dear sally...

I have a friend that I made during the whole United debacle. She was on "the" flight with me and so we both landed in the same boat. we vowed to keep in touch and have done a decent job at it. though, i haven't seen her since that rainy tuesday morning in April of 2006, we have been pretty good about e-mailing. I love keeping in touch with her. When we met, we were both in pretty strange places in life, as I think are most people who decide to become flight attendants. But, I love keeping in touch with her, because when we write, we really write. Long drawn out e-mails about life and most importantly...boys. The great thing is, that I never know who she is talking about or the "back" story to it- so she has to fill me in on everything if i'm to fully understand. The good part about this is, you can never fully fill someone in on ALL the back story to ANYONE or ANY situation. So, I get a different perspective than say, her friends who are right there or her family who is right there. She has given me lots of advice from this special perspective that I really treasure, and though, i'm great at asking for advice but terrible at taking it...I value her opinion and always seem to write to her when i'm in dire straits over something or someone. and so, on this particular night as i find myself in such a situation, I decided to write her. as I was writing her (actually asking her advice about whether or not I should write another person and tell them what's on my mind) I started thinking about this. you see, i don't have the greatest history with letters or long e-mails. i've never taken that whole "write it and address it, but whatever you do...DON'T send it" advice to heart. I mean, if i took the time to write it, then...why not send it. But the thing is, writing is my outlet for what I'm feeling. But a lot of the things I FEEL, don't need to be shared. at least not right now or in "this" particular context. and a lot of things I write are "of the moment." I am a very spontaneous person. I'll come up with an idea, be ALL ABOUT it until a.) I do it or b.) i can't find a partner in crime and/or the moment passes and I forget about it. So a lot of what I write and send off are spontaneous tidbits that are probably left locked in my overactive brain. All of this to say that Hanna, my friend is now on the receiving end of all my crazy letters. I write out exactly what i'm feeling (after explaining as much back story as I can type) and send it off to her. There, that way, someone read it who is a neutral 3rd party. I have written it, so it's off my chest and usually worked out in my head. It's the perfect solution. Too bad, I didn't meet her,say, a year earlier. But no use regretting now. And sometimes, she'll fire back and tell me that I should actually "address" the situation,although usually not by letter, but mostly, these e-mails just sit in her inbox. which is exactly where they should be. It kind of goes back to my "everything looks better in the morning." thing. Once something is written out, I realize just how silly or stupid it actually is. It no longer threatens my happiness by staying locked inside. And I love to go back to my sent mail and see the e-mails i've written to her over the years. let's just say, THANK GOD she received and filtered this stuff. MOST of it is so not important now that it's laughable. And journaling is just not that effective for me. I need to actually tell someone this stuff. People laugh when I call her my pen pal, and that really doesn't convey how special she is to me. Most of my closest friends don't even know she exists or that we have this little penpalship. heck, i don't even know if i'll ever see her again. hopefully I will. but for now, i'm happy sending my neurotic thoughts and crazy opinions across the e-mail waves to the safety of her inbox. and I like getting hers to. we are COMPLETELY different people and just reading her e-mails teaches me so much about living a non-drama, take no bull kind of life. my favorite line from her last e-mail(i'm sure she won't mind me sharing) is..."Got burned by a dude, not worth going into or thinking about. Just need to get over it. You know how stupid and crazy I am. There are always more where that came from" haha. how simple and to the point. it takes me 4 paragraphs to say essentially what she said in 4 sentences. so that is my rant for the night- most of you will probably get nothing out of this blog, since I may be the last remaining person who likes to write actual letters "explaining my behavior" or "pleading my case," but maybe someone will.

ps, if you don't get the "sally" bit then you need to watch Felicity. STAT.

i'm back!

so i'm pretty sure it's no secret by now as to what my favorite song is. not like that is a fun secret anyways...point is-pretty much anyone who knows me knows that it's far and away REK's "feelin good again." there are lots of reasons that this is my favorite song but mostly because i don't think you can say those 6 words without smiling. at least, i know i can't. feels so good feelin' good again. but i will let you in on a little secret that few people know...see NOW you're in the inner circle. i always thought i loved that song because of the way it ended. if you don't know the song, well shame on you, but stop reading immediately and go have a listen. okay, now, you're back. see what I mean...bet you couldn't help but smile. but back to the ending. who doesn't want that in life. to have all their family and friends together in one spot and then look over to find that your one true love is there as well? i'm pretty sure you'd be fooling yourself if you say you haven't ever at least thought you wanted that. get real. you have. but i always thought that i LOVED the song so much because one day i'd have that life-changing "feelin good again" moment surrounded by all the people i loved and then prince charming would drop down on one knee and propose. so everytime i listened to the song i would just smile thinking of that day. until something happened. a couple of months ago my whole family was on a vacation together in colorado. we hadn't all been together in one place in over a year and so we were all pretty pumped to be together. there was one night where we were all eating burgers at a little restaurant and one of the brothers made a comment that made us all laugh until we were crying. at that very moment-those six words flashed through my head...feels so good feelin' good again. not that i had been feeling bad before that but it was just a moment in time where we were all together and all laughing. it was, at the risk of sounding extremely cliche, a perfect moment. you know the kind i'm speaking of-the kind of moments you want to bottle up and save for a day when things aren't so funny or relaxed. the kind of moment where nothing matters but the fact that you are happy RIGHT THEN. now, i'm gonna pause and insert a little tidbit here. i'm a happy person. i think you would all agree. so these moments are not rare for me. but the older i get, the more i realize how important it is to savor them because let's face it-the older we get the more we realize that life isn't always a perfect moment. but back to the point. i didn't really think about this moment anymore until last week. it was a particularly stressful week at school and just a rough week in general. last thursday night after my class i was driving home listening to the radio with the windows down(my favorite thing to do) and the weight of the weeks assignments and stress was lifted off my shoulders and i thought to myself...you guessed it-feels so good...!! so that got me thinking how many of these little moments i have on a daily basis where i feel so good...and then another song i love came on the radio. It's called "you're gonna miss this" and it's all about a girl who keeps wanting to fast forward her life to the next benchmark she thinks she needs to be at. out of high school, married, new house,kids...you know the drill. hmmm. and then i got it. these moments are my life. and i love it. it's not about the "big" moment, it's about all of these little moments. and yes, i know eventually i'll have a big moment that may or may not be the exact one i've "dreamed" of. judging by previous experience-it probably will be better than anything i can dream up.that's okay. i don't want to rush through this right now. i've seen people who are living the "benchmark" life and funny thing is they get what they want and it's still not ACTUALLY what they WANT. they are gonna miss THIS. i know that is not a novel idea, but when you see it firsthand, then it becomes real. i drove home that night vowing to live my moments. a good conversation. feels so good. an especially good run. feels so good. seeing my parents for the first time in awhile. feels so good. laughing with my brothers. feels so good. sliding down the giant slide with mary kate like i'm 4 years old myself. feels so good. a laugh until I cry moment with a good friend. feels so good. hearing wheaton tell me he loves me and saying AUUUSTIN,TX. feels so good. i could go on and on but you get the point. i'm so glad I finally got the point. and the best part is, now that I've discovered this, I love to count my "moments" in any given day. and let me tell ya, there are lots. I just never quite stopped to think about "feelin' good again" on a random Monday in July. but...guess what...it happens. and this revelation came to me at the perfect time. a time when all my close friends are getting married and engaged. obviously i'm super happy for them, but, i've seen other friends go through this before me and get down because they haven't found their mr. right. I guess I could be longing for that, but instead, i'm choosing to begrateful for this time in my life. someday, i'm gonna miss these moments. that is one thing I know for sure. for now I'm too busy trying to become the person I want to be for life which is kind of a time consuming thing. i like to say i'm "livin' on dreams and spaghetti o's." (okay, maybe dreams and turkey sandwiches...) like my mom always reminds me, someday my prince will come, but until that happens, you won't find me waiting. you'll find me living. living the little moments and feelin' good again each and every day.

ba bump ba bump ba bump ba bump...

yay!!! Ashley heard my love bundles heartbeat the other day!! Apparently the niecephew was just going crazy and its little heartbeat was steady steady steady! such a blessing! that's about it for now.

the promised pictures...

these are especially for my bubs. although...i don't have many-mom has most of the really good ones of W and she isn't 100% sure how to load them...i'm waiting on Ash to send me hers!! There is an ESPECIALLY precious one of Wheaton skiing Vail where both the uncles are guarding each side of him to protect him...priceless!! i'll post as soon as I can get my hands on it!

J and T

YAY!!! jenniferandtrotter.com is officially up and running! go check it out!!

in regard...

I will post some pictures of W as soon as possible...as for the paragraphs-my writing teacher tells us that paragraphs(in first drafts) break up creative flow so they are something you add back in later. And since I know all of you pretty well(i think i do-I definitely know YOU well) I figured I didn't have to take the time to do that. I'm off to the Windy City for Katies Bachelorette party so I'll post the pictures when I get back!!! Be triple c!!

the complexities of life.

Over Christmas I started thinking about this blog. The conclusion I came to is that I'm over it. It was fun for awhile at the stage of life when I started it. At that particular stage of life I had nothing better to do than to reflect on what was going on and write about it. Complain,mostly. I looked back at some of those "deeper" thought blogs a couple of weeks ago and had a hard time remembering the mood I must have been in when I wrote them. I had lots of time on my hands then. Now, I do not. I rarely have time to sleep 8 hours a night- much less time to blog. Which leads to an important point...what could/should I be doing when I'm doing these "filler" things instead? Lots. But that's another blog for another day(if there is another day...blogging day I mean.) When my family went skiing about a week ago, I came up with ideas for at least five different blogs. And they were all great and deep. At the time. I was pondering them on the plane ride home. I happened to be sitting next to an aspiring writer and for some reason this came up.(i'm probably the inquiring person on the plane you hope NOT to get seated by) Anyways-he was telling me how much he loved writing and I was telling him how I used to have all these things to say,and now I don't. He was talking about writing as being a way of dealing with things and I definitely agree with him there. So, he told me that if I was having some sort of "writers" block, it wasn't because I wasn't going through things that I could write about...it meant that I was dealing with them in a different way. So, of course I pondered the complexity of that for a couple of days. He's right. It's not like I couldn't take hundreds of the little life experiences i've had lately and turn them into a blog. I definitely could. But i'm dealing with these things differently. I just counted and I have 11 unfinished blogs on here. None of them are little life updates,picture blogs, or happy birthday/engagement blogs. They are all meaningful(hopefully) little tidbits. But for some reason, I couldn't finish them. So, of course, I started reading them. I found many things in common with all of them. First off, they were all started after midnight. Secondly, I can't remember where I was "going" with half of them. However, I can remember starting each and every one of them. They each had, what I thought at the time, was a valid point. I wouldn't post one of them now if you paid me. Not that they are bad, or even that dramatic...they just aren't important. The after midnight thing is what interested me the most. I have never been the type to get depressed, but there is something about the dark night that brings out the more negative side to most people. For example...I was home a couple of weeks ago over Christmas break. I was just about to get into bed when I heard a noise outside my window. I got up the nerve to peak and sure enough I saw some kind of body strewn out on the driveway. I wasn't going to go investigate...so I frantically called John(to no avail) and then woke my dad up. He had to pull himself out of bed, get the shotgun and go investigate. He came back up with the report that it was just a blanket. My dad is the smartest person I've ever met, but did I believe him? NO. In the dark night, that "blanket" was a would be burglar just lying there waiting for us to fall asleep so he could break in. Needless to say, I panicked for another 3 hours then fell asleep. When I woke up, the sun was shining. (immediate flashback to cory sellers singing,"though the sorrow may last through night, the joy comes in the morning.:)) I had forgotten all about the night before until I walked down to get breakfast and wondered what on EARTH the dark blanket I had set on my trunk last night was doing strewn out on the driveway. Get my point. In the light of day it was just a thing. A thing that could be dealt with immediately and then forgotten. Well, my after midnight blogs were all a bit like this. They were my thoughts getting the best of me at night. Things most always look better in the morning. And if they don't-then I can guarantee they look better a couple of days or months later. And that is the case with those "lost" blogs. They just aren't that big of a deal anymore. I've faced the issues and shed some light on them. They aren't burglars anymore, trying to take my happiness. They are just small things that needed to be dealt with. And they have been, for the most part. I am just so used to instant gratification(not a good thing...i know) so if I don't get an answer to a question or something I want right away, I tend to freak. This has all changed now and what I'm realizing most is that the answers and things I want "then" are not AT ALL what I want later or "now." So I think what "they" say about writing your letters to people and then shredding them up... is a fantastic idea. Most of the time, you just need to get something out of your system. And my after midnight, unfinished blogs were just that for me. You never got to read them, but you didn't need to. They didn't and still don't define me.And, although they make up a part of who I am, they are mostly just complaining little rants that would do you no good to read. So back to the whole issue of keeping this blog up. I wasn't going to, but now I think I will. I'm not in the same phase of life I was in when I wrote those other "life" blogs. Thankfully, I've grown up...if only a little bit. But I'm still learning how to deal. So that means...I'll still be writing. Probably after midnight a lot of the time. But i'm gonna wait and post till the sun is shining and it's a new day. Then I'll decide whether it's a pity party or something I think you can get a little something out of. As I sit here at 11:41 PM, I can feel myself getting a little sentimental so I'm going to sign off...for as Scarlett says, "after all, tomorrow is another day."

Hurray Hurray we're on our way...

our family vacation starts today!! Off to snowy colorado for some good skiing...ha. nothing about my skiing is good-but it'll be fun!!

auntie m squared....

how dare I forget to mention the most exciting news...i'm going to be an auntie m AGAIN!!!! My little love bundle(as i've started referring to the baby)is due to make his/her grand entrance to the world August 12!!! YAY!!! Wheaton is going to be a big brother and the sweetest one ever. Besides of course, my older brothers who happen to have their moments!!! :)

all that jazz...

So, the holidays have come and gone! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year! The trip to Memph was rather eventful and although I could spend hours telling stories about each little thing-I think i'll keep those between those who were involved and myself. All I'll say was a good time was had by all!!!