Word. Play. WordPlay.

(Found this lying in my notebook. Wrote it quite awhile ago. Love every word of it.)


Sassy conservationalist nerdy girl writer with secret aspirations of a well-traveled history.

Looking for intertidal protection and creative excellence.

Fervently wishing upon stars and sand dollars for a life full not of love, but of romance.  Ready for loneliness, ready for heartbreak, full of passion and clarity, beauty and transcendence.

Stubborn and unmoving, unwilling to be broken, accepting of cracks and chips.

Constantly found with rings on her fingers and a pencil stuck inside a whispy, messy bun- she traverses these lands with fluidity and grace- a rhythmic sway to her undulating hips.  Toes always naked when playing in the sunshine.  Words tattooed beautifully all over her hands and feet.

In love with the ocean-  moved beyond words by the beating of drums, and the perseverance of the human heart, transfixed by the beauty of all free-thinking men, inspired by the gentle sound of butter sizzling in a pan.

Awestruck at the lifespan of caterpillars-  excited by the profundity of the entire insect world.

Spurred onward by the needs of nations, the scent of hydrangea blossoms and the woven rainbows of color and love in friendship bracelets.

Transformed through divinity, chasing after God like the parched man chases after a raincloud, informed through the medium of authorship, riveted by vintage bicycles and Goodwill coffee mug collections.

Shaped, but not controlled, by the social media generation.  Emotional at the sound of banjos and steel strings. Lifted up by discernment, ripped jeans and Italian espresso.

Avid supporter of:
 Banned books,
 Midnight beach walks
 Romantic poetry
 Naps taken lying in the grass
 Pepperoncinis on her pizza
Bearded dragons as pets
 Flags of other nationalities
Cultural melting pots
Kindness to strangers
Counting the licks to the inside of a Tootsie Pop
Movie nights
Head rubs
"Everything" kisses
Monkey bars
Closing your eyes while swinging
Flirty text messages
Giving your heart away to someone new all the time
Wooden picnic tables
Thankfulness
Feta cheese
Giggle fests
Childlike innocence
Spontaneous fits of shouting
Throwing things when angry
Cobbled streets
A cold, wet beer.

Romanced by Ocean Eyes, homecooked meals and Beatles songs.

Searching for sexy-cute Surfer boy with an affinity for cheesy movies and a thirst for adventure. Also: must love goldfish, long walks, going out to eat, and live music.

Inclined to live by the beach forever, blessed by God, through God, and incandescently happy just to be alive.

Just Call Me The Shrimp Girl

Hi, lovers.

Oy.

It's been a week.

You would not believe the force with which I almost shouted this morning in overwhelming dismay, "It's only WEDNESDAY?!"

Yes, self, it is only Wednesday.

So I'm throwing this dinner party tomorrow night at The Mansion.  (AKA: the place where I live).

It's turning into a weekly thing, where a few girls who live in another house on the other side of town, and myself trade off and on hosting the dinner.  Last week we had it at their house.  This week it's my turn.

Now, I'm not going to go into all the details of how this happened, but somehow this dinner got to be planned on a day which I work.

I meant it for my day off- somehow- I got confused.  Calendars have never been my strong suit.

So tomorrow I'm working from 11-4, and then coming home to cook the dinner for this party of people.  Which, I might add, I don't know the number of.

So all of last night (because I worked yesterday all day) I spent deep cleaning the house.  We're talking dusting window ledges, wiping down cabinets, and toasters, and scrubbing Comet all over the oven and microwave, mopping, etc. To get the house in order for this party.

Sidenote: I probably didn't have to actually do any of this in order to entertain these lovely friends, because, they are all young people and generally young people could care less if your oven is slightly sticky or your toaster is covered in finger prints.  However, these young people were not raised in my house, and I live with a constant hologram-like hallucination of my mother peering over my shoulder whenever I am away from home and in charge of some sort of get-together. Therefore, I cleaned.  Like a madwoman.

I collapsed into bed around 12am, exhausted and full of sore feet after a full day of working, cleaning, shopping (we were in dire need of toilet paper and paper towel) AND making dinner.

This morning, before I work, I've taken it upon myself to get all the final groceries so that I can spend my evening tonight after I work prepping the food so as to ease my transition from work to hostessing tomorrow as smoothly as possible.

This brings us to right now: where I am currently sitting, in the Coach house, furiously typing away on my keyboard, ignoring the groceries sitting on the backseat of my car and thinking about shrimp.

Shrimp.

I've prepared a great menu for tomorrow night: grilled lemon chicken, with a side of garlic bread, salad, and a delicious linguini with shrimp scampi that was going to be the star of the meal.

So after consulting with my boss, who used to be a private, live-in Beverly Hills 90210 chef, (... I know, right???) I decided to visit the local seafood market, because she said it's the best seafood market around and I'd be sure to find what I was looking for there.

So there I was, after checking and re-checking my recipe and having decided to double the size just to be safe, awaiting my opportunity to buy 4, yes, 4 lbs of cocktail shrimp.

I scanned the display case.  My eyes caught the sign of "FRESH SHRIMP. 7.99 per LB."

Okay. I thought. That's a wee bit more than I wanted to spend on four lbs of shrimp, but,  what the heck.  Good food costs good money.  Entertaining should always be an area in which you splurge.  Serve your guests only the best! Yadda yadda yadda.

That was when I realized that the sign was proclaiming bay shrimp for 7 bucks a lb. (Now THAT I wouldn't stand for.)

Bay shrimp. Okay. That's ridiculous.  Where is the normal shrimp?

I took a closer look. "JUMBO PRAWNS 13.99 per LB."

Jumbo prawns are gigantic.  Huge.  Monstrous.  I was fairly certain if I served those on the linguini, somebody would faint for fear of the prawn coming to life and eating them.

Finally it was my turn to be serviced.

I asked the lady for shrimp to be used in a pasta- she asked me if I wanted the bay shrimp meat.

"Er... No... "

"Oh so you want the prawns, then?"

"Well, no, actually, isn't there a size inbetween? You know... scampi sized, cocktail sized, bite sized sauteed shrimp sort of shrimp?"

"Nope.  All we got is the bay shrimp and the jumbo prawns.  The jumbo prawns come in raw or precooked."

"....... Okay. Well, thank you, but that's not what I'm looking for...."

So I left.  Defeated.  Best seafood market around?  Really?

Back to square one.  Now, I live in a very small beachtown, and this was, unfortunately, the only fish market in town. Either I go back to the tiny market where I had purchased my other ingredients, or get back in my car and travel ten miles down the road to Seaside to hunt around some other fish markets.

So I decided I'd try the market again, because I don't have time to go to Seaside and back before work.

In the market, they only had tiger prawns (like jumbo prawns, only slightly smaller, striped and more leggy).

They had frozen pre-cooked shrimp that were the perfect size, quantity, not to mention they were de-veined.

But I, tragically, needed raw shrimp.  Pre-cooked was not going to cut it.

Well, shoot.

Now I don't get off work until between 6:30 and 7.  Which means I have to go home, change my clothes, get back in my car, drive all the way to Seaside, hope that the fish markets aren't closed and try desperately to find some average sized dinner shrimp for hopefully less than 8 bucks per lb, come home, prep the dinner, clean my bathroom and collapse, again, exhausted into my bed before work tomorrow morning.

Luckily, Friday is my day off to recuperate.  In which I plan to do absolutely nothing but laze around like an opalescent nudibranch.  Or, sea slug.

If this shrimp thing doesn't work out- we're having chicken linguini.  Thank God for back-up plans.

Now I have to pull myself away from this comfy couch, change my clothes, and head on into work to tell small children all about intertidal life.

During which, I severely hope I won't get sidetracked by a sand shrimp, and turn my educational spiel into an economical, dinner-shrimp- fueled rant.

With love,

A very frustrated Shrimp Hunter.

Memories

"Winter didn't die, she was murdered and you are the culprit."


"Thirty days alone with the Savior, and an angel, and the devil, rapture and smoke- and I'm careful just not to say that I miss you, 'cause sometimes I guess I still miss myself."

This song, Pretty Girl From Locust, reminds me of the camping trip Beks and I went on last summer.

Something about the tinkering piano notes and the lulting guitar riffs cement the memories I have of those sleepy, early campground mornings.  It captures the quiet nature of the mountains, and glass-top lakes.

The lyrics are just haunting and mournful enough to tinge the memories with a pretty sort of sadness.  Which is what that trip truly meant to us- a pretty sort of sorrow.

So much happened that week-  I think there was a loss of life that greatly impacted us on that trip.

There was a loss of time- and a loss of connection to the outside world- that, when one is so unaccustomed to it, can bring insanity ever that much closer, making you feel even more vulnerable than you already are.

For me, there was a loss of denial about my mom's cancer- those walls I had spent seven years building were vigorously torn down within seven short days and I was left to pick up the ugly pieces and start over.  There was also a loss of distance for me- like the story of the prodigal son, I returned to my roots after a lifetime of being away and I had to face the god-awful person I had become, so far away from the beauty and love of the place that I had grown up in.

I had grown calloused, bitter, resentful and hardened to life at its' basest nature- like cement walls dividing a field, I had become a cold, hard exterior dividing my soul from my memories.

For both of us, I think, there was a loss of delusion, imagination and pretend.  As coping mechanisms for the normal drudgeries and complications of life, Becca and I had come up with this comforting, beautiful, but tragically made-up alternate version of reality.

It was a place we both loved beyond life, but as we braved the wilderness of the mountain, we had to realize it was stunting the growth, progression and natural beauty of our real lives.  That was scary and overwhelmingly hard to process when living in a tent in the middle of a forest hundreds of miles away from home with no, and I mean no connection to the outside world.

There was also a loss, almost, of determination as we realized we were in no way in control of our futures.

I felt like giving up entirely.  I think it's safe to say she did, too.

All of these losses were only solidified when the week was over and on the drive home we witnessed a sad scene- a terrible accident had occured between a motorcyclist and an SUV, and there was the motorcyclist, before any ambulance had arrived to cover him with a blanket and whisk him away, dead on the side of the road.

Neither of us have talked about that since.

It was a cold reminder after an insanely emotional week that life is incredibly short, and you never know when yours will end.

Now that almost a full year has gone by, and the wounds have mostly healed, and the processing has finally started to cease, I can confidently say that all of these little deaths add up to only make life more meaningful.

And even though, in some ways, it was the toughest week of my life, it was also the greatest.  Because of all that we overcame, all the new experiences we had, all of the tragedy that forced us to communicate and bond and rely on each other for survival, we became so much stronger as individuals and as friends, sisters.

Not to mention we did have some crazy good fun on that trip.

I'll never forget the yoga by the lake, the early morning fishing, the endless singing of "Just Around The Riverbend" whenever in the canoe, the splashing fights, the hiking, the endless eating, the day we spent driving all over the surrounding fields and towns and mountains, listening to the Beatles nonstop for six hours, exploring ghost towns and laughing.

The jokes, the notes, the pictures, the campfires, the dreaming.

Secret ceremonies by the lake at midnight- praying and holding hands and giving everything to God, together.

And so you see, now, what I mean by a pretty sort of sorrow.

Sometimes sorrow is God's most potent way of reading into our worlds, crushing everything with His hands, and then sending His Holy Spirit into the rubble to glue everything back together into something more beautiful than you could ever imagine.

And that, my lovers, is the most meaningful part of it all.

Rough Morning

Jehovah Rapha: The God Who Heals.

II Corinthians 12:9-10

"And he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'... That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

"Because of my dad's death, I understand the gospel now in a way I never did before." -My Youth Ministry teacher, this morning.

Because of my mom's cancer, I understand the gospel now in a way I never did before.
Because of my mom's cancer, I understand God's love for me more than I have ever understood before.

I may still be struggling with the trauma of that hole in my past, and the way it impacted my 11 year old mind, but still, God is so good.

He really, really loves me.  And my mother.  My father.  My sisters.

Trials are blessings- and even though I'm still healing, and it's been almost eight years and I'm still not over it, God's bringing me through it.

God, please give me the strength to share this story.

Please give me the courage to share your amazing work through this horror in my life.

I feel you touching me with the Holy Spirit at this moment.

Work through me. Thank you for the cancer.  Thank you for healing my mother.

Thank you for always loving me.

I'm sorry that I've let the cancer keep me from being closer to you.

I'm sorry that deep, deep down in the hiddenness and bitterness of my heart, that I've been harboring anger against you.

I'm sorry for my rebellion.

I've tried to accept the cancer- and I finally have, but I'm still running away from accepting that it came from you.  That you allowed this to happen.  That you would ever let my family hurt so much.

I'm sorry I was blind to my anger- my aggression- my blame- my hurt.

I've gone through the years allowing myself to experience you in certain areas of my life- growing in harsh pride to think that I'm in control- and that I can grow closer to you in this area, but keep you away from that area, and definitely not acknowledge your presence at all in the cancer that wracked my mother's sick, small body.

Because how could a God of love and blessing ever bring that to her? To me?

.... How could a human being be so selfish?  How can I possibly be that ungrateful?

I'm sorry for my pride.  I'm sorry that I felt so scathed by you.

I count it all joy.  Everything you give is good, Father.

Forgive me, God, for my sin against you.  Heal me, please.

Turn the darkness into light.  Let the sun rise on my past.  Make me whole again- a new creation under you.

"If grace is an ocean, I am sinking."

"A line can be straight, or a road, but the heart of a human being?"

Do you know why I love my life?

Because as I sit here in my usual spot at Coach House, a fellow student looks at me, puzzled and asks, "Is that homework?" She motions to the 6 books splayed all over the table, the laptop on my lap and the earnest look on my face.  To which I lovingly get to reply, "Not at all.  This is just my life."

Yes.  This is my life.  Catcher, Eat Pray Love, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Bell Jar, Streetcar, Writing Down the Bones...

I only wish I also had Anna Karenina and Ariel with me, also.

It's a day for falling in love again with the books who first fell in love with me.

It's a day for dreaming of poetry lines to turn into tattoos.

It's a day for indulging the inner Stella Kowalski by immersing myself in my battleworn copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. I wish I could say I don't relate to Stella at all.  But I do.  Deeply.  All women do, in my opinion.  Stanley Kowalski is the ultimate misogynist, and thousands of women all over the world would sign up in a heartbeat to stay devoted to him forever, because his sensuous charm and ruggedness outweigh his arrogance and sexism in every area.  Sad, but true. Therein lies the true folly of women.

It's a day to continue in my dreamy delusions of a future romance with my own personal Holden Caulfield. (Because of my love for this character, I'm convinced that nobody I know is actually going to like the guys that I end up bringing home. What can I say? I like them bookish, misunderstood, multidimensional and highly intelligent. ;)

It's a day to be guided by the experiences and lessons learned and taught by Natalie Goldberg, Elizabeth Gilbert and Annie Dillard.  Be it in the arena of writing, truth-seeking, or insect stalking.

It's a day for finding and underlining my favorite quotes in The Bell Jar.  Ones just like this:

          "From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
          I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

It's a day for rejoicing in the simple fact that I just got a job as a Haystack Interpreter for the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce, and I will be staying in my beloved hometown all summer long.

Hallelujah, amen and amen.

Fall in love with your favorite book today, lovers.

Spend some time loving your libraries.

All the good words and healthy hours of reading in the world,

Xx,
Hannah

Pinterest Finds

I have succumbed.

Judge me not.

Here are a few of my favorite Pinterest finds thus far:

Most of these are from two boards of mine entitled "Summer Lovin'" and "Love. Give. Purify. Reflect. Realise."

Just a few things that I  love more than I am comfortable admitting.

Happy Pinning, Lovers.

<3

Words of Love

Preaching  (Bear with me for a moment to allow myself an exhortation):

You are all beautiful people.  I am pleased, honored and blessed to offer these words to you.  I know them to be of the utmost truth, because you are all alive, and were created in the image of The Most Beautiful.

Please realize your worth, today,  and please continue forward, sharing with someone else their worth.

This world is in a dire need of validation.  People are looking for someone to follow.  People are seeking a way to feel complete.  People are searching for truth-  and while we may not be able to give them those things, we can give each other the gift of understanding.  The gift of compassion.

Self- Actualization is under-rated and under-shared.  People need people, even those of us who are introverted, and try belligerently to deny the fact that we need anybody else- we do desperately need you.  We need each other.

Never stop needing someone else, lovers.  I've had to learn a difficult lesson in my life, and I urge you to realize this truth now before you have to learn it the hard way like I did.  It's shameful and painful to try to deny, so please just accept this and love it for the beauty it possesses: needing people is not now, and never, ever will be a weakness.

Our co-dependence is our strength.  The human race is designed to be united.  Give thanks for that. 

Sermon over.  I digress.