prayer to together, and i said: what if we get fat and old and boring. and he said: i am just so excited to read books together.

so i have not blogged a blog in a moon or two for several reasons, one being: i have nine siblings and one computer at home meaning someone is always ALWAYS playing on disney.com, another being: i am getting nuptialed and i think only about nicholas floyd cottrell and how excited i am to lay face down in the sands of hawaii and giggle and giggle and sleep and then have adventures together forever and eat spaghetti with butter because we both think the kitchen is just another place to chit chat and have never owned our own utensils, another being, i am turning into one of those annoying fianceed people that only want to talk about how bomb.com their fiancee is and how beautiful life is and how good the sun looks in the morning and how even though things are rough and tumble and dreary that there is always happiness and wisdom and love and good feelings in the world and that sometimes it all just makes my heart so full its going to explode. so im sorry, these are the things weighing most heavily on my mind currently and i have nothing of interest to say to you, except that i just love love and i know im just an annoying giddy little girl, but i think secretly inside we all are and im glad of that. and i guess today i just want to tell you: i love that when i have panic attacks about becoming a real person and doing hard things and making big commitments, nicholas tells me: shannon, im just excited to read books together. because for whatever reason, that is just the right answer to everything and calms my anxiety ridden heart.

so i guess this post is a prayer to all those men and women out there that are part of a together, or hope to one day be together, or have been part of a together, or have seen a together that is so so beautiful, or are who they are because their parents were a together or their grandparents or whoever. its a prayer to togetherness. reading books together. walks together. bike rides together. crying together. laughing together. eating together. eating spaghetti with butter together. eating grilled cheese together. failing together. succeeding together. being mad together, and then making up together. the beautiful beautiful thing that is together.

a while ago my mom died, and the light in my dads eyes went away for a while. he is one tough little cookie that kicks a whole lot of a in the world and someone im proud to call papa bear, but he was just plain sad. half of him was gone. all of a sudden he laughed alone. ate alone. failed alone. succeeded alone. he had his kids and his church and his friends and so many people loving him and rooting for him, but he didnt have his teammate. his together person. his heart had a big hole. and then tiffany came along whos husband had died of a heart attack, and he had a together. the hole didnt go away, but they shared their holes together. they laughed together. cried together. fought together. grieved together. played together. and their togetherness was just so happy. his eyes lit up again. i dont know how to explain it. he was just part of a together, a team. and even though that pain will always be there for both of them and the agony of losing a spouse will always be a great big wound, an enormous gaping ugly scar that will never go away, they share the pain together. its one big scar now. and i think more than anything, that is the best part of together. struggling together. pain together. letting someone else hold a bit of the load. crying together, and hurting together, but always knowing that when you feel sadness, you have your together to share it with you.

this thanksgiving i create my together. what a thing to give thanks for. and though i am thankful for everything about nuptials and nicholas and my upcoming life, right now, thinking about my dad and tiffany and the wounds they carry together, i am grateful that when i cry, i do it with someone else. i am grateful for together. i am grateful for all the togethers that have come before, for my mom and dad, for my dad and tiffany, for my grammy and grandpa who have been married for 57 years of together and have seen wars, death and more than you can imagine, together. i give thanks for a boy that wipes my tears and sheds his own, tears that are no longer his or mine, but ours. so i know its mushy and i know im an annoying in love person, but i just am grateful for together, and this is a hallelujah to togethers around the world through the centuries and to come.

prayer to the tazmanian devil named brooke marie mehner slabbert, also known as my big sister.

one time brooke marie mehner slabbert and i decided to go running down a trail behind my backyard that i have dubbed "the pocahontas run." it is long, 12 miles to be exact. it involves running through four rivers, through forest brush, through mountain lion territory, and through some pretty snake-infested landscape. it has been the site of several embarrassing instances for me, including a time involving widsom teeth pulling, laxatives, and an ill-timed run. it is a brutal run, it can be a scary run, and also one of my favorites. i love to take one of my sisters along for the ride, all 12 miles of muddyness. this particular time brooke and i set off, with me promising we'd only go for a little while and then come back, banking on the foot in the door phenomenon i am well known for using every day of my life to get people to do what i want them to do.

so brooke and i set off. i was training, she was not. i thought i was bomb.com for outrunning her the entire way, not even breathing hard. she feared the mountain lions, i was queen of the forest. she was feeling hurt in her calves, my body was a temple. for someone who spent the majority of her life being asked why she was so much bigger-boned than her older sister, it was heaven.

finally we neared the end of the run, at which time there is an enormous hill. im pretty sure ive never run it. as we got there i slowed to a trot, then to a walk. i was dying. i couldnt breathe. i needed water and air and love and a foot massage. i pretended i was doing it for brooke: "ok we can slow down a bit brooke, i know you're tired."

as i plodded my way up the hill, i saw something in my peripheral vision. a tazmanian devil. a tornado of dirt smoke. nothing more than a blur, as it passed up me and whizzed up the hill like the little engine that could on speed. as i watched brooke's back retreat farther and farther up the hill, i was humbled. i was reminded that though i am the bigger sister height wise weight wise shoe size wise and fit into a kids size 16 when she was still a 10 even though I was two years younger, she will always be my big sister. she looks at those giant hills at the end of the pocahontas run, even after she has been wearied for miles, even after shes been running and running, and she dominates them. she kicks their trash. she tells them "i am a tazmanian devil, and i will defeat you." and she does.

when mountains come her way, she climbs them. when trials come pounding at her door, she pounds them back. she inspires me to stop walking, and keep running. she is the one who has paved the way for the rest of the clan of women that makes up my family. she went to high school first. she went to college first. she figured out who n sync was first, and called dibs on lance bass first. she discovered trl first. she got married first. now she is the best mother to elsie jane first, teaching the rest of us how to be, and how to keep on climbing. im glad i have her cloud of dust to follow, her 5'2'' frame pumping up those mountains like it aint no thing. shes always been there, running ahead of me, showing me the way, watching out for snakes and showing me how to give it your all to the very end, the faster woman, my big sister, my tazmanian devil.

happy birthday brookie, thanks for showing me who carson daly is, for showing me how to love those around me, for showing me how to face my fears and conquer them, and for continuing the legacy of beautiful mothers in our family.

prayer to the puppies. im sorry ive neglected you.

we mehners suffer from a disease known as perfectionism. it would not seem this way because i am most often seen in sweatpants living out of my car, my writing looks like hieroglyphics, and showering is an optional activity in my life. but underneath the dirty fingernails and careless persona lies a person that frets over A minuses, cries over b pluses, and will stand in payless shoe source for three and one half hours picking out a pair of fifteen dollar shoes until the lady says "you spent all this time in here and you only picked out one pair of shoes?" and after purchasing the shoes considers three times returning the shoes and getting the other pair and loses multiple minutes of sleep that night wondering if the 15 dollars was spent correctly. its a disease given to me by my perfectionist father glen bron, who irons his sheets and gave me a franklin planner at the age of 6 and gets a haircut approximately once a week even though he is 100 percent bald.

to sum up: i 1. think parting with money is like losing an eyeball unless it is being spent on taking me to india or education or a book or life-saving medication 2. i second guess every decision i have ever made and 3. i must know every single option available to me before i decide on one, which explains why i had 13 serious boyfriends and 7 not so serious boyfriends prior to deciding on an eternal boyfriend.

im sure you are wondering what this has to do with anything pertinent to your life, and it probably is not necessary to post on the internet. but let me tell you what perfectionist mehner personality adds up to: the worst wedding planner of all time. and this from a girl who never even thought about her wedding until she got engaged, at which time she was informed she should have been keeping a folder her whole life of wedding tidbits she liked so she could just refer back to it and think: my whole life i've wanted yellow and blue paisely bridesmaid dresses and a red velvet cake with white icing! no, i am in fact the exact opposite, the girl who never noticed what the bride's dress looked like, didn't even attend most people's weddings, and did not know that linens were an essential part of wedding decor. but all of a sudden i have been thrown into a universe of decision making from websites and vendors that tell you: we want to help make the MOST IMPORTANT day of your life EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT! like that is so helpful mr. vendor. thanks for informing me this is going to be the most important day out of the 7 billion days of life i live. no pressure. and thank you for letting me know you can give me exactly what i want, like its so easy to know what you want. and thank you for doing it all for the low low price of more money than i have spent the rest of my life combined, including college tuition and trips to the hospital.

anyway, the point of this post is not to vent, or disclose that i have spent the last 7 hours of my life looking at wedding blogs on the internet, an activity i never thought i would ever be engaged in. the point of this point is to say: its great to know that it doesnt matter. if i pick the wrong colors, if i see a cuter wedding later, if my dress doesnt fit me, if the food is gross, if my legs fall off so i cant dance the night away which is the only thing i know for definite i want at my reception, if everyone talks behind my back that my wedding sucked, it wont even matter, not even a little bit. and even though every caterer and vendor and dj in the entire world wants to pressure me into thinking this is the most important day of my life, i will not be pressured.

it is an important day. there will be other important ones. and it is not important because i will get the exact cake i want, or the exact bouquet, or whatever. it will be important because from this moment on i will get to have sleepovers with the boy that i love forever, and we will start our lives together, and make each other better and stronger and wipe away each others tears and hold each other up when life decides to beat us up. so social pressure, i laugh in your face. i will not be pressured into thinking every detail matters or that it "only happens once" so i should just go crazy and spend the budget of an entire third world country. i will also not have a panic attack every time i see the price tag. i will still fret over every decision and every dollar spent because its genetically engineered into my blood, but i will not let wedding advertisements trick me into thinking its all about me and wedding favors, and i will not let my guilty conscience manipulate me into thinking i am a bad person for spending money, and i will just let go. i will breathe. and my reception will be exactly what i want if it involves family and friends and dancing and smiles and happiness and love and good vibrations and all of the people who have helped me along this beaten path to this point in life, and most of all nicholas floyd cottrell and his little boy smile, because when i see that i wont even see the centerpieces or the chair covers. and there are millions of people all over the world dying of cancer and millions of children starving and hurting and puppies being kicked and they are a whole lot more important than what veil i wear, and im sorry that i have been thinking about that instead of the puppies, because i promise ive never been like this before. i hope they forgive me, because im going back to pre-wedding me starting here and now, the person who thought tulle was pronounced too-lay, and no amount of people telling me its "my day" and "all about me" can stop me, because im tired of feeling like a tornado inside and life is about being happy and good and not bridesmaid dresses.

sorry for rambling, but i had to remind myself.

hallelujah to your infinite worth. my momma told me im special, and i believe her.

Truman Madsen said it best:
My testimony to you is that you have come literally "trailing clouds of glory." If you only knew who you are and what you did and how you earned the privileges of mortality, and not just mortality but of this time, this place, this dispensation, and the associates that have been meant to cross and intertwine with your lives; if you knew now the vision you had then of what this trial, this probation, what in my bitter moments I call this spook alley of mortality, could produce, would produce; if you knew the latent infinite power that is locked up and hidden for your own good now--you would never again yield to any of the putdowns that are a dime a dozen in our culture today.

amen truman. i love to think of us all as embyros of greatness, with infinite potential locked up inside each of our tiny beating hearts and tiny sensitive souls. makes you think twice about teasing kids on the playground or getting mad or sad or down on yourself, because we are all little seeds of greatness. and i for one intend to use that greatness however i can and water my seed and try to grow into what God intended me for. divine potential baby, is a beautiful thing.

hallelujah for Love in all its shapes and sizes. especially for Love that comes in a 6'4'' variety.

so i recently decided to gain an eternal boy roommate and im feeling very stoked on the whole idea. he is very dope. he makes me giggle. he tells me im beautiful. but more important than any of the silly things like him massaging my feet and telling me i can do it and protecting my tender heart and letting me cry multiple times a day over silly things and not so silly things, he makes me good. it is amazing to me how the sun always comes out when you least expect it and how much you can love another person. it makes me believe in God. i dont know how that is correlated except for that sometimes when your soul feels like its ready to burst out of you and into someone else it makes you realize that something bigger than you exists. it makes you realize that you are not very important and that thinking about yourself all the time is boreeee-ing, because its much more fun to stop all that nonsense and care more about someone else than you do yourself. it makes you appreciate all of the rough roads and cloudy days and psychotic ex-boyfriends and tears that you cried and cancers that your family faced and months in the hospital and broken hearts because it was all worth it because it made you you, and if you weren't you you don't know if you could have found the kind of love that makes you forget about yourself and want to serve the whole entire world and love trees and God and the person next to you in the grocery store that would normally annoy you, but today you love because the world is so much happier when you are in love. and all of a sudden all those rough roads brought you to a sunny field with an incredible view, and it all makes a little more sense and the Future looks like something beautiful.

this whole engagement business has made me think real love, a little bit like an imperfect fragment of God's love for his little children, fills you with love for everyone. it makes the sky bluer and words sound more beautiful and your heart beat faster and you cry at songs like rascal flats broken road that normally just hurts your ears. but most of all i think it makes you good. gooder than you have ever been. it makes you want to help everyone feel a little bit of what you are feeling. it makes you want to pay for the man's taco bell behind you. it makes you want to sing. it makes you want to listen a little harder and try a little more and have a little more patience and give people a little bit of your happiness. it makes you forget that you spent your life feeling like a misfit and your own insecurities and the fact that a person hit your car and didn't stop. it makes you want to be a piece of happiness in the world. it makes you grateful for every hard thing and hard person and hard luck that has helped you to become more prepared to love. it makes you so grateful that you start wondering if its a little weird how grateful you are for cancer and broken hearts. it makes the world look a little softer.

im not saying love is perfect, or even close to perfect, or that my newly found happiness is long lasting and unbreakable. im just saying that right now i feel like loving the whole world a whole lot, and i know why. and i hope that if you have not yet had the opportunity to experience that joyful golden field called finding a teammate, you dont give up hope but keep on fighting, because i think that all of the rough roads will lead you there eventually. and even then i think the road will still be bumpy, but at least there will be someone else in your canoe holding your hand. and it will make the fighting oh so worth it because all of a sudden it will become easier to see everyone around you like God sees them. it will expand your heart. it will feel like home. so i dont even know what the moral of this is, except for that i believe in love and i believe in hard things and i believe in you and i believe in loving the man behind you in line at taco bell and i believe one day we will all find eternal roommates and feel like dancing a lot in public areas. and i hope one day you all find people that make you love the world a little more, because it feels like a little piece of greatness and makes you believe that there is some sort of order to this chaos called life, and that one day all the puzzle pieces will come together and the eiffel tower puzzle you've been working on for 8 months will look more magnificent than you've ever dreamed.

prayer to the little train that could.

yesterday i drove from the great salt lake to south orange county in one solitary swoop. i stopped at mcdonalds, in n out, four gas stations, five restrooms, one alien jerky store, and contemplated stopping at the mad greek cafe because who doesnt want to dine surrounded by 494 statues of greek gods in a makeshift parthenon. you would think i was a family of six, not one solitary person. i listened to 2 cds the entire time and now have every single word memorized of michael jackson billie jean. i listened to 4 hours of talk radio and found out: barack obama is the devil incarnate, john mccain is the devil incarnate, barack obama kills babies, john mccain kills souls. all in all, a rockin experience.

although all of those things made the trip a real joy, perhaps my favorite moment was in the middle of a desert when the longest train i have ever seen passed by. the sun was setting, the mountains were looming, and a boxcar train chugged its way down the tracks as i drove by craning my neck to count. i lost count at 94. the number of boxcars is not important. what is important is that the chugging train, oblivious to its surroundings, going on with its business and gleaming in red yellow and blue, reminded me of how much i love trains. reminded me of when i found out my mom had cancer again, this time terminal, one of my friends bought me the book the little engine that could and told me i could do it. reminded me of at my moms funeral, when one of her best friends got up and said my mom was like the little engine that could, never giving up, always finding a way. reminded me of when one of my moms best friends bought us little glass trains and said to always remember that my mom never gave up. reminded me that even when obstacles arise and things get in our way, we are all little engines that could. we are all little trains in the desert. my mom never gave up. i will never give up.

whenever i see a train i am reminded of my moms dedication, her will to live, to never complain, to endure terminal cancer and endless pain with dignity and grace. yesterday, watching the long train run its track through the desert, one of hte most beautiful sights i have seen in a long time, i felt the little engine that could inside of me and i knew that no matter what life brings, and no matter how looming the mountains look, i can do it. and i will do it. and so will you my friends. so will you.

prayer to lovely people with beating hearts.

so i left dc and my wallet got stolen in the airport and i had 2 layovers until i got back to good ol salt lake city to see the boy i kind of like. i was in such a bootleg mood because who steals someones wallet and i had gotten 2 hours of sleep and i was reading breaking dawn, the latest in the twilight series, and it was giving me a headache. addicted to the pain. anyway, so im sitting in my middle seat on the airplane lamenting my awful station in life and complaining in my head when our plane lands. i look a mess. bags under my eyes. frazzled hair. awkward fitting jeans. airplane sick stomach. complaining heart. then a very large, greyhaired man in front of me turns around. kind eyes. i love kind eyes.

"maam?" he asks me. "are you the one that lost your wallet?" im still annoyed at this point and don't reply in the most chipper of tones. "yes," i reply. he proceeds to tell me about when his wallet got stolen at the gym and how annoying it was, and im still tuning him out because complaining in my head feels like a much more important activity. then he asks me if need money. "no sir, thank you, i'll be ok." im still in a bootleg mood. to which he replies, "no, youre going to need something to eat." and pulls out a 20 and slips it to me. the best part is what he says: "to remind you there are still more good people in the world than bad." then walks away, like a money distributing airplane frequenting santa clause.

thank you large greyhaired man with kind eyes, for reminding me how beautiful the world is, and how much one small act of service can mean. thank you large greyhaired man wtih kind eyes, for reminding me that life is not about what you get, or what happens to you, or how hard your life is, but about how much you give. thank you large greyhaired man with kind eyes, for not thinking twice about giving me 20 dollars, for realizing that the hope you gave me in humanity that day far outweighed whatever he could buy with that 20 dollars. thank you large greyhaired man with kind eyes, for teaching me that service is every day, every hour, and that there are bad people in the world, but there will always be more good than bad. thank you large grey haired man with kind eyes, im working on becoming like you.

prayer to jackie wilson.

today i ran through the 600 degree humidity of washington dc. i listened to some kelly clarkson, some fergalicious, and some will smith, intermixed with some other delightful tunes. as i was finishing my run in a ridiculously sweaty state, i found a little gem on my friends ipod. jackie wilson--your love keeps lifting me higher. though usually nothing can make me run faster than sk8r boi and behind these hazel eyes, this tune elevated my pace to a sprint and i broke into spontaneous dance and pelvic thrusting. i ran with an enormous smile on my face. my bluebird was singing. my heart was rejoicing. i was a free bird in our nation's capital. i was being lifted to new heights. i was soaring above the rush hour traffic and the ambulance sirens in the distance. i decided this song is what love is. i decided this song is what love should make you feel.

i am queen of loving men that treat me bad. i am queen of loving men with mental derangement. i am queen of not liking nice boys, for absolutely no reason other than apparently i am just not that attracted to them. i am queen of never loving normal people. i am queen of analyzing texts, analyzing emails, analyzing men, dispensing advice on whether calling them is too forward, on trying to understand why i come home crying every other night, on justifying why its my fault the relationship isnt going well. but as i listened to this song, revelation came to my mind. love should make you feel good. thats the point. no one will ever understand you completely. no one will ever complete you, because you should be complete on your own. no one will ever change you into a new person or give you new talents or change who you are. but hopefully they will help you discover it. hopefully they will help you see the treasure you have within. hopefully their love will lift you higher. not drag you down.

perhaps to some of you it sounds rather ovbious. but to me, it wasnt always. i think im learning. i dont think love is all you need. i dont think relationships dont take hard work, flexibility and sacrifice. but i think if you are second guessing yourself, never sure of where the other person stands, if you are constantly analyzing what is going on in hopes of figuring it out, costantly justifying how the other person acts, then i think you should flee. flee like the wind. like a kid that has to pee. becuase love should lift you, should make you want to run down the streets of dc dancing like nobodys watching, should help you know yourself better and love others better, and i think its that simple. it is good. it is great. it is the foundation that glues us together as human beings, as people. kelly clarkson didnt get it right. jackie wilson did. in a song that repeats the same 2 lines over and over again, and keeps lifting me higher.

can i get an amen?

quote from the shawshank redemption that is reminiscent of my homeless/sodie experience.

Red (n): And that’s how it came to pass that on the second last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of ‘49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o’clock in the morning drinking icy cold Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
Captain Hadley: Drink up while it’s cold, ladies.
Red (n): The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy, he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.
Heywood: Hey, want a cold one Andy?
Andy: No thanks, I gave up drinking.
Red (n): You could argue he’d done it to curry favor with the guards or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me? I think he just did it to feel normal again, if only for a short while.

amen red.

prayer to sodie. sodie for all.

this last week i had to order millions of dollars of catering for my job. i could tell you about the millions of disastrous events that occurred in the process of acquiring the catering including an enormous tidal wave of coffee spilling all over a taxi and the taxi driver telling me "your boss is a cheap man" while he tried to convince me it would cost 100 bones to clean his precious automobile, but all of that is beside the point. the point of this post is to tell you about the magical experience i had with the leftover catering.

there were millions of sandwiches, cookies, etc. left over from the extravaganza, and my boss told me i could take them and go feed homeless people in the park. im pretty sure no sentence could make me happier. what could be better than taking gourmet sandwiches, cinnamon rolls and happiness to people who get none of the above on a regular basis? i thought nothing. and how wrong i was.

because though they enjoyed the sandwiches, cinnamon rolls, and happiness, the best part of the whole grand adventure was passing out free sodies. as well all know, i love sodie. my sister didi tells me it is my self prescribed medication. having a bad day? stop at chevron for a quick fix. mad at the world? time for 32 oz of joy to make it all better. little did i know that the homeless and i would have such a beautiful bonding experience over the appreciation of this cancer causing carbonation filled beverage. they were grateful for the sandwiches. but they were ecstatic for the sodie. as i asked them what their poision of choice was (sprite, coke, or diet coke), their faces lit up. they grabbed the can gleefully. their eyes sparkled a little brighter. giving them food was fun. but giving them sodie? it made me feel like mother theresa.

in one hot spot, there were 5 men perched on a curb, and they had just been fed by a nearby homeless shelter. i almost didnt stop, because i knew they had been taken care of. but something made me turn and have a little chat with them anyway. in the process, i asked them if they'd want a sodie or two. pure joy radiated from their faces. all of a sudden i was being swarmed. homeless people all around, desperate for a sodie. after i passed them all out, they just sat and sipped for a minute or two. finally, one toothless black man named vick turned to me. "honey," he said, "you are a gift from God."

as i reflected on my magical sodie adventure, i realized why the whole experience brought me so much joy. the homeless get food on a pretty regular basis from nearby shelters, outreach programs, etc. but how often do they get sodie, a treat with no redeeming health benefits and chock full of cancer causing agents, a food item that is simply consumed for the pure joy of its deliciousness even at the harzard of its partaker? im willing to guess the homeless shelter has no sodie fountain.

i guess this all sounds pretty silly to the non-sodie drinker out there. but think of your weakness. purple skittles? mike n ikes? nerd ropes? double stuft oreos? sleeping in too late? cracking your knuckles? biting your nails? they may all be bad for us, but sometimes it just feels good to do something that has absolutely no purpose except for the pure pleasure of the moment. reminds us we are human. reminds us we are real. and that, my friends, is something the homeless deserve too.

prayer to the crocalicious gods.

the croc family was perfect. i was walking home from work, tired and a little worn out of hearing about immigration and wondering who the heck is going to solve the world's problems, and there they were. fanny back wearing, camera toting, visor sporting tourist family decked out in I (heart) DC shirts with severe nose sunburns and the enthusiasm only a young tourist family can have. the 6 year old boy had an enormous head on a stick thin body swathed in tie dye. he loved to pick his nose. his younger sister had gone too far with a bedazzler on her eyeglasses and almost blinded me in direct sunlight with her sparkling vision correctors. she loved rhinestones. the father was holding his young sleeping infant like a sack of potatoes in his arms. his glasses could hardly stay on his nose in light of the enormous pools of sweat that were gathering all over his face. the mother's visor was beautiful, dawning the NYC logo, so as to make sure everyone in DC was aware their vacation included several states. The youngest sister had the knobbiest knees I had ever seen. Her hair had some sort of purple sticky substance in it. Perhaps some sort of candy treat she had been rewarded with earlier. They walked at the slowest rate of all time. They were holding up street traffic. They were beautiful. The best part about this little tourist family was their footware--they all donned the all purpose and all durable croc, in various sizes and shades. It comforted me to know that even though it had been a long day of touring the capitol and dragging screaming children through the smithsonians, their feet were not feeling the pain. their feet could breathe, but at the same time felt the comfort of a supportive arch and a sturdy sole. i like to think their matching crocs were one of the reasons that, at 5:43 PM on a day when the temperature reached upward of 90, the whole family was still smiling. Though I had been feeling a bit down, I perked right up at the thought of one day purchasing 6 pairs of crocs, in various sizes and shades, so that at the end of a hot, humid day full of tantrums and dropped ice cream cones, my future family and i can all look at each other and smile, basking in the comfort of it all.

Sharing is Caring. Pop Rocks can Save us.

This is my friend Yolanda from when I lived in Mexico. Her dad is a migrant worker that illegally crosses the border to work so he can have money to buy her food.

This:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/07/14/immigration_rally_planned_in_iowa_meatpacking_town/
is making me super happy today. It won't let me link to it, I don't know why, but you should copy/paste it into your browser and read it, because maybe it will bring you a bit of happiness too. and i, for one, am all about bringing happiness into the world after i find out things like ladies being chained by their heads to men for two straight years are happening on this planet (if you don't know what im talking about, you should pick up a newspaper maybe. or if you don't want to know, which is understandable, avoid all news stands and don't journey to colombia anytime soon).

when people Care (yes with a capital C, because it deserves it) it makes my heart happy. im interning right now for an immigration/refugee assistance/policy lobbying organization in dc, so you will probably be hearing a lot about it from me. by hearing i mean seeing. and by seeing i mean you will be seeing me passionately tirading, or whatever it is that i do about sadness and suffering and children not having candy and toys. it all began with my save the donkeys in tijuana campaign at the age of 11. ill probably post more about my crusade to save the spray painted donkeys in the future. it culminates in me insisting my entire class bring in all of their spare change and begging my mom to drive me back to mexico so i could buy the donkeys. i was a ridiculous and stubborn child. also a chubby one. right now it will suffice to quote my love dr. seuss: "if someone like you doesn't care a whole lot, nothings going to get better, its not."

anyway, of course i couldnt just post the link because i am the most long-winded person on planet earth. if you made it this far, i salute you. i wish you peace and giggles all day long. i challenge you to spend an extra 15 minutes asking someone questions about their life today and for real listening, not just fake listening and thinking about what you have to do, or anonymously do an act of service, like buying your co-worker pop rocks. im pretty sure we severely underestimate the power of pop rocks to help combat the world's problems.

i found my heart in gettysburg.

i went to gettysburg. i bought a ring. it looks like this. $1.75 of endless joy.

i promised myself i had to cut down on accumulating junk in mass quantities, so i withheld even though i really wanted the $4.75 bullet necklace. the confederate flag heart ring was enough for me. the abraham lincoln bobble head will have to wait for another time.

gettysburg was bomb. i dont feel like describing it except for to tell you that it was bike week in gettysburg, meaning there were millions of leather clad men on harley davidsons. my other favorite thing was going to general picketts all you can eat buffet. a chuckarama with a civil war theme and murals of the confederate troops on the wall? im in love. its fatal flaw was lack of a frozen yogurt machine. the battlefield at gettysburg made me appreciate those that have come before and paved the way. freedom is incredible. we dont appreciate it as much as we should. it is a beautiful and precious gift, one that we should use wisely. i cant imagine what it would be like to be at war in those days, looking into the faces of men you will soon kill or that will kill you. it was so much more personal in those days. now we can just press a button and blow people up. that is probably more scary than anything. look into people's eyes once a while. i think its good for the soul.

it was a good trip. maybe ill post pictures. most likely not. the weekend was weird for other reasons. reasons that made me appreciate my friends and family, and realize that no matter how far you travel, there is no place like home. which is funny, because i wasnt even home. but its good to know that in this great big world, you will always be connected to the people that love you, and that in your darkest of moments they are only one phone call or gchat away. and that my friends, is better than the banana cake at general picketts. maybe as good as a bullet necklace.

to glen bron three weeks after fathers day because i suck at doing things on time

when i was little, i would lie in bed and listen to all the sounds of the night. i had all my family members' sounds memorized, a symphony of familiarity. they were all comforting in a way, letting me know that even though i was alone in my room, i was never really alone. i could always tell it was my dad walking down the hall because his knee creaked. back and forth i could hear it as he paced down the hallway, his left knee, the one i sat on when he picked me and my older sister up. when i was sure there were monsters underneath my bed, i would listen for that creak as he went around locking the doors. it was a lullaby that lulled me to sleep at night, a night light for a little girl petrified of the dark. i could always listen for the creak, and it always came.

when i was a bit bigger, id still get scared at night sometimes. sixteen years old, and still having nightmares. id go running into my parents room trembling and half awake. id feel stupid by the time i got there, but my dad would say "its okay shanny." then he would let me sleep at the foot of their bed, like a dog the size of a teenage girl. he would always get up super early to go to work, and i would listen for the sounds of his standard morning routine as he shuffled around the bathroom. he'd pee for a while, then shower, then dig through his ties. every morning, like clockwork, he'd come out with multiple options to ask my mom which one looked best. id always pretend to be asleep, but id be secretly waiting for him to emerge from his cave of suit coats and dress shirts with two different colors of ties, and he always came.

when i was even bigger, i came home from college for christmas break with a bout of whooping cough and broken confidence. my mom had died a little bit ago, and i wasnt dealing very well. i had signed up to go to mexico next semester, but i was a broken woman who couldnt even get out of the house, let alone go help people in rural mexico. i felt defeated and alone. one night i was crying and i needed someone to care more than anything in the world, and then my dad came in. he sat me down and told me we would figure this out together. we kneeled side by side, at the foot of his bed right next to my old spot, and we prayed. a couple of days later, he drove me to the airport, dropped me off with a suitcase and a smile, and told me that i was going to have an incredible experience. i did. i laughed and i loved and i lived and i ate beans, and i learned about myself and about loving other people. i will never be the same. and it was all because when needed my dad, he came.

now i am older, still confused and unsure of what to do with my life, still afraid of the dark, still in need of confidence and reassurance and love, and still scared of the unknown. the foot of my dad's bed is thousands of miles away. my dad has a new wife to tell him which ties look good with which shirts. he has different children to attend to and different mouths to feed. i dont have whooping cough anymore, and hope never to have it again. life is busy and different than it used to be, and i have to act like a grown up. im told they are not afraid of a whole lot. but sometimes when i get scared at night, i can hear the creak of my daddy's knee, and i know he will always come.

a fun game.

a fun game i like to play sometimes is called: tell your face to act out a certain emotion. its like charades, between you and your face. i have been playing this game since the purchase of my macbook 2 years ago. there have been several good games of charades between me and my face. my face usually wins. the winner gets a photo shoot on photobooth all to his or herself. these were some winners i found today while browsing through photobooth:
this one was: you havent gone #2 in three weeks.

this one was: ive had influenza for 3.4 weeks and it made my eyeballs disappear.

this one was: morph into a 300 pound woman with chicken grease all over her face.

as you can see, my face is very good at this game.

lrc i love you.

i love when the man next to me in the lrc is watching made: i want to be a baseball player on mtv.com.

i love when the power all over campus turns off and the library is evacuated, and all i want is an aluminum blanket, a ham radio, and a group sing along to kumbayah.

i love when there are two 12 year old boys sitting behind me in the lrc that have been engaged in playing some sort of alien video game for 3.5 hours, and not realizing that they are in the library, have grunted multiple times in their pursuit to kill.

i love gchat, but my love for it will never exceed my love for aim. RIP Wnderchic. you were a good friend. you made me e-popular. i salute you. you improved my typing skills more than mavis beacon ever will. thank you gchat, for making internet chatting cool again.

i love caffeine. i love 32 oz of caffeine tucked in the front of my backpack, past the library security guards, every day for the last 2 years, and promptly displayed in front of my computer in the lrc.

and i love that when my best friend since i was 4 and i say our final goodbyes in the lrc when we will most likely never live in the same city again, instead of embracing, we ghostride facebook together one last time.

lrc, youre gunna miss me.

obama fist bumps. and so do i.

i have been an active fist bumper since the ripe age of 7. though the specific motions have varied throughout the ages, the fist bump itself has remained a stable, a constant in my toolbox of touches. i am a self diagnosed hug phobic and used to be a touch phobic, especially public touch, and especially touch initiated by others. typing those words just made my insides feel weird. i hated christmas, because it meant i would have to hug my cousins. when my cousin jake came home from his mission, i hid in the airport bathroom so there would be no forced touching between us. you think i exaggerate, but this is all 100 percent fact. the fist bump provided a perfect solution to all my touching woes: it lasts a split second, the only contact that occurs is between fists, and it reinforces good feelings and glad tidings without any sort of awkward, unnecessary body contact.

i perfected my fist bumping skills in 7th and 8th grade, when forced hugging both when you saw someone and when you parted ways was a must to be a cool kid. unfortunately, i was a cool kid, so i was assaulted by hugs from sweaty 7th grade boys left and right. school was a touching nightmare. i had lots of friends. this meant 30-40 hugs a day. for someone that will go to great lengths to avoid one forced hug, 30-40 was out of the picture. i was being touched too much. touch could come at any time, without warning, and i was never prepared. something had to be done to prevent this invasion of personal space.

though i had been an active fist bumper for the duration of my elementary school years, jr high is when fist bumping became my saving grace. extend a fist, avoid a sweaty hug. fist bumping was a dream compared to a forced hug in which no one knows where to put their arms, your jansport backpack is providing blockage to essential areas needed to complete the touch, and at any moment, with the wrong head turn, your ear could suction to their cheek (has that ever happened to you? in the todem pole of awkward things that could happen during a forced touch, the ear suction is at the top, no questions asked). with fist bumps, there are no questions of full frontal vs. side, height differences, girl arms on top or boy arms, two armed or one, back pat, duration, did i put on deodorant this morning? there is no chance of accidental awkward body part touching. it is intimate without being awkward. and that is how in 7th and 8th grade, i became known as the fist bumper.

though i have gotten less awkward in recent times, i am still not a fan of the forced hug. i have gone to great lengths to avoid the end of the date hug. i am not ashamed to say i have utilized the fist bump as an end of the date hug replacement. brad packer knows what im talking about. it doesnt mean i didnt have a good time. i am just not good at hugging, as my friend chateau was always quick to point out. i am a one armed hugger at best, and my body stiffens to a dead board. who wants to hug a dead board after a magical night together? (i guess all boards are dead, but if you have hugged me in recent times, you know what i mean). fist bumping, on the other hand, is one of my touching talents. i have good hand eye coordination, and a knack for hitting my target. your fist never leaves my fist not feeling good, while my ability to end of the date hug is up there with my ability to match articles of clothing. nonexistent.

though maybe during my jr high years i was not proud of this talent, i am no longer going to hide my fist bumping skills under a bushel. if barack fist bumps when he finds out he received the democratic nomination for the white house, possibly one of the largest feats of all time, then fist bumping is the new top of the todem pole of touch. he could have cried, he could have kissed his wife on the mouth, he could have smoked a victory cigarette, he could have picked her up and whirled her around. but he fist bumped, because he wanted to. and maybe you dont, but i understand exactly how barack was feeling, and i salute him. the fist bump is a token of friendship that can be exchanged with anyone, no matter their height, race, sexual preference, age or hygiene habits. it doesnt discriminate. it just loves. with that fist bump, barack told us: im just one of you. anyone can vote for me, just like anyone can fist bump. i touch my wifes fist. i will touch yours.

so next time you see me and i bump your fist, dont feel offended. im touching you the way i know best. knuckles are the new waist. double bumps are the new back pat. fist bumping is sweeping the nation. fist bump is love. pass it on.

let the bodies hit the floor.

new favorite saturday night activity: convulsing to the sounds of rob zombie with megan allen and nicholas cottrell. apartment destroyed. head banged. punk rock sign held high. happiness felt in heart. thank you rob, for believing in me. you're a good man.

we love each other.

we share souls. a room. a tendency for chaos. and prom dresses.

wild hearts cant be broken.

wild hearts cant be broken was my favorite movie as a child, and for whatever reason, the sentence has been on repeat in my head the past couple of days. words do that, become a scrolling marquee in my head and repeat themselves over and over, until i accidentally start whispering them during conversations. i dont know if you've ever seen the film. its a good one. i dont remember why i loved it so much, except for there was something so beautiful in her wild heart and her perservance to continue on with her dreams, even when she starts to go blind, even when her world lost its color. in the end she disproves everyone and fulfills her dreams, even when it seems impossible and even when her world has become black. i know it seems cheesy and cliche, but in real life thats a hard thing to do. holding onto your dreams isnt easy. actualizing them is next to impossible. keeping your wild heart is probably even harder, because it means being completely true to yourself and telling big bad society they cant tell you who to be.

my mom called me free bird when i was little. she saw my wild heart from the time i was two years old and wearing the same skirt everyday for a month. she let me wear pink fishnets to church until i was eighteen. she let me dye my hair every color under the sun. she let me wear thigh high boots and MC hammer pants to school through elementary school. she let me hide in the bathtub for hours and hours and read books over and over. she let me cover every inch of wall and ceiling space in my room with song lyrics written in size 6 font, in posters of half nude jim morrison, poem after poem, paintings and posters, until not one inch of white was left. she let me believe in myself. she told me it was okay that i was different. she told me that i was creative and beautiful, and that people might tell me otherwise and might not understand. she could tell that people would not understand me. so she told me early that no matter what, to hold onto my wild heart.

im grateful my mom understood my wild heart and its possibilities. im also grateful my mom taught me how to tame it. i think modern society tells you to hold onto your individuality, no matter what, that you should prize it above all things. my mom told me my wild heart was beautiful, but it was only beautiful if i used it to help other people. she saw that it had to be tamed, and steered in the right direction. instead of feeling different, rejected, better than others, my mom taught me that a wild heart is a gift that must be used for good, to understand others, to love others, and to make the world a more beautiful and loving place. the artist doesnt have the right to be elevated above society, the artist is not part of a mysterious elite that is more privileged in their view of the world. rather, the artist has a responsibility to society, to show them beauty and to help people see the world more fully with that special gift, just as people are all obligated to help with their own personal gifts in whatever way they can. in alma it says "bridle your passions, that ye may be filled with love." i dont think i understood that fully, and maybe i still dont. but i think im getting closer. my wild heart has been bridled a bit, shaped and changed and disciplined. i dont think its a bad thing. it has enabled me to love better, with my whole self, rather than haphazardly being subject to the whims and emotions of my wild heart.

my mom told me that wild hearts are a gift, but not everything. she always told me that above all, i must value love and people. i think that is an important point, because a wild heart becomes a hazard if valued above what matters most, if it becomes your way of dividing yourself from humanity, rather than connecting. i think everyone has a wild heart in one way or another, and i love that. love your wild heart. nurture it. wild hearts can't be broken. i believe that. i believe in following your dreams. i believe its ok to wear pink fishnets to church, to sing like no one is listening, to dance with all you got, to flip the bird to social norms at times, to love books with all you have and become friends with the characters. but more importantly than any of that, i believe that wild hearts can be used to make the world a more beautiful place for us all to reside. i think that is the rest of the sentence. wild hearts can't be broken, they can be used for infinite amounts of goodness.

for whit and lindsay.

instead of writing the three papers i have due, ive been thumbing through vera britain's diary from world war I. pathetically, this is a normal late night activity for me. i cant get enough of this war. maybe because ive experienced what its like to have the hope and innocence of your soul crushed when you lose a person you love, to experience what its like to be forever changed by one event, just as the very fabric of the world was changed by this first enormous war, never to return to its state of innocence. they marched off singing, and they never came back, young boys with futures, with wives, with girlfriends, with beating hearts stilled by gunshots. i feel like i can hear the silence of the night, after the battle was over, when bodies lay unmoving and the stars came out. i stumbled across this passage in which vera describes losing her fiancee roland in battle and i wanted to share, because i think it is beautiful, and because i know it is true:

"perhaps one can never rise to the heights until one has gone down into the depths--such depths as I have known of late. Perhaps I shall one day rise, and be worthier of him who in his life both in peace and in war, and in his death on the fields of France, showed me the 'way more plain.' At any rate, if I do face danger and suffering with some measure of heroism, it will be because I have learnt through him that love is supreme, that love is stronger than death and the fear of death."

through watching my mom suffer, i learned those things too vera. i know without the depths we would never learn to rise. some of my most favorite people are going through those depths right now. but i know they too saw someone they love face suffering with heroism, with courage, and with faith, and that they will rise to the heights one day because they have to experience the depths right now. somehow there is beauty in the suffering and a strengthening of the soul, a sweetness that assures me we are all part of something much bigger than we even know. love is supreme, and stronger than death. stronger than fear. i might not know a lot of things, but that is one thing i am sure of, because it is a force much more powerful and real than us all, knitting hearts together around the world and connecting us to the living and the dead, those that have come before and those that are to come. hallelujah.

the universe is speaking, if you listen to it.

i am a student of the universe. i may make lots of mistakes, but no one can say i dont learn from them, and the mistakes of everyone else around me. im a quick learner. and i love to learn. pay attention to the universe. it will tell you things, and if you listen, your life will be a lot better. you will not necessarily experience less pain, heartache, discomfort, or sadness. you may experience more. those are usually good things, because they are signs that you are stumbling forward and doing things that make you uncomfortable. you will also experience a lot more love, a lot more real, a lot more strength, a lot more compassion, a lot more goodness, a lot more yes. the universe loves you. so love it back. give it a hug. things i have recently learned from mother universe:

1. take risks (in shannonelizabeth lingo: believe in yes).
sometimes you have to send your heart out into the universe, even at the chance of complete obliteration. its good for you. believe in yes. i believe in wearing neon in public. i believe in dancing like no one is watching. send it flying. it will always feel good, even when it hurts like h@#4.

2. keep it real.
sometimes people ask me how im doing and i say im having a bad day and then they feel uncomfortable. its okay. i like being real, and sometimes its okay for me to say it like it is, even if no one wants to hear it. im allowed to be real. you're allowed to be real. tell someone how you really feel next time they ask, even if they dont care a lick. it will feel liberating.

3. get yo naughty on.
not naughty like what youre thinking, but its okay to giggle during prayers. its okay to skip class. its okay to not be perfect. sometimes its okay to act like you are three. its good for the soul. drink soda on occasion. eat candy. eat ding dongs. stay up until 4 am. and then dont worry about it.

4. cop a feel.
im glad that i feel things so deeply. joy. sorrow. laughter. they are all good. they are all beautiful. allow yourself to feel, even though its hard. it feels good. and trust your intuition. its usually right. pay attention to how you feel. your heart knows.

5. listen up.
laugh like you mean it. cry like you mean it. live like you mean it. and listen to what the universe tells you, because its usually right. its been around longer than you.

hope you've learned some good things from the universe in times past as well. feel free to share with me and the world wide web, cause i feel like im just talkin and talkin and hogging all the attention, and al gore invented the internet for all to be heard.

its time to stop soul crushing.

if you know me or have had more than a 6 minute conversation with me, you know i love the soul. the soul is the real you, the bluebird that wants to sing out the message you have inside, the sermon to loveliness and realness and poppies and sunshine and childhood and yes and it is fragile and soft and beautiful and all things good and lovely in the world. i say lots of things are my favorite activity, but my #1 favorite activity in life is finding out the message of people's souls. nothing makes me happier. sometimes it takes hacking down brick walls with a shovel and reaching like you've never reached before, pounding with both fists, getting out your chainsaw, but i can usually find it with time and effort. the thing is, its usually worth the investment, because people's souls are incredibly beautiful. i like to visualize what every person's soul looks like--a seaside mural, a lone bluebird warbling to the heavens, the sound of claire de lune by debussy, a field of poppies stretching out forever. sometimes the soul is buried so deep you can't even see it at first, but its always there, and people want to share their souls, even if they feel nervous at first. everyone wants to be understood. everyone wants to be real. the problem is, life beats you up and people are mean and people bruise each other's bluebirds, so you push your soul down to the dark interior of your being, covering it all up in a big pile of meaninglessness and defenses, defending your soft heart with walls of apathy and jadedness. i guess what got me down today is i realized there is enough hunger, poverty, sadness, depression, illness, and so forth in the world to crush people's souls, that no one needs other people crushing their soul too. the universe is capable of enough soul crushing on its own, without people helping it along. the scary thing is the soul crushing done by other people is the most devastating. look at the holocaust. look at the wife you know who is desperate for her husband's attention. look at the lonely girl that feels like she has no friends. look at the abused child. sometimes people don't even realize they are doing it, but i see it happening everyday, all the time, and sometimes i just want to yell out to the world wake up! pay attention! you are crushing people's souls! you are crushing my soul! sometimes its just not caring, or not showing people you care, or treating people like less than the bluebirds they are, or being so inwardly wrapped up that you can't look beyond yourself to other souls in need. in a song by jewel (i know, who quotes jewel), she says we are all fragile flames. i agree. we are all gold inside, buried treasures, warbling bluebirds, and we should treat each other as such. we are all fragile. in a poem i wrote once i said cup the bluebird in tiny hands, gently, gently (i love to quote myself). in a much better poem t.s. eliot wrote, he ends it with this:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

i feel like that whimper is the last sound of the soul as it is dying, crushed too many times by too many people not caring, too many people not listening, too many people not treating each other right, too many people forgetting to tell other people they matter.

im sending a desperate plea out into the internet world right now. a message in a blog bottle. this is what it says:

dear humanity,
be gentle with each other. be nice to each other. care about each other. look for people's bluebirds. care about the message of their soul. tell them they matter. cup their bluebirds in tiny hands, and never, ever bruise it, even when you are tempted to. help combat hunger by loving your neighbor. we're all hungry. stop soul poverty by listening. we are all poor. fight against cancer by spreading love. we all have cancer of the heart. leave notes. if you think something nice in your head, say it. hug your mom. kiss your girlfriend. tell people how you feel. give gifts. ask people about themselves. care enough to listen to their answer. remember their answers. don't crush souls. build souls. pay attention . make people feel like they matter. forget yourself. be good. be true. help people's bluebirds come out and sing. be sincere. be real. let your bluebird out even when its hard. even when people bruise it. be a sermon to loveliness. sing like the mountains are singing back. its a happier way to be. its time to stop contributing to the soul crushing. its time to combat the soul crushing, and it starts with a listening ear and a quiet hug and finding the beauty deep in each person's heart. we'll get better with practice. but we got to start somewhere, so i say we start today, right now, at 6:53 PM on Wednesday April 9, 2008. i know we can do it humanity. its up to us.

sincerely,
shannon elizabeth mehner.

shes keepin it real. im really into blogging about people i love these days.

her parents are hippies. her mom dated prefontaine. i met her at the age of 14, when i was still wearing pleather pants and chasing the cool. she was something real in a sea of high school. sometimes your soul tells you where to go even when your mind isn't grown up enough to know why you're being led somewhere. we were different. i loved makeup. she loved soccer. i loved kevin jones. she loved jack kerouac. from the outside, it looked like a mismatch. but my soul conquered, and we became friends. birds of a feather flock together, even when one of the birds is dressed in pleather. im glad my soul is smarter than i am.

we liked music. we liked books. we liked hating on high school. we liked hanging out with our friends that had graduated and were so college hip. we liked sitting in her station wagon and discussing our mature 16 year old perspectives on life and teenage social classes. shes probably the only real friend i had in high school. real as in she actually cared, real as in she let the bluebird out of her heart once in a while even at the risk of social rejection and bluebird bruising by 17 year olds trying to win battle for biggest biotch. i was buried in coolness and insecurities and unsureties, but she dug deep and she found me. she was probably the first person beyond my family that really dug into me like that, that stuck her shovel in and said lets find something real even though you've covered yourself in black eyeliner. she taught me how to listen to the bluebird in my heart. she appreciated my bluebird. she told me "damnit, let your bluebird sing! He has such a lovely voice!" she is just one of those people. she is real. she can't not be.

i got a boyfriend. we drifted apart. i still hate that situation even though we reconciled over aim (a reunion of wnderchic and irbysan). we love each other again. we dont talk that often these days, but ill never forget. you dont forget stuff like that, becuase it is filed away in your soul's permanent files, with a sticky note that says "this person changed me forever," and a reminder on your to do list--"thank so and so for helping to create me."

well its time for some spring cleaning cause my soul is tired of piles of untouched to do lists. thank you meredith irby for helping to create me--thank you for seeing beyond the pleather. you are a hippie among men, a bluebird among sparrows, a reality in a world of high schoolers chasin the cool, and ill never forget that you helped me learn how to sing.

the mujer from tennessee. or a tribute to one of the best.

her name is deanna. she is 5'8,'' wears a size 10 shoe, is from Tennessee, cusses like a sailor, and pulled herself up by the boot straps in life. She's the kind of person that flips you the double bird if you say she can't do something. she hates exercise, loves colors and big earrings, and will become your best friend in 3 minutes. she got discounted lunches in elementary school because her mom didn't make enough to pull them above the poverty line. her southern drawl comes out something fierce when she gets mad.

when she was 18 she decided to go to mexico. the folks at home didnt know why she wanted to go to a dirty country full of dirty people. but she flipped them the double bird and said "forget you, im going". and she did. she fell in love with a name named jorge. he bought her earrings and was fascinated by this mujer from tennessee, a whirlwind of woman that knew her mind and burped in public. he wooed her with flowers and promises. he was lying. he broke her heart.

it didnt matter. she flipped him the double bird and said you can't keep me down, and you cant ruin mexico for me. mexico changed her life. a part of her heart opened. a whole country full of horchata and laughing and hospitality. it reminded her of the south. she had to come home at the end of the summer, but she couldnt forget the scent of mexican laundry.

she changed her major to latin american studies. her mom threw a fit. she flipped her the double bird and said "sorry mama, but this is what i want for my life". she couldnt forget the faces of the people. she couldnt get rid of the feeling that she belonged there, that the people needed her. a small town girl with big dreams, and a love for fiestas.

so she went back to mexico, flipping double birds by the minute to everyone telling her she was crazy. she studied migration. she peed on the ground and lived on a rancho. she didnt understand why these people had to eat beans for every meal and didnt know how to read. she wanted to say to the mexican government "what the hell is going on?" and flip them the double bird. she didn't, because she'd get shot and she'd have to practice her spanish a bit more before that. but she kept on caring.

she came back and kept studying. she still misses mexico. she dreams of swimming across that wide river that divides mexico from texas alongside the wetbacks coming over to pick fruit to make enough cash to buy their children shoes. she says shes going to wear her tennessee drivers license on a chain around her neck, and when the border patrol shoots her down thinking shes an illegal, boy theyre going to be in for a surprise. "we shot one of our own!" theyre going to say, and maybe someone will think about that a little bit. when she tells you about this dramatic death she has planned for herself, she laughs, but you can tell she means it. "one of our own?" she finishes, her face getting more somber. "I bet thats what God says about everyone they shoot in that river."

maybe one day she will swim across that river with her tennessee drivers license hanging around her neck. maybe one day she'll convince the world mexicans are people too, people that deserve shoes for their children. for now, she is deanna, the mujer from tennessee that flips the double bird to people that try to keep her caged, a free bird singing in a southern drawl, and one of my best friends.

diesta like you mean it.

as prime minister of the world, i make the laws. and i think my new law is that everyone in the world, at precisely 4:36 PM MST, has to quit whatever they are doing and dance their pants off for 22 minutes. I think this may be the solution to world hunger, poverty, depression, obesity, heartache and all other issues plaguing the universe. maybe not the cure all, but definitely a way to alleviate some of these travesties and bring some more joy into the planet. dancing is good for the soul. good for the body. good for the mind. good for the heart. and if everyone, every day, HAD to dance, dance like no one was watching, dance like they had ants in their pants, dance like their life depended on it, i think the world would be a little brighter and hearts would be a a little happier and a little less genocide would take place. not siesta. the world sleeps enough. its obviously not helping. the answer is diesta. diesta is the solution. diesta for 22 minutes, and then return to normal life. i will have to ask the dj of the world to make a dope playlist for the event, which will be piped in through a worldwide speaker system that i am working on installing. just imagine it with me. at 4:36 PM MST, back that thang up comes on from africa to jamaica to alaska to georgia, and everyone must stop, drop and back their thang up to the heavy beats of juvenile. families will be reunited. wars will end. love will be found. feuds will be forgotten. and we will all engage in some good old fashioned booty popping. one worldwide dance partay, and everyone is invited. no bouncer at this door. bring your shimmying arms and your belly rolls. its going to revolutionize the world folks. diesta or die.

im mad.

im mad at the usa. i need to be out of the country. this is the longest ive been in the country for years. i think my soul is breaking.

tomatoes like apples.

today i sat outside the library in my stunna shades and read a book and felt happy about the birthday of life and love and wings and the sun. while i was sitting there, a couple next to me talked, and i listened. i felt invisible. i wasnt invisible, but almost.

she brought him tomatoes. she was nervous to bring him the tomatoes, i could tell from her voice. he had said they were his favorite a while back, and she remembered. he laughed because she gave them to him and he said no knife to slice them? and she kept saying, i thought you eat them like an apple. then he would say thank you. i could tell from his voice he wanted to say thank you for real, it means a lot, but he couldnt say it. it was stuck inside. she kept apologizing for not bringing a knife. he ate the tomatoes. all of them. you could tell they were a little bit in love. probaby not even dating, but a little bit in love.

he kept asking her if she liked tomatoes. she said yes, but not just plain like he was eating them. she would laugh nervously. he would repeat the question. they talked about tomatoes for one half hour. i listened to the whole conversation without ever seeing what they looked like, busy being invisible. i didnt really want to see them, just listen. i liked listening to the ebb and flow of their voices, the anxious undertones, her nervousness at presenting him with this gift, at revealing that she cared, his pleasure to receive it. all unspoken, and so, so beautiful.

it was a perfect dialogue for a perfect afternoon. tomatoes eaten like apples, giving and receiving, laughing and loving, and me invisible beside it all.

ever wonder where gummy worms come from?

have you ever tried the gummy eggs (trolli sour brite eggs to be exact) that are supposed to be what gummy worms come out of? all i have to say about this little treat is they make you sweat. i dont know why, i dont know what, but we ate some today in the cougareat and being the enormous appreciator of candy i am, i thought i would love them. which i did, but they make you sweat. go to your local walmart, cruise the kid candy aisle, and experience the birthplace of gummy worms, these strange little tie-dye egg creations, and tell me what you think, because i'm still figuring out what to think about it all. also wear a muscle tee and put on a good swipe of deoderant, because they are going to make you sweat.

criss cross apple sauce.

one time i was in the british museum in london this summer and i saw this couple, sitting criss cross apple sauce facing each other, knees touching, a little pow wow of we-ness, a little cross cross apple sauce shelter from the world around them. here they were, surrounded by tourists with cameras and maps and bustling to see the magna carta, and they were indian stylin it up on the white marble floor. at the time i was in a fight with my then boyfriend, and i felt like maybe all of our problems could be solved if we just sat down criss cross apple sauce on the floor across from each other, that somehow everything could be okay if we just got in that most intimate of positions and talked it out. i just wanted to run to his side and yell "criss cross apple sauce, tell your teacher to get lost" and plop down to sit on my back pockets and face him straight on, back to the position that brought me so much comfort at the age of 6. everything feels better when you're sitting indian style.

since the time i saw that couple 6 months, i think about them all the time. who doesn't want to sit cross cross apple sauce with the person they love, knees rubbing, bodies facing each other, hearts connected, oblivious to the rush of people around them? why have i never participated in creating an indian style refuge from the big bad world? here was this young couple in love, in one of the most famous and elegant cities in the world, in a museum with the most posh ancient artifacts of all time, sitting criss cross apple sauce on the floor like two kindergartners on time out. maybe they had gotten in a big fight on the tube, and needed to regroup. maybe they had been backpacking europe for months, and just needed a little R and R. maybe they just wanted to look at each other, touch knees, touch hearts, realizing that the leaning tower of pisa is beautiful but nothing compared to the face of the person that loves you back. who knows the why. i dont need the why. all i know is the world looks a little softer when you're looking at the person you love from the lap of mother earth, feet tucked under your calves, criss cross apple sauce.

check plus.

i love to check things. checking, in fact, may be my one of my favorite actions. just the word itself is a beauty--check check check check. not only is it fun to say, you can repeat it multiple times and the integrity of the word does not diminish into a hobble gobble of empty syllables. i like to refer to my pre-homework warm up as "checking my stuff." before i can begin my homework, i must check my email, my blog, my facebook account, my other email account, and my byu account. if i move locations, the checking process begins anew. i have become quite profficient at checking--i can log in and out of facebook in 34 seconds flat. i can check my email like nobody's business. there is no specific order to my checking, but i cannot start my homework until all things i have been checked. i just love to check. and I love Al Gore for inventing the internet, which has provided me something to check so regularly.

today on our walk home from the lrc, at which time i had already checked my email accounts, facebook, etc. multiple times, megan and i took a quick stop in the jsb to get warmed up. at this time, the kiosks looked like an ideal place to do some quick checking. so megan and i logged on, checked our stuff, and then slunk our way home. Needless to say, nothing we check had changed on the 5 minute walk between the lrc and the jsb. but it brought me comfort to know i had checked. i could continue my walk home knowing that i was updated on all events that concerned me on the internet, that all e-communications had been checked and accounted for. i then promptly checked my stuff as soon as i got home and got on my computer, and i have been checking it continuously throughout the night.

i dont know why checking is so fun. rarely has anything changed. rarely is there a new email in my inbox, a new post on my facebook wall, a new grade on my byu account. but on the rare occasion there is something new to check, im glad that i check it immediately, instead of leaving it there to stew without anyone to check on it and see that it is alive and existing on the world-wide-web. nope, not my emails. they are always checked.

i guess the moral of the story is, if you write me emails, i will check them. if you post on my facebook wall, i will check it. nothing goes unchecked in my world. im thinkin about creating more email addresses, websites, blogs, etc. so i have even more things to check. its like when you lose something and you leave a couple of places unchecked, so you still have that little ray of hope in your soul that the lost item is lurking in the one unchecked area. the more places i create to check, the more possibilities there are something new will appear and i will have something to be checking for. now i better go check my stuff before i start studying. it hasnt been checked in more than 8 minutes.

why not post my soul on the internet.

(how can you not think about the sun on a day like today when your soul wants to burst out of your body because the sky is blue and the air is warm and you are alive?)

the golden summer

the sun kissed your shoulders
bronze--
freckles and gentle,
sloping and Real.
Like the edges
of an old film, grainy haze
of what once
was, immortalized.
silent, humming, perfect
before the days of HDTV
traffic and health
insurance.
the air was always sweet
those days of scorching bliss;
all the cares of
tomorrow
suspended on the
horizon.
Now is all we had.
Now is all we have.
Here, this air,
your breath,
this night of faith
knight of faith
the infinite whisper of
Yes--
of endless summer nights
barefoot, all leading to
this moment,
this place. this space
of possibility.
the days in the grass
have dimmed and gone,
but in the set of your jaw
i find
my golden summer.

i have the craziest life of anyone, even oj simpson.

this is my family. ten children, one stepmom, one glenbron dad, one south african brother-in-law, and twelve signs that are supposed to read happy holidays but dont, not even close. this is from our photo shoot at thanksgiving time. at about this time during the photo shoot, glen bron farted. it reeked. sammy the three year old wanted to know who diarrheaed in their pants. he kept trying to take off his shirt. he loves to be nude. stepmom tiffany kept telling us to stop saying the word fart. we kept saying it. glen bron's head was turning red from laughing. ben was trying to eat his sign. eli didnt want to show his braces. eli was wearing a purple shirt that he says he got from a thrift store but actually ordered online. madison kept screaming she hated her letter. i wanted more pumpkin pie. it was some of the happiest moments of my life.

I'm grateful for old and new families, for the merging of worlds, for four people that fell in love, two of them twice (try and figure that one out), for madison writing I HATE GLENN signs all over the house when tiff-tiff and glen-bron were dating and then getting really excited about them getting married when she got to wear heels to the wedding, and for what glenbron calls the world's best emotional insurance, because you have 12 other people to call on when you need someone to love you. maybe one day i will post the whole ridiculous story of my life, but you wouldn't believe it anyway.

i believe in yes.

i love the word yes. si, oui, ja, in every language, in every country, out every person's mouth, i love it. it is my favorite word, it was my first word, it is, in my opinion, the best word: one syllable that packs an infinite world of possibilites within its three tiny letters. today i watched the music video that was made to obama's "yes we can" speech on you tube and i was reminded once again why i love yes. yes is much more than a word, much more than a way of confirming or affirming information, to me, it is a symbol of all that i believe in and all things i base my life on and everything beautiful and noble and worth fighting for in life. i hope that whether i die shot in the battlefield or i am killed by pneumonia at the age of 99, the last word uttered from my dying lips is yes, maybe even two or three or four times, maybe even sung out to the world in one final hallelujah to life. i believe in yes, and let me tell you why.

one time my little sister went on a river rafting trip. the company's slogan was printed on the back of all their rafting guides' t-shirts--"say yes to what is." i think some yoinky doinky river rafting company turned my life slogan into their motto for navigating the rapids. when I was 11 my dad told me "do something you are afraid of everyday", and though i promptly have ignored every other piece of advice he has ever given me, for some reason this thought stayed with me, and whether or not you believe it, i have. i said yes, and i continue saying yes, every single day, 11 years later. let me put that into perspective for you--that is 4015 times i have said yes, yes to what is and no to being crippled by my archenemy fear. it is looking at all of the embarrassment, all of the possibilites of failure, all of the apathy you have accumulated in your soul, and saying yes anyway. this advice has caused me to say yes to exposing my soul to a boy i loved that no longer loved me and straight up rejected me, this advice has caused me to say yes to living in rural mexico and eating beans three times a day and speaking a language that my brain caanot understand without desperate prayers and constant, complete attention, this advice has caused me to wear onesie pajamas in public even at the expense of my self respect, this advice has caused me to say yes to traveling and crying and dancing and being embarrassed and dying my hair pink and wearing my heart on my sleeve even when it is crushed over and over and telling people how I feel and putting everything on the line and facing my demons. Have I failed? So many times I cannot begin to think of them. but 11 years ago my dad told me to say yes to life, and I have. I believe in yes.

when i was in elementary school my mom started a nonprofit organization called Arroyo Vista Children's Theater. it was based on the idea that all children should have an experience that makes them feel special, that teaches them to believe in themselves. in one of the plays that i was in, jack and the beanstalk, one of the songs goes like this:

possibilities, i've got possibilities
shining deep in me
it may not show
but still i know
theres a star inside
waiting to break free.

my mom taught me, and all of the thousands of children ever involved in AV children's theater, to say yes to their possibilities. she taught them to say yes to the world around them. she taught them to say to being all they can be. she taught them to dig inside of themselves and find the hidden courage, the hidden heart, the hidden crevices of themselves that whispered of greatness. she believed in yes. i believe in yes.

one time my roomates and i were trying to figure out how to express our joy because a boy monica liked asked her out. we were so overcome with joy that i just exploded with an enormous yes. and thus the yes dance was born, in which you just let go--you run into the street and you scream yes with all of you have, with all your heart, with all the joy you have inside, at any time of day or night, over and over again so the whole world knows. its an expression of pure yes--the yes dance has been done at some of the happiest moments of my life, moments when i let go of everything and just yes all with my might. maybe it sounds silly, but youve probably never tried it cause it feels like the best thing you've ever done to your body. it is pure freedom, it is leaving behind fear, self doubt, uncertainty, and self respect, and yessing your way through the street. for my birthday a couple of years ago monica made me a pair of sweats with yesss written across the butt in reminder of our tradition, and everytime i wear them (though they now only say essss because the y mysteriously disappeared), my belief system is scribbled across my booty. i believe in sweats with slogans on the butt. i believe in yes.

when my mom died, i didnt know if i could continue onward. This was a time in life when I felt crippled, unsure, unready to move on. then I remembered my mom directing her last play for her nonprofit organization, 98 pounds and on enormous amounts of chemotherapy, making her final mark on that last 100 children just a few short months before she died. she said yes, even when her body said no. she believed more in what she was doing than in letting herself stay in bed, than in wallowing in her pain. she was there when those children performed, 4 feet tall and brimming with possibilities, singing out to the world that she had taught them to believe in yes. every sunday she would have me put on her makeup because she was in too much pain to do it herself, ask me to do her hair and get her dressed, even when her body was ravaged with tumors, so she could go to church. she said yes to God, to life, and to spreading yes, even when life told her no. after she died, when i felt unable to move on, i remembered that, and i said yes. yes i will take all i learned from my mom and my dad and elementary school and from everyone that has ever said yes, martin luther king jr, gandhi, rosa parks, joseph smith, barbara mehner, jesus christ, ponyboy curtis, joan of arc, and i will say yes too. so instead of giving up, letting my mom's death tell me no, i said yes. i believe in yes.

ee cummings summed up everything i believe about yes in my favorite poem that i wear in a locket around my neck to remind me of the power of yes:


love is a place

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

yes is a world, a world we should all believe in. i believe in ee, and i believe in yes.

today i watched the music video of obama's yes we can speech and cried:

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.

after being disillusioned for years with politics and forgetting that change can occur and that perhaps there are still people out there that want to make a positive change, this speech/music video reminded me of why i believe in yes. yes we can, america. yes we can, world. we can hope, we can believe, we can affect positive change to help the world. i believe in yes, obama.

i like to imagine the yes that has not happened yet but hopefully one day will. when i am longer a me but a we, when i can say yes to the end of being alone and yes to giving all i have to someone else so we can serve and love and laugh together and hopefully make the world a little better. when i say yes to a silly boy asking silly me to get married and we have silly children and together we teach them how to say yes, a family that begins with a simple yes, a union that says yes to love and laughter and candy and poetry and beauty spreading yes to the far corners of the earth. sometimes i think this is the most important yes of all, perhaps the yes that all yesses lead to, the world of all worlds. future man i will one day love (once i get over all of these commitment issues and grow up a bit), i believe in yes.

yes is my favorite word, and world. yes is my religion. yes is in my blood, and i hope i always say yes, because saying yes means saying no to fear, self doubt, mediocracy, apathy, indifference, and all other things that leave us paralyzed. i challenge you all to say yes, to dance yes, to sing yes, to breathe yes, to allow others to say yes because you say yes in all you do. say yes for all the others that have said yes throughout history, that are saying yes througout the world, for all those joining together their voices in a hallelujah chorus of yesses that is connecting hearts to all who ever said, is saying, or will say yes. say yes to yes. yes we can, yes is a world, yes to life, yes to possibilities, yes to love. i believe in yes. i think you should too.