I'm Back Again!! :)

Long time, no see!!

Why, you may ask?

1. No one actually reads this blog.
2. It's been years since I've written in it which is because
3. I was serving a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!!!

Just in case anyone comes across this blog who does not know me, let me make a little introduction:

First off, I am weird. That's what my friends tell me and I'm sticking to it. They're right. I'm a little different. And that's why I tell you up front, because I want you to know me. The real me. So if you're not scared off by my honest account of myself than I guess we can keep going.

I grew up on Long Island (that's in New York), don't have the accent.
My family now lives in Jersey, still no accent.
And I am now going to school and working where I served my full-time, Spanish-speaking Mission: in the capital of all things weird and Mormon, UTAH!!! :) Why, because I am a crazy, life-loving Mormon Girl, that's why!!! :D

I am catering my remarks to many I heard all growing up. I've used the word "weird" to describe myself, and my faith, and "my people." But really, aren't we all just ourselves? And isn't being ourselves just normal? If the ability to just be my normal self is weird, than I guess weird I am and weird we are because we choose to live authentically.

There is nothing about me that isn't genuine. I'm not trying to be someone I'm not. I'm just trying to figure myself and this life out. So please take me as I am. :)

This is a picture of me with my family after getting home from my mission. My mission was my first and greatest dream come true:

The second is a mini-collage from when my little sister got married right after I got home in December (and after I played her the song I wrote for her on the occasion):

So this is the beginning of me.

What comes of this blog we'll continue to see.

:)

for all my fellow Jerseyites...

don't judge a book by it's cover.

I don't know why I like paperback books.

Hardcovers are so durable, so protective, so beautiful (when the book has been bound and printed in a fancy edition). And part of me would like to have a pretty library, with volume after volume of fancy editions to display and have at hand for use...in certain cases, as in encyclopedias, dictionaries, the classics, etc, this is the better format. But in my everyday reading, the hardcover presents an exterior that is formal and foreboding. Large and cumbersome. For many books, I want the softcover. The paperback cover, which is no more than another page of the book, another page of the story. It invites you to become more intimate. To curl up comfortably as you canvass from cover to cover. And when the things we love are fragile, it forces us treat take especial care and treat such treasures as we ought to.

Each cover has it's place.

I love both and am glad I don't have to choose between them.

It's what's inside the covers that counts.

p.s. I was wrong,

I do know why I like paperback books. :)

life's little lessons: laundry.

life is a strange teacher. to some she speaks through the sages of the past (aka-books). to others she speaks through parents and other influential figures (like Snoop Dogg). still others choose experience, or experience chooses them; some lessons can't be learned in any other way.

unfortunately for me, laundry is one of these.

don't you love learning lessons that can't be undone?

my last laundry mistake was about seven or eight years ago when i put a red shirt in with my whites. i learned that red+white=a whole lot of pink!

today i learned that when soaking sheets in a sink, the sheets act as a kind of linen water slide. or chute. i left my sheets draped from the sink to the floor this morning. tonight, all the water from the sink is now on the floor.. and everywhere in between. so is the stain. lovely.

this is basically what happened. minus the snow.

...oh. and there is also a fourth group:

people who never learn.

moi.

I'M BACK!!! :D

It has been quite a while, my friends. I don't know why I went on hiatus for so long. I just stopped. I even began to hate blogging because I got out of the flow and never wrote. When I did, it was crap. Oh well. I'm here now.

I'm back in Jersey! I was in Utah from August until Christmas. Since then I have visited my sister in Kansas and my Aunt in Virginia and am now back en mi casa con mi familia. :) ("in my house with my family")

Being "en mi casa con mi familia" is AMAZING! I LOVE IT. :)

Not much is going on just now, just rain and reading. Life is good. :)

p.s. Happy Birthday Grandpa!! :) He was born 1.23.23. He was always a man of numbers.

A Little of the New in the Now.

I moved to Provo, Utah at the end of August. I am currently working full-time and am saving $ for school, mission, and other ambitions. I'm not great at it, but am learning! I hope to begin school here at BYU (Brigham Young University) in either the winter or the spring semester.

There is quite a lot of newness in my life right now. New home. New family (roommates). New haircut. New shoes. New ward (church people). New location for work. New boss. New friends. New boys...it would suffice to say that I am adjusting to many changes right now. Along with the ever-present struggle of becoming a new person every day. Every day coming a little closer to who I want to be. Permanently.

Right now, there is no permanence. I am in transition. For the next many years of my life I will be going from one transitional stage to another. Mortal life is all about the transitory vagabond. And that is what I am. That is where I am. In the now.

SONNET 116

VS.

I just came home from the showdown football game between infamous rivals BYU and U of U. It was epic in all the wrong ways...we were steamrolled: 54 to 10.

From the beginning of the game I was little disappointed in many of my fellow Cougar Nation fans. I am all for rooting for the home team...but not so much for booing or trashing the other team (or your own when they are losing). It is awesome to become involved in the game, to care about the outcome, to be fully engrossed play by play. But I will never forget the revelation I had when advised by Steven Covey book to not allow yourself to become overly emotionally involved in something that is out of your control. I have tried to take this advice to heart...and it helps. So even though I was sad we lost, I am not going to jump off a bridge. It was just one game. There will be others. I still love my team and know they will rally.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

--Old Billy Shakes--