A Run

I went on a run to the temple tonight.
It's absolutely uphill the entire way there.
It was a hard run for me.
Firstly, I haven't been running for a good long amount of time, let alone running up hills.
Secondly, Rexburg is known for it's wind, and I was running against it.
There were times when a motorcycle would drive past me, and I would want to stick out my thumb and hitch a ride up to the temple.
There were moments when someone on a bike would ride past me, and I'd want to take their bike just to get up there faster.
But what is the point of going on a run for physical exercise if you ride on a motorcycle?

I'm going to the temple tomorrow.
There absolutely is a lot of homework that I need to get done tomorrow.
It's going to be a long day for me.
Sometimes it's hard to get to the temple. Sometimes it's hard to have an amazing hard rock testimony. Sometimes the journey is just hard.
There are times when you might see a motorcycle drive past, and you want to hitch a ride. Sometimes you just want to ride on your parents testimony to finish the journey.
Sometimes you want to borrow someones bike, you only make the decision to go because a friend is going.
But what is the point of having difficulties in life in order to strengthen you, if you want to ride off of everyone else? There is not strengthening of yourself if you won't carry the load.

Sometimes it's hard to start a habit. It's hard to read your scriptures everyday, pray morning and night. It's hard to find room in a busy college schedule to attend the temple.
It's hard to run. It's hard to run hills. The first run will knock you out. But in order to get better, don't you have to keep running? You have to continually run those hills in order to strengthen your muscles. Just as you must continually live each aspect of the gospel in order to strengthen your testimony. It won't come in one easy day, one nice jog around the track. You'll have your challenges in life that will test you. You'll run against the wind sometimes. But if you don't, how are you ever to improve?

It's those hard uphill moments that will make you or break you. You are ultimately the only one who can decide which direction you'll go. You can take the challenges and improve, learn, gain strength. It's only through your own legs that you can reach your destination. It's only through your own testimony that you can do what you are meant to do.

Those hills, that wind, it's going to make me.

Today

Today is wonderful.

You know that saying where you have to experience the bitter before you can taste the sweet? Well that's what I've had. Last weekend was an absolutely crappy weekend. It was ridiculous. The load of homework, drama, people trying to get me to not do my homework, tension, "that time of the month" for four of us in my apartment... it was like walking on eggshells all weekend.

But the weather, is beautiful right now. It is 70 degrees. Gorgeous, wonderful, luxurious sun.

The day started with the guys in our ward making the girls breakfast. A full on breakfast too mind you. Eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, hash browns.... ah it was yummy. And then I had a great game of racquetball with a friend who is much better then me. He taught me a lot though, I think I'll improve immensely learning from him. He's got wicked serves. You're either running to the ball, or ducking away from it.

After some clean up, the girls and I went to the temple. This was the first time for me going to the Rexburg Temple. I love this temple. I love temples. I love being there. I don't know how I lasted all fall semester without going once. What a shame. Normally on Saturdays, you plan for a long temple day. Like 4 hours long temple day. So we finished up as much homework as possible so we would be able to relax and have the right frame of mind while in the Lords house. But crazily, we were done in a little over one hour! I don't know how it happened but we got out in perfect time to make it to Quinton's soccer game. Well, we got there at half time but still, perfect.

Beautiful weather for a soccer game, I'm sure I got burned. Intense soccer game, those are the best. And a winning game for Quintons team.

We have stake conference tonight. It's been a good day. I like these Saturdays.

Mom

Mother's Day away from home is obscure to me. I don't like it.

I remember the days of dad making breakfast for mom, while the kids wrote letters, and then we would carry up the mass of food placed on a cookie sheet to her in bed. We would then all sit on the bed and hand her our letter and she would read them to herself, have some laughs, cry and little and procede to give us each a hug and then share her testimony on how we as a family make her life as a mom, a lot easier. How supportive we are with her and dad. But mom, you are the one that makes our life a lot easier. Mine especially. You are the one that supports me. You are the one with the advice. You are the one I want to call when my entire apartment has had a ridiculously crappy saturday. You are the one that I want to tell everything happening in my life to. You are the one I want to talk to when I meet a boy that I'm interested in. Yours is the advice I put the most weight to.

I love you mom. I love what I have learned from you. I love your cooking. I love that you are in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I love that you had me take piano lessons. I love my blanket that I have up here that your grandma made for you in college. I love being able to say that I have "Packard" in me. I love how you support me. I love how you direct me. I love how it was you that got me interested in radiology.

Thank you mom for helping me become what I am today. Thank you for helping me build off of your testimony, to where I now have such a strong one of my own. Thank you for having a wonderful relationship with dad. Thank you for showing me what mother's should be, what should be most important. Thank you for being there in the points in my life where I truly needed you. Thank you for helping me see that high school isn't worth the amount of drama that people put into it. Thank you for being a mother.

I love you mom.

Tissue

I've discovered my favorite tissue.


Bone Tissue.


It is the coolest looking tissue in my opinion. I thought my anatomy & physiology teacher was a little crazy as he stood and stared in love for the hyaline cartilage, but now that's me with my bone tissue.


Doesn't that fasinate you? I could tell you all about the haversion system, canal, osteocytes, lacunas, concentric and interstitial lamellas, volksmann canals... ah I just love it. If I ever come across a poster of this, be sure that it will appear on my wall next to Michael Jackson and The Beatles. Maybe it'll end up on the desktop of my computer... I haven't decided yet. All I know is that I think it looks awesome.

Music

Song of right now: If We Ever Meet Again: Timbaland ft. Katy Perry. My roommates and I are obsessed with it and listen to it enough to have me practically singing it in my sleep. It's addicting but I love the song. The music video is pretty funny too... just Timbalands faces. He cracks me up in this music video. Check it out.

Life of Pi

"I'll be honest about it. It's not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

"For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out."

"Nil magnum nisi bonum. No greatness without goodness."

"I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die."

"I speak in all modesty as I say this, but I discovered at that moment that I have a fierce will to live. It's not something evident, in my experience. Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others- and I am one of those- never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity."

"The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?"

I love all of these quotes; I love the hidden meanings and connections in this book. But I think one of my favorite chapters of this book is Pi's description of fear. Chapter 56.
"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."

I'm Back

It is so great to be back at college. Dang I've missed it. I've missed living with roommates, feeling productive, the stressful workings of getting class schedules up to par, grocery shopping, walking around campus, crossroads, 3rd floor of the library, Broulims, my bedspread, the free gym... man it's good to be back. The weather has been fantastic too, well it's pouring rain right now but! it has been very sunny and perfect temperature. Little hot though walking around campus in long pants... that could become a straining fact as I get farther into the summer. But I love college. I'm made for this life style. High school was a joke, and completely just overflowing with too many hormones and dramatic people. Thank everything for down to earth easy flowing people here at Rexburg.

My schedule is almost put together... it's been a long stressful chaotic few days here for me. My plans keep changing which directly affects my classes that I'm taking. At first I wasn't going to get an associates so I didn't need to take the foundation classes, which was nice. So trying to register for higher end classes, when I can register practically the last day of register... means I didn't get into 4 of my needed classes. Which brought about many emails to teachers, going to classes only to find 30+ more students trying to add that class. And then I decided the smart thing to do would be to get my associates here so classes are easier to transfer... so now I have to take foundations... which are all full. So more emails and more visits to classes. Oh what joyous times are these...

Quirks Of Me

I brush my teeth in the shower and I love it. Why wouldn't anyone enjoy feeling so thorougly clean?

I'm very fond of my bookshelf. Dusting it is a ritual where I lovingly move my books off and on the shelf while reminiscing over the stories I enjoy.

I have to read something every night before I go to sleep. Even if it's only a couple of pages. Any amount of reading will suffice. But it has to happen.

I am always reading a book. There are few times when I am not.

I very seldom/almost never take off my rings, and the few times I do and forget to put them back on... I spaz out until I get them back on my fingers. My hands feel awkward without my rings, I don't like it.

I love converse shoes. Even though I'm a poor college student with the knockoff versions, I still have some legitimate converse all stars. I like vans too but since I already own converse I feel like I'd be betraying them if I started wearing vans also. So I'm a converse girl.

I adore old leather books. I found a bookstore in Provo on Center Street that has a back corner, just full of old leather books. Oh how I wish I owned that corner.

Music is a passion. I transition through phases of music. Broadway, oldies, rock, hip-hop, hawaiian, chill, acoustic, radio, instrumental, and any other phase that has no real definition. The worst phase though would be no knowing what phase I'm in, the middle of the transitioning. Those are lame music days.

I collect face cards, smashed pennies, and fortunes from the fortune cookes.

I like to think that Switzerland, Hawaii and Goblin Valley are all tied for my home away from home.

I have to be able to see a clock at night. It drives me crazy if I don't know what time I randomly wake up during the middle of the night. I need exactness.

I hang up my shirts in rainbow order, with matching colored hangers.

Atlas Shrugged

I've been reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and I finally got through that 65 page long speech, which is monumental. That was a lot of logically deep reasoning for way too many pages. But I picked out a few things. Firstly government...
pg 973. "The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."

She outlines all the the government should be and nothing more. I feel like our government is starting to push itself into our lives more and more, they think they can fix all the problems, but in doing so, they create more problems and create more debt in the process. It's interesting how many ties there are to the government she sets up in her novel, compared to the direction ours is going.

But I've finally finished Atlas Shrugged! All 1,069 pages of it. Once I got through the 65 page speech of deeply intelligent logically stuff...it was fast to finish. But I think I still like The Fountainhead better, probably because I read it first.

Here's some quotes from the speech given by John Galt...They're taken out of context so they might not sound as good as they did in the book but they were wrapped around 65 other pages supporting their meaning.

"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch- or build a cyclotron- without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think."

"But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."

And here are some other quotes from throughout the book...
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent."

"What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish."

Learning Things

One week left until I move back to Rexburg! And I think I'm ready to get back up there. I'm ready to feel productive again. I'm ready for a much more social atmosphere. I'm ready for a free gym. I'm ready to run stairs in the Hart Auditorium. I'm ready to have a more scheduled life. I'm ready for homework. I'm ready for roommates. I'm ready for new faces. Can I get going already?

But life in-between the semesters were a much larger learning experience then I ever thought of having. I learned how to work with a 17 year old autistic boy. I've never been very good with kids with mental disabilities lets firstly point that out... and it was really challenging at times. There were moments when I would just sit and try to breathe, get my legs to stop shaking after Spencer would have one of his "freak outs". I'm not sure what to call it, but when he would get angry or frustrated, it would scare me. But I learned to take the pinches and the hits, I learned how to calm him down, I learned to enjoy little moments when he would sing, or be in a good mood. I learned a lot of patience. I learned to be more watchful.

I learned so much about simple gospel principles from my amazing institute teacher. I'm sad that I won't be able to attend the rest of the classes since I'm moving soon, but Bro. Robinson taught me a lot. I loved going to institute and my schedule Thursday nights would be planned around that class. I learned that a good teacher also makes all the difference...as shown with my other institute class that I never wanted to go to.

I also learned that going to institute munch & mingles will not kill you and will in fact bring about a great number of amazing friends. Even though I only went to one, it brought about me dating an amazing guy who I learned so much from. I've learned more on how to improve myself from him, than anyone I know in that short space of time. He truly is amazing and I look up to him so much. I learned from him how to better study my scriptures. I have gained more insights from his way of studying. He got me going to the temple again, and I've been faithfully going every Tuesday. I've learned more of what I want in my future husband. I feel like with the other guys I've dated, I've learned a lot of what I don't want, but this was such a needed change of air. He's helped me set my bar even higher. I learned to analyze and look at myself. I never really did that before and if it was something I didn't want to think about, I didn't. But now I've learned when I need to look, need to think, need to question. He's also introduced me to some great hysterical youtube videos, a hilarious tv show that I'm obsessed with now, great institute people that I'm friends with now, mangos, and some type of peas or green bean...I forgot the name of it. He's got me into instrumental music. I think in every way around, he's made me a better person and I'm grateful for meeting him and getting to know him.

My knowledge of weddings has expounded immensely ever since Heather got engaged. I know now a bit more of the wedding ring language, wedding dress language, photographers, receptions and the works. Thanks Heather for being the guinea pig of the family. :)

I've learned that my family is my closest friends. It was nice being able to tell my mom anything and everything. It hasn't ever been like that before. Maybe it's because I'm past all the worthless high school drama and things are a bit more serious now. I need her help more now.

I've learned how to tutor someone in math.

I've learned that 65 page speeches from Ayn Rand are extremely hard to get through.

I've learned that I still have a lot left to learn. And thank goodness for it.