The Christmas Baker

Christmastime is here again... I've just decided I'm going to try and incorporate as many one-liners from Christmas songs into this post as possible. Since I preeminently have decided to write about all the things I plan to bake for different events this season, that could be rather difficult. Due to my astounding ability to get decidedly off-topic, perhaps it won't actually be that hard.

Cataracts - For the Win!!

I've begun measuring things in days:
8 days = moving to a retirement community (this is real)
60 days = Christmas
23 days = Utah v. Arizona at RES with Max and Andrew
28 days = Thanksgiving
388 days = "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"
 224 = days since my transplant, days since my last surgery, days since I started taking prednisone, and days since I've had a dialysis treatment
2 = days since Dr. Winward told me I'm not legally blind, I just have cataracts in both my eyes

Accepting Thirty: My Waring Twenties

Over the summer the realization that I was turning 30 on October 15th hit me. And then I freaked out.

The main issue I was having was that I felt I had accomplished very little in the first 29 years of my existence. Oh sure, I survived, but to me that isn't so much an accomplishment as a necessity. I did graduate from college, and have some wedding flowers I did featured in a magazine, and be honored on the field at the Utah Homecoming Game in 2009, but other than that I felt my life was rather accomplishment-less.

Tom

One thing I love about September is it's sunflower season. Here in Salt Lake they grow along sidewalks and off-ramps, taller than I am - plus much more cheerful - and waving at passersby to brighten their days. My brother Tom loved sunflowers; he planted them up and down our lane and late summer always looked like him. Those sunflowers started to fade with waning years, a little like my memories, and soon the last one was stamped out by our new neighbor, a tiny in stature, medium in width man with rapidly diminishing follicles and a truck much too large for his height, because he "didn't want it to scratch the side of his RV". This hurt me deeply, and many a time I have resisted sprinkling the entire length of the lane with sunflower seeds in the night like a thief.

Touche, Thursday

Here's a real short post because I need to complain, but I'm morally opposed to and vehemently against complaining about life on the face-books, and since this is my blog I'm imposing my power of free speech and ownership of space to do so. That was quite the spectacular sentence, and a little run-onish. Whatever.

American Horror Story

"Don't wish, don't start. Wishing only wounds the heart..." These words have been in constant thought for a few days, though I'm unsure why. I don't find myself wishing for much... and then I realize what today is, and it starts to make a little more sense. Stephen Schwartz wasn't talking about a spectacularly horrifying event in American history when he wrote those words, but they fit in so easily to so many scenarios.

11:59 on New Years Eve

 It's like:

The anticipation of wearing your new shoes on the first day of school. The night before summer vacation. The exhiliration of booking a plane ticket home after you've been gone too long. Walking to the door after the best date. The morning of the first gameday of the season.  The morning of any gameday. Christmas Eve as a kid who still believes in Santa Claus.

Sleep Through The Static

I try my best to keep this blog free of things I don't know about: politics, soccer, Pintrest, shows about teen moms. I like to write about things I know in life, because I don't want to false report or hearsay anything. But today is different. Five years ago, a friend of mine was shot at Trolley Square by an 18 year-old who illegally bought illegal guns. This kid shot my friend four times at pointblank range. Miraculously, my friend survived, albeit the life lived before February 12th, 2007 is now all but a memory.

Transplant Update: 4 Months Later

Thanks for my friends Heather and Jo, I finally have a pair of kidneys again

July 15th, 2012. Four months since the day I received my new kidney. It almost seems like years, not months, since it happened. Which is funny, because when it had been one year since i'd been on dialysis, it seemed unbelievable, like it had only barely started, though each individual dialysis treatment seemed like it took a lifetime to finish. I don't think I have anything new or profound or great to say here. But each month that slips by with health and happiness and hope is one to celebrate for me because for such a long time it didn't seem to have any of those things beholding my life.

Transplant Update: Dash for Donation 2012

Alright gang. Here's the deal. In a mere 36 days, on August 11th, the Dash for D onation 5k takes place. I, alongside my sister, who donated her kidney so I could get one, and brother-in-law will be participating in this 5k to raise money for organ donation. Yes, I'll be participating as a runner, not a spectator. I know. I'm kind of freaking out too.

Sleeping to Dream

It's funny the things that motivate and halt you. Accolades and rage, heartbreak and love. It's even funnier when the same thing can both motivate and halt. And by funny here I don't mean something comical. It's more reflective of thought provocation and introspection than anything else. Laziness is my motivator and halter. It motivates me to be more productive, go after the things I really want for my life, the futures I know I can have. Then the magnet flips, the schizophrenia (multiple personalities?) blossoms and laziness becomes the halter. Really, it's a mask for all the flaws I house that I don't want to admit exist to myself or other people.

The Last 4 Days (Always a Bridesmaid)

The stunning bride Mehgan & her beautiful bouquet

It was another wedding weekend for this perennial bridesmaid.  (<-- I supposed that means I'm a good friend to a lot of people. :] )

I. 

Am. 

Exhausted. 

The last four days were wonderful and irreplaceable and tiring and perfect. It was the wedding of my long time friend Mehgan and her now-husband Taylor. Mehgan and I have been friends since she started dating my brother in 2007. Their relationship did not last, but ours did. Mehgan is one of the kindest, most genuine, gorgeous on the inside and out people I know. She's always been really good to me and I can only hope to one day repay the favor.