read

33. the history of love, by nicole krauss.

i need someone to explain this book to me. i.......didn't get it. like, who is who's dad and who is the girl named after and what the heckfire. i did love the little brother though. probably, i took like 51 years to read it, so.....just someone explain it.

34. room, by emma donoghue.

i loved the first part of this book but i felt like the ending was rushed, or the climax was rushed. something was rushed. such a unique way to write this book, from the perspective of a child who only knows Room. 

35. the land of decoration, by grace mccleen.

i really, really liked this book. again with the point of view from the child. there were lots of parts where i cried, which i always love for some morbid reason.  i had to infer a lot in the end because that's the kind of book it is (at least for me who refuses to believe that this could ever happen) and it still leaves me wondering and confused. but it's okay. the ending was perfect.

36. by the iowa sea, by joe blair.

this. i can't even. this book was amazing. it's about a family (written by the father) and son with autism. i loved his writing and the style of his writing. like, james frey. only, not james frey. this was the first book on "memoirs, a recommendation for you" sent to me by amazon and usually those things are full of sports memoirs (no, thanks) and random B list celebrities but this. this was there and i 1) liked the name (there are no sea's in iowa, silly!) and 2) liked the cover (snob). both of those things turned out to have GREAT BOOK right behind them.

i am just trucking along with these here books. but yes. i am still reading the lovely bones and how to read the air. i cannot concentrate when i read the lovely bones. i seriously get so distracted because it's.......slow. i'll get really into it and then have to put it down then i won't pick it up for weeks and weeks. we'll see how i feel when i'm finished, but right now it's not a favorite. i'm also thinking about reading the road and never knowing and little bee. i have these on sample on my kindle and i just cannot decide. 

GIVE ME RECOMMENDATIONS NOW, PLEASETHANKYOU.

closure.

I’ve been suffering from discontent in my heart and soul for the past few weeks. I can’t seem to shake this feeling that’s bearing down on me. I know exactly where it came from, I know exactly why but I cannot make it go away. A few weeks ago someone blindsided me with some not very nice things and out of nowhere, really. And those not very nice words planted a seed of doubt. These little seeds of worthlessness and failure and hatred of myself. These horrible, horrible things that dug deep into my heart and latched on and then spread like wildfire. I doubted myself at every turn, because that’s what you do with these kinds of things.  You’re not good enough, you're told, and you start to believe it.

I just kind of meandered through my days, knowing that these things aren’t true, but not really believing that. But it’s not enough to know that about yourself when you wonder what the rest of the population thinks.  How the rest of the world sees you. It’s not supposed to matter, but we know that it does. It does matter because you know that you’re not fake, you know that you’re not hypocritical and you know that you care.  But then there’s that person, that, for whatever reason, is jealous or angry or upset or spiteful or vengeful.  There’s that person that plants tiny little words of doubt into the person you thought you were, but now you’re not so sure.  And if that’s how they see you, then what about the rest of humanity?  These things become lies. Evil little, dirty little lies. These are the things you once knew:  I make mistakes and I am the farthest thing from perfect, but I am not useless. I am not worthless. I am not alone. I am created in God’s image and he would not create something that He did not love. But it’s completely a different thing to feel these seeds of doubt and deceit sprout up and curl their vicious tendrils around that little spot where all your emotions hide. And for them to kill off those things you once knew and replace them with the things you now know: I am worthless.  I am useless.  I am alone.

And to take these things back, to gain control in shifting sand you have to reach out. You have to listen to the God who is quiet, but He is there. He breathed new life into the dark through Evan.  Through my husband who has to say nice things to me because he is my husband, but I knew that those were not his words.

It’s kind of like spring time, when you pull all the dead vines off the side of your house and rip them from the chain-link fence. You trim back the parts of the trees and bushes and plants that have died during the harsh winter and you are left with new blooms. If you scratch the surface of that branch a little bit of green shows through. That’s new life. It’s a bit of a dramatic analogy. But aren’t you always surprised when you were just sure that your favorite bush didn’t make it through the frost and the snow and the below zero nights? But there it is, thawing out with the rest of the world. There, too, are the truths. Hidden below the dead branches and the brown leaves. It’s going to take some time to clean up and to restore, but it’s alive.  It’ll be okay.

I’m not suffering with depression. I don’t hate myself. I know these things to be true: I am useful. I am productive. I am kind. I am not alone. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Those other things, those did not come from a place of truth or a place where healthy emotions would thrive and flourish.

Emotions are messy and I don’t like them. I find myself at a loss for what I should do when someone is having an emotion around me. I should be an encourager and a friend and I should have positive things to say. But I don’t like emotions. I don’t like to be honest about how I’m feeling. I don’t like to get down and dirty with other people’s emotions because it usually involves personal space invasions and a lot of touching—two of my least favorite things. But that’s not the point.  The point is that I shouldn’t be comfortable where there is suffering. I don’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but I can be there for you. I am going to be intentional with my words. To not speak my mind because it’s exactly that; but to allow my words and my emotions to come from my heart where they will only build people up, not knock them down. I’m going to be intentional and forgiving and loving.  I’m going to regrow and I will be okay and I will be able to forgive and I will be able to forget and other things will happen that will start this process again but I will not falter because I know these things to be true: I am useful. I am productive. I am kind. I am not alone. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

ramblings from the shy one

You know what I hate? I hate assumptions. That because I’m quiet and maybe a little shy and so I’m obviously a rude you-know-what. Today my firm bought everyone lunch at a very ritzy club for administrative professionals week. (I’ve also gotten free catered breakfast, a target gift card and there’s still 2 days left this week! Go law firm, go!) I tend to keep to myself in my office for lot of reasons: I’m younger than almost everyone which means I can’t discuss my grandchildren and social security benefits and golf and power-walking in my step-ups. I refuse to partake in office drama (you should see me when these ladies start to run their mouths. I am the very best at not saying a word and not engaging in any wayshapeorform with that nonsense. Good news: drama doesn’t end when you’re 50 and all grown up! and you want to know something so ridic? my boss, on my review EVEN SAID that i don't partake in the petty drama and i am never associated with that noise. um, duh. thanks for noticing.). Therefore I don’t have very many friends. And I’m okay with that because it’s work and my work life and social life don’t need to overlap. It’s not life or death. But today I sat with several other people at lunch (and can we talk about the fact that I went above and beyond my comfort zone and even went to the luncheon?!) and we talked about dogs and our pets and the ability to have chickens in town now (um, gross. Except I still want a pig, so there’s that) and how delicious the prime rib was (right?! Prime rib, shrimp, chicken, open bar. I mean, really.) and how ridiculous the federal building is and how federal employees get heated parking and blah blah blah and I think I maybe said 3 words. I am the opposite of the type of person who jumps into a conversation with two thousand things to say. I’m the opposite of the type of person who knows someone who has this dog and that dog and it sheds too much for their taste but it’s a fine animal otherwise, and who has free-range chickens in their backyard shed and a mean old hen whose eggs are the best if you can get to them and whose cousin knows someone who knows someone who works in the federal building and why yes, they do indeed have heated parking.

That’s not me. In fact, I have a sharpei/Brittany spaniel dog and I bet you don’t. I bet you’ve never even seen one. My best friend in high school has a St. Bernard, two in fact, and they’re fine dogs except for the drool. I could do without the drool. My grandma had chickens when I was growing up, but I was always scared of them and the damp little coop she kept them in. I don’t know anyone who works in the federal building but my dad works for the city and he rides his bike to work every morning because he’s intense and his truck gets 2 miles to the gallon or something fancy like that and so he has heated parking too because he parks his bike in his heated office.

So there.

But the point is, I’m not the type of person who wants to tell everyone everything. But maybe I'd tell you something if you asked me, even with my social skills that equal those of a hermit crab. If you asked me what kind of dog I have, I wouldn’t sit there are stare at you with my blue eyes fixed on your mouth (because if you asked I have to read lips because I do) and my mouth gaping open like my brain has suddenly evaporated into thin air. I would tell you. But it’s against my entire being to jump head first into a conversation that has nothing to do with my best friend from five years ago and her dogs and my dad’s bike in his office and my grandma’s dead chickens just because I have nothing to say so I’m going to say everything.

I’m shy and I’m quite. I like to listen and I will only give you advice if you ask and I feel incredibly comfortable around you. I don’t share myself with a lot of people. This person I portray on my blog may or may not be who I am in real life depending on how well you know me. I will tell you what you ask me. I will not push my memories and my experiences and my friends and my family and stories about all of these things into your face because it’s not relevant. I’ll be quiet and I will let you speak and I will listen and that is how I will be. Because that is who I am.

In other news, my entire dream was in sign language last night. I spent two weeks in a deaf school and suddenly I’m fluent in ASL five years later? I’m totally okay with that.

round two

 is it possible to be absolutely in love with these pictures? because i am. i started printing them off last night and i love them even more when they're hanging up all pretty on my walls. 

  the above picture was approximately .09 seconds after completely stamping on a cactus. that was real fun, so good thing we're kind of far away so you can't see how completely pissed i am. i have a battle wound and all.

let me tell you how this works. we set the camera to take 10 pictures bambambam and we're really good at holding still or smiling a different way or something for about ohhhhh 3 seconds. then we get bored and we act like total nuts and this happens. which is who we are in real life so.......we also really love that sign and taking pictures with it (good present, jess! <3) also these pictures were taken with my new lens, and i am enamored with it. if it weren't the size of a small baby i'd use it all day err day. lovelovelove.

 this picture is my new favorite. i don't know if it's the edit i used or the angle or what. it's just....perfectly perfect.

 you know what's fun? what's fun is when you set your tripod up on a busy street at 7:30 on a friday night and then have to have a running leap and your husband's hands hoist you 6 feet up in the air and approximately 100 people drive by and stare and wave and honk and you don't care because this is too much fun and also smiling's my favorite.

these are so fun. i want to take a million more. i also now want to be a profesh photog with evan because we are just thee best team. 

dear anyone wanting your picture taken, hire us. <3

i also don't know if it's.....dumb, or whatever, to not have a cohesive editing approach to these. to have some bright and some faded and some vintage and some in the most obnoxious neon colors i could find. but if it is, i don't want to be right. these are perfect to me, in all their amateur photographer imperfections.

and new go-to easiest hairstyle of my life? here.

and they lived happily ever after

round two coming soon. these make me so incredibly happy.

family photos

tonight, evan and i took some new family pictures.  i came up with the genius idea that we should have family pictures taken this summer for our 2 year anniversary and then we looked at how much that costs, and after i puked about that, i realized that we don't need a photographer.  we have a camera.  a very NICE camera that i haven't used in a while and i got a tripod for Christmas and that's just as good as a photographer.

so we did it.  we finally took family pictures (that we've been saying we're taking for yearssss).  we had SO.MUCH.FUN. i know that evan bascially did it because i wanted to but it was just the perfect start to our last weekend. we turned on the timer and set it to take 10 pictures at once.  i definitely need to make some .gifs of the outtakes because evan was doing situation karate kicks and i was showin off my booty dancin skillz, yo.  we're on the fast track to friend making! wooh wooh!

remedy;

evan took me shopping last night because he's the besthusbandever and wanted to fix my problems, which let me tell you: they can be fixed with a tiny bit of retail therapy.

i bought this dress and i'm in love with it. all my problems went away today because no one wants to mess with the girl who is just the cutest. and who has amazing cheekbones (i'm not bragging. it's a fact.) =]

spring cleaning

woah. pardon the dust. i spring cleaned my blog and i can only imagine how scary my blog is while i'm redoing it and yelling at the html because whatever. just please.

just please go away, html, and be normal english words that say, "this is your header. your header is dumb. delete this sentence if you want to remove your header."

i'm an advocate for The Less Confusing The Better. amen.

speaking of more confusing? the new blogger mess. um.....let's not talk about how many feedbacks i've sent regarding how many things i hate. i have nothing good to say about that.

i don't have a whole lot to say because my life has been less than epic this week. i did get a hair cut yesterday and i forced her to fix my bangs because they do this obnoxious parting thing with a million awkward spaces. it probably looked like i gave myself a haircut with a rusty knife or something. i was seriously considering shaving my head and wearing a wig.

can i say something completely unrelated? deodorant is like three dollars. if you have enough body odor to stink up the entire dressing room, please invest in some deodorant. thanks, --the world.

i'd also like to thank spring for showing up and sticking around. we had a good rain storm today (even dusted off the ol' tornader sirens for about....ooohhhh 20 minutes. i'd say they're good and dusted.) and my lilac tree is blooming and my grass is turning green and the cherry trees below my office windows have blossoms! i'm pretty pleased with montana right now, but i'd be even more pleased if it never snowed again and instead we had a beach.

i know that last picture looks like fall but i swear i just took it. it's my apple tree that has about 3 weeks left of its life. we're removing it and putting in a cherry tree. and i have an amazing little diy for that ugly fence. home ownership is just F-U-N fun.

PDA

I'll file this weekend under "worst weekend with the best husband." Weekends seem to really come out and bite me lately. I don't know if it's because I'm too busy during the week to have time to deal with these things, or if people just choose the two days I have off to ruin my life. I'm not even being over dramatic here. It was a real life ruiner, this one.

But there is this man who leapt across patio and lawn furniture to curl me into his arms and who had no idea what my melt down was about but continued to hold me anyway while I relived some of the most painful memories of my life while two sprinkler men stared at me in disbelief from my neighbors yard and my dad was just angry at me for my doubts.

The same man who took me to a million different stores to find a very specific hanger for some art and told me 7294 times (because that's how many I asked) that no! I didn't look like I'd been crying all morning/shit.

The same man who let me take a nap instead of Saturday night church because I just couldn't function.

The same man who took me to church on Sunday and then laid in bed with me afterwards for two whole hours while I slept and he played brick breaker on his ghetto blackberry with the sticky buttons. Who then didn't force me to go grocery shopping but instead played Mario Bros and watched Blue Planet and wowed with me over all that neatness in one location.

I am so, so thankful for my husband and life partner and best friend. He's the one who stood up when everyone else sat down, and I could not be more proud. We only have one more full weekend to ourselves for who knows how long. His internship starts the following weekend and I start school in Septmeber. Two weeks begins my weekends alone where I'm going to have to get creative with how I spend my time (aka not pouting that I have no one to entertain me or take me thrifting or shopping or lay in bed for hours watching bad reality tv. I've got to make some friends or something.). It means a lot less "us" time. And that makes my heart hurt and my chest tighten and my eyes burn, but it's ok. I can write these little PDA posts to show him just how much I adore him. Just how happy I am for his future. Just how proud I am and how much I admire his patience and stamina. He's great. He has the biggest heart and the softest spirit. I couldn't do this life without him and I'm so incredibly blessed to have him to hold on to in these moments that I can't do anything but fall.

our weekend;

FIRST. thank you, thank you ALL for your sweet, sweet comments on my whiny post. i have been in a funk for like 2 weeks. sometimes life isn't rainbows and unicorns and that's just fine. so thank you for making my life. i love the people i've met here. who come to listen to the nonsense i speak and make my life on those days that just aren't the best. <3 so thank you.


i think it was mostly the kind comments that totally picked me up, but this weekend was perfect. i started to feel better, evan got his wisdom teeth out and we spent the weekend just relaxing and hanging out with our friends and fams.

it was a good weekend and i needed that. what also helped was my friday off which meant it was a three day weekend. so yep, that made last week a TWO DAY work week. hollaaaa! i'm having a rough time adjusting to actually having to do work.

buuut back to the weekend. we spent saturday with my family because my brother is in town. i saw him for approximately 30 minutes. but my parents and evan and i had lots of good chats and they fed us which is always a good time. i had about a million twice baked potatoes and my mom made turkey instead of ham and it could easily have been the best turkey i've ever had. we spent the evening with some friends, one who was home for easter and some regulars and played the best game. ever. loaded questions. get it. basically, one person draws and card and picks a question and then everyone else answers it on a piece of paper. the person to the left of the drawer reads all the questions aloud and the drawer has to guess who said what. i am the best at this game and also i'm hilarious. when it was my turn to read, my answer was so funny i couldn't even read the rest of the answers. yes. i am one of those people who laughs at their own jokes. what?


sunday evan and i went to church, WHICH.WAS.AMAZING. i love holiday church. i felt so redeemed and convicted and new. fresh. clean. it was perfect. exactly what i needed.

we tried to shop for a lawn mower but that was boring so instead we went car shopping. we spent the afternoon in the hammock and laughing and being together. absolutely perfect.

and then we ate easter dinner with evan's entire family. i didn't have any deviled eggs this easter and i feel totally ripped off. i also haven't dyed eggs in like, 15 years. ripped off, again. i'm a firm believer colored eggs taste better anyway. NEXT YEAR. andplusalso, i held a baby and she looked real good on me. but kidding because no. not yet. she loved my phone and so we took a video of us to entertain her and when she saw evan she said "DAD!" and i was like ummm nope. and put that away because awkward?

but what's even more awkward was when i fell into the dessert table. and by table i mean apple pie. let me draw you a picture with my words. evan's parents have a "great room" which is attached to their dining room by some stairs. the stairs don't go all the way to the wall so there's a ledge and then nothing. it's like a 2 foot drop. i was standing on the top stair, drooling about the desserts, took a step forward and totally ate it into the table, hand smashed into the apple pie, and it was the funniest moment of my life. i was crying i was laughing so hard. no one saw, not even evan. but he wishes.

it was the perfect weekend. i cried a lot, but that was mostly because i'm hilarious and loving life. i also loved my easter dress. which is the same one i wear all the time, and would wear everyday if that were socially acceptable.

i further continue my campaign for 3.5 work weeks because that extended weekend was absolutely amazing. i love every moment of it. so far, this week has been pretty great as well. so if life wants to continue this way, i will be the happiest girl on the face of planet earth.

Do I really have to say this?

I mean, it should be common sense and common courtesy and human code to not leave rude ANONYMOUS comments on blogs, but since apparently there are in fact people who skipped how-to-behave-in-society class during kindergarten, I'll say it again. Don't leave rude comments. You're not welcome here. But honestly, grow up.

heavy boots

i'm worn out and exhausted. i'm fighting a battle i know nothing about for reasons i can't comprehend. i'm beaten down and trampled on. i'm pretty good at holding it together when i need to. i don't like to be hugged, which is exactly what people need to do when they see you having a nervous breakdown at your desk at 3:00 pm. so i buried my face in a stack of paperwork when i heard the shuffle of footsteps, and let the tears just stream down my face. and i didn't get hugged once. but i so, so needed it. there's that little piece inside of you that just wishes someone would stop and ask if you're okay, and truly mean it. not the how-are-you as their 50 feet away, finethanksbye. and only after i let myself carry the weight of everything i've been holding for the past few weeks, only after i burdened that alone, did i realize it would be nice to have a shoulder to help carry all that.  but i'm the type of person who refuses to ask for help. if it's something i'm completely capable of doing, such as talking myself down from a situation that has no business being in my work space at anytime ever, then i got this. i don't need to ask for help because i have pride and i can do this. i can do this on my own and let. me. do. it. but i can't. oh my gosh, i cannot. i have heavy boots. about ethiopia. about starting school. about this summer. about easter. about trust. about trusting no one. about how i bawl every time i see anything ethiopia at church (people are starting to point and stare. oh, look. there's that crying girl again.) about too much to worry about.......onmyown.

cast all your cares on him for he cares for you. 1 peter 5:7

i'm sick and i don't like carson daily.

the past 3 days have been a waste of my lifeeee. i contracted the flu. the damn flu. i probably would have been able to beat it within a reasonable amount of time (as in, 3 seconds) if it weren't for stressful situations combating my life (to which i say, STFU. thank you.) and inhaling a large quantity of cement while helping my parents do some yard work slash cement mixing. so i think mostly my stomach is made up of cement and that is not fun.

i don't know. i'm sick. that's all. i've spent the last 3 days trying to sleep, trying to not puke my intestines out, trying to not yell at evan for nothing and watching approximately a hundred episodes of jersey shore (CABS A HEYUH). umsoyeah. fun.


it's really annoying that this happens on april 1-3, like ruin my month why don't you, and also on my eat-in-only month. because um, we ordered pizza tonight because 1. we have negative amounts of food in this house and 2. that was the only thing that sounded good. and eat-in-month was my idea, therefore, i can bend the rules when i feel it's appropriate: such as being sick and needing pizza.

and today, when i woke up to decide i wasn't going to work, i could not for the life of me fall back to sleep. i kept being on the verge, and dreaming, but then i'd wake up. then. THEN. when i was finally finally finally asleep, the stupid fire alarm battery decided to be low and beep beep beep every minute. of course. i shot it with a shot gun and slept until like 3.


however, evan did get some really, really exciting news today!!! he's starting an internship at our church in may with the part of our church that goes to ethiopia (and the philippines! and brazil!) and we've been waiting to hear if he got that for months. and months. and months. even longer than i waited for my letter! and he did! YAAAY! it's so very exciting that we both get to start our lives in areas that we're both so very passionate about. and i get to finally share it because holding it in is like a burp you just have to let out in church. HA.

so i guess being sick isn't all bad when you get good news like that. hopefully i have no more stressful situations this week, but i have a 10-step approach on lock down, just.in.case. but i really cannot deal with that. no mo'.

oh. on another note, does anyone watch the voice? do you think carson daily is the most annoying, obnoxious host there ever was? the entire 6 hours that show airs (which, in and of itself is a waste of my time, i mean come. on. if they didn't spend half the episode doing 10 minute flash backs to everyone and their dog.......and what the heckfire was Cee Low wearing this last episode? i can't even.) all i do is make fun of carson daily pushing people off the stage and telling people when to stop talking. i cannot stand him. like, who are you anyway? you hosted TRL for like 3 minutes and now you host this TV show? go back in your hole and stay there until i say you can come out. and christina is so dramatic and snooty and i want to cut the dreads out of naia ketaaaay's hurr. dreads are fine until they drag on the ground. then they're not.


sick larisaa is sick. but she's still as fiesty as ever. because watching jersey shore makes me want to fist fight. and so yeah. bring it, carson.