tenho saudades dessa menina!

as vezes discurso na minha igreja

I gave this talk today in my branch. Please enjoy:

Good afternoon brothers and sisters. Last week in Sunday School, we discussed Matthew 5. We recognize this chapter as Jesus’ infamous Sermon on the Mount. As we enter this chapter, we see our radical elder brother setting the record straight with his disciples as to what was expected of them from Him. I love this chapter. I believe that as Christians, it highlights our moral responsibility to put away any sort of social hierarchy and advocate love and equality among our sisters and brothers. I believe it shows us a way of living that, if implemented, would revolutionize our individual lives and communities. This chapter teaches us that salvation not only lies in our outward actions, but also with the heavier weighted inward thoughts. It teaches us how our interactions with our fellow brothers and sisters must be: full of love and less of preconceived judgments.

Alas, my talk today is NOT about the Sermon on the Mount, but I would, as a side note, recommend you to reread this beautiful manifesto and staple of the gospel by our Savior. I would, however like you to remember the closing verse of Matthew 5, where Jesus leaves us with a daunting invitation. He says that we need to “be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). In this case, the Greek translation of the word perfect means complete, finished and fully developed. I have often pondered this invitation. Even in my most valiant attempts, I find myself in particular to be a very selfish and prideful human; I am in no way finished or complete. What is interesting to me is that this invitation infers a process to go through rather than something we miraculously become. Sometimes the word perfect is used interchangeably with the word righteous and it is on this word that I would like to focus the subject of my talk. I wish to first discuss how we define righteousness. I would then like to categorize righteousness into three important relationships. I will then like to talk about how by nurturing these relationships we can cultivate a perfection of our very own.

First, how do we define righteousness? We call Jesus Christ the Son of Righteousness. Christ is the son of God, so we can assume that righteousness is an attribute of God. The word righteousness is a word composed of a plethora of other words: integrity, upright, just, innocent, true, and sincere. It is a moral and ethical duty to do right. When we are righteous we know our actions are pleasing to God. In the Old Testament, we understand righteousness to be a result of keeping the commandments, or doing rightly as part of a covenant relationship with God. As a person met the demands of hers or his social relationships this person was thought to be a righteous being. In the New Testament, righteousness is changed a bit with the introduction or emphasis that Christ puts on love, faith and mercy. Although the OT understanding is still recognized, faith and love for God becomes the motivating factor of doing right. As a person lives with faith in God and does His will, she or he is reckoned righteous by God.

I do not think it is very easy to be righteous and so I do not use the word lightly when I say someone is righteous—indeed, I would say that there aren’t many people in this world who I would assign this title to. For me, she or he would have to be saint-like to be deemed righteous. Perhaps that is why I think it appropriate that Christ is referred to as the Son of Righteousness, or as Righteousness himself. God is righteous because he is not only right, but because he does the right thing and because He puts right things that are wrong. Is not our purpose on Earth to “know the only true God and Jesus Christ” (John 17:3)—or to know Righteousness? Understanding what it means to be righteous is understanding eternal life and true happiness. Just look up righteous or righteousness in the Topical Guide, I promise you that you will find reference after reference saying that those who were righteous were happy. When we make righteousness become the working principle in all our relationships we develop a character like God’s.

Righteousness can be developed by doing right in the relationships we find ourselves in. There are three different relationships I would like to talk about: first, with our Heavenly Father and Mother—or God; second, with the Earth; and third with people. First, righteousness as it pertains to God and our relationship with Him. In a righteous relationship with God we are doing what is right, or we are following the commandments. We regard our relationship with God as a priority, as sacred and as real. In this regard we faithfully devote ourselves to be like God. We believe him when he says he will make us clean if we repent. I do not believe that simply following the commandments will get us an in with God though. The nature or quality of our relationship with God is a manifestation of our love and faith in him. It is a manifestation of the trust we have in him, in Christ, in repentance and grace--all that makes the Atonement real. Remember, to be perfect is to be fully developed, and our relationship with God is just one of the many we need to do right by, albeit a very important one.

Second, is our relationship with the Earth. Our interaction with the Earth and responsibility to do right by Her is a duty we do not often think of as a moral or religious responsibility. We see no commandment that says, “Do not litter,” or “renew, reuse, recycle” or “cut back on your carbon usage” or “reduce monoculture crops” or “eat meat sparingly” (oh, wait, I think that one may be out there already…). To me, pollution and the excessive overuse and disrespect for the Earth’s resources is just as sinful and hurtful to God and Mother Earth as it is when we lie, cheat or steal. Perhaps not a sin of commission—most of us are not actively destroying our Mother Earth, but a sin of omission by not doing anything to keep our beautiful earthly home clean, respected, healthy and beautiful. What kind of relationship do you have with the soil, the trees or the air you breathe? May I invite you cultivate this relationship righteously? Start a garden, recycle, drive less, walk more, buy less, learn where your food comes from and recognize what it is, get involved with your community and get educated.

Third is our relationship with the people around us. We have only to refer to the Sermon on the Mount to get the idea Christ wants us to have. In Matthew 5:38-44 it reads:

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. 41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Here we read of a drastic change in the social understanding of the Law as Christ infuses mercy, love, respect, and a pacifist outlook into what before was a black and white understanding of right and wrong. Turn then to Mosiah 4:26:

...for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God —I would that ye should impart of you substance to the poor, every man according to that which hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants.

I love this scripture because it charges us to be charitable with our less fortunate brethren. It charges us to put away pride and in humility give what has been blessed to us. The seriousness of this verse is qualified by the first phrase, “for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day.” And lastly to John 13:34-35:

34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Such a simple phrase, “love one another” and yet, I think it is the most neglected. Sure we love our family and our friends, and our hearts go out to people in need all over the world, but is that enough? It is very clear to me what our relationship with our fellowmen should be like if we want to deem it righteous and the word is love. I was excited when the 3-fold mission of the church became a 4-fold mission. If any of you are not unfamiliar with this addition, they are now: proclaim the gospel, redeem the dead, perfect the saints and now, care for the poor and the needy. While I appreciate our churches efforts to extend its helping hands to people in need around the world, I worry that many, including myself, let this be the excuse that keeps us from being “anxiously engaged in a good cause” ourselves, in our own communities (D&C 58:27-28). In the Doctrine and Covenants 58:27-28, we learn that we not only need to be involved, but that it is up to us individually to use our agency to choose to become involved in righteousness. When we chose to live our lives righteously we can as Ghandi said, “Be the change [that we] want to see in the world.”

My favorite Beatitude is found in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” I love this scripture because it shows us what happens as we lfill ourselves and strive to be righteous: that we will be filled. Think back of our definition of perfect—to be complete, finished and fully developed. I believe that as we care for the relationships we have with God, the Earth and its humanity, and try to do right by them, we shall become filled. We shall be filled with happiness, the Spirit and love. I am in no way close to this type of nirvana, and so I feel somewhat like the pot calling the kettle black here, but these are some of the things I have discovered about what it means to be righteous. I hope that my words have touched some of your hearts. I testify that we will not come to know righteousness by ourselves, but it is only through the Atonement and love that we are able to make righteousness the working principal in our personal lives. In Romans 10:3-4 it says,

3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

I emphasize again that we cannot do this by ourselves, and for this I am grateful for my Savior, who, by example, taught us how to live by righteousness and who comes in the meridians of my life to help bring balance and peace to me as I strive to attain righteousness. I testify that, as children of our Heavenly Parents, we will come to know them and become more like them, as we hunger and thirst after righteousness in the relationships we cultivate. I know God loves us. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

hoje retornei pra meu juventude.

Today I went through what was left of my childhood and subsequent teen and young adult life. Mementos. I love mementos and I keep everything. I have every handout from every class or activity that I have ever been too. I have movie ticket stubs, plane ticket stubs, museum ticket stubs. I have pictures. I learned that I have journal entries dating back to 1993--I was seven--to the present day and they fill an entire box (I'm afraid/determined to look at them in the next couple of days). I have dolls--even the ones that I so cruelly mistreated and gave horrible haircuts and dye jobs to; I have my mother's dolls from the 60's, with outfits my grandmother made for them. I have ponies and bears and puppies and, yes, I have Beany Babies. I have every note I have have ever taken in every class I have ever attended. I have every card ever written to me. I have every school paper I have ever written. I have vocab words. I have pennies from the 50's. I have pesos from the 50's. I have heirloom jewelry. I have baby clothes. I have a lot of things.

I threw most of it away. No, really. MOST of it. I filled a huge black, drawstring garbage bag full of stuff and put it out to the trash.

I don't need to keep notes from school.

I don't need to keep the birthday cards signed by distant relatives for my 9th birthday.

I don't need ticket stubs. I don't.

According to my eight year old self, I wanted to live on the beach next to a jungle with lots of animals in it. I wanted to swim with dolphins daily.

I used to write poems--POEMS--about love, flowers, the wind and trees when I was eleven.

I read, voraciously, weird books like the Bronte sisters books, classics like Anne of Green Gables and Nancy Drew. I kept lists of all the books I have ever read.

I was a driven, self-confident, attention-seeking, creative little human.

I found out that I liked to set goals for myself a lot, especially long-term ones. I probably found 3 or 4 lists that were supposed to be what/where I wanted to be in the future, including a time capsule one I wrote in September, 2000. I opened it today, five months late. Just an FYI on that: I have studied abroad, I have been to Italy, I have served a mission, I have learned another language, I have graduated college. I have not gotten married and I do not have three kids.

(REALLY??? THREE??? When did my past self think I would find the time to do all that and still somehow have three babies by age 24???)

a mulher...

Woman’s Rights

Gentlemen and Ladies: --Having been called upon to write upon the subject of woman’s rights, I have prepared a few words in response to the invitation and as a true expression of my individual feelings. Woman’s rights seems to me to be of so much importance that every woman should be interested in it, and should most earnestly endeavor to contend for it in a proper way and manner. There are only a few women who have their rights and who is it that deprives them of these? It is our brother man. I often think that man has uncalled for and unrighteous authority over those of the “weaker sex” as he is pleased to term woman., but everything that goes wrong is in many, yes, in most cases put upon woman’s shoulders, for her to carry as best she can.

I believe in honoring man in his own place but at the same time I do believe his wife should have equal rights with him. I am pleased to see the ladies striving to shake off the chains that have so long enslaved us and I shall rejoice to see the day when freedom’s banner for woman shall wave not only over this our fair land, but over all the world. When that day comes many evils will be trampled beneath our feet that today are tolerated by man.

I am in every sense of the word an advocate and a defender of woman’s rights, and I trust the day will shortly come when woman’s cause will triumph and she will stand free and untrammelled by any of the restraints now imposed upon her sex.

Sarah B. Layton

Kaysville, Utah.

The Woman's Exponent 1891-09-01 vol. 20 no. 5

Thank you Sarah, but we're still working for this equality you're talking about.

vou me mudar pra um ano novo e uma casa velha

The end is abruptly coming with the beginning starting just as abruptly.

Heading East is supposed to be a happy thing, but I'm sad. I'm sad because I will be away from those I have grown to love so, so much. Annnnd I will be facing a future, which I don't really want to deal with right now. The comforting thing is that I will still be an un-adult. I still have tons of school left. And as long as I'm in school, I'm not an adult, right? I remember with Erin graduated from college. Me and Alicia were like, "Whoa! Adult!" Now we are both graduated, and it doesn't feel any different from 3 years ago.

I keep having dreams of the future. Most of the time they make me nervous and anxious. (Partly because sometimes my dreams literally come true.)

One more petty frustration: I am afraid of heights--deathly afraid. Expletives flow freely when I find myself at 60+ feet, and it makes me mad. So mad. I get mad because I love to climb rocks, and sometimes loving to climb rocks means that you climb high. But if I am afraid of heights, I can not climb high. It wouldn't be such a problem (yes it would be) if everyone one around me wasn't afraid of heights. I am the singled one out. When I get high enough, my legs get shaky, my forearms stop contracting and my fingers no longer grip. This leads to falling, and falling really isn't so bad. I was scared of it before, but whateves, I've done it a couple of times now and I don't care about that anymore. It's this height thing that bothers me. Mostly because I don't know what to do to overcome it. It is like this ginormous barrier that keeps me from getting any better.

See you later 2010. I hope that 2011 brings good things. Really good and GREAT things. Noteworthy things.

I think I should have a goal of visiting 4 different countries during 2011 (preferably ones that I have never been to before, but repeats are allowed). Goal made.

A second goal is that I need to do something very awesome. I know this is ambiguous, but I know the feeling I'm going for in my head, and I'm aiming to get the feeling at some point this year.

A third goal is to take charge more. I love to leave responsibilities to other people. I love to be a follower. This isn't because I can't handle responsibility, but because I just don't like to deal with it, and sometimes I feel perfectly inadequate to lead anything. Such a stupid cop-out.

A fourth goal is to write more. I realize that I am not a great writer, but I also don't suck, and sometimes I'm really funny when I write, and most of the time, I really love to write. I think I will start with a short life history, since I will be living at home and will have access to details from my past with all my former journals/diaries so close at hand.

A fifth goal is to run another marathon. That means I need to chose which one to run and buy new running shoes.

A sixth goal is to get over this heights issue. That may involve me doing some dangerous things from very high up. I'm thinking paragliding or sky-diving or bungee-jumping? Or just rock climbing a whole bunch more. Something that would include jumping... This just needs to be gotten over.

GO 2011! BREAK!

nao tenho nada de paciencia.

I am currently trying to be patient and wait the three minutes my computer says it will take for kanye to finish dling, but I'm desperately impatient. WHY KANYE?! Why are you taking so long? It is 1am in the morning. I don't deserve this!

I feel like I'm 14 again, downloading as much off of napster as possible.

(Thought: I was 14 ten years ago. TEN YEARS AGO.)

olha, essa guria!

The story of Jonah from Corinth Baptist Church on Vimeo.

This girl is going to be a wonderful entertainer some day.

a vitoria e' minha

I made it.

Victory.

tu sabes quando tu queres algo quando...

The past weekend I was in Ca., which perhaps could have been a mistake (scholastically speaking of course), because my return reigns in 3 midterms and a quiz in 4 days, and who studies when they're on vacation--let's be honest here. It's Tuesday, and I'm putting money on me surviving the week. But my escape will be close. I may not make it out unscathed.

I can't wait for January 15th. On this day I will have NO immediate worries. NONE. No school to study for. No schools to apply to. No rent to pay. Of course, I will be jobless. And therefore, money-less. But who cares, I'll be a college graduate.

Eu creio...

i believe in being a good moral person.

i believe in mistakes.

i believe a woman is special, but not more than a man is.

i believe in my body.

i believe in telling someone their fly is undone or that they have spinach in their teeth.

i believe i am a sexual being, and i like it.

i believe that trees ARE the answer.

via

i believe in riding, running, climbing, dancing, etc...

i believe beards are beautiful.

via

i believe in eating tasty foods.

i believe in questions.

i believe in God.

i believe in Earth.

i believe in giving.

i believe in brothers and sisters.

i believe in root systems.

i believe in not doing your homework when you can do something worthwhile like read a good book that will probably stick with you longer than you homework will.

i believe in believing and faith.

i believe in breathing VERY DEEP breaths.

i believe in swimming naked.

i believe in being naked.

i believe in listening and giving chances and going back for seconds.

i believe in costco.

i believe in science.

i believe in birth.

illustration by Barry Falls

i believe in connections, synapses and electricity.

i believe in giving my heart a chance to pump fast and slow, delivering needed resources to my body organs and systems.

i believe that i will never understand the purpose of flys, ticks or mosquitoes.

i believe in harnessing power and releasing it.

i believe in quantum physics.

i believe in being alone.

i believe in love.

i believe in protein.

i believe in the right shoes for the right activity.

i believe in not wearing shoes.

i believe in personal manifestos.

i believe in taking copious notes.

i believe in balance and shifting your weight to keep it.

i believe in childhood friends.

i believe in photographs and eyes.

i believe in mountains.

i believe in my parents.

i believe in gardens.

i believe in writing to the end of a page.

i believe in even the distribution of space.

i believe in stars.

i believe in taking precautions and wearing a helmet and stretching.

i believe in sweating.

i believe humans are inherently good.

i believe in nature and nurture.

i believe in myself.

i believe in water.

i believe in clean laundry.

i believe in warm feet.

i believe in waking up with the sun and going to bed with it too.

leve/pesado

I need friends.

Explanation: I have friends. They are humans. They are boys and girls. I have some VERY good friends. I am so happy I have them. They are so good to me. I don't know what I would do with out them. And so I come to realization that I need them. I need friends.

I was thinking earlier about the connection we make with the people we come into contact with and the type of relationship we form that makes us consider closeness with those people. Sitting at my desk at work I look over at my colleagues, who I see EVERY day, and I know that I will never consider a close relationship with any of them. But a 5 minute conversation with another person and it's sealed the deal in regards to our desires for closeness with one another. I have friends who I camp with. Friends who I climb with. Friends who I listen to music with. Friends who I garden with. Friends who I hug. Friends who I just LOVE LOVE LOVE. Friends who I read with. Friends who I go to concerts with. Friends who I laugh with. Then sometimes, SOMETIMES you get lucky. Sometimes you run into people who you can do ALL those things with. Keep those. They are exceptional.

Like this friend:
I like her. A lot.

a distancia fez uma encerrada

"Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death."
-Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

I don't want to die. I want to be able to see.


I love mountaintops.

o que significa ser "bonita"? nada.

I am one year older. One more year to add to my amounting years of wisdom and foolishness. I was perusing on the world of google reader and found a wonderful youtube vid posted on a friends blog. I loved it, so I am reposting it.

What is the meaning of pretty anyway? The word doesn't own any depth.

a familia que tenho...

Nieces and nephews are probably the best inventions created. They are cute. They love you. They are silly. They make car noises when they play with you. They get excited to make flower crowns and learn how to leg wrestle. I am in love with my nieces and nephews. This weekend I was able to travel up to visit my brother and his beautiful family.

Conner was fascinated with the lines in the leaves--he would hold them up to the sunlight and point them out for me.

Adventurous Sebrina and Tricia.

Cadin and his great hair.

Conner sitting on the porch waiting for the sun to set.

Chris, Tricia, Me, Conner, Cadin, Sebrina and Abree in front of the Idaho Falls on the Snake River.

Family is so fulfilling.

as cabelas nao aguenta mais esse ritima

I've been trying a new thing: not washing my hair. Inspired by my dear friend Sara, as well as my age-long desire to dread my hair, I decided to experiment. After almost 2 weeks of not washing the locks, I decided I do not fancy the non-washing regime. Perhaps a week of non-washing is tolerable. My issue is not the way my hair looks but how it feels. My hair itself looks great. It gets very curly, and I've gotten several complements. But my hair is far from touchable. As Emma says, "Please just touch the lower portions." But seriously, just touch the lower portions because the closer you get to my scalp, the thicker and heavier and oilier my hair gets. Don't be grossed out. My hair is NOT dirty. I rinse it on a regular basis, but the natural oils have built up a bit. It basically feels as if I have a lot of product in my hair. On the upside, my hair requires absolutely NO maintenance.

Alicia and I were discussing last night our long hair. Conclusion: we love it. Two and a half years ago Alicia and I, along with our friend Erin, made a pact to not cut our hair (we were all sporting short hair at the time) until I got back from my mission. I've been back from my mission for a year, and none of us have seriously gone to the scissors. Probably the best pact we could have ever made.

escrever para esclarecer.

I've been doing this thing the past couple of weeks. Just writing exercises. In the morning I sit and write until I can't write any more or until I have at least 3 pages. I believe the recent surge of blog-making urges can be attributed to this.

Sometimes the days are COMPLETELY overwhelming for no reason. Today I worked for three hours. That's it. But I arrived home utterly exhausted, believe this was a result of thinking too much. I spoke with my mother. She was making strawberry jam, and I became suddenly homesick. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does it is strong and it's then that I must leave the land of college and being alone and enter the family world. Since it was too early in the day to head to my sister's, I did the next best thing: I headed to Alpine. Alpine is the home of my second family. A place where I can pretend I'm 18 years old again and living in CT. Spending all day under the sun, surrounded by the glorious mountains, in a saline pool, with little ones and a brand new puppy has its healing factors.

Ten things I would like to do before I die:

1. Make a beautiful quilt

2. Be a midwife

3. Write my memoirs

4. Maintain a flourishing garden

5. Build a bed

6. Teach a child how to ride a bike

7. Teach a women to love herself

8. Say "I love you" and kiss a tree in all 50 states

9. Hike the Appalachian trail

10. Climb a mountain a year

sou uma boa pessoa

Have you ever wanted to change something in your life? Bad habits mainly? Something that you do almost on accident because you don't realize that it's even happening?

I do.

A lot.

faz um ano

Chegei da missao faz um ano. Que coisa mais incrivel.

I realize I am not a competent blogger, and after a couple of attempts it has become apparent that blogging is not my calling.

And yet, I blog.

Perhaps its an internal fear of not writing something clever enough for people to enjoy. Maybe that same fear that keeps me quiet and listening in a crowd rather than life of the party is the one that keeps my creative juices flowing. Perhaps I just need to think more.

A question was presented the other night: what is it about yourself that you are currently changing your mind about it? I was supposed to answer it, and at first I knew what it was, but now I'm not so sure. I tend to talk about change a lot. I like the idea of change of moving on. I thought I was turning into someone who was capable of change. I sincerely thought that this was it! But when I am put face to face with changes I should be making, I push change away. I rationalize and I want to continue on the path I've been following for some time.

So bottom line: I am a hypocrite and you probably shouldn't listen to what I say. Although I may say some encouraging things or give inspiring and clever and smart advice, I don't listen to half the things that come out of my mouth.

But I don't think I'm alone in this, and that is the comforting to me. I know there are other people in this world and in my little sphere of existence that have these tendencies, and perhaps we are getting better. I know I'm trying.

A lista vai para sempre

I have always been accustomed to making lists. I think it comes from my mother. I love the pleasure that comes from crossing off something you have previously written down. Grocery lists, packing lists, book lists, to-do lists, pro/con lists--the list (hehe) could go on! My favorite list to make has always been in my planner. I love to write down my plans for the day and then recap and cross the things off that I accomplish. It gives a productive feeling.

But a little less than a year ago, I got the notorious iPhone. It has a calender inside, on which you can put in events and things to do. You can even set an alarm to go off to remind you to do those things--you basic PDA functions. I thought, now that I have this wonderful feature, I can put the old planner away. Technology won over paper. Or so I thought.

After 10 months of trying to adapt to the PDA-style of keeping a planner and making lists, I found that I can't connect with technology in that way! The joy of seeing the daily list shrink as you bring the pen down and run your strike through the individual words was gone. It's like something inside of me was rebelling, saying, "You are better than a computer! Are you letting IT control your life?" This inner rebellion kept me from keeping appointments and making to-do lists and lessened my productivity. (OK, so I can't blame it ALL on the iPhone, but I can put a little blame on the thing.)

I reached the pivot-point last night. I was tired of not crossing things off! Not paying attention to the things I needed to do during the day because of a inner rebellion against technology. No, I did not resolve to give in to this rebellion, it is still alive and well inside of me. But I did pull out my planner. My beloved BYU, recycled paper, academic planner! This morning I sat on my bed and joyously wrote down what I needed to do this week in my planner. That old feeling of productivity rolled back into my heart. The confidence to accomplish crept in. Empowered.

The iPhone is still in use: email checking, banking, facebook stalking, game playing, information getting, texting, phone calling, etc... But never again will I substitute my planner for electric calendars. Not even for the notorious iPhone.

I have already crossed off numerous things from today--I am tempted to write down "go to bed" just so I can cross it off and feel that feeling.

What a great day it was.

a palavra é chega

The emotion extinguisher (ē-mō-shun x-ting-gwish-ur):

1. Eradicating any emotion associated with bad and/or sinful acts.

2. The act of running away from awkward, intimate and/or embarrassing moments.

3. Comparable to a human version of the fire extinguisher.

Thank you Wills.

I just finished my rough draft for my causal analysis of Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension. I am pumped. My mother is going to talk to Dr. Irwin, her associate, who after almost 20 years, has finally been able to do his long-awaited clinical trial of thiamine, and who also inspired me to write this paper. Thiamine, Dr. Irwin says, is the answer to curing PIH, which currently has no known cause or effective treatment and affects 5-10% of all pregnancy's worldwide. According to Dr. Irwin, PIH is caused by a Thiamine (thiamin: vitamin B1, responsible for facilitating carbohydrate metabolism in the cell in order to provide energy for proper function) deficiency and can be treated effectively through thiamine supplementation. If you want to know more about it, let me know, I've become an expert.