I just wrote a really long post about how I almost had to pee behind a building in the scarier part of SLC last night. But I deleted it because I figured it would be kind of boring.

I forgot how you can't really catch your breath when you are working and going to school, and doing foolish things like thinking you are good at using public transit as your lifestyle.
I didn't pee behind a building, or even in a car.

You never think you are going to live on six hours a night. But you do. And you don't even need coffee, is the truth.

One funny thing is that a woman came in to my bank this morning and was there before I got there, and then still had to sit in the car until the branch was open.
When I finally opened the door to let her in, she said, "I've been waiting in the car for an hour." She slid across the counter a single dollar bill. "This is for deposit," she said.
"Why did you come here so early?" I laughed at her, not even one bit sympathetic.
"It's the only time I can."
"Well why didn't you leave your deposit in the night drop or use the ATM?" I asked her, providing a simple, time-effective solution. She just stared at me, and when she realized how foolish she had been, she just got angry.
People are funny. You can rely on that. 
   But don't rely on mortgage rates staying so low after next year. I am pretty disappointed. I wanted to buy a little purple house and have a compost pile in the back yard.

"I think the main reason that being a Mormon didn't workout for me was that I couldn't take wearing long shorts."
-Stesha, and I have to agree, in this horrible weather

Grateful that:

-Summer is almost over
-School is in session
-Plans are being made for exciting trips next year
-I am so well taken care of by a kind God
-Life comes a day at a time

I am really not very stressed out about anything anymore. How did this happen?

No Makeup Monday

Both Martha and I showed up with no makeup on, which is extremely unusual for work, and I could tell it made G just want to duct tape us to our chairs until she could fix the PROBLEM.

I also wore white socks (Que Unprofessional!) just to show how much I wanted to come to work today after such a lovely weekend with friends and family and burritos. Also, I didn't have any clean black ones. That's why. And even though I ironed a week's worth of nice shirts last night, I wore a an old Starbucks collared shirt I got at Wal-Mart three years ago. I know you are impressed by how I let loose.


I felt like it extended my weekend by a few minutes though.

And you know what? I got to the end of a long starving day, and I realized, "Oh my gosh. I don't have to come back here tomorrow." Because tomorrow is my favorite day of the year, besides Thanksgiving and October 27th, and January 1st.

Tomorrow is the first day of school.

Today this guy walked up to Martha's counter, and I couldn't tell where I knew him from, but his face was so familiar.


Maybe because he looked like Spock from Star Trek.

So I thought here is a famous retired Hollywood actor right in front of us, and I smiled, and he instantly moved to my counter.

"Hi, I didn't know you worked here!" He said.
"Where do I know you from?" I asked.
"From bla-bla ward!" He said.
"Nope. I don't go to that ward." Ha ha ha.
"Oh, well you certainly look like Angela, what is your name? Oh Rachel. Wow that is weird, you look like Angela."
"Nope, I guess we look familiar to each other for no reason," I said.
"Yes, well, Angela's kid is always running around during sacrament and her husband is running after her, and Angela just sits there and laughs!" He told me.
Well sir, I am not Angela, so it is just weird that you are telling me this.

For all I know, since Angela looks just like me, she stole my husband and my kid, and converted them to the LDS faith. I'm not sure how I feel about this woman.
I finished the transaction and tried to figure out how I could work into the conversation that I wanted this guy to either invest/apply for a credit card/refinance his house, and just sighed as he walked out.

Martha just laughed, and she stared off into the distance. "That was weird," she said.

Top ten reasons to keep letting the bank make a sales-whore out of me:
-free catered lunches every once in a while
-I am not getting up at 3:45 am to hand coffee out the window to mean people
-paid holidays
-providing for my wife and kids. Oh whoops, that's not me
-my teller coworkers

and that's not ten reasons. That's just it.
Thank you God that I survived all the way to Friday by Your grace alone. Now for some unashamed laying around and reading for two days.

Alaska.

I finished the Out of the Wild: Alaskan Experiment tonight. I cried at the end. I don't know what it is about me that I can't cry at the appropriate times, like when Judy was trying to say goodbye in so many ways. I haven't cried during worship music. 
But I cried at the end of a TV show when 4 people who subjected themselves to horrible conditions found train tracks in the wilderness, and a train picked them up and took them back to their families.

I want to be on Out of the Wild season 3. They've got to be casting soon, right?

I had my usual guilty snack (every third day) of rice. 
"She's eating your food," my dad said to C. (She eats rice and chicken because she is old and throws up anything else)
"I know, I'm so mean! Rice, yum," I said, because I am not supposed to be eating grains. I walked in the other room.
"Noah, will you please move to Alaska with me for a year?" I say this because Philip is pretty worthless to me by now. He has his own agenda, which is not as cool as mine, and he's too involved with his own plans to do anything really cool with me.
"Why the heck would I want to move to Alaska?" He replies, pulling his earphones off his head for a moment, pausing his Youtube video.
"Because, it is a real adventure," I tell him. Maybe at 13, he doesn't have the same call of the wild as you get when you get older and realize civilization sucks. He has a Call of Duty. I think, maybe if I told him he could bring the PS3, he would be more likely to say yes. Still, I feel like I need one of my brothers to go there with me. So it's not going to happen for now.


I feel like several Henry David Thoreau quotes would be appropriate here.


"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."


"All good things are wild and free."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

I could keep going, but I don't even like Thoreau that much.
I just need an excuse.

"Dang it, that was such a good opportunity and I missed it!"

"What, you mean how you forgot to ask that cute guy out on a date?"

"No. I mean, I can't believe I didn't mention our mortgage rates to him."

-Me and Martha. On a daily basis. Life as a single female bank teller.

"I'm always amazed by how quickly a pre-dinner snack can turn into eating an entire jar of pickles."
- a Keaton status update that I had to record so I can look back and laugh again later

might as well do a "Judy-ism" (as Jeremy R. calls them) as well

"I always tell God--and I know He doesn't like it--that if You do this, then it means this..."
-Judy on signs from God. Specifically about who I'm going to marry if her epidural works out.

"I have a uniquely German capacity to vacillate between sentimentality and coldness."
-Tina Fey, describing a trait I see very much in my German family. :)

 

I finally got an invite to Pinterest today, and so of course that is all I've been doing for the past two hours. But (here comes the justification) I think this is at least better than just watching Netflix and eating M&M's all night. (Oh yeah, like last night.)  I am a bit disappointed in myself for the way I spend a lot of my free time. When I was out east, I read so much, and I was writing more.

So. I started a big writing project here, (as requested by the lovely Kelsea) and now I have all sorts of other inspiration for artsy stuff from endlessly surfing stranger's ideas on the internet.

This weekend, I did get in two great workouts, and my room looks fantastic. It is starting to look like the kind of place I would want to live in if I moved out. I realize how that sounds.
Maybe I will never move out then...
Okay, you talked me into it. I will always live here.

I'm not saying that having a Netflix night is bad, but I need to learn moderation. In everything. We have so few hours in between work and work...

I saw this sign the day we were walking around Chicago. It was on the left side of a door, and on the other side was a sign just like it that said:

you are strong.

I didn't get a picture, and I have been looking for one (why wouldn't there be millions of copies on the whole wide internet) but anyway.

I feel like I'm starting to get my personality back. Feeling like I don't want to just sleep all the time. Feel like I like to live here, again.

17 days until September finally starts.

Only one more week of hard work before school starts, and then things get really truly wonderful.

"honestly, I'm down like the economy"

Every morning I wake up at four a.m.

It used to be in fear, and I faced my demons and let them keep me awake for three months.

Now, I am in Utah, and I still wake up at four, though not with nightmares. I think they are visiting someone else now, maybe a coworker, or someone I've handed a latte to, years ago. But I still wake, and every time, as I move out of paralysis and get up to get a glass of water and use the restroom, I realize that I just woke up from Iowa. In my dreams.


To make a long story short:

a) I am having a hard time adjusting to my old real life.
b) I am having a hard time feeling anything at all.

I listen to people talk about their passions, and I wish for their passion, but I think things will be a LOT easier for me when school starts back up. Because, school is my passion, and I think....actually....writing is. Working everyday at a job I feel mediocre about is: Just Getting By, no matter what shoes I'm wearing or how strangers respond to me on the phone.

I am guessing that God has a lot of stuff to throw at me this year, and I am excited about it, and willing to change and grow.

I want to love deeper. I want to participate in real life.

Cheers to speaking in an American accent, relying on the internet for way more than I should, and having a new start everyday.

one nice thing about the past is that we don't have to relive it.

I know I am guilty of spending a lot of time in nostalgia, but as I was cleaning my Hoarders room this weekend, I opened up an old journal that I didn't even remember writing in.

I read some of my horrifying history from a very crazy year of my life, and thanked God that it is so far away now, and that I learned so much from it, and that I never have to do that messed up crap over again. Even though I thought it was awesome at the time.

I just gotta figure out what the heck I am doing now.
There are some things I know.

Only Jesus is cool. 
I love spicy food. 
No one person is going to make you happy, because other people are just as broken as you. Drink more water, and less of everything else. 
There is a time for video games, and there is a time for socializing. 
Don't eat the sushi if a rich guy is paying for it, and you don't see a girlfriend for him anywhere at the table. 
If you can possibly bring a pair of tennis shoes, do.
and, if you stay home and do homework instead of going out with your friends, you will save STRESS and MONEY.

These are my sureties. And I know that new ones will develop, over the next 100 years.

"Summer in the city, I'm so lonely lonely lonely
I've been hallucinating you babe, at the backs of other women. 
And I tap on their shoulder, and they turn around smiling, but there's no recognition in their eyes."
-Regina Spektor


Long week. I'm not so scared to keep doing it, it just feels like it doesn't mean much yet.
Except the beautiful people I know.
I know and love.
But I forget how to talk to, and break my arms around the ones I love. I lose my personality in between the phone calls I am paid for, and standing around in pressed black pants.
I love, and I lack. And I am sorry about the lack. But we press onward and we find old clothes in our closets that fit our new selves.

"Oh summer in the city, means cleavage cleavage cleavage.
And don't get me wrong dear, in general I'm doing quite fine.
It's just when it's summer in the city, and you're so long gone
from this city, I start to miss you baby, sometimes."

Well, I don't know what to say about a lot of stuff.

The conclusion is that I am happy to be back to my friends, and so grateful for their kindnesses to me. Love, love, love, love, love.

And then the results of being gone for so long:

...my room looks like a science experiment or a Hoarding: Buried Alive episode

...being back at work is like, are you serious? I have to do this every day? And then when you get to the end of the day, you get five blissful hours before bed, and then you think again, What? I have to go back to work AGAIN tomorrow?

...oh yeah, about all that ice cream I was eating...shoot.

...but! I forgot how amazing alone time is. I haven't had any, and it is so good to just be by myself for three hours in swimming pools and cardio cinemas

Conclusion II

Everything is going to be pretty awesome. How could it not be, with September right around the corner?