I don't know if it's because she's from the midwest but my grandma says these phrases or euphemisms that I have never heard before.

"They don't have a pot or a window to throw it out of." I don't know if it's a Lutheran thing, or a Midwest thing, or what.

Another thing I learned from watching Jerseylicious, is that people in Jersey are really good at similes. I haven't watched it for a few weeks, but when I do, I will try to take note for you. I feel like this is something I missed out on in Utah's Public High Schools. They don't teach you fun things to say, or how to get your hair big. The cheerleaders kept that one to themselves, but Tracy Dimarco sure filled me in.

"Well, it is a good movie. She might be really dumb, but she's dumb like a fox."
"I think the saying is crazy like a fox."
-my grandma, on Legally Blond and then my dad's quiet response to her

The holidays...

Work has been stressful, and I couldn't figure out why, because I didn't get a single e-mail from my boss all week about stuff I was doing wrong. Because she was on vacation. But then I realized maybe I was grumpy every day because I'd worked 6 days straight and I've been wearing uncomfortable cute shoes in effort to look more professional.

Celisse and I exchanged gifts on Thursday night and then Bryan made us go see Skyline, which was a fun experience and a terrible movie. I love the feeling of the apocalyptic movies though. There is something I crave about leaving your day-to-day circumstances of showing up to work, and then suddenly becoming a part of a group of people who are fighting or struggling in some way to survive. Maybe all of America loves this, and that's why they keep making those movies. But it also goes back to my thing of Freud and his discontents. I seriously want to go live in a commune, with little cabins and no air conditioning or furnaces. To have a community garden. The boys would go hunt or farm and the girls stay home and do laundry and get to read books and actually cook meals. I'd get to hang out with my awesome Christian brothers and sisters all day. Like the beginning of the United States of America. Maybe Heaven could be something like this.

this thing of being out of
school. My job wouldn't really give me more hours for the holidays. But they want me to spread the hours out over the week. So I work these baby shifts which are too short to do anything really important. So I end up watching too many episodes of my newest favorite TV series.

Without 19th century literature to tie me down, I end up going to bed wearing my bathing suit by accident. I enjoy standing in long lines. I enjoy making fake boyfriends so that I don't have to date any mechanics. I wake up in the night thinking about check holds, and Earl, and french toast, and Jillian Michaels. I do that thing of falling asleep on my drives home, in the dark. I choke down coffee. I leave my phone at work until the next day.

19 days. 11 hours. 37 minutes. 12 seconds.

when I was young, and moving fast, nothing slowed me down. slowed me down.
I'd been killing it on this Jillian Michaels gig all week, and then I started eating like a trucker, and ended up staying the night at the Edwards again, kind of accidentally. This time with Shaunte and Celisse in the basement and then I ate like a trucker all day, again. So there's that, I've got that.

The point was, that I am going to try to study Spanish for at least ten minutes a day, so I don't look like a white girl on the first day of class. I think ten minutes is a reasonable goal. And I'd like to read some books for pleasure.
A couple weeks ago, I said, Buenos Noches to this lady as she was walking out, because I considered it night-time. But then she corrected me without looking back, and said, "Buenas Tardes." And I've been afraid to speak Spanish to customers ever since. Even though it is slowly coming back to me. And today, this man who I like came in, and he is older and hispanic, with dark circles under his eyes, and always he is smiling at me. As he walked out, I said, "Buenas tardes," to him, and he turned fully around and gave me a really huge smile and patted me on the back because I was standing next to him at that point. "That's a really good job," he said to me, and then walked out. And it gave me some courage. And I took that courage and I locked it in a drawer to use on Monday.

"You have some of my Christmas tree in your hair."
-Celisse, after we were already eating at Pho Green Papaya

on Civilization and its Discontents
I think one of the biggest things I've been mulling on this semester is Freud. I never planned to read him in my life because I think he's a quack for not believing in God. But it's interesting how he talks about what a bummer society is to live in, and that Civilization might provide us a lot of protection (probably now more than ever as far as medicine is concerned) but it makes us unhappy. I like to picture myself moving out into the woods or moving to a farm in Minnesota and never thinking about Dolce and Gabanna or eating sushi or watching VH1. I watched Sweet Land again last night, but this time with my family, and by the end, my dad, mom and I were all choking up.
I don't want to live with regret that I didn't go back to let the Midwest be part of my growing older. I don't know if God can let me do this or not, as far as: I hope it is His plan and I'm afraid that it is not.

I know that there is work for me here, but I also know what calls to me is the amber waves of grain, my grandmother's kitchen, and the love that you just can't find in the mountains here.

Hell Week

Really not that bad. I've been working out, reading and reading, and I just picked up really good Thai food at a place that is walking distance from my house as a reward for hammering out a few pages this morning.

I'm writing a paper on Influence in Modernism, and another one about Freud. So I have been thinking a lot about what my influences are, and a lot about my guilt.

I want to use the Christmas break to dig deeper into the Bible and try not to spend so much time loving TV. The list of shows I'm hooked on just keeps growing, and it's not good because I've even been dreaming in TV episodes.

So here's a toast to health, this holiday season. Physical, mental, and spiritual.

"I don't mind waiting, if it takes a long, long time. I don't mind wasting the best years of our lives. I don't mind braving the coldest winter of our time. And I don't mind racing through our goodbyes."-Rilo Kiley

A continuation of the Rebecca Saga...

So today was the last official day of classes, and what does Professor Decadence do? He puts us in groups to discuss poetry. [Which is usually on the top of my list of things I hate: group projects, and figuring out poetry ((especially any poetry from the 1800's))] And I am in a group with my friend Elayna, and one of the twins (I don't know which one. For a while I was working it out by the glasses, but then I forgot my code of which went to which) and after we finished breaking down the poem--which is getting easier in my old age--we basically talked about The Walking Dead and Rebecca actually looked me into the eyes and TALKED TO ME. I was so excited, but she was talking very softly about horror movies, which makes her even more endearing, and it turns out SHE ALSO HAS A TWIN. So the plot is thicker. How will I know in the future if I am running into her twin on campus and she does not talk/smile at me, and then I feel slighted all over again? And she even said they wear the same hounds-tooth coat, just in different lengths! The drama.

So then we all had to say goodbye to each other, which was really sad. This is exactly the best semester of my education in my whole life, and I really didn't want to leave any of my classes or say goodbye to Elayna. We both had the "Have a nice life, hopefully we run into each other," speech to say. And now to write 2 huge papers.

I am trying to figure out a very quiet place to write finals this weekend that don't have
-football
-dogs
-birds
-internet

Maybe I will rent a cabin.

some things I miss

I miss what it felt like to be 18 and wild. I miss the nights of staring out the windows and seeing a glittering Salt Lake City every night while I worked 7pm to 7am. I miss how honest mankind was with me then. I miss the old people I spent my hours with. I miss the year my stomach was full of butterflies and how I used to picture what marriage would be like. Echo de menos la inocencia. Music was brilliant. Money was endless.

But in reality, those days were really hard to live through, and the lessons I learned at the time were life-threatening.

The calm of today is full of hope. Every day, the picture gets clearer. My God has climbed the mountains in my name, and to save me from what is worse than the hard parts of this world.

"And when I wake up, well I know I'm going to be. I'm going to be the (one) who wakes up next to you."

Yesterday morning I woke up quick and threw on some really good looking professional clothes, and my high heeled ankle boots that are extremely sexy and uncomfortable and I drank my coffee, and what I said to myself on the way to work. "I am going to be the girl who is wearing these boots today. And I am tall, and I am going to command the room with my presence." And then after I realized that I was throwing things out to the universe, I prayed and gave it to God instead. And our presentation went really well. Even though my face got hod and red, I said my parts and I know my DM was impressed with my statistics, and the hand-out I put together and I felt confident about my job all day, even though I changed shoes at lunch time after he left. I spent my lunch hour buying 20 bottles of Vitaminwater because they were on sale.

Celisse and I got pho after work and watched the Jazz game with Shaunte and a hundred boys, and then stayed the night. I woke up to Zwingli snuggling into my neck, and then the three of us girls watched movies and drank Vitaminwater in bed until 4pm. A thing I learned is that I like The Nightmare before Christmas. My mom wouldn't let me watch it when I was younger, which is probably good. But I would have loved to watch it with a feeling of nostalgia, instead of seeing it for my first time. I am so so so thankful for days like these, and that not everything is permanently changed. That God gives me good things even though I don't deserve them.

I had to miss church though, due to a work Christmas party at a place that is basically like Chuck E. Cheese, and Tanya didn't show up so I just shot hoops and took a lot of pictures of myself in the photo-booth. And now I'm home early on a Saturday night overwhelmed by my upcoming finals but feeling pretty good about everything. I'm excited for Christmas. I'm excited for cold afternoons to drink tea and read novels that aren't for class.