Jumping the shark

After years of threatening to throw Spencer the World's Most Awkward Surprise Party with only people he sorta-kinda knows on the invite list, he went behind my back and actually threw me a real one.
What a jerk.

The only 2 items on the night's agenda were to (1) eat crusty food then (2) sit around and ridicule me,
with everyone I love in attendance, plus a special surprise guest flown in all the way from Midwest, USA.
I may have cried, but I can't be certain. 

It was one of the best, most overwhelming feelings ever. Which feels like a gross understatement, but there's really no other words for suddenly being faced with the reality that all of the people you love most, not only kinda-sorta like you back, but really know and understand who you are - right down to your quirky eating habits and favorite trashy television shows.

It was perfect,

perfect in every possible way that matters.

Now a week later, reading the party planning emails and I'm feeling just as touched by them as I did at the Roast itself. - I've summarized the highlights of the correspondence below for posterity's sake (no, that's funny. I just did it for me).

S: ok girls. i need some help planning a 30th birthday for kayleen.

this much i know: she enjoys a crowd, likes loud and inappropriate conversation, and i'm pretty sure she'd want to be wearing a tiara on her special night. actually i'm positive. who can get us a tiara???  

S: a roast of some sort would be fun... what awkward stories personality quirks/flaws/etc. can we all ridicule her for? ... don't be shy. 

Aft: I know Kay's would love a good roasting... I've heard her make the comment that she would love a reason for people to get together and talk about her. 

Ty: This looks promising. 

Sar: i think you need to celebrate what kays loves...

a theme party where everyone dresses up like one of the real housewives and she has to guess who's who, she likes uncomfortable things, any game that encourages lying, cocktails (monster+lemonade), and friends. 

M: crusty food she likes... beef jerky, gummy bears, Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, soft pretzels, monster/Mtn dew cocktail, taco bell tacos.  

C: a giant game of mafia - and we all agree to get super into it,
or we just set up a table with a giant puzzle and let her have at it,
or a really uncomfortable game of "would you rather ... ?"

D: housewives playing in the background, abernethy on skype, a birthday song solo from me complete with an interpretive dance to go along with it... a mean game of mafia (or any other game that makes people squirm in their seats) 

S: ...who can we get a tiara from?! 

J: i'll spare you my witty rhetoric and just offer a resounding "here, here" to all the afore mentioned replies. 

S: ...she's been joking about a surprise party for years. But, no worries. She doesn't suspect a thing. She's so duuuuummmbbb!!!

That's love, friends. Real love.

   

I am

I struggle less now than ever with the unfounded fear of any potential offense I may cause from saying aloud what I really believe of God and Christ. Chock it up to age or just real progression towards self-actualization, but I'm comfortable.
Comfortable with who I am, what I believe, what I don't believe, what those foundations really mean for me and mine, and where my very unique self fits in the grand scheme of it all. For the body is not one member, but many...

If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body. And if the ear shall say, because I am not the eye, I am not of the body. It is not therefore not of the body.
For if the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now God hath set each one of the members in the body, and now they are many members, but one body.
And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Much rather, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary and those [parts] of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor.
And our uncomely [parts] have more abundant comeliness, whereas our comely [parts] have no need. God tempered the body together, giving more abundant honor to that [part] which lacked that there should be no schism in the body - that the members should have the same care one for another...
And whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it,
And as one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
And now, ye are the body of Christ...(1 Corinthians 12)

...and i am.

There is need and room for all of us, friends. We are never forgotten.
I'm a mormon

  

mesa my love

I grew up on the same street my father did.
The majority of his 30+ grandchildren, including my own children, will grow up in the same neighborhood as well.

Bloom where you are planted.

I love my home. I love my neighbors. And I believe there is a happy place where compassion and the laws of the land meet. - I want my children to grow up in a place where this can happen.
Lets go, District 18.

i've failed to recognize the Glory that surrounds us

we went to see the tree of life last weekend,
and it was beautiful.


shot through a broader scope than that of our standard idea of cinema,
it's a montage of picturesque scenes loosely depicting the story of Us.
with no real resolve or reason,
because none is needed.

a nameless mother and father,
nameless brothers.
and at times in my own self-reflection,
i am all of them.

  

in the spirit of elijah

my last living grandparent passed in april.
she was well in to her 90's, the last of her siblings to go and i imagine was greeted at the veil with many open arms that have waited patiently for her.

i've seen almost every episode of i love lucy with my grandma, choked down a countless number of her tuna sandwiches that as a little girl i claimed 'tasted like flies', and have been blessed with inheriting her slightly less-than-petite ankles. thank you, grandma.

grandpa and co
 

and just so you don't ever question the calibre of roots i come from,
i give you grandpa flake. get your stripes on, brother.

i have a perfect body 'cause my eyelashes catch my sweat

i've recently become my own worst critic. but isn't that who it usually is.

i've been gearing up to take on that thing that almost killed me last spring.
and after weeks of effort to correct a major (we're talking major) holiday weight gain and picking my running back up after losing it completely - you mean i can't maintain by eating whatever i want and sitting on my butt all day. lame. - the scale remains the same.

running every day and focusing my meals around the holy bible of eating and not. a. single. pound. lost.
i admittedly can be just as superficial and human as the next and it's these sorts of things that have the potential to wreck me completely.
and maybe it did for a while.
but something happened amidst my self-pity party and, in few words, i got over myself; took a hammer to the scale, patted myself on the back for the small headway i have made, pulled out the old fat jeans from storage and went on with my days.
happy and healthy and with a little more junk in the trunk, i went on with my days. - and that in itself is a victory.

hurts to purr - matinee

  

my personal style peaked in '93

today i'm 29.
it feels the same as 28.
and yes, 2 posts in a row about my birthday feels as self-indulgent as it probably appears.


according to my facebook newsfeed - because getting your news from anywhere else is just stupid - i'm shifting over from capricorn to sagittarius. i'm elated. it's fitting and lifts the burden after all these years of being seen as emotionally lazy, uncommitted and easily bored.
it's finally not my fault, friends, it's in the stars. - best birthday gift ever.

  

i feel older than i should

self-portraits at almost 29. (i can't wait to go grey.)

boom dynamite

i'm part of a gang.
we meet monthly.
like a book club, but less classy.

i'm the one in the middle who looks grossly similar to an adolescent boy.
note to self: flannels with this haircut can be dangerous. be careful out there.

today is a good day

day 48

there's nothing extra in life i'll ever think i need.
i know that,
but then there's the moments where i actually feel that. - when everything around me feels completely complete.

today was a really good day.

self portraits

day 40

this way

day 22

[sunday] i'm in love

Day 1

counting the significant and not so significant days gone by has turned into somewhat of a security blanket for me.
or maybe it's simply become a way for me to measure time missed. a way for my mind to quietly work its way back when it needs to.


9 weeks of shooting in black and white.
Lack of Color Here (LOCH) project. take one.
see you after christmas.

legend

day 81

"Sometimes I feel like that tree on the hill, where all the wind blows and the hail hits the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock.
i am out of the fold.
standing alone in the sun and the snow, i feel like I am not part of the rest. they welcome me and are kind, but I see [them] as they sit together and it is like they have a certain way between them that is beyond me.

mother told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life.
So I must remember this day. It is beautiful..."

--sarah (these is my words/nancy turner)

spare moments over the past few weeks have been spent chipping away at the growing list of books left unread on my shelves for more months than i'd probably allow myself to admit. i blame my new boyfriend, droid. - tv is so pissed.

somewhere in the midst of prime time premiers and a my 93 pt word on wordfued (bam!), i managed to fit an umpteenth reading of a favorite novel in for bookclub tomorrow night.

sarah is still one of my favorite characters. maybe because i share many of her same sentiments on the idea of happiness.


i've struggled my entire adult life to find words that could loosely define my idea of happiness to others. i've always known that bliss was never a state that appealed to me and all of my happiest moments seem to be accompanied with a tinge of melancholy...

much to my dismay we went camping this past weekend. i went exploring with the boys as soon as we got there, while spencer stayed to set up.
behind a huge log pile, at the end of a stoned path there were 2 lone trees. crooked and out of place, the grass matted more that 3 feet out around the base of their trunks. the late afternoon sun set a harsh contrast to their gnarled bark and the miles of tall pines behind them, calling me to lift the camera roped around my neck. i must remember this day. this day is beautiful.

...pictures are my mouthpiece, i've known this about myself, and this picture specifically is the closest i've come to any sort of definition of that which my brain finds difficult to verbally define.

put on an argyle sweater and put on a smile

day 75

i've learned to be okay with changing my mind.
to allow myself to feel differently than i've previously stated i felt.
i'm bombastic. i claim ideas and beliefs before they ever finish materializing in my head.
i'm okay with this.
with coming to my own place of understanding a little less quietly than others and slowly zigzagging along from place to place.

i've learned that all of these places, my places, are infinite and ever-changing,
and focusing on the race from point a to b feels useless when point b simply doesn't exist.

   

this place is not a state but a process

day 39

they were wedded and it was beautiful.

i heard the start of hoppipolla play through the loudspeakers as i set foot on the wedding venue's spread of green lawn. i thought of how i made him promise he'd play it when i left. i paused, looked ahead. the bride sat crosslegged on the grass next to redheaded pigtails on a freckled face while boys in suits played bocce at the other end of the lawn. i bent down to take a picture - a desperate attempt to pocket just how big the moment felt. - then i turned to stare at the rest of them, and not my idea of them, but them, held in all white chairs, circled around a pile of kids. i closed my eyes, felt a familiar pain in my chest sink to my knees, and smiled. 
that was it. memory's tainted cloud lightened, an answer. as if permission was granted to experience happy things.

when i [ask]...i get no answer. but a rather special sort of no answer. it is not the locked door, but more like a silent, compassionate gaze. as though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. like, 'peace, child; you don't understand.'

--a grief observed (c.s. lewis)

i told him, i just had the most emotional moment of my life.
he laughed. with me, i think. i didn't need to say anything else.

   

i am. i am. i am.

day 3.

we seem to be bombarded lately with a lot of noise about being present, or just being in general.
if i'm being honest, the talk is all a bit arbitrary to me.
not that it's lost on me completely. it's not. but the only thing i can seem to liken it to personally are those rare moments in life when, for only a brief second, your entire self feels completely and acutely aware. as if the tunnel vision we've allowed ourselves to grow accustomed to suddenly pans out causing everything around us to, for lack of a better word, swell.

ideas and notions seem to resonate on more of a physiological level with me.
tell me where a physical pain is felt from loving your child and i get that. it's tangible.
tell me that those rare moments in which your entire self is present are manifested in the sound of the swell buzzing in your ears or in the feel of your throat closing inward and i'll get that too.

i admire a girl who's not afraid to be ugly

the only thing more depressing than the day after christmas was the end of last month's dopplegänger week on facebook. i think i laughed more in that week than i ever have. (with you. always with you, never at you.)

there were far too many fantastic lookalikes to mention them all, - who knew i had so many friends that resembled heidi klum in a bikini on the beach? weird. - but the votes are in and the dopplegänger crown goes out to aaron h as john candy's character, barf, from spaceballs.

you win. congratulations.

ah, that blessed, blessed week has proven to be revealing of all of us and i find your confidence astounding, friends. - and for that i salute you.

as for us? well...
our parents have clearly failed us.

mr. and mrs. reed

sadly, fb has peaked and now there's nowhere for any of it to go but down. i don't sign on that thing to k.i.t., so what am i supposed to do with my time now? - tend to home and family? school work? (suddenly, and embarrassingly, start posting to my blog every day?) don't be ridiculous.

the silver lining of it all, as with every bout of monotony-induced depression, is the amount of movies i've recently ingested. i love nothing more than a good movie binge and rachel getting married was by far the most surprising of the lot: an a cappella version of unknown legend? my heart be still, i think i'm in love.

tunde, i'm feeling you. don't ever change.


**these photos you see here have been pirated....so what? big deal.

keep calm and carry on

or take another percocet and send the other 2 to grandma's.

the 72 hour hospital stay was grand. the food delicious. my favorite part might have been the night nurse documenting my mini melt down as a full blown panic attack. i guess going from "i'm having chest pains" straight to "OMG! i'm gonna lose all my limbs just like that lady on oprah did!" and crying uncontrollably qualifies as a panic attack in the medical field. -- but what do i know, i'm not a doctor.

i'm still feeling a bit spotty and erratic and am probably threatening to "lose it" at least 10 times a day. -- our new calming wall color has yet to put a dent in any of my internal chaos and my recent behavior has landed me with 2 copies of catching fire and 1 nasty email addressed to amazon that contained an embarrassing amount of exclamation points. -- we're all hoping that the hormones start leveling out sooner rather than later.

the small victories made as a new mother of three have been conquering breast feeding, avoiding the awkwardness of double booking dinner and not giving in to the postpartum temptation of chopping or bleaching out my hair. not all change is good, kayleen. not all change is good. now on to bigger and more challenging battles: the diet starts monday.

(not this monday. next.)

day 24: self-portrait

i cut my hair today. -- after promising myself that i would leave it to the professionals after the last time.
(i'm pretty sure i butchered the back.)
this is my side of the dresser on a good day. a really good day.
borrowed books, loose change, family calendars and a bowl full of unworn jewelery that just needs to be thrown away.
we went out for indian food tonight, i wore mascara and everything. i was feeling fancy.
dining in for indian food is always a semi-awkward experience for me.
i came home with curry-stained fingers.
is there a better way to eat naan?