you are my pearl.

dear morgan:
you are not even 5 months old and already you make people around you happier than you even know.

let's get some shoes.

this is enough to make anyone's day:

4 new, comfy pairs of shoes. plus the original but kinda thrashed pink guys.

sure did

just buy 5 pairs of these in 5 different colors.

decent days and nights.

if you're ever curious why i love my family so much, it's largely because of things like this:

obamawesome.

i'm pretty happy with the result of the election.
blah blah blah nobody wants to read another blog about politics blah blah blah i'm too young to know anything anyway. whatever.
emily and my dad said it more eloquently and from both sides of the spectrum anyway.

my boys.

this is how my ride up to kaysville with my brothers started.
then they got hold of my camera and the rest of my roll of film looked like this:






i can't imagine growing up without these boys around.

one month down. 23 to go.

the meandhim is a foreign thing to me.

i never before loved anyone the way that i love him
before him, love was always right from the start,
more of a determination -- i'm going to love this person
so i do.
and it would ebb and flow
up and down
but at a steady, calm pace.

then, it would shrink
and shrivel.

with him though
it's an ascent.
to more.
slowly at first
gradually at first
unsure
happy, but carelessly unsure

but then there became more and more trust each time i held his hand
my hand seemed to fit more surely into his

my hand resting more surely on his chest
feeling for his heartbeat

desperately grasping at first
listening with my palm.


now
with him
love is different

once my hand got comfortable--
accustomed to his rhythmic beat
the contractions

the inhales and exhales of his heart--
the slow-paced steadiness i'd always known vanished.

the love doubled.
it tripled on itself.

like running up a hill--
my legs burn
i'm out of breath

my heart won't slow
the atriums and ventricles expand
and expand

i can't see the top of the hill
of our ascent
and i don't even care to look.
maybe there isn't a top

(my cynicism melts to hope)

i keep running up
faster and faster
i love him more with each leap

and keep drinking the more.
he gives me the more
i keep letting it expand and pulse


i don't need to understand the meandhim.
it is foreign.

the meandhim just is.
and it's right.

8 full hours of sleep.

i have been super sad lately. last night it all sort of got to me and i declared myself unfit for school today. this worked out nicely because not only was my little burrito morgan coming for the day but so was logan! so my day has looked mostly like this:and this:
so even though i have to work in an hour and i'm still stressed about pretty much everything, i'd say missing school was totally worth it.

wonderlust king.

lately i'm kind of obsessed with this guy.

mj.

my mom has bright red hair and she invites everybody she meets to please come to dinner sometime soon. she always has sodas in the fridge. she makes sure you write thank you notes for everything. she knows about architecture and books and how to dress age-appropriately. she understands the occasional need to stay home from school, whether it's stress or sickness or just one of those days, but also the importance of getting work done.
so today is jayne's birthday and she is out doing what she loves the most and that is visiting with various friends and children. while i haven't yet developed her affinity for gardening or decorating a room or not being awkward around new people, she has managed to get me to enjoy reading and to appreciate art and to never leave the house in sweatpants.
which, if you ask me, is pretty important.
happy birthday jaynie pants!

lost and weird.

i saw this on postsecret and it basically summed up how i've felt this week, and how i imagine i'll be feeling for a while until i get into a new routine.
i went out with some good friends last night and had more fun than i've had in a while. we just sat and talked and laughed all night and i forgot about feeling sad and lonely. it was a much needed night of comfort and drinks and good conversation.
but the truth is, i'm having a hard time making sense of myself without thomas.

missing.

yesterday, this boy left for the missionary training center. i won't see him for 2 years. i've known him about that long and haven't spent more than a week or so without him since then.
it's really great that he's doing this, i'm totally happy for him, and i know that it's an important time for both of us.
but right now, it just. really. sucks.

this is what has been going on lately.

this is why i love when emily asks me to play with her hair:
this teapot from world market maybe doesn't look like a teapot:this is definitely the cutest little face in the world, especially in mid-yawn:
this is why i love the google search suggestions:
this is not a well-thought out brand name:

satisfaction.

even though the rest of my room looks like this:
this is pretty satisfying:

awesome.

thanks for the link, emily.

18

boring.

i am a super boring person. this is something i've discovered recently and i'm even so boring that i've just accepted the fact rather than tried to change it. but i've also discovered that i can make myself sound sort of interesting.
but here is proof that i really am a little bit of a snoozefest.
(i found this on my cousin's blog. one of those "fill it out and send it around" things. i had to indulge.)

JOYS:
1. doing laundry.
2. playing dominoes.
3. snow.

FEARS:
1. spiders.
2. horses.
3. failure.

GOALS:
1. lotoja.
2. grow my bit of long hair so i can braid it.
3. clean my room.

COLLECTIONS/OBSESSIONS:
1. cameras.
2. cats.
3. fabian cancellara.
i'll let you guess what i collect and what's an obsession.

RANDOM FACTS:
1. one side of my ribcage has an extra bit. i call it crazy rib.
2. i have a cousin on my dad's side that i didn't know about.
3. my boyfriend and i have 10 cameras between us and only 2
of them are digital.

recipe for a bad mood.

take 1 pair of earbuds and let your cat eat them.
take your replacement pair and lose them.

take your new camera and forget where you put it.

have cat puke on your floor.

accidentally use warm water when you brush your teeth.


you'll be fuming in no time.

distance makes the heart grow fond.

come september, my heart will live here:

(vina del mar, chile)

but the rest of me has to stay here:
(salt lake valley)

update.

this is my broken wrist. i fell off my bike.
art cred goes to tom.










this is my kitty. we hang out a lot.


















this is a really unflattering picture of tom & me.










this is why i love living in utah.












this is the first nishiki bike besides my own that i have ever seen.













this is why i like riding the train.


now back to my hiatus.

titles are dumb sometimes.

i've been kind of avoiding writing anything because i don't have much to say. but i was reading my sister katie's blog and she said perfectly how i feel:

"It's a strange feeling when you read your own words and it doesn't seem like you even know the person who wrote them... I was disappointed at how normal I used to sound and how mopey I have been as of late."

i know how that goes.

hit me baby one more time.

my sister emily posted a blog recently with her top 25 (narrowed down to 10, actually) most played songs on itunes. so i took a look at mine:

1. those anarcho punks are mysterious/ against me! (27)
2. carolina/ ben gibbard (26)
3. sunshine/ g. love & special sauce (25)
4. new slang/ the shins (22)
5. between the bars/ metric (18)
6. candy shop/ andrew bird's bowl of fire (15)
7. pints of guinness make you strong/ against me! (14)
8. thrash unreal/ against me! (14)
9. heretics/ andrew bird (14)
10. frontier psychiatrist/ the avalanches (14)

to clarify, there are only 554 songs currently in the library, and probably 50 of them are my mom's christmas albums.
that means i only listen to about 504.
anyway, i'm always looking for something new to listen to, so i'm officially open for suggestions.

the science of sleep, round two.

woodrow wilson had a sheep named old ike who chewed tobacco.
i didn't think sheep liked tobacco.

i think my sleeping habits are split evenly between those of a 5 and 85 year old.
some nights i want to stay up soooo late, just to see how long i can go. but by around 11.30, i'm pooped and i give up.
and some nights i crawl into bed around 9.00 and even though i'm still tired the next morning (because you can sleep for days on end as a high school student but you are perpetually sleepy.), i am the envy of all my friends.
the older you get, the cooler it is to go to bed early.
("man, i fell asleep at 8 last night!" "no way! i'm so jealous.")
to be honest, i hate staying up late. somehow i manage to do it almost every night, just hanging around. sort of doing homework. constantly eying my bed. i'm not even doing anything useful.
so here i am, 11.26 pm. the 5 year old in me says "come oooon!! let's stay up all night. it'll be so much fun. fun fun fun." (but these days fun is actually replaced by homework.) the 85 year old says "go to bed, you. and drink lots of milk because we don't want osteoporosis."
i guess tonight i'll listen to the 85 year old because the 5 year old is getting bored and sleepy too.
(however, now i've been thinking, maybe i am just an 85 year old at heart. i have the 'crazy cat lady' thing down, i wear old people shoes, and i don't especially like loud noises. but this is a thought for another day.)
and now 20 minutes later, i'm definitely going to listen to old lady elizabeth.
i'm hoping next time i stay up late i do something even remotely productive.

what do you got if you ain't got love?

some things i love.

-my cameras. it's like having very tidy, very quiet children who do nothing but make art (science: take note). every one of them is different, but each is quite spectacular in its own way. i think photography is 15% talent, 10% camera, and 75% camera-photographer relationship. seriously.

-when my mom puts marshmallows in hot chocolate. it's not that i enjoy the actual marshmallows so much as i enjoy that she still thinks to put them in, because in my single-digit years i regarded mallow-less hot chocolate as pointless. i think i developed this trait from my brother. anyway, it's nice to know little things like that never change.

-sleeping with a heating pad. no, seriously. thanks to the worst stomach ache in the history of the world, i fell asleep with a self-timing heating pad that turns itself off before setting the bed afire. while the tummy ache lasted all of a half hour, the heating pad is still in my bed. mainly because it keeps my whole bed warm, but it also keeps my cat in bed all night, which adds even more heat into the equation. i now sleep in a sort of elizabeth sandwich, in which (hahah.) i sleep on the heating pad and the snuggly, furry cat sleeps on me. you wouldn't believe how comfortable it is. it's no wonder i'm late to school every day.

-'if you ain't got love'/ mason jennings.
i really wish i knew how to link to songs. because,
this is daaaaaarling.

finally, i love that it's 10.30 and i get to go to bed because i have my homework done. mostly. like 90% of it.
hey. it's a start.