Sometimes life is like magic...

"See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.

After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.

That’s what I believe.

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.

These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you."
— Robert R. McCammon (Boy's Life)

Who is that guy??

Sometimes I make myself laugh out loud. So, had this guy message me on facebook and I looked at his photo and I thought....how do I know him?? Here is what I then realized. I had lunch with him once, forever ago and he drove a red Dodge Neon, and when I told my friend RS about it her response was "what is he a 16 year old girl?".....and that right there is why she and I are friends. So, when I am looking at his name and trying to remember how I know him I hear her saying that. LOL. I would post his photo for all to enjoy, but that is just mean. Ahhh...these are the moments that make my life fun.

Cupcakes?

So living in the industrial part of SLC does not hold as many random stories as the good ol' Aves. And apparently my brain has decided that it can create random stories all on it's own. For the past week I have been having the strangest dreams. I can't decide if I am sleep deprived or if I am silently going crazy. I actually think that I am running so fast that at night is when my sub-conscience gets to catch up. So, these dreams...well they are all over the map and mostly about things that I don't want to forget to do (unplug my curling iron, make my bed, wear a certain pair of shoes etc.) to the most random things that are not even on my radar, or at least I thought.

I should preface this with one time at band camp, okay well not a band camp, but one time, a sweet friend of mine was having some sort of party and I asked if I could bring anything. She says to me "oh yah can you bring an apple spice bunt cake". I reached out my hand and said "Hi, I am Eiko, I don't own a bunt pan and I don't even know what you are talking about". Lesson here is that I can buy you something but I most likely will not be making it.

So, today is Mothers Day and I am meeting up with my Mom and grandma. My Mom must have had a lapse in remembering who Eiko is because she says to me, maybe you can bring cupcakes. Yah, pretty sure I don't even have a cupcake pan. Checking. Confirmed. I do not own one. Mom meet Eiko, your daughter who does not bake, I thought we covered this through the years. Well let's get to the dream part....so last night....I dreamt that I was supposed to bring cupcakes to some function (thank you Mom). The dream was the most random search for cupcakes, all over town, in all sorts of stores, completely stressed out that I could not find these damn cupcakes. This dream lasted all night. At no point did my brain think, oh I can make these and save myself the stress. No, that literally was never a solution. All I can say about that is at least my brain knows me well enough to know that I would go on a state wide search for cupcakes before resorting to baking. On some level I am okay with this and on some level I feel bad for my future children.

Red Vines

So my weight has been so inconsistent lately and in the last week I gained 5 lbs. I thought perhaps it was 'that time' or maybe it was all of the red vines I consumed recently. Well, good news today while I was cleaning I realized that my scale has been bumped and it reads 5 lbs. heavier. Phew, total relief! I thought I was going to have to give up my red vines!

4 minutes = FAIL

There are days when I see a light or glimmer of hope to me becoming a better person. In hopes to "improve" myself (I should know that these type of situations never end well for me), I have been listening to a CD that discusses communication. For the most part it is pretty entertaining, not as entertaining as many other random things in my life, but entertaining enough for the drive to Tooele every day. So, this particular CD gives a challenge to not criticize any one or any thing for 24 hours. Stop. Think about this....it is not as easy as one would think. Now, I have to say for the most part I do pretty well with these types of things, however about 4 minutes after I decide to take the challenge I pull into the parking lot at work and there is woman wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt and I think to myself "Why do people think it is more than appropriate to wear their pajamas to work, it can't be that hard to put on actual pants". Yep, I lasted 4 minutes. I totally failed and yet on some level I am okay with it.

Clearly the WRONG shoe selection

So to preface this story I have to start with the fact that I choose the wrong shoes for every occasion. For example, recently I have decided that ballet flats in a down poor, stilettos to walk through gravel at a nursery and crocks in the mud were all good ideas.....great for the outfit, BAD for the activity.

On this particular day I decided to wear flips. I guess when Kody told me that we were just going to ride in a tractor I didn't think that we were going to be out in a swampy field. So for an hour or so we cruised around the field and I chatted (of course) while Kody worked....what can I say....I will do pretty much anything to get out of working on my final (don't you worry I did my homework).

Chatting...working....and then....sinking. Yes, with all the rain over the past month this is what happened. Ahh good times. However the best part of the story...we are clear across the field and Kody tells me that I should go (he obviously supports my schooling more than I do) and you know deep inside I think this is a good idea. I really should stop hanging out with my friend and actually attempt to finish my final. So I head out. The problem. We just disc'd the field which means that it is really soft to walk on. The part of the field that we did not disc is completely overgrown with weeds. You combine this with my fear of snakes and walking through the soft wet dirt was hands down the BEST option for Eiko.

As I start walking in my flips in this dirt my favorite DC flip flop breaks. Walk two steps shoe comes apart. Put shoe back together and walk two steps. This goes on for awhile and then I call Kody at which point he says "Koe, if keep going at this pace it is going to take all day"....that is just embarrassing. He thought I was really that slow. At which point I took off my shoes and walked barefoot.

Twilight

Ahhh...Twilight. I have to admit that this photo epitomizes my thought on this subject. First off, I was not a fan of Twilight, I had no interest in the books mostly because they are about vampires and the whole thing takes place in some small woodsy town and well for those of you that know me, know that I am not a huge fan of anything that is remotely scary or that would make me second guess being in the dark at my parent's house in the woods. And yet when the movie premiered I went not expecting a whole lot...what happened was the movie was not half bad and that stirred enough interest to me reading and now on the 4th book of this series.

But really that is neither here nor there....the real story that I want to tell is about the night that I went to see this movie in Montana. I live in a small town in Western Montana and movies are shown at 7 and 9 every night. You never have to guess on the time because it never changes. So...Jenny and I head off to the 9 o'clock showing of Twilight and when we walked into the theatre we find that we are the only two at this showing. So....Twilight, Edward, Bella....two hours later and we walk out of our theatre to find a note that says "Please use this door" with an arrow showing us the way to the side door. Please note that there was not a light on or a soul in site in the ENTIRE building. We proceed outside and the door locked behind us....WE WERE THE ONLY TWO IN THE BUILDING. Yes, they literally locked us inside to watch a movie and went home.....seriously. I know there are a lot of comments about us stealing the candy and such, but honestly when I got outside after watching a VAMPIRE movie to complete darkness I was not excited at all.