happy birthday blog!!

on august 30, 2009

my blog was born.

well, the first post at least.  i was sitting around the edges of our family room with my sisters for much longer than a day during the actual creation and naming process.

in honor of paisley's first birthday, i'll share the incident that created her name.

it all started with hailey.  we read aloud to each other often, all different sorts of books.

we were in the middle of the eragon series (which i'm sad to say, i'm not a fan anymore).

it was the height of tension: a man tied to a stone slab and about to be sacrificed to evil beasts.

and then suddenly,

"he was stricken with paisley!

palsy, actually.  he was stricken with a palsy.  but hailey didn't say that.  she clearly (and intensely) read

"paisley."

and that was the beginning.

we laughed so hard we cried and our sides ached.

the mental image of huge patterned paisley-shaped somethings shooting from the rocks around the poor almost-sacrificed man was too much to bear.

the phrase sat patiently on a sticky note (attached to a magnet board) for almost a year before it became the monument of my record keeping and a constant reminder of sisterly affection {not to mention the persistent reminder of the good laughing at a silly mistake can make}.

the phrase evolved, with time.  it's become a symbol of what life (especially in college) can do to people.

all those bright colors spinning around you, so many and so close that you can barely make sense of it.

but when you back up,

you begin to see that it isn't really chaos at all.

it's a pattern.

unique

brilliant

all your own.

and then you realize your pattern isn't the only one.

sometimes it weaves in and out, through others.  mixing colors, picking up polka dots or stripes.

and that's just the beginning of seeing the real big pattern.

because after all, 

we're all stricken with paisley together here, aren't we?

week one in number 103

wow!  in the chaos of moving, this little blog journal has been neglected.  this past week has been such a flurry; it feels as if i've only been in provo a couple of days, and at the same time it's like i never left.  there's two constants in provo: couples holding hands everywhere and a non-stop steaming of owl city in all the restaurants and stores.

it's been almost one week {tomorrow} that i've been back.  i've opened boxes, gotten bruises, opened boxes, hung pictures, opened boxes, grocery shopped, organized my closet, bought my books, almost cut my little toe off, opened more boxes, put together an end-table, moved furniture, and ran around like a headless chicken most of the week.  i still have an incredible amount to accomplish!

looking back, i realized that one year ago tomorrow, i started this blog to document my adventures while attending byu, as one who was not so certain this happy valley idea was her thing.  in memory of my first post, written the day before the first day of class {today}, i'm taking a little walk down memory lane -- and staring over this year's brink a little as well.

first, read my first post.  now, here's some commentary:

i live across the street from the second level, moderate-sized apartment of last year, in the building with the frills (which i have decided look convincingly like pineapples).  i love the old houses with the broken shutters next door more than almost anything.  as it turned out, the convenient parking garage located beneath the complex of little 205 was a more hospitable place than i realized.  periodic break-ins, scary looking skaters, and glass from shattered windows soon became no surprise in the garage.  luckily for me, my little green punky brewster car was never harmed, nor was i.  provo still seems larger than a medium-sized city, although not quite like new york or hong kong.  i'll admit freely, i am still capable of becoming hilariously lost.  but after nailing down the few main roads (and carrying a map of campus around in my head and my backpack) things became much easier.

although changed considerably from last year, i am still not ordinary.

california-girl-beth lives next to my frilly pineapple complex in a quaint yellow house.  na li, who was as mysterious the day she moved out as the first day we moved in, is around town somewhere, still finishing her chemistry degree and, i imagine, still having midnight solitary fashion shows with her roommate's full-length mirrors.  natalie is with me still, thank goodness.  i can't begin to say how grateful i am that we're still living together.  we are still attempting to keep each other sane, and a little more healthy this semester.

this year, we've added two more girls to our apartment ingredient list.  beth, or elizabeth, is a kindred spirit and long lost sister that served in the same mission as natalie.  the day that a small public bus broke down in uruguay was a fateful day.  you see, natalie and beth were both on that bus.  i awoke to her singing yesterday and it made my heart smile.  she loves to make almost-vegan cupcakes with me, and lets me cuddle with her. genny, or genevieve, is beth's younger sister.  with six years between them and five between natalie and i, if you lined up all our ages, we could all be one big sister-family.  genny is a saint.  she brings a beautiful, sweet, calm presence that i prayed this apartment would find.  she did my dishes this morning, and if you know me, you know that almost nothing makes my day more than finished dishes i didn't do.  it's going to work splendidly, i think, the four of us.

this is the brink.  the day before we all began classes.  i don't expect to get lost.  i'm not particularly nervous.  but i am expectant, excited, and quite curious.  i'm trying a lot of new things this semester.  i'm an incredibly new me than i was a year ago.  this is my last year, and i can't wait to see what's in store for me.

i miss my kitties, still terribly.  i have a thousand pictures to hang on my bulliton board.
and i really can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring.  it's like being at the top of a roller coaster, the part when you can't see over the edge, and that alone takes your breath away.
adventure awaits.

and class begins tomorrow.

it's TIME!

this is it.

tomorrow, i pack my little green punky-brewster (sp?) car and drive back to happy valley.

the goal:  leave before 1:00 pm
actuality: we'll see which direction the wind is blowing tomorrow, when the time comes!

the list of things to do before i leave and things to do the day or two after i arrive is just about a mile long, but now that it's actually written down i'm not quite as crazy.  i'm a scatter brain, as usual when everything is boxed up i-have-no-idea-where, and the only thing i can find is a random art book that didn't quite make it in the book boxes.

sanity level: i can't focus for long enough to tell.  high spirits, skiddish nerves, and a pearl necklace.

i'll get there!  by the end of the week, i'll be moved in, settled, and ready to love another semester with grace.

by the way... the most exciting news of the week: i made it into the second level of latin ballroom, finally!  i can't wait.  i've been dreaming about more samba, rumba, and paso doble routines for more than three years.  oh the things i'll do with my dancing shoes this semester!  three days a week of straight-up latin bliss - practically heaven. {as long as i can get my country dancing fix every once in a while to keep me sane!}

and it's way past my bed-time!  long day with a road trip waiting tomorrow, and i need my sleep.

goodnight!

sanity update soon to follow.

maybe a week late... but still in love

so jack johnson is pretty much the best.  the epitome of beach music, if you will.  if you've visited natalie's blog, unconsciously me, you already know all about this (well almost all about it).  but, for the sake of my own record keeping, here's the story of our musical adventure: {oh boy was it ever an adventure!}

last thursday, natalie and i hit the i15, provo-bound!  the plan: to leave at 9:00 am.  reality: 1:35...ish.  the goal was to have the entirety of #205 (the resting place of my last year of life) packed up in boxes by nightfall.  friday, we planned to clean our little arms off before our dad arrived with his truck to load up our assets and send them to storage for another week, all before we headed further north to sit in some musical bliss.

however, when you start an adventure five and a half hours late, you should expect some unforeseen obstacles {book of jessica, 1:1}.  pulling into provo an exit north of our apartment, we realized the mall that neither of us had entered for much too long was only two minutes away.  after all, we were both in need of a few sale-marked items before the beginning of a new school year.  if the management of #205 had purchased the much-needed security cameras in our absence, they would have caught us pulling into the parking lot at 8:30 pm.  not bad, right?  after hugs and a few quick catch-up stories from the roommates we abandoned, we headed under my bed to grab the plentiful store of boxes we had used to move into my first home-away-from-home.  i found my dusty snowboard, two bins exactly where i left them, but the boxes were  gone.  absolutely, positively gone.  no boxes to be seen.

we sat on my floor for a while, regretting our late start and wondering if monsters under the bed could live through provo winters after all.  soon, the reality of how soon noon on saturday was approaching sunk in.  we grabbed the keys and dashed to walmart.  here, i'll omit the detail.  i simply need to say that after wandering around walmart for over a half hour (during which we had many more small adventures, resulting in my rediscovery of the pineapple lamp of my dreams), we found boxes.  who knew boxes would be in the shipping department, anyway??  we bought them all - well, the small ones.  the bigger size was completely sold out.

we drove back to #205 as fast as my little car could carry us through provo's late night, decidedly more busy than usual traffic.  we packed, and we packed, and we packed, and we packed.  3:30 am found us still packing.  around that time we finally decided we at least ought to take a nap -- after all, the concert less than 24 hours away would certainly keep us up past a decent bed time.  from 4 to 7 in the morning we slept, gloriously from my perspective.  

without breakfast, we were up again, pack-pack-packing.  once again, long story made short, after scrambling like the building was on fire (with the much needed help of our dad that morning) we were out of the apartment completely by noon.  whew!  it's such a relief to be out of #205!

did i mention we're moving into an apartment across the street?  it seems silly (but i'm sure it'll be entirely worth it) to make such a small change for such a big difference in management, upkeep, and overall loveness.

with a quick meal and a short nap, we were off to the concert!  by the end, we were so tired all the lights on the road back were one big blur (and it was a miracle we made it home with no incidents), but an entire night of jack johnson after the rather adventurous day of packing was completely worth every minute of it.

a week later, and i'm still on a jack jonshon high!

pineapple lamp of my dreams, beautiful isn't it?

less than two weeks, and time to get excited!

okay! so classes start soon soooon, and i'm starting to get excited about these ones.  i only have two semesters left, one of which i'll have a part-time internship (if things go according to plans.... see previous entry. ha!), so all my classes are upper-division and most are pretty small sections.  small classes are my favorite - easier discussion, more personal relationship with the professor, and of course SO much easier to get to know everyone else in the class.

here's the line-up:

- cross-cultural family and human development
- advanced family processes
- family adaptation and resiliency
- writing in the social sciences
- and of course,
- doctrine and covenants (part i)

cross-cultural family and human development sounds particularly exciting to me at the moment.  i always loved the studies i read in my other classes in that area.  and oh, the professors!  two of these are from the same professor, one i've had for lower-division and loved.  i actually have quite high expectations for one professor, in particular.  a mr. willoughby.  {really. you can't get a more romantic name than willoughby.}  i've heard nothing of him, yet.  but for his name alone, i expect to be sitting in rapture two days a week for over an hour.

speaking of days of the week, i'm trying a new schedule layout this semester - one i've wanted to pull off for a while.  i don't have any classes on monday or friday, and only one on wednesday.  hello, four day weekends! it'll be interesting to see how it works though.  the hope is that it will give me more effective morning study time (if i know myself at all).  it'll sure make for loooong days on campus!

speaking of... i also need a small lunchbox.  keep your eyes open for me!

plans, not from death cab for cutie

yesterday marked exactly one week left at home.  it's an extremely bittersweet fact.

see, i never expected to be moving back to ivins this summer.  the plan was to stay in provo, find a job  i could keep through this coming fall semester and come home on the weekends (every other, or so).  however, looking back at the entirety of summer, the one word that sums it up is unexpected.  it's been one of the most unpredictable summers of my existence, i believe.  the only other that comes close is the first summer out of high school, with the typical life-altering decisions looming and my decision-resistant nature putting them off as long as possible. but this one beats all.  it was unexpected and unpredictable in almost every way.

however, through the chaotic nature of unexpected events, i've discovered something.  this past january, i wrote a few musings on the same subject, about the unexpected color thrown onto my canvas.  i wrote about how i longed to be able to accept the change with more grace, hope, and trust in God.  i wished i could have seen the beauty that such big changes bring sooner than i did.  and i think i've improved.

i guess in hoping for such, i may have invited several more drop-from-the-sky-and-hit-me-in-the-head changes.  for practice, you see.

what i've discovered is that i have changed.  i can say truthfully that i've seen the beauty this summer (without requiring understanding).  i've been okay with the changes - although some were extremely unwanted, they didn't end my world.  i'm the sort of person with a functioning five year plan.  a five year plan that i work toward.  i've learned to be more flexible with the changes God introduces, less flexible with my foundations despite the always shifting world.

i've come to whole-heartedly believe this quote from the beloved movie, dan in real life:

 "in the future, i will be answering your questions, but today I want to break from my usual format and talk to you about the subject of plans.  not so much my plan for this column, but life plans, and how we all make them.  and how we hope that our kids make good, smart, safe plans of their own.  but if we're really honest with ourselves, our plans usually don't work out as we had hoped.  so instead of asking our young people "what are you plans? what do you plan to do with your life?" maybe we should tell them this: plan to be surprised."


i still have a five year plan.  two of them, in fact.  and a loooooong list of items i'd like to accomplish before i come to the end of those five years.  but i'm making a few changes tonight.  i'm planning to be surprised.  after all, if life were just as i expected, it would get dull pretty quickly.  God knows best, and i can't wait to see what surprises He's waiting to drop from the sky.


as far as i believe, they're probably much better than any plan i could contrive for myself.


i plan to successfully finish another semester this year, and have more adventure doing it than ever before.  but as for the rest, it's all one big surprise!

fascinating womanhood: a review

have you read this book?

because if not, you should.

fascinating womanhood, by helen andelin, was one of those books that opened my eyes and changed the way i think.  it played to my already inclined opinions.  true, i was teased the entire time i read, with my red pen in hand, by my sisters natalie and hailey.  the subtitle, how the ideal woman awakens a man's deepest love and tenderness, was a little too much for them to stomach without snickering every time they saw me buried in my book.  

believe me, i was a little skeptical as well when my mom suggested the book.  after all, the almost-1950's throwback to the suppressed lifestyle of housedress-wearing, grin-and-bear-it sort of woman doesn't exactly sound ideal, right?  well, i can sure say i was wrong!  the image painted of the "ideal woman" by andelin is beautiful.  something to truly aspire to.  she paints the characteristics of femininity with women from history and the great classics, showing the modern-day woman how to return to their true feminine nature.  the more i read, the more i realized how in-line her teachings were with my own beliefs about correct roles for women and men, husbands and wives.  And to add to her own insight, she incorporates scripture and principles taught by Christ.

Now, for a embarrassing little secret: i fall easily for books slightly leaning toward the "self help" category.  Titles like 7 habits of highly effective people and tables of contents revealing assignments make my heart race a tiny bit and my imagination flare up.  i know, i know.  this seems a little... well, unsophisticated?  but my logic is this: we're on this planet to help each other.  books leaning in this direction are simply advice from a more experienced person to those willing to learn, their way of helping out humanity, and i like that.  not to say that i prefer these books more than another kind; i live for great literature.  these are simply a little guilty pleasure.  besides, the scriptures are the best self helps books to speak of.  but, i digress.  fascinating womanhood has assignments and self-evaluations.  i loved it because it helped me start the process of changing little habits i have and work toward a solid goal.

i evaluated my conversation - i'm still working on the gossip thing, as most college girls are, but i've greatly improved.  i've started steering conversation toward others to show my interest in other people more than in myself.  and (this one is fun!) i've worked on my tone of voice, inserting more emotion into my daily exchanges.  believe me, changing my tone alone did wonders for my attitude.  when i decided to speak as though i were bubbling with happiness, i found i actually was!  it's been an unexpected discovery in my journey of thought processes.

i've started wearing dresses and skirts more than anything else.  after all, i prefer them over pants and shorts so much that it was a little ridiculous how little i wore more feminine clothing.  

i've decided to stop cracking my knuckles - a nasty habit i've had for years.

if i wrote all the little things i'd marked and evaluated since this read, it would be eons long.  so i won't.  there are so many mannerisms and habits my eyes have been opened to.  if i could pick the most surprising and interesting section of the book, it would be the topic of being childlike.  it's a Christian teaching i think is largely not understood, at least by me.  andelin's view of becoming childlike was approachable, and it made sense to me.

disregarding the fact that i fell in love with andelin's view of womanhood, this is a book i feel is historically important.  written in response to the popular book of the feminist movement, the feminine mystique, andelin's writings represent the flip-side of the modern woman, a strength in feminism with a religious acknowledgement to the divine role of womanhood.

to sum up, my grandmother read fascinating womanhood after her marriage and gave the book to my mother in high school.  in turn, my mother gave the book to me.  in years to come, i dream of placing it in the hands of my daughters, passing on the knowledge of divine womanhood and encouraging the growth of correct femininity.

it's a read i would absolutely recommend! but be prepared to change the way think about yourself, your role as a woman, and what you can accomplish through developing stronger characteristics of feminism!

ps. while sorting through some of my mom's recipes today with natalie, we came across a simply luscious pie recipe.  as a last note on the recipe card, the writer had encouragingly added, "zero calories if cut into 99 pieces!!"  we had quite a laugh and ended up disrupting hailey's piano student.  oh what a day!

"our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.  it is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.  we ask ourselves, who am i to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?  actually, who are you not to be?  you are a child of God.  your playing small does not serve the world.  there is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  we were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.  it is not just in some; it is in everyone.  and, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same.  as we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--marianne williamson

the LOVE game: II

1. i love my dad and mom.

2. i love running in the rain.
3. i love waking up an hour before everyone else in the house.
4. i love finding a favorite recipe from years ago and getting so excited to make it i can taste it!
5. i love drinking water from a quart jar.
6. i love watching hummingbirds line up in front of the feeder hanging from the front window.
7. i love my collarbones - odd, i know.
8. i love sitting in a room i've just scrubbed every inch of.
9. i love finding old pictures of all my sisters and me.
10. i love being in a room brimming with books.

what do you love today?

why the world doesn't need superman

"from the first day he mysteriously appeared we were enamoured. he seemed too good to be true. a man who could fly, see through walls, bend steel with his bare hands. a man who never lied. a man who could do anything he wanted to yet he chose to be a hero."
       -- lois lane, via

but what happens when a hero fails you?  i was once told the great weakness of superman was his inability to be in two places at once - ironic that despite all the human weaknesses overcome by his alien origin, his demise is the same as every single individual in this great big world: time and space.  and with the realization that his challenge is the same as ours, a slight amount of awe is lost.  it inspires sympathy, but without trust.  while his physical abilities set him apart from the human race, his character faults are just like ours.  so why doesn't the world need superman?

1. the world already has a Savior.
2. how many other superheros are there, anyway?
3. society already has enough perpetually single men to deal with.
4. spandex doesn't look good on anyone.

lois lane has more reasons than i do, but she also had ten more years to mull it over.  although i've had much less time to think about it, i'm familiar with the hurt she must have experienced and the abandonment she was subjected to.  here i am, lois lane.  writing away, convincing myself that i don't need superman.  my reasons will multiply with time, as hers did, i think.

for now, i believe.  simply.  i believe in marriage.  i believe in family.  i believe God has a plan for me.  i believe in many things.



but superman is a myth.