Day of Remembrance

Three main things: college life, cabbage patch dolls, star crunches.

Sunday we had the usual Mosaic activities, and then afterwards Kevin and I headed down to Santa Monica to hang out with a group of college students from Pepperdine University (located in Malibu). We got Johhny's New York Pizza and then headed up to Malibu to get some coffee, play Apples to Apples, and visit the dorm/apartment of some of the students. It was so much fun to get to meet all of them... they were so friendly- inviting us in to their lives. I remembered how fun it was to be in college, to live with four women, and most importantly the way that "time" feels so different. This one is too hard for me to explain right now I think... lets just say I remembered nights that never have to end, friends that never have to leave, homework that always gets done even if you procrastinate.

On the way home we stopped by Target and I saw Cabbage Patch Dolls... I haven't seen those in years! I stopped in the aisle and walked over and said, "They still sell those?" and as I turned around another lady had stopped behind me, astonished as well. They even had hair made of yarn! I missed them so much I was tempted to buy one just for the sake of good memories... I remember in elementary school when my friends and I would hide them in our backpacks at school b/c we were embarrassed that we still played with dolls... yet we still loved them so much!
When I was 18 I worked at Cracker Barrel for a month or so (my typical length of employment for that time frame) and the kitchen staff used to call me "the cabbage patch girl" b/c my eyes are close together just like theirs. I hope they keep those dolls around at Target!

Lastly, Kevin and I found star crunch snacks! We used to eat thesein high school after lunch. I ate one star crunch EVERY DAY my junior year of high school until one day I suddenly got really grossed out (for reasons I still can't explain) and couldn't eat another one. We've been checking local grocery store isles for them recently so we were excited.

It was a great day.

Rambling: City of Dreams

From my perspective, that’s what LA seems to be… the City of Dreams. Reality is what you make of it.

You can live downtown in a high rise loft and be an ambitious business professional. You can live in the rundown back neighborhoods of Hollywood, taking acting classes at night while working the morning shift at Starbucks. You can live at Venice Beach, hang peace signs throughout your apartment, beg for money to smoke pot in your spare time, and surf all morning while the waves are high. You can live in the trendy Westside, where all the designers seem to work and live and while you sit in traffic- you can window shop from the countless showrooms and furniture/Italian kitchen stores you will slowly pass by. You can live downtown, or on the eastside, and attend a fashion design school while searching thru the warehouse district for hidden treasures. You can live just north of the city, where the families seem to gather, find a small house for around half a million dollars, and walk your children to school in the morning before heading out to work. You can be a tri-millionaire (is that even a word?) and live in Beverly Hills and spend as much money on your front lawn as you do on your car - because the landscaping is just as important to maintain as the rest of the material goods.

You can… do whatever you want.

At Mosaic they recently did a quick interview of random people they encountered on the street, asking them how much control they had over their future. Almost all of the people responded by saying they had a lot of control- all they had to do was make good decisions and choices today. And Erwin himself frequently says the most spiritual thing you can do is... choose.

Choose your dream. And then live it.

Raised in a more traditional church culture, I was raised to be “weary” of dreaming too big. You might hope for too much. (Or maybe I just told myself that.) As if it is only God’s job to dream of the future, and yours to just accept today. Or… if you are a big dreamer, you are too proud and need a more humble view of life. I think that’s the one that got to me the most. Somehow dreams got muddled in with pride so I found them impossible to separate. But… this City of Dreams makes me wonder, do I dare to dream? What am I willing to risk to find the life I was created for? I think I’ve found that it’s not a desire to be humble that kept my dreams small, but a lack of courage.

I’m not entirely sure where I am going with this. It just came up today as I wondered again about the future- as Kevin and I try to decide where we might be headed to next, this upcoming summer. I have to admit I feel so overwhelmed… there are too many options for me. But I also thought of an option for myself… usually I let Kevin do all the dreaming and then put it upon myself to just be the one who just focuses on making them come true… but today I had my own dream and so for what its worth, here it is: My new idea of the week:

It is quite simple really. I created such a huge intro that you all think this is amazing… so the reality of how small it is, is slightly embarrassing, but I’ve got to start somewhere. I want to teach. I want to be a college professor. Teach what? I have no idea; I think that’s why I have to go to huge cities like LA and maybe New York, or maybe San Francisco to find out. But that’s what I want to do. And since my parents are considering moving back to Denver in a few years, I’ve started to wonder if someday I’d go back too. I could teach at the University of Colorado, teach something, and it would be fun b/c Boulder is known for being crazy and liberal and natural/freedom loving so I’d fit right in. (Although I’m not fully any of those things, I’m just drawn to them strongly.) And if we ever do have children, my parents would be somewhere around so that they would get to know our kids and so they’d never be too far away (aka: So I could send my kids to them all the time)… countercultural from today’s “go out and leave your family b/c the world offers more” ideas. (And by my sudden anxiety about having kids in a huge city with nobody you know or trust around to help…. And we are nowhere close to having kids, but I got to keep including them b/c I’m afraid life will go by too fast and I’ll forget.) And… it’s the city, the state rather, that I grew up in. How fun to go out and live all these other places to return to where it all began for you. (Yes I know I was born, technically, in Wyoming, but… we moved to Denver soon after and so I don’t really count that.)

That’s my rambling for today.

South Bay Sports

Well... here we all are. This is my Santa Monica soccer team that I've played on since January (ten whole months). Its basically a year round league, although there are three seasons, they follow each other so closely, you are lucky if you get one week off. We play every Sunday afternoon, 18 blocks from the Pacific Ocean.

Last season, we won the Championships. Aparently, its been awhile since they've won one... since they have been playing together for years... they said the last time they won was maybe five years ago. Wow. Well... all that matters is that they DID win. I play for a championship team, even if that means every five years :)

My team is so fun and so LA and thats why I wanted to blog about it. I wanted to tell you about my teammates. Lets see... one is an avid reptile fan- he raises them in his backyard and takes them to huge "reptile rallies" around the state/country to sell/display. No joke. Another's job is to test drive Jeeps and test their "rolling" ability... to see how much they roll in crashes. He says Jeeps suck and roll the most of any SUV. Good to know, I guess. Another guy has lived in LA his whole life and is a pool boy. No pun intended, or maybe one is, but this pool guy could cast perfectly for the next American Pie movie. Another guy, originally from France, had a dream to write a book about world soccer- and so thats what he did. He spent years, every cent he had, and traveled the world interviewing every soccer team on the globe... and published a book. He is working on his revision now, in French. One of the women works for a non-profit organization that raises money and awareness for autism. Their next fundraising event, this weekend, is a Hollywood Premiere screening of the movie "El Cortez" starring Lou Diamond Phillips, with a VIP party following that includes free food and drinks and meeting the actors. And lastly, another one of the guys, is studying acupuncture and recently sent out an email asking if anybody would volunteer to be his dummy so he could try out his new techniques. The ones I didn't mention, I just don't know enough about yet.

Some info about me on this team: I am the youngest, the only one married, the only one from Kansas, and the only one that the team likes to call by my full name "nikki knox". Not just "nikki", not just "knox"... they love my name and say it all, with a laugh. Maybe I should be concerned about this?

Last Sunday was the last game of this season, and we've won all of our games except one. I have to admit, I've had a crappy season. I am just not playing well- can't get my head into the game. I've been so frustrated and sorta embarrassed, that I've thought about quitting, but... this team is just too crazy and fun to leave. Last week I played much better- but I really think its because our opponents were a team of "bar dancers" (no kidding!) that decided to form a soccer team, and then pass out little flyers with glamor shots of them, inviting people to come out and support them, or come by the bar. So today I have bruises all over the arms and legs... I thought to myself "what do models know about soccer" and learned real quick- they know how to throw those elbows, thats for sure. My arms prove it. I got into a fiesty match with a few, but we pulled through with minor injuries :)