potato land

the frozen block of ice is not so frozen at the moment. not quite like home, but que puede hacer? my aunt needed a break and so we went to go watch my grandparents for the weekend. it actually wasn't so bad. fights were minimal and we kept fairly occupied. we took frued because, A: moby dick was full of grass, B: it's cheaper to take the saturn and C: the AC in moby's broken.
*sigh* it's sad to go to my grandparents' houses. my dad's parents are losing their memories and cognative ability completely. grampa's in a rest home and all he wants to do is go back home, only the home he wants is forty years gone. he has no idea who i am and barely knows my dad. his mom's not much better. as for my mom's parents, they're both on oxygen, and can't move without winding themselves. you don't even ask how they are; in short, they're packed up and ready to go home. it's the final waiting that hurts. and the pain is reflected in my parents' eyes. i think that that's the hardest part. it makes me want to be little again when everything appeared good through the rose-colored glasses of naivity. a lot of things make me wish for that. but that's not the way it works.

later (or..earlier) thoughts

being awake at 4:30 maakes you prone to profound (and random) thoughts. i've had both. to share:
1(the profound;at least for me.): records, geneology, and journals are fundamental parts of the gospel. if you think about it that what the scriptures are. you say that you don't have meaningful stuff to write? well, mormon did abridge most of the stuff out. how'd you like to try that on for size? evidently there were some prophets' entries that weren't exactly thrilling and the begats aren't quite so exciting. so the point has been, is, and always will be to keep a record in one way or another so that we do not walk after the sins of our fathers. insead we link the children to the fathers and visa-versa, and it becomes part of who each person IS. (Helaman 5:6) anyway...
2(the random): if something of great importance happens in another timezone, what time is it recorded to have occured? for example: we have pearl harbor recorded to have happened at 7:55 am, but what time do the japanese have it happening at? i guess that they'd probably just have it happen at local time for wherever the record was kept. or maybe as the local time for where the event occurred. but what if the entire nation was affected at once? *sigh* deep thoughts with no answers. i need to dance and get back to regular thought "patterns". where's that book that i was talking about earlier?

summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime...

i think that the best place ever to be at five in the mornin' on a thursday is at the Temple. oh, it was SOO beautiful. it was still really dark, but at the edges lighter blue was seeping into the sky and then the mountains were silouetted against it, except with the snow showing where the two mountains converge in a canyon. then to top it of was the awe-inspiring Temple itself all light up with spotlights on Moroni. it just glowed and eminated love. i love that place so much. my dad just laughed as i sleepily described it to him. and then i got to crash face-down on the couch! my favorite! i swear, we have to best couch for sleeping on (though occasionally leather ones are really comf). :)
now baseball, hay fever and a book that's calling my name. :) i love summer.

linked up

statix showed me how to create links for my blog and i was playing with them. check 'em out. no seriously, check 'em out! they're uber random. but anyway...
today was kinda crazy. i guess that yearbook day generally is. and that's all folks. no more to say today that makes any sense and isn't somehow related to to the colors black and white. ciao!

timeless yearbooks.

looking through old yearbooks is always a source of great entertainment for me. both my own and other people's. especially my parents'. it's fun to read the comments that people write in. it reveals a little more about what they were like when they were your age. i'm cat curious, but my mom "doesn't remember" what about half of the entries were about in one of the books.it makes me wonder about what i should write in yearbooks this year. something meaningful that they're kids will have free licence to make fun of. and the pictures... well we're not going there since i can't talk. :) ha ha! i only show up once in the entire book and that's my mug shot! hmm, we actually should PLAN stuff to do next time. i vote that it's delagated to t-man, smiley, or mr. "i'm a georgia peach mowing my lawn". anyone dispute?....it's settled then. unless otherwise told, i'm coming home after school, eating lunch, and taking a nap. :P so there.

de-century-ified

our ward is going to martin's cove this summer to make the ever popular trek. as part of leading up to that we're having a pioneer country fair today with different pioneer activities. personally i'm affiliated with the handcart and horse rides. well, we're supposed to dress up in our pioneer clothes for the trek, and being the prompt person that i am...i just finished my bonnet. it's silly to see my family in clothes from the eighteen hundreds wandering around the house watching tv, on the computer, or using a dremil tool. i need to go help set up right about now but i can't remember where i hid my real shoes. it's been a while. well, i can check the computer off the list of places they're not. :)

p.s.-

does anybody know when q-tip gets back? i hear that he went to the frozen ice block *shudder* to visit his sister. i hope that he doesn't stay there all week. i need him to sign my yearbook. :, plus second period is lame without the one person that knows that i'm actually alive in that class.

psycadelic scrubbin'

i'm seriously likin' these scrubs. made from a super good cotten, they breath fabulously, don't draw as much heat, and of course the coloring is just awesome. it's what would happen if you dropped the devil's china rainbow. intense red, green, yellow, orange and black all swirl together. all this, added to the fact that they are custom made and tailored to me comf make them the bestest.
anyway, the sky is BeeUtiful and it would be a shame to leave that blue sky hangin'. i'm totally up for frisbee, kickball, anything and everything! feel free to join in. pasta amigos!

fallin'..in and out... of love

that song has been stuck in my head since it came on the radio during photo (that was a mess. i was late into the dark room and ended up not even getting an enlarger. :P all i got done was mounting one photo.) anyway..
ryan enters basic today. i'm not sure what to feel. i still think that he's an idiot, but at this point he's signed his life away and i can't change that, so i might as well not make the situation worse. i'm definitely going to miss him. *sigh* relationships are messed up. i'm being a selective hermit when i grow up.
:) gone daddy gone just came on the radio! AND MY MOM BOUGHT STRAWBERRY PLANTS! WE GET TO PLANT THEM TODAY!!!! i have to go right now. pasta y'all!

attack of the killer sunbeams

The following article was submitted for the Journal of Collegium Aesculapium, the magazine for the LDS physicians association.

Nothing in my 4 years ofmedical school at Georgetown prepared me for what I was to encounter six weeks into my residency in Provo. I expected being swamped with patients in my mission to stomp out disease. I even expected to stay up all night more often than daytime people should ever do. And I was quite enthralled with living in such a clean little city with such friendly people. I soon found that my seven fellow residents were impressively dedicated to their church. In fact, all seven had served missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we quickly became good friends, which helped me dismiss the stories I had grown up hearing about this strange religion. . My new mission companions, the residents, would frequently take me aside to clue me in about the LDS Church and culture. But every time I thought I was getting a handle on the dominant culture in and around Provo, someone threw me a curveball -- like the humbling experience that happened to me on a busy afternoon in the Family Practice Center.
I had been up all night, was tired, and still had a long list of patients to see. My honed diagnostic skills were dulled from sleep deprivation and my milk of human kindness had begun to curdle. "Will it ever end?" I thought to myself as I ran through the next chart. Hmm. The chart belonged to a 34-year-old mother named Betsy. Her presenting complaint was depression. Through my fatigue, I heard myself saying, "Not another one!" Thoughts raced through my head of an earlier patient who took almost an hour to tell me her life story - a big stretch for her scheduled ten-minute office visit. I quickly gathered my thoughts and entered the room. I greeted Betsy and she shook my hand. She did not smile. I could tell right away she was depressed and reached in my pocket for my prescription pad, ready to bless our encounter with a prescription for Prozac. "What's wrong Betsy?" I asked in a quiet, reassuring tone. "Oh Dr. Tubbs, I can't take this anymore." Tears began to flow down her cheeks almost immediately. "I feel like everybody is out to get me." "What makes you say that?" I inquired. "I'm sure I'm making more of it than there is. I try to be a servant of God and do what is asked of me," she sobbed, "but I just can't take it anymore." "I can see you have a lot of stress in your life Betsy. Why don't you tell me about it." "My husband doesn't like me anymore. He yells at me for not keeping the house clean. The dog messes on the floor, and the sunbeams are driving me crazy!" I stopped her in mid-sentence. "What?" To my amazement she said it again: "The sunbeams are driving me crazy!" She was even more emphatic about it this time. Trying not to laugh and to maintain a therapeutic empathy, I inquired, "Just what do the sunbeams do?" "They get into everything! I just can't control them!" "You try to control them?" I asked. "It's impossible. They move so fast you know!" "Oh, I know," I
said, trying to humor her. "They get into everything," she cried. "They come in and out the door and in and out the door, and they won't stop talking." "Won't stop talking?" I repeated, trying not to gasp. "I just can't seem to keep them quiet. I have tried everything. Even ear plugs! I love them, but sometimes I think they are possessed by the devil himself." What a nutcase, I thought in my semi-comatose state. Barely able to keep a straight face, I asked, "So have you told anyone about the sunbeams?" "Oh Dr. Tubbs, that is the worst part. I tried to talk to my bishop about them, but he just thinks I'm crazy." An accurate diagnosis. I couldn't agree more, I thought silently. "He just told me to deal with them! He said I'm an adult and need to learn how to handle sunbeams. He doesn't understand me at all." I was fascinated. I couldn't believe no one had diagnosed her before. This was classic paranoid schizophrenia. My first case. Do we have a straightjacket? I've always wanted to put someone in one. Does she need to be locked up? Wanting her to go on, I asked, "Well, Betsy, have you tried suntan oil?" She stared at me coldly like I was patronizing her. The room was silent. Trying to backtrack, I asked, "Well, do you have a rash anywhere?" She looked puzzled. I had confused the confused. I anxiously awaited her reply. She tilted her head to one side and asked, "You're not LDS are you?" "No, I'm not." I said. At first she chuckled, but seconds later she burst right out laughing. "You probably think I'm crazy!" Where I come from sunbeams had more to do
with solar flares than healthy young children. My Mormon companions failed to equip me with this vital ecclesiastical information. I did, however, manage to lift her spirit to new heights and she left the office in a much better mood. This lesson in language reinforced my feeling that, in spite of my Georgetown education, I sure didn't know it all. John Stuart Mill once noted: "Language is the light of the mind." I'll bet old John never got enlightened by the sunbeams.

sunshine withdrawl

*sigh* this rain is throwing me off majorly. i want the sun so bad. i paced myself during the winter for a normal summer arrival and now my reserves of vitamin d are next to nil. and it's starting to show. it's worse than winter. you expect to be without hues then. now i wake up every day hoping to look up out of my window and see blue and all i see is dirty shades of black and grey. the bed spits me out and i go through the day feeling cold, hungry, and depressed. i'm not sure how to cope. i can't ever remember this happening before. :' maybe i need one of those heat lamps that they put in iguana equariums.
sorry that you guys have to deal with me right now. i wish that i could just curl up and sleep till the sun came back. y'all are great. thanks. hasta...

shoebox philosophy

i've been kind of philisofical today. not for any real reason that i can see, just am. it always surprises me when i tone down the energy, step back and look at things. i think that it's the rain. if it were sunny then i'd be out goofing off, but the grey clouds and wet everything make you think. probably cause i fell out of like(more like slid, kind of like sliding into first, but out of love instead. does that make sense?) how do things stablitize so much as you get older? do they even? it seems like it woul have to, but everyone says stuff like that to you from the age of 4 on, and i can't see that it has really. if anything life has become less stable as i spend more time trudging through its goopy goop. adolecence is a very unique time if life. biologically you're at a point of chemical chaos and major formation of mind, body and sould. yet it's at this time that not just learning becomes intense, but decisions aswell. you form your personality, social bonds, and pretty much lock yourself into a road that you want to follow for the rest of your life. that's really scary when you think that one minute you can't get enough of something and the next if you never hear of it again it will be too soon. i heard the phrase once that someone was "scared to being." that's kind of how i am. i don't feel like i can really trust myself at such a formative time. i'm terrified of doing something wrong that will mess up this life and maybe after. i try so hard to be good, but i still find myself doing things that i regret and want to take back. *sigh* i need a spiritual booster shot. maybe i'll go to the temple with smiley and doug tomorrow. i can nap after school, plus at this point the scholastic enviornment is recessing to the back burner for a while. i need to talk to matthias and see about applying some places with him. it's less intimidating to apply with a friend to make sure you don't go yellow or get eaten; one of the two.

monday night fever

so my dad went to all-a-dollar and got some cheapo styrofoam planes and we flew them. as the lesson we talked about refrences to flying and planes, etc in the scriptures. we went down to the tanner building at the byu and flew them there, listening to "saturday night fever" because we couldn't decide on a radio station. every time i hear that fantasia re-vamped song i think of the devil from the cartoon in disco pants, and all his little demons have afros. then we came home and had strawberry pie.
i think that it's funny; i'm constantly finding more and more little ways that i'm like my extended family. por ejemplo: i found out today that my grandmother wrote an editorial column for the local newspaper. just the job i was thinking of doing. weird huh? or how my aunt was the shortest in the family, but no one ever bothered her because eileen had a way of making you sorry, despite being vertically challenged. anyway, it makes me laugh. and i seroiusly need to do my homework. that weould really stink if i failed school three weeks from summer.

happy mommy day!

normally i would not be on today, but i wanted to wait until after we called my sister to write her a letter. so now i'm on. but only for a minute, as i must hurredly depart. anyway, talking to nancy was a party. being a missionary would be the coolest ever. that's all i have to say.
strawberries are in season in cali!! we bought a billion and are probably jammin' for fhe tommorrow night! :) mmmm, yummy, red, sticky happiness!

nobody's fault

we just called my brother. it's mothers' day there (about 7:30 am) and it was the best time to call. it took forever to make a connection; the number he gave us was 1 off. the city code was 720 and not 702 or something like that. anyway, there weren't enough phones in the house for everyone to be on, so i gave mine to jason. somebody'd give it back when there was time for me to talk. the thing was that, umm, we only had a little more than 1/2 hour to talk, and after everyone that wanted to had talked, and when my dad handed me the phone, the time was up and everyone was hanging up. i heard nathan say goodbye and hang up. he didn't hear me. i know that it wasn't anyone's fault and nobody even thought about it, but it still hurts. it hurts a lot. I Miss Nathan SO MUCH. we call nancy tommorrow.

para que grabe...

i should do some in depth psyco-analysis on mi mismo. 350+ bubbles today and i have a tape recording stuck in my head of "pon el caset en la grabadora para que grabe. no hables haste que oigas el tono *beep*" this is worse than the most obnoxious song ever. it's almost as bad as having the entire first section of a listening section from spanish 2, including the intro, stuck in my head during an english test. "unidad 1, etapa 3; A: enrique y ricardo estan hablando en...(it goes on for about 10 more seconds)" that was bad.
i think that i did okay on my test. i guess that i'll see come july. until then i'll go my merry way and try not to worry. hey, now that it's over i can be semi-pecimistic. even if i failed it(i REALLY hope i didn't), i have 8 credits of concurrent enrollment. i'd just be 4 less than i would have gotten with the test. if i get a good scholarship, i won't even notice the difference. :) i'm just glad it's over and all of the worry in the world won't change how i did. i'll forget about it in a little while, just wait and see.

no soy bastante vieja para morir!

tomo el examen espanol A.P. manana. he estado pensando en espanol desde la clase hoy. no puedo enfocar me en nada. ahora tengo..casi exactemente 12 horas hasta el examen cuando morire. ESTOY UN POCO PREOCUPADA!! he gastado un ano y mucho dinero para tomarlo manana. creo que solamente preston sabe un poquito de como me siento. me digo no preocuparme, pero me decubre tocando mi pelo nerviosamente. me siento un poco enferma. me voy a ver Looney Tunes con subtitulos espanoles. ora para mi. pray for me