A wise friend once told me this story:

"I met a man without a dollar to his name
Who had no traits of any value but his smile
I met a man who had no yearn or claim to fame
Who was content to let life pass him for a while
And I was sure that all I ever wanted
Was a life like the movie stars led
And he kissed me right here
And said:

"I'll give you stars and the moon and a soul to guide you
And a promise I'll never go
I'll give you hope to bring out all the life inside you
And the strength that will help you grow.
I'll give you truth and a future that's twenty times better
Than any Hollywood plot."
And I thought, "You know,
I'd rather have a yacht."

I met a man who lived his life out on the road
Who left a wife and kids in Portland on a whim
I met a man whose fire and passion always showed
Who asked if I could spare a week to ride with him
But I was sure that all I ever wanted
Was a life that was scripted and planned
And he said,
"But you don't understand -

"I'll give you stars and the moon and the open highway
And a river beneath your feet
I'll give you days full of dreams if you travel my way
And a summer you can't repeat.
I'll give you nights full of passion and days of adventure,
No strings, just warm summer rain."
And I thought, "You know,
I'd rather have champagne."

I met a man who had a fortune in the bank
Who had retired at age thirty, set for life.
I met a man and didn't know which stars to thank,
And then he asked one day if I would be his wife.
And I looked up, and all that I could think of
Was the life I had dreamt I would live
And I said to him:
"What will you give?"

"I'll give you cars and a townhouse in Turtle Bay
And a fur and a diamond ring
And we'll get married in Spain on my yacht today
And we'll honeymoon in Beijing.
And you'll meet stars at the parties I throw at my villas
In Nice and Paris in June."

And I thought, "Okay."
And I took a breath
And I got my yacht
And the years went by
And it never changed
And it never grew
And I never dreamed
And I woke one day
And I looked around
And I thought, 'My God...

I'll never have the moon.'"

My fiance is the first man in the story. and somehow together, we'll get the moon.

Life is Good

I've had a lot of time to think about what I'm going to be doing until school resumes in January. My first thoughts were to convenience - stay in Logan, work with people with disabilities, don't move, save money, keep friends and make new ones, quit Michaels ASAP. That didn't work.

My next thought was National Park work... somewhere that pays room and board. Work until late October, go home, play with new RM (my sister, she's been out a year now!), and resume the Logan apartment and job hunt.

I was sitting in Institute one morning, zoning out of announcements when one caught my attention. "Want to work in Yellowstone?..." I wrote down the hours of the institute's employment office I didn't know existed and resolved to go that week. Miracle #1. I was hoping that the institute may know of more jobs better suited for my standards - no Sunday work, close to church, friends to go with...

Anyway, a few days later found me flipping through a bunch of brochures in the employment office, picking out the occasional national park job, summer camp, internship for a foundation that works with people with disabilities... Wait.

I went home, hopped online, and looked up the foundation. I found that they ran a summer camp and they did things year round too. They were currently accepting applications. I fiddled around with the application, filled it out , and got stuck on references, as usual. I'd gotten the BYU Psychology Professor from the homeward, the mother of an autistic girl that loves me, and ... the third? I wanted to use my special needs institute teacher, but, she's one of those people that has to run and do everything all at once. For a week I kept going to class early trying to catch her (i couldn't after class - i had a class WAAAAaaaaaayyyyyyy across campus.) Finally, i was determined to get it over with and be late if i had to.

I showed up ever earlier than usual, but she was running late. She scurries in frantically setting up her lesson. I conceded to being late after all. She looked at me, said Hello, and moved on. Suddenly, she said, "Amy, i have something for you! did you know that you can graduate from Institute this semester?" "uh, no" "come over to my office, I have a paper for you." Okay. Miracle #2.

No, I wasn't eligible for graduation after all, but that paper came at the exact right moment. Sister Parker was not only willing to be a reference, but she was also familiar with the camp and foundation :)

Anyway, I filled in the blank spots and sent it in. Just as I was walking away from the post office, I realized I hadn't even enclosed a resume :(

The next week was spring break. I was driving about with a friend when I got a phone call. IT WAS THEM!!! we scheduled an interview for later that week. Miracle #3. Had they called the next week, I'd have to borrow a car (Ehh... nerve wracking) or bum a ride (yeah right, during the day during the week, who's going to be going to SLC then?) But since the interview was DURING spring break, ...day trip with mom. Oooohhhh yeeeeaaaahhhh.

Wednesday they called back wanting to postpone the appointment. I consented to later that day instead of the next week. That morning rolled around and I was getting ready to go. A bunch of silly things kept going wrong. Like no eyeliner because I thought i hadn't packed it (i had, i found when I went home and unpacked) Or my new shirt suddenly being a constricting one size too small. or nearly spilling lunch we'd just picked up all over my resume I actually remembered to bring. Stress.

They showed me around the camp while they were waiting for the interviewer to show up, we interviewed, and the waiting game was on. 1.5 - 2 weeks.

During the waiting game the ward mission leader came over to teach a lesson in my ethiopian nonmember roommate's general vicinity (she excused herself halfway through) and we talked about miracles. He challenged us to pray for a miracle daily.
The 2 weeks came and went without a peep.

Finally, I decided to ask for a miracle. Just a phone call either way, whether or not I actually got the job.
That night ~ 5 pm I got one. (Miracle #4)
Unfortunately I was working so i didn't answer it. I called back as requested the next morning and received the news. I HAD gotten the job!

I'll be in Salt Lake, not too far from home OR Logan, i work Sunday night to Friday afternoon, the job provides room and board (which really means that my entire paycheck goes straight into my pocket), I won't be living at home, and BEST of all, I'll be working with people with disabilities of all ages and with disabilities of all types. Helllloooo career exploration.

Only downsides:
A: not terribly awesome pay. but that doesn't matter, because room and board is included.
B: I have to work over memorial day weekend. My extended family always gets together and has a huge remembrance day : we decorate graves of family members in five different cemeteries in the high Uintah mountains. We get about 8 generations back, to the first generation pioneers. My grandmother and her sister come out and join their siblings in the festivities, and we exchange old stories about the ancestors. And then there's a huge potluck at one of the uncle's houses. It is awesome. And I'll have to miss it. But, Carolyn (my missionary sister) will too, and maybe i'll get to see grandma and her spitfire sister the day before or something.
C: There is another huge family reunion in New York this summer. I will most likely miss this. Maybe Carolyn and I will have to take a nationwide jaunt to visit family we both haven't seen for two years. I might have enough skymiles to pull it off, after last summer's trip to Romania...
D: I have to find another job at the end of August.

That Which...

That which I could expound upon for pages and pages but won't because this week is another gray hair week and by the time I actually have time to pay attention and write, all my ideas will be buried under new ones. (and some brief ideas that would have included a deep and compelling story, but won't.)

The girl who grinned at the sky. (and how she made my day and that she wants the boy next door. therefore we could have been best friends, if I'd ever see her again. pity.)

the dichotomy of digital and real personalities. (everybody's different in text than in person. Those that fail to realize this needs reality to slap them in the face.)

hyperbole of Kathryn (baby sister and her ... eccentricities)

my failure of saying no (car boy. See "the dichotomy"... he's reality's number 1 offender)

you know you're good friends when (see, i've already lost this idea. fill in your own)

postage this year (spent a lot. Will spend more tomorrow. i don't know how much total, but could find out. later.)

cars. (see "you know you're good"...)

How life is supposed to happen and how it won't. (see the intro to this post)

what i want (HAH! as if.)

the census (have been waiting ten years to touch one. anticlimactic.)

delicious sounds of sauce ('nuff said.)

memory lane -spinny park - white willow - paul's house (no comment)

i'm only one person with two arms and 10 toes! (aren't you?)

Why is a raven like a writing desk? (three words: Edgar Allen Poe.)

Walk to campus via the quad (I'm going to miss school next semester)

synesthesia (apparently people with this condition have screwed up perceptions of the five senses. they can see tastes, etc.)

violets (favorite. smell and taste. yup. they're edible. try them in your next salad.

poppies (in flander's fields the poppies grow beneath the crosses row by row...)

ducks (held one the other day after falling down the stairs. Go team.)

bruises and welts (see "ducks")

the gym window (maybe i'll get a picture of it tomorrow. tis purdy. and in a strange place for life and art and beautiful things.)

missing out on thunder (April thunderstorm that snowed. A girl was too plugged in to notice. she missed out)

We'll see if I ever get around to this list. Will keep you posted. Maybe. And now! Back to studying for last midterm of the semester.

Billy Jim and the Absence of Hermeneutics of Given Names

My senior year of high school I was walking down the halls of the rival across town and came across a poster with a little quote on it. I laughed, pointed it out to a friend, they laughed, and we continued on.

Somehow that quote has always stuck with me. Maybe because of its strange failure to say what it tries to say, or maybe because I couldn't help but recognize the power in the haphazard words.

The quote?

Act as if what you do makes a difference.
~William James

Now, don't you see what I'm saying? It carries a connotation that what you do WON”T matter. Ever.

For quite some time I'd felt that way – that nothing matters in the end. That everything will work out the way it's supposed to, regardless of your role in it all.

This week, a good friend posted almost the same quote. Almost. She included a two-word tag line that I'd never seen before. Her inclusion? “It Does.”

Now it says, “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

I'm not saying that anything I do has made a difference in other people's lives, maybe it has but sometimes I just don't want to know. But I know that whenever I try to make a difference in someone's life, the difference has been made in mine.

Earlier this week i was reminded of this by an unwitting friend. He'd alluded to a painful Monday, I offered some solace. Instead of turning his day around, he turned my entire week. All we did was share a cup of hot cocoa and some words of empathy and encouragement. But afterward I was reminded that there is hope in my life as I expressed hope in his. That things aren't as bad as they seem now. That I don't have to be caught up in myself.

This wasn't the first time either. I went to Romania to hold babies that needed love. I wanted to make their lives better if only in a small way. While doing so I held a one year old girl whose functionality was as advanced as a newborn's. She couldn't even control her eyes. As i sang to her, trying to soothe her fussing, she'd only respond to the primary songs of my own childhood. I sang one line: I am a child of God, his promises are sure. Celestial glory shall be mine, if I can but endure. As the phrase ended, her eyes flipped up, gazing into mine. Peacefulness spread through my chest and tears sprang to my own eyes. She knew.

Because of this one little girl and my two weeks of holding her close, I've taken classes I'd never have thought about before, I've chosen a major I'd never considered, and I have direction in my life.
I'd not have all of this if it weren't for my trying to make someone's life better. Someone's life was bettered. Mine.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Closure

8 months, 5 days.

January 2nd to September 7th.

We'd endured 5 months of long distance, 3500 miles of driving, 1400 miles in flight, hours on the phone, parent-imposed curfews, a summer of work - not play, finals week, midterms, two moves, family members departing, pleasant surprises, gifts, emergency lunches, thrift shop trips, walks, piggybacks with sisters, a mission call, sushi, picnics - both sunlit and candlelit, slurpees, a first (and second and third) taco, movies, car cleaning, sunsets, moonrises, a roommate's wedding reception, libraries, reading under a trampoline, sunsets, moonrises, hikes, adventures, getting lost, getting found, ward hopping, homicidal mothers yelling EY!, indian food, implications, selfishness, forgiveness, selflessness, miscommunications, falls, band aids, private whispers, screams of delight, exhaustion, promises, plans left undone, plans completed, exhilaration, love.

I've never felt this way about anyone before, and I fear I never will again.

Last weekend as we held each other on my doorstep, it felt different. I loved him, but didn't need him. Things were ending, whether I wanted them to or not.

Last week as I'd walk across campus I'd see couples holding hands or lying in the sun. I hated them. I hated them for having something I couldn't. My Scott was gone, but on Saturday I'd show them.
This week when I see a woman leaning her head on her man's shoulder, her eyes closed; when I see a couple necking passionately in their own owrld in the middle of the bustling hallway, there was no jealousy. There was no hate. My Scott really was gone.

I was expecting to break up with him, not to break up with each other. It was entirely mutual, unlike the inception of our relationship. He was always the first to pick me up, drive me home, put an arm around me, hold my hand, say "I like you," then "I've fallen for you," then lean in and kiss me. At the beginning he invested far more far quicker than I, therefore I wasn't expecting him to be done before me. I was expecting to lay it all out, step aside, and let m stubborn, insistent side carry me through the subsequent and expected waves of misery.
No, he knew it had to be over, just as I did the last night we saw each other.

At times I wish I had my tenacity on my side, but it's lain dormant as of late. Instead there's something else, something deeper. Something that says "I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, much less in the next couple years, but it'll be all right." I'm sad, but I'm not morose. I'm not curled in a fetal position surrounded by a halo of chocolate wrappers. It just feels right, and my tenacity isn't insisting that I be wrong.

Scott has been my best (albeit only) boyfriend, but also one of my best friends. He is my best guy friend, and one of the best men I've ever known. Despite his protests, he has been the absolute best I've ever had.

Scott, I love you.

Thank you for teaching me how.

Introspectus

Ever had one of those nights where you're so tired that you flop onto your bed and instantly fall asleep without even a blanket on top of you? And then in the middle of the night you half wake up and realize that you are, in fact, cold. But you are also ridiculously comfortable there, curled up and dozing that you can't bear to move and spoil the immense contentment wrapped around you in the blanket's stead. So you just lie there, wishing you were warmer but unwilling to do anything about it.

That's what I was doing last year. I was too comfortable that I didn't change anything until I simply couldn't stand it anymore. Until I realized that nothing was going to change unless I changed it. Until I realized that my misery was self inflicted.

Last year my misery made me into something I didn't recognize. I didn't even realize that the monster I'd become even existed. My misery made me angry. My anger made me sarcastic, caustic, and eager to inflict pain on others. I was malicious. I refused to meet new people. Since I refused to meet people, I forgot how to do it. I withdrew inside myself, unwilling to come out even around the people I loved the most. I spent my time doing absolutely nothing, making no memories, useful skills, or even talents. I did only what was required, and even then, only the bare minimum.

I contemplated dropping out of high school, even though I only had one term left and one class left to pass. I obsessed over men who brought out the worst in me. I lied skillfully to remove suspicion and bring more on others around me. I twisted words, situations, feelings, arms. I cared for no one, including myself. I did what I wanted, so long as it wouldn't get me in trouble that night. I respected visible boundaries while skipping gleefully around the ones I could easily sneak past. The smallest slights wounded me deeply and I refused to let them go. What once were molehills were now mountains, the mountains molehills. I scorned everything that I had once held dear. I forgot about the people and places and things I had once loved.

I thank God that this is no longer me.

I asked rhetorically last night, “What was I thinking?” The only answer I got was, “Maybe you weren't.”

He was right.

:)

Interesting how just a glimpse of a dripping water faucet or a pair of feet clad in bright green converse can turn my horrible day into something a little above tolerable.

Because I CAN

(CNN) -- Was it a theft? A prank? A roundabout effort to bring some holiday cheer to the police? Authorities in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the mysterious appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods.

A police officer examines an oddly placed piano in the woods of Harwich, Massachusetts.



Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.

Sgt. Adam Hutton of the Harwich Police Department said information has been broadcast to all the other police departments in the Cape Cod area in hopes of drumming up a clue, however minor it may be.

But so far, the investigation is flat.

Also of note: Near the mystery piano -- serial number 733746 -- was a bench, positioned as though someone was about to play.

The piano was at the end of a dirt road, near a walking path to a footbridge in the middle of conservation land near the Cape.

It took a handful of police to move the piano into a vehicle to transport it to storage, so it would appear that putting it into the woods took more than one person.

Asked whether Harwich police will be holding a holiday party in the storage bay -- tickling the ivories, pouring eggnog -- while they await word of the piano's origin and fate, Hutton laughed. No such plans.

Harwich police have had some fun, though. Among the photos they sent to the news media is one of Officer Derek Dutra examining the piano in the woods. The police entitled the photo "Liberace."

A good friend just sent this to me, knowing my penchant for pianos, strange occurrences, and forestry.

The thought that comes to mind is for my dream house, which WILL include a round living room whose walls are entirely windows. In the exact center of this room will grow a tree. A tree whose leaves inspire the Greeks, and whose bare branches scrape ones soul. (also can't be fruit bearing... Cuz I don't want fruit rotting in my house. And it can't be poisonous for dogs, but i digress)

Beneath this tree will sit a piano. Not just any piano, but a Black Steinway 3/4 Grand Piano.

(Not like this one.)

And I will be happy.

And I'll hang white string lights from the tree...
And I could build a treehouse in the tree...
And I can rake my living room in the fall...
And if its a flowering tree I'll play my piano in the midst of cascading petals
And I'll play my piano in the midst of cascading leaves in October
And the moon will shine through my transparent ceiling and I will play for her, just as she has played for me.



And it's totally never going to happen.
but a girl can dream, right?

we are not alone.

he calls himself god's version of a crash test dummy. a sick and twisted soul.
i don't see that in him.

what do i see?

i see a confused child, wondering, wandering.

he has some inclination of where to go but he gets distracted by shiny things along the way.
he picks up the glitzy trinkets, fingering them, awed by their brightness.
he forgets that it's just the trash left over from another person.

the trash consumes his vision, his hands, his mind. he sits down on the side of the road and just stares.

sometimes he realizes that it's crap, and moves along a little farther. he keeps walking a little bit. until he forgets what's trash and what's not and picks up a sequin shard and marvels at that instead.

sometimes he finds a truly fantastic piece of trash, marvels at it longer, and then puts it in his pocket to take out occasionally while walking.

the thing is he's so fascinated by the crap in his hands, in his pockets, that he can't look up. He can't bear to see what makes the shiny things shine in the first place (the sun)
he can't bear to see the true beauty around him - the beauty he can't take with him, the beauty that is even more so when he keeps going further.

i know he's seen glimpses.
but his pockets are simply too full.


STRIP IT OFF AND RUN NAKED. I DARE YOU.

i know you know you want to.

you can know what it's like to be free.

i promise.