like a prayer.

grown up list #1.

2010-02-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

when we were little my older sister brookie and i used to put on my mom and dads clothes and pretend to be them and argue over bills and dinner and i would pretend to read the wall street journal and go to work with a briefcase and do other fatherly things. brookie always made me be the dad, one of the wonderful perks of being the younger sister. my mom and dad would watch us and laugh and smile knowingly, because they knew something that i did not: that one day i would in fact be a grown up (though not a dad), something my six-year-old brain could not comprehend and my twenty-four-year-old one is still working through. sometimes i can feel that day creeping up on me bit by bit, even though when im mailing off important grownup mail or using a credit card i still feel like that little girl in her daddys pants, just pretending to be a grownup for a short little while until my next door neighbor comes over and we can go rollerblading.

when i was that little girl (a chubby, chubby little girl with unkempt hair that went swimming in XXL tees over her bathing suit) i not only liked to play dad, i also used to make lists--lists of my favorite books, lists of boys that smelled like B.O. (Jeffrey Fisher, are you out there?), lists of the characters I thought were dreamy (Gilbert from Ann of Green Gables anyone?), lists of the five women I wanted to look like when I grew up (Jane Fonda topped the list, I kid you not, my mom owned all of her step videos), lists of the countries I wanted to see and the professions i would one day achieve (a ballerina-writer-iceskater-fireman-spy-princess, obviously). Those lists are lost somewhere in the attic of the house i grew up in, or maybe somewhere out in the universe never to be found, but today when I was feeling like a little girl in her daddy's pants as I talked to someone on the phone about the state of the economy, I started making another list in my head--a list of the things I want when I'm a grown up. And since lists are not as fun unless they are written and recorded for the sake of public record, here it is blogging universe, a list from the slightly more grown up version of the chubby little girl who always had to play the boy character:

Things I want when I grow up (drum roll please)

1. to live on a street called zeitgest. i'm not sure why. Mostly because I really really like that word, and I think it is probably the best street name I can imagine. 22 zeitgest. does that address exist anywhere in the world? google map it for me because im moving in.

2. have a pack of wild children. Like maybe 4 to 7. I hope they are barefoot most of the time and enjoy wearing wild outfits that don't match and often do things like try to fly or catch lizards or eat sand. also when i picture them in my minds eye i picture them with some sort of tail sweatpants..are those available?

3. dance on every continent, preferably with nick and my pack of wild children. preferably with the locals of the continent. preferably in some sort of tribal costume. matching tribal costumes. im envisioning the part in peter pan when they are captured by the indians and dance around the fire.

4. meet Ponyboy Curtis. or at least SE Hinton. Is she alive? or maybe just someone with the name ponyboy curtis. or name my child ponyboy, although nick has already threatened to leave me if i pull through on that one.

5. write a really really amazing book. I don't care what its about, as long as it involves dancing, candy, happiness and makes at least one to two people cry. also, i would like it not to include any capital letters because we all know how i feel about those.

6. beome president of the United States. or at least president of something. maybe the pta, maybe a small municipality, maybe the burger king kids club. but whatever it is, i would like to be known as king shannon. i know that i am a president and not a king, but i like the idea of being called a king.

7. discover buried treasure. i know this sounds farfetched, but i actually have a lead and i actually may accomplish this. so when im laughing all the way to the buried treasure trunk, youll feel silly you doubted me.

8. convince nick to go skydiving with me, preferably in some sort of matching unitard on some sort of momentous occasion. hes not into it. can you email him and let him know this is a good idea?

9. become the reason for a national holiday.

10. own a windmill. i love windmills a whole lot, a topic for another blogpost, but id like one in my back yard if possible, as well as a weeping willow tree, a tree house, and an enormous pool of jello.

11. live in a treehouse. this has been a life dream.

12. learn how to speak a very obscure language and then visit a place where they speak that obscure language and casually start conversing with a native, surprising them all with my incredible intellectual abilities and perfect accent.

13. become an astronaut.

14. break the world record for speed reading. this one i really think may be within my reach.

15. become a court reporter. partly for the outfits, and partly because its like a really cool important version of a secretary and they get to type things like "lawyer sneezes".

16. see the loch ness monster, and maybe get interviewed by large news agencies about it. act like its no big deal.

these lists may continue if my neighbor doesnt come over to go rollerblading. i will keep you tuned. now its my turn to ask: what is on your list of things to do as a grownup? please tell me, especially if it involves swordfighting or graffiti.

do you

2010-02-24T22:17:00.000-08:00

ever feel like the world is very very big? in a good, mouth open sort of way that makes you want to watch land before time and maybe sit by a window that looks out onto the endlessness or maybe just a fire escape, or maybe go stand next to a very large tree so you can feel very small?

i do.

sometimes im glad to be insignificant.

prayer to me.

2010-02-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

do you ever ask for a million peoples opinions on a million everythings? do you ever get nervous because someone makes a comment and you think, maybe theyre right, maybe ill do it their way, and then you do it their way and then you think, maybe i should do it my way? do you ever hear someone else got a different answer than you on a homework assignment and feel torn between scribbling out your own and putting theirs and keeping the answer you worked so hard to find? do you ever ask 400 people in the optometrists office which glasses look good on you and spend 3.5 hours trying on every single pair that exists twice while asking the receptionist: do these make me look sexy? maybe not. but i do. and im sorry, receptionist that had to reassure me twelve times blondes can wear black frames. i really am. probably because it was annoying, but also i came back the next day and bought the tan ones.

i think one of my assets, and faults, all bundled into one little package, is that i value other peoples opinions. like...a lot. i dont even want to talk about planning a wedding, because i asked everyone from the janitor to my next door neighbor to the wedding dress alterer for opinions on flowers, heels, meat choices, bla bla bla and so on until there were 743 hands in the cookie jar. and while i think my ability to appreciate that people have talents and expertise in different areas is great and that it is a gift to have a good cabinet of people to turn to, a tour de force of friends with various knowledge from cooking skills to an extensive knowledge of history, i also think sometimes you must ride alone. trust yourself. thats one that im working on.

because sometimes the bottom line is you, and no one else. sometimes i think there is something really profound and beautiful in digging deep inside that bluebird of a soul when faced with a tough or not-so-tough decision and digging past all of the murky grey stuff and finding what you really think. knowing who you really really are, without all those outside things or people helping to define you. knowing that whether or not everyone else thinks you look good in red, that you like blue. knowing that no matter what somebody else puts as their answer, you know yours. i think that its important to find that inner you, the inside shannon that knows who she is, what she wants and that she likes her scrambled egg with ketchup even if people think thats gross. i think there will be decisions in life when you want to look left or right or up or down or to your spouse or mom or oprah, but when you look around you will be alone, left only with a road ahead of you and your heart and gut to tell you which path is yours for the taking. and i think thats good and right, and when you come out of it you will be headed in the exact right decision, with a bounce in your step that wasnt there before.

dont get me wrong, oprah can help. and so can fortune cookies and flipping coins or whatever else offers you words of wisdom. but i think when it comes down to it, down to the wire, that you have to trust yourself before anyone or anything else. others can help, but you have to be confident that you know you, and that your heart is strong and right and can lead you confidently in the direction of your dreams. you can listen to what everyone else says love feels like or looks like or tastes like, but i think when you feel it for yourself it has its own special flavor that is just yours and yours alone, and you know it when it comes and it might not be what everyone else told you to expect. and i think that is the way it is supposed to be with those important decisions that are thrown our way, and i hope that i listen to the beating of my own heart frequently enough that when i need it i will be able to know whats its telling me to do.

and i love that im making decisions each day, learning to listen to myself and creating myself piece by piece, decision by decision, discovering who and what i am. and i hope you are enjoying this path you are building too; navigating through the sea of voices and listening to the one voice that matters most, the one that cannot be taken from you no matter how people try, the one thing that will never fail you in moments of difficult decision if you let it speak true and strong.

prayer to enchiladas. cause they are dang good.

2010-02-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

this might be a picture of nick and i in the middle of the amazon at night. and we might have had full length matching ponchos.

i might have made nick enchiladas for valentines day (and by i, i mean i provided the ingredients and nikki did most of the work) and there might have been one left in our refrigerator. and i might have eaten it last night while i was posting on my blogspot for the first time in <80 days. and nick might have been super excited about eating it for lunch today and he might have been anticipating it all day and he might have opened the fridge at approximately 1:43 pm and he might have found no enchilada. and he might have emailed me while i was in class and the email might have said in the subject line "when did you eat the enchilada?" and i might have burst out laughing right then, and it might have been at a moment we were discussing a photograph of a beheaded man that was up on the blackboard. and it might have been very inappropriate, and i might have spent the duration of a very serious class about printing graphic and tragic photographs trying to think of really really really really sad things but I might have been failing because everytime i looked up at the blackboard no matter what the photograph was i might have envisioned a very large enchilada or an empty refrigerator and burst out in inappropriate laughter.

and i might have a history of eating the last enchilada out of the fridge or maybe leftover bajio quesadilla that wasnt mine and maybe belonged to my sisters boyfriend, so i might take this opportunity to apologize to all of those whom ive wronged in the enchilada world, particularly didi mehner, who has overlooked all my enchilada sins and still found it in her heart to love me.

can i tell you a secret?

2010-02-15T20:57:00.001-08:00

like a really big one? one that ive been repressing for decades, maybe even my entire life in full?

i am a really huge enormous perfectionist. like the worst kid. the competitive kind. the obsessive kind. the kind that doesnt think something is worth doing unless it is the very tip top bestest in the entire municipality, region, maybe even entire continental united states. its really kind of disgusting.

i always knew this about things that were important, like church and school and doing good and beautiful things in art and writing and whatever else seemed to creep along. but as i have become a married woman with things to do like decorating houses and picking out wedding dresses and picking out pants for my husband, ive realized i am also a perfectionist in the unimportant things too. which kind of sucks, and which kind of disproves the notion ive always had of myself that im on a crusade to save the world and the trivial is far beneath me, left for those who watch the bachelor for real. because of course, i only watch it for fake.

the point: i think sometimes we think being a perfectionist is like a good bad thing, like how you answer that question in interviews about your weakness with "i work too hard", which we all know is really a good thing and another way of saying, i am the best candidate for this job. but perfectionism, even though its the best answer to the weakness interview question and you should continue using that answer as a means to secure stable employment in this deep dark time of recession, is not a good thing. its not good because it is a competition, because perfectionism stems from comparison and comparison belittles and degrades the uniqueness of each individual soul here on green earth.

and every day i become more and more aware that no matter how much i want it or no matter how much i pretend not to want it, i will never be the girl who is perfect. perfect looking, perfect clothing, perfect bod, perfect looking house. [mine is still left undecorated with no hand soap 2 months after moving here]. and i dont want to be that person, because that means the pursuit of being perfect has become my life, and i dont want my life to be about that. i really, really dont, not even a little bit. and i really dont want to think that table lamps or perfectly cooked meals are more important than bluebirds and sunshine and doing really really nice things, because even though we all seem to care about the table lamp things more than we'd care to admit, im pretty sure when life is over no one will mention your table lamps at your funeral. and really, would you want them to?

they always say the first step in overcoming an addiction is admitting you have a problem right? so here is me admitting it over the worldwideweb for the eyes of no one because i havent written on this blog in 15 years or so. but to anyone who stumbles upon this, i want you to know that im glad you are you in all of your imperfections, and im working on loving mine. im working on remembering every day that the perfect people that are all around me arent perfect, and that life is not a venn diagram, its the opposite. which is..im not sure what. a big lovefest where everyone wins? an enormous hug? i really hope so. im working on remembering perfectionism isnt a bad thing thats really good, its not a security blanket to secretly hold next to my heart and pretend like i dont like it even though i cling to it as part of my identity. im working on remembering its just a bad thing, plain and simple, because it means i am focused on ME instead of all of the people that are more important than that. im working on remembering that trivial things are trivial because they are trivial, not because they are secretly indicators of how on top of life you are. im working on remembering there are like three, maybe four things that are really worth being invested in in life, and none of them involve knick knacks or really cute boots. im working on it.

im working on it because one day, after a long happy life of very badly cooked meals and disasters in everything domestic, i want to be able to remember all of the nice, nice things i did for other people. i want to be okay with times when i felt fat or didnt have nice outfits or sat behind a girl that was a whole lot prettier than i was. i want to be unable to remember if my hair looked good or not. i want to only remember days filled with a lot of nonjealousy and noncompetition and a lot of happiness for other people and thoughts about haiti and service and really good books.

and one day when this life is over, maybe tomorrow or the next or 100 years from now, i want people at my funeral to say i was compassionate, kind, loving, huggy, generous, an embracer of life. i dont want anyone to say i was a perfectionist or kept an immaculate house. i want them to remember me as someone who blew past the trivial without giving it a second thought, someone who spent all of her precious energy and time and money on things that really mattered, like telling people they are really, really great and laughing with her mouth wide open.

i just think we should try. can we try?

2009-09-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-08-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

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."

2009-07-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-25T10:56:00.001-07:00

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,

2009-06-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-08T15:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-04-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

(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.

2009-03-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-11T15:44:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-03-05T19:14:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-01-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-01-06T14:05:00.001-08:00

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.

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

2008-11-17T23:19:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

2008-10-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

prayer to the puppies. im sorry ive neglected you.

2008-10-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

sorry for rambling, but i had to remind myself.

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

2008-09-30T20:03:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

2008-09-23T00:23:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

prayer to the little train that could.

2008-08-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

prayer to lovely people with beating hearts.

2008-08-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

prayer to jackie wilson.

2008-07-31T18:33:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

can i get an amen?

2008-07-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

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

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

amen red.

prayer to sodie. sodie for all.

2008-07-27T20:25:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

prayer to the crocalicious gods.

2008-07-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

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

Sharing is Caring. Pop Rocks can Save us.

2008-07-15T06:50:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

i found my heart in gettysburg.

2008-07-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

2008-06-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

a fun game.

2008-06-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

lrc i love you.

2008-06-18T14:11:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

lrc, youre gunna miss me.

obama fist bumps. and so do i.

2008-06-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

let the bodies hit the floor.

2008-06-03T20:46:00.001-07:00

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

we love each other.

2008-05-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

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

wild hearts cant be broken.

2008-05-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

for whit and lindsay.

2008-04-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

the universe is speaking, if you listen to it.

2008-04-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

its time to stop soul crushing.

2008-04-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

sincerely,
shannon elizabeth mehner.

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

2008-04-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

2008-04-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

diesta like you mean it.

2008-03-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

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

im mad.

2008-03-20T02:39:00.001-07:00

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

tomatoes like apples.

2008-03-19T01:32:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

ever wonder where gummy worms come from?

2008-03-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

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

criss cross apple sauce.

2008-03-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

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

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

check plus.

2008-03-03T22:09:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

why not post my soul on the internet.

2008-02-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

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

the golden summer

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

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

2008-02-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

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

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

i believe in yes.

2008-02-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

love is a place

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lent.

2008-02-09T01:42:00.000-08:00

for lent this year, i decided to give up common sense. didi, my little sister, is giving up self esteem. eric, my long-limbed friend, is giving up his virginity. My roommate katherine and her boyfriend, matt, are giving up gender. i feel good about these decisions for lent. i think these are all manageable goals, and i think if we work hard enough, we can achieve them. dedication is key, and staying out of tempting situations is a must. for example, i need to stay away from planners, career counselors, mathematicians, and any sort of parental figure. instead, i need to hang out at pool bars, focus on immediate gratification, and work on thinking only of myself and my carnal desires. its all about how much you want it, thats the thing. you have to keep your eye on the prize and not let small speed bumps along the way deter you from reaching your dreams. i challenge you all to reach for the gold. if you shoot for the moon, even if you fail you'll land among the stars. im a star, are you?

i love surprise people.

2008-02-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

its 10 32 am and im semi asleep on megan allens couch while she gently slumbers next to me and we have matching christmas pajama sets on and i am contemplating in my head what it is that all of my friends have in common (side note: she just lifted her head and mumbled something unintelligible that sounded like grumblegrumblewhyareyouawakegrumblegrumble and then promptly went back to a gentle slumber). if you know me, this is a much more difficult question than you may think at first glance. one time father mehner attempted to have a surprise birthday for me at the ripe age of 16 and invite my friends, and it was a disaster to the 8476th degree. lets just say the array of people present included players of pokemon, the comedy sportz team, several pleather sporting cheerleaders, mormons, atheists, pre-teens and sweet bros. the segregation was heavy, and martin luther king jr would have been disappointed. in terms of my very successful dating career, there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the characters i date, ranging from the most typical member of society to convicted felons with serious personality disorders. when didi and i go down the dating line up, it results in mass amounts of giggling and didi asking this question--"who the h are you ever going to marry!?". evidently, i have absolutely no "type". the question that remains is complex: what is it that causes me to create deep friendships with all of these diverse types? and why is funfetti cake so delicious at 10:48 am? (fourth slice in the last 32 hours, but i grooved and did some deep knee bends to stronger by kanye so i deserve it.)

i think part of it is that i have 74 personalities, so each one matches up with a different person. being the schizophrenic i am, i can easily morph into whoever i am with and discuss (or at least fake discuss) whatever topic it is that interests them (music, literary theory, skateboarding, cheez-its.) beyond my multi-pronged identity issues, i have realized what it is that i gravitate toward in all of these peoples is one beautiful enduring theme: they are surprises. wonderful, fantastic, expectation defying, surprise grab bags of human beings. when i am in a judgemental and generalizing mood, i like to separate provoian society into four categories: bros/hoes, indie rock, normal, and intellectuals. what i like about my friends is that though they may look like they fit into one of these categories, they are a surprise on the inside, like the time kevin yackle and i decided it would be funny to dip tomatoes in chocolate and pretend like they were chocolate covered strawberries. now that was a surprise. take for example, megan, who is now cleaning the kitchen in booty shorts. she loves juicy coutour, cheetah is a daily part of her wardrobe, and she completely defies all stereotypes of a normal bro/hoe because she cares deeply about the world, has the wittiest sense of humour known to man, and loves men with clear braces. she defies every expectation you would have for a platinum haired, perfectly tanned, jewel wearing woman. she is a Surprise with a capital S, and a Surprise that keeps on giving.

i am a big proponent of change in all of its various forms. i dye my hair approximately once a month because i get bored. i like it when people assume i am dumb and then i kick their a on tests. i try to get out of the country at least every six months. i LOVE when unexpected things happen, especially crisis situations. in light of all these fun facts, it is absolutely no surprise that i LOVE surprise people, and surround myself with them. In appearance, stature, intelligence level, culture, humour, hygiene habits, basically every way you can imagine, the people i am friends with have nothing in common. but they are all grab bags of goodies, gifts that keep on giving, surprise souls with nuggets of joy that are unexpected and oh so delightful. they are tricks of the best kind, constantly surprising me with interesting new talents, making me laugh because who would ever guess that my completely conservative looking and seemingly shy roommate katherine doesn't believe in gender, knows more about English than a lot of your professors, and loves to shimmy to mariah carey all i want for christmas is you. one day, when i acquire time and skillz and motivation to do this, i am going to take all of my surprise friends and put them in one room for 24 hours and let them all love each other. im sure it wouldnt happen in the first 16 hours, but i think as the lights got low and time kept tickin they would find that surprise people love other surprise people, and not to be fooled by the cheetah print, or by the extensive vocabulary, or by the sk8r boy persona. in the meantime, i challenge you all to suspend judgement for one day and go out and find a surprise person, and be surprised. you'll get addicted.

the things i actually do when i am pretending to do my homework.

2008-01-29T23:06:00.000-08:00

or, a secret peek into shannons night life:

read ee cummings poetry from my prized possession, the complete works of ee cummings. wish i had someone to share it with when i find a beautiful poem. have no one, so fantasize what it will be like when someone cares that i found a poem that made my soul collapse. reconcile self to the thought that maybe no one will ever care.

mark off where i have been in the wonderful book 1000 places to go before you die. while marking, plan trips to germany, greece, and anne frank's house. consider getting in my car and driving across america, but too cold to get out of bed.

read about radiohead on the internet. research arcade fire and their affiliation with the church. look at beck's art work online and wonder if he really believes in scientology.

wikipedia things i want to know more about that i wrote in the margins of my notes during class. previous searches: earlobe functions, gender difference in latin america, zoot suit riot, fox news and animal language to describe migrants, modernization theory, child prostitution in thailand, lead poisioning, dandruff and its causes.

watch snowboarding videos such as white balance. remember back on times when i used to be cool and reconcile myself to the fact that i will probably never be cool again.

ride my bike at 2 am. its cold at that hour, i probably don't recommend it.

see how many times i can listen to one song in a row before i get so sick of it i never want to listen to it again. i probably have the highest tolerance for repetition you have ever seen. watch beyonce irreplaceable on youtube and feel liberated from malekind.

write family newsletter emails to my whole family that describe the things i learned in school that day and end with sincerely, the prime minister of the world. ally mehner now refers to me as prime minister of the world in her daily conversations.

listen to music while lying upside down with my feet on the bed and my head on the floor. i like doing this while i eat laffy taffy and drink diet soda. i also like doing this when i am depressed.

write poetry that you will never read because i will never show it to you. consider sending poems i have written about various people across the world to them, realize this is bad idea and remove idea from head. as a warning, i write a poem about every new person i meet, so if you are reading this i have probably written a poem about you. i hope that terrifies you.

do reading for school, only never assigned reading. only reading that is due much later in the semester and that in no way will benefit my education at this point. i also read stuff from past semesters, that will not benefit me grade wise either.

buy stunna shades online.

get depressed about the state of humanity.

decide i am going to help the world. resolve to be more productive tomorrow.

why i am glad i am not perfect.

2008-01-24T21:11:00.000-08:00

sometimes by around 5 30 when i have been on campus since 9 i look at myself in the women's restroom mirror and this is what i see: eyeliner smeared around the corners of my eyes, jeans that have become perpetually baggier as the day has worn on, greasy hair that is frazzling in interesting ways, usually with greyish roots since my real hair color is called stray cat grey by most color charts, clothing that doesnt match nor seem to fit my body correctly, and a new zit forming on my lower lip. i have never been one of those girls that always look perfect, with flawless skin, coordinated ensembles and a sassy smile, and even if i try real hard, i never will be. i am not sexy. i am just a mess.

beyond the fact that i am a physical mess, i am an internal mess too. i am never on time. i always seem to crinkle every paper i own. no matter how often i vacuum my car, there are always crumbs on the floor. i say the wrong things at the wrong time. sometimes i forget to read my scriptures. sometimes i exercise, sometimes i dont. i am opinionated, loud, introverted and extroverted at the same time, emotionally unstable, and care way too much about everything. i wear unsexy costumes at halloween. i love diet dr pepper and i drink way too much of it all daily. i encourage chevron employees to fulfill their life dreams and acquire tattoos of hearts with wings. laffy taffys are my favorite food group. i lose my wallet 6 times a day.

in the official kingdom of marriage also known as provo, perfection seems to be the ideal. sometimes at 6 30 am, i look outside into the snowy darkness, and there are four girls out running in 9 degree weather. i know girls with 4.0s that have never missed a class in their lives. I know girls that always look perfect, never daring to step out of the house without their foundation and mascara on. i know girls that pretend they dont fart. i know girls that would never consider seeing an R rated movie, never consider thinking an ill thought of someone else, never admit they are sad or angry or occasionally cuss in their heads or say something that would hint at them being anything but perfect people that come from perfect families and do perfect things and think perfect things and act in perfect ways.

i used to want to be perfect. i used to think in order to trick a man into loving me, i had to be perfect. i used to think being righteous meant being perfect. but one day, while downing 32 oz of diet dr pepper while wearing orange mesh shorts some like to describe as my lesbian shorts, i realized it is all one big fat lie, and that being perfect will land you in a mental institution or on mass amounts of antidepressants. NO ONE is perfect, and being a good person does not mean being perfect, or even working on becoming perfect. the problem with being perfect is that perfection like what i am describing is not REAL. REAL people are not perfect, and people that put on the pretense of being perfect are not facing reality. perfection is a big hoax based far too much on everyone else's opinion and holding in your gas at all times. the problem with perfection is there are always people that are going to be more perfect than you. so if you don't figure out something else to be, you're going to end up almost perfect with another perfect person beating you out for prom queen of perfection. you're going to end up with pneumonia because no one should run in 9 degree weather. you're going to never experience what its like to say what the hell and miss your class so that you can go jump in mud puddles with your galoshes on. you're going to end up with an eating disorder, because not everyone is naturally thin and gaining weight is part of life and it happens to everyone. you're going to end up trapped in a box of perfection, desperately attempting to cover up your imperfections so no one finds out your secret that you are a real human being. you're going to end up living all the rules of religion, without ever figuring out why you are living them or what the real meaning of being like Christ is. you're going to end up thin, accomplished, poised, polished and absolutely miserable.

I think this quote probably sums up my thoughts on the matter perfectly: "but nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great, ever came out of imitations. What is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. More difficult because there is no zeitgeist to read, no template to follow, no mask to wear. Terrifying actually, because it requires you to set aside what your friends expect, what your family and co-workers demand, what your acquaintances require, to set aside the message this culture sends...and then look, everyday, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am" (Anna Quindlen).

I am not, in any way, promoting being mediocre. I think it is good to strive, to work, to long, to push yourself. But I think that all of these things need to be done in reality, by real people. And I think that because a person wears a bikini or isn't super woman and cook and clean and get straight A's and aspire to be the best homemaker and relief society president and iron their sheets everyday and never have emotional breakdowns or says something bad about someone else, doesn't make them not righteous, or not good, or not a fabulous person. I think it just makes them REAL. I think we probably all need to give up this quest for perfection, and start on the quest for progression. We need to face reality, we need to accept ours and others flaws, which are sometimes not even flaws, but just idiosyncracies that make us individuals. We need to realize that really we are just commanded to love and that is what brings us to God, not wearing perfect clothing or exercising perfect amounts or smiling perfect smiles. We need to embrace our individuality, our unique identities, and enjoy being a mess, and use that mess to become more loving, more beautiful people. I will never have perfect eyeliner or get up at 5:30 AM to read my scriptures for three hours a day. i will never be prom queen of perfection, and neither will you, and I am FINE WITH THAT, so I think you should be too. I am glad I am a mess. I am glad I can chew with my mouth open, laugh too loud, fall asleep in church, admit that I suck at several things and eat like I'm four years old, have opinions other people don't agree with. I am glad to be me and not someone drowning in nonreality. I am glad I left the cage of perfection, a free bird in mismatched clothing singing the praises of imperfection. it's a much better way to live provo, i promise.

why you should read my favorite book.

2008-01-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

From the time I was in fourth grade, I’ve known I was crazy. You’re probably not crazy, so you think I’m ridiculous and dramatic. But I know I’m crazy, and the funny thing is, I guess I’m becoming okay with that. If you’re not okay with that, then go read something else, because this essay doesn’t end with me realizing I am actually normal or that my insanity will one day magically disappear or even that there is medication for this sort of thing. I am honestly just a lunatic, and I probably always will be.

I think I was always crazy, but fourth grade is when I admitted it to myself, and my mom started calling in the therapists. We were assigned to read Bridge to Terabithia for 4th grade English, and I, being the creative soul and complete disaster that I was, procrastinated reading it until 7 PM the night before. We had had about a month to complete this task, so I knew I had better do some good skimming if I wanted to advance to fifth grade. I figured I’d thump through the chapters, get an idea of what happened, and use my brilliant ability to completely fake it to charm my teacher and fellow classmates. It had always worked before.

My plan crashed and burned the second I got to page 2. I was dying to know if Jess Aarons was going to win the 5th grade race. I was dying to know why his family didn’t understand him and how he was going to survive when at the ripe age of 10 he already felt abused by reality. I was transported into a world where I fit—where imagination and deep feeling and magic were part of the landscape.

I found myself in Leslie Burke. She appeared on page 9 and Moonlight Sonata rang in my ears. She was tough and complex and creative and completely comfortable in her own skin. She didn’t give a damn that the other kids thought she dressed weird or that she didn’t have a TV or that her parents were ‘hippies’—writers that the southern world of Lark Creek not only didn’t understand, but rejected. She rejoiced in her abnormality, she delighted in her insanity. Her soul sang to mine, and for the first time in my nine short years, I felt like I had a place in the world.

I read voraciously for hours, enthralled with the magical world of Terabithia Leslie and Jess create, jealous that they found each other, immersed in the way that they fed and nurtured each other and created a safe haven to protect their tender souls from the outside world. I couldn’t stop; I was hungry. Hungry to know that it is okay to see things from a different lens, hungry to know that this beautiful world wasn’t going to be destroyed right before my eyes. I could see the sun shining off the walls of the gold room so clearly it hurt my heart; I craved climbing to the tops of the trees of Terabithia so badly it made my fists clench.

I got to page 212 and almost collapsed. Jess’ beautiful world came tumbling down when Leslie drowned. I thought it was over. The magic in the universe was gone, shimmering for a fleeting second and then disappearing into a cloud of vapor. I resigned myself to a world of social constraints and superficial emotion, of always feeling misunderstood and repressed in my box of isolation. I cried and cried, not sure if I could continue reading. When Leslie died, a piece of me died.

But I was valiant. I read on, perhaps partly out of morbid curiosity to see how Jess could possibly withstand this giant defeat. I needed him to fight, because I wasn’t strong enough. The universe stood silent, uneasy and not sure where to turn from this point. Do we let the Janice Averys of the world take over? It seemed to be asking.

But Jess fought. He wavered, he sunk, but he did not give up. He took the gift of this little girl that had showed him the beauty inherent in the very fabric of the universe, and he held tight to it. He knew, better than I, that Leslie had endowed him with responsibility. So he marched on, with courage of heart and nobility of character. He knew that when Leslie died the magic didn’t die too. He would just have to learn to recognize it on his own.

By the last page, I was no longer crying out of sorrow, but crying because the infinite amount of pain and beauty in the universe was weighing on my soul. Leslie awakened the magic in the universe for Jess, and now it was Jess’ turn to awaken the magic in someone else. On Page 213 he fights on in the way we must all fight on--He takes his sister Maybelle’s hand and he introduces her to the land of Terabithia.

Maybe it took me until I was 9 to figure out was I was crazy. Or maybe it just took getting to know Leslie Burke to realize that crazy isn’t a bad thing, but a beautiful and noble thing if you use it to fight the giants of Terabithia and the suffering inherent in reality. It isn’t easy being crazy—people don’t like the way you dress, or they laugh at you because you don’t have a TV and see the beauty in sonnets and leaves and little boys named Jess that like to paint. Sometimes you wish you didn’t feel it in your soul when you heard a hummingbird sing or suffer with your mom as she battles terminal cancer. Sometimes you just want to surrender to the Janice Averys of the world and throw in the towel.

But Leslie taught me that Terabithia can be found anywhere. Leslie showed me that the magic is all around you, but first you have to find it inside of you. Leslie taught me that being crazy doesn’t mean you get to sit comfortably in a box of isolation for the rest of your life, but that with lunacy comes responsibility: the responsibility to fight on and awaken the magic in others, because there is suffering and pain in the universe, but there will always be more beauty. You just have to know how to see it.

a letters a letter no matter how small. or an explanation for why i do not capitalize at the beginning of sentences in this blog.

2008-01-16T08:01:00.000-08:00

i don’t believe in capitals. i guess that’s really not true—its not that I have something against capitals, its just that i don’t like using them in their proper places, at the beginning of sentences and for titles and names and so forth. ive had always a soft spot for lowercase—the dot hanging out in its teeny circle of solitude above the lower case i, the little q dipping its tail into the next line, a bit self conscious about its extra appendage. If lowercase q went to jr high, he’d be the one getting picked on, his voice not yet changed and still wearing superhero briefs even when everyone else has graduated to the manly world of boxers. I’m not sure why I love the little guys so much, I’ve just always felt wronged somehow watching the innocent r and baby s marched into place by the big bad capital Ds and Fs of the world. maybe I just read the world through a marxist lens, but it always seemed like the lowercase letters deserved a chance to be at the front of the line too.

i think this natural disgust for the aggressive nature of capital letters was what led me to fall in love with ee cummings. ee cummings doesn’t use capitals in his poetry. In an ee cummings poem, everything seems equal, nonintimidating, just lower case letters smoothly unfolding down the page, like velvet carpet or creamy sorbet, with no big bad capitals to intimidate the weenie lowercases to get back in their places at the back of the line. For a while, I tried to live in an ee cummings world devoid of capitals. i started writing everything in little letters, refusing to buy into the idea that capitals are a necessary part of the world of language. my teachers didn’t agree, constantly marking up my harmonious worlds of liberated lowercase with angry red pen—The beginning of sentences need capitals! Why is everything lowercase!? i tried to explain it was deliberate, but 6th grade teachers don’t believe you make errors like that on purpose. in danger of failing 6th grade (failing elementary school does not bode well for your academic future) and being scorned by all the capital-using students around me, I relinquished my poetic license. social pressure had forced me to become a capitalist.

i hate the fact that I gave into the Man and continue to give into the Man, but i do. im a capital-using prostitute that has a lowercase soul, a little letter loving woman screaming damn the man inside while turning in perfectly punctuated papers conformed to the perfection society demands of me. such is life says my father. but a little piece of me dies everytime i replace my shy friend little b with his angry and ferocious older Brother.

one day when i have a complete nervous breakdown and finally allow myself to break free of social norms (this is inevitable, mind you, for ive been conforming to standards completely against my nature since i was potty trained and at some point i assuredly will snap), the first thing im going to do is turn in an essay in all lowercase letters. yes, this will involve an inordinate amount of work seeing as microsoft word conveniently auto capitalizes all words that are supposed to be capitalized within your document. but i think im up to the task, armed with the knowledge that breaking free of the system is not going to occur overnight. reaching outside of the box of conformity we are all drowning in is going to take going back to every sentence within my document and de-autocapitalizing, but im okay with that. we must start somewhere.

for now blogging world, don’t be fooled by my outward conformity, my capitalist appearance. i remain an advocate of the underdog, a proponent of the i and r and o, a lover of the little man.

my stability in life.

2008-01-15T00:55:00.000-08:00

her name is marie and she is pretty much the greatest person of all time, ever. she is upward of 60, has clear braces, and volunteers with me at a grief center called canary garden. i may sound like im being sarcastic, but i assure you, im not. she is simply the one thing, next to diet coke, purple skittles, watching stunna glasses videos on you tube, and reading ee cummings poetry, that gets me through the week and reminds me that though people suck and tsunamis happen and i may have a 43 percent chance of being stabbed by my exboyfriend, life is beautiful and everything is going to be okay.

why? you may ask. let me tell you why. beyond the fact that she is a lovely human being and attempting to better humanity through service rendered at canary garden, she unashamedly, unabashedly, and might i even say boldly and with a certain air of flair and elegance, LOVES mickey mouse. No, my friend, she does not simply like mickey mouse, or even love mickey mouse in lower case letters. she LOVES mickey mouse. how do i know this? because her life (and her wardrobe) is CONSUMED by mickey mouse. she spent christmas vacationing at disney world (i asked her how it was and im pretty sure no one has ever loved a vacation more than marie loved disney world). her keys are adorned with a micky mouse key chain. she wears mickey mouse clips in her hair daily, sometimes several. if i could get a close enough look, i would even submit a 32 percent guesstimate that the brackets on her braces are in the shape of small mickey mouse heads. she loves mickey mouse like britney spears loves shaving her head and exposing her lack of undergarments, like hilary clinton hates to lose, like i love my hip hiptionary that is on its way in the mail from amazon.com. a whole, hella, lot.

tonight i walked into canary garden and there was marie, with her mickey mouse clipboard in hand, mickey mouse clips in hair, and mickey mouse keychain in pocket. joy swelled within my bosom when i realized she had a new piece of paraphenelia tonight--a mickey mouse leather bomber jacket. seeing as i grew up 30 minutes from disneyland and have frequented the disney store since the age of 4, i have a pretty good hold on the prices of mickey mouse related items. i would render a guess that this jacket cost upward of 100 dollars. to marie, it was a small price to pay to be swathed in the mouse that she loves so tenderly. all i can say is, boy did she look hot in that leather beauty. i cant wait to see what next week brings.

so you want me to stop mickey mousing around and tell you why the heck i am telling you all of this. im getting to it, really. my sister and i have speculated on what it is that fostered such an attachment (possible theories: her parents got a divorce when she was young and watching mickey mouse on tv helped her cope, her deceased husband was walt disney, she was born with a disfigured head that resembled mickey mouse ears, etc.) its not really important what it is that caused this fixation to occur. maybe one day i will ask, when i can control my giggles enough to resemble a normal human being around her. but right now, im not concerned. what makes me so happy about the whole situation is that marie has found her stability in life, and she wears it loud and proud. marie knows what makes her happy and she sticks to it loyally--she's found a way to survive in this ridiculous chaos we call life. mickey mouse is her system, and im pretty sure we all need some sort of system to navigate our way through the jungle that is mankind.

marie is my hero because she knows what it is that will bring a smile to her face--putting on her mickey mouse socks in the morning, jingling her mickey mouse key chain, wiping her nose on mickey mouse tissue. maybe disney is a worldwide corporation that is contributing to globalization and hyperreality and all other things bad in the world, but maries not worried. mickey mouse is her man, and she loves him. she doesnt love disney, or love disney movies, she just loves one man, one mouse, and his name is mickey. to me, thats what its all about--finding your mickey mouse in the world and sticking to it, regardless of how ridiculous your grey strands may look pulled up into a pastel mickey mouse claw, regardless of how many people are giggling behind your back because lets face it, mickey mouse obsessions are a little odd. its about not caring that you are upward of 60 and maybe too old for mickey mouse, or leather jackets for that matter, not caring that mickey mouse probably stopped being cool in 1972 (unless of course you are sporting the retro mickey mouse sweatshirt, in which case you have reached the pinnacle of indie coolness). marie loves him anyway, and she loves him for real. not because its cool, not because other people think shes funny or hip, but because she honestly, truly, LOVES mickey mouse. she adorns her soul and wardrobe with him, and i like that. for marie, he is the one thing that will remain stable and true, a constant in a sea of change.

marie has inspired me to find my own mickey mouse, my own system for smiling my way through the day, and i suggest you all seek your mickey mouses too (and if possible, find a leather bomber jacket as cool as marie's). how many of us really truly love something from the bottom of our soul, even when its not cool or hip or even when people may diagnose us with slight mental derangement for loving it? how many of us love something for real?

for now, marie is my mickey mouse, increasing my happiness level one mickey mouse themed item at a time. i hope next week brings embroidered ears atop her cute little head, sure to provide a stunning accent to her mickey mouse brackets.