A Little Beauty

To what have I been spending my days? My job of course!

I work as a landscape specialist for BYU grounds crew. Yay.

What do I do?

well... my crew takes care of this stream... which is artificial and almost a half mile lone. There is a walking trail beside it all made out of expocrete paving stones. Don't be fooled by the innocent appearance of this waterfall (one of many, I might add)-- the hill appears to be nothing more than a grassy knoll with a quiet stream set in to please the eyes of all passers-by.

It isn't. That hill has earned the nickname "Hell Hill"... among others, because it is impossibly steep, stony and features little to no green growth. Rotting stumps and knarled roots are becoming exposed by erosion-- and the topsoil always goes to one place... the bottom of the lovely stream.

So, Julie's supervisor discovers she has some experience with landscape and products. He then comes to her and says, This is your new project. Make that hillside beautiful-- and stop the dirt from falling into the stream.

Several cubic yards of rocks, a few natural stone retainment walls and bucket after bucket after bucket of organic mulch later-- this very ugly area is finally starting to look like how should have looked all along: beautiful.

I think I'll pat myself on the back.

Friends

I love my friends. This sounds like a silly high school type cliche statement, but I really really do love my friends.

I think I read more into the title, "Friend" than most. A friend, to some, is someone who you meet, who you like, and who you recognize as you walk down the street, and you have the liberty to stop and say hello. Friends, to others, are those people who you know you can always call to go hang out, to grab chinese, to go sledding-- and they usually always come. A friend, to others still, is a person who will bear with you, help you, love you and sacrifice for you.

Recently, a lot of hard things have happened. I turned to my closest friend, my Savior, Jesus Christ, for help. And this is why I love my friends.

He is perfect. He loves me. He never gives up on me. He believe in me. He sees me as I am, and accepts me anyway. He weeps with me. He comforts me. He gave his life for me. He never leaves me alone.

The beautiful thing about having Christ as a friend is that you start to want to be that kind of friend to others. I have a deep, inexpressible love for my beautiful friends. I know that I am not the easiest person to be a friend to, mostly because I require a lot of strength from my friends, especially in times when I am weak and could not possible go it alone. And so when I see them pull through for me, time after time, and every time I see them reach out to make my life better, I feel an overwhelming gratitude that I cannot possibly express in words. These are the people I can trust. These are the people, I know, who like my Savior, won't give up on me.

Love is such a powerful and healing emotion. I think it is what people seek above anything else. I think I learned what charity (love) is from, first, my Redeemer, and second, from my friends. And so the time is long overdue for me to express my love for them. I wouldn't be the person I am now without all of those bearing me up.

The Lord once said to Joseph Smith in liberty jail:

"My son, peace be unto thy soul... Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands."

I apologize for the sappiness of this post, but I want to share my conviction that I know that good and noble friends are blessings from my Father in Heaven in my life. He knows how much I need them, and how much I need the opportunity to be a good friend to others.

God is great.

Picking Plums

SO I work for grounds crew. My job is to design some sort of retainment mechanism for a really steep hill of dirt. When it rains, the hill erodes into a large water feature that cost the university millions to build. My supervisor found out that I worked for a landscaping company and all of a sudden believes I am wonder woman when it comes to design and asked me to head this project.

I started working on it on Monday.

You'd think I'd get a lot of satisfaction doing that instead of weeding or mowing lawns. I do. But, the absolute best part...

They planted these terrible trees that have super messy fruit that drops all over the paving stones. I spent the majority of my life hating these horrible trees. Until I found out that the fruit was edible! PLUMS.

So, as I did almost nothing today, I decided to hike up the hill and climb the tree and pick them and eat them. People gave me super weird looks as they passed on the walkway underneath me. But... when you're poor... you get food where you can.

Next week, I might dig for edible roots and scour the mountainside for wild strawberries.

Can You Spell Tired

Well I have never been a mom, but I find that I am absolutely EXHAUSTED today. I think it will help if I write down my accomplishments of the day.

1. Woke up at six and ran to the trailhead of Y mountain (it uphill the whole way).

2. Showered, made oatmeal for breakfast.

3. Did grammar exercises for class.

4. Went to class at nine.

5. Went to work, where I carried rocks up hill for a few hours.

6. Went to class, where we learned more grammar.

7. Went to work and carried more rocks and dug detainment walls into the side of an impossibly steep hill, for another few hours.

8. Walked home and started reading Karl Marx for one of my classes.

9. Made spaghetti.

10. Started blogging.

It really wasn't that bad of a day. I feel very accomplished, but also worried for all the things that I didn't finish, and yet, seem to lack the mental brain power or physical energy to carry on. To think I was planning on hitting the gym tonight. Ha ha ha. :)

A Groundbreaking Event

So... my family has never been much for sports or anything. I mean watching them. My sister played volleyball, my other sister played rugby and my brother wrestled. My dad coached soccer.

BUT...

For some reason there was no watching of the super bowl and very little following of hockey night in Canada-- unless some team that we sort of new made it to the play-offs.

How is it, some of my American friends may ask, that I made it to my senior year of college without once ever watching a football game, live or on TV? Well, that is the way it was.

Today that changed. I watched BYU play Texas... on the TV, with corn chips and salsa on the table. I yelled when our team dropped the ball (which seemed to happen far too often, despite my limited game knowledge), I cheered when we scored-- and suddenly, I felt as though I had bonded over a beautiful, purely American ritual. I felt close to the smelly, jeering guys.

I moved forward today.

The Happiest Place on Earth

The temple? Disneyland? Canada?

All happy places. But the happiest of all?

D.I.

For those of you who don't know... DI stands for deseret industries... and it basically the largest and least expensive second hand store you will find anywhere. Cool?

It is pretty much a dream come true for every penniless newly married couple, every person who has ever dreamed of having a great halloween costume, every poor student who can't afford a new pair of jeans, a new tv, or a new... anything. Hat. Mittens. Scarves. Shoes. Grandfather clocks. Shelves.

Thats pretty much the only constructive thing I did today.

Don't You Just LOVE it?

Language.

Today I was thinking about language a lot. Well, the past little while I have been thinking about language a lot. I decided that we think about language backwards. If I say a word like "trite", somebody will ask me, "What does trite mean?"

That's not the question you should ask. A word means nothing. A word only represents something that is a meaning. There is a difference.

I realized this while in Germany, but it solidified upon my return to good ol' U S of A. Because today I was sitting in the library, and a glorious sound fell upon my ears. A young man, sitting almost directly behind me, received a phone call. And before I could register my complete annoyance that he answered it, he answered it like this:

Hallo! ... Ja, ich bin gut. Studierst du hier jetzt? ... ah, du bist shon fertig... Nein, nein. Ich bin nicht verheiratet....

And instead of annoyance, my heart was filled with joy! Not because he was not married, but because it had been a whole week since such beauty had filled my ears.

Words represent meanings. For in German, or in English, it was what this person meant that was being conveyed-- I simply am now able to have two ways to discover the SAME meaning. Glorious.

I'm still smiling.