I miss the cacti, but most of all, I miss…

(Because he should have been there)

I don’t know how I got born in to such a family, but I’m sure happy I did.

Is it time for Thanksgiving yet?

Stupid.

Reasons why homosexuals should not be allowed to have children, according to a Utah father:

Parents need to “raise kids in a multicultural environment, meaning a mom and a dad.”

So “multicultural” now means man and woman?  How lucky his kids are to be raised so multiculturally (in Utah)!  Ha.

I loooooooove reading things like this.

False advertising

Two Sundays ago I advertised this on my blog:

“Stay tuned for my thoughts on Elder Holland’s talk.”

I lied.

I had been working on that post for a while, and was just adding the finishing touches when my computer crashed (of course).  I figured that was a sign from God to stop hatin’ on his people, so I will no longer be writing about that (that’s a bit of a lie too.  Really, I will not be sharing my thoughts out of sheer frustration and not wanting to recollect the different thoughts and comments from me and others as to why the talk made us feel uncomfortable).

I hope you are not terribly disappointed, and I hope I can make it up to you with this:

http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/?artpiece_id=353#

Please click on the link and look at this wonderful piece of “fine art” (there I go with that false advertising again)… you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks for the compliment, BUT….

This morning I found this on my windshield:

It was a nice surprise considering that, from a distance, I thought the piece of paper under my wiper was a parking ticket.  I’m pretty positive I know who left it, as he was watching me park from his porch and tried to strike up a conversation as I walked by.  If I remember correctly, he was pretty cute–at least he was tall and had a nice smile.  Plus, I was impressed by how neat his handwriting is.

In all honesty, I’m pretty shy, so I most likely would not have called him anyway.  The big thing, though, is that I at least actually considered it…….. until I noticed this:

Really?  If you’re going to make the effort to pick a girl up like this, at least spell a simple word like “you’re” correctly.

Oh well.  I guess this gives me an excuse to not feel bad about ignoring the note now.  Or am I just using a simple misplacement of an apostrophe to justify my shyness?  Is it ridiculous for me to set correct spelling as a standard for the people I date?  I don’t really know, but needless to say, I don’t think this anonymous guy will be getting a call from me anytime soon.

A Rambling of Thoughts on a Sunday Afternoon

Note: As I walked away from the empty building that had held a non-denominational church service just two weeks earlier, I was glad I brought a notebook along. I wasn’t ready to go home, so I instead decided to find a quiet spot to just write. I thought back to an exercise an English teacher once had me do, where I just wrote for five minutes straight. It didn’t matter what it was about. It didn’t matter if the topic changed. It didn’t even matter if it was grammatically correct. It only mattered that I was writing, and that I did not stop until I ended on something I really wanted to think twice about. I decided to do this exercise again, and now I am posting the results. I began addressing the topic of clothing, as the night before I had a conversation with a friend about its significance. I ramble a lot, but I do end up eventually finding a topic to stop on. It’s certainly not my best piece of literary work, but I am happy with the conclusion that I reached.

Is a person’s clothes really all that important? No, not in the long scheme of things. What is important, obviously, is the person. However, their clothing is a good initial indicator of what they are like. It’s a short cut to understanding them–an outward reflection of who they are.
If I were to always wear whatever I wanted to–not taking into account the impracticalities of things such as ironing–I would wear dresses. Flowy dresses that move with the wind. Dresses with patterns of flowers. That’s what I’m wearing now, and it makes me happy. It is an outward reflection on my inner mood. Cheerful, carefree, and beautiful.
A sunny day with a slight breeze, my outfit is the perfect one for my current situation. Tucked into a little nook outside of the Knight Library, I’m reveling in the solitude that I’ve found on this stone bench–a bench so old it has moss crawling up its corners in delicate and beautiful patterns. My bench has a built-in umbrella–a tree that protects me from the sunlight my pale skin evidently tries to avoid. On second thought, perhaps it’s wrong to compare the tree to an umbrella considering the small leaves it continuously pours on me with each new breeze. It’s peaceful though.
There is noise, but it is a distant noise. The noise of people rushing past my nook, the occasional jingle from the tagged collars of dogs being walked nearby, and just now, the church bells ringing, signaling the release of parishioners eager to stretch their legs and gossip. Although my plan for the day was to be one of them, I’m glad I am not.
I’ve come to the realization that my most spiritual moments are those of solitude. Moments where I can get away from the demands of everything. Moments where I don’t have to entertain my friends or oblige my parents. Moments where I don’t have to put up a farce for the members of my ward nor feel the pressure to connect to a higher being and His son. These are moments where I can be free to connect to myself. And, for me, moments like that have proven to be much more spiritual.

Another thing I hate…

It’s been a while. Since I’ve been in Eugene, the majority of my time online has consisted of craigslist searches for jobs and housing. However, a recent romp around facebook has inspired me to write again.
I have a lot of friends who are either recently married or will be very shortly. And, regardless of my current war on marriage for myself, I do enjoy looking at pictures and judging.
It’s no secret that I love to judge everything–clothes, hairstyles, decorations, food–and weddings are the perfect conglomeration of all of these things. From the moment the invitation is received to the moment after I’ve had the chance to study all of your pictures on facebook, I will judge your wedding.

That being said, a family friend recently got married. When I looked at the invitation, I almost fell over with laughter. It was by far the worst invitation I’ve seen in my recent memory. Imagine my suprise, then, when the pictures were posted, and they were actually really nice. I didn’t care for the bride’s dress (an unfortunate, yet current fashion trend involving a huge, puffy skirt sporatically gathered), but the reception was beautiful. Her flower arrangements were lovely, consisting mostly of simple yet tasteful sunflowers. The cake was very nice and elegant looking, there were nice linen table cloths, classy lighting… just an overall beautiful reception.

However, the last couple of pictures in the wedding album completely ruined every single one of my positive thoughts towards their wedding.

Really? You just got married… Everybody already knows what’s going to happen. It’s just so tacky. If anyone dares put something like that on my car when I get married, I will not be happy. Actually, forget that; I’m not taking any chances. I’m eloping.

*As this is now a publicly available blog and anyone has the ability to read it, I want to throw in a small disclaimer.  The young man that got married here is very nice, as I’m sure is his wife.  This car decorating really does not speak to their lack of maturity or taste, but rather to their friends who decided to decorate it.  I don’t know who the friends are, but if I did, I would politely ask them not to attend my wedding/ elopement.*

My Christ-Like Moment of the Day (yesterday)

So despite my frequent questioning and my lose adherence to many church “guidelines” (What can I say? I like R rated movies, coffee, and the occasional swear word.), I am, actually, a pretty decent person. Case in point, yesterday on my way home from church, I was sitting in traffic on the highway, and a vehicle very reminiscent of this one was just ahead in the lane next to me.

Looking at it, I knew this transportable contraption was the reason for global warming, and instantly, I hated it. “They must be from Texas,” I thought, and sure enough, when I looked at the plates, my suspicions were confirmed. As if this wasn’t bad enough, they had bumper stickers–bumper stickers saying classy things like, “Piss off the Liberals: Buy a gun!” However, my hatred wasn’t entirely incited until I saw this:Yep… they were still proud Bush supporters (lets face it, I would have voted for Bush back in 2004 if I could have [I now understand why minors can’t vote], but I would never keep his bumper sticker on my car past 2006 unless I was a true supporter). This moving monstrosity was a complete collaboration of everything I hate.
And then I saw their blinker, signaling that they’d like to get into my lane. Now traffic was so bad that we were just sitting. I could have done the same thing that the couple of cars in front of me had done; stayed directly behind the car in front, ignoring their desire to move into my lane. However, I decided to be the bigger person (which is ironic when you compare the size of my little Geo Prism to their massive Dodge Ram+house-on-wheels). I decided not to move forward with traffic, allowing enough room for these poor lost souls to get in.
So there you go, I’m not entirely all bad.
But word to the wise, if you plan on vacationing in Oregon and you don’t own a car that gets over 15 mpg, at least take your inflammatory right-wing bumper stickers off. I mean, do what you want, but it’s just a tip from me. I’m all for free speech, if you’re all for getting your car keyed.

Regional Rules of Mormonism

So ever since classes have been over, I’ve been much more interested in keeping up my blog. All day long I have thoughts come into my mind, and I think, “I should write that down and blog about it later.” An example being yesterday, when I was writing about Miss California, and I facetiously talked of the “regional rules of Mormonism.” I knew I wanted to expound on that, so here I am, writing again about more silly stuff.
I guess my main question is, what kind of disparities are there between Mormons who live in different areas? Now I have some experience as I’ve lived in nine different places–small towns, big cities, Mormon metropolises, and places that haven’t heard of Mormons at all–and in each of these places, the rules of Mormonism (I’m intentionally disregarding the doctrine of Mormonism in this post. The affect that being in Utah has on my perceptions of the doctrine deserve an entirely separate post in and of itself) are regarded differently.
The point that I facetiously brought up last night was modesty. I said that Miss California should not have worn the dress that she did if she is Mormon (I actually do not care what she wears. In all honesty, I was just trying to find more problems with her). But it really does seem like depending on where you are from, modesty does have more or less of an impact on clothes decisions. Caitlin mentioned in my comment section the horrible ordeal of prom dresses, so I’ll stick with that example. It just so happened that when Prom season 2006 came around, I was enjoying my spring break with my sisters in Utah. While up there, my mother informed my sisters that they needed to take me prom dress shopping in a place where I would have modest options. After hours of trying on different dresses, most of which looked like they belonged in a Disney movie, we were really frustrated. The fact of the matter is that Mormon prom dresses are either insanely ugly or ridiculously overpriced. I mean, would you believe that someone would pay $420+tax on this awful rendition of Little Bo Peep meets an acid-washed upside down muffin wrapper (Sorry I left the picture so large. I made it smaller, but it just didn’t do justice to the beauty of this dress)?

So, needless to say, prom dress shopping was frustrating. Finally we settled on a much more simple tea-length dress with cap-sleeves that made it impossible for me to lift my arms up–quite the ideal dress for dancing in obviously.

Yeah… the pictures are really blurry. And I’m too pale to look good in a champagne colored dress. Really, it just all looks bad. But seriously, there weren’t really any other options, so I went to prom in a dress that I couldn’t move my arms in and nearly matched my skin tone. After all my trouble, imagine my surprise when I see other Mormon girls wearing something similar to this but without the shoulder straps:

Or when my friend from Minnesota who was the Branch President’s daughter also had a less than “modest” dress. Now does it really matter to me? No. I guess I’m just bitter that I had to go through that Utah shopping experience (although my sisters did make it fun). But seriously, what is it about Utah that makes the rules more important than other places?
Another area that this is evident in is dating. When I lived in the small Minnesota branch, there were hardly any Mormon guys for us to date, so it was widely accepted that we would date non-Mormons and that we would date them exclusively. Once I was in Arizona, it was no longer ok for me to date a non-Mormon, but I could still have a serious boyfriend. But then I moved to Utah and had two roommates from Orem who had only ever been on double dates with other members. They had never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, and never even held a guys hand. And they are now both twenty and still that same, awkward way. It just seems weird.
Church attendance is also a big thing I noticed. Everywhere else, if I missed church for three weeks in a row, it wasn’t a big deal. But here, I not only miss church, but I miss family home evening, ward prayer, break the fast, enrichment, home and visiting teachers, and any other ward/ stake activity that takes place. That provides so many more opportunities for me to be considered inactive, when really, what if I’m just busy?
Anyway, I guess I don’t have an overall message to this post, it’s just an observation as to how Mormonism changes depending on where you are/ how many other Mormons live around you. Oh, and I can’t wait to move away from Provo for good in four months.

To bring some much needed comedy to an all too serious blog:

Q: What do you call a grizzly bear standing in the rain?
A: A drizzly bear!

You can always count on a laffy taffy to make you smile.