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.