Life Lately

Since I don't quite know how to manage photos via blogger yet, you will just have to make due with my slew of photos, in no particular order:

My reunion with Emily at the Flying M

Our family photo Fall 2012

Fugiyama lunch date with Sam {and the chef's specials made just for us}

Friends coming to visit in La Grande!!

& a dinner chef Jeff made for all of us

J's hair after a bike ride home from campus

At the gala with the newest issue of Oregon East literary magazine where I intern

and more!

stop signs

i'm so glad that you and i
stop at stop signs

when the rest of the world
just drives on by

living free and cavalier
is nice once in a while

but we have to care
because we have a reason

we know what happens
when we don't stop.

we know because
we've done it before,

we've been there
and we're not going back.

at least,
i'm not

Testing Day.

I don't have any lucky socks, jeans, or ponytail holders. I've only got what is in my mind and I can assure you it is stuffed to the brim with Spanish adverbs, uses of the impersonal and accidental "se," imperfect vs preterite verbs, and lots of vocabulary that has to do with different sicknesses, body parts, and the doctor's office. Ironically I have a bit of a resfriado myself. Hmmm....

I'm pretty lucky in that with my particular major, I don't have a lot of scary tests at the testing center. Do not be fooled, however, because I've got to read more than there is time in the day, and write until my fingers fall off, but I love it.

What do you love about what you do?

These people around me,
are underestimated to say the least.

Their intelligence and worth
are hidden behind their potty mouths,
which make me want to hide from them.

I know they are more than they allow themselves to be.
I pray that they are. Because as for now,
they make up the world
as I know it.

I don't have to hide from them,
I don't have to isolate myself
from this strange melancholy,

because when I step inside
and get to know their interior,
I find diamonds in the rough.

Happiness is....

..getting through a week you thought impossible

..waking up to a text at 6 a.m. with word and picture that your newest niece has been brought into the world. And not being able to fall back asleep because you're too excited

..friends coming to visit, so excited to see you and venture the place you call home

..fall photo shoots full of laughs

..the complete dive of Nell's Drive In, but dreamy cream drinks and deliciously greasy food.. and more laughs

..24 hours of fun and feel good with some of your favorite people that you couldn't have planned better if you tried

..feeling loved and that you have enough

..somehow getting your homework turned in by midnight without completely crashing the party

..facetime with family, where you are so excited to talk you keep interrupting one another

..hardly being able to hold back the tears talking about the newest little Thompson baby (name TBD)

..the smell of baked pumpkin cookies filling the apartment, and for once not stuffing yourself full of them

..crisp, fresh autumn air that somehow makes life feel new

..wanting to freeze time, but knowing you can't because there are more good things to come

This is happening happiness

we don't do this
because we have to
but because we want to

in ten years we will look back
on our twenty-something selves
and laugh while we hold our screaming children
on the front porch

we will remember when we used to go on dates
the two of us
and when it was quiet
when we tripped on shoes
instead of toys

but we will know
we have never been happier

and we know it now.

We can do hard things.

I have loved to write from the very beginning. Each year in school I looked forward to the writing assessments. I always anticipated prompts they might ask. With my big family, life was never boring. I always had a fun story to recall, and loved getting to construct it and put it on paper.

And then came academic writing. Though research papers were not initially as fun, I have always been able to still find my own voice and be proud of a paper to call my own. Until my Lit classes....

Not only do I have to read something that makes little sense to me (the first three times), but I have to put it into context, summarize it, tell about the parts that were most interesting to me (and why), and then interpret the piece as a whole, and relate it to other things we have been learning.

Doing said assignments is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life. It takes every bit of  my concentration and patience. It is as though I have to squeeze out every single sentence from my brain until, one by one, it is complete. And then I pray very hard that it makes a bit of sense.

Don't get me wrong, I always feel better after these assignments are complete, but while they are in the making, you may as well chain my arms and legs down to the edge of a cliff and torture me.

This is a lesson for me. I hope to instill in my children a love for literature, so when this part comes around they are more worried about having too much to say. Fantasy? Yeah.