And she fled into the wilderness

Yesterday was one of those days where I saw what I was really made of, my true colors, and they were shades of yellow. A little blue too. I couldn't shake it. I was unhappy all day, no matter where I went, home, Kyrie's, Break the Fast, so I ran away. I got into my car and just started driving up University Avenue with no destination in mind. As I kept driving I started to head up the canyon. I saw a sign, took the next right and headed up to Squaw Peak. It was beautiful and more than that, it was calming. I sat at the overlook and stared out across the valley and felt like I had left everything down there. I wasn't exactly happy or completely at peaceof any of that a lt of people say in testimony meeting, but I was content which was the most I could ask for. I eventually got up from where I sat on the ground at the overlook and then walked up the narrow path for aobut ten minutes or so until I got to a big rock that was flattish and just on the ground, waiting for me to sit on it and lean against the other rocks. I just sat there in the sun, feeling it hit me like something tangible. I did a lot of thinking. I thouhgt about the kind of person I am becoming and the kind of person that I used to be. I thouhgt about the advice Kyrie was going to give me. I thought about school, church, work, and home. I thought about one of my friends who over the summer took me up to his thinking rock. And I cried. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was alone and it was a relief; I could cry.

Revelations

In my day I have watched a good many chick flicks and lame romances with underdeveloped characters and weak story lines that are great successes with most women because of all the grand romantic gestures. John Cusack and his stereo, Will Smith and his jumping on top of cars, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. Really? Really. People eat it up. And the love interest man always has the help of the lovestruck (though almost always, for some reason or another, pissed off)girl's best friend in planning something huge and romantic and that's why she is such a good friend and the love between the couple is deepened proportionally withow ridicuous the grand gesture was. Fly around the world? About _______ that deep. Jump onto a moving yacht? About _____________ that deep. Run across town? _____ or so. Unless the lover also gains the help of the people in the town as he runs.

It's all pretty dumb, isn't it?

This is what I've learned from experience and seeing happy couples in my family and all over stupid BYU campus.

Falling in love isn't about a big, eloquent speech, or some expensive set-up. It's sitting, talking, in the kitchen or the car. It isn't seeing the guy with his shirt off for the first time; it's seeing him fall asleep on the couch and knowing that you could wake up to that face in the middle of the night and feel safe. It isn't a tuxedo or designer jeans; it's the pajamas and his favorite, ugly tee-shirt. It isn't seeing him rescue a baby from a burning building, but seeing him do the dishes or brushing his teeth. It's cooking dinner together, going to ward choir together, being sad when one is out of town for three days, or simply picking the other up at the airport with just a smile and know that it's enough.

And a best friend doesn't have to keep you from jumping out of a window on the 60th floor to be a best friend. There don't have to be big fights and then tons of tears while feelings are discussed followed by lots of hugs. A best friend just needs to be able to get super grossed out by transanal eviseration (or whatever your gross topic of choice is) and then laugh about it with you. A best friend just needs to listen to the same stories about the same person over and over. They just bring crappy chicken noodle soup over when your sick. A best friend lets you run up a fifty dollar tab. Best friends can have really weird dreams about each other and then tell the other one and know the judgement won't be too harsh. The most radical it will probably get is sitting in a boring hospital through a minor surgery.

All this crap with friends helping each other when they fall down or get in jail. Phooey. The best friend laughs harder than anyone when you trip, either got you in jail or is there with you. Broken hearted? Need comfort and empathy? Sometimes. Mostly, your best friend warned you about the consequences of lending out your heart, or pieces of it, and will tell you "I told you so," before the back patting begins. Only because she loves you and is smarter than you.

Love, whether the best friend or the romance that takes you away, is about being able to confess how sick to your stomach you are after scarfing down a large thing of nasty (but freaking delicious) French fries. Love is being together but pursuing independent activities, napping, doing homework, reading, and being happy just to have someone with you, just to be there. Love is safety and comfort.

I guess that would make a really boring, low-grossing move, but it wouldn't be grosing us all out with it's cheesiness and cliches.

The Culinary Creations of the Poor

It's a little remarkable what I can find in my fridge and cupboard to make into a fairly delicious lunch. Today I am doing pasta. I don't have any spaghetti sauce and I didn't want to do cream of mushroom something, so I peeked into my fridge and found a quart of half and half, a little bit of a block of colby jack cheese, and cream cheese. In my cupboard I found tomato soup and garlic and onion powder, and powered oregano. Okay. It might sound ghetto and gross and you might be half right; it is really ghetto.
So first I poured some half and half into a pot. I tend to just be an intuitive cook so I never measure anything but I bet it was about a cup or so. Then I threw in the cream cheese, grated the longhorn cheese and tossed it in too. Next was two wooden spoonfuls of tomato soup followed by generous amounts of each spice. Then I mixed it all together and let it simmer for a while.
The result, on penne pasta topped with a dollop of sour cream (because I love sour cream), was a kind of macaroni and cheese thing, only with the hint of tomato and was really quite delicious. I ahve leftovers so I guess we'll see how they taste tomorrow; maybe I'm just so hungry anything is good.

Herbal Tea is Saving My Life

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my sister of spectacularity, Rachel Whipple. On Friday she made a trip up to my apartment to visit me in my sickbed. She brought with her the elixir of life - Red Zinger herbal tea. Mixed with a little bit of honey (and by a little bit I mean at least a tablespoon) it tastes quite good and helps me feel better. Ish. Hurray for lemongrass and hibiscus and hippie sisters!

Best Books Ever

I think I might still be on the whole great book high because I can't bring myself to read anything else for fear it won't be a good. Well, it's not so much a fear as it is a certainty.
Anyhow. Most people have heard me raving by now, but just in case I have missed the two people who read this, I am going to rave some more.
The Hunger Games. So so so good. I read it in a day and then the bought the secondone immediately and tried to pace myself a little bit more so I could have it for longer, but it still only lasted me two days. It's amazing. For sure the best books I have read in a really long time, including whatever else I may have ranted about on here. So go read it.

District 9 and Other Stuff

I went with a couple of friends tonight to see District 9. I ate way too much popcorn and got super sick (but only when I got home, but the movie was so completely worth it! It was so good. I don't want to spoil anything for anybody, but suffice it to say there are maybe three thousand f-bombs and lots of blood and body exploding (which is indisputably awesome)and a whole other array of very entertaining tidbits. It seemed a littleslow at first - I didn't know where it was going at all, but then the story picked up and for the rest of the movie I was pretty much freaking out. It was just plain old amazing. I know that Clint was trying to decide whether or nothe liked it, but I loved it immediately. Five Gold Stars.

So I feel like I need to change gears a little and give a tiny thankamony. I had a really weird last night and a very long, tiring today, but I also have the best,most supportive, and helpful friends. And older sister. Can't forget Rachel. But my friend David just set aside his calculus immediately when I needed just someone to cheer me up. Maybe he needed a break and so him dropping his homework or me might have been self-serving. I know he likes to think he's a bad person, so I will just pretend that was it. But, yeah. I am thankful that I have people like Kyrie and David and Rachel, not to mention Casey and Camille (the movie buddies), to help me out while I am growing up.

Anyways. It was a long day, but a great night. Thanks District 9 and good buddies.

What If Yonic?

This question is the result of a severely random train of thouhgt. It started when I read The Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray. We readthis article in my English 251class (my teacher was very apologetic afterwards because so many people were offended. I just kinda wanted him to drop a pair and say "Yeah, we read this. It was racy, but I expect everyone to deal with it maturely and if we have a serious poblem come talk to me," and then continue disussion, but that didn't happen.) But we discussed it with the backdrop of literature and how males write versus how women write and how each sex enjoys literature differently.
One of the questions that was posed was whether or not the structure of the story would be different had women been the forerunners of literature. My teacher mentioned that the geeral form of a plot follows the sexual experience for men, with a lot of rising action, a climax and then falling action and a conclusion. A peak. From what I understand and can imagine, the experience for women is much different, and my teacher asked us if we thouhgt that it would affect literature. And I think it really would. I think that sex might be one of the most human, spiritual, and personal experiences a person can have and it follows that something of that nature would effect (affect? I can never get it right.) many aspects of a society of humans.
Ever since that discussion, I have just wondered how far that is true. Our society - and most societies - is a patriarchal one and it shows. Look at skyscrapers. Each one is phallic and each architect wants theirs to be bigger, taller, and more pleasing than any other. Weapons too. Swords, spears, arrows, even guns are a tad phallic and were designed (by men) to be powerful and durable.
So my question is how would everything be different if we were in a strictly matriarchal society? Buildings? Weapons? Literature? What else?
I think it would be really cool to write a fantasy short story about a society like that, where everything is yonic (which was such a hard word to find online. It took me ten minutes of googling to find the opposite of phallic and it is still not a perfect term).

Only Six Accomplished Women

School is back in session and as such I have had the opportunity to people watch a little bit and after the first two days of my second year, this is what I have determined: Mormon society is very, very strange.
For many obvious reasons; we are in fact a peculiar people, but recently (probably from the influence of my hippie sister Rachel) I have been thinking a lot about the role of women and i ave been able to see how Mormons on the whole see that role here on campus.
I feel a pressure here at BYU, not only to succeed at a competitve university, but also to stand out in other areas. I feel a pressure to be better at singing or playing the piano (though neither will likely happen any time soon. I feel like I need to be thin and very pretty, athletic and fit. I feel like I need to be a good cook and a tidy housekeeper, a good time manager and a hard worker.
Maybe everyone feels these pressure, but from my two days of observing around campus and delving into my memories of young women's, it seems that there is more pressure on the women in or Mormon society. I feel the need to be accomplished.

``Oh! certainly, no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.''

And then the inconsistency: women are expected to, after they are very "accomplished," settle down and have a family. I look forward to the day when I will have children to raise and teach, but it seems like a very anti-feminist thing that these accomplished women are expected to don the apron and welcome their husband home from work with dinner and a sparkling kitchen. Don't get me wrong, I will be happy to do just that because I expect to love my husband that much, but I just wonder about it.
I guess it's just the expectation, the assumption, that bothers me a little bit.

Can you tell that Rachel definitely lives in Provo and we visit much more than we used to?