I'm thankful for Mark and Jenny

This is my dad and his brother Mark walking on the beach last August in Coronado.
Mark isn't particularly short, in fact, I think he's about 6', it's just that my dad is almost seven feet tall.
Mark is my dad's brother and we see him when we go to California. He wears Tommy Bahama shirts, and he's a doctor, and he laughs high and wheezy just like my dad and their sister do when something is unbearably funny. I like to talk to him. More importantly, my dad likes to talk to him. Although my dad and his brother could probably not be more different in some ways, they love each other, and they are brothers. They talk on the phone because they care about each other and sort of level each other out. When they were little, my uncle Mark used to start screaming in the kitchen that my dad was beating him up even though nothing was happening and my dad would get in trouble just because he was the big one, and Mark was the little redheaded one.
I love that story.

Jenny and I were also on the beach that day. We've always fought a lot, but she is my sister and I love her. Lately we have been getting along fairly, which is more than we can say for the rest of our lives up to this point, and I am so thankful. I love her so much. She levels me out, because she is not crazy, and I loosen her up (or I pretend I do), because I am. See in the picture how I'm flailing and she's calm? Yeah.
Tonight she let me use her report card from this term to get free Krispy Kremes, and for that, I was extremely thankful. When we were little she would make bite marks on her arms and pretend I bit her, which I didn't, but I'd get in trouble anyways. But I don't really care.

I'm thankful for Mark and Jenny tonight.
This hasn't been particularly profoundly written.
But I am.

And for good measure, a sweet picture of Jenny and my Poppy (father to my father and Mark) in 1996, when she was four and he was not. I'll have you know, he still has those red polyester pants.

I'm thankful for Them

Click this song before you read and listen to it while you read. Otherwise you're lame.

I popped the collar of my teal corduroy bomber jacket yesterday as I walked briskly out of my last class. I wrapped my purple scarf and zipped the jacket, because I knew it was going to be brisk outside. I raked my hand through my staticky collegiate mess of short hair and plucked my headphones from my pocket as I walked, placing them in their appropriate ears. Placed my thumb on the front of my iPod. Shuffle. Shuffle shuffle. Sam Cooke Little Red Rooster, no, Jane is a Groupee Sly and the Family Stone, Ain't Got You, Barbra, Emiliana Torrini, no, Border Song, no, Queen, Daisy Eagan, Mr. Moonlight, no. Aida? Definitely not. Thumb thumb thumb. Not Pink Floyd, no, Vertical Herizon, no, thumb thumb, Keane, Don't Ever Change by the Beatles? Closer. Close Up Frou Frou, My World Ray Charles Noooooooo The Pogues? Too....Irish. I'm Irish. Anyways.

Simple Minds. Don't You (Forget About Me).

I looked up and smiled, remembering.

I cranked it up, flipped the lock button, stuffed the iPod into my back pocket, yellow leaves rained everywhere. It was windy. I ran pell-mell past the Hinckley building, staff parking, across the crosswalk, past the stretch of lawn, over the Marriott Center, and as I ran up the stairs to my car, and closed my eyes for a second (yes running up stairs with eyes closed and headphones in try it sometime) my hair whipped long around my shoulders and my clip-clip-clipping high-heeled boots were my dirty old brown Converse for a second, and I was wearing bellbottoms and a raggedy polo shirt and my patchy old jean jacket all of a sudden. As I hit my car and zoomed home, I transferred the iPod to my radio and blasted the song Slow change may pull us apart when the light gets into your heart baby don't you forget about me Don't Don't Don't Don't again and again and again, and down University I left my windows rolled down, drove with my knee, and threw my arms out to my sides. I flew at 65 mph. It was flying. I flew home to the weekend to see them.

In high school, three people and I dressed up as the Breakfast Club. Then we decided we could be them. Even though we were all in drama. Do you know who the Breakfast Club is? I sure hope you do. If not you're missing out on some quality.

The four of us were the Breakfast Club for Halloween in my junior year of high school, Trevor in his jean jacket with a bandana affixed somewhere, Casey with a paper letter tacked to the front of his white track jacket and a blue wife beater inside of it. Dave wore a sweater, and I wore the parka and the dirty Converse. We were missing a princess, but we didn't ever find somebody.

We were in high school together. And the three of them meant very much to me. Very much more than I can say. Trevor drew me funny pictures and I always had him on the phone crooked between my ear and my shoulder telling him every bit. And Dave listened and knew all the things I didn't and corrected my grammar. And Casey, well, we fought a lot, but we loved each other a lot too. He always gave me piggybacks in the grocery store when I was tired and danced with me in parking lots. We all did plays together. The four of us. The four of us had a balance.


We haven't all been together since 2007, because people have been being grownups in all kinds of ways. And things are obviously a lot different now.

But last night Casey came home from Florida and Trevor and Dave and I were here waiting for him today. We ate lunch and slurped frosties and wandered Target together. All four of us.
Today we were all together. And today I am so thankful for that. It was magic.
(YES MAGIC.)

I'm thankful for PWMIMBLCWRWAGTWBWAN Getting Married

Last fall I had the opportunity to be enrolled in an English pre-req we like to call ENG 292, or the second half of all British literature. 16 weeks to cover all of it. In the English major at BYU you have to take British Lit 1, British Lit 2, and American Lit before you can take any real classes. Think of them like classes named Biology or Physics or Health. Very very very broad.

I had a man named Westover for British Lit 1 last fall. It was his first semester teaching, and he hummed in vibrato a lot between sentences. Emma can confirm this. We read Frankenstein and talked about Mary Shelley a lot in that class.

It was a good class. We talked about things that I liked, so, I liked the class. That's usually how it works. It was also a class full of pretty laid back, pleasant people. There was the redheaded guy with the last name of Snyder with whom I exchanged favorite brands of designer denim, a girl who worked upstairs in the same building as the class who was smiley and always in secretary clothes eating something out of a tupperware. There was another girl who was tiny and round, always with a giant Mountain Dew, and somehow she always had one headphone in--she was everlastingly indignant and talking about her mission. Our discussions were peppered with her outlandish comments.
A plodding row of married guys sat in the back row, one with a combover and leather jacket, another, tall, with the ever-present Red Sox hat on, another redheaded and flushed who always laughed uneasily. They were nice and helped me study for midterms that I probably would have bombed otherwise. This was our cozy right half of the classroom, which I never ventured out of--the left side was all the weirdos who would never comment or do their reading.

The last installment on this familiar side of the classroom was two people: one boy, and one girl. They both sat against the far right wall, she just behind him. Both brunettes, she was tan, he was pale. She had a face like mine, with big features, and he looked a bit like an intellectual Beaker, long-faced. They didn't know each other just as well as the rest of us didn't. I knew the girl from somewhere, wondered who she was for a few class periods, and then figured out she'd dated the older brother of my bleach-blond high school student body VP boyfriend. I'd seen her on their lawn with the Brother once, watching a movie on a laptop. I thought she was so pretty and nice.

The boy who would sit in front of her in British Lit always did his reading. I'd presume to say he was probably the smartest person in the class. He was thin and wore sweaters and round glasses. He always had something intelligent to say, always, and read out loud in the best read-out-loud voice. I was completely enthralled, and so was Westover, presumably, with this voice, because he always asked the boy to read aloud.

I'm a nosy person.

But so are most English majors. Actually, the entire English department. Actually, I'd venture to guess it's a requirement for anyone in the college of Humanities, along with Love of Pretty, Deep-Looking Cover Art and Hatred of Anything Math Related (speaking of, my Shakespeare teacher brought a graph up on the screen yesterday and my entire class went into loud moans and about pooped their pants and screamed and covered their faces) and Serious Emotional Overbearance Problems.

This Boy and Girl began a friendship in the class. We figured that by about the fifth week of class, they'd at least been on a date. Tupperware and Pepper Girl and Snyder and I would watch these two delightedly throughout class, as she'd turn to say something to him and he'd smile back into her eyes. There was something going on over there. We loved staring unabashedly from three feet away as the two of them became Something or Other right there in front of us. He was just the coolest, the smartest, and she was just the prettiest and obviously the nicest. They were just the est together.

After a while, we forgot about their relationship, it seemed to become stagnant, no showing of affection, no changes. No in-class declarations of love. Their mediocrely interesting in-class flirtations became as habitual for us (the watchers) as Pepper Girl's loud comments or Westover's humming or Harry Potter inevitably showing up in the conversation at least once a class period or the perpetual, stony (but friendly) silence of the married man English majors (a rare breed) on the back row. The little scrabble of people I sat in figured Boy and Girl had been on a date or two and left it at that, because nothing seemed to change.

On the last day of class, we met in the campus library to geek over some Special Collections, first editions of Dickens, a first edition of something or other owned by Jerome Kern, stuff like that. It was a nice end to the class. I wouldn't say any of us in the group had become snuggily close, but we got along fine. We assembled in the plush basement room of the library, surrounded by steep shelves of books, comforted, and I noticed that Boy and Girl weren't there. Neither of them. Hmmm.





Then they walked in holding hands.

And then we all wet our pants with happiness at least in our minds. We spent a half hour after class standing by the metal detectors discussing the happiness, after we watched them walk away, hands entwined, shaking our heads happily with big fat grins on our faces.

And now they're getting married.

And whenever I see either of them in the hallways at school, I smile and add an extra bounce to my step afterwards, because it's fun to know them and know that they met in a class that I was in and know that they fell madly in love. It's kind of awesome.

Up next: Oh, you know. Something. Any suggestions? What are you guys thankful for? Gimme your thankful food, your thankful book, and your thankful clothing item. Or something.

I'm thankful for Regina

this picture is from last night from my very own camera.

I am thankful for Regina Spektor the singer.
I am thankful that her concert in Salt Lake was last night and that I got to go and stand huddled up against the back of some tall boy who was huddled onto his short boyfriend's back in front of him.
I thought if height order was fair I probably should have been between them. But I could see Regina out of my left eye over the guy's shoulder about half the time, so I was good.
I guess if height order was correct and fair and just I probably should have just shoved Tawny in front of me.
I am thankful that Regina played Poor Little Rich Boy and Eet and Dance Anthem of the Eighties, and the song that is very special to me (The Man of a Thousand Faces) that nobody even knows, and that she was as sweet and charming in concert as she was the last time she was here. She really is incredible live. And I wish she'd played Somedays but oh well.
I am thankful that her opening band didn't suck at all. They were really awesome. They were Jupiter One.
I am thankful that she was wearing a cool patterned housedress-type dress with faces on it, because she is cool.
I am thankful that I could go with Talley because he is my friend. We went to Moochies to eat Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and Carl's Jr. for shakes beforehand, and I am thankful, because both were super delicious.
I am thankful that after five hours of standing in that blasted arena, with my knees tired and wobbling, and sweaty, we went to Maverick and I got a sweet, icy Sierra Mist from the fountain which quenched my thirst like nothing ever has before.
I am thankful for the kind of tired that's like when you're leaving Disneyland and you're ten years old and you feel like you won't even make it across the cement to the Mustafa parking lot and you'll just die right there on the ground full of tired Space Mountain-y happiness, because that was the kind of tired I was last night and it felt so good to crawl into bed so tiredly and so full of Regina Spektor goodness.

Thank you Housedresses Across America, Sierra Mist, Talley, Katie, Whitney, Tawny, and Makena, Jupiter One, Moochies, and Carl's Jr. for existing on yesterday, the sixth of November, two thousand and nine.

And thank you Regina. Awesomeness.


Following: I am thankful for People Who Met in My British Lit Class Whose Relationship We All Got To Watch Bud Who Are Now Getting Married.
(and yes I barely know these people, and yes I might be a creep (See: Jenny's Creep Wednesday) for writing about them, but they just make me joyously happy.)

I'm thankful for A Good Remedy for Beard Rash

The definition of beard rash is not on the internet.
So don't look it up.

The definition of beard rash, as defined by me (take into consideration my limited experience), is this:
An eruption of smooth, newly-exfoliated pinkish-red-sometimes orangish kind of unpleasant lingering tenderness on the bottom half of a non-bearded face when it has been in close, frictioned contact (kissing) with another face that is, on the contrary, bearded.

Bearded, or at least covered in two or three days' worth of stubble. One day of stubble is enough sometimes to give one the Rash, especially when you're dealing with someone who is particularly bristled. None of those pansy wisp beards ever cause real trouble.

I have experienced beard rash. And for all of you shaking your heads at me and scurrying off to think pointless derogatory things about my affectionate habits, I say, Boo You. Beard rash can occur from just two or three seconds-worth of kissing, if the person's face is sandpapery or foliagy enough. Just as it can occur from twenty minutes of kissing across the console or kissing through a movie and 45 minutes afterwards until you open your eyes, roll them, and wonder what in the heck you're doing. You're hungry. You want a pizza.

So, beard rash. I don't always get it. There seems to be no correlation between when it happens and why except for one perfectly wicked correlational device we like to call Inconvenience. It shows up like an awful cramping stomachache does when you're at the mall. Or how you all of a sudden have to go to the bathroom as soon as you get to someone's house at which you don't feel comfortable using the bathroom.

This beard rash thing sometimes is no problem at all, and sometimes flares up into a hugely conspicuous bright pink ring or beard-shaped little guy on your face. Sometimes it doesn't leave for hours. Days. Sometimes it goes away almost immediately. I have friends who experience beard rash in a crusty manner, which cannot be fun at all. Other friends actually apply things like Neosporin. I don't know if they're kissing a piece of sandstone or something with barnacles on it, but this always concerns me a little bit.

Once lately I was engaged in frictioning faces with someone very pleasant for a relatively short amount of time. Really quite short. It was kind of a goodbye-see-you-later-nice-to-see-you-Goodness-I-like-you-please-kiss-me type of thing. I had to be somewhere in a little while but I was sure I'd make it on time. I don't know why I was sure of this, why in the world, because I am always late to everything, somehow, even when I leave on time.
So I engaged in face frictioning with my fairly bristled friend--right, he has super rough facial foliage--and at some point we discontinued the activity. At some point directly after that, I looked at the clock and realized I had five minutes to be somewhere that would take me twenty, at least. No biggie, I thought. No biggie. I'm always late.

I sauntered calmly, my face tingling a little, to the closest mirror, to wipe the smudges of mascara from under the outer corners of my eyes that inevitably show up every few hours of every day.
I screamed. I looked like a clown. My face was totally orangish red pink on the bottom half. Bright and tingly and like a giant lightbulb that just says I KISSED I KISSED I KISSED I KISSED VERY RECENTLY. LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME. OW OW OW. MY FACE HASN'T EVEN COOLED OFF YET ARE YOU EMBARRASSED TO BE LOOKING AT ME?!?!

This place I was about to be late to was the last place you go with a big fat BEARD RASH on your face. The very last. I would have rather been meeting up with my grandparents with an army of hickies, the beard rash, and a cloud of angry Democrats behind me than going where I was going with the beard rash alone.

My pleasant bristled friend (shall we call him, the PBF?) stood behind me as I looked into the mirror, laughing a little, as though he had known about this all along. He was worried for my sake though. Who wouldn't be. Gulp. We stood there in front of the mirror for a while and then I felt indignant because it wasn't going away. In fact, it seemed to be getting dark redder as the blood rushed to my face from frustration and lateness.

I stomped into the dark kitchen of his little house to be indignant, but then opened his freezer, grabbed a bag of frozen peas, and smacked them onto the bottom half of my face. I stood staring at the inside of the open door of his freezer, stacked with numerous things. The kitchen was black except for the frosty light coming from the back of the freezer. I sighed. My face stingily accepted the cold from the peas.
PBF came and stood in front of the door and put his face close to mine (on the other side of the peas) and touched my ear and made a little speech and we laughed helplessly a little and I iced my face as well as I could with the cold, cold vegetables. They made it feel better and get less red. And everything was all right, and I went to where I was going.

Thank you frozen peas. I like to eat you sometimes too.
And thank you PBF for touching my ear and being leveled while I was freaking out.


up next: I'm thankful for Regina, as long as her concert doesn't suck, which I know it totally won't.

I'm thankful for Sue and Nail Plastic

Across the street from my parents' house is a house that old people live in.
Well, most of the houses on the street are occupied by old people. There are the ones with the lap pool in their backyard that makes their house worth like 12,000 more dollars, who always bring over huge bunches of daises when they're uprooting for the winter, then there are the ones whose house is next door and yellow and covered with ivy, but they're always gone on missions. There are the ones who have pink fiber optic-laced carpet in their living room. There are the ones who are crazy and used to call my parents in high school when I got home late to make sure my parents knew. They'd hear and peer at me driving by super late and call my parents. Every teenager in my neighborhood has a special eye-roll reserved for those guys.

The house directly across the street used to have a man named Dick Davis living in it, but he died when I was younger. I don't remember anything about him except for when the circus came to town and he let my little sister and I come over early in the morning to watch the elephants setting stuff up in the Provo valley below the cliff of his backyard. He was old, and he died. Now Sue and Jerry live there. They are old, but not quite.

Sue is 68 and has brown hair and brown eyes. She reminds me of a little sparrow because she's very spunky and round and knows a lot. She runs the ward newsletter. She knows all about computers. She knows a lot, and she talks a lot, and since she talks a lot, we get along very well. She and her husband Jerry have lived in the brown brick house across from mine for about five years. They have a cat named Stinky and another one whose name I have never actually asked, but when they talk to it, they call it something that sounds like "Skanky". I'm pretty sure that's not the cat's name, though, so, who knows. They have other cats too. They also have a candy machine with Jordan almonds in it sitting in their front hall.
Sue and Jerry both graduated college as old people, and their little neck banner things from graduation hang on the railings of the stairs just inside their entry. Jerry's is embroidered with a message to Sue. They really love each other.
Sue and I sit together at church sometimes. We've just begun being good friends this year, and this summer, she started doing my mom's nails. Sue does nails. Sue is very good at nails. My mother pays Sue to do her nails.

I've never really been interested in having Nails, that is, long ones that are hard and scratchy and take maintenance that you can't get dirt underneath. They're for people who don't fall down and scuff their shoes all the time, people with clean cars and perfectly coiffed hair. I'm more the do-a-crappy-job-of-painting-my-nail-stubs-bright-orange kind of girl. But, towards the end of the summer, Sue offered to do my nails for free. Because I needed "a lift". Now that I'm becoming a grownup and stuff, I figured I could take a few lessons from having long ladylike elegant nails of elegance. So, I decided to go ahead with it. Sue puts this stuff on them that makes them grow crazy long. Mine are getting long now.

Sue went on dialysis about a month ago, which she was hoping she wouldn't have to do. It's no fun, she tells me. I wish she didn't have to be on it, but it is making her feel a lot better. She's got this crazy bruise on her left arm from where they poke her. She's there at dialysis for five hours a day, three days a week. She really likes Ben, one of the nurses, and asks me if she can give him my phone number. The alternate days she's not at dialysis are when I go over to get my nails done and to chatter.
I go over every ten days or couple of weeks, now, and sit and talk with Sue about my life and her life and what she does with hers and what I should do with mine. Stinky sits on my lap and Sue and I sit in her bedroom with a folding table between us, and Law and Order humming on the TV in her background, and she paints thick clear plastic carefully onto my nails with a clear paintbrush. I always want to make cookies for her but she's not supposed to eat a lot of stuff. Sue's bedside table has an open box of Milk Duds on it, always. Her giant Apple computer sits on her desk and there's a plaid fleece blanket folded on the chair under my bum.

I alternate my hands in and out of this little light box which cures the plastic on each nail, and Sue tells me about her granddaughter and her sons, and health insurance and how ridiculous it is with dialysis. I looked at her wedding pictures the other day, and told her how my best friend had a veil just like hers--a little poof right up on top of her head. Sue tells me how she thinks I should go on a mission, how I need to finish school, how everything will happen in good time. I tell her about being nervous to finish college and about who is talking to me, and who isn't, and how much I miss people sometimes, and about a new restaurant I went to this week. I ask her how she knows things. She tries to convince me to put Halloween stickers on my nails, and I say a vehement no, and we laugh.

I'm very thankful for the "lift" Sue gives me each week or two, for our friendship, for the life she's lead so far that I learn from, for her wedding pictures with bridesmaids in pink dresses and little pillbox hats, for how similar I have found myself to be to this grownup who I was pretty sure I had nothing in common with, for my nice long nails, for Stinky the cat, for the open box of Milk Duds that reminds me I don't have to be old when I get old just because I'm old, and for Sue.

Thank you Sue.

Up Next In The Warm Leaves/Crisp Cider Thankfulness 2009 Installment:

I'm thankful for A Good Remedy for Beard Rash.
and the definition of beard rash, if you're not quite sure what that is. But no details.

Crisp Cider and Warm Leaves, or whatever

It is November, and as several (or probably thousands) of other bloggers are doing, I am having a good think about thankfulness and what it is that I am thankful for. I would tell you that I'm going to spend each morning this month devoted to writing you a short, perfectly-formed blog about something I am thankful for, like crisp autumn leaves or warm apple cider or whatever, but as soon as I make goals like that, I end up missing days and feeling very discouraged. So let's just say that, for the entire month of November (minus a few days at the beginning...good planning, Julie) whenever something very thankful happens, and I happen to catch the whim of it, and I happen to be at my computer, or I happen to be feeling extremely full of words that need to be let out to describe my thankfulness, I will tell you a small story about something that happened to me that I am very grateful for.

Deal?
Ok good.