Reunited and It Feels So Good

This year Thanksgiving was in Colorado. Don’t worry though, I still spent it with my family. 

When you ask a middle school youth group what they’re thankful for they always say, “family and friends.” It gets old hearing 20 kids have the same response. Seriously, there has to be something else they’re grateful for. This past weekend I found that my answer is the same as theirs. I can’t put into words how thankful I am to be blessed with such an incredible family (this family would also include those in the above picture) and amazing friends. Not only the friends that I’ve known for years, but the ones that I’ve met in the last couple months as well.

Doesn't this look like a great place to spend Thanksgiving?
Yes, I think so too.

I’m not exactly sure why, but I've never really been that homesick. Every once in a while I was, but not as bad as some people said it would be. I do miss being around people that I really know and who know me. Certain things happen that remind me of something else, and I just wish there were people here who would know why I was laughing for no reason. Example: anytime someone mentions segways I nearly lose it. On Thanksgiving I missed my family more than I have so far while being away from them, because I was with a family that was nothing like my own (it was also rather upsetting that there wasn’t a bowl of black olives in sight). My family had dinner at Gramma and Grampa’s, and we all have sat in the same places for as long as I can remember. So when my cousin who sits next to me sent a picture of just her place at the end of the table, I almost freaked. I was sad because I wasn’t with them, but that was outweighed by how happy it makes me to have them all. 

Olive You

I've been thinking about all the things that I'm thankful for, and I realized that they are all things that I don't have right now because I'm not in Prescott and not with those I love. This past week proved to me that a reunion will be more enjoyable the longer you go without something or seeing someone. So I can't wait to see everyone and everything that I've found myself missing over the past four months, because I know that seeing them again will make me happier than anything else ever could.

Psalm 118:28-29

You are my God, I give you thanks; my God, I offer you praise. Give thanks to the LORD, who is good, whose love endures forever.

"You held the bell. Go you"

One of the few things that I can remember are the dates that certain events happened on. I have no idea why, but it’s probably because that type of thing is important to me. Today is one of those important days. A year ago I caused a school lockdown (saying it that way makes me feel cooler), and not one day has gone by this past year that I haven’t thought about it. Terribly sorry if it bothers you that I’m so open about this and that I talk about it like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal, but not because it was a horrible thing. At the time it wasn’t exactly pleasant, and not being able to drive for 3 months wasn’t my favorite. This is a big deal because it is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

Something that bothers me the most about this whole situation is that there are about 10 minutes where I can’t remember anything. Absolutely nothing. The last thing I remember was packing up because class was almost over. Then I was laying on the floor. It took another 20 minutes before I felt like I wasn’t half asleep and could talk. I don’t remember the people who helped out, people told me afterwards who the heroes of the day were. The only people I actually saw were officer fuller (he wasn’t even close to me, so I have no clue why I saw him), my dad (I heard him more than I saw him), one paramedic (only because he was right in my face), and McCready (I waved to him as they were putting me in the ambulance). On top of not being able to remember anything that happened during those 10 minutes, I had no control over what was going on. I had people grabbing me and sticking stuff in my mouth, and I can’t remember any of it. That doesn't sound like a huge problem, but it really freaks me out. You know how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea where you are? It was sort of like that, except it took me a while before I figured out what was happening.

What surprised me during this whole thing was that people cared. Obviously my close friends were concerned, but I was most surprised by the people in Carbone’s (aka Carboner) class. In my corner I was surrounded by guys. They’re great, and I love them all, but they’re not exactly the people I would’ve expected to run to the nurse or get mad at her when she wouldn’t let them use their phones to call an ambulance. I mean, these are the guys who played Pokemon when we were working on our senior paper. Nothing shows you who you real friends are like being in the hospital, and nothing shows you how great people actually are like having a seizure in class. 

I was in the ER for about 10 minutes and then friends started to text me. There were 11 that I talked to those next few days. Now that’s not an overwhelming number, but that doesn’t matter to me. I remember every one of the people I talked to, and that’s why I know the specific number. Your true friends are the ones who say, “are you alive?” and,  “you really shouldn’t do that again tho you scared the shit out of me.” 

Then came all the what if questions. What if I was driving? What if I was walking down the hallway? What if my really close friends were there? What if I didn’t wake up? As I was thinking about these questions, something finally clicked in my head. None of those bad things happened and everything turned out okay, so God had to be watching out for me. Maybe He does know what He’s doing. Looking back now, it’s clear to see that God used this to bring me closer to Him. God is so amazing.

During the months following all of this, my view on life completely changed. I began to appreciate life in a way that I never had before. So if the last thing I ever did was pack up my bag for my next class, how would people remember me? What kind of an impact would I have made? I didn’t know the answer. I knew what I hoped the answer would’ve been, but I honestly couldn’t answer them. That’s when I realized I had to change. I had to live doing the things I wanted to, because you never know if you're going to get another chance.

I can sit here and tell you a bunch of cliche sayings (live like there’s no tomorrow, live with no regrets, blah blah blah), but it’s hard to take those to heart without having a reason to live in those ways. In order to understand how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away, you have to experience for yourself how fragile life really is. I don't know what that will look like for you. You'll know when this does happen though, because you truly will be living. You will feel more alive than you ever have before. So if tomorrow never comes, will you be happy with the person you were today?

Psalm 90:12

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

"Wilbur Would Kick Waldo's A#@"

Everyone always thought that I would go to U of A (including me). Who knows how many Arizona shirts I’ve owned throughout my life. So the fact that Weber’s mascot is also a wildcat (Waldo instead of Wilbur) made it a little bit better that I was coming here and not U of A. I’d be a purple wildcat instead of a navy and red one. Anyways, my loyalty is now with this school. I bleed purple. 

Just remember that in order to get purple, you have to combine red and blue. Tonight a group of people from our floor watched the Weber/USU basketball game. Of course I cheered for us even as we blew a ten point halftime lead and then lost by twelve. Then I came back home and watched the last minute of the Arizona/USC game. I was more into that minute than the forty minutes of the basketball game. Why? Arizona will always be my first team. I love Weber, but if they played Arizona I would root for Arizona. Sorry Waldo, but you just can’t beat out the team that I’ve been a fan of for nineteen years. 


P.S. 
The title of this was a quote from Robert when we were having a conversation about who had better sports teams.

Except navy and red, not purple 

Bear Down

For mATt iNg

With some things I'm a little bit OCD. Such as formatting a paper or some other computer related project. It has to be perfect and I will spend as much time necessary to make it that way. Well my blog is not cooperating with my perfectionist tendencies. I can get pictures to go in the general area I want, but sometimes they decide to do their own thing when I post them. Who knows how long I spent getting pictures of old TV shows to line up uniformly, only to have them go all over the place. Quite frustrating. So of course I would go back and edit again, because perhaps the blogger website was confused about what I was asking it to do. My determination didn't pay of, because the pictures were all over the place again. So frustrating that I have to get up and walk away from the computer. Sometimes I just scrap the pictures and use links, so make sure you click on them. Text also decides to not conform to my wishes. Check out the space between the first part of the T3/Tswift entry and the title. It's quite large. I can assure you that I've tried to fix this at least ten times, but to no avail. If you see something that isn't perfectly formatted in future entries, know that it's really bothering me too.

T3/TSwift

It’s borderline ridiculous how sentimental I am. That’s why I’m a pack-rat (not a hoarder). I keep anything that has some memory attached to it. Not lame memories like “oh someone gave this to me on a tuesday” or something along that line. There is a legitimate reason behind why I keep things. Memories are my favorite. While I may not be able to remember the name of somebody I met 10 minutes ago, I can remember random things from years ago. In case you were wondering what frequency the mariachi radio station is that my grampa listens to, it’s 103.5 FM. Or least that’s what it was six years ago. I haven’t checked since then. 

My mother sent Toy Story 3 today, so I promise that memory/sentimental/hoarding, I mean pack-rat tendency, is a relevant topic. Anyways, Robert and I went to T3 opening day (not in 3D because it’s lame). Let me just tell you, I cried. I can think of three movies that have made me do that... Marley & Me (luckily I watched it alone at midnight because it was definitely an ugly cry), Friday Night Lights (Yes, weird I know. I can’t really explain this one), and Fox and the Hound (I was four and I still haven’t watched it since). Now it didn’t just get me at the end (if this didn’t happen to you, then you must have had a bad childhood or some traumatic experience that caused you to have no emotions and I’m terribly sorry about that), but also at the beginning. The part where it’s showing video of Andy playing as a kid literally brought hundreds of my own memories flooding into my head at once. I’m fully aware that this should have made me happy, and trust me I was very happy. The problem is that Andy was going to college, and I was to. It was like my childhood was ending, and that is not ok with me.

I won’t list all my childhood memories because there’s too many and I’d spend the next few hours reminiscing. One thing they all had in common though was imagination. Side note: I had an imaginary husband named Geppetto and our children were Doreen and Henry. Sometimes they would join my family at the table for dinner and I’d make them their own servings. I was also obsessed with horses when I was younger, but we didn’t exactly have the room for one in our backyard. Side note: my car fund was originally a horse fund. So what was I going to do about my horse dilemma? I’d just pretend that I had one. Better than that, I could have two or three imaginary horses. 

  

Isn't he cute?

Think back to your imaginary friends and to what games you used to play with your toys. There was absolutely no doubt in your mind that those things were real. You could see them and hear their voices and you could play for hours without ever getting bored. At what point did we realize that they weren’t real? That our toys were just toys, and they didn’t come to life when we left the room? That our pretend horses weren’t going to cut it anymore, so we needed to start saving our quarters for a real one? When did we begin to feel bored and needed someone else to make up games for us to play? I don’t know the answer, but if I find out, I’ll go back to that point and convince my younger self that the things I imagine are real. I’ll tell myself, “Self, don’t ever stop serving your husband and kids dinner, or they’ll get hungry. Let your horses out of their stalls every day and brush them afterwards so they’ll look clean and healthy. Oh, and don’t ever stop believing in Santa.”

Imagination makes life so much better

That brings me to this song Never Grow Up by Taylor Swift. Side note: I like Taylor Swift. She has my respect for writing her own lyrics and music. Also for not punching Kanye West right in his big mouth. Originally I was just going to talk about how I don’t want to grow up. It’s true. I don’t want to have to get a job and pay taxes and find somewhere to live and have to worry about insurance. Those things sound boring and rather stressful, so I’d rather avoid them for as long as possible. Unfortunately these things are starting to slowly creep into my life. I don’t doubt my ability to handle these issues, I just don’t want to have to deal with them because that will mean I’m getting older, therefore I won’t be a kid anymore. Hence why T3 made me feel like my childhood was ending. When you were younger life was so much easier. I often wish that I was four again so I could play all day and not have a care in the world. As I was writing about imagination, I realized something... it’s possible for me to grow up and do things that adults do, but that doesn’t mean I have to grow out of my imagination. Maybe if I can somehow recapture my childhood imagination, I can enjoy life more and not be as stressed as everyone else. So I’m going to go try and find out how to get back to the state of mind where I believed in all the ideas I came up with, and had no doubt in my mind that they were real.

Bring Your Little Brother to College Day

Robert came to visit last Thursday until Sunday. Why? Because he’s my brother and he can. On Friday we finished To Kill A Mockingbird in english (that’s all we did last week), which he watched last year in school. Then there was the always exciting algebra, which is a class he is taking this year. It is a very strong possibility that he is smarter than some of my classmates. 

Friday night we went to the Ogden Zombie Crawl. There were a couple hundred people decked out in zombie gear walking around downtown. It was pretty exciting. One guy ran up and was about an inch away from my face making zombie noises. Then we checked out some Weber hockey. Those are always entertaining games to attend. FYI: Robert ate four corn dogs.

Saturday was last last home football game of the season. We walked so we didn’t have to mess with parking. It was a great idea until it started to rain at halftime, and continued to do so until we got back.




We played some ping pong and pool (I dominated of course), and then came the Wii. I’m capable of surviving without video games, but we discovered Tanks! and it’s ridiculously addicting. We played until 2:00 AM. Since it was late, everything was funny. The next day my stomach hurt from laughing so much.

During our video game time we had a three hour iChat with Paige. We actually talked for about two hours, but apparently our side was blurry (remind me to sign up for skype). The other hour consisted of: Robert putting his finger over the camera, Paige flipping off Robert and threatening to beat him up the next time they saw each other, having to get up to cut a weird looking tail of hair off the side of Robert’s head, all of us watching sports center without really talking, having to get up to fan smoke away from the fire alarm, and then putting Paige on the table so she could watch our exhilarating game of Tanks!

What a great, great, great weekend.