i have this new thing where i forget to sleep at night, so i am surviving on naps. some days i just throw on an episode of south park for the sake of falling asleep, and two hours later i am deliriously happy. my semester is over next week, and then i have a whole month off of school. that also means a whole month off of public transportation, and painting pictures, and reading books. i should have some good, solid time to seek Jesus and make some money.

so that leaves me right here, with oil paint on my fingers and a bruise on my back, wishing i was chewing gum. it's been a long week, and today is only just monday. the weekend was a mess of work and car rides. sometimes my favorite part of a whole week is just a ride back from provo in a warm ford with a good friend. i need nights like that to keep me from going crazy during an eight hour shift. one day i am afraid i will just snap and quit, or yell at a customer. for the time being though, i just try to find the good in customers. the only scary thing is that, after 10 minutes of seeing them, every woman with brown hair starts to look alike, and i'd be angry too if someone asked me how i was doing five times in one day.

yup, that leaves me right here, wondering about the very state of my heart. i think about paul, when he says that his flesh and his soul are in a constant battle, and i agree with him. my head and my flesh want one thing, and my heart starts to want it too, when i am not trusting. God has a plan that i don't see, so usually i imagine what it is. i assume this, that and the other, and i take matters into my own hands. God is PATIENT though, even when i am not. i want my life to be a reflection of that. i sure do need his help every single second though. to breathe is to want so many things, but i have all that i need at this moment in Christ, and i trust that. He has my heart where he wants it for now, and i am going to rest and be okay in that.

i had a dream that i was smoking copious amounts of cigarettes in the CIA's backyard. one by one they went, and i wasn't even scared that they would be mad at me for breaking the law. i sat on the plastic swingset (the CIA always has one of those) and watched the smoke rise and rise. and then you came. you sat down next to me,
"you shouldn't smoke, it's bad for your health. give me a few of those."

so i did. and we sat there, in the dark, and didn't say anything. we watched glowing ember after glowing ember extinguish, and still we sat. i forgot that i actually hated cigarettes, and also being outside in the cold. you grabbed my hand, and told me it was freezing. i told you i didn't have gloves, so you did the job for me. you started telling me stories. i listened, fascinated, about all sorts of subjects: the war, climbing mountains, and road trips to other states. the CIA seemed childish. we sat for hours, and then you smiled sadly, got up and left. plain and simple, you were gone, without an explanation or a look back.


but i always did love you for being mysterious, i guess. and for defying the CIA at three am.

at 2 am, wes anderson reminds me of a lot of things in my life. like that i don't actually hate to paint. or that i like the kinks and bill murray. or that, sometimes, i just want to be margot tenenbaum. she is so mysterious, with the cigarettes hidden under bricks and the wearing a fur coat everywhere. i wonder what would happen if i packed up, went to indiana, and came back with a wooden finger. now there is a life. usually, though, things like headaches just end up happening on the weekends, and i am finally okay with that.

the bad news in my life seems to come in waves, just like the good news does. it is so strange that things keep happening in extremes, but they do, and that is the way it works here. some things are a lot harder to handle than others, and they don't hit home until later, when it just isn't expected. God has a way of doing things that i will never begin to understand. that terrifies me sometimes i guess. things happen, and things don't happen, but i know that i can trust there is a reason for all of it. i know that God is sovereign, and that is the truth that i will cling to until he takes me home. i will cling to it through scary phone calls, and exhausted nights, and days where all i want to do is praise his name. hallelujah and amen.

and sometimes i just realize that gossip girl doesn't compare to my real life nights, standing in a parking lot, or riding all the miles back to sandy, utah.

an 18-year old boy will spell connoisseur as 'contasuer' and thermostat as 'thermesdat', but he might sometimes still manage to pull off being charming. he may do what is bad for his health, like smoke lots of cigarettes, and drink lots of caffiene, but he will always stay strong and skinny (at least until 18 turns into 40). he will confuse you, and tease you, and make you angry, but he will always be your best friend. that is just the plain and simple truth of it.

i, on the other hand, will not do much reveling in 18. i will still get massiveheadaches and want to sleepforthreemorehours. probably i will spend the next year working, and going to college, and always being addicted to some new tv show (but only if it's already on dvd, and not about a crime scene). but, still, i am excited about what the next year will even mean.

"I still played with Barbies until I was like, 16. I would go on a date then come home and play with my Barbies. They were more exciting than my dates."

-my boss, tonight.

one time when i was 6 or 7 i watched a little boy pick up a cigarette butt out of the gutter and place it in his mouth. i did nothing but laugh and mumble that hemightgetsick.

another time, when i was nine, i watched my cousin fall off a bike onto her face. i rode my bike home as fast as i could to call for help. when i got there i realized she had the key.

at the age of ten i watched a bottle rocket tip over in the street and hit a house a few times.

when i was 11 the olympics came to town, so i got to go downtown and watch people drink a lot of beer.

on my 13th birthday i had been to two different middle schools. by my 17th birthday, i had been to nine different schools.

when i was fourteen i thought i really loved somebody, because i was fourteen.

at fifteen i was in high school, listening to the sound of music and not doing drugs. i was staying up until 6 am, sharing my secrets.

when i turned 16 my hair was purple and we had a party.

yup, at sixteen i smoked for the first time, out there in the winter cold.

seventeen i got a scholarship, and finished up high school with a fizzle, not a bang.




now it's almost time for eighteen, and i don't know where to start, except for in a hotel room in omaha, nebraska.

"He'd obviously hoped to create a moment, the kind that leads you to change your life, but it didn't quite work. If you are a doctor and someone hands you a diseased lung, you might very well examine it and make some radical life changes. If, on the other hand, you are not a doctor, you're liable to do what I did, which was to stand there thinking, Damn, this lung is heavy."

-David Sedaris, on quitting smoking.

this has been running through my mind for the past few days, but it still makes me laugh in the end.