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.

burritos. snapped glasses. ford. piles of laundry. the shining. mascara. watching someone smoke a cigarette. knit gloves. life aquatic. short lines at the dmv. next semester. text messages. the train. naps. the Bible. cute jackets. french press. npr. alligator. bags of green apples. curly hair. perfect jeans. getting a paycheck. ten years later. story ideas.

it's the simple things that just make life more interesting.

some things i have lost in the past few days:

1. my debit card or two.
2. my license
3. my whole entire wallet.
4. my appetite
5. hours of sleep
6. control
7. uncertainty.
8. occasional sanity.

some things i have won:
1. a football game.
2. ten years in utah.
3. free food at mcdonalds.
4. Jesus Christ.

and i want to pick up a bad habit more than ever right now. my flesh, it kills me.

today i learned two things:


that if someone smiles at you big enough, there is no way to keep from smiling back. even if the person is just a boy with blonde hair that has no idea what is going on. it is physically impossible, even if it happens repeatedly and you're used to it.


that you can really get a good cup of coffee for under two bucks without using discounts or coupons or any of that.

a few days ago, i just completely forgot that i was in school, and it took me until around now to remember. today is the first day in about two or three weeks that i have gotten home to an empty house and had time to stop doing anything.i've been doing so much that my head even forgets important things like when my birthday is or the date or why i even live in salt lake, utah. yup, it's the first friday i can even remember in the two months that i've lived here that i've had nothing going on after 7 PM. looking back, that is just plain exhausting, and now i am wondering what in the world two weeks of being in charge of children and houses i could never afford has done to me. but always, it's easy to see that God gives me more grace in the times that i want to run down every orange cone on the road and quit grocery shopping or even cooking ever. and also, he gives it when i just want to run down to provo on my own strength just to sleep in my bed for hours.

the funny thing is that, 5 years ago, i would have never thought my life on a sunday night would be watching a walk to remember with a german girl that has seen it eight times.


but the living in salt lake part doesn't surprise me much.