Monday

~Monday is a lame way to spend 1/7 of your life.
~Author Unknown

~Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday.

Alright, feeling slightly productive even after a rough day at work, so I thought I'd blog. Nothing big. Don't have much to say :)

Oh Mondays... I had a seminary teacher who loved Mondays. They were his favorite day of the week. I quite admired that, but I had a hard time understanding it myself. Ya, fresh start but they just are not fun!

The obvious problem would be that they are so far away from the weekend. I can't really argue that. But I have a hard time getting back into things after the weekend. My efficiency today was terrible. I don't have the percentage-I get it the next day-but I don't think I want to know :P But I think what throws me off personally, is the devotional we have at work on Monday mornings.

See, I have goals throughout the day. And when we take a half hour out of the day (one I quite enjoy really) it puts me behind. And when I feel behind I go more slowly cuz I don't feel quite as motivated. Ya, I know I can work on that. But it's also kind of become my excuse for doing poorly on Mondays :)

Plus, I have to take time to change my needles and oil my machine. And today, my MP3 Player (really my brother's that I am borrowing) quit. Like, no warning. Nothing. It now has a black screen and it won't even turn off. Ya, the light's still on and it quit on me about nine hours ago. Can't make it work. It was a long afternoon without music... and I can imagine tomorrow if I don't figure something out...

Alright, enough with the negativity. I did get my hair dyed today! I love when it's redone! I did the same blond streaks on top and red underneath. Except, I did do the red a little darker in hopes that it won't fade as much... Haha, I just know I'm gonna have fun with the bleeding colors every time I wash it for the next week or two :)

Positives I'll share on the Internet... I get paid Friday! And I have overtime on this pay check! Pretty excited. Let's see... I got my financial aid information. Turns out, if I was still going to France, I'd have a good chunk of money :) But then I'm not going. Haha, and it's kind of sad to look at those numbers and know I now have to tell BYU I'm not going to school until January and watch the money go away...

Wow, that turned negative! Geez! I swear I don't mean to be so down! I write plenty of happy things in my journal :) Haha, which is part of the reason I don't get to blogging...

Updates...

~Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.
~Robert Anthony

So, I haven't slept very much lately. Oh, probably 3 1/2 or 4 hours a night... haha, but I don't mind. I accidentally take 3 hour naps several days a week, so I thought I was okay. Last night I fell asleep at 10:30, woke up and took out my contacts at 3:30, and didn't wake up until 12:30. I got 14 hours of sleep!

I'm at about 90% efficiency at work! But, that is when I'm trying my absolute hardest and pushing all day to keep up with my expectations-15 bundles by breakfast, 29 by lunch... etc. I don't know how I'm going to get to 100%. I wasn't too worried, since I was supposed to put in my two weeks notice yesterday, but now that I'm staying, I have to worry about such things.

Which leads to my next thing: I have decided not to go on the study abroad to France this fall. There are a lot of reasons but I feel a lot better about everything now. I wasn't ready, wasn't excited. I'll be staying home and working this semester-and I'm kind of excited about having money :)

Oh, and I'm nineteen now! I'm excited, just because whenever I told people how old I was this last year, they assumed I was a senior in high school... Dang summer birthdays :) Haha, I don't mind, really, just that I feel younger than everyone "my age." If that makes any sense. Everyone I graduated with will start turning twenty in a few weeks-holy cow! That's crazy! I know, twenty isn't that old. It just seems weird :)

Global Village

~As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.
~Ram Dass

Two days in a row! Haha, so, during my lunch break at work I've been reading a book called You Can Never Get Enough of What You Don't Need by Mary Ellen Edmunds. I'd read the first section before, but it's been a year or two. Today I came across a very interesting concept that I wanted to share. I'm just going to copy out of the book-I can't really paraphrase :)

"If the world were a global village"

"If we could shrink earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.

-There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South, and 8 Africans.

-52 would be female, 48 would be male.

-70 would be nonwhite, 30 would be white.

-70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian.

-6 people would posses 59% of the entire world's wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States.

-80 would live in substandard housing, 70 would be unable to read, 50 would suffer from malnutrition.

-1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth; 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education; and 1 would own a computer."

-----------------

"...nearly 42,000 children die every single day in this world from preventable causes..."

"...And every single day here in America, we spend more than a billion dollars on groceries, consume more than 25 billion gallons of water--almost 200 gallons per person--and throw out close to 2 billion pounds of trash...these numbers are from way back in 1987..."

Three Weeks

~What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
~William Least Heat Moon

Alright, I know I don't blog enough. Until recently I couldn't listen to music at work... and sewing elastic in a straight line as fast as you can all day gets boring. So, I wrote blog posts in my head. Thus, I did not care to do it all over again when I got home :) I know, bad excuse, but true. I think I was starting to go insane with the conversations and things I did to keep myself entertained all day.

But honestly, besides that, there isn't a lot to write. Well... I have a lot to say to my journal, but not much I want to put out on the Internet for everyone to see.

I'm supposed to leave for Paris three weeks from tomorrow. Supposed to. Besides the fact that I have no money, no plane ticket, can't speak French, and don't know anyone going, I'm scared to death. I can't really see myself going. When I applied for the program back in January, September seemed forever away. I can't imagine myself living in another country for three months.

Ya, it's only 88 days, but looking back 88 days ago from today... a lot has changed. I've found I really admire the missionaries who go wherever they are called for two years. And I can call home and email whenever I want.

Back in January I had nothing to lose going. I was getting used to not seeing my family for three or four weeks. I didn't really talk to my roommates, and thus had no one to room with come fall anyway. My friends were all over and I only saw, like, two of them every few months. I was getting sick of school in Provo... and there really are some stereotypical annoying BYU things that just get to you after a while.

Things are different now. Ya, I still don't have any friends at BYU, no one to room with. But four months at home changes things.

I don't really know where this post is going-I just felt like I should post something and sometimes when I try to write in my journal I get overwhelmed because I have to explain everything.

Singin' in the Car

~He who sings frightens away his ills.
~Miguel de Cervantes

Confession: I sing in the car.

Yes, I love to crank up my radio and sing-off tune, I'm sure. Now, I don't have statistics and I can't really tell you how many people sing in the car-though I think it would be interesting to know. I do know there are 2, 560, 156 people who "like" singing in the car on Facebook :)

But, I have to say, I don't generally sing when I'm stopped at an intersection. People have more time to look around then. I do it. I've caught people singing and laughed to myself-I'm sorry to say.

I bring this up because I was singing on the way home from work yesterday. I'm working on not caring what others think, so I was singing at the stop light. I glanced in my rear view mirror and noticed the guy in the car behind me singing. I watched him for a minute and realized we were singing the same song :)

I realized this just in time for him to stop singing... and glace to both sides. I found myself doing the same thing about fifteen seconds later. Thinking about it, it's really dumb. Who cares if someone sees? It's not like you'll ever see them again. (okay, so I have seen someone I know singing... but just once)

But the biggest thing is, how many people can really say they've never sung in the car? Really?

I'm still self-conscious about it, it's true. I just found it interesting to think about :)

The Stars

~A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really... "Do the stars gaze back?" Now *that's* a question.
~Stardust

So, the other night I was outside just after the sun set. I'd been helping my dad get ready for the preschool open house but my brother was helping him in the shed and I wasn't going to be able to do much. So I went over and climbed on the tramp.

I laid down and starred at the sky. It was quiet and peaceful-lately I always seem to have music on in the background. I could hear crickets somewhere in the neighborhood. The tramp moved slightly beneath me as I breathed. I watched the sky as it faded to a dark blue. Right above me, in the middle of the sky, was the darkest.

The horizon all around me was still a bright, turquoise blue-the kind everyone seems to think is beautiful. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and I don't recall seeing the moon.

It faded. Like the painting exercises we always did in school-adding a little black with each stroke or box, leading to the center of the sky. Or adding a little water to lighten each stroke on the way out. I just watched it. I hadn't noticed how beautiful it could be. We always seem to focus on the sun going down, the orange and pink clouds.

I watched as the stars begun to appear. They started in that dark area, the one farthest from the light. I've always loved stars; they're amazing. Amazing how far away they are, yet how they shine so bright. How they're different sizes. They make patterns and shapes in the sky... but they're not set every so far apart. It's natural.

I had some time to think. I forgot the neighborhood around me-the electronics and music and worries. I thought about the sky, what it could show me. I thought of the popular quote saying that when it's dark enough we can see the stars.

I've always taken that quotes as a kind of truth, haven't really thought about it. I pondered on my own life-not like I don't have the time to think all day at work. It's just different in that setting. I'm not going to share what I thought, what I learned, what I wondered... I share this to hopefully make you think.

I quite enjoyed those twenty or thirty minutes I spent laying on my trampoline, starring at the stars. I think I'll have to do that more often.

A Blind Girl

~No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.
~Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Alright, I know, I've really dropped the ball on blogging. And since I love when people post on the blogs I read, I'll try to be more consistant-it is the start of a new month :) So we'll see how it goes...

I ran across the following story on another blog. I tried to find an author or where it was originally from, but couldn't. I found it really... not surprising, but it wasn't what I expected. And it made me think. Because I do complain a lot, I'm sorry to say. I'm still trying to adjust to having a full-time job and it feels like all I do is work. But I wasn't all that happy about being in school when that was the case. I really need to work on this.

Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing :)


Story of a Blind Girl

A blind girl hated herself because she was blind. She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend. He was always there for her. She told her boyfriend, "If only I could only see the world, I will marry you."

One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her. When the bandages came off, she was able to see everything, including her boyfriend. He asked her, "Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?"

The girl looked at her boyfriend and saw that he was blind.

The sight of his closed eyelids shocked her. She hadn’t expected that. The thought of looking at them the rest of her life led her to refuse to marry him. Her boyfriend left her in tears and days later wrote a note to her saying:

“Take good care of your eyes, my dear; before they were yours, they were mine.”

This is how the human brain often works when our "status changes." Only a very few remember what life was like before, and who was always by their side in the most painful situations.

Life Is a Gift Today before you say an unkind word -Think of someone who can’t speak.

Before you complain about the taste of your food – Think of someone who has nothing to eat.

Before you complain about your husband or wife – Think of someone who’s crying out to for a companion.

Today before you complain about life – Think of someone who went too early to heaven.

Before you complain about your children – Think of someone who desires children but they’re barren.

Before you argue about your dirty house someone didn’t clean or sweep – Think of the people who are living in the streets.

Before whining about the distance you drive – Think of someone who walks the same distance with their feet.

And when you are tired and complain about your job – Think of the unemployed, the disabled, and those who wish they had your job.

But before you think of pointing the finger or condemning another – Remember that not one of us is without error and we all answer to God When depressing thoughts seem to get you down – Put a smile on your face and thank God you’re alive and still around.