Yesterday was good.  Someone called me “really skinny” and I won the $700 auction item for $125.00 at work (2 day River trip and lodging in Green River).  Not bad.

Today is good because I’m drinking a half-decaf hot vanilla latte and it is overcast outside, ready to pour, which is just as invigorating right now as sunshine after a long winter. 

Darren has been gone for a month since the 6th.  I’ll turn 25 in a month since the 6th.  BJ and I had our one year wedding anniversary on the 6th.  When I opened the garage to pull the car in after dinner, there stood a shiny red bicycle, exactly how I lustily pointed it out in the catalogue.  He said he was nervous because I got quiet, I guess he didn’t hear me gasp.  Then we went inside and sliced open our thawing chocolate wedding cake as tradition.  We took reluctant bites out of it over the garbage can for the crumbs to fall into, it was still decent for being 1 year old, but it's scary to eat old cake no matter what. Anyway, the whole night, it was so sweet, and I was so surprised by the bike.  I'm surprising him with a night stay up the mountains at a lodge with heated pools on the roof on Saturday.  I'm surprised by all these surprises.

I felt really relieved and accomplished that we made it through the first year of marriage, people always say it's the hardest.  It feels like it's been so much longer what with all we've been through, all that has changed forever in such a short time.  He's still here, and so am I.  And there's still time.

There is a part of me, I've realized, that will always be lost, never be filled.  I'm trying not to dwell there anymore.  

God, I have a lot of ground to cover.  Hardly any of it will matter as only one part involves poetry, but what the hell. The past ten days have been a dynamic type.  There was Wednesday when I went to a pioneer day parade with my family in Bountiful.  Spending time with my grandparents, even squished in between the two in the backseat of my mom’s white Camry, proved a more enjoyable time than I’ve had in awhile.  We raked their backyard of bird feathers after a cat apparently had dinner.  My grandma, in all her adorableness, responded “Well I don’t like that kind of nature” after my mom exhaled, “That’s nature” while clumping the zillion downy feathers into a pile.   There was the time I hung out with Cody and we talked about everything over pizza and long walks through liberty park.  We hugged long hugs and I couldn't tell if I felt lost or found.  He's gone back to Seattle now and changed his number, but he's moving back in about a week. There have been fights between BJ and me.  There have been secret, hopeless thoughts.  There have been times when moments of aloneness have put thoughts into my head.  Habit or clarity?

There was the time when we spent 500 bucks to get Aaron out of jail after a police officer called and asked us to come salvage his passengers from American Fork canyon.  He was charged with a DUI for smoking weed while driving.  We didn’t get a single “thank you” from him, but I’m the only one that noticed.  There was the time we stayed up talking with Bobbi and Matty in the summer night backyard of their 50’s home.  Cigarette smoke clouding in front of the porch lights while I rubbed their dog’s eager belly and thought about what I wanted in life.  There is the elation and relief at finally finishing our bathroom and getting multiple compliments on its modern beauty on Sunday when Chelsea, Jenn, Rosa, Phil, BJ and I watched the Wizard of Oz twice on TNT while baking cookies; the second time around was to scrutinize the rumored hanged midget in the background of the set that Chelsea swore was there.  It ended up just being a bird.  Then there was the time today where I heard the heart beat of someone I don’t know yet and I realized being happy or excited about something that hasn’t made a promise can be a curse…or if nothing else, terrifying.  I’ve made a nice little home in my nonchalance.  For awhile I didn’t think it was a choice.  But to feel it threatened today…was one of the most invigorating and dangerous feelings I’ve felt in a long time.

I just realized the reason I was attracted to livejournal in the beginning, when it was this innovative new crazy thing that people wrote on; genuine vulnerable material about what was really going on in their heads and lives, not discussion material that you casually keep your friends posted on.  It all reminded me of that book, Go Ask Alice.  When I was twelve, reading something like that mystified me because I felt like I was granted entry onto the ride of someone’s precious, raw feelings and thoughts and daily life. Criticisms did not arise nor did any of her words and paragraphs escape me because I felt indebted by having a looking glass into one persons' secret world while the rest of the world hid.   It was fascinating and addicting to be a part of another person's life from afar like that.  Reading and participating in livejournal gave me sort of the same feeling for awhile.  Later I discovered Go Ask Alice was atually just a work of fiction some mormon lady put together as a cautionary tale.  frownie.