Life. It's Much Better When You Live It.

So! If you have looked around here much recently, I obviously have had a problem with keeping things fresh.

Those posts from before were once beautiful or funny and now they've wilted, died, and are now decomposing. They're in need of replacement.

I've gotten very much sucked into the minute and meaningless details of my life over the past...         forever and I wish to repent.


Dull Monotony.

Life can become very gray if we let it. It becomes insanely uninteresting and extremely tedious.

"I have to take a shower now? Didn't I just do that yesterday?"

"What? Food? Didn't I just eat this a few hours ago?"

"Time for bed again!?!"

These are the thoughts that beplague the bored and tired mind.
Life is so much better if we just look up every once in a while.

So Keep Your Head Up.

Feel the wind on your face every once in a while, take a deep breath.

This is life worth living.

Live a little Thoreau, make intentional actions. Make your life an adventure. 

Life is an open box of crayons, so why choose to use only gray?

Recently, I've had an epiphany, my life has turned around... Again!


I have a whole lot going on, and I moved and I have 4 AP classes that demand a certifiably insane amount of my time, but these are all lame excuses!

A life not lived is no life at all. Take a little time to make a difference for someone else, or to see the beauty of the world around you! Stretch your arms and BREATHE!

Nothing can stop you from feeling free and being yourself!--nothing but YOU, that is...

That's right, you can make your own life seem pointless. You can get yourself focused on the teeny, tiny, pointless things that will only ever matter now...

(of course, you still have to work and live in the now, and it is the now that takes you to your future, so you really do need to get focused on the details, yes, if you want to move on successfully, but that's not what your life should be all about, silly!



and now I'm going to try to stop throwing out these one line motivational quotes... we'll see how well that goes...

The problem is, when you get sucked into the monotony, the creativity is bleached out of you. nay, it flees from the very presence of such notions of tediosity. 

I have had so little worth writing about because all I ever do is school, homework, and practicing. DON'T DO THAT TO YOURSELF! IT'S STUPID! 



I then had this great epiphany and I reached out and stretched and I BROKE FREE!!!

and life had meaning again. I was going to give people cookies and staying to talk for hours and hours, I was walking down the sidewalk singing with a grin on my face, I was happy!

WHEN YOU INVOLVE OTHER PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE IMPROVING THEIRS, YOUR OWN LIFE MULTIPLIES LIKE BUNNIES IN HAPPINESS.

Arizona

I haven't posted consistently for a long while, but it's okay, because I have plenty of excuses.

One of those excuses happens to be the desolate desert chunk of gravel and sand we call

ARIZONA

Yes, I did a stint as an Arizonan... Arizonian? Arizonanian? (who really cares anyway?).

How was it, you might ask?

It was enlightening, it changed and broadened my privileged perspective. It is also incredibly ugly and bland ... and hot... and dry... and a totally useless place to live--I mean who moves to Arizona for any reason other than 80 degree winters? (I'm so sorry to you Arizona love people...).

I'm also allergic to the air there, so that was lovely.

And the crazy dry air gave me frequent nose bleeds, which was even lovelier.

And it meant I slept on an air mattress for 5 months ish...

Beautiful, eh? But the sky was never that blue...

But Let's Skip to the HIGHLIGHTS!!!

• I had plenty of time to focus solely on my music. *Angelic sounds of praising at such great news*

• I met some amazing people

• I spent more time with my Family

We'll go into more detail in just a moment, but I just have to point out that yes, despite the horribly impurgable smell that still persists in every washable thing I have and the annoying constant cold and the aching back and the unceasingly frequent road trips....

It was still a SPECTACULAR EXPERIENCE.

I learned to play Guitar AGAIN! and this time I learned a lot more than I have ever before, I got much better.

I also worked on piano sight-reading, and I found a spectacular arrangement that I'll mention in a minute.

All of my friends from Utah totally dropped off the face of the planet for a few months there, except sometimes when I'd come back to visit *thanks, guys*

I made friends with some AMAZING people there though.

Random people that I had met once or twice would drop by my house or call me and invite me to come do something with them starting the very first week.

The people there that I met were so much more genuine than anyone else I'd ever met before. They were willing to call you up whenever just to talk to you or to spend time with you.

and on my last week there, my extra fabulous friend, Leanne, took me paddle boarding with another girl we knew.

Firstly-it was SOOOO fun.

but this other girl said to me that day something that changed my whiny stupid moaning perception completely:

"We were thinking about how this must have been the best few months of your life!"

I was more than slightly caught off guard.

It had been horrible. I had written 20 unanswered letters. My friends seemed to have forgotten me. I had to do all of my classes online. I spent most of my time in my bedroom. We didn't even have any real furniture, it was like we'd been camping inside a house...

I responded quickly with a questioning rebuttal:

"My grandpa died."

but that one line this girl said stuck in me.

EVERYONE had reached out to help me. EVERYONE had served me. I'd met so many great people who were willing to drop everything to spend time with me because it was a limited resource. These people considered themselves to be my good friends, yet I regarded them simply as acquaintances I'd met who I would soon be leaving forever.

I had been so rude to them. I would always talk wistfully about my "real" friends in Utah (just saying things like "oh ya, one time, my best friends and I..."). These people were real friends too. They had been there for me when I really needed someone. They had served me right and left and tried to make my life as much fun as possible, and I had totally ignored it. I'd been too busy whining and complaining and feeling sorry for myself.

And that really turned around my experience.

It really added new meaning to a piano solo I'd been working on for almost the whole trip towards perfecting...

"Have I Done Any Good?"

An excellent question to keep ourselves on track.

This song set the tone for me about half way through, but it didn't mean nearly as much to me until this dear friend's comment.

I'd been trying to see what I could do to make other people happy, which I was just doing at activities I was invited to, trying to make everyone feel included, working hard for my Secretary position in my Laurel Class Presidency...

and then that comment.

And I realized all that I had taken for granted that they had gone out of their way to do things for me...

And so now this becomes my mantra for my return home.

I will use what they've taught me to do the same for others.

I started a little bit, but then I had to leave for girls' camp and now I have such a huge, nasty, probably-infected, gaping hole in my lip (the grandmother of all canker sores) that I literally can't even talk because it's too irritating. (don't worry, I'm going to get it checked out by the doctor or maybe dentist tomorrow morning [because it just keeps getting bigger])

SO! My dear friends, the 12 of you who might actually ever read this, please help me find ways to serve you and to be able to spend more time with you.

Because, as the song says, "have I cheered up the sad, or made someone feel glad? If not I have failed indeed."

Read the whole song here

https://www.lds.org/music/text/hymns/have-i-done-any-good?lang=eng

Picture: http://www.hikemore.com/indepth/Grand-Canyon/Saguaro-Cactus-Grand-Canyon.htm

I was BORN to Be BLONDE.

Yes, not only have I chosen to divulge to the internet my super common name, but now I'm also telling the whole world that I'm a blondie. How unique.

So you might just be wondering right now why I'm choosing this particular moment to come out of the closet as pertaining to my golden locks.

I promise you'll understand soon... If you can understand my peculiar vernacular at all.

If you ask Google for a definition to the word 'prom' you will find a similar result to this:

prom

präm

noun

informal

1. 1.

   NORTH AMERICAN

   a formal dance, especially one held by a class in high school or college at the end of a year.
2. 2.

   BRITISH

   short for promenade (sense 1 of the noun).

But I think that prom has a very important third definition that needs to be widely known...

So below, you will find my additional definition to prom.

prom

präm

    3. Crazy Squirrel

        a context in which the confusing of two people is extremely socially unacceptable.

Have I piqued your interest yet? Are you intrigued?

[story telling voice comes from out of the bowels of my being, where it normally dwells whenever I'm not telling a story-- which makes it more of a hotel than a home.]


AHEM.
PROM

As I mentioned before, I haven't spent all of my time 'in Arizona' in Arizona. I've spent it in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington DC.

So it should come of little surprise to you that I happened to be back in Utah for the weekend of my High School Prom.

A few of my friends knew I would be back, and it also happened to be the weekend of the anniversary of my birth.

So I got asked!
via this picture, over a text message...


The text said something to the effect of "What if you found this on your doorstep?"

I wasn't sure if they were just asking my opinion as to what kind of reaction they would get or if they were actually asking me to prom.



Some Key Information as Background:
[I received this text from a contact on my phone named 'Tanner'.

Because of a number of reasons you probably wouldn't care to hear, including that I know a good number of Tanners and that only about half of them went to my school, I assumed very quickly that this was one particular Tanner.]

You might be able to see where this story is headed by now.

Of course, I clarified with the sender that they were, in fact, asking me to prom, and then I asked for an address.

I just happened to have approximately 350 tootsie roll wrappers, most of which were folded very carefully into tiny little sailor paper hats. Don't ask why, just know that I have one crafty sister.

SO! I take these hats and I make a cute little response package, one of them saying on the inside "Go to prom with you? Tanner Asdf? Aye, aye toots."

I decorated the package very nicely, addressing Tanner Asdf by name a good number of times, as that's the way I speak, constantly calling peoples' names, to keep their focus or something, I don't know why...

A few days later, I receive a text message from Tanner Jkl;, my buddy listed only as 'Tanner' in my phone contacts, sometimes better known as "thief" by those who have read previous entries here, asking me why I had sent a package for Tanner Asdf to his--Tanner Jkl;'s house. Obviously, I had mixed up their addresses. I tried to explain this to the inquiring Tanner, but then he asked why I ever needed to send the other Tanner a package anyway.

My answer was more complicated than it needed to be, but I briefly explained that the Tanner in question had asked me to prom.

Tanner Jkl; informed me that he had actually been the asker.

Boy, did I feel sheepish.

AND I LAUGHED SOOOOO HARD.

I couldn't control it. It was one of the dumbest things I'd ever done, and the stupidity of it was cracking me up.

So for anyone who didn't follow that, I thought that I'd been asked by one Tanner, so I answered him with a yes, but then I'd actually been asked by another Tanner, but still sent the response to his house, just with the wrong last name all over it.

And of course the two of them were sitting together watching a movie while I figured this out.

So they opened the package together.

I told the Tanner who'd actually asked me to just cross out the other last name wherever it appeared, and replace it with his own.

And then I finally understood that random R.It was an indicator to the boy's actual last name.



Good heavens to Betsy, I was born to be blonde.








But all this aside,

Prom was super fun and I had a great time with some of the best friends ever, and we laughed plenty. And then some more.

Under a Stupid Rock

Well basically, you lot must have clearly been living under a stupid rock if you didn't know this, but recently, I have had the crazy adventure of temporarily relocating to Phoenix, Arizona... or somewhere around there...

But that's still okay if you didn't know, because I kind of just dropped off the face of the earth for a while there. That and we've spent half of our time 'there' everywhere else. Seriously.

My desert adventure has been greatly expanded to my grand American adventure. Needless to say, it has been quite the adventure; even more than we expected.

I've been EVERYWHERE recently. 

So... Let's talk.

What are some of the best adventures I've had recently? OOH! I've got a few good ones. No worries.

So feel free to read on, and I'll try my very very very hardest to not take forever again.

Thank you so very much to anyone who even cares,

Sarah

Hah! I used my real name this time! I bet you didn't expect that one.