Holidays and scary things!

Hello Holidays!

There are 7 more school days before Christmas break, but who's counting right? ;)

That means there are 7 more days for me to figure out how to incorporate the holiday spirit of giving into my life more.

For a while now, I've been thinking of a friend to whom I would like to gift a Book of Mormon. Now, I have gifted a Book of Mormon before and it's very frightening for me. You'd think after the time I spent as a missionary, it would get easier.

It doesn't.

It's always hard and always scary and I ALWAYS build it up in my head to be more than it is.

I have conversations in my head that start a lot like this:

What if they think I'm trying to convert them? (Well, I sort of am...so...)

What if they think I'm trying to tell them that I think they're going to hell or something? (Then I haven't been doing a very good job at being their friend have I?)

What if they throw it away/never read it? (Doesn't change the fact that I gave.)

What if they get all weird about it? (Maybe you're the one being weird!)

I never stop to think about the positive conversations that I could have:

What if they read it and have questions to ask me--will I be ready to answer? (Better read that book again yourself, eh?)

What if they want to come to church? (Not super unusual to have marrieds at our singles branch. )

What if they join the church? (Then you'll probably get to help out with the baptism!)

Most of the time these conversations in my head keep me from doing whatever scary thing it is that I have set my mind to.

Except in one case: I auditioned for a solo in our community choir's production of Handel's Messiah. And...drumroll please...will be singing one of the soprano solos "Rejoice Greatly" (here's a recording of one of my favorite sopranos singing this...not what I sound like obviously...)

We rehearsed with the orchestra yesterday. That was scary. A week from Saturday and Sunday I will sing this in front of a paying audience. Scary. But I'm doing it. :)

And I think for Christmas I will give my friend a copy of the Book of Mormon. Then I will disappear for a few days visiting family for the holidays. :)

I'll keep you posted.

Do you do scary things? How does that usually work out for you?

Birthday Crisis

Every year around my birthday I like to think about things in my life.

This year I had a bit of a "mid-life crisis". I had NO IDEA what to do for year 26.

NO IDEA.

I decided to look back to this post 2 years ago for my 24th birthday. There's some good stuff here that I want to do this year.

Like:
-Learn to play the guitar
-Try out for community theater

But lots of the other things I've already done...
-Ran a half-marathon
-Learned to drive stick
-Climbed a mountain
-Watched another meteor shower
-Went to lots of places where I'd never been


At a YSA fireside last week, our lesson was about setting and achieving goals. I am feeling strangely powerful and brave about my life currently. I don't want to be scared of the future, and I want to just go out and DO STUFF!!

So I am going to learn to play the guitar this year. I am going to be in  the Yuma Community Theater production of "My Fair Lady". I am going to run another half-marathon. I'm going to go on a wonderful vacation--maybe even by myself (!). I'm going to do simple things to, like read awesome books, do crossword puzzles, and make crafty things I find on pinterest. :)

And I'm going to continue my goal to love people more. That was my goal for 2012 and I think it should just be a life goal.

So I think I'm ready for my birthday. It's probably going to be great.

No, it IS going to be great!

School's out for summer!

You sang that song in your head, didn't you? Come on, you totally did.

So did I.

School's been out for a couple of days now and, to tell you the truth, as much as I enjoy a good day off every now and again, I'm starting to wish I had stuff to do during the day. It gets kind of lonely around here.

Anyhow, I made it through my first year of teaching! I feel very accomplished. I'm almost ready to start thinking about next year--well, I'm always thinking about it--I guess I mean that I'm almost ready to start doing something about next year. Plenty of time for all of that still. :)

Hope you're enjoying your summer also!

What we deserve

deserve: to be worthy of; merit. To be worthy or deserving. 

To quote a very inspired and well-needed text message: there is one amazing one (man) that you truly deserve.

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful for that text message and for the friend behind the text who is capable of seeing so much of the good in me that I often cannot see in myself. 

Unfortunately, I don't really think that one can "be worthy" of a healthy and fulfilling relationship. I know plenty of people who are selfish, shallow, proud, and honestly, kind of mean, who have managed to find people to love who also love them back. I also know plenty of wonderfully kind, devoted, loving and caring individuals who have been divorced or who are still single. What does that say about "deserving" things? 

Is there still some magical "flaw" that has to be overcome before Prince Charming rides up on his white horse and rescues me from a life of disappointed hopes? Obviously I must not be quite "deserving" enough. 

Deserve has to go both ways, so when bad things happen, didn't I do something bad to "deserve" that too? It's only logical, don't you think? That's why I don't like it. Even when I'm doing all of the right things, disappointment, illness, whatever trial you can think of can still come and bug me. What does that say about "deserving"?

Hiding behind the definition was the etymology of the word deserve. Apparently it comes from the Latin word deservire, which means "to serve zealously". 

I understand this. I understand serving something. If I want to be happy, I choose things in my life that make me happy and I do those things. If I want to be miserable, I eat cookie dough for breakfast (does that really happen???) and stay inside all day writing blog posts that never get published. But I don't think that this really means that we deserve to be or have anything. 

I know what you're thinking...it's all in God's timing...sometimes we don't understand the plan...everything will work out in the end, so if it's not working out, it's not the end...we reap what we sow...

I'm talking about straight deserving. In 10 years from now, if I am (we can only pray) in a stable family situation, did I do anything to deserve that? If I'm not, did I somehow deserve that also?

Honestly, I don't think so. I believe that that miracle will come because of the Lord's mercy, "after all I can do". After I serve zealously, maybe God will see fit to bless me with what I want.  

Surprise Cookies

My new favorite thing to do: bake cookies with something hidden (or melted) into the middle. On Saturday night I made Rolo cookies. They are like the simplest cookies to make--seriously--but they taste super amazing. So amazing that they disappear almost instantaneously. I took them to our YSA fireside and they were gone before I even got one (good thing I snuck a couple at home...). Today I brought the FHE treat. Not wanting everyone to get too much of a good thing--although I doubt there is such a thing as too many Rolo cookies--I made peppermint patty cookies. Hardly different, but just different enough to seem different to me. My next challenge is to put something non-chocolate into the middle of my cookies. But no jam. Too messy.

Want to know the "recipe" for Rolo/peppermint patty cookies? I have it memorized.

1 chocolate cake mix. I like devil's food.
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil

1 package of Rolos or peppermint patties.

Pre-heat oven to 350. Mix up the dough--it will be very thick. For rolo cookies, take a rolo and put just enough dough on it to hide it completely--remember it's a surprise! They will look like little balls on the pan. For peppermint cookies, take a nickel-sized ball of dough and smash it until it's pretty flat in your hand. Press the peppermint patty into the dough, then get more dough to press onto the bottom so that the patty is hidden.

Bake for about 7 minutes. Both of these cookies are better cooled, so resist the urge to eat them warm. (It will be hard, but worth the self-control.)

 I get about 36 rolo cookies, but today only got 29 peppermint cookies. I would plan on 28 because a couple of my cookies leaked and ruined the surprise and I should have used the extra dough to seal them up better.

I am not a food blogger, so I don't have pictures of these cookies--look them up on pinterest or something.

Maybe I like surprise cookies so much right now because I feel surprised by a lot of things--like how many Gospel insights I gain because of something that happened at school. All of my "lives" are overlapping and intertwining and it is sometimes hard.

That said, this is probably one of the busiest weeks I will be experiencing. After Saturday though my certification classes should be finished (hallelujah!), but if you don't hear from me before then (besides right now), don't feel sad. Odds are no one else did either.

Don't forget to think of what I can put in my cookies. I'm looking for something non-chocolate. I'll settle for something white chocolate that I can put inside a yellow cake cookie--or better yet--a funfetti cookie! :)

My EquivaLENT

Sometimes I feel like I have the Catholic guilt gene even though I don't think Catholicism runs in my family (I may be wrong here). I guess I have to call mine the Mormon guilt gene even though we don't have a long family history of Mormonism either. Somewhere along the way we picked it up. :) But since I've got a little bit of Catholicism running through my veins, and after all, catholic just means universal--look it up I'm not lying--I feel completely justified in doing Lent as a non-Catholic.

Hence, my EquivaLENT. That's what I'm calling it. It's taken me...counting on fingers...4 days from the time that normal Catholics start Lent to figure out what I'm giving up. It only took staying up too late and chatting on a couch for it to come to me.

I am giving up negativity. Starting now, I am not going to say...I hope I don't regret this...anything negative. And by that I mean things that are unnecessarily critical. Some things are okay: I'm a teacher. I have to correct students when they're wrong. That's not being negative or critical, it's just being a teacher. I'm also in the market for a new-to-me car. But if I don't like something and voice my opinion, that is not being negative. Those are just two examples to help you understand.

But sitting around complaining about life? That's being unnecessarily critical and I'm not allowed to do that. Also, no talking bad about people behind their back. To their face is still okay... :)  (Maybe next year I'll give up sarcasm...but not this year.)

I need your help because I fear that I may have a couple of days of silence before I remember how to be really positive. But I remember that I used to be that kind of person. That's how I got the nickname Sunshine Sarah.

So, on Easter Sunday, which is when EquivaLENT is finished (and real Lent too), I'm hoping that I will be the genuinely happy, positive, upbeat and adorably optimistic person I feel like I used to be. I can't wait to see her again.

p.s. I really hope you enjoy the EquivaLENT play on words as much as I do...just throwing that out. :)

Leap Year

Did you know that 2012 is a leap year?

Somehow now that I've seen the movie Leap Year, I can't think of a February 29th without thinking about the movie. It's a silly movie about a girl wanting to propose to her longtime boyfriend because that's apparently allowed on Leap Year Day. But, like a good romantic comedy, there's always another guy...I'm not going to tell you what she does in the end, because I like it and I want to watch it with you someday. Like on February 29th.

I'm not saying that I'm going to do something crazy like propose to my boyfriend. Remember how I don't have a boyfriend? So I can't propose because there is no one to propose to. But I want to do something CRAZY on Leap Year Day.

Just because I can.


Any suggestions on CRAZY things I should do?

After

Well. I survived.

I ran my first half-marathon yesterday. I say first because I would totally do another one. Like for sure. I'm going to do another half-marathon. Now, I've never had a baby before and I am NOT comparing half-marathons and giving birth directly, nor am I going to say that one is harder or easier than the other. But go with me.  I think they are related only because there is so much misery during the "before" processes (training/pregnancy) and an awful lot of pain--physical and mental--during the "actual" (half-marathon/giving birth) and yet somewhere in the "after" (sore body/baby that never sleeps, etc...) you think back and say, yep, I'll do that again sometime. Not tomorrow, but again.

There's a satisfaction in finishing something that seems physically impossible when you first think about it. You know that other people have done it and survived--some even like it--but somehow it seems too impossible for you to complete. And then you do.

So here's to my first in hopefully a long string of half-marathons.

Maybe tucked in there we'll find a full marathon...

Before

Hey. It's me...


I'm just running a half marathon tomorrow. TOMORROW.

I picked up my packet today and it totally feels real now. I have my number paper and everything.

 I am excited and nervous and excited. Part of me (a small part) thinks I'm going to fail miserably. The rest of me thinks that, even though I'm going to be kind of tired (what else is new?) I'm going to do just fine and I'm going to be so stinkin' happy for finishing.

 I can't believe this is happening. I just thought I'd write something quick before I jump into bed. I am trying to capture the way I feel before the half-marathon. I won't think about how far it is.

Sometimes I actually have fun while I'm running. I hope tomorrow is one of those days--when I don't just think about when I can take a break or when I'll be over. Just 2 and a half hours of fun running. 2 and a half hours. If I'm lucky. It might take me more like 3 hours. That would be really slow though--like if I walked most of it. Which I won't have to do unless there are lots of hills. I think there's only one. But it's kind of a big hill and it will be towards the end.

 I guess we'll just see what happens.

Tomorrow.

Love

No I am not "in love".

 However, love is my New Year's resolution for 2012. I want to love more. Anticipated benefits of living a life filled with love: 

-less time to complain! (hooray!)
-more friends!
-happier days at work!
-healthier body!
-improved spirituality!
-less of everything "bad"!

 Yes. All of those points needed exclamation points. It's all so exciting.

 This year, I resolve to love the Lord, the people around me, my job, my life, and myself.

 So let's fall in love this year. <3