i just think we should try. can we try?

as i sit here eating raspberry white chocolate hugs monica left in our theatre room, im thinking about jobs. about life. dreams and the like, and the transistion from youth to adulthood, which im convinced happens in periodic spurts throughout your life, in small moments and nudges: when you fail a test in college and realize your self esteem no longer solely relies on getting an A, when you no longer have health insurance in your daddys name, when you learn that love is when you dont get what you wanted and dont remind the other person you didnt get what you wanted even though you are dying for SOMEONE, ANYONE, to know of your supreme sacrifice, when you work all day long everyday and no longer have the freedom of midday gas station trips for sodie or a casual target browse or a pretend study session in the library, when you start being on time or at least not ridiculously late, when you start making decisions without consulting 89 other people (although you still google the answers to make sure phantom internet people agree with you), when you cry and don't tell anyone about it, when you bring baked goods anywhere (maybe some people have done that the duration of their life, but i didnt know how to operate an oven until i was 23 years of age). sometimes i feel like a full-blown adult, although i know the growing spurts will continue, little nudges leading me to self-actualization, or at least something like it. my mom used to say being an adult is returning the shopping cart to the RETURN SHOPPING CART HERE places in the parking lot (she cried when my sister did that for the first time without being told). i do that these days, but if i decide not to buy an item i still leave it in the nearest aisle. which makes me think, maturing is still in process, which in some small way, makes me relieved. i dont think im ready for self actualization.

anyway, now that i am an adult-in-embryo i feel that i have refined my life philosophy a little bit. i realize now that in my youth my ideas could be infantile and fantasy, not always connected to the reality that is necessitated by taking care of yourself. but it brings me joy to realize that my philosophy has not fundamentally changed with age and hasnt become entirely jaded by the reality of a paycheck and "adult stuff" for lack of a better term, but just tweaked to fit the realness of adultdom that i was not familiar with before. and even though i am surrounded in a chorus of "i hate my jobs" and "thats being an adult," i think it is possible to live a life you love. i emphatically believe you can. and i am confident i will.

the majority of people i know hate their jobs. some hate where they live, some hate how much they weigh, some hate the people they associate with or their hair or their shyness or their inability to cook or whatever it is they hate. there are some things you cant control, and i realize that. i also realize there is a responsibility that comes with adulthood, and i gladly accept it. i would work a job i hate if that was the only way to feed my children. i would. im not arguing that sometimes life necessitates certain actions and im grateful for people that prioritize. but i think, for the most part, you can love most things in your life and "i have to" can be a shield. that may be offensive and i dont know every situation and i would never judge yours. but i do it, parading excuses left and right for why i cant possibly follow my dreams, but most of the excuses are flimsy and hollow, a weak euphemism for "im scared".

and once you throw those bad boys out the window and try, youre on your way. and one day, one glorious day, you really may be who you want to be living the life you always wanted, the person you dreamed of when you were small with big ideas. i think that taking control and choosing what you want and then going after it with your heart and soul, whatever it is, doing everything within your power to get it, is maybe an integral part of being a real and important being in the universe. i know it is scary. it makes my pits sweat. it is not always fun, and sometimes it results in you crying your eyes out because someone said you couldnt do it. this has happened to me more times than i can count on both hands. but i am glad for those times, because i think it means i reached out of my comfort circle and tried: tried really, really hard. which is really kind of the best part about being a human being and not just an instinctive animal.

trying leads to the good stuff, or so im told. maybe i have just seen too many movies like rudy and miracle and D2 and almost famous. sometimes it boggles my mind that i only have one life. you mean i dont get to do this over? what? are you sure? sometimes i think we forget this in the day to days, and we just go through the motions and do what we can to scrape by. and i think that is okay sometimes, because sometimes thats all you can do. but if dr seuss and mother theresa and johnny appleseed and martin luther king jr and george washington and emilio estevez can do something profound for the world and not just scrape by, i think i can too. i do. and i think that i must, and you must, because this is all we have. these 59 or 80 or 32 years or however long we have to make some footprints.

you can argue you dont want to do anything big. i may or may not believe you, because i think as a little kid you probably said you wanted to be president or a doctor or a firefighter or whatever, and i think you meant it. and that might not be your dream anymore, but i think you still dream, cause i do. and i think you still want to live a life you love, but you may be afraid to reach out of that comfortable little zone youve created over the past however many years where you know where everything is and how things are going to go. i love my zone, but i want to love my life more, and that requires reaching and stepping out and putting myself out ready to get thrown to the lions by employers saying no, teachers saying i cant do it, boys rejecting my love. nick and i were looking at statistics today on getting jobs and the percentage of people that acquire jobs through applying online is 7%. the percentage of people who acquire jobs through walking into a business and asking for an interview is 68%. i think that statistic says it all. lets leave the glow of the computer screen and get out there, because apparently the success rate of really trying and doing scary things is much, much higher.

hopefully my thoughts have not gotten lost in a sea of adjectives and repetition. im just excited to live my one little life as best and as big as i know how. im excited to try. im excited to fail, because that means im stretching and growing, trying to do something that matters. im excited to live a life i love. im excited for nick to live a life he loves. im excited to do big and scary things together. and im excited for you to live a life you love too, because life is just a lot of days piled up on top of each other, and then its over like that. done, finito, which i dont think my peon of a brain can really understand. but lets hope when we all leave this green earth for some other beautiful place our feet have left our comfort zone more than once in a while, and from somewhere far away we can see our footprints all over the place, zigzaggy patterns to all those scary forests and hills and oceans, a life in which we tried really hard, and a life which we truly loved.

because sometimes the universe is just right, and it is your moment in the sun.

so last week my intramural softball team won the championships and i acquired the illustrious byu intramural champion shirt one year after graduating and life was good.

and then this weekend nick and i drove to cedar city and went to the shakespearean festival and then to zion and hiked the narrows and camped on rock hard ground and had each other and red rock and high mountains and no one else and life was good.

and then today i started my 7th grade teaching position for next year and opened boxes of brand new novels like the count of monte cristo, macbeth, farenheit 451, anthem, and tom sawyer and i loved my life as i inhaled my most favorite scent in the world and thought in my head "i get paid to read these, and try to make other people love them like i do. paid a lot of money," and life was good.

and then i drove home so happy after opening all my books and smelling all of their pages, and came home to nick passed out on the couch in basketball shorts and tube socks with a book lying on his chest, and life was good.

and then i opened my email not expecting anything of significance and there was an acceptance letter from northwestern, waiting for me patiently to open it, and i did, and i think my heart exploded, and life was good.

and then nick threw me up in the air and told me he was so proud and we felt good, like we were supposed to move to chicago, like maybe there is big things for us to do there or maybe the universe is pushing us in that direction, and we rushed to the store to get tons of jelly bellys to slink into the movie theatre and went to see 500 days of summer for the second time to celebrate, and life was good.

and now nick is in the shower while i type this, while i sit here smiling, and life is so good. not because of all of those things, not really at all, but because sometimes you feel like you are in a good place and your heart and soul and mind and the universe are all aligned and it feels just right, like the universe was painting an enormous picture and it just got to you and put you in in the exact right spot, just when you thought it maybe wasn't going to put you in the painting at all. and this is not a post like my life is so perfect or great or only awesome things happen to me, because very not awesome things happen to me too. and i hope this blog isnt one of those kinds of blogs, because i dont think it is and i dont those kinds of blogs do anything good for the world. my husband is very not perfect, and i am even more very not perfect, and a lot of times i dont get what i want and i cry and i feel sadness and the bad things. but sometimes, after a lot of the big storms and waiting and unsurety and losing of faith and gaining of faith and jolts of reality in which you remember that details arent important and life is pretty much all details except for the big stuff like love and service and sharing your poprocks, sometimes after all of that crazy weather when you get a little shook up, the sun shines. and it feels even warmer, this moment, because it was so cold before. and you know it may get cold again, it WILL get cold again, but for now that is okay. because life is good, and because sometimes the universe is just right, and it is your moment in the sun.

prayer to trust. for the record, i do not have a cat named "ing."

so these last few weeks for me have been quite a rollercoaster nightmare of emotion. i wont go into graphic detail, i will just leave it at the waiting game in life has become panic and i spent an entire night tossing and turning because i forgot to acquire a tour permit from utah parks and recs before i took the bears to cub scout camp and was terrified they would deny us and they wouldn't get to fulfill their little 8 year old boy dreams of shooting bb guns and it would be all my fault for not reading the fine print on the utah scouts website and they would remember me forever as the leader that ruined their lives. but lets be honest, the tour permit was just the tip of the panic iceberg. life has become a stress machine.

being married has taught me a lot about myself, which is funny because i psychoanalyze like its my job, drawing conclusions such as "i love candy so much because as a child when the kids called me fat at school i came home and ate candy and it didnt call me fat and i loved it for that." i constantly diagnose myself with mental illness. i attribute my love for crying to my affinity for the liquid peace of the womb. i am constantly noticing things about myself and then asking why and how and where did that come from. but there is an entire side of me that i didnt know about, and i am unpacking it piece by piece, learning to understand and come to terms with this new part of shannon that i didnt know, or at least used to be merely a distant acquaintance.

this new shannon has come out in light of recent events, and reared her ugly head. then eaten every piece of food in sight. im not going to tell you the grim details of all the things that have transpired, but i will say this: i am crazy. already knew that. and also, i have learned lots of things, but most profoundly the importance of trust. trust like a child. at school i told the kids i had a cat named "ing" in order to teach them suffixes, and the next day little annelisa brought me cat food. they trust. they dont question. they follow. they take your hand, wide eyed and soft mouthed, and they let you lead them, and they believe every word you say as though it came from the window of heaven. it is beautiful. it is real. it inspires you to tell them important things. it makes you feel worthy.

i realize the trust of childhood must be destroyed. chidlren are taught not to talk to strangers, to never accept candy from random people on the street, to constantly be on the defense. i understand why. i understand we need to protect and live in reality and realize that unless we look out for ourselves, we will get taken advantage of and maybe left in a dark alley with bullet wounds. i 100 percent believe that (not the bullet wounds parts, but the living defensively stuff). i will teach my children to keep an eye out for molesters, to never trust charismatic people, to never date psychos as i once did, to spend halloween at a school sponsored event with individually wrapped candy. i will teach them to trust their gut feelings. i will scare them into avoiding dark alleys.

but i think there is something to be said about trust, a lost art form in this day and age. i think there is something to be said about really truly believing someone would name their cat "ing." i think there is something to santa claus and the tooth fairy and all dogs go to heaven and completely believing your dad really can beat up anyone and knows more than the encyclopedia. santa claus may not exist, but i dont think that matters, not even a little bit. what matters, i think, is believing. trusting. the act itself, not the outcome. there is something extraordinary about trusting that something magical exists, that the universe is in harmony and things work out, even when child molesters and poisonous candy bars exist. there is something about trusting in the future, in trusting that things will be okay and that the good will always outweigh the bad, even when the bad is weighing down your soul. there is something miraculous about trust, because it is ultimately just another version of love. isnt falling in love the ultimate example of trust? hearts are broken everyday around the world, but we keep going back to it, putting our trust in someone new, going against the odds and putting ourself in that vulnerable squishy place again. and then one day, it is worth it, and all the times you trusted when you shouldnt are made up for by the time you trusted when you should.

i have learned this, and i have especially learned the beauty of trusting in people, especially the ones you love. because sometimes you just have to let go, and believe, even when you really dont want to. sometimes you have to take their hand and follow, because if you love them, you will trust. and maybe they are leading you astray or telling you santa clause is watching you and will give you coal if you steal your sister's barbie one more time, but it doesnt really matter. thats not the point, and it never will be.

so heres my pledge to trust more. to believe in those i love, and allow them to lead me. to calm down, and breathe. heres to being a better follower, because heaven knows i love to lead. heres to steps into the darkness, illuminated by nothing other than the hand holding mine. heres to realizing that in the end that hand in mine is my real destination, and that tiny fact in itself is why i trust. anywhere else we end up is all gravy.

prayer to the summer. how i love you.

really i just want to say: hallelujah for the sun, for youth, for barefeet, for shorts, for stunna shades, for driving around in nicks sauna of a 1984 volvo singing to lady gaga, for flowers (have you ever been to pikes market in seattle or whatever its called and looked at their flower selection? it is the most incredible thing i have ever seen, ever), for loose tees, for road trips, for water, for bbqs, for the beach, for all of the secretssurpriseshappinessesjoy that comes with heat and light and being able to go outside barefoot in the morning to get the newspaper (even though nick and i dont have a newspaper subscription). summertime is magical.

ps. summertime has made me realize all of the requirements i have for a dream job: be allowed to wear tshirts and flip flops to work, be allowed to see the sun midday, be allowed to wear a messy, chlorinated bun, be allowed to wear my stunna shades at all times. which leaves me with one option: wild rivers lifeguard.

prayer to waiting. and eating my feelings.

so i feel like people feel similiar to me in a lot of ways--not sure what their path is in life, whether it is the road less traveled or the road more traveled or not even taking a road but just hacking at the trees off the beaten path and creating their own road, and ive been thinking about it a lot. how we all live little lives and have little worries and try to do the right thing and sometimes feel nervous we dont know what that is, or that somewhere there is this lifechanging thing we are supposed to be doing, and somehow we are missing out, accidentally eating little ceasars pizza and watching the outsiders on dvd when in actuality we are supposed to be obamas foreign policy advisor or writing a novel that will change the world. and then you look back on your life and gasp and think if i hadnt made this decision this wouldnt have happened or if my mom hadnt gotten sick and i had taken a year off school to go take care of her i would have never met my together, nicholas floyd cottrell, because i would have been gone from the state of utah, and sometimes you see how all these puzzle pieces fit together to form your perfect puzzle of the eiffel tower, and you get nervous that maybe the pieces wont fit so well together next time or oyure picking up the wrong pieces or youre missing one or something. or maybe only i feel like that.

so nick and i have been trying to make these decisions and things keep cropping up and different surprises show up and then we end up not sure where we are supposed to be or what exactly we should be doing. and though sometimes it makes me cry and sometimes it makes me sad and sometimes it makes me eat a lot of jelly beans, it also has taught me a beautiful concept that i had never really thought about before: waiting. waiting can be a beautiful thing, and i think it is something i am learning slowly. to look before i leap, to ponder before i go for it, to pray before i jump. to be still. to hold on. to wait until an answer comes my way, or to wait until it feels right to make a decision, or maybe just to wait. i am not saying staying in a constant state of indecision is a good thing--limbo makes me crazy. insane, actually. but sometimes it is important to wait.

i think about all of the people that have waited, patiently, quietly, and with hope and faith, or even have been forced to wait against their will--the pioneers in missouri, thinking it was the time of the second coming, the world waiting for Christ to redeem them, those who have a hard time getting pregnant, my mom as she waited for her life to end, the people on the titanic as they waited to live or die, the jewish people in the holocaust that waited in hiding until it was safe for them to come out and be seen, people who wait their whole lives to fall in love, people in world war 1 and 11 and every war there ever has been for the people they love to come home, waiting waiting waiting. sometimes the waiting ended up despair, or heartache, or the waiting never ended, or maybe there are some that are still waiting. i have reverence for these people, for their patience, for their ability to wait, especially for those forced to wait. i admire their dignity, and ability to pause.

in no way am i comparing my situation to any of these waiting situations. i am not being forced to wait. my life is not in danger. i am not waiting for my fiancee or brother to come home from war. but i do have reverence and appreciation for the people who have come before me, and waited. and i hope i can learn from their ability to wait, and be inspired and ready when it is the right time to make a decision, and remember their examples of fortitude and patience. their endless waiting, maybe never fulfilled. i hope i can learn to be still.

until then, i will be consuming vast amounts of jelly beans.

prayer to small inspirations, preferably in a pop-punk format.

when it rains, it pours. maybe ill post every day in june. im just that surprising.

so this morning i went on a run. during this time i tried to think about everything except for "when is this going to be over?" so naturally i spent the duration thinking "when is this going to be over?" i used to be able to run 15 miles no sweat (well, a lot of sweat actually, but you know what i mean), but i spent the winter teaching school and eating little ceasars pizza with my husband, which is really unfortunate now that i have gallons of free time in which i prefer to be hiking, swimming, running, endangering my life in exhilarating ways, and doing anything in the beauty that is utah in the summer. so i was going to run 3 miles, the first 1.2 miles of which i blamed my discomfort and shrinking will to go on on my ipod music (too slow, too boring, not getting me pumped enough), and then on my outfit choice (these shorts give me wedgies, my winterwhite midriff is being exposed every time i take a step), until realizing that the real issue was my entirely out of shape body. which made me laugh, because isnt that just like life? when you are unhappy with yourself, you tend to blame it on others, or if you are as entirely human and flawed as i am, you tend to see what you hate about yourself in others. when i had that realization, that it was not that beyonces your loves got me looking so crazy right now or ace of bases i saw the sun that had lost their energy, but me, i felt slightly ashamed that i had been so hard on these poor inatimate objects. and then i felt bad for all of the times i have taken out my frustration or anger or sadness on someone else. because, ive said it before, but ill say it again, i really believe that the only thing you can control in life is yourself, and the sooner you figure that out and stop trying to help perfect and change and criticize those around you, the happier life becomes. which means, it is not ace of bases fault i am a slow and sucky runner, or even little ceasars pizza. it is my own.

anyway, when i am running is usually when i have my greatest breakthrough moments or thoughts or ideas or whatever. that is usually when i am in shape though and not counting second by second until my run will end. so i reached mile 1.2, and decided i would turn around. i cant do this anymore, my legs are burning, my lungs are collapsing, i have become those people we used to see at mcdonalds that would order 2 large fries and my dad would shake his head in disgust and say "this is what has become of america." and then, a miraculous thing happened. the last thing i would expect to help me forge ahead came along and got my legs pumping: "mr brightside," by the killers came on my ipod shuffler, and all of a sudden i was hauling. the killers helped me keep going. the killers.

the killers is a band that stars on nick and is regular sarcastic banter, as in, we dont listen to them and often make fun of them in mean spirited ways. but there was mr brightside, and all of a sudden i was running, arms flailing, singing at the top of my lungs inappropriate lyrics that i will not post on this blog, wind in my hair, and i believed in myself again. it would take work, dedication, and admitting that i was out of shape, but i could do it! i could be the physically fit person i once was! and mr brightside is what made me believe.

i think there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this: a.) you never know who might come along and help you along when you really need some help b.) dont judge, because those things you judged may end up being your inspiration, c.) you can do it, and maybe listening to the killers mr brightside will motivate you, as it did me.

maybe you dont want to be able to run 15 miles. maybe you want to be able to sew a dress or sing like mariah carey or make really really good omelets. maybe you want to star in a movie. i dont know what it is, but give it your best shot. the killers believe in you, and so do i.

p.s. the best part of my run was when i passed by a middle aged group of jolly, pot-bellied men fitness walking together, weights in hand, discussing their favorite types of sees candies. life is good, people, its very good.

and just to lighten this tension filled mood,

the husbands g-chat response to my boring post:
3:26
good post, looks like you and i are in the same boat

just so you know, this is a boring post. but its my blog, and i want to be boring right now.

this post is just going to be a mish mash of whatever has been on my mind lately, because i don't feel coherent enough at the current time to figure out what the theme is or how it all matches or how to make some sort of sense of everything, which is i think is okay, and im trying to be okay with that. but i do want to write, because i havent in weeks and weeks and weeks, and because sometimes writing it all out helps me make sense of the puzzle in a way that i cant seem to do in the hollows of my own mind. but be forewarned, this is all enormously boring.

the purpose of this blog is not a personal diary or play by play of my lifes events, but instead small prayers to those beautiful things that make my heart keep beating (as ee writes, those times when the "singing reaches of my soul spoke the green"). for me it is those small moments of clarity, those prayers to a greater force, those "poppies in october" (slyvia plath) which are "a gift, a love gift, Utterly unasked for By a sky," and it is these moments or poems or flowers or blue sky or handholds or perfectly written sentences or perfect mountains, moments of ultimate beauty, that make my insides cry out "O my God, what am I, That these late mouths should cry open In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers." To translate into mormonspeak, these moments are tender mercies in the middle of the forest of frost, miliseconds when my spirit seems in perfect harmony with the world's spirit. As Goethe once so eloquently wrote in his masterpiece Faust, "Art is long, time short."

the reason i write about these lovegifts is because they keep me sane, and they keep me believing that the world is more beautiful than ugly, and because i think in the hustle and bustle of real life duties we tend to ignore these small moments in which the heavens are opened and the Universe makes himself known, . that being said, i can tend to be the opposite of normal--the partaker of love gifts and the shunner of real life, which is a doomed way to live when life is composed of an endless cycle of everydays, and love gifts may feed the soul but they cannot feed the mouth.

i guess the concept of everydays and practicality has been on my mind because nick and i are at a crossroads of sorts, trying to figure out which path is ours for the taking. ive been thinking a lot about robert frost's poem the road not taken, especially in light of its generally accepted misinterpretation. I will post the poem here for your reading pleasure:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The general public has pegged this poem a beacon of inspiration, a tribute to taking the road less traveled. in actuality, the tone of the poem is probably ironic, a jab at the tendency of humankind to rationalize their decisions and in all likelihood is probably hinting that taking one or the other will not end up making an enormous difference. but we still worry and worry about which path is right, and then once our minds are made up, we think of all of the reasons we are right. i dont know why this poem has been a scrolling marquee in my bogged down brain, but it has been. maybe because i wonder if in the end the road less traveled is over-rated, or what my personal path should be. we're in the middle of some serious decision making--staying in utah is the practical choice, we would be turning down a big chunk of change not to, but i dont want to be in utah, and dont plan on being here for any extended period of time. but sometimes i feel idiotic in the middle of a recession to turn down promotions for the sake of following my heart, when i know following your heart is not always the most correct principle. ive always been one to chase the adventure--i want to live in kenya, or uruguay, or anywhere not in the country. i want to do crazy things. i want to see everything. i know the greater purpose of life is to serve others, to serve God, and to become internally the person you are meant to become, but what is the purpose of life on a day to day scale? i think it is probably different for everyone, and unique for everyone. but its hard when you hear that you should be buying a house and thinking about the future when really you just want to be living in a big city and giving homeless people lollipops.

i could wax philosphical all day long. i could even throw in a dozen or so philosophers to help me figure out this conundrum. in the end, i think which path you choose does matter. i strongly believe there is a divine plan for me, and i was born thinking im going to do amazing, world-changing things (my mom said i was born with confidence you've never seen). i think everyone has this capability and amazing, world-changing things to offer, if they choose to follow the right path. my dad says most choose the path of least resistance, which i try to avoid so carefully sometimes i arbitrarily choose the path of most resistance. maybe there are a series of right paths. who knows. all i know is, i dont want to be in utah, and im deathly afraid of settling or not getting advanced degrees or not choosing something, but just ending up with it because i happened upon it, which makes sleeping at night rather difficult.

this is a boring, rambling, ridiculous post. but i told nick last night that in most general, daily conversation i never really say what im thinking about or what i wish to be saying, because i know the other person isnt interested in a discussion of aristotle or a debate on gun control, and sometimes i just want to say what i say.

OKAY? SO THIS IS ME SAYING WHAT I WANT TO SAY. GET OVER IT.

if anyone has guidance on the topic, or can help me figure out the right plan for my life, let me know ASAP. i also want you all to know that this is a more specific, daily worry, but that overall i am confident God or the Universe or whichever higher power you believe in, will lead me the direction I need to go to accomplish those big, world-changing things. and i keep reminding myself of that.

okay everyone, the boringness is over. please excuse when the enormous, overanalytical, nose-in-a-book nerd inside of me pushes her way past the skinny jeans.

happy birthday to my mom.

today is my mom's birthday. she would be 51. normally i dont tell people personal information like that because it is holy to me, but i decided to let it loose on the web because i want everyone to celebrate my mom's birthday, because it is a special day. a day for dancing and loving and smiling and feeling like your chest is going to burst because life is hard but it is also incredibly full of beauty, and sacred and precious. i decided this morning that this beautiful day would be a celebration. a celebration of life and love and wings and bluebirds and beating hearts that are so real and holy and all the beautiful things my mom taught me. i have done a lot of crying, and a lot of loud singing to arcade fire and beastie boys and the now 27 cd, and more crying. on a sidenote, i would like my funeral to be a group singalong to wake up by arcade fire. and now that that is published on the worldwideweb you must all fulfill my wishes when im through or else my ghost will come back to haunt you when im gone.

i know some of you probably think i am crazy for calling this day a celebration. but it is a celebration. it is a celebration because i had (and have) the best mom ever. she taught me and millions of other people in this cold and lonely world about their inner possibility. she believed in people. she believed in me. she loved children, and they loved her. she served with all of her heart. she was selfless. she was everyone's best friend. she suffered horrific cancer and cancer treatment twice with dignity, grace and incredible compassion. the only time i ever heard anything that could slightly resemble complaining come from her mouth (even through terrible pain and the deterioration of her body) was the time we were late to the doctor and we were in the car and my dad didnt turn when he had a chance and the sh word slipped out of her mouth. she was on a lot of drugs at the time that were messing with her mind, and she cant be held responsible. but it sure made me laugh, and love her even more.


my mom was many wonderful things, funny and beautiful and fun and remarkably intelligent, but more than anything she embodied charity. one time when she was in terrible, excruciating pain as her life ended, down to less than 80 pounds and unable to eat or drink, she started to scream from the unbearable nature of the disease overtaking her body. the hospice nurse nor anyone else could calm her down. i was there for every moment of my mom's slow spiral toward death, but this moment was too much for me. i began to cry, unable to control the pain i felt at my mom's physical suffering. she opened her eyes, put her hand on mine, and in slurred and drugged speech told me, "its okay shanny." even in the midst of her own horrific suffering, suffering i cannot imagine, she was more concerned about me than herself. in the worst moment of her life, she was looking outward. she was the very definition of charity, a tumor-filled cancer patient with a heart that could not be conquered by drugs and pain and disease. that was the last conversation i ever had with my mom, and the one that has defined my life from this moment forward. she was released from her life on earth because she had figured out the secret of living, that true, real joy is found in loving others.


because of that today is a celebration my friends, because even from the ugliness of cancer and disease and death can spring lovely, wonderful things like charity and hope and life. because even though thinking about my mom hurts my heart, it makes me want to be better and more like her and more like God. it is a celebration of healthy bodies, of toes and eyes and hearts and the ability to jump and move and eat without pain, because for the last seven months of her life she did not have that, and it is a precious, precious gift. it is a celebration of possibilities, the infinite possibility within each person and the hope that we can all see that possibility within one another. it is a celebration because my mom taught me, at the tender age of 19, the secret of living, of really, truly, completely living, even if you are dying from terminal cancer. the secret to happiness, come what may. that conversation will forever remain etched on the landscape of my mind, a reminder that cancer is no match for charity, and that compassion lives on forever, and is a force much bigger and greater than we could ever imagine. for that i am profoundly grateful, and for that i sing and dance and eat candy and celebrate. and for that i choose, this day and every day from now on, to try to remember to live, to really, truly live, as my mom did, no matter what may happen or how many melanoma tumors choose to enter my body.

so dont worry about me today. celebrate life and living and charity. eat some candy. say hi to your neighbor. do something youre scared of. stop thinking about yourself. listen to someone. do them a favor. buy them some pop rocks. lend someone your now 27 cd. give someone your favorite coat or shoes or whatever, because its good for the soul. look for their possibility. believe in them and their potential for greatness. im going to try to do this today, because everytime i get down and miss her so infinitely much and want her here to hug me and listen to me and make everything better, i try to do something nice for someone else. and thats when she comes, teaching me how to live, the touch of her soft hand and the sound of her soft voice whispering, "its okay shanny."

stay golden. you and me and charlie are artists.

(picture shown to me by eric cottrell and i cant remember who photographed it, but hes good dont you think?)

“every child is an artist. the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”--pablo picasso

sometimes i have small panic attacks that i am becoming an adult and that somewhere the artist inside of me or the creator or the free bird with wings that is ready to sing is slowly being silenced, being covered by health insurance and church callings and the mundanity of everyday life. breathe shannon i say. calm down. i see kids all day but sometimes i wonder if the one inside of me is gone, if the the details and bills and paperwork are somehow slowly chiseling away the creativesoul inside and that all of the things that made me shannon elizabeth mehner as a child have become subject to the difficulty of just keeping my head afloat in this great big grown up ocean. this grown up business is tricky.

as a child, teenager, and well into my college years functioning as a normal person was not my strong suit. matching clothes and clean rooms, even remembering to turn off the lights, was not a part of the calendar year. one time i was cooking macaroni and cheese but i was reading this beautiful book and i knew it was burning (the macaroni and cheese, not the book), i could smell it and hear it and a part of my brain knew, but i just kept on reading until whitney's pan was scorched to the core. sorry whitney, i never bought you a new pan. see, im so bad at this stuff.

that book was a dream though.

but deadlines and paperwork and all of those details, man, not my thing. i liked books and poetry and art and imagination. i liked to create, and be in awe of creation. one time during college i hopped in the car with lucky (the very embodiment of a bluebird, marching to the beat of the craziest drum ive ever heard) in our onesie pajamas and drove to montana and listened to john lennon and danced by the side of the road next to a ram on a mountain and ate so many animal crackers i almost died and told stories about truck drivers, intricate, detailed stories about imaginary truckdrivers and their lives on the road. we arrived at my sisters house at 3 am and left the next day at 7 pm. in all grownup standards, it was ridiculous. but boy we danced next to those montana mountains in that brilliant sun. and i felt alive.

during my sophomore year of college i painted one shoe bright pink and one shoe bright green and i wore them to school everyday. i loved neon. neon was life. at the time i thought my dad was going to get an ulcer from how ridiculous i looked and i did look ridiculous. but it just felt good you know, to wear neon. to wear what i wanted. i felt like me in those shoes. i liked how that felt.

nick and i talk a lot about how life is a balance. boy do i know it. i am trying to learn balance. sometimes its just so boring though! i work fulltime, i wear normal, boring, professional clothes, i try to be productive. gone are the days of cutting out snowflakes in the attic until 2 am and then pasting them on the ceiling. gone are the days of writing millions of random thoughts on very small pieces of paper, and dispersing them in random places on campus for random people to find while they are going on with their everyday lives. i go to bed at a decent hour. i have a routine.

its not all bad. some of it is very good. i am much better at functioning in life now. there are no loaves of bread under my bed molding, unlike high school. i have not burned anything in a while. i take care of adult things that i never thought i would be able to take care of. but sometimes i miss wearing neon shoes and writing down my thoughts in a secret journal and reading poetry in the middle of the day on a bench and crying because it made me feel so incredibly alive. i love to feel alive! sometimes i miss hiding in the closet so i wouldnt have to clean the bathroom and reading bridge to terabithia for the 600th time and marveling at the fact that it just gets better everytime you read it. sometimes i miss being golden, and i worry that all the golden parts inside of me are rotting.

i dont think all grownups lose the child inside. i hope not. i think it is always there if we look for it. being a grown up is inveitable. progression is important. this i know and believe most of the time. im glad that i am better at paying bills. but i hope that no matter how deep i wade into the ocean of adulthood, i still keep a foot in the kiddie pool. i hope i still make irrational decisions and believe that imagination is the most important thing in the entire world and read poetry sometimes in the middle of the day even though the kitchen is a disaster. i hope my bluebird never goes into too deep of a sleep because im so focused on getting everything done that i forget how beautiful just living and breathing and being can be. i hope sometimes i still wear neon. i hope i always dance like no one is watching, and i dance often. i hope i never worry too much about what other grownups think.

i hope too, that i always find time to create, and to appreciate creation in all of its forms. picasso is right when he says every child is an artist. smart man that picasso. maybe not every child is a painter or a writer or a reader or a muralist, but every child appreciates spiderwebs and leaves and snowfall. every child creates worlds and stories and imagines they are batman or babe ruth or a butterfly or a princess. every child can make a toy out of yarn or a paperclip or even their own hand. im always amazed at recess that the kids are never cold, but they dont even notice the frosty weather. they are busy creating.

i know grownup world comes with responsibilities and worries and real life things to address. but i hope you still let that child out sometimes, okay? is that okay? i hope you still think spiderwebs are a wonder, and try to create something everyday because the world is too big and bright not to, and you are an artist. worlds, paintings, good vibrations, a toy out of yarn, whatever you want. i think you should sit back and soak in the world sometimes too. i was babysitting yesterday and we sat on a bench, charlie, jillian and i, and we watched two men cut down an enormous oak tree and it was beautiful being there in the sun watching this enormous tree come down branch by branch, so big and sad a little that its life was over and done, and i sat back and watched and charlie and i talked about how tough tree cutters are and i felt glad to be there. content. when we were coming home four-year-old charlie turned to me with big eyes and a golden soul and said in all earnestness, "life is awesome." i agree. and i hope that no matter how busy i get or how many worries life brings or how easy it is to let all of the golden inside rot, i always see it the way charlie does.

prayer to my glass jar.

i cried last night. nicholas can attest to the fact i cry at least once a day, if not multiple episodes. last night i wept and wept until i was dedhydrated of all body liquids. this is a normal occurence, so dont feel concerned. i just have a lot of weepiness in me, because life is so incredibly beautiful and sad and big. i cry every day at school when the kids sing god bless the usa. i cry when i think about my husband. i cried in the movie the holiday when arthur abbott enters the ballroom and everyone stands up and claps for him, and throughout the duration of the movie selena. so last night i cried and cried until the bed was a mess of mascara smears and snot, but it wasnt anything out of the ordinary. and my teammate just held me close and stroked my hair and did all of those things you daydreamed about when you were little and thought having a boyfriend would change your life. so cheesy it makes me want to barf. but its true. so anyway, i was leaking out of my eyeballs, drowning in my own state of misery and woe and tearfulness, when i finally looked up.

and there, looking back at me, was another set of eyeballs full of tears. i hope nicholas doesnt kill me for posting this on the internet. he is a very manly man that is good at sports and manly junk, and my family refers to him as "head boy" because he is so good at being a boy. but there he was, misty eyed just because i was. and i felt (and feel) like the luckiest woman in the world because when i was fourteen years old i wrote a poem about myself entitled glass jar, and here are a few of the lines:

she thinks her soul will collapse from the weight
of the
beauty and the pain
and she wants someone
to collect her
tears
in a glass jar.

and last night i was just reminded again that my tears are counted and collected, no matter how many i shed. that even though i cry six times a day, someone cares about each and every single tear and is collecting them in his own little glass jar, and no matter how much water i leak, each drop matters and is precious. my fourteen year old self would weep to know that she found her glass jar, and my twenty three year old self does. so sorry to post about love again and be silly and cheesy and a giddy girl inside, but its the theme of my life right now. and i guess i just want to say again, cause i know ive already said it, that a glass jar is worth waiting for, and that you deserve it, and if someone doesnt care about every tear, they dont deserve yours. your tears matter, even if you have 4 billon of em, like me. and i believe in happy endings, and that each person has their glass jar somewhere in the world, ready to collect all of the condensation that falls from their eyelids. hallelujah for a melodramatic fourteen year old that knew she needed someone to collect her tears in a glass jar, and a twenty five year old named nick that has glass jars to spare.

this is an e-card to my e-friends. heart twins. i might have made brownie batter and eaten all of it while nick was playing basketball.

so ive been musing the past couple of days on my addiction to blogs. my husband says my downfall in life is blogs. blog blog bliggity blogs, i love blogs. i read them all night long. i sneak one in in between real life chores and reward myself with a quick peek after a task is completed, or not completed but almost completed, completed enough that i deserve a break. for the most part, it is a huge, enormous waste of time (im so good at that), but im willing to wager my future of being independently wealthy on the fact you, blog reader, love blogs too. even if you wont admit to loving them, you sneak and click and creep around the blogs of those you know and those you dont know, secretly soaking in every word and picture and comment of people's personal lives published right here on the beautiful internet (unless you are my husband, who has absolutely no interest in blogs and didn't start reading mine until i cried and said if he loved me he would want to know what i had to say to the internet world).

so here is my question of the day: why? whats the obsession with blogs? why must i know what my sisters ex best friends husband did yesterday, and last week for valentines day? why why why? why do i secretly want to see pictures of a girl i havent talked to in five years? why am i interested in how your christmas break went? why does a new post make excitement creep up my spine and look like a large mixing bowl of brownie batter waiting to be consumed while my husband is away at basketball and not present to enforce my 2009 goal of not eating crap for every meal?

the answer, my friends, is simple. i love simple, because i think that everything is simple if you can just take it in the right way. my brain and my heart puzzled over it for a while and then i realized i was making the question much too complex, just like we do with everything in life. its simple. its easy. its life. its the way things work. PEOPLE NEED PEOPLE. people love people. we love each other. i love you. something you said or wrote or posted or told your friend who told your neighbor who told me has probably caused me to cry at some time. we, as in the enormous chain of beating hearts known as mankind, love to know about each other. we like to know that in some way we are all a little bit the same, a little bit human, working towards the same things and crying sometimes and laughing sometimes and doing all those other things that make us beautiful and human. our souls cry out "you are like me!" and somehow that makes life a little better and a little easier and helps us keep rowing in our little canoes. and though sometimes blogs encourage crap like jealousy and competition and all that other junk that also makes us human but not so beautiful, they do something much more important. they connect us.

maybe you live in illnois or georgia or japan or croatia, but through publishing on your own little plot of cyberspace, i can know how youre doing, feeling, what you look like, about your new bangs. i can feel like we are friends (even if i dont know you, sorry if that creeps you out but youre reading my blog and you dont know me, so you're the creeper.) and when bad things happen, and you say "hey, i dont feel so hot today" and you are brave enough and bold enough and beautiful enough to say that to all of your e-friends on the worldwideweb, i can think, "we all have rough days," and maybe on my next rough day i will think of your blogspot and your little post and feel like maybe someone out there in that big bad world knows how i feel. someone whos heart is beating just like mine is beating, maybe even at the exact same time, like heart twins. and i can share a little bit in your wedding day when you post wedding pictures, and i can think your kid is cute when you show me the 180th video of him, and i can laugh at your jokes, and i can relate to you in some small and important little way. i like that. and i like you. and i like that we are both humans, humans with hearts.

i hear a lot of negative stuff about blogs. i know sometimes it brings out weird things like whos kids are the cutest or who has the funniest posts or self advertisement or the promotion of the idea that people have perfect lives or whatever, but cheers to all of you out there that are sending your messages out into the universe, hoping someone will find your bottle and feel connected, sending your bluebird out to e-fly not sure whether people will comment or creep or just be mad you are taking up cyberspace. cheers to you that read blogs not to think your life (or your blog) is better than anyone elses, but because you want to connect, you want to find heart twins across the world. you want to be human together. cheers to you that arent afraid to be yourselves, arent afraid to show your true colors, your inner bluebirds, your blog bottles to an entire internet-reading population of blogger-junkies. cheers to you who blog about the hard things and the good things and the things that we all need to read once in a while. cheers to you for sitting on the other end of a computer screen, heart beating.

so i guess this prayer is a hallelujah to all those who blog, and blog because you are human and real and want to send out your message in a blog bottle to whomever reads it. its beautiful. i mean it. it is also a prayer to those who guiltily read blogs, secretly hoping you are not super weird for slinking onto blogs of people you've never met, and really really hoping that they will never find out. its not weird. its just human. we are all just people, people who are connected thanks to the glorious magic of the internet and the blogosphere and the worldwide conversation that now takes place everyday. im glad people need people, and e-people need e-people, and i can log onto my computer at 3:42 am and find someone to connect to. and maybe, just maybe, youre on the other end of a computer screen, eating brownie batter and nodding your head, heart beating at the exact same time as mine, my heart twin. this is an e-card to all of you.

prayer to the benjamins.

nicholas and i are planning on being independently wealthy in our lives. not because we have any brilliant business ideas or corporate connections or a zest for summer sales or rich relatives with terminal diseases, so no, we haven't quite figured out how yet. small road bump. we just know we want to be independently wealthy, and we like to discuss it on a regular basis. i've realized, however, that most people don't understand our love for the thought of being independently wealthy. no, it is not because i want a lexus or a big house or fancy clothes. i love our 1984 volvo, and i know for fact if someone took nick to a car dealership and said "you can have any car you want," nick would pick the volvo. and so would i. we dont like stuff. mostly we hate it. so our hope to one day be swimming in the green stems from ideas like this that we would love to execute:

1. buy super nice couches/bikes/snowboards/baby chairs/whatever and list them as free on craiglist.

2. randomly drop 100 dollar bills in locations only really nice, charitable, unselfish human beings could find them. such as: the back kitchens of homeless shelters, church hallways, etc.

3.pay neighborhood kids a lot of money to pet sit. (one time someone paid me 100 buckaroonis to watch their dog for a week and you would have thought i won the lottery.)

4. give super huge tips at restaurants. in cash money, because who doesn't love cash money. and the waiter/waitress would keel over in suprise, because nick and i look like we are homeless most of the time. dont you love surprises? SURPRISE! we are independently wealthy!

5. adopt a lot of neglected children and a lot of neglected pets.

6. travel the world, bestowing benjamins upon whomever we meet and like.

7. go to the drivethru and pay for everyone's order inside. free cinni-sticks and bean burritos all around!

8. pay neighborhood children to do all of our bidding: lawn-mowing, furniture-moving, garage-organizing, cartoon-viewing, whatever. then compensate them in candy and money.

9. tuck 100 dollar bills in strollers.

10. take every kid from your kid's school to chuck e cheese and give them each 500 tokens.

11. buy millions of cups of lemonade from lemonade stands. literally, millions.

12. continue to look homeless and drive cars older than I am, because who doesn't love a good surprise.

*disclaimer: nick would like the blogging world to know he would never pay anyone to mow his lawn.

prayer to poor logic.

nick and i's new favorite discussion topic is: which state do you hate the most and/or which state would you least like to live in? we also like to rank states/locations we would prefer to live in, and which states we would be okay living in for a short period of time and then hasta la vista-ing one to two years later (a la mississippi, cause it would be cool to live in the south, but only for enough time to say "we lived in the south" before we died of humidity overdose). though this may sound like an entirely pointless discussion topic, it is actually quite necessary as we determine the route our lives take. it has also cued me into the fact that i have absolutely no ground for most of my opinions on states, or probably no ground for my opinions on life in general, except for chance encounters as a child, things people have said that have stuck in my brain, and anything associated with throwing up. please do not be offended by my opinions, they are based on nothing legitimate and are entirely worthless, and jut reflect poorly on me.

nicks least favorite state to live in:
idaho
my least favorite state to live in:
nevada
why? you ask. nicks reasons include: too many potatoes, people go cow tipping for fun, and i think nothing else. as you can see, we never buy into stereotypes. my reasons for choosing nevada include: hot, and one time when i was seven a man on the vegas strip corner passed me a paper with pornography on it. traumatizing. also, one time we stopped at jack in the box there and got oreo shakes, and i woke up a while later with sandpaper tongue and the realization that i was going to die if i did not receive water in the next 1/2 hour, but we were millions of desert miles from any civilization and i did die. not really. but it felt like it. and once you feel like you have died in a state, you never want to return.

as you can see, very legitimate reasons to look elsewhere for a place to spend our lives together.

some other of our choices lower on the list:
kansas (nick once got lost in the state and drove 100 miles the wrong way, and i have a deep fear of tornadoes embedded in me from the classic book/movie Wizard of Oz)
rhode island (I am fine with Rhode Island because it is the setting of my all-time favorite book series ever, the babysitter's club. Nick doesn't believe in rhode island because it is "just too small. who wants to know every single person in the state?")
iowa (no legitimate reasons except for it sounds like idaho, which is at the bottom of nick's list.)
utah (too many mormons. we are mormon, but don't worry, logic is not our strong point, and im not obsessed with being an individual or anything.)
vermont (once again, nick says its too cold. i heard once from an employee at macy's that this state is the home of the burton factory, so i think im ok with it. although it is cold. i may have to ponder that one.)
arizona (threw up once in the car driving through this state. nick loves arizona because it is home of his beloved suns. but i just associate it with throw up.)

i hope this has not offended anyone or the state in which they reside. as you can see, this post simply showcases the poor logic which my husband and i exercise to make important life decisions. but really, can i be expected to live in a state in which my only experience with it involves an inordinate amount of throw up? really?

which states do you hate? love? why? please, do tell.

prayer to kindergartners.

today at school i sat in a chair during storytime and the children gathered at my feet. i felt content. i felt needed. i felt like mama bear reading to her bear cubs. i felt loving adoration oozing from the children. i was the queen of the pack tenderly watching out for the small ones that treasured and revered me.

then hanson, an exchange student from china, dropped the bomb. "it smell like wet sock."

interesting. i kept reading, enchanted with my ability to read the book upside down so all the children could see the pictures and my animated voices. then mason chimed in. "it smells like old sock."

nicole followed suit. "ewwwww old socks. old socks. we can't read anymore. it smells like old socks and im going to die."

that was it. my magical world was gone, destroyed by old socks. instead of listening to the soothing sound of my teacherly voice, they all were now enraptured with the old sock smell.

"wet sock wet sock wet sock wet sock wet sock wet sock!" hanson screamed, hitting himself in the head. "smell like wet sock bad bad bad bad!"

meanwhile, klayson had taken to sniffing everyone's socks one by one, in a twisted version of duck, duck, goose. "new sockkk, newwww sockkkk, new sockkkk........OLD SOCK! OLD SOCK! EVERYONE RUN!"

gwen began to cry, stuffing her fingers into her noise, while gavin lay face down on the carpet. apparently the smell had knocked him dead.

"GO TO YOUR SEATS!" I yelled. "There are no old socks!"

I was mad. it was like a terrorist attack was going on at the school. i investigated the scene of the crime, sniffing around, concluding there was no old sock smell and the entire thing was a stunt to get out of storytime.

fast forward seven hours. i came home, pulled my shoes off after a long day at work, and cuddled next to my husband. five minutes later he plugged his nose and explained, "It smells like old sock."

ive been away my loves. but i am back, and this is a prayer to you.

i currently work at an elementary school and i see lots of cute little kids every day do cute little things that make me believe the universe is a cute little place. sometimes it makes my heart ache because i see little kids cry and i see little kids not have friends and i see little kids eat their lunches alone and just not fit in too well. sometimes i am reminded of being a cute little kid and sometimes my heart feels sad for little kid me trying to make it in a big bad world and especially for the time in fourth grade when someone told me "it ain't over till the fat lady sings, so sing shannon," and i took my 110 pound body home and cried till i could cry no more, and then ate a doughnut. life is hard on the playground.

today i was watching the kids at recess and i was reminded of little kid shannon again. a little girl asked me to watch her do the monkey bars, and as she proceeded to twist her stick thin body into pretzels all over those things, i felt a little twinge of sadness for my days on the playground. i was a beefy kid and though i wanted to be prom queen of the playground, the girl that did cartwheels and splits and one handed monkey bars, i was the opposite. i would attempt the monkey bars only when i was all by myself, painstakingly trying over and over to no avail. i had no upper body strength, and i had had one too many fruit snacks in my days. but i knew, somehow, someway, i had to do those monkey bars to gain my title as playground prom queen. so i practiced and practiced.

finally, one day i attempted those monkey bars, in front of everyone, right in the middle of recess. my heart was pounding, my knees were shaking, but all i wanted was to get across, to waltz across gracefully, to swing from bar to bar like the 50 pound girls with perfect headbands that never finished their lunches because they were too full and competed in gymnastics after school. i crossed five bars before i fell, straight on my face. everyone saw. i was humilated. my face had broken my fall. i cried. it was at that moment, right there on the playground, 17 years ago, i realized i would never be prom queen of the playground. i would probably never be prom queen of anything. and no matter how hard i tried or how much i practiced or how many less doughnuts i ate, i would never be the stick-thin one-handed monkey bar girl.

come to find out, 17 years later, my arms are actually abnormally short, about 2 inches shorter on each arm than they should be. my eternal boyfriend nicholas calls me t-rex. i never realized until just today that probably part of my monkey bar woes were due in part to my t-rex status (especially combined with the fact i hit the 100 pound mark in second grade). but that, my dear friends, is not the point. it doesnt matter why i couldnt do them, it doesnt matter that it was my life dream to be playground prom queen, it doesnt matter that i took one gymnastics class, realized i was the only person in the class who couldnt do a cartwheel, and never came back. it doesnt matter that i would watch the olympics and dream about wearing little leotards and pray every night to God that he would change my body type and flexibility level and make me popular. it doesnt matter because 17 years later, watching little leslie swing her stick legs all over the monkey-bars and do all the things i ever dreamed about doing, i realized i am glad i am me. and i realized the monkey bars are really not that important, even though they seemed life or death 17 years ago.

i have lots of flaws. i cannot do monkey bars. i never match. i cant organize to save my life. i complain. i lose things. i never have my cell phone. i can be mean. i can be selfish. i get jealous. even now, 17 years later, i get jealous of the perfect headbanded one-armed monkey bar-doing stick thin girls all grown up. sometimes they still seem perfect. but as i passed through elementary school and middle school and high school and college, i started to learn no one is perfect. people are just people. some people are good at the monkey bars. some people are good at pokemon. some people are good at giving hugs. some peopel are good at school. some people are good at laughing. some people are good at exposing their personal insecurities about monkey bars on the internet.

so, my lovely blog readers, i want you to know i like myself, and i like you. i am not good at the monkey bars, but i am good at lots of other things. there are lots of things i need to work on. but i have accepted who i am and im glad for it. im glad for the day i cried on the playground, and learned how to brush myself off and get up and keep on living and be okay with never being playground prom queen, because i am lucky to just be me. you are lucky to just be you. i want you all to know that whether i know you or not, i know you are good at things too. maybe you are a prom queen, a whiz at the monkey bars who manages to do it while keeping every perfect hair in place. most likely you are just like the rest of us masses, undercover prom queens that are good at things like conversations or dropping baked goods off for people or loving with your whole heart or making perfect popcorn, things that will never get us to the olympics or make us the most popular person on the playground, but thats okay. im glad for me. im glad for you. im glad we are all different sizes and shapes and have different lengths of arms and talents, and we are all good at different things. and since this post is a prayer to you, anyone out there in the internet universe, i am giving us all the challenge of spending one week loving ourselves the way we are. loving ourselves for what we are good at, and loving others for what they are good at. not being jealous, just being happy that we all have something great to offer the world, something to offer by just being me or you. i will be happy for all of you that can do the monkey bars, and you try not to be jealous of my t-rex arms.

thats all. good luck on the playground of life. im sure glad youre you.

ps i will never go a month ago without another prayer. promise.

prayer to pedaling. love eggs are fragile.

im so glad i have his love eggs.

whilst single, i invented a theory that has been well received by the general public entitled "pedaling." the theory behind pedaling is that instead of investing all of your love eggs into one crush basket, you get to know lots of people before making decisions like that. if that sounds like chinese to you, the point of the theory is that you should not invest in someone until they invest in you, and prematurely fall in love. instead you should pedal los of men and get to know them all better, until someone pedals back in your direction, and that is when you slowly start putting your love eggs one by one in their basket.

pedaling also means you are taking action, control of your life, instead of waiting around for some doinkhead boy to look in your direction. instead of waiting for a man to ask you out or falling more madly in love with that cute boy in your class every day even though he has never done anything for you and you have no reason to like him or think he would treat your love eggs kindly, you decide that you are in control of your life and you pedal, pedal, pedal. this means you flirt, you attend social gatherings by the dozens, you text many men, you get to to know lots of people, you have an open mind. it may sound like you are treating peoples emotions callously. this is not true. pedaling just allows you to see all the fishes in the sea, and not get treated badly by people who wont be careful with your tender heart. it is a screening process. it helps you get to know and get along with lots of different types of people. it helps you protect your love eggs until you know someone is not going to make an omelet out of them.

i would like to cite a success story from pedaling: my own. yes, it is true. i pedal pedal pedaled my way into nicholas cottrells heart, and yes, i asked him out first. i had just broken up with a bad bad boyfriend that i usually refer to as voldemort and was feeling low on self esteem and life. it was during this time that i created my POA, my plan of action. i had woken up a few days in a row feeling like life looked like a huge cloud of grey nothingness, so i decided instead of letting life and crazy ex-boyfriends control me, i was going to control my life. i decided i would do certain things everyday to love myself, like positive self talk, pray, force myself to go out when i really just felt like soaking my pillow with tears, and other things, and then i signed it with blood. ok, not with blood, just with red pen, but i was fully committed to my POA. pedaling was born in response to the POA, as i realized part of my past mistakes in dating came from my early emotional commitment before fully checking into if the boy i was dating was a crazy lunatic or not. i decided i needed to get to know several men and not emotionally commit to just one so early on, and wait until i found someone that knew the fragility of love eggs. i decided in order to do this i had to learn how to pedal. so i did. i tried not to give out my tender heart too fast. i tried to pedal in many directions. i tried to get to know people and not give out my love eggs to people that would just throw them around. i decided to love myself.

as part of pedaling i asked out nicholas cottrell. such a bold faced move you say. it was bold. but since i had not already emotionally committed, i didnt really care if he said no or thought i was in l.o.v.e. with him, because i was just seeing what was out there, and i didnt care what he thought. (he did, by the way think i loved him). (but i dont care). thank you pedaling, because nicholas cottrell is not the sort of boy i would normally date, and if i had not decided to open my eyes and broaden my horizon and just get to know people, i would have never given nicholas a real chance in my heart. he was not my type: he was not emotionally crazy, extremely weird and/or quirky, and a societal misfit. in fact, he was very very normal. but i pedaled toward him, loving myself along the way and remembering i was great so i didnt care if he didnt like me.

the rest is a long story that doesnt need to be published on the internet. it culminated in november 29,2008, when i officially stopped pedaling for time and all eternity. now normal nicholas and i live in the same house, play speed scrabble, take pictures of ourselves on my macbook to see who can get the most double chins, decide which celebrities are indie and which are bros, cry together whilst watching blood diamond, pledge to be real grownups and then eat spaghetti noodles with butter for dinner, read 4th grade civil war novels out loud in bed, and protect each other's love eggs with everything we have.

the point of my story is this: i dont think love is just something that happens magically one day. i dont think it happens magically any day. in my case, i had to take control of my life and do something. instead of sitting around and waiting, i went out and acted. it made me feel like i was in charge. the boss of my own life. this is applicable to all things i think, and i try to apply it a lot in life. victims dont get what they want. pedalers do. i had to stop giving my tender heart to creeps. i had to learn to love and respect myself, and i had to learn that it is okay to wait a bit before you give someone your love eggs. you have to make sure they deserve them. i learned that love is not when your heart skips a bit because the hott boy in your anthropology class sits next to you, or even when a boy write you a bomb.com poem that melts your heart. real love, at least in my experience, is when someone treats your love eggs with reverence and awe, cupping them in gentle hands, protecting them with everything they have because they know how fragile and beautiful those love eggs really are.

so if you are still out there and single and tend to date people that are l.o.s.e.r.s. like i did, i recommend pedaling. just try it. pedal pedal pedal your brains out. get to know people you wouldnt. dont invest love eggs just yet. be open minded. protect your heart until you know someone will handle yours gently, and give theirs back. love yourself a whole lot, because i think if you do that first, you will have a healthier and better relationship, and find someone that will treat you the way you deserve. take control. control feels so good. my mom used to tell me the only person who's actions you can control are your own, and its true. so control your own actions. be bold. ask someone out, but dont care if they say no, because who cares. youre great, and you will eventually find someone who thinks so too. ask lots of people out. tell yourself you are the bomb. never, ever date someone that does not handle your love eggs with extreme care. please dont, because i did, and you are better than that. your love eggs deserve the best. wait for that, even when its hard. and then one day after pedaling around you will put your love eggs into someones crush basket, and they will start giving you their love eggs back, and it will feel good and right. and maybe one day you will end up in a nest together, playing speed scrabble, and so so happy you married someone named normal nicholas that treasures your love eggs a whole lot.

prayer to a diamond that reminds me diamonds arent forever.

when my mom and dad got married, my dad couldnt afford a toaster let alone a diamond ring. so he bought his sisters diamond earrings and made them into a wedding ring. by made them into a wedding ring i mean he stuck them next to each other on a band. they looked like two eyeballs looking out at you. i was scared of it when i was young because i thought it was watching me. my mom loved the ring, because my dad gave it to her.

my mom had that ring until she went into surgery for her cancer the first time, and they had to take it off her finger with vaseline. my dad stuck it in a napkin and put in his pocket and then promptly threw it away. if you know the mehner family, that is not that surprising.

my dad decided to replace the thrown away ring with a beautiful, enormous diamond ring, the ring fantasies are made of. my mom usually wore it turned around so you could just see the band. she was very understated. she just liked being herself. but she loved the ring, not because it was beautiful and people were envious of it and because it glittered a lot in the sun and in artificial lighting in buildings, but because my dad gave it to her. she did not love it more or less than her first ring, just the same.

she died with that wedding ring on her finger. that beautiful, enormous, expensive diamond. and after she died i remember my little sister didi looking at her hand and looking at me and saying "she didnt take anything with her, not even her wedding ring."

it seems pretty obvious, but maybe its not, because we still run around all day trying to have the bigger diamond, a fancier car, a nicer ipod. we work lots and lots of hours so we can afford that new blender or house or whatever it is that we are hoping for. maybe its because most of us will not die today or tomorrow or even the next day. but my mom was 47, not very old at all, and she died. and she probably took memories and love and knowledge and all those good things that cannot be touched, but she most definitely did not take her wedding ring, because i saw it, still there on her finger when she closed her eyes for the last time.

when i got married, i inherited that wedding ring. i have a beautiful, big, expensive diamond on my finger. when people ask to see my ring they look over at my husband like "wow, you must really love her." we feel uncomfortable a lot. usually i get very nervous and blurt out "it was my moms ring!" so they dont think i am 23 and high maintenance. maybe some people would love it beacuse it is big and expensive and beautiful and probably what a lot of girls dream about. i love it, but hopefully not for those reasons.

i love it because it was my moms ring. i love it beacuse when i look at it i think about her turning it around so you cant see the diamond, cause she was embarrassed. i love it because when i look at it i remember that i may have a chunk of change on my wedding finger, but i cant take it with me. she didnt take it with her. and everytime i look at it, i remember that life is short. fleeting. and we can waste a whole lot of time chasing the wrong things, like big wedding rings and fancy cars and whatever it is that messes with our head everyday, but in a second it can all be over, and all that stuff will be left here.

someday i will die, and the wedding ring will be left on my finger, just like it was left on my moms. until then, it will serve as a reminder to me that life is short and beautiful and delicate, and you cant take it with you.