Hard Things Are Cake

When I was a wee lil senior in high school, I really wanted to run for BYU. Dream came true when I looked at the ringing phone's caller ID: Patrick Shane. Only there are lotz of crazy NCAA rules about recruits, so when there was a mess up with the plane tickets or the dates for the official visit, Coachie couldn't call me, but I didn't know that. I was scared to call him, intimidated. I remember holding the phone, sucking in, and telling myself I was holy-cow not going to let this chance pass me by. Turns out he had just postponed the dates, n even a bd.

Okay so maybe we did have basically all the ingredients we needed.
We still make a pretty huge cake.

When I first started substitute teaching, some of the junior highs would hand me a free lunch pass for subs when I checked in at the front office. If walking through a crowd of middle schoolers in a lunch room, waiting in line with them, and eating their food doesn't sound uncomfortable to you, then buy me a box of chocolates. Honestly, it really wasn't that hard, and it tots def for sure's not a big deal. I mean you just walk into the lunch room, grab your food and leave. Why do I sometimes think some of the easiest things in the world are hard?

Like yesterday. I bought a plane ticket for myself. I have flown around quite a bit, but someone else - my mom, BYU travel, random people off the street - have always arranged my travel. And don't ask me why, for some reason I thought buying a plane ticket would be hard. I've purchased a few train tickets in my lifetime, but planes? Different story. That is why people used to hire travel agents isn't it? Well guess the penny, buying a plane ticket is easier than scooping ice cream.

And reading 30 books in half-term? Easy. Planning out how to teach an entire school year to eight graders? Easy. Running 10 miles in the snow when there is icicles forming on your eyelashes? Easy. Just one foot in front of the other. Baking a giant cake, without flour or sugar or eggs or milk or frosting? Easy. Easy as cake actually.

So ya, sometimes easy things seem hard, but they're not. After the fact, I always look back and laugh at myself for ever stressing. And I blog about it so you can all see the awk little quirks of mikeln.

*I have never, and would never, let someone random off the street buy me a plane ticket.

What 100 dollars can do

The first time I ever cried for happiness was when I gave my aunt a hundred dollars to help her pay for a law suit. I was eight years old, and we were parked in one of those overflow dirt parking lots out in the desert, when I slid on out of my grandmother’s big ‘ol SUV to head into the store. Without thinking, I picked up some money tumbling along in the wind, but when I looked at it, my mind didn’t believe my eyes. It was One Hundred buckaroos.

Now some people think it is stealing to take money off the ground; I didn’t think so, but we turned it in anyway being the good people that we like to think we are. The lady at the desk refused to take it. “You found this blowing out in the desert?” She raised those thin eyebrows. “Honey, no one’s gonna come lookin’ for this.”

My parents said they would keep it safe for me, ya know, until I knew what I wanted to do with it. Somehow, I knew it was special, and I wasn’t about to just give it away to the toy store. A few months later, we had this dinner for my aunt because she was dealing with this law suit and all. Being eight, I didn’t know much of what was going on, except that she wanted custody of my cousin or something like that. I’ll admit that when my mom suggested I give the Benjamin to my aunt to help her out, I wasn’t exactly what you might call thrilled. But I knew it was a nice, maybe even the right thing to do.

I had seen people cry because they were happy before, and I knew that was why she was crying when she opened the card. It was anonymous, but she knew. Her Thank-You folded in between our hug, and suddenly I was crying too. The tears felt different though; they were warm, and my insides were exploding with light.

I knew right then and there, no doll or toy or bike could have made me that happy. It wasn’t even happy, it was pure, untainted joy.

Acetone or Non-acetone?

I have always been a firm believer of acetone nail polish remover. Especially because it works probably 76 times better than non-acetone and is exactly, to the T with the i's dotted, the same price. Why would anyone walking on the world ever buy non-acetone?

1. Because they have little kids and they don't want the acetone to ruin their carpet. My mom pointed this out to me. Okay, fine - but what is more important, carpet or humans? haha, just kidding Mom. A little bit of luxury isn't worth ruining your carpet.

2. Because it ruins your nails!? What? Yes, Exactly four weeks from this coming Monday someone told me that this lethal substance, acetone nail polish, ruins your nails. And it is true because the internet said the same thing. I'm not shy; I am a frequent nail polish removerer. My nails seem fine, but, well, what if??

So today, or probably tomorrow - definitely not until Saturday, I am buying myself a pretty bottle of non-acetone.

Speaking of nail polish, once my perfect lil' sis got mad at me and decided to punish me by pouring nail polish remover on my bed, in a little polish-remover lake right below my pillow (piilllooowww). Okay, so she was five, but my parents took away all her nail polish for multiple-who-knows-how-many years. Now she paints my toe nails whenever I go home to continue paying off her dept, or maybe she does it just because she loves me...

Memoir

Once when I was a little chickling, I was sitting in a patch of clovers (not) watching my brother play soccer. I had recently seen seen an episode of Reading Rainbow : ) where they had searched through a 5' by 5' square of clovers to find a lucky four leaf gem. So I decided to try my luck. I searched through each regular three-leaf flower, carefully separating them out, looking at each one individually. And guess what, I am not kidding, I found one. So you know what I did with it? I put it in my pocket to show my mom when I got home. A four-leaf clover in my pocket. When I got home to show my mommy, my four-leaf clover, dead and crumpled, was not much of a treasure. So...I threw it away. yes. I am crazy. I once found a four-leaf clover and I threw it away. cray-cray-ka-cray. You are just going to have to believe me.

Here is a completely random picture of me with an owl. #readharrypotter4lyfe

Spencer from French

A few years ago in my French 201 class I met this kid named Spencer. He was funny and nice and a little bit different from what I would have expected. In French, every other second we pair up to talk aka practice our French, and he was always my partner because somehow we always sat next to each other. I liked him, thought he was pretty cool, and was pretty good at French too.

Then he stopped coming to class for a week, which is a big deal because in this four credit class, we were there every day. I got kinda a bit worried about him, but I didn't have his number to shoot him an are-you-okay-or-what's-up text. When he came back, I asked him where he had been (I asked him in French of course ;). He told me had gotten very sick and had been in the hospital all last week. Glad he was better, we got back to talking in French. Until he stopped coming again.

Was he okay? At the hospital again? Why didn't I ever get his number? It would have been perfectly reasonable to think that maybe he withdrew from the class. I mean, he had missed over a week, and French 201 is no springtime picnic. I hoped that had been the case, but I couldn't help but worry that something worse had happened. I hoped he was okay, but also realized that if he had passed away, I would not have even known. I would keep on living my life the same if he had dropped the class or if he had died. The thought bothered me, and I worried.

That was about two years ago. #tbt2011

The other day I was walking on campus, just thinking about nothing, maybe humming, and I saw Spencer. He was just walking out of a building, like he probably did every day, with his backpack over his shoulder and a beanie on his head like he always did way back in French class. I smiled so big at him, you probably wouldn't have been able to get the sunshine off my face. Of course, he didn't really remember me, so he gave me kind of a funny look, like "why are you so happy? I mean it is cool that you are happy, but you just look really happy and you are staring right at me." I was really happy. Just that feeling you get when you realize that someone you thought might have possibly been dead is alive, well, and breathing.

This slice of life had a cherry on top.

Mountains to Climb

I came across this blog post about Utah and the snow piles. And it made me think about this church talk about overcoming challenges. And then it made me remember my high school cross country teammate Lauren Lucas.

Once, near the end of summer in Vegas, yes scorching hot Vegas, we were doing hill repeats, just for fun, because we are overachievers, and because we told ourselves we were going to take state that year. And after a few repeats, when we were at the top, one of us looked over at the foothills of Black Mountain. Maybe because anything would have been better than running up that hill again or maybe just because a mountain seemed easier...

"Look at that mountain; let's run it," someone said. So we did. Let me tell you right now: Running up mountains is one of the most rewarding physical experiences. It literally feels like you are pulling yourself, and each other, up to greater heights. So we sat there, looking over the Las Vegas valley, looking at all the next mountains we were going to run up. We told ourselves we could run up anything, and I still believe that sometimes.