Book Worm

For about the billionth time in my life I went into a bookstore, naively thinking that I could simply grab what I needed and then leave soon afterwards. Oh, how mistaken I always am. Two and a half hours later, I have my scratch pad out, jotting down intriguing titles (which is just about everything on the shelf). I just love books!--picking it up, feeling its weight in my hands, becoming curious at the title and illustration, reading the summaries and quotes, flipping the pages to smell that wonderful book smell. Aaaahhhhhhhh . . .

And I really love to read. I am still SO giddy that I have a job that basically pays me to sit and read all day. But even with all that, it's not near enuf time to come close to reading everything that sounds interesting to me. Since I got hired slightly over three months ago I've already read the following:
Four Souls by Louise Erdrich
Sam's Letters to Jennifer by James Patterson
The Queen Of The South by Arturo Perez-Reverte
All I Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum
Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen
Our Heritage (Church)
The PeaceGiver by James L. Ferrell
Great Short Stories By American Women
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
Better Than You Think You Are by Ardeth G. Kapp
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Return To Sender by Sandy Hutson
Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan
Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks
To Draw Closer To God by Henry B. Eyring
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
A Night Without Stars by James Howe
Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright
Technopoly by Neil Postman
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
A Chimp In The Family by Vince Smith
The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Lectures On Faith by Joseph Smith
The Book Of Mormon
and I'm currently working on Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler, If Life Were Easy Then It Wouldn't Be Hard by Sheri Dew, and How Tough Could It Be? by Austin Murphy. This is why I've never been able to fill in my favorite books on my profile, cuz I've just read too much, and loved most of it. I like to try and get a good mixture in of church books, fiction, non-fiction, and juvy.

And I love that I'm finally old enuf (I think so, anyway, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, no doubt) to talk about how much I love to read without being thought a complete dweeb (except by the funny kids I work with. Silly kids). Cheers!

Solitaire as X Box

As I've been trying to wean myself off naps this week, I found that the only thing that was interesting enough (at the time) to keep me awake was playing solitaire. So, I commenced to play it for over an hour. I didn't win once. No matter how much I wanted to pull myself away, I just couldn't seem to. And after that marathon, I was so exhausted I needed a nap.
Today, I just decided to go straight to the sheets rather than even try. When I woke up, I felt so energized that I decided to play a little solitaire. I finally won.

Kiss of Death

I heard yesterday about this girl that was allergic to peanuts. Her boyfriend ate a peanut butter sandwich and then gave her a kiss. She died that evening from her allergic reaction. Oh man.

Bi-polarism

on a manic depressive scale of 1-10, right now I am an 11. I just got done crying to my mom on the phone (aren't mommies great?) and now have a sudden case of the giggles. Tell me something stupid, anything at all, and I'll prolly think it's funny.
This could be a serious personality flaw. The DSM IV would think so. But since it's not a long-standing characteristic, I don't think I could be diagnosed with it. And since I'm not qualified (and too mentally inept) to diagnose myself as mentally inept, I'll continue pretending to lead the normal life.
But really, because crying is such a cathartic experience, I think it must release an endorphin of some type in my brain and so then laughing just becomes so easy. It's pretty refreshing, really. I think it was an old Jewish proverb, or maybe a Chinese one, that said, "What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul." Ah, those Chinese Jews. What will they think of next?

Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year

(or comeback of his life, as I'd like to hope)

I don't blame you for being you, but you can't blame me for hating it (hanging in?)

And how

Support your local poet.

a hole to stick my head in now, please

I slobbered on myself yesterdae. Dan thought I should have been embarrassed about that, and so I proceeded to explain to him how I don't really embarrass that easily.

Fast forward about 3 hours and I found myself having one of the most embarrassing experiences that I've had in a while. There's this rope swing in Mona (some of you are familiar with it) that people have been hyping up for a bit now, and last evening I finally had the opportunity to go. I was pretty hyped up myself. It wasn't very warm outside, and the sun had already gone down when we got there. Lon starts hypothesizing about the worst case scenario. "If you dropped right there close to the shore, you'd break something," etc. Linwood and he weren't even going to swing. But I didn't drive 30 miles down there for nothing. Everybody went before I did (except Linwood), giving me ample time to completely psych myself out. So I finally climb up in the tree and stand on the little wooden platform for about ten minutes straight (much to the annoyance of everyone there), continuing to psych myself out. My arms are like little twigs, and so I was very doubtful of their ability to hold the dropping of my whole weight when I stepped off that platform. Everybody else had done it and been fine, so I finally just went for it, and basically fell straight into the water. I couldn't, or didn't anyway, hold myself on that rope past the low point of the swing, and that's where I fell in. Yeah, it was about three feet from the shore. The water was only about five feet deep there, but I guess I went barreling in at enough of an angle that I didn't hurt myself. Maybe nobody saw the mortifying plunge . . . But my head emerged to the sound of everyone cheering for me, that wholesome thing that people do when they don't want one of their peers to feel too overly stupid, which of course just ensures the feeling of stupidity. I crawled to the shore and slinked over to where my towel was. People continued swinging, and the nite attained normalcy, again. Well, for everyone else, I spose. I remain quite disconcerted. I refused to pose for the picture because it was not a moment that I wanted immortalized in any way. (I know that posting this on my blog is counterbalancing that. Overly, probably. Oh well. You see how much I trust you people, to read this and still be my friends?)

I think it really is something I could probably do, but I had just completely wigged myself out, and everyone was watching. People were talking about going back on a hot, sunny day sometime. I feel a need to go again and redeem myself. But then there's always the chance that I'll flop again. And I'm sure that nobody else could give a rat's behind if I "redeem" msyelf or not. Ah, the things we do to try and save face.

I recognize that there's really no need to be embarrassed, cuz I was there with a group of really great people, and they won't think any the less of me. But, I unintentionally exposed a vulnerable side of myself that I wouldn't have necessarily chosen to show those people. And, unfortunately, that can't be undone now, and there's really no telling how much this small and singular event will effect certain people's perceptions of me, irreversibly for the rest of time as we know it. And that is really what I regret.

All Around

"I think the world's keenest desire is for beauty, and that our knowledge of how to achieve that is the various forms of behavior and expression that we apply a single word to, which is love."

--Barry Lopez

Hairdon't

Well, I've always kinda turned my nose up at the girls with the stripey hair. You want highlights, why did you do stripes instead? Well, due to circumstances somewhat beyond my control, I have now become one of those girls. Naturally, I'm not very happy about being a stripe-head. Perhaps I'll come to terms with it someday. But until then, I would have preferred polka dots, or at least zig-zags.

Plummeting

I went sky diving this last weekend! Can you even believe it?! I still kinda can't. I had emotionally removed myself from the reality of it (in order to prevent an extreme amount of excitement and nervousness that could have potentially interfered with my functionality), and then it happened. Before I could even think twice, I was out the door of that plane, and speeding to the ground below, even though it didn't seem to be getting any closer. We jumped at about 12,000 feet of altitude. I screamed. Maybe that's a little too girly, but I really just couldn't help it. Jay (my tandem experienced jumper) wrote "NICE SCREAMS!!!" in my skydive log afterwards. I got to pull the rip cord at about 5,000 feet. The parachuting was cool cuz it was slower and we twirled around and checked out the beautiful earth below us. The landing was smooth and easy. The only problem I encountered was my dang sensitive ears feeling like they were going to explode from all the altitude change.
Love is the next great adventure now, Ryan said.

one of those things

Have any of you ever been on a heterosexual date with someone who's homosexual, but is trying not to be, but you can tell that being with you isn't helping their situation at all?
Oh man, talk about awkward.

to all of those who think life can be broken down into nothing but a mathematical equation

"The clock is a piece of machinery whose 'product' is seconds and minutes. In manufacturing such a product, the clock has the effect of disassociating time from human events and thus nourishes the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created. [the use of the masculine pronouns here I find significant.] In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded. Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. The inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment; that is to say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser."

Perhaps those last few sentences are a little extreme, but it brings up an interesting point: isn't human nature and all the convoluted ins and outs that make up people and their personalites and idiosyncrasies and relationships a bit more complex than "mathematically measurable sequences"? A person is far too complex and uniqe to ever be described by some equation or graph.

Thus, maybe some of you should stop wearing watches.

what IS it that you want to hear?

"Am I more than you bargained for yet? I've been dying to tell you anything you wanna hear, cuz that's just who I am this week."

LavFest

Here I am at the largest lavendar fields in our nation. I know, I know, you can all get my autograph later.

B Names

I guess maybe I just needed to prove to myself that I could create the uprising that I did. I have a tendency to manufacture drama when my life starts borderlining on boredom, I guess. But, as Bryant pointed out, it wasn't really an uprising to anyone but my roommates, who really needn't worry too much, cuz the name code I used was really only that crack-able to the people who are already familiar with the situations. So no major beans were spilt, right?

p.s. who knows what Byron's blog is?

The Bane of My Existence

I think someone called this the barstool phenomenon once: Affection is directed at the person next to another person all the way down the line, aka. Person A is interested in Person B, who is interested in Person C, who is interested in Person D, and so on and so forth.

Case in point:

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. . . deleted . . .

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Let's just get it together, people! (Probably this didn't make much sense to anyone. I guess I just wanted to get it all out of my head for my own benefit.)

*All examples given are based on actual individuals and their situations, but names have been changed to protect identities (and the secrets that go along with them).

Thursday Evening

Well, I could get chastised for being a fast mover. Or I could get chastised for being a slow mover. Am currently experiencing frustration at not being in a position in which I could be rebuked for either.
Everyone seems to be ignoring me. I guess their world keeps going round without me.

Plus, why is the Jordan River and the Provo temples both closed for cleaning right now? That's two weeks in a row of the guilts for me, and it's simply not healthy, I can tell ya that much. Shall make an attempt at Mt. Timpanogas tomorrow morning, perhaps.

Sometimes I guess when I'm the subject of the sentence I'm writing I cut myself out. Am currently doing such. Use style when feeling annoyed at and insignificant in my own life.

Choosey

"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
--Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Now there's a lady who knows what I go through. Remember in Bandits how Cate Blanchett's character says she can't choose between her two love interests because together they make the perfect man?

Indeed.

Something I Do

Do you ever say that you've run out of things to say, just so you won't have to talk anymore because you know if you do something will come out wrong and you'll dig your hole deeper than it already is?

Cuz I do.

Isn't she beautiful, though?

Always a bridesmaid . . .

Bitch Blog

Got called a Bitch yesterday. It was the first time in years that this has happened (to my knowledge, anyway). As I mentioned to Don previously, there are very different nuances depending on whether this endearing term comes from the mouth of a girl or boy. I remember being highly offended several years ago when this name was last directed at me. However, oddly, yesterday I wasn't very offended. For several reasons. Partially, I know I deserved it, much to my chagrin. When I saw his name on my phone, I knew it was coming before I even picked it up, so I wasn't very shocked. I feel lucky to know enough about my perpetrator to know that he's a fairly emotional person (more so than he usually lets on), and that cussing is a primary way he releases frustration. It sorta dramatizes things, I spose.
In fact, it shows just the amount of emotionality that I find desirable.

Durango, Colorado

Almost nothing suits me better than good friends and a road trip.

Sense

I find a fatal flaw in the logic of love.

Sense

If love is a labor, I'll slave til the end.

Sense

Love, love will tear us apart again . . .

All That We Let In

Dust in our eyes our own boots kicked up
Heartsick we nursed along the way we picked up
You may not see it when it's sticking in your skin
But we're better off for all that we let in

Lost friends and loved ones much too young
So much promises and work left undone
When all that guards us is a single centerline
And the brutal crossing over when it's time

I don't know where it all begins
And I don't know where it all will end
We're better off for all that we let in.

One day those toughies will be withered up and bent
The father, son, the holy warriors and the president
With glory days of put up dukes for all the world to see
Beaten into submission in the name of the free

We're in a nevolution I have heard it said
Everyone's so busy now but do we move ahead
The planets hurting and atoms splitting
And a sweater for your love you sit there knitting.

I don't know where it all begins
And I don't know where it all will end
We're better off for all that we let in.

See those crosses on the side of the road
Tied with ribbons in the medium
They make me grateful I can go this far
Lay me down and never wake me up again.

Kat writes a poem and she sticks it on my truck
We don't believe in war and we don't believe in luck
The birds were calling to her, what were they saying
As the gate blew open the tops of the trees were swaying.

I've passed the cemetery walk my dog down there
I read the names in stone and say a silent prayer
When I get home you're cooking supper on the stove
And the greatest gift of life is to know love.

I don't know where it all begins
And I don't know where it all will end
We're better off for all that we let in.

a few randoms

Well, Tim Drake was wearing his collar flipped up over the weekend. But his whole shirt was also inside out, so the playfulness of that balanced the obnoxiousness of the collar quite nicely and I let it slide.

Happy thought for the day: Ashley told me last nite that her brother Dan said her roommate all-star cast would include me, Elizabeth, and Audrey. I guess he's really liked us. He told her that everytime he sees Elizabeth or me we make him laugh. He's such a good person and I always enjoy his company. Glad he can feel the same about me. I even admit to being jealous of the relationship between Ashley and him. He's so great to her.

on the subject of honesty . . .

Honesty is something I greatly appreciate. And it's a courtesy that I expect returned. I guess I expect too much.

Timing is a part of honesty, too, because if a person is allowed to go a certain amount of time thinking something while another person knows it isn't correct, and that person allows more than a justifiable amount of time to pass without fixing the misconception, then dishonesty has taken place.

Emily admired me for having an agenda and making it somewhat known. I guess that's where I went wrong, though.

I shouldn't feel like I have to apologize for being honest and upfront with others about my feelings. I'm sick of playing the games, and that's one of the biggest ways to put a stop to it--to finally share the truth of our feelings with others. But I really don't like that somebody else has construed it that I should apologize for being honest with him.

It made him uncomfortable.

Honesty never has been, or will be, something that I will apologize for. I can apologize for the effects of that honesty, but the actual telling of it is never a mistake. The effects in this case being that I made someone uncomfortable.

Well, heaven forbid. Welcome to this world. If that's the worst wound you come out of this with, then life has plenty of surprises left for you. Don't go cryin home to momma.

Peeves

Don't flip your collar up unless you're Cate Blanchett in The Aviator and it's real and authentic and allowed. It just screams that you're trying too hard. It smacks of effort.

And on another note, it's Friday nite and I'm bored. Supposed to watch a movie with some people but I can't call who I really want to call, so . . . I guess he's in VP somewhere playing games, or something. Whatev.

Chubby Hitler

Yeah. So this blog needs a new name before I start handing it out to people. It's not that I don't dig Chrishley. It's a special thing to me, but it's gotta be a little more universal. Chubby Hitler is a nice one, as is Zombie Jury. But neither of these contain any version of my name, which I think I would like in there somewhere. We'll save them for band names.

The Curse

The curse is real! I only had very strong suspicions before, but sufficient events have occurred to now make it statistically significant that the boys I date end up marrying the girl they date right after me. Spencer, Kevin, Jon, Millhouse, Jeff, Steve. And now Jimmy. and I had told him. we'd even joked about it! "Yeah, so whenever you feel like you're ready to get married, just break up with me and whoever comes along, you'll be set." a jest, some light-hearted banter, all in good fun. But sure enough . . . August 5th in the Manti Temple.
Watch out world, Christie's on the loose.

Yeah, Whatever

We don't have to stay friends,
Let's pretend to be enemies.
Whatever makes you happy,
Whatever makes it beautiful,
Whatever leaves you satisfied.

Graduation

Ah, the day finally arrives! 4 of us in my ward all graduated in social work. Isn't that cool?

Comparisons

Change is to Elizabeth as
Uncertainty is to Christie.

Frustrations

But you were 'just friends,'
at least that's what you said.
Now I know better.
I'll forgive you for what you've done
if you say that I'm the one.
I have other options, too.
But all I want is you.
It's not my style to lay it on the line
But you don't leave me with a choice this time.
Why weren't you true,
though I trusted you?
When you were 'just friends,'
At least that's what you said.
Now I know better.
--Gavin Degraw

Divertido Llaves

My keys have officially been missing now for over 48 hours. I'm losing my mind. I had to bum a ride to work today (45 minutes late) and stay two and a half hours later than needed in order to get another ride home. And I had to beg a key off the secretary so I could get into my room. A wee embarrassing, if you ask me. So, basically I'm on the verge now of calling the fam up in So Jo and inquiring as to someone's ability to drive a spare key down here. This won't prevent problems with the secretary tomorrow, but it will at least allow me the freedom my Quentin (car) has to offer.

Christine and Lillith

President Hinckley's father's name was Bryant, who eventually married Ada Bitner. But before he married her, he had a first wife named Christine.
I'm thinking about Lillith, the supposed first wife of Adam. What's the significance? I need to look some more into this.

Halloween 04 with Bryant.

Verbosity

In my hours upon hours of Internet surfing last week, I stumbled upon some interesting new words with which to enhance my vocab: Anuptaphobia is the fear of staying single, and Gamophobia is the fear of marriage. (see link) As a single individual living in Provo, perhaps these hit a little too close to home.

Firstling

Ha! weex late but worth the wait! I just found the e mail from Ashley telling me about this. It somehow got lost in the dark abyss that is my inbox. I was pretty tickled to find it, tho. Happy Easter, all. Two months from today and I turn 23. Gulp. Not ready to feel that old. I think I'll always be 17 inside. Well, rock on, and talk to ya later, dawgs.

Hi. My name's Chrishley. This is my first post. I'm just testing it out. But sleep calls. Goodnight.