning colors, but are now capped off with snow. The trees at the top are frozen into sugar and some one can go up there and make snow angels while we are still driving with our windows down, here in the valley.
So Kelsea and Caleb let me come with them up Little Cottonwood and we hiked for a bit, and then I ate dinner with them at Caleb's parents' house.

Its funny to spend time with your friend's parents and realize why they are exactly who they are.
But no matter how great Caleb is, I wouldn't love baseball for him.

Matt- I will look forward to our luncheon for the remainder of this morning and during my afternoon classes. It will sustain me.
Sincerely, Rachel

Rachel. The pho will sustain me just as much as the pleasure of your company will.
Regards,
Matthew

Matt, with the accordance to the Utah Clean Air act, I suspect neither of us will be smoking during our company. Thank you, Rachel

Rachel, the surgeon general reports that smoking is bad for our health. Please don't smoke if you are pregnant. With all due respect,
Matthew

Matthew: I already knew that. I am pregnant with the surgeon general's baby. I was more concerned about second hand smoke.
Yours truly, Rachel

Dear Rachel, I was hoping to be a surgeon general one day and make someone pregnant. Thanks, Matthew.

Matthew, I hope you fine some new goals in life.
Appalled,
Rachel

you've been saying that since the day we met

Last night we were listening to In Rainbows by Radiohead as Nick was chopping avocados. Stesha and I were sitting on the stools eating pieces of cheese and bits of vegetables here and there, and I said passively, "I don't own this album, and I've only heard it through a couple times, but I feel like I know every single song and that I've been listening to it my entire life." And then Nick actually listened to an entire sentence I said, and responded to me.
"Hahner, I know this sounds weird, but it's your heart song. It's like your heart knows it, and was meant to understand it, and the beating of your heart is in sync with it."
I've never heard Nick say anything like that, and it gave me chills. And I've been mulling on it all day today as we played music for Sandy church and then hung out as a band at Dan's house.
I've stayed away from Radiohead because it hurts my soul.
But maybe I should pull out the old albums and let it be.

"This conversation is making me uncomfortable... or, actually I just need to go to the bathroom."
-Hannah B.

napping and other fine things

Yes. I took a nap. Didn't get to play in Fillmore with my band, but I guess I needed the rest and stuff. And at the moment I feel like everything is in good control (which is amazing; I never feel that way. Which, I know things will go careening the other direction by next week but they feel so balanced right now) I hung out with Tony and Shannon and Bryan last night, like we used to. It felt good like old times. We got the Pie and went back to T & S' house to play Clue. Kristyn L. and Celisse played several games with us.
Today I worked a long long long time, but Darrell and Courtney made it pretty dece and I feel like things are semi straightened out, as far as I left Jessie another really long note about maybe getting less hours.
Nap, strange dreams, church. I sat with Bryan's mom which for some reason just felt the most natural out of anything, and her whole family was pretty much in Fillmore except for Brandon who paced around the room the entire time.
Then Philip and I went to Nick's and he made some pretty great nachos and showed us his sweet amp and then disappeared to smoke a pipe and
my band is playing tomorrow so I'm going to bed.

Parting is all we know of Heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson

give up and let me go

If I could somehow go through the last three days, and give you a photo montage it would be something like this, set to Cowboy Robot.
It starts with me in bed early on night up early Saturday, saying I'm okay, okay, okay. I drink 6-10 shots of espresso at work with Darrell...then suddenly I'm in the mountains, it is raining, and I am far far away. (Cowboy Robot comes in, I'm on the second go around with this album) My truck is fishtailing up this dirt gravel road and I think, "I'm really going to die alone. Like really, this time." But with a few more expletives than that.
I get to the Big Canyon music fest in the middle of nowhere, right as I can hear Revolution Medicine starting I slam my car door shut, wave at Paul and run through the trees, Kelsea's voice coming through the rain. (Yes, so dramatic and romantic, and my lungs giving out). I sit in Kaylene's arms for a moment and pull myself together. Kels and Collin and Caleb play an amazing set in the pouring rain, Kaylene and I huddled under an umbrella.
I go back down those mountains alone.
We graduate to I'm at church nervously drinking water, then at Olive Garden part 2 with Celisse, Alex, and Hannah Porter. I've had 2 more cups of caffeine, and I'm eating dinner with 3 of probably the most cynical people I know, which is good. I can't think straight, I fall asleep in my hot tub by accident.
Sunday-- I spend the entire day in bed, besides one hour at the gym that doesn't help anything. I start to think I'm having a relapse of my first semester of college when I throw off the covers and go to Shannon's house, and my D'Amicos heal me.
Then I sleep in today, get my contacts (I can finally finally finally see). I get my dose of Vitamin Kayleigh and grab coffee at work before going to the U.
After Spanish class, one of my classmates starts talking to me at the TRAX station, and we become friends by accident when we both get on the wrong trains. He's a young music snob, so we both have something in common, and we keep each other safe from creepy transients.
And then hookah with my buddies and like a hundred episodes of How I met your Mother.

So everything fell apart and came back together. And I'm happy again. And I'm taking all of this one day at a time, because it will come together one day when I'm back in the Midwest and smiling and tan.


"Dave, you look tired... like you've been babysitting all day."
-J.J.

missing the d'amicos

I was sitting there, flipping through Tegan and Sara's (er, I mean Tony and Shannon's) wedding photos when all the sudden I came across a picture of 3-year-old Shannon stuck in the box.
"Awwww. Shannon, look at you. You're so cute!" and she just laughs, and Tony is sitting quietly next to me studying the picture.
After a long pause, he says, "Our kids are going to be so ugly."
And I can't remember how we ever stopped hanging out.


"And he texts me and says, "How do you fix a broken jack-o-lantern" and I thought he was using a metaphor for his broken heart, so I told him to drive across town and throw it at a mailbox. But it turned out that it was a joke, and the answer was "Take it to a pumpkin patch".
-Tony

A note to the girl whose photo is on the cover of my Spanish book:
you look so creepy. why are you making that face?

A message to that creepy guy who came and sat next to me on TRAX when there were plenty of seats all over the place (not next to me):
Get a life and quit creeping people. It's the 90's bro.

An apology to a girl I didn't used to think was cool, but was there for me today at Starbucks when I was literally falling apart:
I am really sorry about not thinking you were cool til today. I should give people more chances than I do.

And a silent thought I'm transmitting to the Teacher's Assistant who was looking at my notes while she sat next to me:
Just because I'm an English major doesn't mean I can always spell. Specially when I've been hungry for twelve hours.

tonight the trains were less creepy and more friendly.
the people on them, I mean.

my little mechanical engineer friend who I sit next to in film class (she might be Korean? she's awful cute for someone who makes rocket boosters for ATK) brought popcorn and I brought some candy and we watched Central Station (a pretty darn good Brazilian film).

We discussed Pablo Naruda's poetry in spanish class, in spanish. It is much harder to dissect a poem, written in another language, while speaking in another language.

it was a good long hard day. and I'm getting used to this life. Even liking it.


"I long for my father. I long for everything."
-Dora, Central Station

It was good to hang out at Nick's last night. I didn't feel so much like the stranger I've become. I chatted with Stesha, enjoying the smell of pumpkin candles, and her fall decorations.
It is home.
She and Nick, the ocean books on the coffee tables...it can melt my bones sometimes.

Time is going by so quickly. And I don't want to lose it to anything but Jesus.
My memories hurt, and my future hurts, but there is constantly Jesus, ready to hold me.

"I was born secular and inconsolable. I heard that He walked the earth.
And God goes, where He wants.
And who knows where He is not
in me."
-Jenny Lewis

head.ache.

ouch. I'm so over having a headache every day.
Give me back my life.

"If both of these horses is to lay up and die," he thinks to himself as he stares into the sun.
His companion's been bleedin' and he's weeping to himself thinking, "Oh my sweet Sue, I won't be coming home now."
-the snake the cross the crown

I think the irritation started somewhere in English 3701 when my asshole teacher said something about myths of a world flood. Add to that a headache from a lazy contact prescription, my body trying to fall asleep in my classes, and my neck craned over Geoffrey Chaucer's General Prologue for several hours on Trax....and I'm cranky.

I've gotten to the part of life again where I can't just walk away. And I hate that.
Being tied down.

But I think God just wants me to stay here.
We had a good band practice, and ended early and just spent time praying for a while. It was refreshing, and I guess unifying.
I can live with tomorrow.

vidas secas = totally boring
No ripped Brazilians. The movie was slow and painstaking. The hard part about taking a foreign film class, is when it's boring, you can't shut your eyes because then you can't read the subtitles. What to do. What to do?

And then I ran into Jess Braiker at college. I saw her sometime during my first year at SLCC when when we were playing a show as "Normandy" at the Union at the U. (This during the RockU days, when music was fun but everything else was really going horribly wrong wrong wrong.) So that was pretty much two years ago. She is thin, and very, very chill. Like, she really is a hippie.
I pretended to be a hippie when we were best friends. And I mean, I did a pretty good job what with the recycling, the tie-dye, glasses...so on and so fourth. But she has really carried this thing full-term. She's legit. And I grew up to be a....German. A regular one. Becoming more and more conservative, probably. But she kept saying, 4 years ago this, and 4 years ago that. And it's really been 4 years? I am starting to feel old. Dang it. I still feel 16 almost everyday.
To be continued.

I just finished a little hot tub therapy with "expired" Naked Orange-Mango Juice from the Bucks and I am in repose. Til 5am.

Gute Nacht.

Me: I totally want to come to the movie tonight. I think I have my homework in the bag.
Jason: This is stupid to ask, but do you mean, "homework in the bag" like the figure of speech, or do you literally have homework in your bag that needs to be done?"
Me: Both.
Jason ( 4 minutes later) : I feel retarded for asking, but its like, the first way implied that you got it taken care of and out of the way, whereas the literal way means the opposite. So I racked my brain, and did what anyone in my place would do- Chacha'd it. They didn't give me a good answer, so I am forced to ask you again.

Lord you know I'm ready to be found.

It was a hard week. I'll admit it now. I got maybe 5 hours of sleep a night, which was partly my fault, but partly I barely have any time to sleep. So much homework. So much work, and I keep missing the trains. It causes a lot of anxiety. But I'll get it all worked out, I'm pretty sure.

My class ended at 3:30pm yesterday, and I got some lunch with Matt Nanes which we can do on Tuesday/Thursday because of our class schedules. Then he will usually ride the train with me til he reaches the Starbucks that Ashlie works at. After that I met my dad at the Gallivan center for the last twilight show (Neko Case). He has a mild obsession with her music. He took pictures of her during soundcheck and then chased her down to get her to sign one of her albums that he has. And then later on, she played really well with her band. It was a fun show and we could see really well from the spot my dad staked out. I also met up with Hannah from work, saw Lauren and Dax, caught Alison for a second which was crazy, and then at the end Kayleigh, Dave and Jason showed up. It was like a huge party for Salt Lake City. It was wild.

And then tonight I rode down to Provo with Alex and Bryan and went to church with them.
Life is pretty dece, mostly because I get to sleep in tomorrow.
Peace.

I think that I will end up spending a lot of time commuting. But this isn't necessarily bad.

uh.... yeah. Cinnamon applesauce is so good, and text messages from friends who broke your heart a long time ago, and always learning. It's so beautiful, this strange life.
It's such a long way of walking with blisters on your feet to settle down and figure out that in the end


you are really fine about everything.

"Now, go away. My advil is wearing off."

My last day of freedom. But for once it doesn't look as scary as it used to because I will only be going full time this semester and then taper off after that. Or anyways, that's the plan right now. I've been sleeping so much today. I found out that I had today off (instead of working 11 days straight) which is pretty much awesome. If you give me even one day off from work, I will beg to go back. It's funny. I finally decided at 3pm to make a cup of coffee cuz I keep falling back asleep and just the smell of the coffee made me yearn - yes I just said yearn - to go back to work tomorrow.
Possibly I think I'm anemic.
Okay. I'm going back to bed or something.

she said the city's not for sleeping

uh. What I am mostly disappointed in is how quickly the fire and burning leaves your mouth after eating things with hazardous amounts of sriracha in them.

Also I am thinking that I like learning new things and meeting new peoples and having experiences and that this is a good time of life.
I hold on to things loosely, especially everything.

"Behind her skin is actually a boy."
-Noah at age 10, commenting on the olympics

how I feel about when people don't have their myspace profiles set to private.

It makes me pretty happy. And sneaky. I like finding out about them because they don't know I'm finding it out. And sometimes they have funny jokes.

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I'm sort of excited for school to start again. Hopefully I'll be a better student this time around. I think I didn't get excited til yesterday when whole milk two splenda guy came through our drive through. He never talks but lately he's been opening up to me about the economy and such. I hand him his coffee and he tells me that we're doing alright in Utah. He says something about how his students told him with all the coffee he buys he should just invest $6 a day in Starbucks Stock and he laughs, and I ask him what he teaches. He tells me he teaches language to the army, and my interest is suddenly peaked by
a) army
b) language
because I love language and I always wanted to join the army. But anyways, he starts telling me how you can make bank if you know Chinese. So maybe I will finish learning Spanish and then move on to Chinese. And move to California and travel. For fun, you know?
So school doesn't make me as pissy as it used to, is the moral of my story.
And I drink too much coffee.
The End.

Oh wait.

"If I dressed sluttier I'd sell more aprons...but they won't let me."
-Hannah Porter

My phone died at the Pho restaurant, which was a little bit distracting the rest of the night. But the pho was good. Really good.

Celisse and I went to watch people play basketball. I don't play anymore mostly because I'm too lazy to get dressed and I really haven't been running much lately. I can't keep up like I used to. I don't know when I started getting out of shape but I did.

We slept for ten hours. I like to spend the night with Celisse when I get a day off because we just sleep and sleep and sleep and then roll out of bed at 10 when our bodies hurt from lying in bed, and we go get something to eat. Her house is quiet, cuz she doesn't have younger siblings. Her dogs don't bark. We ate some wedding cake she brings home because she is a cake decorator now.

Leaning my body out the window, I start thinking about working at a different bank again, to make more money. Or even, gulp, someday going back to work for IHC. The hospital. Becoming a phlebotomist or something.
But for now, everything is very good.

Also, I just thought this was funny. It's a snippet from a Q & A on the Guide blog on Cha Cha (yes, I'm working for ChaCha. It's actually semi-addicting)

"Dear Guide: I’ll agree with you that those “how many” questions can be tough, especially at the blazing speed ChaCha likes to deliver our answers. But I won’t say impossible. Everything is possible with enough time and coffee.

Of course, we don’t always have enough time or espresso to plumb the depths of the Internet for an answer. So let me offer some quick suggestions..."

"Who the hell is Kaylene?" Nick once said when he had been talking to her for fifteen minutes.
I laugh about it still.

I'm playing memory games with little pieces I forgot and I forget. Maybe I'm trying to categorize tonight, like Elijah Wood in "Everything is Illuminated", sticking things in ziploc bags and stapling them to the wall.

Number one: the smell of the really awful coffee we made at the hospital, and just how the air felt at one in the morning there. I would dip Lorna Dunes in the coffee and try to stay awake, charting vitals. How heavy your eyelids feel when you know you'll be up til 7:30 a.m. The dinging bells of the call lights. Making small talk about Texas with John. He was one of those people I got to know so well. Like when you know everything they're going to say next and all their jokes, and what makes their heart feel heavy when they wake up.

Number two: How I would feel driving to the hospital. Awful. It was dark and the air was hard. But how I would feel driving home; like I had changed the world. And I miss that feeling. I miss that direction and how it was who I was. And how I hated it.

Number three: Starting at Chase. It was hot and smelled good and it was easy to park, and I felt older. Going to the U and the awful headaches, and learning how to put my arms and legs on in the morning and having the most complicated relationships of my entire life, and how easily it all fell together. Learning how to just turn off how I feel: priceless.

That's all and so much for tonight.

Today I turned down an interview to be a shift manager. I had been planning to go to it all weekend, but just didn't have peace about it. In the end, I think it would be just too much with going to school full time, and being in a band that is like another part time job. Jason, I think, talked me out of it the most last night when he said something to the effect of "Shit girl, when are you going to have time to breathe?"

The truth is, I don't even know what to do on my days off any more. I live at Starbucks. I sleep there. I will probably get married at Starbucks and raise children there.
Oh dear. I am delirious.

20 days left before I have to go back to school. DANG.

It's been quite a few days of having this blood blister under my fingernail. My thumbnail. Slammed it in a register. Nails take a long time to grow. It's been 18 days and it has only floated a twelfth of an inch higher.

Things take a long time to change.

Like bad habits. 21 days or something to quit a bad habit? 21 days of that empty feeling in your gut of living without that habit.
But how many days will it take for me to look at your face and convince myself that I'm not in love with you? The muscles in my heart snapping and ripping and my stomach clenched up, my appetite gone. The bruise; the hematoma that will form in my chest, and the high-necked shirts I will wear to cover it up. How many days of that?
I'm not going to pretend that
I'm going to give in to that yet.
The bruise.
The shaking.

I don't know what to say. It's too hot to think, or to even tell the truth all the time. It's like why bother getting involved in anything this week when it is just so much effort and you could blow up fireworks in the drive-thru in your hometown anyways.

Maybe when school starts and it gets cold I won't think so much and so hard.
I'll go running.
I won't cut my hair.
All the people will keep holding hands, and they won't remember about real love and how it finds you under the blacklight. They won't remember about how it happens in between cigarettes and iPhones and the endless winter you thought you'd forgotten about.

Rich shots of espresso.

We'll get back to the way things worked.

Kayleigh-isms

"Dude, Rachel, are you so excited for this moment of tonight?"


"We will continue this in the next text. But leave right now to come to the D.I. We are almost everywhere."


"You are too dope to be the pope.. sorry it's the only thing that rhymed."

kind of funny

"Keaton told them to maybe stop doing heroine, and they wanted to fight us. So we left." -Ashlie
"Well I couldn't have fit in that spot anyways." -Keaton

"Do you realize the fun level of THIS!" -Nick, on Raging Waters 2008, or RA08 as he coined it. Which as usual makes no sense because it would've been RW08.

"Jeff - well I know he's my brother - but he's just not living up to the expectation lately."
-Jason

I'm not writing very coherently lately, and sometimes I wish I could go back to a place where my writing had good flow and was clear and had clear voice.

I'm taking iron nowadays but the bruises haven't stopped. I'm like an apple falling around the produce section with so many bruises by now that nobody wants to buy me because they know that I'm just squishy.

They have this thing in Utah called Pioneer day to celebrate people trekking it to Utah to colonize. I like it because it's another excuse to light off fireworks and have another BBQ and your friends drink beer and tell good stories.
Celisse and I had breakfast at IHOP and this guy threw over pans of dishes and smacked his fist on our exact table walking out. I was thinking it was probably a disgruntled employee. Celisse thought he'd come back with a gun. (It is the west side after all) And I was picturing us on national news. All our friends would know we died at IHOP and they'd have some bad picture of us and Bryan would know Celisse didn't stop in to say hi to him even though IHOP is in his Walmart's parking lot and he would hold a grudge with her about it to the grave.
But we made it through breakfast and took her shiatsus for a walk. Is that how you spell shitzu? Bless you.
I worked with Jessie and Jason towards the end of Sammy's shift. I think she smokes in the bathroom but I haven't collected enough evidence yet to confront her about it. I actually don't care that much. She should be able to smoke in the bathroom if she really wants to. It's the small things in life.

So then we had the barbeque and all sat on Nick's patio just laughing and enjoying life, and it's one of those things I wish I could freeze and just never change. I want us to always be able to do that and I don't really care if we never grew up and had kids and got real jobs with 401k's. I just want to be able to smoke on the back porch of Nick's duplex and plan adventures to Mexico til the end.
Is it too much to ask?

And this love isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration...

I could start at the beginning.
Yesterday I was working at Caitlin's Starbucks because they were short and I needed the hours. It was good, they actually let me bar and this guy who looked like Jack from LOST was running the drive through. It was a little unnerving, because everytime he said something like, "We need to rebrew coffee" I just took him so serious because you just do everything Jack says. He's our leader.
Anyway, he was Presbyterian and when no one else was around we were sort of talking about it, and I told him we'd moved here to start the Rock and he's like, "Oh, so you're a Christian, do you mind if I ask you what you believe gets you into Heaven?" And I freaked out cuz a customer walked in the door and so I just leaned over and whispered, "I am saved by grace." And his face turned into the sunlight. "AMEN! SISTER. If there was anything you could have said!" And he gave me a high five and that was that. We didn't say anything else about it and I left at the end of my shift.
Also I saw Lisa (a nurse I used to work with from the hospital). And it really just bought back a flood of memories and raw emotion that I'd forgotten I'd had. I started asking her all these questions. I want to go back and see John and Joe and Alex. A part of my heart belongs at that hospital and I left it there, and it's really hard to know what to do about that.

So I worked at Caitlin's store and then went to meet Celisse at her house now that she's home but there was a huge storm out there and I kept getting lost cuz it's the freakin' west side. Ha ha ha. We were kind of both pissed off for different reasons while we ate Chinese food together. I think that's why we're such good friends. Cuz we can hang out pissed off and be totally fine with it.
Then Jessi calls and tells me that Shonna's best friend Maren died, which is heartbreaking. She is just only a little bit older than me, and Shonna's always talking about her, and which college she was going to, and being diebetic. I felt like I knew the girl, and it's just one more reminder that life is short, and you never know when it's going to be. Never.

So I closed the store because they needed help, and then opened this morning which was creepy but endurable. And I realize that I would just pick to work all the time, and is that healthy, and what does it say about me.
There is so much more that is going on right now, but I'm just going to call it a night and eat some spaghetti.

It's an escapade in a different language. Juggling knives drunk under the deceitful smell of Dolce and Gabbana. Don't act like you don't remember.
Lighting matches and lighting up the room
and listening close to what you don't say during the silence on the patio in the middle of the day.
I loved you always but I never want to see you
in all my bad dreams.
With head a c h e s.
I want you to believe the frozen state and that I don't change. Don't come after me and think I'll change. Don't count on me not to hurt your feelings when the windows are shut.
I
can't
always
do
it.
But I'll be sorry everyday. I'll be the mistress and I'll be glory when everything is over.
The cupcake in it's wrapper.
The newspaper on the front door.
Damn, I'll-be-yes-reliable. What I would give if you
would just know my passwords and what I'm going to say next.

Originally uploaded by maneeacc

This is how I feel right now. And I want to sleep for a couple days. And I don't want to answer the phone anymore. Just want to wear a headband and smoke cigarettes at night time.

how I think I'm doing
at house sitting:
like, 6 out of 10.

The dogs are miserable. They are way stressed from not having anyone home that actually loves them. They make me miserable. (Don't get me wrong, I love dogs. One at a time) But other than that, I like having the place to myself. It makes me want to move out.

Randal is out of town, so at the last minute yesterday, we had Bryan come to our practice and he's playing drums for us, which is pretty much awesome. We played Provo tonight, and I thought it went really well, and we're playing again tomorrow. (Darling) Hannah (from work, cuz she always says Darling, and I have a lot of Hannahs these days) and I are getting sushi tomorrow, and I'm just plain tired tonight.
No new bruises.

I like closing sometimes because I get to sleep in and go to the gym and I feel like I really didn't have to work very much cuz I'm not tired.

Today we found out that my cat was boarded up under the house. She'd crawled under the house and my dad was painting and sealed up a hole that had been there for a while, and apparently she didn't realize he was doing that. It was funny. We let her out and she was fine.

Anyway. I closed with Shonna, and she's great. Jason came and visited us and ended up staying for 4 hours, which is a bonus. Kelsea came in and hung out too.

Pretty much my life is great and I have nothing to complain about except allergies.
And sometimes I think about packing up and moving to Seattle. But I have a lot of years to try that, probably.

And, Lisa, I forgot to tell you that I love you.
And Lisa, I forgot to tell you I love you more than Rachel does, or anyone else. I love you more than your family probably. Your husband and kids.
That's not that hard, my family doesn't love me that much.
What? your daughter Melissa loves you!
Yeah, but she's annoying.

Time Out

Okay. I got my shifts covered today and tomorrow so I'm settling down a little bit. Getting enough sleep that I'm not a cranky robot, and I've just been playing so much Mob Wars on Facebook that my brain is probably melting.
Yes, I admit, I did wake up at 2 am and 3:30 am to do a couple quick jobs to earn some money really quick and went back to sleep. But I was able to buy an Armored Range Rover today, so it was all worth it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, get addicted.
ADD ME TO YOUR MOB! :)

Um. Yeah. Been playing a lot of basketball, going to the gym, and my hair is growing. I'm pretty happy.

Oh yes. Today I also went to lunch with my old coworker from Chase (Kristie). We had enchiladas and talked about the downfall of that Chase branch. I said hi to everyone there, but my old boss George didn't even smile at me. It's sort of sad. But people make their own hell sometimes. Tanya came out to lunch with us. (Russian Tanya. My former ABM) She's working at Key now. We're both happier.

And this is the end for now.

It's a good thing to have underwear.

Kayleigh and I hit the wall at about 10 today. Somewhere in between her putting a straw in my mouth while I was talking to customers and her screaming "baller" at the top of her lungs...I realized she'd lost her mind. She dared me to down an energy packet, and of course I said of course, but only if I could chase it with a shot, and pretty soon every partner in the store had an energy packet and a shot, ready to go, and one of our customers took a picture. We all went at the same time and Kayleigh snorted the energy packet and the espresso shot right back out her nose. In front of a Middle-Eastern woman who was waiting at the register.
Only Middle Eastern people and very rich business people buy cappuccinos anymore. I don't know why.
Kayleigh probably still has vitamin B and Ginseng up her nose. I don't ask questions.

But this is my life now. I stay too many hours, and I come home and don't go to bed, like I think something special will happen if I stay awake. Sleep is a thing of the past. I am gradually dying, but I'm the happiest person I can remember being, these last three years.

safe from all the horrors of your stinging velvet arms

Today is my first day off. I work 9 more days in a row. I don't think they realize all the overtime I've been getting, or they'd give me more time off. 49 hours last week. At least I made good tips...and I haven't had time to think, again.

So today I slept in til 9:30, watched some (guilty pleasure) Grey's Anatomy, and went to the gym for a decent workout. My family is gone to the farm except my dad, so we've been chilling and having fun. Eating Chinese food and enjoying the peace. Its weird. I clean the bathroom and I smile because I realize no one will come in and mess it up. It's a beautiful thing.

Some of the beautiful things about being alone, number one being:
-clean bathroom, then
-not sharing money
-my schedule doesn't depend on anyone else

I don't like being alone. I'm just saying that I'm enjoying these things while they last. Enjoying independence.

I'm living my life in a series of alarm clocks. 4:15 am. 5 am. 7:30am. 5:17 am.
My phone goes off and then the actual alarm clock across the room.
Wash my eyes with warm water/contacts/pull on my stockings clear up to my knees. Headband, polo shirt, eggs and toast.
Two shots of espresso over whipped cream and caramel sauce...

Press repeat and shake in a couple band practices and naps and more alarms so that I'm not late for stuff. Venti size that. Sugar free. Every morning since I came back from Heaven.

I'm not complaining. I stay out of trouble and I like playing music. So much good has come out of changing jobs that its not even funny. But my boss even told me yesterday (or the day before? they're all the same) that she thought I was a workaholic.
"Yeah..."I said, laughing.
"Well I'm not complaining," she said, also laughing.
Free drinks for everybody. Gotta pay back the man for all the fun I've had. And miles to go before I sleep.
Miles to go before I sleep.

In California, does it all start, or does it all end?

I guess that depends on if you are from Germany or Russia or Mexico or Spain.
I'm from the Midwest, respectively. I guess.

I had a great time with Celisse. We ate too much, talked a lot or not at all. Cooked, ran, moved mattresses in Elevators that were much too small. Parked a U-Haul in a handicapped spot... swam on the roof of a hotel, ate ribs, drank champagne, dined with rich people, and I got free pants.



It's back to business.

Initially, my biggest excitement about going to college was that you could go to the bathroom whenever you want. I told this to Jace who was graduated when I was going into Senior year of highschool. He agreed with me, and also appreciated how good Mac n' Cheese was. He had a job where he could eat as many Nabisco Oreos as he wanted. He worked from 3 am on and got off early during the day. I ended up in a similar position to Jace. I got to eat as many Oreos as I wanted, and I worked from 11pm to 7am. We both got tired of Oreos, but he went on a Mission to who-knows-where for the LDS church and I started working for the bank instead of the hospital.
Nowadays I encourage my brother that in college you get to go to the bathroom whenever you want, and you also can get V8 out of the vending machines. It's a good deal, I guess.

I conditioned my hair for the first time today since January. Swimming a lot made it fried, sort of. So I had to.

Okay. So in conclusion, today I decided that its okay to give up sometimes. AS IN, its okay to not take your bass home, thinking you'll practice. It's okay that you know deep down that you won't practice. Its okay to admit to Alex, when he writes home, that you haven't been very faithful with your scales. And, it's okay to wear the same socks two days in a row.
And its okay to eat potato chips.
And its alright to admit you have an addiction to Starbucks. There are many like you.

A lot of people were looking at Tegan and Sara and wanting to kiss them, or just really really enjoying their music.
And I was too, but mostly, I just want to be them. Well, Tegan specifically cuz I like her haircut better. But the glamour just gets to me. I WANT IT. I want the tattoos and the hair, and playing amazing music and traveling the country, and being from Canada, and looking cold and wearing jackets. I want it all.
I feel 16 again.


I need the revolution medicine.

It's just like....
be who you are. Stop locking me out already.

Whatever. I'm not 17 anymore.

What I'm doing these days:
1) Working a lot. I'm working both jobs shamelessly. Sort of shamelessly. It's like I am unfireable from Chase. I took a $9000 loss the last week I worked. And they still haven't given me the boot. I think George is in denial that I quit over a month ago, because they haven't even interviewed for my position yet. OH WELL! Not my problem.

2) Loving Starbucks? And this is the part where I admit that I am going through my workaholic phase that I do every year to get over, or get under, or go through some kind of trial. Throw all that angry-sad-crazy energy into a job. Pay the bills. Fall in lerve with coworkers named Kayleigh that scream a lot and sing and dance and throw espresso shots on top of caramel macchiatos. Lerve. Not love. Not homosexual...

3) Taking tums: to coat over that hole in my throat from being sick. Being sick is/was gross.

4) Trying not to think about what love is. Or butterflies...or...crap. I'm thinking about it.

5) Eating ramen noodles with Siracha sauce, dreaming about Celisse coming back into my life for the weekend. (Tegan and Sara show, H-yeah) Getting up in the morning. Pretending I feel good every day. Meeting God when and where I can (Could you come down and chat with me God, all I know is Grey's Anatomy 2nd Season and dress codes and matches lighting cigarettes that I don't smoke all the way down.. Have I even smoked in over a week?)

6) I know, number six. But I forgot that all I do is play music over and over. In Tooele even. WHAT IS THAT! Tooele is on the other side of the freakin' Salt Lake. And Rain. And bass, and pics in my cupholders.

7) remember when you were with us? You hung out? And you weren't pregnant? You dyed your hair brown and we were in the mountains, and we were still little girls?

8) Okay. I'm done now, saying.

I think Jesus has tattoos.
Or my image of him has tattoos. Right now it does. I think my image of Jesus changes from time to time to match the kind of person I'm most comfortable with.
Eventually Jesus won't have tattoos anymore, is maybe what I'm saying.
Jesus is a doctor, but one who's not in it for the money. And one who's not tired.

I'm sick. I don't get sick very often, and when I do it's pretty awful. I've only been sick twice since I was 15. I feel like I'm being punished, but maybe God is just trying to teach me compassion again, because I forgot about it.

I want to go home. Wherever home is.

If I ever learn how to commit, then maybe it's time for me to get a tattoo.
That's what I've noticed, anyway.
The people I know that have tattoos got some sorta commitment going on.
Yeah.

Small blessings from God, on a Friday:
-not seeing Oliver
-Flight of the Conchords
-Gold Oreos
-night running with Jack
-the end of a very long headache
-texts with Alison and Celisse
-Venus razors
-White peony tea from Surfas

the end.

This is the part where the drums come in.

I get these regrets about where I am, and then I get past them. But still.
I worry constantly...
maybe because I have nothing else to think about? Everything seems like a lot of work and I just think too much.

And this is the part that I wish I'd move away and never come back.
No expectations. No standards. No pictures on the wall.
A human eraser.

I've been spending way too much time in nostalgia lately.

It started when I put in an Ani DiFranco CD and went back to Senior year, alone with so many people in that horrible aerobics room, in the morning. The floor smelt like it was burning. Running alone. The sad looks from Babbo that I still recognize on other peoples faces, here and there, in passing, at 2 in the morning or in my sleep at night.
Those songs from Ani were weighing my heart heavier by 5 or 6 pounds, and then that was that, for a couple days.

And then driving through Kearns today with Celisse I remembered Brian O'Rourke's water polo game that we came "way" out to. Junior year. Flashbacks of me and Kelsea and Brian. Or Jordan. Or Linnea.
It makes me homesick for a place that doesn't exist.

The hard part, after losing those friends, is to remember to treasure the people you are with. Trying to hold them down in your arms and whispering, "Please don't go...please don't go." To love them enough that they won't leave you.
Can you stop the fallout?

Part B of Today, because my hair is coloring

My allergies are killing me.
Celisse is in town for her friend's wedding, and I've been watching her put together the cake. I don't know what I'll do when I won't be able to see her all the time. My seams will come undone.

And.
What about getting old? The skin that's holding me together right now is going to get old some day, and where am I even going to be, then? WHERE.
This man came into the bank today, and I thought he was drunk for a while, because he was having a really hard time forming words and thinking straight. He But after a minute I was starting to tell that he was deeply sad, and it sort of killed me. He wasn't old or young, he was just a man.
"Some people are just good," he started saying to me. "They shouldn't have to go."
"Did you lose someone?" I asked him.
"Yes.."
"I'm sorry," I told him. And I meant it. His eyes were red, and I don't know if I've ever seen someone that heartbroken in a really long time. To see in his face that life was just hard. That words were hard to choke out. That writing down letters on a paper was hard. That getting from here to there was just...hard. I started crying as he walked out the door, and I didn't even know what had happened to him. Didn't know who she was, or how she belonged to him.

And--
I still don't know where ANY of this is going. The only thing I seem to know these days is that nothing is consistent, and that everything I take root in is washed away. But I guess that is God for you. I guess it's called starting over, and that's what I said I wanted, didn't I.

A) I wish my hair was longer
b) I wish it was warmer outside
C) why do naps sound sooo good these days?
d) I wish I had a teleporter. Just saying.



"I have to go to the bathroom--just real quick--would you like a banana, orange, tomato, apple or a cookie?" -Celisse

I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours

Sometimes today just automatically feels better than yesterday even though nothing has changed. At all.
Well...roughly 155,000 people have died, and that many have been born (or more), the world really hasn't changed that much. The mass is the same. But then I've got a cup of coffee in my hands, and everything is so much better. The windows are open, work is over, and 6 billion people are dealing with their problems, but maybe I am one of the 1 billion people that is just waking up again and living a normal life, because I don't have that much to lose. I mean, anything could get worse, but I don't have a husband or kids to lose.
That's kind of morbid. I was just thinking, when this lady came into the bank and told me her son died, that by having nothing, I also can't get that heartbroken. I'm sorry, Lady.

I feel good, I'm kind of trying to say. The windows are down, I was trying to say.
And I sort of quit smoking (I've never been a smoker). But on Tuesday I gave Tony all the cigarettes that I compulsively buy. But I smoked a Primetime with Malinda before class. But that doesn't count.

Mostly, everyday, I just feel bad for George. I get more and more attached to him, and feel so bad at what a terrible mess I'm leaving him. And Tanya will leave. And Kristie will leave.
Daaaaang.
I pray for him.

Okay, I haven't left yet.
Some sketch thoughts.

-I feel really really bad for George (my manager). I don't know if I've had so much compassion for a person deep inside me in a long time. We are all leaving him and I don't know what else to do but stay extra hours when I can.

-two people have recently started talking to me again (as opposed to the silent treatment I've gotten) Tanya (took two days), and Nick, who has been mad at me for a few months.
I don't like when people are mad at me.

-the weather isn't helping anyone's life get better. snow? what?

Okay so. I gave my boss notice that I was leaving on Saturday. George was totally bummed. But I did give him three weeks notice. Although, I probably should have put more time into thinking all of this out (because of the mess that it has been, and the late nights of staring at the ceiling), I went to a job fair at Starbucks, that day, after work. I interviewed less than 3 hours after quitting the bank. I come back to the bank Monday (Yep, I worked 6 days in a row and only got 1 day off) and everyone except Dax and Kristie are shunning me. The district manager is the devil, trying to whisper in my ear and get me to stay, indirectly making judgments on my character and making it sound like the right thing to do to stay in the hellhole that the branch is.
Ahh. But after two days of being "shunned" I gladly accept the job at Starbucks.
I'M GETTING OUT!!
Anyways. I've had quite a couple sleepless nights.
But I am going to California to hang out with a wonderful girl and eat sushi and see the ocean.
Bon Voyage.

"So, anything interesting happen?"
"Well, JeNae has eaten a dog."
"What?!"
"Not a whole dog."

It's almost the end.



I think?

This is the aforementioned seawood soup with noodles. I eat it, like, every other day or something.

What do I have to say or what am I saying.

I am excited about seawood soup, clean laundry, "bed-in-a-bag", sleeping in (almost too much), perfume, already planned Father's day gifts, long lost cameras and photos (what is new for me, losing a camera and getting it back?), going to see Celisse, less than three weeks left of school, having homework squared away for once, good friends, and food food food!

Not stoked on: skin that hurts around your fingernails, boys who ask me out, grades, waiting a hundred years for payday, and not having time to read a book.

Mostly my quest in life is just to find a shampoo to rely on.

Había una vez

I'm never really sure what's going on, and I'm just trying to handle it all in the best way I know how.
Tonight, I'm a little deaf from band practice (work + school + band practice = thursday, long and tiring) and a little sad, a little victorious, and a little separate from the reality that I'm sure every one else is dealing with while falling asleep.

One of my friends told me today that he was getting a divorce, which makes me sad. I am probably one of the most optimistic people I know about relationships. I always think that they'll work themselves out, because that is how my life has gone? There haven't been any storms that I haven't survived after months of good music and eating vegetables... what is cold is forgivable. I've never been in a long-term relationship myself, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real...

Anyways. I've been eating Asian food for a few days now, and I just feel good in general, besides being deaf tonight.
GOD DO YOU HEAR THAT? I'm alright. Stressed a little, because the job situation is never really good. But oh well. Rice noodles with seawood soup can solve crimes? And running to the New Pornographers is good for the soul? Go figure.

A list. In a little while I'm sure that my thoughts will be more collected.
But right now I've just got a lot of fragments that I chew on while I'm staring out the windows of my truck waiting for the light to turn green.

-Noah cooked a bar of soap in the microwave yesterday
-I went to the Asian supermarket today. Whoa.
-short shift at work
-Project Runway Season 1
-drank so much pop and also had an Americano last night, and somehow I fell asleep?
-the sky is the same color as the road right now. Yuck.

Sustaining

Nothing very new going on.
Today is my eighth day of running. It feels really good. Grandparents have been in town but they are leaving tomorrow. This is my last night on the couch, but I will miss them. It'd be nice if they just bought a farm out here. I wish I could have all the people I love in one spot. My grandparents, Jenni and Megan, Jake, Celisse. And if the ocean could be closer.

Easter this year was better than 2007. I was thinking about where I was this time last year. Last Easter Sunday, I was watching everyone rush into one of my patients rooms to try to resuscitate a dying man. Nothing that dramatic happens to me at work anymore. I miss it a little bit, just because I have a distance from it. I miss Alex Thompson too.
My friendships are quite different than they were a year ago. They've gotten so much stranger, but better. More like the spot that I should be in. This, too feels good.
But I'm still just never sure what is supposed to happen next.
I'm okay with enjoying what is now but the future is so very unplanned that all the work I've done the past 4 semesters seems like it just has an ellipses on it. Like its just going to trail off and get forgotten.
I just don't know what to expect.

But whatev!

I'm still driving your way, and I'm sorry everyday

Which is worse:
a) not knowing what you want out of life
b) knowing exactly what you want, and having it directly out of reach..

And life goes on.

I'm trying to simplify this week. (Isn't that an everlasting process...trying to simplify) I've taken two nights off of my regular routine to just do chores and go running. I hung pictures in my room last night. Sat down and worked on tattoo sketches for Kaylene, and watched Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Today my grandparents got here, and so I'm just hanging out with them, enjoying their company. I also got lunch with Ashlie and Corey, which was awesome.
I some times try out different lives every week. I think this is a good thing.

I won't always want what I'll never have, I won't always live in my regret.
-Jimmy Eat World

in the backseat

Its just one of those weekends that worked really hard on my heart and is really hard to put into words. I have come back to SLC in the overwhelming reality that I am part of an amazing family that stretches so far and is so loving. The reality that God is the only thing I can ever fall back on. The reality that Burger's King everyday will wreck your life.
Prayer, worship, prayer, and driving a lot.

Here's to Jesus.
To sleeping on deflated air mattresses.
To stopping on your friend's myspace page to listen to their whole profile song.
To green tea or gelato.
To hallelujah.
To kick drums.
To looking into someone's eyes and knowing they only sparkle because you love them.

i killed my dinner with karate.

Happy Sunday for the first time in at least three weeks that I can think of.. it's the happy sort of waking up at ten 'o clock (would have been nine o clock yesterday? I don't get this whole daylight thing) and felt content like you do when you've seen someone lovely the night before and he visits you somehow in your dreams like a good friend. Content like when you're having peaceful flashbacks.
I watched a movie by myself and then went for a long run/walk and ended up swinging on the swings at a park.
abridged soundtrack
open book - cake
if you don't, don't - jimmy eat world
the book of right on - Joanna Newsom
reptilia - the strokes

It felt good like breathing. It felt like watching Philip saw his cast off his arm in Midway, Utah in a posh resort. It felt like being able to speak spanish. Watching a dog catch a frisbee in the air. Like knowing.
After I shot some hoops with someone's leftover basketball, I walked home and I realized I just felt good because I knew some stuff, in the midst of all this uncertainty.
1) I know God is real. And I grasp that. I grasp that foundation.
2) I'm going to take a class with Alison again, and even if that's all I take for the rest of my college life, that will be good. Art. Good.
3) Vampire Weekend is a great CD.

And that's all I need to know for a little while. And maybe that I could have some pull-aparts from the Pie soon. That would be fantastic.

life after midterms

People are always trying to tell you not to worry about stuff. About how it doesn't add a day to your life (oh that's the Bible. Good one, God!) but also about how it just stresses you out and you live shorter and stuff.
But really.
If I didn't worry now and then, I wouldn't show up to school. I wouldn't try to pass my classes. I wouldn't try to balance at the end of the day (fired much?) and there would be no anticipation, no let down. No relief...
What I'm trying to say is that worry kills me but I use it like an instrument to keep me in shape.
Or maybe I'm using it to kill me.

Okay. On towards brighter pastures...
If you have a minute, you should check out my friend Paul Porter.
(http://www.myspace.com/paulportermusic)
Listen to "The Verdict".
Por favor.

"Well, don't worry about it.........unless you want to."
-Shannon

a list.

-I suck at scrabble?
-midterms tomorrow
-sleeping next to a bucket of laundry
-finding Helen Keller quarters
-Am I friends with Tanya in real life?
-wheredoesthegoodgo
-Dónde está mi corazón? Yo ponerlo en algún lugar.
-no I don't live here anymore

yeah, I'm not buying it either, but I'll try selling it anyway

I guess I am addicted to running away from home. To home. Living in my car day to day, living in other people's houses. Being in other states.
I long for Des Moines, I long for Peoria. I long for that feeling of home that is not always in my parent's house, but often with my grandmother, or out in the silent breathtaking country of Illinois. So I go looking for it all over.
But when it comes down to it, I hate leaving here.

Bob helped me with my Spanish homework today. Well he wrote it for me, actually. He's pretty much a fantastic guy, and he's got some facial hair right now, which is probably why we've been getting along so well this week.
Maybe I'll pass Spanish.
Maybe I'll just be okay at life?

New admission, at 3 in the morning.
Smelling like smoke, feeling confused because I skipped ahead too many episodes in LOST, and this is the actual admission:
Sometimes I just don't eat all day because I'm too lazy to try to come up with something interesting to eat with the varied foods we have here in this place.

And then at three in the morning, I realize I am starving because all I ate today was oatmeal and half a plate of pasta. And I am still too uninspired to make something.
Goodnight.

a grievance or two

A) why the hell do you put up a stink when I ask you to take your effing ID out of your effing wallet. You think I can see the license number and the expiration date, and see your picture through that filthy piece of plastic enough to type it into the computer?
B) I need your ID in the first place because I don't know who you are, stupid
C) Why do you think its okay to park your car in my drive through and make four other people wait for you to add all your checks, and OH! You don't even have a deposit slip, and OH WAIT, can I get you a pen too, and give suckers to your kids while their are FOUR OTHER PEOPLE waiting to make deposits behind you.
D) I am not a human being. It is okay if you do not respond to my 'hello' or my 'have a good day'. And also if you could boss me around a little and have me staple stuff for you and give you your balance and give you a print out and call your mom and dry clean your shirts and count your $700 in ones. It's okay. It's cool, dude.


Sorry. Just putting it out there. I don't know how much I love this job anymore.

selfish admission of the week:

I just want to be happy.
That temporary happiness that leaves you and buries you and smothers you and enlightens you. Happiness like cupcakes and swimming and painted portraits and a brand new CD, and a hair cut, and a boyfriend who was named Tim (slightly metro, with framed glasses, you know?), smoking when it's not chilly outside, and seeing the stars in a recognizable constellation.

when they pin this thing on you- I'll tell them the truth, that you were made out of sugar and had it coming/that you leaped across distances and should have used a tight rope. That you spilled coffee on your pants, and never bothered to change them. That you were a hero, but I don't think I ever would have loved you for it. That you lived alone and would never admit it. That you were dramatic when you could have gotten your point across in quieter ways. That you're a conARTIST (but that I am mostly the same, I won't tell them that) That you have the best poison I've ever tasted and the longest story that's ever kept my attention.
That when you are far away, you are near.
And that I'll still take your advice any day.

things I have finished on my 20 year old list so far

-go back to Colorado
-see the ocean
-ride a roller coaster
-see Magnolia
-do something nice for somebody else

I'd like to finish a few things before the end of the year, also, such as

-learn Spanish
-write another story
-get out of debt

And then there are the things that I'd like to check off my list more frequently, like
-going to Mrs. Backer's to eat a french pastry
-have tea with Ashley at the Beehive Tea room
-go on music fasts, or eating fasts to spend more time praying
-hang out with my family and enjoy their company
-write letters to Celisse and send them in the mail
-run.

I'm getting more and more tired of my job, but I want to stay at least as long as Tanya. We'll see, I guess.

I am realizing that no matter how much people get what they want, they're still never happy. I think everyone has to realize that for themselves, and it's something I learn over and over as I watch the people I love get what they want, and God just wants them to burn for him.

He leaves us with a hole, because he loves us and wants us to seek him.

It's still hard to remember. When Bill talks about money at church, I always think exactly what he says..."No way, if someone gave me a million dollars, I'd do exactly the right things with it." But I know that when everything was said and done, it would just teach me how to get in more credit debt than I already am. So I'm happy being poor and not seeing the end of this tunnel quite yet.

And as for my heart, I am trying to brainwash myself a little. Trying to love being single (which is sometimes very easy and sometimes excruciating) enough that I could maybe stop smiling at Kevin, who comes through my drive-thru every day and would love to make my life any kind of hell he chose. Funny how easy it is to see through a fast car and cocky grin sometimes.

Sunday: shaky and coffee and lovely and unsatisfactory.

I was wearing my glasses tonight, and staring in the mirror I was just remembering you-- the way you used to wear your glasses more often. We both did. When we were younger. Or you weren't that young, but I was just a kid and learning.
Thinking my hair was long or short, and you loved me either way.
Thinking you loved me when I smoked. We smoked.
Thinking you loved me when I drank and swore and when I hated you and I loved you. Thinking you remember what the inside of my heart looks like, and you remember the TV shows I used to like, and what music I can't stand, and you remember that way I like my name written on paper in your handwriting, how it makes me warm, and it makes me feel pretty.

I was thinking I should call you more often, thinking I read your letters so much, but they don't say anything to me when I'm trying to choke down coffee in the morning. Wondering if I'm hearing from you, or really just guessing what you would say if you had the type of smooth voice coming across the table to me. That maybe you'd sound like Tom Hanks? I hope you sound like Tom Hanks.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, where did you go, and who is the cheap person I replace you with from moment to moment. The lovely people who are not you.
I guess I mean that I adore you.
In a round about way. Could you come back?

-Rache

"Do you think God has a bachelors of science degree?"
-Billy

Dear Jordan,
I'm just wondering where you are, and if some girl made you fall in love with her yet. And if she did, was it because her hair was long?
That's all for tonight.

Love,
Ampa

"I'm going to beat the maximum hardness of aliens."
-Nick D. on Halo, age 22

Science of Sleep made me sad at the end, even though it ends so happily and they're smiling. You still really don't know...

Sundays are always usually a little bit sad, and a little hit happy. I wake up alone and decide whether or not I'm really trying to quit coffee. Undecided, I drink half a cup and pop in a movie, around noon. My family is still gone somewhere so I eat a bowl of cereal around 2, finish the movie, and go for a run.
Feel lightheaded, lay on the floor with my dog for a minute, and then decide to shower. Perhaps catch up with my friends later and still haven't had a conversation with my parents in over a week.
Repeat, more or less for the next 52 Sundays til this one rolls around next year.
The weekend is not a reflection, I believe, on the substance of my life.

here it is

I walked in the door and started thumbing through mail that finally got here after I waited such a long time and my mother incredulously asks me, "Were you smoking in your car?" And yes I was. "Well, could you please leave your clothes outside?"
"Could you please leave Saturday night at Saturday night?" Don't be rude, guys. "I can't believe you were smoking in your car." Tanya's dad is in the hospital. They think he is going to die.

Tanya bursts into the room when I am on lunch; she is waiting for her husband to take her to the hospital, and somehow she is still thinking about me. I am lying on the couch with a blanket pulled up to my chin. It feels weird, your boss seeing you trying to fall asleep. It feels like she is at my house.
"Will you eat my lunch, Rachel?"
"What? You should eat it later, if you come back, you will be hungry."
"No, if I'm hungry I'll get something else."
"Tanya..."
"Please, Rachel, eat it. It will go bad otherwise." My shoes are on the other side of the room. I feel strange.
"Thank you Tanya, I will pay you for it."
"No don't worry..." we are sitting in silence. "I want to kill her, Rachel. I want to kill the bitch that kept pouring his drinks. I can never forgive her."

No, this is not about love, because I am not in love.

I met you at the bus station when we were both late for something. You were the tie dye in my shirt, or the black out I had yesterday at 11:43 a.m.
You were, essentially, the best cup of coffee I ever had.

I try to capture you and put your face in my dreams, but often I wake with very little success. Mostly you have forgotten all the poems I memorized for you. My handwriting that you never saw. The letters you didn't get because you were out of town, or out of the country. You were in the air and I tried not to love you like I tried not to breathe.

No, this is not about love, because I am not in love.
Of course there is guesswork that I've given up on, because I've gotten too old and stopped wearing my glasses.

Noah is in the room next door making sound effects ON TOP of the sound effects the game is making.

concentrate from argentina

The bird can sing like a cardinal now, imitate the microwave timer, catcall, and he is just learning to say "Pretty bird". The last part is sort of funny because when I first got Goulet, Philip said, "No, don't say pretty bird, the last thing we'd want him to learn is something as cliche as 'pretty bird'." I would also like to teach him to say "Bite me" but I don't think my family would love that.

I'm having a mid-week weekend. I'm skipping church to watch movies and eat oatmeal creme pies. You would too. Better than a midweek meltdown...

"So that I remember to never go that far, could you leave me with a scar?"
(Missy Higgins)

Its been one month and one day since Brian Reagan died. Everyday I go past the billboard on the freeway that says Beloved father, son and brother. But I didn't go past it yesterday because I stayed away from the freeway.
I always think that its interesting that he shares his name with the comedian, and until today, I was always thinking about when it would be a month since he died. It has probably been a hard month for his family.
I like to put months in front of months, because I think that whatever painful experience you've gone through, that more and more months equals healed over pieces of your heart. Pieces that the cuts and scrapes aren't so raw. So in Brian's one month of being somewhere else (Heaven or Hell, I guess God only knows a man's heart), I've been paid two times. The moon has gone away and come back. The days have gotten colder, but they've at least had more minutes of light extending them. It's even a new year.
I think in this last month, I realized that I needed to live a more drastic life because I've gotten comfortable, leaving (as Ben Dory would have said when we were six years old) butt marks on the benches at Amigo's. I think Ben might have gotten spanked for saying "butt" that time.
I realized this when I noticed I was saying the same thing to every customer, and that my job is so second nature that I feel like I've fallen asleep, and as I hand back the receipts to bank patrons that I can't even remember running the transaction.
I love my job. Lets get that straight. I love my job because my assistant manager is awesome. Anyways. I was saying a more drastic lifestyle.
This is 48 plus hours now of no secular music. Its hard and its easy. It gives me time to think and pray, but I just feel like some Regina Spektor or Damien Rice to shoot up my veins. It's good. It's been easier not to swear. It's been easier to just sit back and praise God.
Secondly besides my music fast, I've only spent $5 in the last three days which is hugely uncharacteristic of me. I'm on an actual budget because I do want to go to Spain.
And being poor and singing through the silence in my car has actually made me a happier person.