i miss you

dear friend (you know who you are),

hope ya know that i think of you often.

remember when we met? you weren't really sure about me at first -- i was a little awkward, a little insecure, a little ... much -- but you gave me a chance. i like to think that the risk paid off. you found me when i really needed you.

a list of thanks:

thanks for seeing my good qualities and loving them
thanks for seeing my bad qualities and loving me anyway
thanks for giving me that ridiculous nickname
thanks for our inside jokes
thanks for understanding that i am always trying
thanks for making me laugh so hard i cried
thanks for making me laugh when i can't stop crying
thanks for the long lunch dates
thanks for remembering the little things that mean everything to me
thanks for forgiving me when i am late (again) at remembering yours
thanks for reading this list even though it's totally cliche
thanks for understanding how sincerely i mean it all

i know i don't get to see you as often as i would like. and sometimes i don't get to see you at all. but i carry you with me. these days i find myself feeling like i need a friend more than ever, but then i remember i have you. can't you sense how happy make me?


like when you visited me in a city where i knew no one...

and taught me that i deserve to be really loved...

and shared a once in a lifetime trip with me (and then let me steal the photos off of your blog...)

and spent so much of your time cracking me up...

and stole my heart everytime you smiled...

and made me wish that i were as dedicated as you are (even though you might not be a real person...)

and know that this letter is addressed to you even if i didn't have a picture of you on my computer...

frankly, you make me ME. and i like me. thanks.

so even though i wrote for nine straight hours today at work, i owe it to you to drop a line. just to let you know that one of god's greatest graces is that he lets us have friends. and you may not believe it, but i didn't get that from a hallmark card.

with love...

public enemy number one

this guy:


here's how it all works. in 1784 he writes a satirical essay recommending that the frenchies wake up before noon. pretty sure there was something about using less candles in there too.

next thing you know, the british take off with this idea.

now, i have to wake up an hour earlier for work and endure a painful headache all afternoon.

so, benny boy, you may have had your heyday -- you know, helping establish liberty in america and all -- but today, sir, i take issue with you.

tomorrow we might be friends again. stay tuned.

scatter sunshine

a few things brightening my life lately:

tax refunds


potential trip/cruise to spend said refund


swimsuit shopping for said trip (online, of course. no one likes trying on swimsuits). i'm particularly liking these ones:

going to nyc with my mom and little sis in five short weeks

french eclectic style (click here to find out what your style is--thanks, Diane!)






learning a little more every day about trusting God's plan for me (and learning patience when it's not my plan).

oh, and did i mention fridays off?

in fact, i'm feeling so sunny that i've almost forgotten that my brand-new jeans split right in the crotch in the middle of my workday yesterday...

viva la vida

there's a hill on my way home every day. i'd estimate it's about fifteen blocks from the freeway exit to my street. if fate is on my side, i can put my car in neutral when i exit the freeway, weave between traffic, hit the only stop light and coast all the way to 10th Ave. when it happens, it is absolutely exhilarating and the perfect ending to my commute.

that happened to me yesterday.

alright, here's where i try to force a metaphor between this and my life (be ye warned).

i love when i have days like that. i wake up early, my hair looks good, i like something i wrote at work, i go to the gym, the sun is still up when i get home from work, jesse miraculously has no tests/quizzes/homework due the next day, perhaps an episode of LOST is on (did anyone watch tonight's episode? DUDE). it's wonderful.

today wasn't one of those days. it wasn't a bad day, mind you. more things went right than wrong, but i was tired. on my way home, i made it about seven blocks, anticipating my only obstacle: the red light. i slowly pushed the brake, thinking that if i spaced it out enough i could still make it--even if i made the turn at five miles per hour. when i finally stopped at the light, i realized i had a choice. i could either accept this as defeat, or i could decide to make the most of it.

when the light turned green, i decided to give myself a boost and accelerated for one block. i still coasted several blocks before i turned. and you know what? it still felt pretty good. so today i have decided that i still prefer when the stars all align, but it's alright to push a couple of them around if necessary.


and, because i never have pictures, feast your eyes on these handsome boys (and me).

do you long for true love?

was your valentine's day filled with romantic getaways, expensive chocolates, three dozen red roses, one carat solitaire diamond earrings and a romantic dinner with candlelight and violin players?

mine was better.

road trip to boise with the husband, screaming nieces and nephews, a few hours at the mall, tacos with the family, and the blessing of a sweet new baby.

it may not be on any kay jewelers ads, but it was wonderful.

hope everyone else had a LOVEly (see what i did there?) weekend.

isn't writing supposed to be therapeutic?

alright, i didn't think i would post this, but today it seems all too relevant. i took a creative nonfiction course this summer, and it was a truly awesome experience. below you will find a sketch i wrote that was fun but helpful.

for a few months, i thought i was cured.

but then this week happened. it seems that my weak human nature makes change so impossible. anyway, without further ado, here is a little something something that will sum up the past few days. (Andrea, you can stop reading here as you have already endured this psychobabble)

The Mean Greens

In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly Golightly is an expert on the “mean reds,” those times when “suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.” For Golightly, the mean reds are temporarily remedied with inevitable trips to Tiffany’s. I suffer from a similar condition I like to think of as the “mean greens,” when I’m suddenly envious without any logical reason --the cure for which still eludes me.

Anything can really set the mean greens off. Finding a cute sweater from Anthropologie only to check my bank account and realize how far out of my price range it truly is. Hearing about a great graduate program in Scotland a well-deserving friend of mine is headed to while I pack up for the glaringly less glamorous move to Pocatello, Idaho for my husband’s graduate work. Even finding out that an ex-boyfriend from eons ago that remains only in my life as a remnant photo in my high school yearbook is getting married seems to set me off.

While the greens frequently spur up in moments of attempted retail therapy or other financial transactions, they aren’t restricted to purely materialistic moments; in fact, they’re generally the easiest to mitigate when they are attached to something shallow and fleeting. Unfortunately, the greens often attach most firmly to where it hurts most, or—even more shockingly—where they aren’t expected to hurt at all. They come as that nagging in the back of my mind that I am somehow behind in life or inadequate.

Symptoms of the mean greens include: sulking, quietly internet browsing for hours on end, and secretly despising those whose fortune is infinitely greater than mine. Though these symptoms often take place in a warm, safe, comfortable home where my loving husband sits—secretly laughing at this silly rage—the greens take over. They block all reason. They look down upon the rational section of my brain and simply state, “Try as you might, there is no key to my undoing.” Frankly, they don’t care how fortunate I really am. They’re just that mean. Attempts to mediate such feelings are often futile.

This is generally where I hear my mother’s voice, reminding me to lose myself in helping others. I have finally grown up enough to realize that my mother is generally right, so I have tried this selfless approach several times; I really have. I visit girls I know who just had babies in an attempt to mitigate my own baby hunger, I make dinner for my husband to remember how lucky I am to have him, and I have even gone so far as to sew aprons and blankets for others in attempts to improve my domesticity rather than focus on my current position as domestically derelict. But the greens are resilient. Soon I find myself thinking that to truly serve others, I would do something larger, grander. I dream of taking humanitarian trips around the world, setting up literacy circles and health clinics; in these visions I become a regular Angelina Jolie—without the film career and vials of blood around my neck. These visions of grand humanity only create a new source of the mean greens—humanitarian envy.

Like Holly Golightly, I don’t really know where this case of the mean greens started or why I allow it to perpetuate. I tell myself that it’s a byproduct of growing up in a large family where hand-me-downs were the norm. Unfortunately for my anger-projecting-psyche, I really loved hand-me-downs; they were a connection to those far more fashionable than I—older, beautiful, female relatives. Then the vicious truth sets in—there is a possibility that I allow the world to tell me what I should have and who I should be. I believe them. When I was young, I didn’t realize that I needed Polly Pockets until every girl on TV seemed to be toting her set with her to glamorous tea parties and play dates. I didn’t care that I dressed badly until the seventh grade when (name withheld to protect the innocent) told me we couldn’t be friends anymore because I needed better clothes. I didn’t mind having diabetes and the challenges it presented in my life until my friends began having child after child and casually telling me all the things I’ll never know until I’m a mother.

It’s not that I am upset with people who can purchase a wonderful wardrobe or happily move forward with their lives. There’s more to it. Despite all efforts to become a strong, educated, independent woman, there’s some dissatisfaction with me.

For now, I live with the encumbering weight of the mean greens, but like Holly Golightly, I dream of being released from their irrational stronghold; I’m still searching for a “real-life place that’d make me feel like Tiffany’s.” As a precaution against future fits of the greens, I just hope it has a clearance rack.

the sound of stifling

when i got my job, i was elated. my dad was disappointed.

i don't think it's that he reveled in my unemployment misery--health insurance nightmares, extreme boredom and constant stress about paying rent. he worried that if i worked as a writer that i would "lose my spark." he told me that the work would suck all the fun out of writing for me.

i told him he was crazy. i survived book reports. i had survived the five paragraph essay in high school. i had even survived the grueling hours dedicated to exploring fetishes, epiphany, romantic poetry (ugh), and even rhetoric and composition (double ugh) on the page. i still loved writing.

i quickly assured the man that the blog would remain strong, that i would continue fanning my sad little spark under the delusion that only smoky the bear could slow me down.

to be honest, work is great. i write and edit every day.

but i'm beginning to think the colonel might be right. after all, it's been two weeks, and this was the best post i could conjur up. are you all worried that this is telling of my sad demise?

p.s. in other talent development news, i have been working diligently on my ability to kill aliens on jesse's ps3. if you have any aliens that need to be shot or beaten with the butt of a gun, let me know.