Sisters!

Baby sister face

Oldest sister face

 I love being in a family. 

Slip away

Last night was kind of a perfect evening. The kind where you show up at the venue alone but within about 20 minutes you are sitting in a nest of a bunch of friends you haven't seen in ages and then the music starts and it's warm and inviting and the audience is totally with them the whole time.  If you ever have a chance to see either Motopony or Typhoon please go.

I'm posting one more Motonpony song today because this one almost made me cry last night. Waiting is far more romantic in love song theory than it is in cold hard reality but this song is so pretty. It does a good job of capturing that "I hope this happens but it likely won't but please if it could" feeling you get when you are trying to be patient in what feels like an impossible situation. Not that I have ever been in one of those of course.



(These guys left my house just as clean and put together as they found it. And even left a thank you note. Polite musicians are my favorite. )

Poker

Funny things sometimes happen when your friend is a widely read music blogger. You might find yourself  on Josh Ritter's tour bus at midnight on a Wednesday, you might get to enjoy Friends and Family night with Devotchka and the Colorado Symphony, you could be sitting in an old stone church listening to a member of Band of Horses play an acoustic set for six people.

Or last night, you could be blowing up an air mattress for two very sleepy members of Motopony who just needed a good night's rest after eight shows at SXSW.

Motopony is opening for Typhoon tonight here in COS and Heather's blog is presenting the show. Something I didn't know until I met Heather is how often that scruffy band you see at a tiny club show goes and sleeps on a stranger's couch after their show. Last night she had way more musicians than soft sleeping surfaces so a few spilled over onto my living room floor. I got a drummer and a lead singer who were peacefully snoozing away when I snuck out the door this morning way, way earlier than I believe these noncturnal species usually wake up.

I will confess that I hadn't heard any Motopony songs until yesterday and now I believe I have listened to "King of Diamonds" approximately 1 million times give or take. I went for a run last night and it was sort of cold and bleak and this track was the perfect companion-I listened to it on repeat for the entire 45 minutes. As my music guru friend Jayd said, "this is honestly a perfect song. Pure hit." It was awfully fun to get to tell Daniel how far it had crept into my heart and I'm excited to see it live tonight. I particularly love these lyrics:

I've been lookin' for the king of diamonds

But I guess the queen will do
I've been lookin' for the king of diamonds
'Till the dealer gave me you

History

Once upon a time I lived up in a neighborhood with eight other kids my school age. Five girls and three boys and lots and lots of energy. I think it became some form of punishment if you ever got assigned to teach our church classes. We talked to much and teased each other like crazy. The boys would toiler paper our houses and we would ride our bikes over to spy on their basketball games. Someone always always had a crush on someone else but never the same ones at the same time. We played truth or dare and made prank calls during epic sleepovers. I'm quite certain that I never knew quite how lucky I was. I keep in touch with most of the girls and see here and there what those boys are up to through Facebook.

It was such a treat today to log in and see my old friend Ryan from that group in one of the I'm a Mormon ads. If you can watch this without kind of wanting them to adopt you-you might not have a heart.


So fun to see what a terrific guy he grew up to be. Even if he did pull my pigtails when we were five.

Old World

This was one of those weird weeks you have every now and then were everything is at once the best and also kind of the worst. 

I was in London for most of it and had a super productive trip. As has tended to be the case with these site visits, I come away feeling really REALLY good at my job. We're close enough now that I'm starting to wake up in the middle of the night imagining the entire rowing team is eight feet tall and we'll have nothing to fit them but for the most part, the Games could start tomorrow and we could likely pull it off. 

I managed to squeeze in dinner with my old SLOC friends who are working for the organizing committee which was awfully nice. And in a surprising turn, a sorority sister from SUU who I haven't seen in 14 years and who I didn't realize was living in London contacted me on Facebook and we had lunch one day. She was a baby freshman when I was a senior and I'm certain our little Cedar City selves would have fallen over dead to see us in our heels and scarves sitting in a pub in SoHo and catching each other up on our interesting resumes. 

Great trip all around, I have no caveats. 2012 has been a nonstop thrill ride and it's only going to get cooler. I'll be in New York for a week in April for our big 100 days out celebration in Times Square and then I get to spend 10 days in June watching people make the 2012 Track and Field team over and over. You will be hard pressed to find someone having a more interesting and exciting few months at work. 

So it makes sense that I cried on the plane most of the way home right? 

I was over tired already and made the mistake of watching several romantic comedies and the result was that I completely broke down when Ryan Gosling does the "Dirty Dancing" move with Emma Stone and it unleashed this overwhelming fear that I have done the order of things terribly terribly wrong. It did not help when I went to a St. Patrick's Day party yesterday that one of my coworkers threw and I was definitely the only single person there and one of only a very small handful who wasn't chasing after a couple of kidlets. I used to be comforted by the fact that it was just my LDS friends who had babies when they were themselves were babies and that out in the real world, there was plenty of time to get to that part of my list. But last night I looked around and all the dads of all the two year old had grey hair and it was just all a little bit too much. 

Just to be clear-I love my life and I am able to make lists and lists of things I am thankful for every night before I go to bed. And inevitably, it feels embarrassing to follow those lists with any kind of "hey could I maybe meet a nice boy soon?" prayer because I've already got more than my share of good things in my life. But guys, being alone. can get. exhausting. And being eternally optimistic about being the single one can also be exhausting too. I hate hate hate the word lonely because it seems like such a stupid thing to admit to when I have so many great people in my life but sometimes what you really want is someone to get the damn tires rotated because I'm just never going to remember to do that. 

So today I was feeling extra alone at church and I was scrolling through Instagram (which I shouldn't be doing but raise your hand if you have never played with your phone during sacrament meeting and I'll say you lie) and came upon this quote: 

"God sees you not only as a mortal being on a small planet who lives for a brief season-He sees you as His child. He sees you as the being you are capable of and designed to become. He wants you to know that you matter to Him." 

Pretty simple little quote and something I've known pretty much since I was born but it came along at just the right moment and reminded me that I'm a) not as alone as it feels sometimes and b) that everything I have always believed about timelines is totally true. There isn't a schedule, I'm not behind. It doesn't mean it's not sometimes really scary and that I'm not going to keep worrying about it. But it's nice to have these moments of clarity I can go back to when I'm terrified that I'm going to have to compete harder for Favorite Aunt status so someone will come visit me in the rest home someday. 

So thanks Instagram friend of a friend I can't quite remember why I'm following. I needed that. 

p.s.

if you haven't seen the Dirty Dancing bit from "Crazy Stupid Love", it's pretty awesome. And it would totally work. 

 

Remix

So I'm packing for London again-just a quick six day trip to tie up some loose ends so that in four short months (breathe, breathe) we can head back and outfit 2000 people.

In the meantime, I am pretty sure I have the man I want to marry. Behold ladies and gentleman...a bounty to anyone who can deliver him to me.



I seriously can't stop watching. Cute and clever and smart and goofy and likely to be rich?

BRING HIM TO ME INTERNET.

First

I've been sort of taken with this Lady Antebellum tune this week-it's all about young love and first kisses and the chorus talks about losing track of that first love and them staying 18 and beautiful in your memory. It's got a sweet melody that has been tugging at me despite my resistance to being sucked into yet another pop country song.



However, yesterday I got the giggles because thanks to Facebook, I know my first kiss now wears his blackberry on a belt clip. So while I can still remember the perfect summer night I met him and we talked and talked and talked until I had to be dragged out of the party, I have to close my eyes a little tighter to see his big green eyes and not that damn blackberry*. So much for 18 and beautiful.

Technology, I so love hate you.

(*I should disclose that he's also got two kids and a pretty wife so. You know. I guess he did OK even with the belt clip.)