for a laugh:

(find comic here)

heart is full.  no words today. 

i've lost my marbles

i love this song. i am especially delighted to include a video played by yundi li, who has my heart ever since i saw this documentary at the ic.


i listen to this song when i can't look my thesis in the face. i also blog. so here i am, blogging and listening.

i lost my journal, which has majorly thrown off my groove. this journal is where i work to become me, and knowing that someone might have it and be reading my process is very unsettling. if you chance upon a black moleskine journal, soft-shelled with graph pages and my soul inside it, could you fly it my way?  

thanks.

highlights come in all shapes and sizes

1. new snow drew my eyes to the mountains, still there, always there, and that was a happy reacquaintance.

2. on my way into the library, i passed a girl on her way out and overheard just one phrase: "yeah, i'm pretty sure the elders quorum president likes me."  ahhhhh byu. 

3. listening to bob dylan's "most of the time (alternate version)"  over and over and over.  great song.

2010: a retrospective; or: "the year my haircuts weren't as bad as i thought"

i have a weird brain.  (i'm sure you all have weird brains too, but sadly, i can only vouch for myself.  someday, technology will stop messing around with ipads and figure out how to send civilians to the new frontier: the human mind...of someone else. but until then, there's only one view.)  anyway, as i tossed and turned tonight because my newly resolved bedtime is like four hours before i'm even close to tired, i realized that we're on the upswing again. 

if you've spent even five minutes reading my blog, you know i'm a seasonal and circular girl.  my life is a pile of rounds stacked on top of each other, not a line blurring into the future like a heat mirage.  every year is a new circle.  january 1 is at the bottom, and frtmdkdsja is at the top. (i'm a little fuzzy about what is at the top.)  technically, i guess my life would have to be a pile of ovals, because circles don't have tops and bottoms since every point is equidistant (right? anybody?), but it's not that important.  all that matters is that new years starts the life half of the year, and some point in summer (maybe my birthday) starts the death half.  i know it's still a long way off, and i'm the last person to send the snow away early, but i did dream of spring for a minute tonight, and even summer. that's what it means to be on the upswing. 

i really like commemorating chunks of time and figuring out what was awesome or unique or learnworthy about them, so i can't pass up the chance to shout out to 2010, especially since it was such an important year partly because I:

• spent a month camping and relearning beauty.  
• lived my first summer in provo.
• found yoga (thanks lj).
• loved a lot.
• got published.
• discovered prayer.
• discovered revision. 
• became a goal-setter.
• "moved out on my own." sort of.
• gave up tv.
• traveled near, which is sometimes better than far.
• lost some big things and learned better to let go.
• still didn't graduate. tried to be ok with it.
• remembered how to reach for things. 
• forgot. remembered again.
• partied at weddings of people i love.
• tried doing some adult things (conferences, responsibility, jobs, prioritizing), but still never made it to the doctor.
• loved my age.
• was changed fundamentally.

  life has all loveliness to sell, remember?

(i've been thinking about that whole upswing/downturn thing, and i recognize that i was just poorly describing solstice.  resolved 2011: i will do a better job celebrating solstice.) 

resonance.

resonance (from the OED):

a. "the condition in which an oscillating or periodic force acting on an object or system has a frequency close to that of a natural vibration of the object; a resulting amplification of the natural vibration."

b. "the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection or by the synchronous vibration of a surrounding space or a neighbouring object. Also: a sound, or quality of sound, resulting from this."

 

how far will it go, this "neighbor" business?

over the break, my jim brother gave a talk in church about how Jesus told us to love our neighbors.  i love this idea, and i never really get tired of the conversation about what neighbor means and where we draw our lines between the people we're willing to love and the people we're not willing to love. i hope i keep learning that those lines are all in my head.  just the illusion of bricks--you can really walk right through.

on a separate but related note, sister and i made these awesome cookies TWICE last month. both times we were short-sighted and found ourselves mid-batch missing an ingredient.  so we argued about if we should go to the store or borrow from a neighbor, and we chose borrowing both times even though we both hate borrowing.  one time sister got bendur to pick up the borrowment, but even he felt sheepish when he heard how much we were asking for.  this led me to wonder: when are you asking too much?  is a cup of sugar fine, but a bag of sugar bad form?  have you ever asked a neighbor to borrow a steak?  a box of oreos?  a bottle of soda?  a frozen chicken?  i'd like to try that.  i never will.

anyway here's the recipe for cookies good enough to borrow for.

sour cream sugar cookies (from the west family):
1c butter
2c sugar
2 eggs
1 c sour cream
1 t vanilla
1/2 t soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 t baking pow
41/2-5 c flour
roll 1/4 inch. put what you aren't rolling out in fridge; it will make it easier to roll.
bake at 350 for 8-10 min


frosting:
1t  vanilla
1/2c butter
1/2 cream cheese
4 c pow sugar
1/4 almond extract
1/4 t lemon extract
you could omit either of those