the LOVE game: IV

1. i love nutmeg on my applesauce, in my oatmeal, and in everything else imaginable {in the fall}.
2. i love snuggly kitty cats - late night, early morning, and during yoga.
3. i love ingrid michaelson while i'm eating breakfast.
4. i love thanksgiving pie planning meetings.
5. i love epic movie marathons and ahi's taste of asia with hailey - oh the memories it brings back!
6. i love the anticipation of drawing christmas "sister" names.
7. i love waking up in the same bed as two cats and a sister.
8. i love the view from the front windows of my ivins home - the william's house, particularly.
9. i love the smell of autumn - the smoky rich air, the wet sagebrush, the sweet things baking.
10. i love now - two days before thanksgiving when the adreniline hits me in the face and i can't stop jumping up and down like a two-year-old, when thanksgiving food is home from the grocery store, when the tv blares christmas music, when shoppers have smiles on their faces.  i love now!

be careful what you wish for

remembering back a few years ago, if i had known i would be moving to seattle soon, i would have been thrilled.  no, thrilled is an understatement.  i would have been packing my bags today!  all i wanted was to go somewhere far away (and provo was not far enough).  byu was about the last place on the list; i didn't even know that marriage and family studies existed.  my top pick was anywhere in the northwest: oregon, preferably; washington, a close second; even northern california would have satisfied my craving for far and different.  but i drew the byu card, and packed up my room to move to happy valley.

it only took a few months before i really started to love provo.  i fell in love with the ancient houses, first.  the first morning i glimpsed the mountains on fire with autumn, i knew no other sight could have satisfied my soul as much.  screaming at the ice on the sidewalks and slipping every two steps had me laughing harder than is allowed at straight-faced straight-laced byu.  the morning rain in the spring.  the train's whistle at night.  the campus bells at noon.  yes, i am deeply in love with provo - in a way that i never thought possible.  can you believe i'm sad to have missed the first huge snowstorm of the season?  i am!  thinking backward, i'm shocked i didn't want to be there.

i'm amused that i thought i needed the northwest so deeply.  just when i was resigned to the fact that portland or seattle was a dream possibly too far-fetched, i found the flourishing families project.  launched from byu and based in seattle.  that was a little over a year ago - the first time i applied for the internship.  two days after submitting an application, i withdrew it again.  it was definitely not the right thing for me!  at that point, i forgot all about the northwest.  goodbye, redwood forests and rocky seashore!

but, i should have been more careful what i wished and prayed for so fervently.  you see, i guess even when we forget our dreams (those that we really held so close and so deep), God doesn't forget.  he remembers all those things we wanted so much we thought we'd die if we didn't get them.

application round two, and i'll be moving to seattle for the summer!  i'll admit it - i had mixed feelings.  see, when i forgot my northwest dream, i found others.  other dreams that now seem more deep, more fervent, more... well, desirable.  i'm ecstatic to have found a reality in my dream!  i know i'll be quite more than content up in my little corner of the united states!  and i have to remember that God gives us our righteous desires - eventually.  after all, this internship is solid proof of that!

here's the thought: a wise professor told me a few days ago, oh honey, we hardly ever get what we want in life!

and after mulling it over for several days, i've seesawed slightly.  at first, it seemed just the advice i needed!  after all, it's not what i want that really matters.  it's not where i am, but how i'm living.  and that's all that really matters.  but then i remembered... wait, i wanted seattle.  i wanted that northwest coast so badly it ached!

and i think we do get what we want, just not necessarily when we expect it.  it's easy to be so set on getting what we want now, when we want it, that we lose sight of what we wanted - or really want.  because (as long as we're wanting good things, and wanting them for the right reasons) we get what we want.

and that's . . . a good thing, right?
inconvenient, perhaps.
but definitely good!

apparently when i ramble, it always ends with a goal! :)

i've been writing too many research papers.  after the fourth or fifth time someone asks you, "how's life??" and ten minutes later you find yourself rambling on about the research articles you're reading, you know it's time to take a little break from the social sciences {for a while}.  i get hyper-focused.  luckily, i realized this early enough in the semester to make some changes.  next semester the cure will take place i hope.  but.  if i start writing poetry in my creative writing class about the social sciences, i hope someone gives me an F - or some other massive wake-up call!  sadly, although i'm home on thanksgiving {break}, my homework level has bumped itself up significantly - which doesn't help my conversational skills this week.  my professors have decided they'd rather be out for christmas a week earlier than planned.  consequently, all my finals (except one) have been moved up a week.  pro: i get an extra week of christmas break! and there's one less to endure of this insane semester. con: all my final papers have to be finished while i'm on thanksgiving break...and all my finals (except one) are on the same day.  eeeek!

but.
final papers are not going to be the death of me this week.  if that happens, it will be death by turkey.  that's right, folks. this year, i am eating turkey.
and finals aren't going to be the death of me, either. if that happens, it'll be the eight inches of snow i get to trudge through to get to finals... before the test, rather than after.
but... let's make the goal that i am not going to die... i like that one.
*first goal of my 21st year: don't die - not because of fourteen page papers, not because of finals, not because of turkey, not because of snow.
in fact... here we go. i like this better!
*first revised goal of my 21st year:  be happy about my fourteen page papers (after all, it really is fascinating research), study my eyes out for finals (the hope is for A's!), eat as much turkey as i want (it's been sooooooo long!), and make more snow men this year than i ever have before.
ready....GO!
okay.. maybe not tonight. but...come monday, the papers seriously begin!

by the way, have i said how much i love the holidays?
because i do.
also, it is so good to be home!

happy early thanksgiving!

random review, a few lists

okay, it's been a while... {again} so instead of trying to make up for anything, i'm simply going to do one of my favorite things: make a list. and probably include a picture or two.

thanksgiving plans! and plan of attack:

- leave tomorrow (friday) by noon

- create really fabulous driving playlist with all my new favorites from natalie and sabrina (including blind pilot, whom i now love).

- packpackpack tonight.. at some point hopefully.

- buy myself a couple sweaters - or at least long-sleeved shirts. believe me, i NEED winter clothes.

- go running in the morning so i don't get crazy fidgety in the car on the way down to home.

homework level:

- affects sleep level, which is at a monthly low.  fortunately, i've got another night to catch up before driving.

- last assignment before thanksgiving turned in as of 8:30 this morning

- school surprise this morning! both morning classes absolutely canceled. i am sorry my professor is ill, but also very grateful that i could eat breakfast this morning.

- 4 papers to go before the end of the break (big ones)

- two classes to go before the break... i think i can i think i can i think i can i think i can... 

excitement factors:

- i get to see my family tomorrow.

- i get to see my cats tomorrow.

- i get to go shopping in the morning.

- i have a bunch of new exciting music.

- i got to sleep in this morning.

- there are still crunchy red leaves all over provo.

- ivins is going to be significantly warmer than provo.

- all my finals have been moved up - that much closer to the finish line.

- i would have been on time to both of my 8:00 classes this week, had one of them not been canceled - that's progress, i'm telling you!

- i get to read all the books i want to read over the holiday.

the last week{ish}'s events/highlights:

- genni smashing nilla wafers with a hammer

- only one night of less than three hours of sleep

- speaking in church - glad to have done it, glad to have it over with

- listening to lady gaga with sabrina dancing like crazy in the car

- laughing more at comedy sportz, with the whole crew of us here

- one and a half days running this week (and one yoga day) - not hitting quite the mark, but still much better than expected this week

- starting my christmas shopping (that's right, sabrina - you were first!)

- drawing christmas names in my apartment (i have genni!)

- redesigning {slightly} the blog.  i was in desperate need of a change - however subtle.

- olive garden fhe

- a couple of really interesting experiences with crazy boys

- romeo & juliet: anticipated heartache, discovered freedom. allison, you are my favorite.

- really great hearttohearts

- pumpkin chocolate oats and bananas

- pumpkin pie oatmeal

- pad thai

- the emergency room for two hours (it had been a while - luckily, this time i wasn't the one with the bracelet)

- going to bed at 12:00, waking up at 11:30

- going to bed at 3:45, waking up at 6:30

- professor ripping apart my paper

- professor commending my paper

- professor condoning my eye-rolling and acknowledging my honesty in doing so

- helping hailey with math on less than three hours of sleep

- late birthday present from natalie - book by brian doyle! 

- wearing a high-wasted skirt and being happy about it

- finally doing my laundry

- cornbread and toothpaste... then the lack of toothpaste

- cookies from mom

- new potential favorite game: atlantis

- and of course, spit. the game, you know.

what a week! and only one more to go till thanksgiving. november has flown, hasn't it?

black ink

today is monumental.  today, my printer officially prints in black.
for the last several weeks (probably more like month or so), i have printed papers in blue, green, and red.  sticky notes stuck on the front page of every hard copy turned in assignment apologizing for the strange colors - i simply couldn't get my hands on black ink.  i bought ink twice: both times it was the wrong cartridge for my printer.  that fact alone makes me want to run around in circles ranting about ink cartridge sizes and conspiracy theories and college student budgets and the end of the world.

luckily, last night natalie went to costco.  we realized just two or three days ago that costco will refill our ink cartridges for much less than buying a new one.  at least, we had heard the rumor.  little did i know, that fact alone would save me more than fifty dollars this week!  that's right.  ten dollar refills.  costco, you are my hero.

but i've had a slight realization... after printing my first paper in a month in black ink, i realized that i kind of liked all these colorful papers!  it was like a signature... a stamp or mark stating this is the work of a gal that loves color!  unfortunately, i don't know how much my aging professors would like to read yellow ink after all the other colors have run out... and to tell you the truth, this semester, i'd rather not test those limits!

so, thank you costco, for refilling the ink cartridges of desperate students for a much more reasonable price than all the alternatives.  i am, for the rest of the semester, in your debt!

run to love

i have a lot to talk about.  but for a moment, i revert to an old summer subject: run.

i learned to run (and learned to love to run) in ivins.  well, behind ivins, actually.  back in those weaving red canyons, i learned to talk to my Heavenly Father - really talk; i learned to be happy, learned to love myself.  a large portion of that learning peace came from the surrounding peace of the mountains, the barely-dawn light, chirping birds, silent streets, sparse housing.  there, back in that desperate-clinging-overpowering peace, is self-discovery, is God-discovery.  there, it's easy to pull my legs out from under the covers and into my running shoes, easy to get on that running trail.

naturally, then, returning to provo-running is more than slightly jarring.  stop signs at every corner, backpacks back and forth on every street, crowding the thin sidewalks.  houses with no yards or stacked right on top of each other.  thousands of other runners with their ipods and minishorts.  but peace? thought? prayer?  especially when the privacy of your own room is invaded by roommates' music and upstairs residence movie nights twenty-four hours a day, those are scarce things to come by.

yesterday, i found a slice of that mountain-peace in provo.  it resides at 6:00 am - before the beginning sunrays touch the mountains.  i don't run alone in provo, especially in pre-dawn darkness.  happily, my roommate genni is a willing *accomplice this week, enabling me to rediscover that peace.  re-recognizing that provo is capable of holding a feeling even slightly resembling my mountain-prayer-peace encourages my good-opinion-growth of the city more than ever.

so there you go.  it was dark.  it was raining beautifully and freezing cold.  but quiet, still, sleeping, inspiring, dreaming.  and i remember that i have enough love, enough love for all of provo now, too.


ps. i saw a note in a campus bathroom this morning that read: smile! remember you are a beautiful daughter of God!  it did make me smile, and i sent a silent thank you to the kind girl that reminded me.
pps. today was provo's first real snow of the season.  thick flakes falling in clumps gracefully to the ground.  and yes, they stuck on my nose and eyelashes!
ppps. and now i have officially used too many hyphens and dashes in a post... oh dear!
*also,  i know i'm not technically using the word accomplice in its proper setting. i just like it a lot. it's what came to mind! and i wanted to use it today.

birthday!! and a shocking surprise.

yes, that's right.  this week {thursday} was my twenty-first birthday.  because the last year has sincerely taken me for a whirl, i'll be updating soon.  new profile.  new layout.  new life lists.  new goals {i do this by birthday more than by year...i think it makes them more personal}.  new pictures.  new-ish me. . . . but not really more grown-up.  i've officially decided i don't believe in growing up.  not that i'm throwing responsibility to the wind and joining the peter pan generations, here.  i'm just not growing up in the usual sense.. i'm growing up in the literal sense.

thanks mostly to the saintly natalie, my birthday celebration was an absolutely fabulous blast.  she made me breakfast, bought me a package of guilty pleasure veggie corndogs, planned, organized, decorated, and more.  a little group of close friends {natalie, sabrina, beth, genni, and me} went to dinner at happy sumo  - YUM sushi. so so great.  later that night, we played spit for hours, watched emperor's new groove, ate mountains of cupcakes, threw over a hundred yellow balloons around, played some kazoo, attempted an unsuccessful learning session of killer bunnies, and generally had a ball.  my birthday had really been kicked off the night before {starts at midnight!} with a thrilling, ear-splitting round of happy birthday by the general living room crowd.

mostly, i felt loved - which is what a birthday is all about.

sadly, the decorations came down yesterday in preparation for our vigorous cleaning checks {PASS}.

and now for my news...
this coming summer, i will not be blogging from little happy valley.  i won't be blogging from home-sweet-home-ivins, either.  i'll be blogging from seattle!
shocked?
i was, too.

remember that internship i applied for?  well, there are two branches: one in provo, one in seattle, washington.  i applied for the provo branch.  logically, i'd be close to home, wouldn't have to drive my car all over a huge city...it just made sense.  but guess what?  they offered me a spot in seattle.  and guess what?  i took it!  i'm nervous, anxious, eager, excited, scared, anticipatory, still shocked, horribly sad to be leaving my family for a solid four months, fabulously thrilled by the thought of such a huge adventure, and feeling so many different and contradictory things i don't know how to react. except for excited. i am that.  also nervous. i know i'm that, too.
did i say nervous?

satisfactorily, i can now say to my dear little future: i found you!

adventure, here i come!
i feel a little like buzz lightyear. see, for me, seattle is practically infinity.  i can't even imagine what beyond would look like!

i have the most amazing little sister.

hailey jo.
it's not really what her name is (my parents thought hailey jo johansen might be a little much), but it's what we've called her since she was born.  since the day she came home to us, we knew she was destined to be great, to be important, to be beautiful.  with dark curly crazy hair and wild green eyes to match, she stands the tallest of the johansen women - beating me by almost an inch and a half.  she loves cats and dogs just as much as i do, and gives our two a little extra love for me while i'm away from home.  she's slightly more than five years younger than me, but you wouldn't know it to look at us.

despite her age (most high school girls need a wakeup call, and i can say that because i was one of them once), hailey is cool.  really cool.  because of her early determination and stubborn nature, she's on her way to becoming a master pianist, already wowing us.  at every trip home, one of my favorite moments is lying on the couch and listening to her play.  i could do that for hours, and i miss hearing that everyday just as much as i miss my kitties.  you'd think a brilliant pianist would steer away from high school sports slightly, right?  not hailey.  not only does she decidedly not avoid crazy high school competition, she chose the most intense to participate in.  my sister's part of one of the first rugby teams in utah.  i can't wait to see her play.  add to the list a few more things: her passion for political discussion; love of education, literature, and history; her intense game of chess; and her strength of testimony in her Savior.  she makes incredible raspberry cornmeal pancakes and perfect buttercream frosting which is just the right compliment to my cupcake obsession phases.  she's willing to try just about anything - once at least, and because of that has a wide range of loves.  she owns rock climbing shoes and heels.  can beat me at spit and sprints {but not chess - yet}.  i help her with her math homework and she tells me all she knows about current political candidates.  she already knows what colleges she wants to attend, which degrees she's aiming for, and has a working oh, probably 20 year plan laid out.

this girl's got it figured out.

i love you, haimee.
and can't wait to see you in four days!

winter semester line-up

i am going back to the kind of school schedule that made me beam - exuberantly beam, i mean.  i love my classes, right now!  but {being honest, here} they've gotten a little heavy.  heavy load, weighty subject matter, all on the same day... it's gotten to be quite a lot this semester.  

class registration opened for me today, and although nothing will be absolutely finalized for a week or so (and even then, it'll probably change until a day before the semester begins), i'm ecstatic about several of these classes.  it is rather funny, though: the schedule is surprisingly reminiscent of my high school class schedule - something i never thought i'd care to repeat.  with the art major i've added, i'll have either a painting or drawing class.  i've decided to give in to my love of it and take a creative writing class (thus more happiness).  i really haven't done much thought-out creative writing for a few years, so i am excessively excited about this one!  also, it's a prerequisite for a class natalie is taking this semester, creative non-fiction, that seems fantastic.  i'll be taking that one for sure as well.  also, call it a guilty pleasure if you will, i'm taking a family finance class.  it makes me a little giddy, i'll be honest.  all that budgeting stuff, it's just right up my alley.  of course, there's the moral foundations of family life course, theories in family perspective, and the high hope of the internship prep class rolling around in the potential mix, too.

one thing's for sure: there's no getting bogged down in five fourteen analytical research papers due on the same day in the same semester again.  i was crazy for taking this many 400-level classes at once. crazy, i tell you.  but i think it paid off.  after all, i never would have broken down enough to add an art minor to begin with if i hadn't gone a little bit crazy.

so here's to crazy.

and a really great class line-up.

to october:

lately, i love the yellow leaves crunching under my black shoes while i run on the provo streets, swishing and whirling on the pavement.  the watercolor east mountains, staying transparent from dawn till late afternoon, give the days a surreal quality {as if in a fairytale}.  confused clouds - all different shades of blue and grey, all different shapes and speeds floating - play around the mountain tips, concealing their heights, failing to hide the white sunlight, the sunlight the last days of october have still permitted power to leak through to rest on my eyelashes and cheeks.

lately, i wake up slowly because the mornings have turned blue.  i peak out the blinds, anticipating the first morning i'll wake to white covering my windowsill, the stair-rails, the light-posts, the trees.  the sun is tardy usually, these days.  on the walk to class, this morning, natalie read aloud to me (essays by brian doyle); the moving text kept my mind off the frigid air.  scarves. coats. mittens.  socks and tights.  frozen breath in air.  red trees covered with spiderwebs of ice.  these are the days i crave yoga in the early mornings, to wake up before the sun.

lately, midnight comes too soon.  october is slipping away from beneath my toes, whisping and threading through my fingertips and out of grasp {like a handful of sugar}.  it's real - very real.  although each individual day isn't filled with specific memories lifetime lasting, the repetitive nature of waking and cracking the blinds to check for snow leaves a fingerprint in the storage center of my mind.

october has been a remembering month, granting nostalgic longing for lost people, lost places, lost emotions.  the onset of winter tends to have that effect - a clinging, of sorts, while memories are buried under white drifts.  checking for that burial is an anticipation, i guess.  soon, the snow will cover more than the leaves.  i've never felt quite so freed by the idea of winter as i do this year.  there have been things i've neglected to bury,  but the snow is coming; the first flurries danced in the valley today.  and when snow buries autumn's dead, the earth can begin to heal, to restore, and once again to play.


and about the scrabble interview: i was called back for a second (which took place last friday).  individual this time, luckily!  the waiting shouldn't last long.  the promise of the first of november clutches the back of my mind constantly.  honest to goodness, i want this internship!