To shed some light on the positive, and to apologize for the negative (the president and the female makeup isn't all that bad.....on second thought...it is) REGARDLESS, I feel like some optimism would do me (and everyone else) a little good.

"Make up your mind to be happy-even when you don't have money, even when you don't have a clear complexion, even when you don't have the Nobel Prize. Some of the happiest people I know have none of these things the world insists are necessary for satisfaction and joy. Why are they happy? I suppose it is because they don't listen very well. Or they listen too well-to the things their hearts tell them. They glory in the beauty of the earth...They glory in the love of their families...They glory in the scriptures...
One thing I know for certain: the time we have here goes by far too quickly. Don't waste any more time sitting on the bench watching life pass you by." - Joseph B. Wirthlin

"Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers."
- John Sutherland Bonnell

And last but not least:

"There's hope
It doesn't cost a thing to smile
You don't have to pay to laugh
You better thank God for that." - India Arie

And as of late, French makes me happy. Especially if it is coming from a cute boy with a cute accent.

Au Revoire les amis.

A Hymn To Him

"A Hymn to Him" from My Fair Lady.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have found an inarguable truth that I would like to share in just a moment....
But before I do, let me just state that what I am about to write is not "peach punch" (thank you fellow blogger for sharing that great word with me)...
***This is a final warning to those of you who are about to read what has been written; take note that this is not , I repeat NOT entitled: A Hymn to Her, nor does it recognize the nobility or character of a woman (which is why I must apologize in advance for dissing my fellow females), but today, today is a day where this is the case.

From the enlightened words of Professor Higgins, I will now bare my livid soul:

Women are irrational, that's all there is to that!
Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!
They're nothing but exasperating, irritating,
vacillating, calculating, agitating,
Maddening and infuriating hags!

Amen.

Confession Session.

New Month.
New Thoughts.
New Confessions for today, March 1, 2009.

1. I want to marry Wes Jurkatis. I've had a crush on him ever since he asked me for a piece of gum in the tenth grade. It's about time I face the depressing fact that I am in love.

2. I cry in every episode of Extreme Home Makeover when they say: "Move that bus!" As the family starts to cry, I cry with them.
Every time.
No exceptions.

3. I religiously watch America's Next Top Model marathons on the Oxygen channel. My dad would disown me if he knew that too.

3. I crave writing like I crave chocolate. It's an addiction.

4. I've wanted to move to Boston my whole life, I just don't know if I'd be brave enough to start my life over.

5. Some days I have a different attitude towards marriage than the rest of the BYU population. Not that I don't want to, or that I think it isn't a wonderful thing - I do...just give me 7 years.

6. One day I want to sit next to a stranger on a park bench and hear their life story.

7. I firmly believe wishes come true - surprise, surprise. I also believe that pinky fingers are as easy to bite off as carrots and that there are men who hide under cars so that they can clip Achilles tendons and then easily take their victim...

8. I am frustrated with the people who say you should live life with no regrets...I think that's really stupid. I regret plenty of things, and because of that, I have learned some really great things.
Life just seems to work out that way.

9. I have always wanted a brother.
Always.
When I was little, I would draw "my family" pictures with a little boy up in the clouds (a hint my parents didn't take...) But today I had an epiphany and realized that I actually did have three brothers in heaven, we just came down to earth as best friends.

10. I am especially happy today to know that families can be together forever.

That's all.

Oh, and I am not thrilled at this point with the socialist country our President seems to be turning the U.S. into - just throwing that out there.

Treasured Growing Pains.

We buried our box of memories.
But now I just refer to it as the treasure box.
Included in this treasure box were our learners permits, terribly embarrassing pictures, notes passed in our Algebra classes, movie ticket stubs, concert ticket stubs, even an oh-so-special chocolate rose which was celebrated with when each of us got our first kiss (a good or bad experience depending on the case)... but to get to the point, this is a treasure box of complete insignificant value to anyone but ourselves.
That's what makes it so special.

Only several years after burying this box, one of us is already married, another is engaged, two of us have spent several months living thousands of miles away from home, and none of us live together like we had probably once originally planned...despite the new schools, the new friends, and the new lives, we've remained friends at heart. But back to the time when we were all inseparable, we were the Class of '07. SF Dons. Oh baby.

(An excerpt from my 7up Girl Series - a work still in progress):

I had changed. The girl who once walked into those doors as a sophomore, had walked out someone new only several years later. Sometimes we pay more attention to whats going on in the world, that we lose track of the change going on inside our own selves.

During those years I had learned the Pythagorean Theorem and the Dewey Decimal System, I learned that the absolute value of anything will always be positive, and that an apostrophe has three uses, all of which I have forgotten; but out of all the learning that helped me make my way into the next chapter of my life entitled: college, my heart still learned so much more. I learned to love myself and to love others. I learned that the learning never stops – and that the mistakes we might make can teach us what we need to know the most. I learned that as I drifted from friendships and even when my best friend was taken away - no one could take away what I had had, because high school can be more than just four years of homework, prom queens, skipping class, or what to wear. It shapes us. It creates us… but most of all, as I walked out with diploma in hand and the best of friends by my side, I learned with every ounce of bittersweet realization that I somehow,
in some way,
and sometimes in ridiculous fashion…
grew up.

I wouldn’t ever go back, but I wouldn’t ever change a thing because thinking of that box has reminded me of something Emily Dickinson once said: “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."

I guess the same goes for high school.

Those who may not have gone out of their way to bury a box, luckily still have their own treasure box of memories (thanks to the temporal lobe in the brain - one of the few things I've retained from my magnificently hard psych class).

But anyway, here I am, sitting in my sweats with my 15 minute face mask on at one in the morning, realizing that although life has drastically changed and as different as I am (or hope to be) today, one thing has remained the same from the time of burying that treasure box.
Somehow,
in some way
(and occasionally in ridiculous fashion)

I am still trying to grow up.

Cupid & Cummings.

Elliot, Frost, Tennyson - even Whitman, the best of the best cannot come close or even compete with the adoration my heart holds for E.E. Cummings.
Granted, a part of his poetry is somewhat provocative, and would have pushed the envelope 100 years ago...but I believe that Cummings and I are both two helpless and hopeless romantics at heart. If we were to run into each other on the street today, we would become the dearest of friends and I imagine we would spend hours and days in bookstores and coffee shops, talking about love and being in love and hating love and so on and so forth.

The most beloved E.E. Cummings poem there is, (at least personally speaking), is "somewhere i have never traveled" - as I read this poem years ago, it was as if Cupid took out that dreaded arrow and shot right at my heart.

I am in love with E.E. Cummings.

(and if you want to be too, read on)

somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

The beauty of this poem is in its simplicity - which, I believe, some of the most beautiful things are: simple.

This poem can EVEN go without capitalization and punctuation ...
Honestly people, who can get away with that?

So go on ahead and read Thoreau's "Epitaph On The World", "Life in A Love" by Browning, or anything by Oscar Wilde (and I readily admit that I do love them all) but they just can't beat this.

(whether it's because of Cupid or Cummings, I don't know, I'm just clearly biased).

"I Wanted It To Be You"

I wish I could take credit for what I am about to write, but I can't; Hollywood can however, but I would like to assure you that had I been born with brilliance or eloquence, I would have said this all a long time ago.
I am writing this simply because every time I see this movie, I can't help but think: I am Kathleen Kelly. Her lines speak from my heart.

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, valuable, but small. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So goodnight, dear void."

"I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings..."

"No. No, but... but there's the dream of someone else. "

"People always say that change is a good thing, but what it really means is that something that you didn't want to happen, has happened."

"What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me...And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?...Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal."

"I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You've got mail. I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beating of my own heart. I have mail. From you."

"When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does."

"I'm completely jealous. When I'm confronted by someone I get tongue tied and my mind goes blank. Then I spend the rest of the night tossing and turning over what I should have said."

"I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly."

Oh, how I love this movie.

Emotionally Accomplished.

Most of the time, I feel emotionally unaccomplished. Like a million loose ends are all stuck up in my head, but today - today was a special day, because as I stood in the shower, washing my hair, listening to music and thinking about life, everything finally fit - and I will tell you how I got here.
-As I drove to school today one of those "songs" came on - the song that somehow, identifies completely with whoever you are, and whatever you are doing, and whatever part of life you are in - it is as if it were written for you for that moment. Yes, I listened to a song.
-I talked to my best friend. It's been said that, "In a friend, you find your second self," - it's true.
-I talked to my mom and then my dad. While my mom will emotionally rationalize with all my problems and weird adolescent feelings, my dad always talks sense. He makes me forget the silly things and wise up. I love my parents.
-I appreciated my mother's left overs. For as long as I can remember, I have hated left overs with a distinct passion. Leftover Mondays were the worst growing up, but tonight, as I reheated last nights dinner - I became especially thankful because I just realized my milk expired a week ago and Apple Jacks were no longer on the menu.
-Last one continued: I was thankful for little things today. A friend recently read 'The Secret' and raves that it is the best thing to happen to him, but it starts by being thankful for the little things. So I did just that. As I walked on campus, I reminded myself to be thankful for the ability to walk up those nightmarish stairs. I was thankful for the chance to be nearly blinded by the brightness of the snow and the sun combined. I was thankful to be enrolled in a magnificently difficult Pysch class, and so the list goes on...
-I did aerobics. My endorphins skyrocketed as I nearly collapsed in my intense kick boxing/yoga/weight training/pilates/sweat til you bleed aerobics class. But I felt great after.
-Last but not least, I was reading for one of my classes, and bam, sham, cazaam - I read this marvelous line: "I love you" is much more a promise of behavior and commitment than it is an expression of feeling.
For some reason, that simple sentence made so much sense, that my life changed - not really, but really.

And there you have it. I am emotionally accomplished. I know all too well that by tomorrow I will probably come undone when my hair doesn't look right, or that cute, cute, cutest boy ever in my class doesn't talk to me, or I miss a pop quiz...
But for now, I am emotionally accomplished.

Venting.

The RM's in my religion classes need to stop thinking they know absolutely everything.
They don't.

Wishing 101.

"Dreams and wishes come true, without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."

Due to my increase in wishes this time of year, and also considering the many, many, many that have recently come true - I would like to spend some time enlightening others on the concepts of wishing.

Wishing 101.
1. You can make a wish on the following:
11:11
shooting star
first star
glow in the dark stars
first snowfall (comes true by the last snow fall..or so I've been told)
wishing bracelets
wishing fountains
eye lashes
holding your breath through a tunnel
if you touch metal while going over railroad tracks
candles
birthday candles (BIG deal)
in your heart

2) Rules to wishing:
Rule #1. You've probably heard that if you tell your wish, it won't come true...well, that's not true. You can tell someone if you'd like to, but sometimes telling someone will spoil it (especially if they are involved in the wish). I personally believe the best wishes are wishes untold, but if you wish to share it, you aren't putting your wish in jeopardy, unlike popular belief.
Rule #2. You have to put your whole heart into it. End of story.

3) Exceptions: Your wishes may/may not come true exactly how you want - the good thing about wishes, is they come true when they need to/how they're supposed to - so even if you end up wishing for something ridiculous like I did once upon a time (to marry one of the members in Dream Street - or something like that) it will not come true if it will make you unhappy one day... (this dream street member is now openly gay)

That's about it. If you read this, and now want to make a wish (which you all should) but find that there are no stars, eye lashes, or candles around - feel free to watch the video above and wish on the shooting star.

"If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme...Like a bolt out of the blue - fate steps in and see's you through, when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true."

The only thing to learn from my ramblings today is: wishes come true.

Monroe.

"I believe everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right...and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. "

word.