Hot Hot Heat.

What it was like
to live alone

in an apartment with no air conditioning

in July:

Taking all of the fans in the whole house

and pointing them at my face while I sleep.

Never doing dishes

or cleaning up anything.

Living in a cave,

because turning the light on makes it hotter.

Eating my weight in otter pops every night.

Then, just before bed,

having s'mores ice cream from the carton

while I read Anne of Green Gables.

Going nuts.

Written Summer 2013.

No Words: Pizza Hut

Once I wrote a blog post

about how I loved Ray Charles so much

that there were no words

to describe it.

But of course I had to try.

Lately, there have been a lot of things
that my love for
has defied the power of words to describe.

Like Pizza Hut.

There's a Pizza Hut Express
in the UVU food court.
It might be my favorite thing about UVU.

Even though the word express in the title
is misleading,
it's always worth the (long) wait
to get five glorious breadsticks,

each covered in so much parmesan
that you're in danger of choking
if you inhale too deeply.

You always feel a little sick afterward,
but that might be the best part.

For some reason,
I have vivid memories of
drinking water out of plastic tumblers
at birthday parties
at the sit-down, dine-in Pizza Hut
when I was little.

And that might be half the reason
that I love it so much.

Sundance the Kid.

This is Justin.

We could talk about how

it took us a few months to become friends

because I didn't like him at first.

We could also talk about

how devastatingly handsome he is.

But let's not talk about either of those things.

Instead,

let's talk about how

his Instagram is an artistic masterpiece.

Let's talk about how

you are one lucky human

if you ever get the privilege

of hearing him sing along to the radio

while he drives.

Let's talk about how

being around him

makes you remember 

how much you love

to look at the mountains

and how much you love America.

And that you want to be

an inherently kinder person,

like he is.

Not being his friend

sounds like a bad idea now,

doesn't it?

The First Day of Spring in Pictures.

This last year,

I celebrated

the winter solstice

the autumnal equinox

and the summer solstice.

I'm so grateful

that the internet told me this morning

that it was the vernal equinox,

or I would have missed it.

 Wearing sandals

in 30 degree weather

because it's the first day of spring:

Priceless.

2 feet inside the front door

of Walmart.

To everyone obsessed with Frozen:

Let it go. 

 First time filling out a bracket.

I love things

where I get to make

lots of arbitrary choices.

Looks like

I was feeling good

about Villanova

at the time.

 Why, yes.

I'm glad you asked.

This is a cat

holding a genie's lamp

that is emitting flowers.

Looks like that cat

wished for the first day of spring.

(Happy birthday, Alyssa!)

Ran 10 miles straight

for the first time in my life.

Passed this beauty.

 This strawberry

exactly resembles the one

that Cindy Lou Who gets

in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

It would later become

an integral component

of my strawberries and cream.

To bid winter goodbye,

I ceremonially threw out

the dead flowers I've had

for two months.

Now, listen to this:

Congratulations!

It's really

and truly

and officially spring.

I'm so happy I could cry.

Poems.

I just want to clear up
some confusion.

These blog posts

are

definitely

not

poems.

I do not write poems.

I have prose

running through my veins.

I write posts this way

because I have an aversion

to large blocks of text.

A strong aversion.

As in,
I-don't-care-
how-interesting-you-are-
I'm-not-gonna-read-anything-
unless-you-give-me-some-white-space.

But.

Once upon a time,

I used to write poems.
Sometimes.

High school, you know?

Here's one:

Pull the bow smoothly now,

Like a rake in a zen garden.

Curve your chin now,

With the arc of the sugar bowl handle.

Press the strings

Till your fingers bleed,

Like you press the keys of that old typewriter

Just to hear the click-clack of the past.

And play, now! Play!

Concert halls await you now,

With packed houses of bow ties

And fur coats,

Ready to sift you to nothing

With their classically-trained ears.

Oh give up, now! Give up!

Grab that violin by the neck

And make a fiddle of it.

Climb up onto the roof of your house

And play to the birds!

The birds, now!

Who are squawking and cheeping

As they hurry south

For the winter.

A little story about this.

On a whim,

I entered that poem

into a contest for the lit mag

in high school.

And one day,

they read my name

on the morning announcements,

saying that I had won

some prize.

The heads of everyone in homeroom

turned to look at me.

For four years,

I'd done everything I could

to not draw any attention to myself.

And suddenly 

all these people

who didn't necessarily really know

who I was

knew that I wrote poems.

I was mortified.

All day people congratulated me,

and I wanted to slip underneath

the linoleum floor tiles.

By the next day,

everyone had forgotten my fame.

And I never even got a copy

of the magazine

to see my work in print.

So yeah.

I don't write poems.

That year,

I was doing a picture of the day project.

This is the picture from that day.

I captioned it,

"Wednesday, March 25.

Oh, the shame."

Funnily enough,

I am wearing that sweatshirt

as I type this.

First Kiss.

So,

my first kiss 
occurred in the recent past.

There, I said it.

(We can discuss

what took so long

at another time,

if you really want.)

But really.

There were literally

years of anticipation

leading up to this event.

And in the end,

it turned out just fine.

It was good.

It was nice.

But there's a reason I'm telling you this.

And it's this:

everything has been different since.

I'm a little surprised at myself,
since that sounds very overdramatic
and chick flickish.
And we all know
those are things I hate.

But it's true.

It's like I was let in on a secret
that I hadn't known I was being kept from.

Now I can look at
every song,
every movie,
every story that humans tell,
and say,
"Oh yeah.
Okay.
I see."

Everything makes more sense.

I left behind a type of naivety

that I had always carried with me.

And now I'm more of a person.
There's more to me.

A whole world of relatability

has opened up before me.

Even though
I might have liked to kiss a boy
a bit lot sooner,
I really value
that I was old enough
to appreciate how much
that one little moment
helped me to grow up.

Growing up is so sweet
and so satisfying,

because the way it happens to you

is yours
and yours alone.

A Moment for the Pensieve.

You know those moments

that you want to bottle

so you can return to them

in your Pensieve?

On my birthday,

I sat on my front lawn

in short sleeves

with no shoes on,

eating my very first

Mountain West Burrito,

listening to

only my favorite music.

And the burrito tasted

like the ingredients were grown

in a lush green field

warmed by the sun

next to a stream of sweet, clear water.

via

And the sun

and the sky,
and the feeling of knowing
it was a special day.

I can't even describe it.

I just know I want to live it

again and again.

Some of the songs

that made the cut.

The Leftovers.

The other day,

I made this chicken & rice dish

for dinner,

something I'd made before

and remembered liking.

But it turned out mediocre this time.

So now I've got

two full tupperwares

of Leftovers

staring me in the face

when I open the fridge.

I want to gag

every time I think about

having to eat them.

What's worse,

they've taken on

human characteristics.

The Leftovers have become

that guy that wants to go out with you

who won't leave you alone.

I try not to look in that corner

when I open the fridge.

I know if the Leftovers see me,

they'll say,

"Rachel,

we want to have lunch with you this week.

When are you free?"

I keep making up excuses.

"Sorry, Leftovers,

my boss is taking me out for lunch today!

Maybe tomorrow."

I've stood up the Leftovers a few times,

leaving them confused in the break room fridge

while I snack on Reese's cups
all day at work.

"Sorry, Leftovers,

I wasn't hungry for lunch today!

Tomorrow for sure."

Worst of all,

I've avoided the Leftovers

to spend time with

Soft Pretzel,

someone I actually like.

"Whoops,

I'm running late.

I need a portable dinner.

Sorry, Leftovers,

it looks like a Soft Pretzel tonight."

This needs to end.

I think I'll ask the Leftovers

to meet me by the trashcan

so we can talk about our relationship.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The Most Beautiful Perfect Day.

This beautiful weather

we've been having

is too good to be true.

I keep saying to myself,

"This is the most beautiful day

there has ever been."

Today,

I lay in the grass

at Rock Canyon Park

and looked up at the sky

and thought,

"This is the most beautiful perfect day

in the history of beautiful perfect days."

And that made me a little sad.

The Kip in my head said,

"Napoleon, like anyone can even know that."

I can't know that.

I haven't experienced every beautiful perfect day

in the history of time.

I haven't set criteria

and rated them

and come up with a definitive list.

But I feel like today

is the most beautiful perfect day.

Am I wrong?

I thought about it,

and decided

that I'm not wrong.

Every new beautiful perfect day

is the most beautiful perfect day

there's ever been.

And even when the sun sets

on that kind of day,

you can sleep well,

knowing that beautiful perfect days

are never going to stop coming.

Why to Be My Boyfriend.

I know pictures of food are obnoxious,

but this is

literally

the most exquisite thing

I've ever made.

And there's more where that came from,

ya dig?

Making the Wrong Choice.

You know when you feel yourself

making the wrong choice?

When you're not doing something

that you really want to do,

just because you're scared.

And you're sitting there,

staring at the wall,

saying,

"I'm making the wrong choice."

And it's not even

too late to change your mind.

You can march back over there

and do what you want to do.

But with each minute that passes,

the window is narrowing.

You try to convince yourself

that it's okay,

that next time you'll make the right choice.

And with each minute that passes,
you become more comfortable
with how it feels
to let yourself down.

My goal

is to rid my life

of those moments.

Quality Human Beings.

Yesterday,

I particularly noticed

the quality of humans

around me.

Like your boss who wakes up at 5 a.m.

to make you all cookies.

Like friends who come bright and early

to pick you up.

Like coworkers who make you want to

give them your clementines

because they are so grateful

when you do.

Like shopping with a friend

who throws things that she tried on

over the fitting room wall to you

and then says,

"That looks better on you."

Like friends

that are still your friends

after years,

and take you on

not-really-dates-that-are-kind-of-dates

and buy you dinner.

Like people you see at a party

that you don't know very well

but who laugh at your jokes.

And you start to think about

wanting to get to know them better.

Like the party host

who walks around

passing out food,

and you can't help but look at her

in awe.

Like people who ask,

"How have you been?"

and you can hear in their voice

how much they want to know the answer.

Like friends who drive you home

every time

and sit in the car with you

outside of your house

because you want to keep talking.

Like roommates

who you love to live with

because they are always so kind

to each other.

It was almost too good.