Saturday, March 31, 2012

Everyday Heroes

Day after day they work
Putting their lives on the line for us
I’ve never met them
They have no idea who I am either
But I’m grateful for what they do
If only they knew that
What drives them to do it?
What could possibly make them do it?
They sleep with guns an arm’s length away,
Um, scary? I think yes
Walking the streets of foreign lands
Spending months, even years away from their families
Talking to them only when they have connection
Their only hold is the photo they keep in the front pocket
Tucked safely away with the note from their wives
The only tangible memory of them
The family back home questions, worries
Go days without seeing them
Missed events: birthdays, bike rides, proms, anniversaries
Going to bed without even a hug
Kissing the frame by their bedside
Praying that they will survive yet another day
Maybe soon they will get transferred home
They hold onto that wish as they drift to sleep
Only to wake up the next day and not see them there
Maybe things will be different one day
But for now what more can we do?
Dear Soldier the most I can say is thank you
Your sacrifices are great
And I can never repay you
I respect you
I’m grateful for you
Thank you for fighting for my freedom

Favorite Movie

Hmm.... That is really hard cause there are so many. You'd think that my favorite movie would be Legally Blonde, cause, hello, Elle Woods, it would just make sense. I think I will just talk about the most recent movie I have seen in theaters, HUNGER GAMES! So good. I actually really liked the movie, I think the directors did a really good job creating the scenes, and following the book. It was very nice. Okay and a bit on Legally Blonde. I just think that movie is so fun. It is really quite hysterical, and so I like it.

So those are my favorite movies that I'm not afraid to talk about, but what about the movies that have been our favorite since I was two? They sit unwatched like that gross cereal that your mom keeps buying but it keeps getting pushed to the back cause she's the only one that eats it. You run across it every now and again only to move on. But really one day won't we become like our parents. Reaching for the cereal with the healthy stuff in them cause our bodies can't take all that sugar anymore. Won't that happen with the movie? One day we will see it and think of our childhood. Maybe we will indulge ourselves. Babysit for a neighbor and put it in so you can secretly relive your childhood. Secretly belt out the Lion King Hakuna Matata. Cry when the Beast is on the roof and it feels like all hope is lost. Laugh at the exchange between Buzz and Woody. Ahh, those were the days, the good times, the movies.

So really my favorite movies are hiding behind some box, somewhere, waiting for the moment when I decide to relive my childhood.


~Elle Woods

Monday, March 26, 2012

Taking Chances: My Ode to Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both. . .
 
There I stand.
Which road do I take next?
The one which has been there forever?
Or that once in a lifetime opportunity?
I hate not knowing what the future holds
All these options being thrown at us now
The world is telling us to decided the next step
That step leads us to the rest of our future.
So many doubts run through my mind
What if it’s wrong? What if it’s right?
What if it’s too hard? What if I fail?
There is one thing I know for certain in life,
It’s my secret weakness that I think I can share,
I hate that word,
FAILURE
It’s so vulgar, so depressing, so upsetting
I think maybe that is my real fear here
That fear that what if I choose the road that leads me to failure
Then what?
I have no option then,
It’s not like I can go back and start over
So that’s it, isn’t admitting you have a problem the first step to recovery?
Well I have taken that first step, but now what?
I guess there isn’t really a second,
I just have to choose
I am doing no good to myself sitting on the fence and watching the world rush by without me
So I’ve made up my mind
I have my decision,
I’m not going to waste my time anymore on worries
I’m going to work on making that choice the better one
I’m not giving up on myself
That word, failure, yeah it’s not going to be a part of it
There is no room for failure
Only room for taking chances and learning from mistakes
Mistakes are not failures if you fix them the next time around.
Here I go,
Working my hardest to be my best.

. . . I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.



Saturday, March 17, 2012

My Poetry

I write it
It’s compiled of papers
Scattered from all different places
Equations from math are etched in the back
George Washington and other president’s timelines cover the sides
But at least I wrote it down
All those days of not paying attention in class
Maybe they are finally paying off
Maybe this is me finding my calling in life
Maybe, probably not

I hide it from most people
Afraid of what they might say if they actually saw it
No I don’t spill my secrets
But I say what I feel
I have no inhibitions
I don’t care what others have to say
Maybe that is the scariest part
But if they actually saw it what would I do
It might be too late to transfer schools
But maybe not

Oh but it just isn’t fair
So what if I stated my mind
It’s my poetry after all right
Or is it for you?
Did I write it so just in case someone saw it I wouldn’t be mortified?
I hope not
I really thought that it was for me.
I really thought that it was mine
That no one could take that outlet away from me

Subconsciously what if I still follow all the rules
Those stupid, confining rules of literacy
They say that I can’t end a sentence in the middle of . . .
Hmm. Look at that, I just did.
So there

Nope it’s for me
That proves it
It’s still my outlet
But it’s not for you to see
It’s mine
My poetry.

~Elle Woods

I Want to Be a Poet

Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure.

When I first read this I thought for sure it was going to be another depressing poem.
Maybe it's that word failure,
It's such a heavy word to throw around that when I hear I become depressed
I think about all that I have failed,
I think about what I may currently be failing,
Mostly I think of what if I do fail, how bad will that make me?

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold

My depression deepens after reading this.
Not only did we fail the first time,
But apparently we continued to fail, leading us to the breaking point
When we are no longer holding ourselves together anymore
When we are no longer allowed to be ourselves,
That is depressing.

I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection

Regrets
I wish for a life of no regrets
I wish to be able to look back and realize that
I did the best I could
I think I will work on that

I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

See we’re looking up now
Life was good,
We might have regrets, but they are small in comparison,
Comparison to what we have accomplished
The memories of the good times,
What a great sigh of relief

I offer no apology only this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers
And cuddle near

All we want is to be remembered,
To find out that what we did in life meant something
Us being there made a difference in someone else’s life
Service, we hope that we can be remembered for what we did for others
We will be there when others need us most
We will be a friend

What a happy ending to a depressing beginning
I guess that just goes to prove
No matter how bad a situation may seem,
We can always make it better.

~Elle Woods

P.S. this was my analysis of the poem Quilts by Nikki Giovanni
The way she captured the opposites of happy and sad
The way she exemplified how different outlooks really make a difference
She really makes me wish I was a poet.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Sleep

Lying there staring at the ceiling
Counting sheep
But sleep never comes.
The creaks in the house echo through my room
Bouncing between the window and the dresser
Tick tock, tick tock
Time never stops it keeps going,
But where does it go?
When I close my eyes what happens?
Where does my mind go?
I reach my breaking point
Finally falling captive to that looming darkness
Sleep

My mind wanders
Traveling through the empty house,
Exploring each crevice
Storing the previous day away
Hiding some moments
Holding others out in the open to share with all
While clutching some moments close to my heart
I replay those moments and they come to life
The sounds, the smells, the smiles, the tears
It all comes flooding back
In waves of memories
Time never stops it keeps going

Moving on
It travels to all the places I’ve been
It hides behind the desk
That holds me captive during the day
It reaches out to me
Acting out what I wish I would have just said
If only, if only
It’s my one more chance to stand out
It takes me to all the places I wish to go
Hiking the hillside of the Himalayas,
Biking the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Riding the dizzying roller coasters of Disneyland
Standing atop the ridge lines of Scotland
Looking out among the rolling waves coming in

Those waves of memories
Filling the room
Jumbling together to create dreams
Unfolding all the moments like a map
Only to fold them back up
And file them neatly away
Behind the tab titled memories
My mind continues to wander
Time keeps going
Tick tock echo through my room

Beep BEep BEeP BEEP BEEP!!!
The alarm sounds
Awakening me to the reality of time
It continued on without me
While all I did was sleep

~ Elle Woods

Attitude is Everything

I needed another post, but just couldn't think of anything else to write. I decided to google the term Uplifiting Stories and found this one on Attitude:

Think About your Attitude

Michael is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say.

When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"

He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Michael was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Michael and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

Michael replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or...I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes, it is," Michael said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life."

I reflected on what Michael said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care. Michael was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw Michael about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon to be born daughter, " Michael replied. "Then, as I play on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or ...I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.

Michael continued, "...the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.
In their eyes, I read "he's a dead man. I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me, said Michael. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. "Yes, I replied."

The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled,"Gravity."

Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."

Michael lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

After I read this all I could do was think how much our attitude affects every aspect of our lives. Remember in life, things won't always go your way, we've all experienced defeat but it is how you deal with it that really matters. I choose to be happy.
~ Elle Woods

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Never Give Up Hope

Who said we had to grow up?
At what point in our lives are we required to let go of our childhood dreams?
Those days of wishing to grow up and be doctors or astronauts,
Why did we give up?
When did we realize that not every child our age would grow up to become the president?
More importantly when did we decide that it wouldn’t be us who would be president?
It’s just not fair.
It’s not fair that the world has told us what we have to become
It’s not fair that we have been told to be someone else
We have to come up with some reasonable boring desk job,
When we were little it was all about adventure.
All about playing with our friends,
All about riding our bikes and rollerblading during the summer
All about making it to Harvard, and being a genius
When coloring perfectly inside the lines meant we would be the next Picasso.
Well I’ve decided that I will not give that up.
No I’m no artist, and I knew that as a child,
But who says I can’t be a brilliant doctor.
No one, that’s who,
No one will tell me what I can and cannot do
I will never give up hope on what I want to become,
And you shouldn’t either.

The First and Last

It’s the end
Okay maybe not the end, but the last
It’s the last basketball game of our senior year
The last time we ride the spirit bus
The last time we get to cheer we love Quincy
It’s the last time
But it’s all the beginning
The beginning of new chances
The beginning of new opportunities
The chance to start over
Maybe cheer at the U of U, or BYU or USU games as a student
It’s our opportunity
It’s not the end,
It’s only the beginning.