Bittersweet memories.

It's all about thoughts. And memories. Getting stuck on them. Not able to escape them. I love embracing my thoughts after not being able to spend enough time with them. I hate them sometimes...angry because they overanalzye or because some of them are useless and waste my time or lessen my character. Today I'd like to celebrate beautiful memories and thoughts. The sad ones too.

I'm living with college freshmen girls this year. Everyone knows that in the first semester of school, most anyone who was in a relationship before school, breaks up with their he or she...or they get broken up with. I've been preparing myself mentally (as well as stocking up on some sturdy tissues) for the day one of my girls comes to me in tears because it happened. So I dwelled for just a little while on that particular letdown in my own life and though it was sad, I found a few things worth celebrating along the way...

I had fallen for a boy who hadn't fallen for me. I had been told he wanted to dive in and call me his, yet after a long while he bowed out. I had foolishly kept my hopes high. I had invested too much emotion in something that was not going to happen. I had wrongfully idealized him. I selfishly wanted him.

He told me over the phone it wasn't going to happen. We hung up on a note that sounded pretty, yet on the inside, in that place where your dreams, and reality meet, I was being taunted by heartbreak. My heart felt hunched like Rick's withered shoulders in Casablanca as Elsa walked away from him for the last time.

 I hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen to find my mom because I didn't want to be alone. Quiet tears were sliding down my face. They felt like weights, pulling on my face, my heart, my thoughts. My mom turned around and because she is wonderful she simply knew. And without a word I cried and she wrapped her arms around me and for the first time in my adult life I sobbed into someone else. I can't imagine what it was like for my deeply empathetic mother. To hold a precious, shaking and sniffling part of her world. To watch me hurt so deeply. In that moment I have never been more grateful for my mom and i have never been in so much anguish. Simultaneously. Beautiful. Broken.

I think it's possible to celebrate sadness...or maybe I'm celebrating the fact that it's ok to be sad. For a time at least. And I think it's always ok to celebrate the role of a mother. And here's to embracing heartache for a time then slowly letting go of it. Ready to embrace new things.

Waiting.

When I do something that's worth writing about, there's usually food involved. Jesus was always doing stuff that revolved around food. He was always hanging out with people and eating. He even made dinner for a few thousand people a couple times (that's a lot of people).

The other night a dear friend and I decided we wanted to make ourselves dinner. After consulting our hungry stomachs, we decided to make Calzones. We scampered around the grocery store for the ingredients. After three hours of adding, mixing, rising, stirring, and tasting, we ate our Italian masterpieces. Honestly, I made a horrible culinary sidekick. I gave up on asking for guidance and ended up sitting on the kitchen floor with a guitar in hand, serenading my culinary Cook while she did the hard stuff. We popped them in the oven and then we waited. And waited. And waited.

Waiting has been the theme of my week. Waiting in line to ride the thriller-est rollercoaster at Six Flags. Waiting on good food. Waiting to see a certain someone I haven't seen in a long time. Waiting for Thursday (my favorite day of the week) to come around. Waiting in ridiculous traffic, while watching in my rear view mirror as a menacing thunder storm slowly crept toward my car. Waiting for loved ones to stop holding onto life in their final days; letting them know that their wait for "a better place" is over and its ok for them to let go.

Calzone waiting was never such a good thing - we sat on the floor and talked about life's struggles and heartaches. We talked about things we wish we did but don't do and things we do we wish we didn't. We drank a deep fuchsia colored pomegranate lemonade and paraded around the kitchen trying to hip-hop dance to accoustic music. We sat and allowed silence to seep into the deepest parts of our souls.

I love how "waiting" is really not simple, yet it's the simple things we do while waiting that makes it worth while.

Living life amidst the waiting.

Lists.

Lists act as either motivators or monsters in my day to day life.

I've never experienced a love/hate relationship with anything like I do with lists. Having a list of "things to do" over the summer agitates me often; yet, I love making lists and getting to cross off an accomplished task. Do you write down easy and hard tasks on your list like I do? That way you can quickly do and check off a lot of the easy things and you feel like you've been more productive than you really have.

I have decided I like fun lists. And to make up for my entire two months of not celebrating anything on the Simple Side, I figured I could make a very condensed list of all the simply wonderful things I have seen and celebrated:

1. The other day I ate stringed cheese. The strung way though. You know, the way you used to eat it when you were a kid; peeling off each individual strand and dangling it into your mouth. That's before you became a busy adult and had to start swallowing the cheese stick whole.

2. It's June. I'm pretty sure I saw someone driving down the highway a few weeks ago with a giant Christmas Tree strapped to the top of their car. I had to admit to myself that I have felt the urge to celebrate Christmas in June before. I hope, if a Christmas urge was what that person was experiencing, that they acted on it.

3. Whilst dogsitting I walked by my neighbors house and found my neighbor with a hose in her hand, graciously spraying a gang of ducks that had decided to congregate in her front yard. Every time I walk by that house now, the sprinklers on and the ducks are playing in it. I hope they get the ducks a slip and slide soon- I'd love to see that.

4. Lake encounters. On an all too boring day, I spontaneously decided to kayak across the lake, float down a river, and dive into the latest "must read" book. I floated peacefully and closed my eyes to embrace the beautiful stillness.... until I realized I had to go to the bathroom and really didn't want to embrace nature in that way. So I paddled back. On another not so exciting day, I found myself worn out after an unwilling visit to the workout center. I'm trying this new thing lately, where I try to do something spontaneous or new to make each day different from the last. I pulled up to the lake, threw off my socks and shoes, and ran with my limbs flailing clumsily in all directions and fell into the mirky water. It was beautiful. 5. Reading Children's Literature with my closest friends. Honestly, this one's going to get it's own blog post some day. But for now, I have to plug it. It's life-giving. And freeing. And laugh worthy. Go try it.

Treks.

Any Treky's out there? I grew up a Star Trek junky thanks to my dad's sci-fi obsession. Being empathetically driven, I thought it was ridiculous Spock's species, the Vulcan's, were robbed of emotion. To live without emotion- no thanks. I thought it was cool that the badges the Enterprise crew wore on their out of style space uniforms, served as walkie-talkies. My number one desire was to fly like Peter Pan, but I always thought a good substitute to flying was to stand on the Enterprises' transportaion deck and sl0wly disappear to find myself on some other ship or planet. I wish travel was that easy.

I trek a lot in life and with all the traveling I do, I secretly wish someone would invent a transportation deck (My other secret wish is that I'll get a letter from Hogwarts informing me I need magical schooling... my owl must have gotten lost, I'm still waiting for my letter). Today it's a roadtrip from California to Texas. A grueling 19 hour drive.

I look out my window and see flat. Did you know the terrain is different depending on which road you take from California to Texas? The road there is much prettier than the road back. Times ten.

Like I said, it's flat. On the celebration side of treking, I've decided terrain is a lot like breakfast food. And I love breakfast food. Sprinkled donuts specifically (in case you ever want to buy me one). Southern California resembles waffles. Hills and valleys. With smog for syrup. What I see as I look out my window is a pancake. Flat land- with no chololate chips or blueberry lumps. Just flat.

Yesterday my traveling companion and I took a little detour to the Grand Canyon. It's probably against Simple Side rules to compare one of the wonders of the world with breakfast food, but if I had to try... it kind of looks like granola with a big hole in the middle. So if you ever find yourself on a road trip, wishing the world would start spinning faster so you could get to your destination sooner, just start picturing the terrain around you as breakfast food... or try to invent a transportation deck. Both are acceptable and both tend to make the time go by faster.

last looks.

"I've recently become a connoisseur of last looks... there's one right now." -Elizabethtown

Here's to finality's. Last looks. Last moments. Last meals. Last songs. Last laughs. Last hand squeezes. Last annoyances. Last impressions. Last goodbyes...for awhile at least.

With finality's come beginnings. Let's celebrate both. When the end is near it is so easy to prepare in advance to spring upon what is next. It's almost as if we're crouched, conserving all our energy, ready for the heads up...and then... the mad plunge into the newness. But while waiting for the jump, don't forget to take a last look and reminisce the previous leap in life. How beautiful.

There's a new leap in life for me. I'm crouched ready for the plunge. But i'm all about last looks. Gratefulness and eternal thankfulness come from last looks.

And with my last looks I'll give you all a knowing grin that says, "I'll be seeing you."

***dedicated to my 104b sisters. With them, there is no such thing as last looks...

weeds. in the spring.

Weeds scream analogies. Their poisonous beauty provides enough analogies to fill a size venti at Starbucks (a venti is HUGE in my opinion because I know that even if I tried to drink one, I'd throw it up. And that's what I like to call a barf-load of analogies).

They scream cliche phrases like "there's more than meets the eye".
And i like them.

Engagement Tales.

I love celebrating tales of "how he popped the question". They shouldn't be reserved strictly for the shes and hers in this world. I secretly think the hes and hims like hearing them too. Why? Cause one day he's going to find himself wanting to do nothing else but get on one knee in front of the beauty he's walking next to and ask her if she'd like to stroll arm and arm with him for the rest of their lives... and he's going to need ideas for how to go about doing that. Gentlemen, it's a myth that engagements are gushy and only for the ladies. It can't hurt to listen to what you should do...and shouldn't do.

He had it written all over his face because he was so nervous.

She forgot to say "yes" because she was so overhwlemed.

He sang her favorite song in the exact same spot they had met years before.

She showed up in sweaty work out clothes because the thought of him proposing hadn't crosssed her mind.

He researched diamonds to find the one that resembled her character the most.

She picked out the same ring he did at the jewelry outlet two weeks before he proposed.

He didn't just ask "will you marry me?" but found himself asking her if he could have the privilege of serving her the rest of his life.

She secretly knew two days before so she went and got her nails done.

Even though he was 82 and hadn't put all of his weight on one knee in years, he got down on his shaking knee because she was worth it.

She thought he was states away, when he was actually waitng for her in her living room.

He washed her feet.

She got down on one knee next to him because her legs gave out from underneath her.

So here's to celebrating their tales with them and getting the opportunity to watch them stroll through the rest of life arm in arm...