to my future children: first installment

no matter how much you whine and beg, how much you want our house to be the "cool house" that you can invite all your friends to, with all the cool toys, no matter how much you try to convince me that i need to be the "cool mom," the mom who is "with it" and "hip," we will never have a game system. no wii for you.

i don't know how much the world/the media/school is going to teach you about how to use your imagination and what that even means, so we will have imagination days, where we play games together outside and make up stories and play house and play doctor and play school and read stories. i want you to be able to unplug from the craziness of the world and reality (within reason (haha), of course).

three little emails in my inbox this evening

all is well, in the midst of writer's block, mounds of reading, papers to grade, parties to execute, dances to choreograph, missed episodes to catch up on, muddy buddies to eat, and conversations to be had.

maybe this will give me the boost i need to get stuff done :)

the witching hour

it is that time of year again, where our thoughts are filled with costume ideas, scary stories, and black and orange. our apartment has gotten into the full swing of halloween. we prepared our costumes early (twenties wear to satisfy the requirements of the ward party last friday night), we have looked at decorating and creepy food ideas (meat loaf hand? we are all over that), and we read agatha christie's very creepy, very a propos murder mystery and then there were none. aloud and often at the stroke of midnight. and every night after we finished reading we had to run up the stairs to our beds, too afraid to stay downstairs in the dark.
i was talking to berg the other day and i asked her what she was going to be for halloween this year. she said she didn't really know yet, and she didn't know what the freshman festivities would be. i remembered my own freshman halloween. i didn't dress up, i didn't celebrate really, i didn't trick or treat through helaman halls like some of my friends did. but then, a couple years later, my roommates and i went all out--we dressed in theme, hit the stake dance party, and went to a concert at the riverwoods. we had a busy halloween. i wonder if everyone goes through a little halloween dry spell, a lack of enthusiasm for getting dressed up and engaging in pagan merriment. the last couple years of high school were the same.
now, though, i love halloween (aside from the creepy stuff that some people are into. i do not do haunted houses, forests, asylums, or warehouses, and i do not do scary movies, except in very rare cases, like a couple of years ago when i really, really wanted to see psycho at international cinema the weekend before halloween so i planned to go with my study abroad friends and then through some crazy circumstances which i don't remember none of them ended up coming so it was just me and i had to walk to the car alone afterwards and when i got home i had to tell meredith everything because i was bursting to talk about it with someone. that's one of my few exceptions.).
but anyway, after that long aside, halloween is pretty awesome and i'm going to be rather bummed when the season is over. thanksgiving is great, and i am looking forward to 1) a break and 2) good food. but we are finding that it is difficult to think of good thanksgiving themed books for our nightly readings. so for now, i'll have fun getting ready for halloween and all the mischief that comes along with it.

this night is sparkling/ don't you let it go

so, we went to see taylor swift a couple weeks ago. it was amazing, just as we knew it would be.
because of the craziness that is my life right now, i am just now uploading the pictures and videos to my computer. we didn't have great seats, so the pictures aren't like looking right up her nose or anything super cool like that, but looking at them and watching the videos did take me back to that magical night.

here are some pictures from the festivities. (i will not be posting any videos. too embarrassing--you can hear my loud singing, as i am the camera operator, and the dumb comments i make--"it's spinning!")

matching tie-dye. it's tradition.

in our seats. berg with a blurry face.

love her!!

loved these dresses.

enchanted, obviously. well, not obvious from the picture, but obvious because i love this song with everything that i am.        so yeah, obvious.

long live with the band :)

wearing a lovely dress sitting on a lovely couch.

flying around in a balcony during love story. yes, that is correct.

and, there she is looking like a princess.

for those of you skeptics who say that 1) t-swift is lame or has lame songs or 2) she's not good live, you don't know what you are talking about. i still believe that she would be an awesome friend and a super cool person, and i still get the chills when i hear some of her songs, because they express exactly how i feel. and, you'll just have to take my word for it: she is incredible in concert. she puts on an amazing, highly entertaining show, and everyone who is there adores her, which makes it even better.

also, this year, after making the regrettable mistake of not shelling out the cash for concert shirts at her last salt lake show, we stood in line and debated over the merits of the various t-shirts on display. meredith was this close to buying a forty dollar throw blanket, which she is now saying she wants us to buy her for her birthday. we bought our shirts and i wore mine to school the next day, sparking several conversations/one-sided debates. and, i'm even wearing my shirt now, i just realized.

thanks again, t-swift. you never disappoint. come to salt lake again, and tweet about us, why don't you. and thanks to berg for being born so we could buy her a ticket for her birthday.

where did all of my free time go?

all of a sudden, i have no time to do the things i want to do.

this includes, but is not necessarily limited to:
painting my nails
watching the new episodes of my favorite shows just added to netflix watch instantly
finally finishing by biannual reading of the seventh harry potter, which i began at the end of august
writing a legit and comprehensive (whatever that means) journal entry
writing other such enjoyable things
shopping
going out to get frozen yogurt
watching movies
just generally hanging around not worrying about the big projects and life decisions that i have been putting off

i'm not sure what to do about this. the perpetual student in me can't get past the assignments and deadlines. but the human, the real person who wants to be happy, an emotion that is increasingly felt outside of school, is telling me that i have to rethink the way i do things.

so, we'll see. i'm not sure what this means yet. but i think it means that some things are more important than others. now it's a matter of figuring out what the most important things are. it's time to revisit an old favorite.

to nana's house we go

today, even though i had about a million things to do and i have had barely a minute to stop and think, i felt a tiny bit of reprieve from the stress, worry, and overwork of the past few days and weeks. i know that i still have about a million things to do and one conference presentation to get through tomorrow, but a little mini vacation from school and provo is nice.

so i'll spend a couple days here at nana and bopy's house and see the cousins and go to the yummy food places and go shopping at my favorite store  and maybe play a harmless game of bunco and maybe meet a new second cousin or first cousin once removed and swim once last time and try to get all my stuff done in a non-provo environment.

a writing exercise

1. Write down the first word that you think of, right now, and write about it for five minutes. Stop, at five minutes on the nose, mid-word if you must.

2. Take the last letter of the last word (or half word) that you wrote and think of a word that begins with that letter. Write down that word and write about it for five minutes.

3. Repeat step 2 as many times as you feel necessary to get the creative juices flowing.

smell
i think often about how certain smells are associated with certain times of the year or even certain times in my life. the hard part is that i usually can't recall them on command, and i couldn't tell you off the top of my head which smells come with each season. but every once in a while a scent will hit me, tickling my olfactory sense and triggering some memory, whether vivid or faint.
like, the smell of coffee reminds me of walking into disney's california adventure, which is a place near and dear to my heart. and, for some reason, it always smelled like coffee when we walked under that golden gate bridge.
or, yesterday, as the clouds rolled into provo to signal impending rain and that clean muggy smell permeated the air, i was again flooded with images. of carefully sidestepping big gushing crawling slimy worms that confetti the sidewalk. or of curling up in my bed under my big green fluffy precious moments blanket, good book in hand and fuzzy sock on foot. the smell of rain means a bath for the world.

if my doorbell was like this, my feelings would be more certain

world-d-doorbell
pretty much since we moved in seven years ago, our doorbell at home has been on the fritz. this isn't too distressing, by any means, because the previous owners had one of those really annoying melodious doorbells--ding dong ding dong, ding ding ding dong. my first instinct, when i get to a door, is to knock anyway. knocking can be loud, i grant you that, but it is mostly relegated to the door area. the doorbell, however, is more intrusive. when you push it, you know there is a little box situated somewhere in the house that will probably wake up a baby from a nap or something. my little brother's twerpy friends used to come to our door seeking him out and, instead of knocking like polite little boys, they would ring the doorbell incessantly. my feelings about doorbells are uncertain.