In Memorium. Sort of.

Last summer, I became a full-blown Fossil fan. I'm still too painfully frugal to buy anything at full price, but being a mere hour away from a Fossil Outlet, and having a Dillards five minutes away that has ridiculously fantastic sales makes Fossil much more accessible. While I love all of my purchases oh-so-very-much, I particularly loved a certain red striped scarf. Do you all remember it?

Scarfy at Sundance with friends.

Scarfy likes pizza.

Me, Scarfy, and our sidewalk manfriend.
This picture would be nothing without Scarfy, let's be honest.

How could you forget it? It's made more appearances in pictures of me than any other accessory I have, and has starred in two consecutive profile pictures. Really, it doesn't get much better than that scarf. It's red, striped, stretchy, and it's Fossil. Swoonarama.

Some of you might also remember the tragic day in ... probably February when Scarfy, that dear, sweet, stretchy, beloved scarf, was abducted, never to be seen again. It all happened on a very rough day, a day on which Heather and I went to the gym. It was cold outside, so I had worn my scarf up to class that day. Having become exhausted earlier than my fellow healthy people, I had gotten changed first, and took a seat outside the gym doors. While I waited, I was still very warm and indoors, so I put my coat and scarf in my backpack. At some point in the process of getting out a book to read and returning that book to my backpack, I removed Scarfy, and because of the angle of my vision relative to the ground and my seat ... I was not able to see my beloved scarf when I grabbed my things and walked away, leaving that precious scarf behind.

One rotten, nightmare of an evening later, (it was a Wednesday, and I had a late class, and, as I recall, the whole day had been a nightmare. Even my family here in MO remembers it because I called my mom about how miserable and terrible it was, topped off by the loss of my scarf), I went looking for Scarfy down at the Smith Fieldhouse. I asked if anyone had turned it in to the desk outside the gym--no one had.

Now tell me: if you had found a scarf like Scarfy, would you return it to the desk instead of taking it with you? Like heck you would! You'd have taken it too because it's JUST THAT AWESOME. This is unfortunate for me because I never saw Scarfy again. I'm sure someone, somewhere is keeping that scarf hidden until next winter so that they can pretend that they bought it and not have to worry about me catching them in their thievery on campus (because believe me, I looked at every single reddish scarf I saw for like a month, hoping to catch the thief red-necked). I'm pretty sure I cried on my way home that day, and it took me a long time to get over it. Scarfy, you will be missed ...

... or rather, not so much.

What is this blasphemy?! you ask. Well, let me tell you (and really, I should have told you a couple of weeks ago when it happened ... I've just been a loser and not told anyone for inexplicable and unaccountable reasons):

Over Memorial Day weekend, I returned to the Fossil outlet, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of a Scarfy-scarf. Unfortunately, those dreams were not to be realized...

... until Memorial Day itself (2 days after my fruitless search at the outlet) when my mom, having just returned from Vegas, pulled out the exact same scarf (which she had purchased at a Fossil outlet in Vegas) and gave it to me :)

Needless to say, I am BEYOND HAPPY. I love my scarf.

"What A Frickin' Life I Have"

--Michael Buble

I got called out a couple of days ago for not blogging recently. It's a show of just how busy I've been that it's taken me this long to get around to fixing that problem. Yes, it's been almost a month since I last blogged, and frankly ... there's not too much to be said that I haven't texted or Skyped or Facebooked to you all, and the majority of that isn't something that I think belongs on the internet anyways (wink, wink) so am I off the hook? Or at least forgiven? :)

Let me tell you what my weeks look like these days.

• Sunday: Leave for church at 9:10, church 10-1, hang out until 1:30-2ish, home by 3, ... w/e.
• Monday: Wake up at 7, get to work between 8 and 8:30, lunch 12-1 either by the statue of Lewis, Clark, & Co. or in the park by the governor's mansion, leave work by 5:15, bed by 11:30 (attempted, usually)
• Tuesday: Same as Monday, but leave for institute at 6:10, institute 7-8:30, hang out sometimes until 9:30, home by about 10:15.
• Wednesday: Same as Monday.
• Thursday: Same as Monday.
• Friday: Same as Monday.
• Saturday: Sleep in as late as possible, do stuff, bed by midnight.

Now, I suppose it's fair to point out that (1) I'm only in my third week that looks like this, and (2) there's usually some kind of date/hanging out activity that happens on Friday or Saturday, so it's not quite so dry and stale as it may seem.

But it's still pretty dry and stale. I'm making $13 an hour instead of $25 an hour like I was originally told, but I guess the fact that I'm only a junior in college with no kind of similar experience makes me less valuable to the team anyhow. I pre-populate, edit, and track documents, among other things, which today included being the scribe for a 3-hour long meeting. Now, I don't want you to think I'm complaining, because I'm really not. Let me explain.

This summer is teaching me a lot about the phrase "I will ... open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

I'm not going to be explicit in the nature of said blessings, because, like I said earlier, not everything in my life right now is something I want to post on the internet. But here's what's up: I'm being blessing beyond my capacity to receive. Or, rather, I'm being blessed with things that are far above my maturity, skill, and personal merit, and my capacity is so small at times that there is simply not room for me to juggle one blessing, let alone two or three or twelve. They become difficult to handle; they are (for lack of better words) cumbersome and unwieldy in my small and graceless hands. I simply don't know what to do, and I feel lost and like a failure, and it's a challenge. I should be dropping these things left and right; I should be curled up in my bed, amazed that I was able to even touch these kinds of blessings.

But somehow, I'm hanging on to them. Or maybe they're hanging on to me ... I really don't know. Maybe there's some kind of divine glue or tape or thread that is keeping me attached to these things, even when everything about me and them is like magnets being pushed together with the same poles facing each other. The forces of nature should be pushing these things away from me, but they aren't.

It gets a little more interesting too ... I think that, rather than me clinging for dear life and watching my fingers slip and feeling a strain, I'm feeling better equipped to handle these blessings. It's almost like I'm being blessed by my blessings at the same time that I'm being tried by my blessings ... because trials are blessings ... and it's like this outrageous cycle of blessing and trying and trying and blessing and on and on, over and over again.

The craziest part to me is that I wasn't going to come to Missouri this summer. I was going to go to France, and after I decided I wasn't going to France, I was going to stay in Provo ... because really, what could there ever be for me to do in Missouri? Work at Old Navy and have no friends? I also was about 95% sure that my scholarship was in the tank because of my French 321 class, and I figured I could make better money by working a couple of jobs here in Missouri (one of them being Old Navy) and I'd be able to make up at least a little bit for losing it. Furthermore, I had only been casually considering coming home for a couple of weeks when one afternoon I found myself sitting on the couch doing homework and then suddenly I had the most bizarre, all-consuming bout of homesickness. We're talking instantaneous crying jag, and after that I knew I couldn't stay in Provo for the spring. I couldn't do it, not for anything. I felt like I was running into my parents' bedroom in the middle of the night like I did when I was little and I had a bad dream.

So tell me how, after all of that, I ended up not only keeping my scholarship, but getting a job that pays almost twice what I was making at Old Navy, with more hours than I ever could have gotten at Old Navy, which happens to be in my line of work/study, and is a way more legit job that is really intended for college graduates which will carry much more significant weight on a resume than just about anything I could ever even have dreamed of?

Oh, and let's just throw in the fact that I've been spending a lot of time with one of the most awesome, impressive, fantastic people ever. (I won't say any more on that subject.) And just chuck into the whole mix the thousand other things that just seem so far beyond the scope of what anyone should even be allowed to hope for in their life.

I mean, I don't even know what to think, let alone what to say. There is simply not room enough to receive the things I have been given, and not enough room in heart to contain the gratitude that I feel. <3