Beautiful Ugly Things

I. Blondie realized at the end of his shift
that there had been a pair of dirty boxers
scrunched at the bottom of a leg of his chef pants all night.

II. The morning we got engaged, Blondie and I drove to a parking lot with a good view of the east. He stepped outside of the car to photograph the sunrise and instead poked the camera back in the car to photograph me while I heartily blew my nose. I was unaware until the last shot.

December 30, 2009.

"Locusts will
Lift me up."

Weird Beliefs!

You can have weird beliefs, and then, you can grow out of them.

(1) I used to be concerned with popularity. I saw princes and princesses at school, at the grocery store, at PetsMart, at the county fair. In eleventh grade, I visited colleges and estimated the percentage of preps on each campus. At some point in college, early on in my experience, I stopped seeing preppiness. Now, I just don’t. I lost my prep-o-meter. No one on the streets seems like a priss. They all seem way more complex than that.

(2) When I was a kid, I used to think I had to–this sounds crazy–save up happiness for later. I could let out only a certain amount of happy energy per day. I would save it for the times when I needed it. I didn’t want it to run out. The philosophy operated in my life like this:
Let’s say, it’s Saturday, and tonight, I’m going to a sleepover. Before I meet my friends, I have to be grumpy for a little bit & not tap into any of the good resources. I’ll need all the good energy I can get during the sleepover. If I’m excited and happy during the day, I won’t have any happy energy left because...
Okay, this really sounds crazy, but it was like that! For real. This way of thinking carried over into middle school. I thought of it as “saving smiles,” and I genuinely thought it was how I worked. I was so amazed when it went away.
I don’t save up positive energy. I use it whenever I can. I understand joy is infinite: it has no bounds, it doesn’t run out, and I’m not going to have to be grumpy later if I don’t get all the grumpiness out now.

(3) When I was a toddler, I believed that if I walked on the sidewalk behind our condominium, I would be snatched up by kidnappers immediately.


Prin College Bluffs. Winter 2010.

I have no doubt
one day we're gonna
get out.

Pigs and swine

When I hear the verse, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine,” I sometimes think, “Awww. The pigs. Why not? Just throw 'em some pearls.”

You should be honest around everyone.

After dinner, I went to the lake with Blondie and walked to the end of a dock, carrying one of the pumpkins from our wedding. We swung it in our arms to a chant of “one, two, three, THROW” and threw it hard and screamed, “We’re married.”


It was the one at the end that you can barely see.

They were sitting in the strawberry swing.