meat

today, i'm eating italien chicken sausage, and a slice of turkey.  {both from happy animals.}

and that's a really, really big deal!

some days, meat tastes absolutely divine to me.  others, i can barely get it past my gag reflex.  but we're working, here!  baby steps...

also a delicious salad with grape tomatoes and banana peppers (my favorite pepper ever).

i've decided there's no way to politely eat a grape tomato...
or a slice of meat for that matter.

i'm just not good at politely eating meat.  and i need to work on that before eating it in public.

bon appetit!

wherein dr. day restores my sanity.

today is a glorious day.

today is glorious for two reasons.

1) i woke up to an amazing thunderstorm.  really, if you're going to be cloudy, bring the thunder with you!  while i don't do rain so well, i adore thunder.

2) we're going home early!!


really, it's just about the best thing that ever happened to me.  after vacation, i've been feeling severely ready to leave.  although i'll admit, i've found my love for this place {in a very sudden and large way}, i'm also extremely excited to be moving on.  sometimes, that time just comes, and when it comes, there is simply no sense in dragging things on.

dr. day understands this.  in fact, he seems to understand this better than most of the general population.  see, when he came in to work today, he said, "this is the end."  and he meant it.  no more dragging everything on for another three weeks. after this week, we'll be finished up with our work and after next, we'll all be having a party and heading home!  ten days left in seattle.

only ten days.

and that is very, very doable.

dr. day, i love you.

my long absence

it's been an interesting summer.

i blog, i stop... i blog about not blogging, then i stop again.

but i think i've started to understand why i just haven't been able to get myself to blog lately.  my sister told me last week,

"there's a time to write and a time to experience.  you're just experiencing right now."


i think that's a big part of it.  after doing everything i'm doing everyday, there just isn't enough in me most days to sit down and write about it.  it's taken all my emotional energy to DO.

then, there's another part, too.  this summer has changed me.  enough that i might call it an ideological shift.  according to social science research, those don't happen often in people's lives.  maybe once, very rarely twice, and sometimes people go through life without ever experiencing something that makes them question who they are in relation to everyone else in the world.

this summer, the shift has been rather gradual, but looking back now, it seems to override all the other experiences i've had while living in seattle.  it's hard to even put words to it... i'm just simply not the same.

it has quite a bit to do with my inner state of peace, with my relativity to others around me.  the fact that i know i can't compete with the world anymore, so i might as well live in peace with it.  it has quite a bit to do with deciding not to go to graduate school and to explore other options to live and love what i'm living.  it has loads to do changing the way i eat.

i feel like i'm still kind of ... grasping at air trying to put my hands on it sometimes.  which really, can get frustrating because most of the time i'm not sure how to live, now that the way i used to live isn't right for me anymore.

through all of this, the thought of writing it down has been a little ridiculous.  and yet, i couldn't really write about anything else because of how unimportant it all seemed in comparison.  so, the simple solution was to stop writing for long periods of time.

i've been thinking really hard about coming back lately.  back to provo, back to ivins, first.  back to school, back to the blog.  and when i've thought about coming back to the blog, more often than not i've thought about not coming back at all.  it feels like i've outgrown the roots of this blog.

paisley: my first description stated that i was the pattern - that during life, it always seemed so chaotic; it didn't make sense.  but when i looked above, stepped back, i could see the pattern.  my life was the pattern.

while that's a cute philosophy, it's just not me anymore.

i'm refusing to be a part of anything approaching chaos.

i've fantasized at times about never coming back to the blog again once my journey through school is over.  it's certain now.  the initial goal was to make it through college.  i'm almost there.  come december, i'll finish my last class and walk out of byu, for good.  after that, it's goodbye, paisley.

i'm not sure if i'll start another, but i have plenty of time to think about that!

i hope i'm back consistently, at this point.  but i can't be sure.  when one is ideologically unsteady, you never can tell when things are going to tilt off-balance again and send me into another bout of emotional overload.  but i can hope that doesn't happen.  and as long as it doesn't, i'm back for at least another five months!