My obsession with the mail

Ok, so this is WAY pathetic but I'm going to write about it anyway. Like I've mentioned before, five of my best friends are on missions right now (the fifth one just left today). So naturally, mail is kind of a big deal for me. Sometimes I'll check it three or four times a day before the mailman will actually get there. Last Wednesday I was waiting on a letter from one of my friends and I saw the mailman pull up from the kitchen window. I waited for him to drive away and then sprinted out to the mailbox. Seriously, you think Usain Bolt is fast? I totally would've creamed him. There sitting on the stack of junk mail were 2 letters! It was like Christmas morning when Santa Claus brings you exactly what you asked for. It was great. It's so sad on the days when I don't get anything because I'll walk out to the mailbox with an elevated heartrate (I told you this was pathetic) and then I'll find nothing but junk mail and I'll walk back to the house all dejected. I really hope the neighbors don't make a habit out of staring out their windows. I'm sure I'm a sight to behold.

opening the windows of heaven

Ok, I'm not one to sit and write publicly but about the blessings I receive, I save that for my journal but I just wanted to share with you how some things really do work out perfectly. It might be a bit cheesy to some of you but if I cared about that I wouldn't be writing this right now. I got paid today. The list of things I needed to get with my paycheck is as follows:

Tithing- $57
Gas- $90
Books for school- $359
Car payment- $200
Grand total- $706

That list was a bit scary to me because my paychecks normally work out to be about $550. I really had no idea where I was going to get the extra $150 I needed. I opened my paycheck today and it was $706.81. Yeah. I had an extra 81 cents. It is another witness to me of the fact that Heavenly Father truly is aware of our circumstances and watches over us. It's also amazing to me how deducting 10% from a paycheck makes it multiply so much more. Things work out if we put our trust in the Lord and move forward with faith.

Have you ever felt like this?

The other night as we were getting ready to eat dinner, Ian put a bushel of grapes onto his plate. Attached to this bushel of red, juicy grapes whas a lone little green one. I took a picture of it first because I thought it was cool but also because there are a lot of times in our lives where we become that little green grape. All alone in a sea of people and circumstances with no real insight as to how we got there in the first place or how to escape. We spend so much time trying to be a red grape, we forget how cool it is to be a green one. I've been trying really hard lately to accept my green-ness. One of the ways I do it, that really sounds way too easy but I promise it works, is to simply tell myself that I accept it. You see, your mind and your body don't like to be in opposition with each other. If you start telling yourself something, eventually it will be true simply because you said it is. So be that green grape! Love the person who stares back at you in the mirror (with or without makeup) and remember that you were created to be you, not just another red grape.

Sigh! The frustration...

Have you ever felt like you were totally on the verge of something amazing and then nothing happened? That's pretty much exactly how I'm feeling right now. In a previous post, I mentioned a melody on the piano that I've been messing around with for quite some time now. Well, I sat down for an hour tonight and messed around with it. I changed the key and started humming the melody and singing stupid words like "I have no idea where this is going... I'm sick of playing this over and over" stuff like that. Suddenly things just clicked in my head and lyrics flowed out onto the paper. Just a chorus but that's better than nothing right? I wrote the verses after another half an hour of mulling it over in my head. I came to the computer to transfer the chicken scratch that is my handwriting when I'm songwriting into something more legible. Well, to make a long story short, in the process of, what I considered, making the finished product better than the original, the fourteen lines of text I had written over the course of the last hour were slowly whittled down to two. That's right, I ditched all but two lines of the chorus. What I want to know is HOW IN THE WORLD DO PEOPLE DO THIS FOR A LIVING??!! and why in the world did was that my dream as a child? On the bright side of things (because we know that I'm a glass-half-full kinda girl), I do have a pretty outstanding couplet. I do believe it's time I find an adequate muse, because whatever's on my brain right now simply won't suffice any longer.

My favorite TV show

My sisters and I are obsessed with The Secret Life of the American Teenager. What I've heard from most people is that they don't like it because it's all about sex. Well, I won't disagree that there is a lot of sex in that show (not like you actually watch people have sex, just rumors that float around school and stuff) but there's more to it than that.

The show is about a 15-year-old girl, Amy Juergens, who finds out she got pregnant by a boy named Ricky while they were at band camp. Meanwhile, she's falling in love with another boy, Ben who is the most awkward, cute, funny kid I've ever seen. He knows she's pregnant and is willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy, even if it includes not seeing her for awhile as she plans to go away to have the baby. Her parents are also in the middle of a nasty seperation because her Dad cheated on her Mom. It's full of drama but hey, such is life.

The show is really about how to handle life when it doesn't turn out the way you plan. I think that's a good lesson to learn because let's face it, life never turns out the way you plan. It's also about accepting people for who they are and not judging them by the mistakes they've made. If you haven't seen it, watch it. Tuesday nights at 6, MST of course, on abcfamily.

A little bit of patriotism

A lot of people rag on the United States. I guess that's to be expected when you're the #1 country in the world and have been for centuries, people get a little jealous. I can't really say I'm bothered by the misconceived notions of people from other countries. Yes most of them are untrue and generally brought about by rumors, but really, who hasn't assumed the worst of someone or some place without first getting all the facts? The issue I have here, which is the topic of this post, is the lack of patriotism in our country. I can't count the number of times I've heard Americans bad-mouthing their homeland. It's sick. Of course America isn't but let's do a little comparison shall we?

The postal service in Argentina went on strike this last week. Before that it was the dairy farmers, before that the cow herders. Riots broke out on the streets over a raise in the price of a bus token. I'm not trying to say anything against Argentina, the comparison I want to make here is when was the last time The United States had a group of people go on strike. Yep, it was the writer's strike. Pales in comparison a little bit, does it not?

Let's take a trip across the Atlantic a little further to Africa. Very few people in Africa even have a solid roof over their head. They have no access to adequate medical care and millions die from diseases that are unheard of in the US. While we're tossing out pounds of leftovers that have gone bad in the fridge, they're wondering how their children are going to survive the week.

It's time to get rid of the negative attitudes and start expressing gratitude for the blessing it is to live in this country. If you have a problem with how things are here, take a look past your nose and see how bad things really could be for you. Which one do you really prefer? As for me, I am and always will be proud to be an American.

The best part of summer

There's nothing like sitting around the campfire in AF canyon. I love it! My family and I all like to get together for family night once or twice a month up there and just have a good time. Tonight we kept scaring people away because we were so loud and weird... oh well! What you see is what you get with my family.

cynical? maybe... therepeutic? You bet!

Ian wrote to me today and, as usual, ended his email with "burn something for me," followed by a request for some pictures because I haven't sent some in awhile. I decided to combine the two. I was going through some piles in my room today and I found a few old pictures of Ian and Melissa. Any normal person would probably just throw them away but I am definitely not normal so I decided to burn them. With the help of my little brother, I made a nice firepit out of an ice cream bucket, which quickly melted, (I knew that would happen, it was part of the effect) and we burned all the pictures of them I had. Well, the ones in print anyway.

writer's block

Have you ever had one of those times where you want so desperately to put your thoughts into words but every time you open your mouth the makings of your brain turn to putty and leak out your ears? Ok, so that was a bad visual but I'm kind of in that position right now. I've been playing with a melody/accompaniment that's been dancing around in my head for almost a year now. I wrote it sitting in the Eccles music building at Dixie in September of '07. It has extreme potential and it's one of the only melodies that I've written that I really truly like but I cannot think of any words. Every time I sit down to write words, my mind betrays me and I forget how to speak English. Now I know how a toddler feels.

The ER

Ever since I decided I wanted to be a nurse, which was about halfway through my senior year of high school, I've been toying with the idea of working in the ER. I like the fast-paced environment and I like helping people. It seems to be a good combination right? The only thing that is a bit of a deterrent is being surrounded by death on a pretty consistent basis. Despite the fact that you do everything in your power to save lives, people still die. I'm a big time Daddy's girl so sometimes when my Dad works at the hospital, I'll go follow him around for few hours and see what there is to see. My Dad's been a respiratory therapist for 20 years now and he's really good at what he does all over the hospital and it's really beneficial for me to watch him. He teaches me a lot about being a good health care provider. The nurses that he works with are also amazingly welcoming and eager to teach me things. Well, the other night just happened to be one of those nights and the ER at AF hospital was totally slammed. Almost every one of the rooms was full. There was everything from a three-year-old that needed stitches (poor guy was screamin' his little lungs out) to a 55-year-old woman with a broken wrist. Right around midnight, the paramedics brought a man in who was in full cardiac arrest. I watched as a million things went on, my Dad in the middle of it all. Everyone fought to bring this guy back to life. Despite their best efforts, he didn't make it. Although I felt sorry for the family standing outside, I myself really wasn't all that sad. I walked away from that night in the hospital, for the first time in a long time, not overwhelmed by being a nurse. I really feel like this is what I should be doing in my life.

Missionary Slut

One of my friends at work nicknamed me missionary slut. It sounds kind of derogatory but I really like it. If anything, it's a funny thing to tell people about me. Four of my best friends are on missions right now. Curtis is in Paris, France, Ian's in Cordoba, Argentina, Cory's in Toronto, Canada, and Dan's in Washington DC. I love to write letters. Getting responses is even better. I got a letter from Ian about a week and a half ago that gave me all sorts of warm fuzzies. Apparently Argentina has Friend day. It's a national holiday like Mother's day in the United States. He wrote me a letter expressing his gratitude for my friendship and reminded me of a few memories that made me laugh. I've probably read it like 30 times since then. That's just one example though. I've gotten letters/emails like that from all of them. I love being a missionary slut!