mail

I keep all of the mail that I get. Envelopes too. Ok, so not every piece of mail: those annoying and persistent credit card and insurance offers get shredded (then made into Easter basket grass) but all of my actual correspondence I keep. I even have files of some emails between me and family or friends abroad or old friends I've reconnected with via the internet.

Maybe it's my LDS upbringing and emphasis on family and personal history, journal writing, etc, but I feel like these letters are important some how: they tell a part of my life that doesn't necessarily make it in my journal but is still a part of me. I told a friend that once that I had a binder of our emails and it freaked him out a little. We had been friends in preschool when I lived in Park Slope and I had found him on Facebook my freshman year of college. He was still in Brooklyn and we started emailing. I just loved these little letters we wrote to each other, little friendship love notes of times past and theoretical futures and I just felt like they were so beautiful and temporal. So I printed them out and put them in a binder to save them, to remember those feelings of new affections and that experience of transitioning from child to adult and wanting to hang on to those droplets of youth as long as possible.

I have several friends who when they break up with a girl they burn or throw away any material traces of their relationship from their lives, deleting them from their online profiles as if they never existed. Photos, love letters, gifts, they are all discarded in the passion and hurt of separation. I don't know how they can do that. It seems so hurtful not just to the other person but to themselves, as if they are lying about who they are and what their lives have been. I have boxes of love letters and homemade stuffed animals and jewelry and t-shirts that are so much a part of me that thinking of discarding them gives me a small literal pang.

So I keep them. I can't bear to discard them. Because everyone that we know and meet and especially love shapes who we are and who we become in so many ways: if we try to hide it or lie about it or pretend like it never happened we lose a part of ourselves, a part that is perhaps the most important part of ourselves, the part of ourselves that knows how to love.

And who knows? Maybe one day all these letters and creations and journals will be displayed in a museum for others to see and marvel at and connect with. Maybe.

easter egg mail!

Today I mailed some Easter eggs: no big deal. I got the idea from this blog I follow called Giver's Log. She does these great little posts about things you can send through the mail that are 13 ounces or less and, you guessed it, Easter eggs are one of them! Below are a picture of her eggs with postage and then my eggs sans postage.

Via Giver's Log.

The blurred out labels are the private addresses,
not just smeary messes.

I brought them into the post office and I was a little worried that they wouldn't let me mail them, but it was no problem! I'd weighed them at home and they were half an ounce and sending them parcel post was $1.95. I asked if we could use stamps instead of the little print-outs they do with the postage printed on a bar code, so we used 2 $1 stamps. Sure, that added an extra 5 cents per egg, but I think it was worth it, don't you? They looked really great all stamped up and ready to go! I hope my lovely pen-pal friends will enjoy them.

Side note about postage: all the new stamps coming out in 2012 are forever stamps! Isn't that wonderful? Now you can have all sorts of fun stamps that will never decrease in mailing value. (My favorites that I've been coveting for a while are the Pioneers of Industrial Design ones, but I won't let myself buy until I use up the stamps I already have: clearly I need to get mailing!)

birthday package

It was my friend Erin's birthday earlier this month and I sent her a birthday package to help her celebrate! Here are some highlights...

I stamped this card for her on a scrap piece of letterpressed paper.
See the amazing anatomical heart stamp? She gave that to me for my birthday:
isn't it beautiful?!

I made her this birthday banner at the after school program where I work.

I made her this tote bag...

(Get it?! Get it?! It was Braeden's idea.)

I covered these match boxes and cut down these candles so they would fit.

And here's all those goodies (plus some).

It was really fun to make. I packed it in a box filled with water balloons that I blew up (not with water, obviously) so that when she opened it it was like the party had already started.

mail

I have had a brown shipping box that has been sitting on my bedroom floor for literally months waiting to be mailed back as a return. And I have also been months overdue in sending out some custom made books to my dear friend Jacob Seifert.

Today, I finally made it to the post office. And the lil' beauty pictured below is well on its way to Boston. So keep a look out, friend!

(Photos of the contents of this box will be revealed to the world as soon as they are first revealed to its intended recipient: hopefully within two business days.)

what's with today, today?

Things that I did today:

• Some yard maintenance: swept up some leaves around the side door, put some stuff in the garage, turned the open trash cans upside down so they won't accumulate stagnant water.
• Laundry: the dryer stopped working again so I had to finish up my one load at the neighbor's house: I have the best neighbors in the world
• Cleaned up the studio: since my initial move-in the studio has gotten less and less organized and more and more useless. Today I finally stopped  being afraid and dove in to put everything back in its place. Braeden also helped me take the door off its hinges so now I have to keep it clean since you can see into it from the living room. Good motivation. Also, the door was über obnoxious because it opened into the room in a weird and intrusive way.
• Went to Stuff Etc: my friend Autumn asked me to make her guest book for her wedding in December (so exciting!!!) so I went and found some fabric for the cover today. Their colors are dark teal and silver with a peacock feather accent, so I was hoping to find some kind of crazy peacock patterned something, but alas, no luck. I did find a great satin-y robe though that I think will work just fine...
• Went to Institute: I love my Institute class here so much. We always have awesome discussions, and there are great people and food and it is fun.
• Hung out with the Braeden face: he makes me happy

Additionally, yesterday we took Stephanie's challenge to try the green smoothie a second time. I found a recipe for it in a random Kiwi magazine I found in one of my boots (why are all these strange magazines following me across the country?) so I felt better about the proportions, plus I used the standard baby spinach instead of the funky Farmer's Market spinach so it was so much better. You may view our various reactions below:

Gloria, Me, and Braeden with our fancy London Hard Rock glasses filled with green smoothie take 2.

Bottoms up!

Cue the crazy eyes. Clearly a sign of a successful smoothie. A+.

Additionally, here is a final letter for the letter series of posts. I found these envelopes at this amazing Amish thrift store that Gloria introduced us to and they were only a buck twenty five for a whole box of them. Amazing. Below is the first letter I ever sent using one, to my friend Erin. Because she is amazing.

the fine print

I wrote this letter to my friend Erin, one of my friends from high school and faithful pen-pal. Speaking of, I just got a letter from her today! Hooray! (Also a long-awaited one from Matt Webb which is AMAZING. Pen pals are the best!!!) Erin is currently going to grad school up in Wisconsin (read: wiss-KHAN-sun) for science journalism, and I thought this amazingly depicted scientist was right up her ally. All it is is a full page illustration from a BYU Magazine I had lying around (don't ask me why, I'm not in the habit of reading let alone saving said magazine, but somehow this one stowed away with me in my move to Iowa) that I put into my typewriter and typed my letter onto. I avoided typing over his face since I figured that would a) look weird and b) be difficult to read over his thick, black rimmed glasses etc. Now whenever I leaf through a magazine of any kind I'm always on the look out for great letter writing material.

In other news, I watched all four sessions of General Conference this weekend and it was great! I watched the Saturday morning session online with Braeden at the Batcave (aka his one-bedroom apartment in sketchville—while we were watching his neighbors threw 2 potted plants over the railings of the stairwell into his outdoor walkway that smashed and spread dirt all over), then the afternoon session online up in North Liberty with Gloria, Sarah, Braeden, Jayne, and Keith at Keith's place (the connection was a little intermittent so we didn't get all of the talks, but the company was superb, as was the gluten-free snackage). Sunday we all went to the Stake Center to watch and participate in the potluck lunch, then Braeden and I went up to Amy's place in West Bend(?) with Eric and Megan(?) to watch the final session. There is something so lovey about sitting among friends, listening to our church leaders expound upon principles of our faith and just knowing that you are where you are supposed to be. Some of my favorite talks were President Monson's in the Sunday morning session where he talked about gratitude and Elder Gong's talk in the Saturday afternoon session where he mentioned his ancestor named First Dragon Gong. Best. Name. Ever. You can check out and download any and all of these talks at your leisure at the church website. I highly recommend them all.

And, PS, at the movie night at Jarrod's house after the Priesthood session of conference, Braeden Jones held my hand. Fact. I feel like I am in middle school. Haha. But I am happy.

mail: lost in transit

I love mail. This is a fact. Most people who know me know this about me. I don't know what it is about checking the mail and finding an envelope for me that just makes my whole day slash sometimes week. I guess I get my love of the handwritten note (read: personal; typed letters from friends are just as appreciated) from my dad, and since he's a best-selling author he must be onto something, right?

In honor of mail, I have been making slash writing lots of letters and cards recently and I thought I should share some of them with you. (A few of you may recognize these as little gifts that have arrived to you recently...) Since there are a lot of them and usually one picture doesn't quite do them justice, I think we'll try doing a series of posts.

This first one is a card that I wrote to my dear friend Matt Webb while he was at summer camp (the same camp I worked at with him last year). We exchanged several letters this summer, and this was the last one I wrote to him while he was a camp, but it got lost in the mail. What? Lame sauce. All that survives are these photos...

Looks, confusing, right?

Here it is from the back: this paper á la Purgatory recycling bin.

You open it up, pull the sides apart, and behold! the world makes sense again. (There was also a secret stamped message between the cards that was not photographed, regrettably. I guess you'll just have to use your imagination.)

Tomorrow: Playing Cards: They're not just for "gaming" anymore.

in the mail

i live in a house with a mouse

I live in a house. A pink house. And I love it. I love it so much I once took a picture of it (see above) and made it into a postcard and sent it to my friend who is on her mission in Portugal. I was inspired by her postcard to me from the MTC of the MTC flag poles. There was a little blurb on the back with information about what their significance and stuff. Stephanie and I wrote a little blurb about the Pink House but I cannot now remember exactly what we said. Something about how it is the home of the famous Cassandra and formerly the home of the Stephanie. Also other things that were more clever.

My friend Suzanna also lives in a house. It is not pink. I also love it. She has some fantastic wall paper that I secretly and not so secretly covet. She also starred in a fantastic movie with other kids in her FHE group in which you can see her sexy self, fantastic acting skills, and beautiful aforementioned wallpaper. There is also a rather attractive male counterpart who I happened to recognize from my freshman year. What?! The world is so small.

On a completely different note, I randomly watched a trailer for this new movie $9.99 today. I want to see it very much but it is rated R for language and brief sexuality and nudity. What? It is claymation. Nobody wants to see clay figures having sex. Nobody.

So this movie is based on the short stories of Etgar Keret which I think is awesome not because I've read them (I haven't and the BYU Library's only copy of one of his many books is checked out until September. What?!) but because I am in a literature and film class right now and I just learned that about 60% of movies made are based on literature. 60%! That's a lot. It's pretty interesting to think about because movies and books are not the same at all, and we talk about that in the class—how there are certain things that are inherently literary about literature and things that are cinematic about movies that just don't cross over. That means that there are some things that books do that movies can't—they just can't. But it also means that there are things that movies can do that books can't. Think about it. It'll blow your mind.

Also I may or may not have but definitely did purchase the soundtrack for this movie today. I think it is the new soundtrack of my life.