I have been super crappy at blogging this semester! But I really need to work on it because this is where I'm trying to keep fun things that I can look back on!
Well now I can blog something that happened a few months ago so I'm looking back on it as I'm blogging it but, hey, better late than never!
I apologize for the cookie dough we had obviously been eating but after coming across googly eyes in the store we really had no choice but to make our mouths into little people!
But i just took a test and while I do have another one tomorrow that will be harder I feel like I can celebrate the good grade I got on this one by letting myself blog a bit!
Today's blog will have another P!nk music video
I love P!nk
So when I found this new song she did with Nate Ruess I was all excited!
And then I watched it and was like "Oh man. They made a bad song" (Fantastic Mr. Fox reference)
And then I listened again because even if I thought some of the lyrics were kind of dumb,
it is catchy, and there's no denying that.
And then I did this thing that I've gotten in the habit of doing with love songs
where I pretend that they're not about love
(because yeah love songs are fun but there are so many of them and after a while,
dissecting every song to mean
"I love you and will do anything for you"
even in variation, gets pretty boring.).
So go ahead and listen once just for the experience:
Catchy but not really anything new, right?
Now I'll give you my new interpretation of it and maybe you can sympathize with the fact that I've listened to it at least 1000 times in the past 24 hours.
Yeah, I'm listening to it right now.
Just Give Me a Reason- according to Jessie Wright
So we all go though hard times, right? Some people may be nodding a little more furiously than others but we all do, to some degree. I picture this song is more for the people who have hit an 8 or 9 on the wow-that-was-so-hard-I-think-a-part-of-my-soul-just-broke-off-and-floated-away-o-meter. Some people will admit that they have not yet experienced something on that end of the scale but others know what I'm talking about and the "not romantic" interpretation of this song is for you!
So instead of P!nk and Nate singing to each other (She could snap him in half anyway, no matter how awesome he is : / although you may notice that he's not the guy she's making out with in the pool...) I imagine it as one person singing with their sanity. I use myself as an example in parts because I have had up close and personal, front row seats to my own experiences but I'm sure this generalizes.
Here are the lyrics, I'll just break them down (My thoughts will be in p!nk):
Right from the start
You were a thief
You stole my heart
And I your willing victim
I let you see the parts of me
That weren't all that pretty
And with every touch you fixed them
Now you've been talking in your sleep oh oh
Things you never say to me oh oh
Tell me that you've had enough
Of our love, our love
So I love logic, I love feeling like I know what's going on, that I'm making an educated decision about things and that I have good judgement about something. In a way this can be defined as being "addicted to my sanity". I get a rush from being sane.
As a kid and in high school people always used to tell me that I have such a good head on my shoulders and that I had this gift for thinking clearly. My sanity and I became very close friends, when I struggled my sanity could fix it because together we could find logic and reason. (I guess this would be during times of lower level difficulty)
But during those really intense times sanity begins to betray us as a particularly difficult "growing experience" begins. In my experience it can begin telling me things I don't understand or want to hear because as most people know, when we pass about a 7 on our difficulty meter you begin to disagree with logic, reason and belief (if you don't lose them all together).
Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It's in the stars
It's been written in the scars on our hearts
We're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
And then we reach this point (generally near the end) where we've just about overcome our difficulty and things are hard but it's more of a residual effect. We feel like we're past it enough to at least try to reason with reason again and try to learn to work with our sanity! We can turn to it and say "hey, just give me a reason to try with you again, just a little one's enough!" We may be almost certain that our relationship was broken (even for years at a time) but at this point we have enough clarity and can now see that it's just bent and we can forgive each other learn to work together again.
I'm sorry I don't understand
Where all of this is coming from
I thought that we were fine
(Oh we had everything)
Your head is running wild again
My dear we still have everythin'
And it's all in your mind
(Yeah but this is happenin')
You've been havin' real bad dreams oh oh
You used to lie so close to me oh oh
There's nothing more than empty sheets
Between our love, our love
Oh our love, our love
Is this not exactly the argument we have in our heads with ourselves often? There's a part of us saying "hey, everything's fine, I don't even know why you're freaking out" and you (a small voice in the background) are saying "everything was fine! Why are things changing?! And yeah, things may SEEM ok but THIS is still happening!" and slowly but surely you and your sanity drift apart.
Oh tear ducts and rust
I'll fix it for us
We're collecting dust
But our love's enough
You're holding it in
You're pouring a drink
No nothing is as bad as it seems
We'll come clean
Here are all the coping mechanisms we try to fill that void with (where our sanity used to be)! We cry until we can't cry anymore and just rust up, we think we can fix everything by ourselves and the relationship between us and our sanity collects dust as we abandon it. We hold things in and turn to whatever we need to to feel grounded, things we never thought we would. But nothing is as bad as it seems or at least it won't be that bad forever because eventually we come clean and ask for even the littlest bit of hope at that friendship with our sane mind to be straightened out.
Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It's in the stars
It's been written in the scars on our hearts
We're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
And eventually it comes. That reason to see that we're not permanently severed from our sanity but that the relationship has just been bent up. We're destined to work well together! It's been written in the scars on our hearts (yes, what I find to be the dumbest lyric in the song) but while i don't believe in soul mates or that we are destined to find a certain person to love, I do believe that we are destined to figure ourselves out. It's our whole reason for being here! Become friends with ourselves, learn to love ourselves. THAT is something that I know is everyone is destined to discover.
First work is still going really well. Working on-call is really annoying sometimes but it feels good to go to work and feel like you're on the way to what you want to be. The kids are so funny, though troubled and it's fun to build those relationships. People are so cool and have so many different levels and dimensions and by going and working with troubled youth I get to hear and see the whole spectrum of human emotion.
AND THEN I had a training for a week that took me out of school and my internship for work where I was taught how to take down a resident, should the need arise. It was 40 hours of being thrown around and throwing people around and in the end I was officially certified! I got a certificate and everything!
Then there's the internship: I get to go out with a case worker and meet with the kids in their homes, group homes or wherever they are placed, see how they're doing and talk over options for them in the future. It's amazing the millions of different things that go into youth making something of themselves. And I get to see it! It's been great to learn about what options are available to them. It's really helping me figure out what I what to do in the future.
And then there's school. Which sometimes I forget I'm doing because everything else pulls me away! but thus far I'm doing well so that's good since I'm jussaboutdone!
Well... this was going to turn into an actually interesting post but I am TIRED!
So an update of the actually fun things I've been doing will come soon!
So about a week before Christmas I tell my dad that this t-shirt would be an awesome birthday idea for me since I wanted it real bad. I figured Christmas was coming up too soon so just submitted it as a birthday suggestion and then Christmas morning I wake up to find that Santa has dropped it off for me! I was so excited!
Here is why I am so excited about this t-shirt: It has the lyrics of a song on it by Brandi Carlile who is one of the most talented musical artists currently walking the planet. The song was inspired by a friend of Brandi's who went through an addiction and recovered. At the concert she actually introduced the song as one that she hoped would inspired juvenile delinquents to aim for a better future and that falling down does not mean staying down.
As this goes along directly with my line of work I was basically smitten by her awesomeness. So I think I'll attach a link so that the joy can be consumed by the ears of all of my loved ones:
Ok so first Ben and I were hanging out and we were like "We're hungry. Let's make dinnner". But Ben is a vegetarian. I'm thinking about devoting a whole post to it. We'll see.
But anyway, I was like "what should we make?!" and Ben was all "Squash, peppers, onions and a little garlic"
And I was like- that sounds delicious!
But I need meat...
And this is what happened. Veggies and a Wendy's single YUM!
Ben also made sweet potatoes with Rosemary! This one looked happy and Asian >)
And then Ben ate him! He was a little less happy about that...
Also, as was mentioned in a previous post, I have a fear of whales. In order to help alleviate the fear, Ben found Steve (the tiny killer whale) and said (we'll find bigger and bigger ones until you get up to a real whale and then you won't be afraid! I said that was a bad idea because I don't want to be around whales at all but then when we at the dollar store yesterday we found this blue guy. Whale number 2. A little bit bigger than Steve. I've named him "That Whale Thing" (I just called it that one time and Ben decided it should be so). :( We'll see how this whole experiment works out...
So I was driving to a friend's place yesterday and saw a Christmas tree and thought "Oh yeah, it's almost Christma.... wait" and then I realized it's not almost Christmas. It's actually the middle of January!
Life has been crazy.
For example. On Christmas day I worked the evening shift at work. And then I worked every day after that for the next 7 days. By the end I was pretty sure I was dead.
But luckily I missed the sickness going around!
Ok, I'm just going to look back through pictures recently taken and do a little catch up!
So these are in no particular order, just how they uploaded:
So I went up to Farmington for a night and hung out with my grandma! She is know to the little kids in her neighborhood as "Grandma Puppies" because of Zeus and Pheobe. They are hilarious and love to cuddle. And Zeus likes to sit on Pheobe's head so that's always hilarious!
We got some Chinese food! What's funny though is that this is a picture of our food AFTER having finished. The portions were HUGE!
New Year's Eve was spent with me experiencing this Just Dance game for the first time and it was awesome! Some personal favorites were "Maneater" and some Ricky Martin song that made you do things like pretend to ride a horse and sword fight. It was awesome!
Then there was the drive to Idaho that was barren but pretty... kind of.
Brynlee and McKinley in matching PJs!
Our family tried to play Christmas Pictionary. You were supposed to use common Christmas phrases but Jeff started doing things like "Santa Claus likes ____" and putting the most mundane object possible (and then sucking at drawing it). As you can see Jake caught right on. We don't actually know if Santa likes pudding but at least it's within the realm of Christmas food. My favorite was Jeff putting "Santa said ho ho ho" and not telling us we got it right until we made sure to have "says" in the past tense. This is my family.
Syd and i tried some new stuff with her make up! Success! And I just love this winking picture :)
Homemade cake totally from scratch! Good thing Ben knows how to cook and bake...
One night Ben was like "I have your birthday present but I think I need to give it to you early." and so he pulls these out. Tickets to a concert that I really want to go to but wasn't sure if I should spend the money on! I was so happy I was speechless! Seriously, I didn't talk for like 5 minutes. We're going to Ed Sheeran!!!!!
I went up to Salt Lake to hang out with Pappity and we went to Les Mis. Ummmmmm stunning. Anne Hathaway and I patched up our friendship (which was going through a rocky period of lack of respect for her) when she flawlessly sang "I Dreamed a Dream" in one take.
And then Caitlan and I had a joint birthday party! This was not part of it but it was at Zurchers so Caitlan had to put it on her head.
Dan, Rich, Caitlan, Me, Loren, Amanda and Ben And here is a little snap shot from the party! The theme was 1920s. It was perfect and went awesomely!
Dan and I decided it was hot chocolate time so we promptly ran over to Sonic and satisfied that need.
So I said "Let's take a picture for my blog! Smile" and Dan couldn't get the menacing look off his face for two seconds for a friendly picture!
As we were chatting I found a dollar store purchase
in my car that I had forgotten about
(the dollar store never stops providing happiness)!
These little sticky slap hands made it possible for me to slap Dan across the face 17 times and blindly flail about during which I'm sure i smote him thousands of times.
Then on the way back to his place we were spinning cookies around the block and found these guys in someone's yard!
They were just chillin'. I didn't get a picture of the one with antlers because they kind of got spooked when we swung around in front of them...
Then we went home and Bryan played the piano while we sang some Christmas songs! Eventually we moved onto Billy Joel (like everyone does) and recorded one but unfortunately we can't figure out how to format it so it will upload...
Probably for the best hahaha! But we'll keep working on it!
At one
point she was taking requests and got one that she didn’t know so she was like
“Well,
let’s figure it out!”
Every
single song was sung so passionately. Papz and I were listening to her CDs
after and we both agreed that she’s actually significantly better live. She
holds nothing back and is just so loving every minute of being there with you.
She was
literally 12 feet away from us.
We were basically
singing in the mic with Tim.
The
incredible Trio
Phil and Brandi
Papz and I
were thrilled to hear her sing
“The Story” which is, indeed, our song!
Brandi and
Tim basically making their guitars into one amazing power instrument from the
gods.
And then
she sang “That Wasn’t Me” which was written from experiences had with people
who have made major mistakes. It's aimed toward juveniles to inspire them to be the best person
they can be. As this is what I am passionate about I all but died when she was
talking about it.
Phil and
Tim sang this awesome song called Love Hurts. I was laughing the whole time!
I could
have listened to her sing “The River” the entire night. It was honestly so inspiring.
An accurate depiction
of how awesome they are
Papz and I
post concert. It was an incredible night. We went home and watched another
concert of hers off of itunes.
I
was doing my hair this morning at Ben's place (I had an early final
that I didn't get ready for and then just went to his place) and he
got all jealous of how awesome it looked. So I was like "I can
do it to yours too!" and he was all "no you can't, my hair
doesn't do that" and I informed him that I have magical hair
stuff.
So
after putting some hairspray in his hair (or as he would say "after
puttin' some shiz in his hair") I took the straighter to it and
this wonder happened!
Syd and I decide to do a temple trip and on the way up we're talking about how we can help people at 12:12 today (12/12/12) because of a birthday wish my friend Alex made.
He asked that, for his birthday, at 12:12 pm people do nice things for each other, little acts of service. So it's approaching and we're like "what should we do?"
Then a woman stops us and asks if we can take a picture. Awesome, a little act of service!
So in this little group I see two middle-aged women, a boy (who I assume is leaving) and then there's a girl but she's talking to one of the woman and is not facing me.
She hands Syd the camera and I'm finishing a text on my phone (I know, some service I'm providing, right?) and then I hear "Jessie?!?!?!"
I look up and it turns out that it's the GIRL who is going on a mission and she's one of my old work friends who I LOVED working with! Just that morning I had looked up her address and was ready to send her a DearElder by the end if the day!
It was so exciting to catch up and send her off!!!!
So for my act of service at 12:12 pm on 12/12/12
I sent off a missionary!
All the pictures were on her camera but I told her to send me them so hopefully I'll be able to update this post with a picture that includes her!
