Life Lately

Hey, guys. Guess what? I didn't fall off the face of the earth. Here I am! And here's life lately:

First off, I graduated!! whoohoooo!
On Thursday, May 30th me and 600 of my closest friends ("closest friends" being defined as the people I have literally spent the last 12 years of my life with) graduated from Dear Old AF High.
And here are some lovely photos of me and my friends and family on that day:

Me and the bestie.

The Fiends.

The Family, minus our missionary.

My Sr Trip took me to NYC! where i ate the best food in the whole world and walked the Brooklyn Bridge and saw 5 Broadway shows and went to the 9/11 memorial and stood in Time Square and got soaked to the bone in the pouring rain and walked through Central Park and took the Subway/learned about public transportation and ate hot dogs on the front steps of the MET where i had the biggest migraine and and and SO many other things. I'll spare you all the photos, but i will include a few:

Time Square.

The New York sunset from the top of the Rockefeller building.

New York in the rain.

The hallway of strollers in the Manhattan LDS Church building.

A lovely photo of The Lake in Central Park. Don't those row boats look fun?!

The largest piece of pizza i could find.

The friends who are more like family.

And to finish off, the NYC skyline.

Well, that's life lately, aside from Smoothie King, rodeos, concerts, and boating.
Sorry it's been so long.

Marley Kay

Book Poisoning

Symptoms:

Insomnia, lack of appetite, mild paranoia, obsessive tendencies, mild loss of hygiene awareness, indescribable need to continue reading, etc.

Generally resulting in a physically and mentally exhausted state of grouchiness and poor nutrition.

More to come... Maybe. I have a book to attend to.

I blame you, Emily.

Marley Kay

The front porch

The front porch is a very important part of living.

The porch is where first impressions are made with the opening of a door and a hand shake.

It's where friends stop to talk a while on their Sunday walk, and some times the area they cover in chalk when you break your collar bone.

It's where you watch the neighbor's kids get in water fights in the summer and snowball fights in the winter.

It's where memories are frozen in the form of first-day-of-school photos, family portraits, and high school dance pictures.

It is where grandma brings you out a cup of hot chocolate and sits for a while when you have too much to think about.

And where you cry when a silly boy breaks your heart.

It's where you watch airplanes fly by, anxiously awaiting a shooting star so you can make one more wish.

And even where you get a fantastic goodnight kiss.

The front porch is also where you ponder a lot of things.

You watch the sun go down and the stars come out and you wonder what this whole life thing is all about for you.

You gaze up at those stars and clouds and the sliver of the silver moon that's still out at this time of month and try to calculate how far each one could possibly be from you.

(But then you remember physics class was last year and  you nearly failed calculus so you just smile and wonder anyway.)

You sit on that front porch and you evaluate your life, think about friends and family, and you grin because of all those beautiful memories.

All on the front porch--

It's pretty important, you know.

Marley Kay

The love solar system.

Ever been caught in a love triangle?
Try multiplying it by two and a half.

There's this one guy, for metaphor sake, lets call him the Sun. And then there's Mercury, always in orbit just a little too close for comfort and a little bit... Hot headed with jealousy, let's say. Lets skip the next 3 and head straight to Jupiter. Oh, Jupiter. Stolen such a large part of the Sun's gravitational pull, but is Jupiter pulling back? That's the real question. (Probably, but Mr. Sun would never assume such things.) Skip a couple more and we get to Pluto.... Too far to get too much warmth from the sun, but an orbit so skiwampus (just go with it, ok? There's no way I could figure that word out today) that it happens periodically enough to keep sweet little Pluto around. And last but not least, the Comet. Definitely no one saw that one coming. And that Comet came out of NOWHERE. Surprised 'em all for a moment, I'll tell ya what. But don't worry, that pesky Comet will be out of everyone's orbit in no time, just wait a week and a half.

Oh how fun it is, that good ol' solar system.


"Um, no one. Wah-wah."
Marley Kay

i refuse to sink.

I keep typing out sentences and then deleting them. I don't know how to start this so I guess this'll have to do.

I know I'm not extremely talented. I know I have a hard time memorizing and tap is certainly not my thing.
I'm trying really hard, though. And even if I've missed AP Language a couple times, I'm still doing the best I can.

After all, I am surviving. At least I'm trying to, anyway.
I'm surviving by Monday emails and checking the mailbox and the empty Diet Coke bottles rolling around in my floor boards. I'm surviving by 4x4s and long talks with Morgan and learning how to filter and not filter. I'm surviving by 14 hour set builds and long drives in my truck and country music and smoothies all around.

But here's the thing:
I refuse to be the weakest link.
I refuse to let comments rip me apart.
I refuse to self-destruct.
I refuse to get sick.
I refuse to give up.
I refuse to let anyone drag me down.
I refuse to sink.

Because I can do anything that I want to do.
(And I want this really bad.)

(Look familiar? Don't worry, I wear it religiously.)

Marley Kay

dreams and doubts and whatever else.

I'm not really sure why I'm even writing this.
I'm not really sure if my world is flipping upside-down or turning just as usual.
I'm doubting a whole lot of things though... but maybe that's normal?
It's probably normal.
No worries, just figuring it out.
Heaven knows what my life is coming to.

(Dreamin' old dreams, wishin' old wishes.)

Hinges, car rides, and soup.

You know what I love?
Details.
(Yup, call me OCD, but I love 'em!)

Not just details in the painting or movie or whatever visual,
I love the details of people.
(Yup, I'm also a freakish observer. Surprise! Try not to get freaked out if you catch me studying things. 'Cause that's what I do.)

I love the way every time I see my Grandma she says "hi there!" With the same exact inflection and same exact smile, and how she sends a postcard from anywhere and everywhere she travels.
And the way my Dad's cheeks look like one of those little picture-book characters from the 50's when he smiles because he thinks he's funny.
Also, if you could just see the look on my brother's face before commits to anything. Even little things.
And my sister does this thing in front of the mirror every morning while she's getting ready. She makes this face, fixes something, and repeats until satisfied.

I love all the things people do when they don't think anyone is watching.
Picking fingernails, playing with their hair, rubbing their ankle, spelling things with their fingers, tapping feet...

There's this look she gets while she's thinking, and one that he gets before he states his carefully worded, but always strong opinion. One of his eyes opens more than the other. She uses her posture like a defense mechanism. He kinda goes "zombie mode" if someone isn't talking to him. She always watches you intently when you speak, but in a comfortable way. He hardly says a word but his entire thought process is written all over his face.

It's all the little details that create people.
The details that create that beauty.
There is beauty in a complete thing, like a person.
When you look at someone and take all of them in?
You take in their hair, and their clothes, the freckles on their nose, and the dimples on their cheeks.
You see how their eyebrows get all scrunched up right before they start to cry, how their smile pulls up higher on one side than the other, and the way their eyes wander when they're nervous.
That is what completes a person.
That is what makes them beautiful.

I read in a book once about "taking a picture with your heart."-- drinking in every last bit of a moment until it sticks with you.
Can I just say, I love that. And I really do it a lot.
One of my favorite things to do is to look through that album.
I take a deep breath and everything just comes... The smell of the room, the energy it had, the smile on their face, your view from the passenger seat, all of it!

There's nothing quite like reminiscing over the details of a perfect moment in time.
And sure, it creates all sorts of nostalgia, but hey, it feels kinda good. Because you really felt something. And it sure seems like as a society we are deadening ourselves from that. Turns out, it's pretty healthy to feel things, and react to them, in my opinion at least.

Take a deep breath. Breathe it all in for a second. Close your eyes tight. Let it stay with you. 'Cause those are the little things you'll wish you'd remembered.


Your dreamer
Marley Kay