Hope Still Flies

• At the beginning of the year, I lost my grandma. I miss her still today, very, very much.

• I survived two more semesters of college. Somehow.
• Celebrated 1 year of marriage, and 4 years of being together with that one guy. I think his name's Michael.
• :)
• Didn't exercise nearly as much as I should have. Again.
• Watched my nieces and nephews get even bigger still.
• Spent great time with my family and friends.
• Read lots. Yay!
• Collected even more penguin stuff. So. Many. Penguins. In my apartment.
• Survived being a Hastings barista for another year.
• Loved.
• Hoped.
• Believed.

"Oh, when it hits me, all I can do is just breathe again, and breathe through. Can I hope for something more? Can I hope for something real?"
- "Breathe Through" by Annie Stela

It really does feel like just yesterday that I last updated my blog. I'm fairly certain school causes me to enter some crazy time-continual... thing. I'm sure I'll be able to explain it after I'm done with physical chemistry 2.

Oh, how I wish I were kidding.

Anyway...

Lately, with this whole Haiti thing, I've been hearing and thinking a lot about hope. In high school, one of my English teachers asked us to define the word "hope". I remember sitting there, feeling slightly dumbfounded that I couldn't give a definition for a word that I believed so much in. But how do you explain hope? I just don't think it is that easy.

I mean... there's the feeling of hope you get when you see parents with a newborn...


There's hope for a warmer season when you see color among the dead things...


And yet... we all use the word hope on a daily basis, for things not as important...
I hope it doesn't storm tonight.
I hope we still have eggs in the fridge.
I hope my metabolism never slows down.
I hope I don't regret okay-ing my dear husband to buy an xbox (...wait...what?)

We hope for things for our current family...
I hope my mom gets the job she's been hoping for.
I hope my dad can get a book published.
I hope that everything works out job-wise for my sister and her family.
I hope my brother and his wife don't move too far away.
I hope my little sister succeeds in all she wants to do.
I hope my husband always loves and enjoys music as much as he does now.

...for our future family....
I hope I can do half as good of a job raising my (future) kids as my parents did raising me.
I hope I will be able to give my kids a beautiful and stable life.
I hope that God times everything out perfectly.

...for ourselves...
I hope that I can make someone smile today.
I hope I don't disappoint or fail people I care about.
I hope that I'll be a better person today than I was yesterday.
I hope I can survive classes this semester.
I hope I don't go crazy and destroy the xbox
(only kidding... of course.)
...I hope no one tells my husband that I've played the xbox more than him so far.

ahem.

We have hopes for the world...
I hope the people in Haiti are feeling a sense of peace and can get back on their feet soon.
I hope all of the soldiers, and families of soldiers, are staying sane.
I hope everyone who doesn't think they are loved, know that they really are.
I hope that one day people will just love. They will stop treating people differently because of gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, DVD collection. Love is so much easier than hate, and I hope people will someday realize that.

Of course, we all hope for things that probably will never happen...
I hope that I'll win the lottery.
I hope none of the people I love ever have to feel pain.
I hope my children will never have to experience sadness.
I hope that some day I have enough money to buy out half of the Etsy shops. (a girl can dream, right?)

It's amazing how much there really is to hope for in the world. We all hold on to these hopes, and I really do think it is good for our soul. "They" always say it's never good to give up hope. I definitely believe that's true. The people I've met who have given up on hope seem to have all been in really low places in their lives. Sure, it's not all because of giving up hope, but there is definitely a correlation.

Moral of the story... hope is everywhere. We can hope for just about anything. Whether they come true or not, doesn't really matter, as long as you hope and dream. It's good for the mind.

Ah. It feels good to ramble, even if none of the above makes sense. I'm not a writer, definitely a long way from being one, but it's good to just talk/write sometimes. Everything else in life is good. Michael and I are going ice skating tomorrow (he's never been!) and have been married for almost 8 months already, which is insane. I'm not ready for another week of school, but I'll just have to suck it up and deal with it like the 20,000 other people on campus. Classes are interesting this semester, and I have a lot of downtime between most of them, which will hopefully be incentive for me to study...

...

But anybody who knows me know that probably won't happen. (But mom and dad, I promise to try really, really hard.) We do have a new addition to the household... the aforementioned xbox 360. We have Assassin's Creed 2 and Godfather 2. I'm pretty horrible at the types of games for xbox, which is why I love our wii... But yeah. I've been playing. Usually when Michael's not home, and you hear things like, "Here horsey... you stay here with the other horseys... I'm gonna go kill some evil people."

I would do homework, but I haven't had any... Which will change very, very quickly starting tomorrow. So I will try to update again sooner rather than later... There really is just nothing too interesting happening.

Hmm... I don't like my header for my new layout... but I've gotta get to go watch The Ugly Truth, so it'll have to do for now.

"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have."
~Frederick Keonig

How true that statement is. I have many favorite quotes, and was trying to pick one to start off this post, and this one just jumped out at me.

Happiness.

I've been trying to figure out how to begin this little shpeal.. I think I'll start off with some personal experience from work.... For those who don't know, I work in a cafe that's part of a bigger book/movie/music store. I have my fair share of run-ins with all sorts of different people. Happy, sad, angry, nonchalant... pretty much every kind of emotion. I've found it true that happiness is contagious... but so is anger. When I get a happy, thankful customer, it puts me in a happier mood. Angry or bitter customers just put me in a bad mood.

But then, in that bad mood, I've wondered, "Who is this person to come in here and make me unhappy? I shouldn't be catching their bad mood, I should be extending my happiness out to them." And so I have been making more of a conscious effort to be extra helpful and happy to those who look like they need it. Sure, sometimes it just backfires and people just withdraw more and push back. It's then that I decide that there's only so much I can do, and I hope that they can find happiness somewhere. I smile and thank them for coming in and that I hope they have a good day, because it's true.

My grandma was always happy. It was one of the things I admire about her. She was an amazingly loving, giving, happy person. I'm hoping that one day, I can love and give as much as she did. When we would visit she would always be laughing and smiling and it really seems like nothing ever got her down. If she burned something while baking, she would say, "Oh shoot," and then just carry on. I know so many people who would be so mad that they had ruined something that they would just be upset for hours. I used to do that too.

But now I realize that life is way too short to be angry or upset. For every second that we're unhappy, a happy second is lost, and can never be gotten back. At the end of my life, I want to know that I was as happy as much as I could, and made the best out of bad situations. I want my happiness to spread to other people, so they can spread it on. There are enough bad things in this world, and not nearly enough good ones.

So, the next time you spill something, instead of getting upset, laugh to yourself and say, "Well, I should be more careful next time!"

I spill things. Often.

But I find that smiling or laughing about it and cleaning it up and getting on with my day feels so much better than getting upset or mad at myself and being in a bad mood.

Next time you're walking on campus or down the street, make eye contact with people and smile at them. Because you really never know how much of a difference that can make.

And if they think you're crazy... their loss. =)

Next time someone's being negative and you find your own mood deteriorating, change the subject. Or just remember that there's no reason that a bad mood should win out.

I understand that there will be times to be upset or sad or mad. I just don't think that these moments should outnumber the happy.

There is also way too much hate in this world. People not accepting other people for whatever reason. I don't want to step too far into religious boundaries here (that's a completely different post). I consider myself a Christian. I believe in God and Jesus. But I don't think it's fair to shove beliefs on other people, or to tell them what they believe is wrong. (I don't consider going to different countries and teaching people about Jesus shoving beliefs, just for the record.) All that is doing is creating hate. I am all for love. Telling someone "I'm right and you're wrong" is usually just going to make that person push back harder, which is not going to help the situation. Just because someone is different or believes something different than me doesn't mean that I tell them that they're wrong and I'm right and that would could never be friends.

Love, people... Love.

I apologize for the disorganization and everything of this post. Of course, nothing came out quite like I wanted it to. I've never been the best with writing. (No matter what my mother tells you.) I just... wish there could be more happiness. There's never enough off it.

I'm going to end this post with a song that's been popular on the Christian stations recently. It's called "Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus)" by Chris Rice. The first time I heard it, I was a mess. Even now, if I sit by myself, really think about it, and sing along, I'm a mess. I hope you like it.


Much, much love.


P.S. Tomorrow I might be trying to redo my blog layout again. So I apologize if it's a mess.

"Make a wish and place it in your heart. Anything you want, everything you want. Do you have it? Good. Now believe it can come true. You never know where the next miracle is gonna come from, the next smile, the next wish come true. But if you believe that it's right around the corner, and you open your heart and mind to the possibility of it, to the certainty of it. You just might get the thing you're wishing for. The world is full of magic. You just have to believe in it. So make your wish. Do you have it? Good. Now believe in it. With all your heart."
-One Tree Hill... season 5 episode 13 - "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace"

So that's where the quote in my header came from.. for those who didn't know. =)

If Michael wouldn't kill me, I'd write my vows completely from quotes from One Tree Hill and Grey's Anatomy.

But something tells me that wouldn't go over very well. Oh well.

So I'm back to working at the SBC in Borders here in town. I love it. It's really not much different than working in Manhattan, but for some reason, I like it more here. Meh. Anyway... I went in to check my schedule the other day, and I was talking to one of my managers when she asked me a question that I do get (mostly from people I'm not as close to) sometimes...

Why are you deciding to get married so young and soon (after the engagement... 6 months)?

And for a long time, I didn't know how to answer it. I would give some lame excuse about how we were going to move to CO, but then that fell through and we just decided to get married anyway. But really?

I know we're young. Believe me, I get that. But anyone who knows me &/or Michael relatively well knows that we're fairly mature people, who are completely crazy for each other. Since we've gotten close, he has become my best friend. He's always the first person I tell things to, and he makes me laugh more than I thought could be possible... But that's all kind of besides the point. The point is, I am so in love with him, and I know that I am going to be spending the rest of my life with him... So why wait to start that leg of the journey (marriage) any longer? Life is way too short as it is. We all know that things happen to even the best people. Tragedies happen. And I know that if someday, something were to happen to him and we waited to get married... my one regret would be not marrying him sooner. I don't want that to happen. I'm ready to completely share my highs and lows, good days and bad days, joy and sorrows, with this man. Who also loves me more than I ever deserved. And I am not ashamed to be getting married a month shy of 20. I know that I will be loving Michael every day for the rest of my life.

So there. In case any of you were wondering why I am stressing myself to gray hairs why we're getting married now... There you have it. Agree or disagree if you will... but I'm pretty dang excited that this thing is going down in three and a half weeks. (!!!) Of course, I won't be seeing Michael for another 2 weeks, and then after 2 days, he'll be gone for another 6 days... but then.. we be gettin' hitched. =)

On a completely unrelated subject... I've already decided to add another show to my obsession love list...


This, my friends, is Glee. There was a sneak peek on Fox last night, and it's currently free to download the Pilot on iTunes. That girl in the animation was the lead Wendla for the OBC Spring Awakening. She's pretty much amazing. It's a comedy about the Glee Club at a high school. I'd highly recommend it.

And So You Think You Can Dance starts tomorrow!! Let the obsessing OBSESSING (over the amazing dances the people do) begin!

Friday I'm having a date night with my 7-year-old nephew. It's pretty much going to be a blast, and I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures.

But for now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my date with Godiva dark chocolate covered almonds, Coke, and Bride Wars...
much love,
alex