a life that's good

I feel like I am constantly drinking from this full cup, that keeps getting better. I never knew life like this before. I love my job. I love my friends. I love my God and hold nothing against him anymore. I stopped worrying about the things I couldn't control and here I am, excited to get out of bed each day and do another one. Not ticking days off the calendar, hoping God takes me home. Instead I hope that God uses me, and I look forward to all the seconds I get to be on the court for the game.

I'm overwhelmed by joy. It feels like falling in love each day.

On the Farm

Vacation officially started. Redbox rentals, brand new tooth brush, Aussie friends, Mac n Cheese, Captain Morgan and a beautiful snowy day.

God has richly blessed me.

9 to 5

I have this fantasy of having the kind of job that you can wake up and shower and read the paper, and make your coffee and toast and sit and chill with your kids for half an hour before work in the morning. But I don't have kids or a newspaper subscription.

So I guess I'm lucky to get off work at 1pm and watch Battle Star Galactica in my underpants and eat cake all day.

That is the other American dream right? 

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.

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.

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.

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.

"I made orange juice from concentrate and showed her the trick of squeezing the juice of one real orange into it. It removes the taste of being frozen. She marveled at this, and I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again. The day felt like a birthday, our first, and we ourselves were the gifts, to be opened again and again."
from Miranda July's Ten True Things. I love how she writes, I get lost in it.

and as Jenny Lewis would say, the days come to me like sailors, and I watch them as they sail away.
I don't have much of my own words to say tonight. I don't get sad, that's good. I still get happy, that's very good. I had a moment of euphoria, even, at work the other day.
The day started a beautiful way of me driving to work when it was just starting to get enough sun to light up the sleepy, crystal clear valley. It is only this way in the cold. And my heater was starting to warm up the air, and I was so pleased to be wearing gloves and a jacket at 6 a.m.
This is a very hard thing to explain, this crystal clear thing. It is like a moment when the colors pop out to you, and you realize how wonderful your life is when you don't have a headache, and you don't have any social engagements tonight, and you can't think of a single sin. It's the moment you clean your glasses and put them back on, and then you realize the world is a lot different than you just thought you were looking at a second ago.
So the moment of euphoria came three or four hours after that. Mixed with sleepy giddiness and one latte, and Jordan wasn't there, I looked around the room and I wanted to say, "I love you. I love you. I love all of you and I want you to come to my party." And at the party, they were going to laugh at all of my jokes, and I would smile, but not smile so big as to crinkle my eyes, and the weather would be like falling asleep in a soft bed. And the music would be Frank Sinatra and Grizzly Bear, and the hors d'oeuvres would be sushi.


It is a powerful thing to have a moment like that. And a very surprising one to have it at Starbucks.

"She used to have the cutest short hair."
-Judy, absentmindedly, on a news reporter. She always laments when women sell out and let their hair grow

I was telling her this animated story about turning lanes today while we were driving on our way to a doctor appointment and waving my arms around and laughing about it, and I looked over and she was just smiling at me. "I'm glad you're here." She said, in reply to my story. And it's moments like that. I want to freeze time. Sleeping in, and then when we finally wake up, I just go in her room and lay on her quilt and we just talk with no age-gap between us.

I've been away from Utah long enough to start to believe in real love again. To melt my heart when I see my grandparents talk about their deceased spouses. To realize that yes, you can make a love last 50 years. I don't pretend to know how to hope for that myself (perhaps the Lord will come back before that affection could stir up within me. It would take a lightning bolt to feel butterflies again) but I have to recognize that it happens for other people. And that is a beautiful thing.

If only I could steal one of those stories and sell it as a novel. I might need another summer for that.

My first week of college is great so far. I gave up on the bus ever coming though, so I took my car all the way downtown and then TRAXed up and ran into Ten, Ben, and Niels. And when I ran into Ben he said he had a class down in the anthropology building, and I said, "Oh I love that building, it's cute like an old old old elementary school!" And then I wondered how I knew that, and remembered that I had a thing for a while that I was trying to go to the bathroom in every department/building on campus. I have accomplished a lot of these bathrooms by now, I hope you know.

My first teacher of the day sounds like McDreamy if you close your eyes, and also has a big nose which I like. And two of the books for his class have naked ladies on them, so you know it'll be good. I read a poem called Don Juan in Hell and I like to say this to myself now and then because it slips off the tongue.

My second teacher spits a lot.

And then after that I found Emily on a grassy knoll, and we went and bought our books together. We are making a friendship that really works.

I then drove past Shannon's Starbucks and did a U-turn when I saw her car, and ended up hanging out with Scrib, Soper, and the D'Amicos all night by accident, which was really wonderful.

I guess I don't mind being a student forever.

Long overdue Nickisms

"Would you drink champagne if I opened it?"
"Dan, don't threaten me with a good time."

"Wait, will it ever come back?" (on the subject of his "golden" birthday, which was when he was eleven, so he didn't know about it)

"I want to go somewhere wild. Like Maine."

and one from Ashleigh:

"Sometimes I just think about the day-to-day space odysseys."


Oh Nicholas.

"If you (wear) a mustache you can come (to) Randal's bachelor party !!!!!"
-Nicholas D'Amico's poorly spelled text to me this morning.

I am having a very nice time on vacation. Once we got home from Illinois I basically started to live at the Mombergers' and watch Celisse make a wedding cake, and slept in for a really long time all the time. And worked out. And colored my hair. And started talking to an old friend, and went with Cel while she bought her wedding dress.

And I'm really happy.
I think it's also related to no school or work. But I'm really happy.

Murder me Rachael, I've made a mistake

My Writing teacher has a tattoo sleeve that he keeps barely hidden, he casually mentioned that he eats pho (by accident), and he's a grad student who drinks water almost as nervously as I do.
I think I have a crush on him.

In other news, I really have been feeling blessed by a few things

-I don't even carry pills around with me when I leave my home for days because I haven't been having headaches
-sleeping at the Momberger's; always. Its wonderful not waking up to a house full of dogs, and Celisse is pretty great too. Ha ha.
-being free: I hardly ever worry anymore about doctor appointments, homework assignments, working 40 hours, money, men, anemia, going to church, band practice. It's like I hit the easy button.

It could be because I've been listening to rap from Jeff the Vegan.

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

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

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

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

It's a good thing to have underwear.

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

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

selfish admission of the week:

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

My life is in fast forward, right now, which I don't really mind. Where has the month of October gone? I've spent it at the drive through, working for the mafia, or something.

I slept in til 9 this morning, which is a novelty now that my hours have changed. I laid there, and even though I could hear the words "pancake! pancake Izzy? Would you like a pancake?" I didn't get up. I rolled over and played music on my phone and fell back asleep.

I'm content with my life, right now. Which is a dangerous thing to say, because then you know something will come along. But I'm happy right now. I'm learning self control in some of the most difficult areas of my life, and my anxiety at school, and sometimes work has been going gradually away.
I'm okay with what's next, whatever it is. Bring it on.

I rolled over because my phone kept going off. Kaylene wasn't next to me anymore. The dog was snoring.
"So this is what it feels like to wake up in a rich person's bed early afternoon on a Tuesday," I thought to myself, smiling. "Yes...."
Once Kelsea and I realized we were still in the same house, she let me hear some music, and tried to make coffee, which spilled all over the floor, since she didn't put a coffee pot underneath it. Somewhere after that, Matt Miller came over to the rich-house and made us huge pancakes.

After I walked outside and realized it was indeed daytime, I went downtown to meet Lauren, and we made cupcakes and watched ridiculous comedians. We drank more coffee.
Then came 50 minutes of traffic on the way home, although I did listen to Between Earth and Sky by the Colour for the 16th time this week. (Go buy that CD, it will make you unbelievably happy).
I ate enchiladas with the fam, then had band, and then went bowling.

Yes, I do lead a charmed life.