I.give.it.you.all (yes, I will)

But you came from nothing.

You found yourself creeping from dust, grateful for a Creator who breathed life into you and gave you a brain that would rebel against Him.

You said sorry.
Sorry that you can't break down more, for Him.
Sorry that you flirt with the idea of other lovers.
Sorry that you don't fall down hard enough and that you can't deserve Him.
But He won't hear of it.

He looks past the failures, and the adulteries, and the idolatries, because of this one time that you bent your knee to him.
And for some reason, you wake up in a warm house in the United States of AMERICA, despite His other lovers in Africa and South America and such, but you are still so whiny? you still think it is hard to go to live alone in your shell? you think you deserve more than 3 or 4 huge meals a day and a limitless credit card?


And yet, there is unending forgiveness.

happy, reprise

Yesterday, one of my regular customers (one who I have barely talked to that much) announced out of nowhere that he had a Christmas present in his car for me, and then walked away.

I got uncomfortable as all of the other girls gave me a weird stare, and then he suddenly appeared again and handed me a framed picture, and said, "From one Midwesterner to another. It's a little piece of home." And it was a black and white picture of a lonely barn out in the middle of nowhere, Illinois.
I started crying.
I didn't know what to do. I haven't been back since May, and I know I'm going back in January, but it is just the time of year, and the fact that in all of my fuzzy-headed foolishness and mayhem, it was a reminder of the solid rock I have to stand on in the Midwest, and the solid rock I have in Jesus, who sees my loneliness and wants to take care of me.
"I'm going to hang it up in my room," I told him, not knowing what else to do, and if I was supposed to hug him or what. But now the photograph is sitting on my desk and I can't stop staring at it when I come in and out of the room, and it's become its own person, living there, haunting me when I wake and when I brush my teeth and it says to me, "Have you made all the right decisions? Are you really supposed to stay in Salt Lake?" But what I mumble back to the photograph is that it doesn't know what it is talking about and to stop trying to break my heart.

And then we all went to a women's basketball game, and Wesley threw up real vomit on us, which was disgusting but we still got smothered burritos anyway, after we'd cleaned up and changed.

And this is my life. 
Getting thrown up on.
Working out with Emily and Philip and Krista, and Ken asking me if my parents are Calvinist.
Sleeping long naps in the afternoon and killing my plants slowly by forgetting to open up the blinds.


But after today, there will be a little more sunlight in each day, because God is kind enough to give us seasons so we don't think we're living the same days over and over again.

I'll be right here, lying in the hands of God

Me: I'm going to be this soldier, because he has a mustache.
3-year-old Elias: My dad has a mustache.
Me: No, I don't think he does. I've never seen him with a mustache?
Elias: Well he does. He hides it behind his hair.
Me: Oh.....okay.
Elias: God has a mustache too.
Me: Really? How do you know?
Elias: When you get to Heaven, you will know too.


When I am strong, I am very strong, and I wish I could bottle up the strength and save it for my weak moments and take a sip and feel strong again. 
Sometimes I go to God so grateful, and sometimes I come to Him in a panic and tell him I doubt all the goodness He seems to think he has for me.

My poor, beautiful Elaine, who has so much more hurt in her life right now than I know what to do with, she sat on the floor at 4:45am this morning while I brewed 6 pitchers of tea and said, "Do you ever wish that God would just tell you whether you are wasting your time or whether to make a move?"
"Yes," I said.
"Like, I just wish I knew when it was time to give up, and move down a different road."
"Exactly," I said.

I can't wait for that day that God tells me what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'll just keep asking Him everyday and make thousands of cups of coffee in the meantime.

Elias: Why are you laughing at me?
Me: Because I think you are really funny.
Elias: No. I'm not funny.
Me: Why wouldn't you want to be funny? Everyone wants to be funny!
Elias: I want to be a serious boy.

Let's start over.

Personally, I really don't know what's going on.
That's why I haven't been writing anything.

My heart isn't saying anything, and my head is just saying "I love Jesus, I love America, I love Starbucks."
And maybe the last two things are foolish to admit somedays, but there is grace for that. Also, I may be brainwashed from getting up at 3:45am to brew coffee for crazy men.

 So here are some quotes.

"It's weird but, when I lean over like this, I can feel it squishing my baby. (long pause....) So maybe I shouldn't be doing that anymore."
-pregnant Elaine

"Dalmatians always die of cancer. I guarantee every single one of the 101 dalmatians died of cancer."
-Philip

"Run hard good and faithful servant! Just kidding. Go burn some calories."
-Ken

conjugation

"I've been trying to do it right.

I've been living a lonely life.

I've been sleeping here instead,

I've been sleeping in my bed."

-The Lumineers

she resists 

she resisted 

she is resisting 

she will resist

It is a daily fight. A daily thorn.

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful."

Hebrews 10:23

recovery

Today was Be-Blessed-Thursday.

Yesterday seemed pretty overwhelming (at least to everyone else on the internet? and at my small group? I think the person who won the most depressing day ended up being Tim, whose coworker got hit by a car and died yesterday morning in front of students from the school he was jogging to, to work). Celisse and I went and got crappy pho after small group at the only restaurant that was still open at 9:30 and then stood in the kitchen and listened to the guys talk about creation theology, and I wanted to say words but I just kept losing them while I stared into space.
I eventually drove home after midnight and sat in my driveway and cried for Tim's colleague. I cried because he didn't know he was going to die when he woke up yesterday morning. I cried because I know I am not doing enough with all the short time I've been given. I wept for Emily, and Elaine, and replayed my earlier conversation with Emily during our lunch together, and how she keeps looking for fulfillment in one empty avenue or another.

I don't have all the answers. But I do know that going to bed alleviates a lot of the pressure that we accumulate via coffee and dwelling on evil and making right and wrong decisions all day.

Today there was rest.

Surely goodness will follow me.

tiny adventures

Source: little-people.blogspot.de via Betty on Pinterest

That's what I do all day long.

 I have many little mishaps at work while drinking very small cups of espresso that make my tiny blood vessels pump miniature red blood cells in fast-forward. I change each customer's life in a momentary way that wears off after an hour, but they keep coming back for me anyway.

I have a tiny adventure of a nap in my soft bed with my beautiful comforter, and a tiny spritz of lavender in the air makes it a tiny, dreamy moment.
 
I have a tiny adventure to the gym, and you don't know what will happen. I have a tiny adventure in the rec room with Krista where we literally almost pump iron, but all the weights are made of plastic now.

I make myself a tiny glass of wine and cut not-so-expensive cheese into tiny cubes and pretend I am in Beaune.

But I am writing one page stories in my head all day, where I am the heroine, and if I was illustrated out, I might even be a tinier little girl.

And I just try to take a step back and sigh because I am so happy about it sometimes.

high tide

Ken, Doll you got my life in order.

Well. Sort of.

I think all the running around and building cool muscles, got me feeling pretty right with the world. I am really getting my act together. Writing things down. Mailing overdue letters. Framing prints that have been laying secretly between pieces of cardboard and waiting to be loved on the wall.

Show up to band practice. Check.
Invite coworker to church. Check.
Donate to charity. Check.
Write down Bible verses. Check.
Make your bed and open the shutters so your plants get light while you are at work. Check and check.

It is not that hard to be content, I guess.
And this may be a swelling of the tide. This might be the high tide, and a later season will leave the shore exposed and my bones exposed on a hot, dry beach next to a sandstone cliff.
So I hope I have strong faith then, and that I use this time to reinforce my foundation.

And may it be at least eight years before I ever take a child through the doors of Ikea, Lord.
And may I never go to sleep next to a man who wants to talk about football statistics or politics, Lord.
And if it is your will, Lord, let my legs keep running and climbing and jumping as long as I live, Lord.
I love You.
To God be the glory alone, for a personal trainer who likes to get paid in coffee. For a clean car, and for dates with best friends, and for a place of worship where we are still not condemned by our government, yet.
Amen.

run run run

I was dumping coffee from a ladle into the grinder this afternoon, standing next to Emily and Elaine and watching Philip make drinks on the other side of the room, when I was struck by a horrifying thought.

What if it gets to be February and I still don't really want to apply for other "real" jobs?

But I shut it down, because we will take care of that when the time comes, and I love to feel in love with the people I spend so much time with and pray for, and get paid to laugh with, for so many sleep-deprived hours a week.

In other news,
as usual, I am perfecting my bathing suit bod in the depth of gingerbread cookies and snowfall and "holiday" party time.  Why couldn't I have looked this great in a tank-top during summer?

I made a goal for myself to not buy any more fall/winter clothes until I had run 50 miles, and I am at 48 miles as of tonight, and will finish the 50 tomorrow morning. This, along with our PT sessions with Ken, and just not really eating crap all day will hopefully help me fit in my next bridesmaid dress that should hopefully come soon so I can find out if I need to surgically remove a few ribs before Jackie's wedding in January.

Also, adding a VIA pack to your protein shake is the bomb for those who have only been sleeping 5 hours a night and working a hundred shifts a week.

50 miles in 35 days. Now again, faster.

slow down

"They say I'm the world's poorest president. Let me tell you that I'm not poor! Poor are those who need too much..."

"I discovered the keys to this in the jail cells, when I couldn't read. If I hadn't spent those years there, I wouldn't be who I am, because one learns more from pain than from bounty," he said. "That's why, the night when I had a mattress, I felt happy. How is it possible, therefore, that we spend our lives poisoned with desperation to buy a new car every two years? If I could, I would live much more simply."

- Uruguayan President Jose Mujica (excerpt taken from this recent NPR article, but it was cooler hearing it in his voice on the radio)

It gave me such hope, that a 77 year old man who is president of a country, drives a really, really old Volkswagen Beetle, and washes his own dishes. 

I am so richly blessed.
I don't know why God picked me to have a full belly, and strong, working legs, and a car to drive and a house and family to live with, but I am thankful every day.

something good this way comes

Source: Uploaded by user via Frances on Pinterest

I am having a really happy season right now.
It's called "I don't work at a bank, and I don't have 10 page papers to worry about and it's going to be Christmas time so soon, and let's eat turkey and be thankful for everything we've got" season.

When I graduated in May, I think my heart started to warm up and I thought God would magically produce a perfect boyfriend for me who wore some kind of uniform and would like to go running with me, and he would be a good leader, and push me to greatness, and he would be goofy and make me laugh like a cartoon.

And then when it didn't happen, I was like, what the hell, God? Help a brotha out. I'm ready to get crackin' on a family and homeschool some little kids and grow a garden.

But after a long, hard summer I think I am back to a place of medium. Like for 2 years, marriage grossed me out, and then for six months, marriage was all I wanted, and now I want marriage in a medium way that is really easy to wait for, and to barely care if it really happens or not, because I will find things to do with the days that my maker gives me.

I am having a 10 out of 10 week. My gym owner is one of my regulars at Sbux, and he has been giving me, Emily, and Krista free personal training, which has drastically raised my serotonin or whatever. It is a good replacement for my Crossfit life. And now it is snowing and gorgeous outside, and I'm starting to get almost a full night's sleep most nights, and I love my unimportant little retail job.

Everything seems manageable again, and it is such a blessing from God. 
I will enjoy this season of rest while it lasts.

Source: domesticexecutiveonline.com via Mary Nell on Pinterest

on repeat

Maybe it's the election, or getting my cavities filled (and old ones replaced...am I age 50?) that is really reminding me that I am not experiencing everything for the first time anymore. I am watching LOST and getting to the last episode (again) and finding myself calculating that if I watch one episode a week starting January 1st, I won't have to watch Sun and Jin die again until late 2014.

Maybe it was Radio West. This guy was telling Doug Fabrizio today about these moments while he was out hunting that surpassed those moments that only get to happen once in your life, better than putting a ring on someone else's finger in your own  wedding ceremony, or graduating college, or any of those moments that you already know what the picture will look like. He was talking about those moments that you don't expect, and you are wide awake for the whole thing, and think, "This is really happening, and it will never happen again," and he was talking about caribou. But I was thinking about my own moments that I get to have, like that.

Whether it is sitting across from Celisse in her car, and hearing her admit a secret that she really didn't have to tell me.
Whether it was that night, two weeks ago, that I was driving home from a closing shift and all my friends were doing something way cooler, but I slowed down my Jetta and watched people launch chinese lanterns across the park, and across the sky.
Whether it is meeting the love of your life, and having your breath catch in your lungs as you realized that he really understood you--like only in the way that a family member or your very personal God knows your soul--only to watch him slip away after 7-Eleven dates into the blue abyss of hipster/atheistic/rockstar territory.
Or watching your father cry, and finding out that he really loves you crazy.

What I have to look forward to are those moments. For the next 40 years, or whatever.
So I've got that.
There's that.

waiting

The summer I lived with Judy, I would wake up every morning before the paper delivery guy would drive by the house and before the newspaper would land (THUNK) on the porch. Somewhere, a baby would stir in its crib, but not wake up, and the mother would stir in her bed, and say a thankful prayer that she did not have to get up this time, and she would wonder why anyone still got the newspaper delivered when there was the internet now, before falling asleep to a dream about an old coworker she used to rely on to make her feel like she had real friends..

I would wake at 3:45 or 4am, and wait patiently for him. The absence of him would leave a quiet white noise waiting in the air. It would kill me, sometimes, to wait for him. And then his car would drive obediently towards our house, I would hear the beloved thunk of the newspaper on our porch. I would pull myself up in the bed and look out the window to make sure he got back in his car and that he wasn't crawling up the side of the house to my window. I would lie there, awake for another minute, consider what my murder might actually be like. I'd get up to go pee and then sleep a few more hours, before I would bring Judy her ice packs, and start the coffee maker and bring said newspaper to her spot on the couch where we would eat breakfast and plan our leisure time. (All of our time was leisure time). And in those days, I lived happily ever after, whether or not my murder was just around the corner.

I think of how easy it would be to make a phone call, and be back there for good.

But I think that life is supposed to be harder than that.
And I think that even my life here is much, MUCH easier than life for practically everyone else in the world. I wish I could take some of the suffering of my brethren onto my shoulders to relieve them, and to feel like I was doing something.
But God mapped this all out, and He knows, and I don't, and I just have to be patient, in the silence before the newspaper shows up. To be thankful, for now, that I am not the one delivering the newspapers at 4am, under an angry full moon.

meet me in Montauk

Source: Uploaded by user via Today is that rainy day. on Pinterest

Me: How are you?
J: I am twelve days sober.
Me: That is awesome!
J: Yeah, I am only smoking pot now.

It would be very easy to become a psychopath. I am on a steady plan to become one, and it has involved not sleeping all week, and then trying to work while still in a dream state, and with a lack of red meat in my diet.  Add Eternal Sunshine to all of this, shake with espresso and eggnog, and add Halloween makeup and not taking a night off from anything, and there you go.


"I found your life's most perfect butter sauce."
- Chef Celisse

cheers for the fearless

Source: celia-perrin-sidarous.com via Rachel on Pinterest

love at first snow. sunrise. sunset.

All the things keep happening and I can't make myself write them all out. (well I've been journaling in a real, physical journal, so there's also that) But.

I got back together with my band. Got back together with my bass. It feels electrical. And now Ashleigh is playing cello, which is bomb.
I'm stoked on this Experience the Worship thing that we're doing, and excited and encouraged about music and Jesus in general.

I just keep showing up to work.
And people can be kind of condescending that I have a degree and love to work at Starbucks. But too bad. I just love it, still.

I keep running.
I had a 21 mile a week goal, and I haven't met it since I came back from the Land of Pastries and Gnocchi, but this week I ran my fastest mile ever? It felt fantastic?

And you just keep going. 
The daytime feels great and full of life and breathing and color,
the night time feels like ripping out your own hair and slicing off your own skin and breathing becomes not a thing that you can do.
But you just keep going, and God is good either way. Because if you have something good and holy and pure....you are going to have to slay the dragons that show up to try and take it from you.

Friday quotes

"I can tell you really need to pee, you're like 3 inches taller."
-Bryan


Me: I don't want to have a wedding.
Dad: Okay, you don't have to.  You can just stay here and watch the dogs.
Me: No,  I mean I want to get married, I just don't want to have a wedding.


Me: Oh my gosh. One day Wesley is going to be thirteen and have a man's voice.
Celisse: Yeah, he'll be like, "Come on Mom, cook me some Eggos."

sliding doors

Sometimes I see clearly through the window
into the other life.

I see a fatter version of me, married to Cam. Thirty-six years old, with one kid who cries when I try to teach him mathematics.
His name is always Pedro, even though Cam and I are white.

The other me never sold out for God, in the parallel life. She quit trying. And maybe moved to West Valley.

It was really that Cam was little by little unfaithful to me, with winks and smiles to other women. To using his romance language on them.
We would get quieter, everyday to each other, and things would fall apart. I would want a vacation and  a new car, and he would want romance out of me. He would find out I was gloomy, after our vows, and would get angry when I never cleaned out the dryer lint-trap.

And this is where I am so blessed, is that the life I am living belongs to God, and that I have to check with God, before decisions like marrying Cam.

The parallel me, in other universes and predestinations...
she tries to figure out where things went wrong in her marriage, and parenthood, and career when the real me just finds new things to smile about, and realizes that all the moments can be turned into worship.
Even in painful sacrifice and flashbacks.
The me that got picked for this life seriously takes it for granted most days.

you keep saying that.

"Look, this is his ex-girlfriend's profile pictures. I can't see all of them. She may have blocked me. The only time I met her, she wouldn't shake my hand because she said it was weird. But seriously, she has changed her profile picture at least three times since I looked a couple weeks ago. Who takes pictures like this of themselves? I mean, who is taking these pictures of her, for her? Don't you think it is kind of trampy to change your profile picture so often? He told me she was a tomboy, but these pictures tell me she is trying to pick up guys at bars."

I am puzzled as to what she does in her free time. I am puzzled as to where her free time comes from, in between working this job, and the other job for the trucking company, and her demanding family time.

I wonder what the free time looks like for her. What PG rated things do she and the boyfriend do? How many sentences, out of all the sentences they say to each other, are about the ex-girlfriend? How many sentences are about their future? Do they ever doubt their plans, and if they do, is it because they think they'll get in a car crash, or is it about the ex-girlfriend, or is it because they have been bad at commitment so far?

I think a lot about other people's free time. This mainly started with Renee, when I spent 35 hours a week with her, and she wouldn't tell me any truth about her personal life.

When people walk in the door, I wonder how they got to a point in their day that put them in front of me, and I try to gauge whether they want me to be part of their day, or if I am just a machine that spits out a cup of a coffee.
Am I harbor or a bank. Are you a sailor or a pirate.

Does this person stand in front of the mirror and worry about their hair loss? Does she sit at the edge of her bed and sigh in the morning, or does she just get right up and go to the bathroom. Does he get nervous to say his coffee order, and that's why he's kind of a jerk?
What do they do in the in-between moments?

I try to make these questions mean that I see the other people as people.
But I forget sometimes,
and the people are just numbers. Especially if they keep their sunglasses on.

the first day of my life

Cinque Terra, Italy

It's hard to know what to start writing about my trip.
It was fantastic. I wish that every one I knew and love could have been there. Everything was gorgeous, and tasted great, and time slowed down, and my stomach healed, and things that never made sense started to make sense about the whole world.

Stuff like that, is what I would say.

But some things I will say as I decompress are that
1) I love America
2) I even love Utah
I was ready to come home after seventeen amazing days.

About life now

I was washing dishes at Starbucks today (is that where I have most epiphanies?) and I was realizing that real life is nice. I don't know how to explain to you what real life is. It is a combination of being done with college, and having taken every girl's dream vacation, and then what is left? What is next? I'm supposed to start some journey or career or something, but in fact, just real life by itself is nice.

On the car, driving home from a pho date with Celisse and Bryan, I thought about how people 5, 7, or 11 years older than me are just now starting over with nothing. Somewhere out there.
And I'm starting over, but not with nothing. I'm starting over with an education, and not doing drugs, and a faith and hope in Jesus, and a family that loves me.

The desires of my heart are far away and unreachable, but that's probably how I like them. I like the chase.
And it keeps me desperate for time with my maker.

So this is the first day of my life with no countdowns. To the big, white canvas waiting for me.
Real life is kind of nice.

Hello from Lyon

I don't have a legit computer, and also I've been too lazy to journal while I've been here, but let me just tell you that being in France is pretty bomb.

I am hoping to remember my memories by pictures an videos.

I am just constantly floored by how good the food really is. People always say that, but I guess I learned the truth.

Also I am incredibly blessed that God put me in a place in life that I could afford to take this trip, and the time off for it.

And the other thing, besides the beauty and food, is it just feels so good to only think about how great of a time I'm having and forgetting all my worries from home.

It is nice to be an alien for once.

answer key

The secret is: I really miss deadlines.

Being a graduate just feels like, the deadlines are floating around in outer space. Anything could happen at any time, and it makes for a queasy stomach.

But having a deadline for leaving the country gave me things to do this week, like pack, call my credit cards, buy a bridesmaid dress so it can be shipped in time for my cousin's wedding, and find my things that were lost in the abyss of my room. Here are some other things.

-I thought I was having small daily heart attacks, but it seems my acid reflux is just moving to a place next to my heart. This is unfortunate because I was hoping to get some Valium out of my problems. Just kidding?

-Sometimes you feel in love, and sometimes you say, "Heart, that is a bad idea, let's go do dishes instead."

 -Putting away a Starbucks order can probably burn 600 calories.

 -a moment when Elaine suddenly appears by your side, unexpectedly, while you are ringing up a customer, and whispers, "When are we going to run away together, my Love?" and you whisper back, "Tonight, at midnight," and then finish swiping a white guy's credit card for his triple nonfat latte

 -headaches that go away with minimal effort and ibuprofen

 -fourth or fifth honeymoons with the love of your life

 -family dinners when you all say memories

-hearing your latest favorite song coming on at work, and then putting it on repeat

-butterflies in your stomach about leaving the United States for no other reason but having fun

There will be time for doctors and dentists and for brewing coffee over and over.
Tomorrow is not that time.

landlocked blues

Source: dfnisland.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I am so sleepy/exhausted today that I think even my soul wants to take a nap.

I like going to beaches well enough, but what I really wish I could do,

is be out on the water.

In a boat, for a really long time, with some books and a heart that is ready to heal over and forgive, and come out bright and shiny and pump blood better than ever. And I would have a lot of new blood to give to the people who are worse with wear.

Because I look around me, and all I can think about is my brothers and sisters who signed up to fight in this war with me, but they have gotten weary of fighting battles, and are stripping themselves of the armor of God.

They stand in fields, willing and ready to be wiped out by the gunfire of the enemy.

I wish I could hold them and bandage them up, and somehow give them the courage to keep going.

monday morning at Panera

She held my hand across the car, in between the seats, but the way she held it, all I could feel was how soft her skin was--like an innocent small child--and I knew all she was thinking about was to keep going and to keep listening to the radio. I didn't know how to meet her grandpa, yet we ended up sitting across the table with him, and I was choking down some coffee, even though I don't like to drink coffee with salty breakfast food (I was having eggs and toast) and wished I had broken down and gotten a coke instead. They were saying all of the usual things that didn't mean anything special, but formed warm air in our booth, and I knew she wasn't thinking about what it had felt like to hold my hand (she had done it accidentally), but that was all I could think about when her grandpa kept blinking so slowly. I worried that my skin was going to get as old as his was, in fewer years than his did, and I started to panic. I panicked that I would never find myself married, and would lose all the things about me that gave the walls color, and made my dogs keep living. I suddenly felt sure that I would walk back into my apartment, alone, and both of my dogs would be 100% dead. I panicked that my hair would take an awful shape, and I wouldn't remember how to open fashion magazines, and I worried that the wrong perfumes would start smelling really good to me, and that I would be an old woman who smelled bad, but had all of her organs strangely unabridged. I knew my friend was thinking only about her grandfather's safety, about how he was getting along with a stint (or is it a stent?) in his heart but all I could think was that I wish I had told Peter I would marry him, and where would I be now. I'd be at Promontory. I'd be miserable. I'd be cutting coupons, and wiping tables at Wendy's. But as we got back into her car she said, "Thank you Lisa. Thank you for doing this with me. He's so proud, but he can't be so steely around my girlfriends, and I'm glad you were with me." And I felt bad that I hadn't even been with her, the whole time. I'd been drifting around the city with ridiculous expectations of how my life was really going to turn out after everything. I'm not missing all the points on purpose. Sometimes you just open the cupboard and find that it is bare. But sometimes if you walk to the other room, and then back again, you will find a different sort of bareableness, that you really weren't expecting. And this will help you to keep waking up and eating the same breakfast, over and over.

hip hip, for the lift

for Elaine, forever ago

Me: Can I go home sick so I can watch--
Elaine: Soaps?
Alex: I used to love to watch the Soaps when I was a kid.
Me: I was going to say Star Wars.
Elaine: General Hospital!
Alex: Yeah!
Elaine: My moms used to watch General Hospital and split a Diet Coke.

I don't know why I think this is so funny. I suppose it is partly because
a) Elaine kind of has two moms and
b) that they would split a Diet Coke.


Elaine is my darling, and favorite coworker. She comes from a polygamist family, but I haven't exactly pinned down what their beliefs are (they are not necessarily FLDS?) because she is wild and unorthodox, but still believes if her husband felt called to have a second wife, she'd be down.

She has red hair, and she is beautiful, and delightful, and funny and cheerful.
I wish I could bottle up the way I feel around her, and take it everywhere. No one would ever call me a dark and stormy person.

I am in a state of extreme encouragement right now. 
Even though I am sick (a result, I believe, of not drinking alcohol, but I don't have time to go into that theory right now) I am pretty happy and looking forward to my European vacation coming up, and I think my stomach is really getting healed from not drinking coffee and alcohol.

I am blessed beyond all measure.
Even though this life may not be the desire of my heart, when I come home from work and I don't have to cook dinner for my fake husband and imaginary kids, I am pretty lucky to get to just water my plants and take a nap. God knows what He is doing.

oh, hi there

Source: shop.uncovet.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I haven't had a lot to say because, I just worked 8 days straight, and my legs hurt more than my brain works.

I've been standing around at work, and thinking, this is not my real life. I told my boss, "I don't usually remember driving to work, or driving home. I'm not quite sure that this isn't just actually a dream." And she just laughed that, "You're weird, Rachel," laugh that says she's not actually sure that I'm not a dream either.

I'm going to spend the next three days reading,
 not drinking coffee or beer,
catching up with my 21 mile a week running goal,
and hanging out with Jesus.

"Thank You for my life."

Source: google.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I think I might have an ulcer from stress, and from trying to take care of my acid reflux with natural remedies (AC Vinegar and Aloe Vera juice).  At this point, it is almost comedic to me. But I think I have to stop drinking coffee if I want to keep my esophagus.

This has been a rough season for me, (post college, and my weird stomach, and finishing ALIAS) and might continue to be until the plane touches down in the Paris airport in a few weeks.

But what I have gotten out of it is

-more loving, desperate quiet times
-a hunger for God and his word
-an appetite for books and fiction in general
-time to paint, call people on the telephone, time to watch old movies, time to run 4 miles a day
-anger to run 4 miles a day
-plants. A lot of them
-a clean, happy room
-a better version of me?

I have so much to be grateful for, and I say it out loud to myself, while I choke down tea instead of coffee, and drink nothing but water at night.



Patricia: Nobody knows anything, Joe. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump, and we'll see. That's life, right? 
Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)

we were never supposed to leave

I walked back into the room and specified the smell to air conditioning and soggy graham crackers.

And how do you say goodbye like this?

I pictured myself floating away in a small rowboat. Gliding through the night into the wide waters where the ripples that my small boat made....they affected no one but me. Only I could hear the splashes of my rowing, and how God has called me to be content with these nightly trips around the island. To row back, and to dock while everyone is sleeping next to someone else's beating heart.

I console myself that someone is flying above, in a helicopter, and can't see me, and they think that perhaps they are alone as well. Besides dispatch. Despite air controllers. 

Despite that God loves us and knows us and speaks to us.

Sometimes it is hard to hear him above the white noise and the neighbor's dog, and the paddling of your oars. But you hope he is still guiding you to a place that the sand is not as rocky, and that your ulcer could be solved by ice cream, and to where none of your loved ones have accidentally bleached your favorite pajamas into a color less than purple....

That is where I am drifting in the summer night air. And when I drift north, and the sea freezes into floes, there will be grace for that time too.

God of Jacob, God of Rachel

Some weeks ago (or was it months?) Steele (was it Steele? it had to have been) said something during a teaching that struck me about how God created me, and picked out what I would be like, and it made me view God as nicer guy than I had for a whole lotta months.

Suddenly my Facebook page popped up in my mind, and I saw all my interests displayed, and I thought, how incredibly romantic. The past ten years I have been waiting for a man to show up, and love me for the things that make me Rachel, when it was Him all the time that had already loved and picked me out.

He picked out my affinity for Wes Anderson movies, and the way literature would speak to me (and my which degree I'd end up with), that I would have more art prints than wall space to hang them on. That I would love corn fields more than cityscapes. That the sound of a football game would give me a headache (I think, deep down, this goes back to Ft. Collins where the library was open on Sundays and when I brought home VHS tapes, I was never able to watch them right away because my mother was watching Sunday Night Football). And He knew that I would catalogue the things that my friends say, to laugh at later on.


But also he picked out the weird things like my ridiculous obsession with air quality and precipitation and humidity. He decided that jewelry would SICK ME OUT. (I have never met anyone else yet in this huge world that is disgusted by all jewelry. My dad asked me a couple weeks ago, "Is that a real thing, do other women feel the same way that you do?" And I said No, Dad, no other kindred spirit has shown herself up to me and put her arms around me, and told me that earrings are the grossest thing to her too.) He picked my bruisy skin and my original hair color. He alone understands why every birthday, I think I will get murdered before the next. He knows the time and place of my actual death, and every scar and haircut I will get before that day.

He gifts me with small moments where I find lovers who see me for me, and share my sentiments, but ultimately it is just a reflection back to Him. To my one true love.

And in that blinding moment that Steele was talking, I realized that after 20 years, God is rooting for me. And it lifted a lot of guilt and loneliness off of my shoulders. And the days I have woken up since then, and remembered that God picked out my profile, I feel like--

I feel like "You know what? I am a brave and pure daughter of the King."
And it makes the rocky times easier.

road blocks

I've been sitting at this airport for a lot of hours, Brad. I've been thinking about ways that I burned the chicken, and how you wouldn't even choke down the coffee.

I've been thinking about the ways I would get up in the morning, like I didn't even know you. I'd swing my legs off of the bed, so easily like the alarm clock was nicer than any of us really knew. Like we really didn't know that all this time, it just wanted to keep sleeping just like we did.
I'd make the bed with you still in it, and pull my hair into a ponytail like you didn't need to use the toilet at 5:30 a.m. and I'd shut the bathroom door and do my makeup for twenty minutes.

I know you've been suffering Brad, and I think you should go home. Go back to your mother's seventies-style living room, and go back to your dad's workshop with the peg board.
Take the hammer off of the wall, and smash whatever you need to, even though you are a gentle soul. I know I've been killing you so slowly.

I will call you in six or seven hours, and we will just breathe across the static, and the telephone company will rip us off of minutes we can't see. They'll charge us for all the seconds that we don't know what to say.

I know what I want to say, but my voice will get somewhere in the walls, the plasma, the whatever. You know, between my lungs and pit of my stomach.

And what I would say is what I've already said in the text messages and the silent dinners at restaurants.
That I'm made of stuff.
That I'm made of cardboard and charcoal and cotton balls and TV screens.
That you're made of cinder blocks and Burger King and air-filter-fibers and even sometimes plastic sacks from Target.

And for some reason, we can't build a time machine out of that. Can't go back to the beginning, and it is making me sleepy.

It's making me the end.

I still see Your gospel

Some nights it feels like every person you ever knew and loved is holding a balloon to your mouth, and asking you to fill it with air. But you find your lungs have quit working the way a real human's should.

Sometimes the streetlights taunt you and say that you don't know what you are doing, anyway. They say you are breathing the air for no reason.

And then you have to reiterate that you are a soldier. That you are asked to fight harder battles, with the promise that, in a few hours, it could possibly be morning, and though God has called you to suffer in a harder way than you thought He would, you've still got promises.

You have promises that one day you will wake up to the One that loved you first. That made you the way you are and knows the times you had to wear Kevlar or had to count to ten to keep breathing.

building Spaceships

"Eat your chicken, or go to bed," Shannon said, assertively sticking out the green tupperware plate.

"I can't go to bed, Mom. It hurts me," he said, playing on her iPad.

A few weeks ago, Leo looked out the window and said to Shannon, "Mom, how do we get to the moon?"

And she told him, "In a spaceship."

And I think that might have been one of the first moments that I actually wanted to have a kid. But what I also think, when both of her kids are crying, is that there is definitely a reason God has protected children from me thus far.

But I spent the night helping Shannon build a spaceship, under the porch light, with duct tape and Starbucks boxes, and for a moment I forgot all the things that wake up my stomach in the morning with too much acid, and forgot to drink a beer, and I forgot to go workout til my legs fell off.

It felt really nice.

Megan-isms

"Is this game over? Because I'd really like that."

"He gets cuter everytime I see him. He's like, husband material."
-when she saw baby Wesley on Saturday

"The older generation is obsessed with the iPad. Are you guys agreeing?"
-over a glass of wine, the same night


This post was originally about Megan, but then I remembered two other recent ones.


"Oxycodone, I'm on oxycodone?"
-Isabel, said like a true druggie 8 hours after her wisdom teeth surgery

"All I wanna do, is touch your butt. And I've gotta feeling, I'm not the only one."
-Emily, she sings this one a lot if the rooms gets a little boring

The Corrections

"Sometimes I get so excited thinking about my morning coffee,"

 Mr. Söderblad said, "I can't fall asleep at night." 

Jonathan Franzen

July 26

"what? It's been 7 minutes? I have to go to the bathroom again." -Emily

office supplies

"Watching movies is so easy," Luke said, in reference to how much more work it is to read a book, or worse, to sit down to write.
But I thought that, the whole way back to the suburbs.
Watching the movie is so much easier.

Luke doesn't own a stapler, but he has moved out of his parents' home.

My car might be broken down, but I have small things like a personal stapler and a perfect cup of coffee everyday.

He might have independence, but I have 4 Australians who follow me from room to room and tell me that my hair looks nice, and could they please have a piece of my ice cream cone.

But what is happens is that these days turn into different days, and that the weather changes eventually, and that bands come out with new albums, and that your skin keeps keeping the organs inside of your body as best it can.

So you might not look like the other people here, but there are lots of people in other towns who would think you are doing a really regular or even good job at your life.

july 7

My father started to listen to that hipster radio station, before I could even notice. I left the room one day, and when I came back, he wasn't listening to NPR anymore. He was listening to whatever the kids downtown are listening to.

So I made us several pans of cinnamon rolls.
Every Saturday that I didn't have to work the morning rush and stand at that window and watch a carousel of the meanest people in the world lazily stick their hands out of their car window and receive for their non-efforts a perfectly crafted beverage back into those rude hands, well. Those Saturdays were what kept me going. The illusion of a weekend specially for me.

And the most shocking thing about my father listening to the hipster radio station, was that I had tried this before. I had tried the station before, when NPR would let me down at 8:30 or 9:45 or 11:59 during Jazz hours and before the comforting sound of the BBC radio telling me I'd stayed up far too late, and that I might indeed be a teenager. The hipster station would let me down with some evening garbage that did not sound very hipster, or perhaps it was so hipster that it was even making it hard for the hipsters to breathe, in their cooler-than-me euphoria.

But days passed, and each time my father turned on the station, it relentlessly played music I liked, and was surprised that he would leave the radio on, and that we were both enjoying my kind of music, while I was trying to eat a whole watermelon by myself.

You can wait out a whole summer, in your house, if you try hard enough. You have to prepare ahead of time, though.

97 degrees

And then, you realize you still don't know what you are going to do with all your empty pages. You fill the squares on your calendar with different colored inks, and pretend you are not just trying to catch up with other people who also don't know what they are doing with their lives.

So you just freak out and buy a new duvet cover at Ikea, instead of showing up in yourself for others, in more respectable places.

I'm trying not to be your flakiest friend, Sharon.
I'm trying not to be the one that says she can't go to your ballet recital because of the headache that comes back with bright sunlight, and Sharon, I'm trying to pretend for you that I would like to sit at your pool party where you will not be serving martinis.

But I can't turn it off, like a brother.
I can't compartmentalize, and pretend that every time the door swings on its hinges, that I do not hope
this hope,
or think that....

I am trying to want to come to your pool party, is what is getting lost in this email to you, Sharon.
There are no excuses.
I will show up to your pool party with a macaroni salad and a bottle of Sprite, and whatever is left of me after not sleeping and not taking iron pills, and not lacquering up my skin with suntan lotion.

a love note

The deep truth of it is, I love Starbucks right now.
Like, really love it.

I love my coworkers, I love 25% of our customers, and I love that my job is handing people a cup of something that I believe in. Everyday.

People keep asking me what I'm going to do now that I'm done with college, but truthfully I just want to keep paying my bills with espresso until I don't love it anymore, and then I'll look for something else.

I love that everyday brings surprising people into my life, and that I only have to invest 90 seconds into them.

I am extremely blessed.

"Stand inside an empty tuxedo with grapes in my mouth, waiting for Ada."
The National


There were some parts of the story that ended with me being everywhere. It ended with me being in your car. It ended with me in the foothills, leaning against a tree with my rib cage crushing me for the hell of it. Or it ended with the end, which is the part of the song after the song has fizzled out.

My legs do get restless, so much so that I take a sleeping pill to keep the legs in my bed under some covers.
So much do the legs get restless, that after the song fizzles out, I wack them, and pinch them, and say, "Legs, my eyes are tired and they are beggin' you to give it up now." The sleeping pill says funnier things than that, but we can't retell the stories in front of children.

And the color creeps into your skin, unwillingly.
The lines creep up next to your eyes and make you older, even though you are still stubbing your toe against the foot of your bed like you've been doing for twenty years.
Have you learned nothing, in all the weeks you have survived so far?
Your muscles should remember
better
by
now.

pastimes

It is seriously not my fault, this thing. I only have one CD left, and when I put it in, I only listen to 2 of the songs.
I drive to work before it is light, and play the song on repeat. I pop the CD out, and the song is on the radio, and it makes my stomach hurt more each time.
I don't eat, I don't sleep.
I don't sleep.


I could next become a skinny skeleton, and you could pack me up in your cupboard and say, "Well, she never got gutsy, or free," but I hope I get free.

I hope for years to write love letters, in between temper tantrums, and night runs, and painful radio hits, and black and white photos that I didn't plan to come across.

I hope to build bridges, but it seriously not my fault.
This thing.

Starbucks Days

Eat Raisin Bran, groggy.
Hope car starts.
Say hello to the same customer as yesterday, and wonder if you already saw them this morning.
Grind, brew, repeat.
Grind, brew, repeat.
Fake a smile to a mean guy.
Fake happy attitude to rude rich woman who smells wonderful, and has glorious hair volume, and when she goes anywhere, men line up to buy her a salad. Buy her a sugar-free anything. Buy her a piece of celery coated with self-loathing, and watch these business people flood the lobby with business meetings and hear them suck up all the internet until it moves like a whale from the router to the patio.
Open pastry case, smell the Maple scones, and know that autumn will come back for you, in approximately 86 days.
Grande iced hazlenut americano. Receive wink, feel heart flood with patriotism and another rogue emotion that you should probably guillotine with the bagel cutter next to the oven.
Get your heart back to business.
Eat a bucket of Spaghettios.
Worry that your boss knows all your sins. Worry about that thing of getting fired.
Recall 2am nightmare and decide to stay awake forever. Realize your liability for the television medicine you've been living on.
"I'm going to marry your brother," Emily says, the way she said yesterday, and the day before, but with different hairstyles, and varying quietude in her voice.
And you compose a letter to your brother.

Dear Philip,
I realize with gravity, the way we are never supposed to express familial fondness, and although this has been charged of us in austerity, I secede.
I miss you knowing my jokes. I miss the way you would work the 7am to 3:30pm shift, and the way this enabled me to sleep in and work the evening shifts, and never feel the desperate eyes of the automobile salesmen.
I miss your computer being around, and my music that you took with you on your computer.
Our coworkers miss you because they'd like to get rid of me back to night shift, as I am quite louder than you are and sing more songs than you do.

Mostly I miss the thing about the jokes.

Love, or just even just like,

Rachel

sleepy

E.E. Cummings

 The hardest days are the ones that you are doing dishes, and you realize you have to work for the rest of your life. And you haven't been sleeping well, is why it hurts.

But then you realize you are surrounded by wonderful people, who can still surprise you and make you laugh...

life still has some surprises?

yes.

And always I feel blessed by the safety I experience, living in the U.S., and I am blessed by my gracious God, to never go hungry or cold, or without medicine for the rocks and hard places.

So in the now.open.forever that I'm walking through with no handrails or paths, at least I have my God to keep talking to, and friends to shoot espresso shots with, when we would all rather still be in bed.

Leviathan

"In such condition there is no place for industry...no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
-Thomas Hobbes

In short.

No matter what people say, dogs don't really know when you're sad. They want your ice cream more than they want to sympathize for you.

But you gotta keep going because somewhere out there, men and women are dying for you.

And you have to keep going because one perfect man died for you, even though He didn't have to, and He was sinless, and you sure don't deserve it.
So there's that.

Lose 5 lbs this Week!

If you stop drinking champagne and eating ice-cream sandwiches.

All over the neighborhood, the dogs are barking.
We yield to summer whether we want to or not, but delight in cool days that remind us that the snow will indeed come back and save us from heat-exhaustion and fickle summer romances that we had our hearts set on.

Still.

If I feel overwhelmed: it will not last forever.

If joy floods my heart: I'll try to remember it with photographs and written record.

If Satan tries to tackle me, I will wear a stealthier uniform and heavier, ceramic padding.
His bones will be crushed underneath my feet.

And if I start to feel nothing, I will find the loopholes in the corners that I've been cornered in.
There is always a loophole.

summer skins

 Pictures from Roger's house in Iowa.

Sometimes I find these old stories that I forgot I wrote.

They are like stories coming from a stranger, and they bring back a memory that had been cremated, and I reconstitute it, and nod, and I think that I can remember being that person for a minute.

But I don't care to keep being that person. I sleep much better than she did.

doors

"No one can survive happy hour but the honey badgers."
-Zeth


And then there was me, and only me left.

And then there was no homework on a Sunday night.
And then there were doors that you would have to pick from.

And then I thought, what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life but exercise and watch the best TV shows?

And I realized that this is why people buy a house? to give themselves unlimited things to fix and to have to afford?

But you know what? That is what The Sims is for.

Well, I knew it would be a slippery slope to come back to Iowa.

I just can't remember times that I woke up happy everyday, like I do in Iowa. Every fragrance in the air is pure, and the colors seem brighter, and everything tastes richer.

If I was a scientist, I would think something about what is going on in my brain, and words like serotonin and oxytocin would come up.
But I'm not a scientist, so I just think I'm happy.

hopeful

"Well unlike you, I don't judge people just by how they look, okay? I'm more concerned about their compassion and principles."
"Well that is not very compassionate to those of us who look fantastic and don't have principles, is it?"

(Running Wilde Episode 1.02)

Summer, I am not going to let you kill me.


I got my haircut yesterday, and I've been running two miles a day, and I am starting lots of projects.
Today I had three cups of coffee, and then went to meet with my creative writing group. It was really encouraging, and fun to sit at a table with four other people who have a same passion and similar goals.


Then I got my cap and gown, and I am graduating tonight. I am hoping it will give me some closure, for now, and make everything seem more real.

A little

Well, I was going to stay stuff about funny stuff,
but then I ended up saving it for a story where it will get tucked away on a shelf, and when I die in a few weeks (I always think I'm just about to die) it won't get read for a year or two until my family can handle to start reading all of the sappy stories I've written. Or, if I live, it will go in the arsenal.

And, an aside on my fiction-writing:
I read a piece this week for my final Creative Writing workshop, and when class was over, my new friend Marc said, "It was good, a bit like your other piece though, in that, she was so lonely," and I knew he was right, and I stewed for a few hours over whether or not I keep writing the same character over again. And here's what has happened to me.


a) I re-read No one Belongs Here More than You by Miranda July at Christmas time, and what I realized I knew and loved about her writing, was that deep-seated loneliness that every human being has(man or woman, teenager or fifty-year-old business man) almost all of the days of their lives, and how she shows that without really saying it


b) I started to believe it is a fact that every single person, whether married or slave, or divorced, or perpetually single (ME), or homeless guy, or Prime Minister, or alien from outer space... they are suppressing the loneliness (not necessarily a libido all the time, Sigmund) and that this loneliness is the hole that God wants to fill.


c) Maybe we do all feel the loneliness, but some of us definitely don't admit to it. Or either way, I started writing stories about this same girl who lives alone, surrounded by people, and I don't even necessarily think she is me. I'm just trying to take care of her. But I need to write a couple old man stories, maybe, for Marc, so he thinks I'm just not writing the same white-girl story over and over.


So now that that's over, here are some of the other things that have been happening to me.

I clumsily spilled an entire venti coffee on a really sweet guy one week ago, and I've never been so embarrassed in my life. And you know, dear friend, how little I use the superlatives. I tried to think of my top five most embarrassing moments, but none came close to this.

I took Ceramics 1 twice in highschool. The second time was with my best friend Kelsea, and one day, after walking out of the bathroom and all the way to Ceramics, and then in and out of the storage room, and then sitting down, our teacher said,
"Kelsea, does Rachel know she has toilet paper sticking out of the back of her pants?" because he was never sure what things we were doing on purpose, and I'm pretty sure most of my teachers thought I did drugs.
And Kelsea said, "I doubt it," or something, and then came and whispered it to me, and while my face turned bright red, this did not even come close to the bright red burns that were probably on this guy's thighs when I drenched them in coffee. And then he tried to tip me, which made it worse.


Besides that, I finished college.

"I'm not real big on guys with hats."
-Hannah B., who is making me feel better about my dating standards

A lot of funny/sad/lonely/embarrassing things have been happening to me lately, which is really fortunate from a writer's standpoint, but not so hot from a just-trying-to-live-a-normal-life standpoint.

I will start with Thursday which was funny, and see if I have more energy later for sad, lonely, and embarrassing.

I went to the Art Barn for a reading, and my Jenny Lewis classmate showed up.
  "Oh hey, Jessica right?"
  "No, it's Rachel," I say, not all that shocked that she forgot my name even after our many conversations.
  "Oh that's right, well this is.....Tony," she said, squinting her eyes as she looked at him. "Tony B." (I'm not leaving his name out for privacy, she actually called him that.)
  "Hello Tony, nice to meet you," I said.
  "Nice to meet you," he smiled, looking at me, but not really looking at me.
Jeni was looking around the room. "Nice place they've got here," and pointed at a photograph and started laughing, "Look, it's art," she said.
I was noticing that she still had not said what she was doing with Tony, and if this was a date or not.
  "Is this your first time here?" I asked.
  "Yes," she laughed, and got up abruptly to look around.
I looked at Tony.
  "So you guys been friends long?" Thinking he might correct me and say he was her boyfriend.
  "No. We don't know each other that well," he kept looking around.
  "So you just thought you'd come to support Jeni?"
  "Yeah," he said. I tried to give him room to make up a story, but it turns out that he probably is really just someone she bought pot from, and invited him to come to our reading.

Sometimes I wonder how people get any work done when they smoke pot, but Jeni's rain story was actually more interesting than I thought it was going to be when I first wrote about her a few weeks back.  I always think pot was just a high school thing. I forget people are really still doing it.

But then, I spend all of my time at other responsible people's houses.

"So I've been stalking all the people I went to high school with on Facebook, and 95% of them are married or had a baby or both."
"Oh my gosh, Rachel, that is not creepy at all," Kirsten scoffs while she scrubs the drains.
"You guys, this is really normal."
"OH MY GOSH," is the obligatory Roxanne response that I have come to know and count on in the harder moments of wearing a collared black shirt and chugging bitter espresso.
"Rachel, you know that it's only Utah that people get married so young."
"I know, Kirsten," I tell her, shoving ice from one side of the ice bin to the other with a grande scoop. "I'm trying to tell you that it makes me feel better that at least half of them have gotten fatter."
Kirsten laughs at me.


I had a dream, two nights ago that I I lived in Venice on a boat, and one afternoon got my arm chomped off by an alligator. But I knew it was a dream, as I was getting dragged behind a speedboat and the alligator was relieving me of one of my favorite extremities.
I don't wake up in fear as often.

Tonight, well, I feel a little better about the future. Maybe it is because the sun stays up later, yawning into the evening. Maybe it is a meeting I had with my professor about grad school, and it gave me hope for the months and years outside of my graduating in two weeks.

My parents give me Primetimes in my stocking each Christmas, because we traditionally only smoke on Christmas. But my father lit a pipe tonight so I dug up 3 Christmases worth of cherry Primetimes from my sock drawer and smoked a couple on our back porch.
I blew a few smoke rings into the here-and-there-breeze. I forgot that I knew how. I couldn't remember how I learned until I re-wound to four summers ago when I thought that I could still save the world.


I can't save the world.
 I've learned everything since that summer in black and white. But what I know is, if an alligator chomps me up tomorrow, then that was God's will for me.
And that it was His best will for me.

I think if one of us is going to suffer
why shouldn't it be me?

Blind Pilot

 

I thought, I will sit down. I will collect and organize myself, and then I will get one cup of coffee and close my eyes until class starts.

And then I hear,


"Hey. Hey! What's up?"
And I look up and see Jenny Lewis is talking to me. But it's not Jenny Lewis. I have had not that much sleep, and no coffee yet. I have had a morning as the slowest swimmer in Crossfit, and the slowest burpees,  and no sugar yet, and scrambling to finish my cramming for my Comm test and then sentence-tweaking to hand out my story to my workshop, and here I am talking to Jenny Lewis.
Well, her real name is Jenny, and she looks like Jenny Lewis.
Every class period, she gets up halfway through to go to the bathroom, and I think that She Is So Brave to do that. I always envision a life where you can drink as much water as you want and go to the bathroom whenever you please, and it's a far off goal, and the answer is marrying a rich guy and never working again.
But Jenny comes to sit next to me and I admit that I am nervous to hand out my piece. I picture her leaving in the middle of class to go to the bathroom. I see her lazy, lilting walk, like she was maybe once a dancer, and she is used to having the attention, even though her hair is starting to grey in her mid twenties, and she talks like a pot head.

She starts to explain that she is done with her workshop piece too, even though she doesn't have to hand it out for another week.
She wants to tell me the story she wrote.
She gives me uninterrupted eye contact, which is really hard for me to handle. This is because of history of eye-contacters and also that I know now that certain colors burn out when you look at them forever. I look at the color of her while she tells me, giggling, that her story is about two young girls who get caught in a storm, and then a ditch--
"You want to know what happens?" Jenny asks, her head tilted to one side like my Australian shepherd at dinner time.
"Yes," I say, because it is the polite thing, and I know how to make friends in college by now.
"I'm not going to tell you," she says, eating a piece of chocolate, but offering me some.
"Oh it's okay, I have chocolate too, in my lunch bag," I say, blushing, and looking away to give my eyes a break from looking at her eyes.
Can you get high by looking at someone who is probably stoned?
"Well my chocolate is better than yours," she jokes, even though I've had those Love Letter Chocolate Bars before and the love letters they come with are less than inspiring.
I smile again and look back at her.
"I'll tell you how it ends, because I know it's killing you," she says.
I nod, trying to figure out where she comes from. How do people end up the way they are? What did their parents do to them? What did their lovers do to them?
"Well, the girls gets stuck, but then her brother grabs her hand," she said.
I looked at her.

I looked at her for another second, and then I realized that she meant that that was the end, and I tried to all of the sudden feign surprise.
"Oh he saves her?" I acted very happy to know the end.
"Yeah, well you don't know for sure. It ends with him holding her hand."
"Wow. I'm so glad," I said, in what I believe was a convincing version of me. But then in that split instant I wondered, do people think I am convincing or do they know that I'm just a phony? They can probably tell by my clothes, even though I am the only girl in class with plucked eyebrows and mascara on.
"Yeah," she says, so sure of herself, that I suddenly feel sure of myself. I feel sure of the chocolate brand that I have in my lunch pail. I feel sure of my burpees and sure that I breathe the same air in my lungs that everyone else breathes... but that it feels richer to me in some moments, and when I am sad, it may feel richer to them in their moments.

And the rich, fresh piney air that I thought was just something I smelled during Green Air Days in Utah, was actually fresh mulch that they surrounded the trees in the courtyard that I walk through every afternoon.

But I don't give up.

When people say that thing of how their marriage grows better everyday, well...

That is how I feel about college, which is a really unfortunate thing. I'm enjoying the last of the days.
When I sleep at night, I try to think how I can turn them into more days.

I didn't think I would like Roxanne at the beginning. Sometimes she would do things that would bug me, but now I find myself embracing her strange behavior, and her surprising concerns.

"I think I'm going to go to Bosley, and have them help me with my eyebrows."
"Your eyebrows? What? What is Bosley?"
"You know it's that commercial where they take hair from the back of your head and put it on the front of your head if you need it. But I'm going to have them fill out my eyebrows."
 "What if your eyebrows start growing as fast as the rest of your hair on your head?"
"Well, I will just trim them then."

The thing is, Roxanne's eyebrows look fine, and because she is crazy, I start looking for
whatdoIthinkaboutthatiscompletelyirrational
And anyway. It's probably good that Roxanne doesn't sit down at her computer at night and tell the internet the things that I am saying. 

let's get everybody drunk on sunshine


As my bus started to leave the downtown area, I saw two guys out on the lawn of some closed salon, and they were fishing. They were casting their lines into the lawn, and the sidewalk. Over and over.

I always think I've seen everything until I leave the house. And I'm so glad other people do embarrassing things in public besides me.

I have an embarrassing admission.
I eat sardines and other canned fish.


Tanya is the only person who has ever made me feel okay about this. But the truth is, I'm a freaky eater.
So I always try to find a spot where no one will bother me while I eat the fish (okay guys. Canned fish is a high protein snack that is easy to pack when you are going to be away from a fridge all day. And I am practically a shark, I love fish so much) but today, this guy found me and asked me to take a survey and I looked at him and raised my eyebrows, like, are you really okay that there is a can of fish on the table?
But he survived.

I'm intoxicated on pool water. I'm drunk on music. Maybe I like the spring more than I thought.

I'm having non-fiction writer's block lately. I haven't been able to make my real life seem funny or interesting, because no one wants to hear how awesome my vacation was, or how I went to another wedding where the married couple was younger than me.

So I will just rely on Roxanne, because she is always good for a laugh, or a jaw dropping story, or when you need to break out into song.

Me: The truth is, Roxanne, I haven't had a boyfriend in a long time because I am not good at it.
Roxy: Yeah, me either. My last two boyfriends were an alcoholic and then a drug dealer. But I miss the money and the jewelry.

thoughts on this week

-I am in love with my new Crossfit coach. He is handsome and his voice is hoarse from yelling encouraging things all the time. Crossfit seems to be what makes me get out of bed every day. I know people always tell you that things are life-changing, but Crossfit saves me so much of the time from being a slave to my flesh. I never want to go but I'm so glad I do, and now I can't picture life without it.

-I am looking forward to my "babymoon" with my best friend in California where I am mostly picturing us lying on the beach and doing nothing for six days.

-I am still trying not to think about life after college, because it is horrifying like a Narnia that is always winter and never Christmas.
It is like an entire CD with songs that have no bridges.
It is like soda with no carbonation.
 And I only have seven weeks left before real life.

But I am keeping my heart wide open. God knows where the good goes.

Mariann and me, well we stopped taking the pills at the same time, and opened our faces wide to a cold December.
To a cold January.
To a cold--well it wasn't that cold but I felt myself waking up to my hands gone numb every morning and I would look over at her and how she could sleep with her mouth closed, and I took the suggested vitamins. Told myself the vitamins made me happier but I still ended up cutting off all of my hair as if to say,
well.

I guess I wanted to say that I was a brand new shiny page in Vogue for her.
That I was something she could hold on to, but she broke up with me, and I don't know if it's about breathing with my mouth open, or if I cooked breakfast in the wrong way, or if I laughed too easily while watching the news, or maybe she liked my hair longer,       or if she didn't need me anymore to be free of the pills all by herself.

She would send me these romantic text messages from time to time, afterwards, and I would stop the car to read them, and breathing would get harder for me. I could smell her there in the car. I would lean over and touch the passenger seat. I would clench the passenger seat and whisper the words you told me would help me, and I wouldn't respond to the messages.

And I became a certified camper and would camp all the nights that I didn't have to work in the morning. I would drive myself drunk into the mountains and set up the tent in the dark, and lay in my thermal sleeping bag, and bite off all the nails that I had left. I'd re-read the messages from her. Save them for good, then delete them for really good, then wish I hadn't deleted them and then
I would conjugate Spanish verbs until I fell asleep. In the morning, I could feel alive because it was really cold.
And that's what I was going to tell you, Sharon.

That even though.


That all of this.


That I still have hope, and that sometimes the hope has nothing to do with her, and I know that's a start.

Source: etsy.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Art by the Terrific Nan Lawson

Maybe once a week--or four times if I'm honest--I look around at all these married people and think

"How in the world do two people get so lucky to like each other at the same time...
and then love each other at the same time
and just so happen
to find themselves married

to each other?"

It seems an awfully hard thing to be capable of,
and yet,
so many people are ending up married all the time. I think to myself, why do I (and my friends X and Y and Z) find ourselves
i n c a p a b l e
of being given in marriage?

It seems like a miracle, that two people could end up... together.
It seems like an impossibility that they could procreate and move forward through life educating an offspring about the way it could be more like them.


I have moments in the car where I catch myself thinking I could see myself with a four year old child. Could fill its cup with apple juice, and make it eat broccoli like I make my dogs eat broccoli while we watch Downton Abbey together, and then I can see myself standing in the bathroom making this kid brush his/her teeth seven or eight times a day and then make this kid memorize John Donne and Bible verses and listen to NPR in his/her pre-adolescence.

And then I shake myself out of it. I switch the windshield wipers on and off, and remember that I am incapable.
That I am an aunt, at best.
I give my phone number accidentally to pot-head snowboarders some nights so that when they leave me voicemail, I can pretend that my dance card is full.

But what Roxanne says, is that we are independent women. That we are going to college (although she hasn't actually taken classes yet).
But as I sip my iced tea, what beats under my black collared t-shirt, down in my heart, in my sore burpee'd out chest is this:

I want to find myself married against somebody who wants to have children that brush their teeth eight times a day as well. That I might be capable of this. That we could make coffee for each other in the morning (in an alternating fashion) and that somehow we could make one world out of two selfishnesses. That we could sew the two worlds into one Frankenstein monster, and still be happy that we are waking up next to each other.

Roxanne snickers.
I know I will keep suffering my horror dreams alone for now.