LG Chocolate touch

no i have NOT gotten a new phone. but i WANT THIS ONE SO BADLY!

pics from the weekender in vegas

i dont know how much i can express.....this man is awesome to me! i own ever one of the movies and i love love love the story and the dramatic music and everything. the theme song is my ringtone for heaven sake! im so stoked to have this picture.

in order: mandy, charissa and tristen. roommates, aka ''the girls downstairs" minus michelle

nathan was singing along to the country song the fremont street band was singing

i think i may have just ruined what could possibly have been the cutest picture ever taken of two people.

how did nathan get so freaking photogenic? its just not fair.

quote of the trip #1:

me: "they kept saying we'd make a cute couple."

megan: "tristen, i think you'd make a cute couple with anyone."

me: "psh! well...thanks for the compliment but stop lying now, please."

class ish again

so i know all this changing school schedule stuff is annoying. to none more than me, believe me! but i have another switch up that may work and may mess it all up horrifically. i took out the engl sci fic class so i could sign up for engl poetry class. im only waitlisted, however so if no one drops it i wont get in AND i may be too late to get back in to the enlg sci fic class. see what i mean about walking on thin ice? seriously.

schedule update. forget the old one

MWF-- 8am Family Communication
9am Earth Quakes, Volcanos and Natural Disasters
10am Intro to Imaginative Literature: Sci Fic
R (thursday) 4pm earth quakes, volcanos and natural disasters lab
TBA Black History Month Conference
TBA Native American Week Conference

and im done! yay!!!

oh AND!

also! i finally submitted all my recent poems to the kolab canyon review thing. hopefully they're good enough that i can get published this next year. yay! just the possibility is paralyzing!

news

signed up for classes finally.

bio- human sexuality
hist- black history month conference
hist- native american week conference
geo- earthquakes, volcanos and natural disasters
engl- intro to imaginative literature: sci fic

i'll have to work less hours but it should be fine. starting at noon instead of 11am. but im keeping the faith so i dont freak out about less money. hah oh well.

impossible

Odysseus told his men
To plug their ears with wax
Curiosity triumphed over fear
What does the song sound like?
I only want to hear.

Enjoy the pleasures
but forego the consequences.
If only that were possible in reality.

I want to feel his mouth on my neck
His breath in my ear
And see the pleasure of it in his eyes.

If only he could tie me up
and save me
from the effect of this cause.
A stone of action
Dropped in the pool of consequences.

The ripples would be my ruin.

Better to hope but not indulge.
To imagine but never execute.

within the hope of night

I awaken to find a misty realm
Where raindrops glisten among the fallen,
Withered leaves of autumn.

The sacrificial plumage adorning each oak and maple
ignites, like the feathers of a phoenix,
engulfing the world before plummeting to the ground.

Red, orange and yellow curls mingle
With splashes of heaven upon the sidewalks.

The glow of each stationary lamppost
Beckons like a safe harbor in a storm
Of fluttering leaves upon stable branches.

I walk alone and as I lift my face to the sky
My cheeks feel the water diamonds
Released from the hovering white world above.

I marvel at the sensation of angels tears
As the stars play peek-a-boo through
The thick pregnant clouds.

10/20/09

i call this one....love note

Write a love note
Never to be sent

Take it, keep it, hide it.
Always hiding. Hide the smile
Hide the affection
Hide the love
Hide it from everyone.

Keep it small
Keep it contained
Keep it always hidden
Hidden from everybody.

Scribble initials on notebook corners
And gum wrappers.
Write it but tear it out,
Ball it up
Throw it away.
Keep it hidden
Keep it safe.

Sneak pictures when he’s not looking.
Get the eyes
Get the smile
Get the beauty
Save the image. Never to forget.
But never let anyone see.
Never let anyone guess.
Never let anyone know.

The truth would make you prisoner.

i know i know. seasons and more seasons. big deal

all the leaves dropped on the brand new snow fall.

more amazing colors

right before the snow fell

snowy/ rainy worlds

mixed seasons

i love seeing all the green still in the world when snows trying so hard to cover it all up. it snows and all the green leaves drop like rocks!

the leaves on the top make it look like an iced cake with candles stuck on top. cute, right? haha

the note scene

She angrily ripped the note from her pocket. Tearing off the bottom portion with the forbidden words he would never see, she handed him the lined paper. The blue stripes reminded her of the classic prison uniforms Hollywood convicts wore in her imagination. She knew that with every word they spoke, with every moment they spent together she was getting closer and closer to wearing that black and white jumpsuit.
Her tight fist held the bottom half of the note. Her rainbow polished fingernails made indentations in her palm, and she felt her pounding heartbeat in her pressed fingertips.
They talked. They fought. She yelled. He grunted and huffed hearty sighs. They touched; a hand on the shoulder, a teasing tug of her braid. They joked. They laughed. They smiled. They apologized.
He read the note out loud. "I am not like Amber. Amber humiliated you in front of people who cared about you. Amber called you creepy. Amber almost had you and lost you because of her own idiocy. I am not like Amber."
He smiled smugly and tucked the folded paper into his jacket pocket.
His grin confused her. So many hinting signals. So many dropped lines and half suggested compliments. Tongues bitten to suppress voicing desires. She didn't know what to make of it all. And her innate curiosity and urge to delve deep and explore every topic of conversation that was brought up scared her. She refused to give in to these temptations, knowing the phrase, "And one thing led to another," all too well.
She would not know what his smiles meant until June. The thirteenth of June. She had to physically stop herself from counting down the days. Till it was safe. Till it was legal. If it came up before then it would not be because of something she had said. It would not be her doing.
They smiled. They joked. They agreed. They said goodbye. They walked away.
And as her back turned to him and her feet carried her away from everything that called out to her heart, she reverently took the crumpled ball of paper from her pocket. Her fingers uncurled the creased and wrinkled note. Four words, the lines, thin and crooked on the soft page stared back at her. The forbidden words. The conclusion of the note he seemed to be so proud of. Her dirty, destroying secret.

"Amber didn't love you."

and days later megan retaliated by writing this:

Highbeams tickle the edges of all i can see. Anticipation rises as my destination is set. Cool crisp air kisses my cheeks as i step out of the car to see more than i hoped for. A brilliant light flashes through the night as it fades as quickly as it ...appeared; leaving a streak in the blue sky. A falling star, a wish is made. More follow in suit. High hopes are met and this is where dreams begin.

Midnight Adventures

Possibilities are endless with a full tank of gas.
A mission for movies takes us away from home.
Road trips aren't about the destination.
Good tunes and good company, just like your dad said.
We miss our exit on purpose,
miles passing as the playlist runs down.
We keep driving as the invisible moon hangs overhead.
The eternal stretch of highway leads us past field after field;
escaped cows and mile markers.
We laugh and head bang.
Spontaneity continues to take over.
Pulled off to the side we star gaze with blankets,
butterfly knives, and cell phone flash lights.
The milky way more than makes up for frozen cheeks.
Silence consumes us as the air chills.
Our journey continues,
the city lights blinking behind us like stars.
Silly superstitions are always a laugh
and we hold our breath and lift our feet
as cattle grates pass below our tires.
Every mile a stolen pleasure, we chase tail lights, escaping civilization.
10-17-09

my favorite one

this was just carpeting the edges of the parking lots. i loved the reds and almost purple colors in there. thought it was amazing.

some more pics

awesome leaves on suu campus

at parawan gap looking at the petroglyphs

megs and i watching the new moon trailer after WEEKS of being too busy for pattinson. sorry rob.

pics and ish

i found this picture on facebook--i think one of Thayne's friends had it posted-and i just fell in love with the amazing colors and contrasts and the light piercing the sky and everything. had to share it--even though it wasn't mine in the first place.

this is a picture my friend Megan took while hiking/exploring this afternoon. i loved the perspectives included in the shot. thought she did an incredible job.

could not go a moment more

without sharing this mans beauty with the world. Tanner Cohen. the new {gay} zac effron. im in love! find myself in the position of being a genuine fag hag once again, dangit. :D jk he's just amazingly gorgeous and oh so talented. acting, singing, being pretty; you name it, he can do it and do it well!

PART ONE

so im sure every one's been curious. and i've finally decided to share. my life.

after moving, i had summer break. dads surgery, recovery, moms ish and a trip to indiana {pics to come later}. lots more happened but as i am a college student im not resposible for remembering anything when the semester isnt in session. therefore blanks have been drawn.

my house is nothing special from the outside so i wont be posting pics of it but i do LOVE LOVE LOVE my roommates. technically it isnt my first time living with non-relatives but katie pretty much counted as a sister as far as i was concered so it FEELS like the first time. i have been deeply blessed with these girls. they constantly remind me that im a bad influence on them because i so encourage openness and honesty. we talk about everything and just finished a competition on who could go without shaving their legs for the longest. michelle won. i lost by the second day. just couldnt do it. they save me from uncontrollable situations often and i pay it forward by saving them from bugs and other critters we happen to find. its a win win.

school is tougher this year but only bc my intensity is stablizing. my schedule is as follows:
monday, wednesday and friday:
8am-8:50 Nutrition
9am-9:50 Intro to Sociology
tuesday and thursday:
7am-8:20 American Civilizations
8:30-9:50 Intermediate writing: Shakespeare and the Rennesance
monday-friday:
11am-2:30pm work at the Post-High school

so yeah--thats that. so far grades are still good but the "early to bed, early to rise" rule is absolutley breaking me! im trying and im trying had but that doesnt always cut it.
what else can i blabber on about?
boys.
pretty much nonexistant right now. got some small crushes on other classmates but mostly i've been focusing my spare energy on the friends i already have. we've been needing each other pretty regularly.

panda express has become my new shrink. seriously, ill call megan and we will go to panda. we both order the same thing everytime and we talk while we eat. after we're done we drive around town {mostly the back routes from cedar to enoch} and sing loudly to random music while the wind flows through our hair and cleanses our souls of he negative energy we were harboring.

speaking of cleansing my soul, i have been writing some pretty intense things lately. i can include some of that later, if peeps ask for it.

MORE LATER--LOVE YOU GUYS

The Exodus (part one)

Trudi and I are moving.

She has decided to move to Washington state in a little city called Cashmere. And I will be moving just one or two neighborhoods over from where I am right now. Mom and Dad came into town yesterday and are going to be staying in Hatch while they help us out. Trudi will be moving most of her stuff to Hatch for storage and then renting a truck and making the journey up to Washington with Trayci and Mom. They will bring the truck back down for her. And most of this will be happening Tuesday-Thursday.

We will be very sad to leave this house that we love so much. After all Trudi went to get in here, its only an act of God that would make her move away from it. Most of her friends {and especially the older women in her ward} are very sad to see her leave the area.

As for me, finals are all this week and I'm so ready for the semester to be over. Only one more month of work at the high school till the summer is official. I'm gonna be working at a little antique store about 50 yards from my new residence (thanks mostly to Taneil and her amazing connections). SO! I'm done typing. Back to packing or writing papers, doing dishes or folding laundry. ...I think I feel my third wind coming on...or is this the fourth one?

my first intermediate writing assignment {got an A-}

Tristen Fagg
1/26/09
IW: Science and Values

My Emotional Technological Story

It was July 3, 2007 when I got the phone call that felt like the end of the world. As a girl who comes from a very large and tightly knit family I have the capacity to care a great deal about others. And when those I care for are in danger of any kind I rely on the technological advances of my generation to help save them. Whether it be a new model of weapon in the hands of a police officer or the machines that keep one on life support during a coma. Technology, though some attest it in its many forms, saves lives. And I am grateful for it.
I was getting ready for work when the phone rang. It was my sister, Trayci. She said, "I don’t want you to worry, but we need your prayers." I froze. My mind was eerily crystal clear for about three seconds while she explained what had happened. My 65 year old father, located in Las Vegas, had had a heart attack. Open heart surgery was imminent. Doctor’s speculated a quadruple by-pass. He had felt it coming and gotten to the hospital twenty minutes before the heart attack hit. Had he been anywhere else he would have died from complications.
My heart began racing and I started pacing as my mind went wild with possibilities. Instead of listening to my sisters calming attempts my mind was bringing up and discarding ideas of how to get from Cedar City to Las Vegas in rapid succession.
I need to get to Vegas, I thought, Drive?
My car won’t make it.
Bus fare?
I have no money.
I have to get there....
And soon....
But how?
As the youngest member of my family I have grown accustomed to getting what I want. Those who do not know me would call me a spoiled control freak. I prefer to think of myself as determined and self motivated. If I want something badly enough, I will find a way to get it. And if I cannot have what I want, I do not want it anymore. I wanted to get to Las Vegas. I needed to get to my father. To make sure he lived. To make sure he knew I loved him. I realized my mere presence had no affect on whether he lived or died but he sure as hell was not going to die while I was a state away twiddling my thumbs and pretending my world was still intact.
I suddenly remembered Trayci on the phone and started paying attention. She was telling me the story of what had happened.
For the past year or so my father had been employed at Wal-Mart. Not as a greeter, he’s not quite that old yet, but as a hardware specialist. The employee parking was about a quarter of a mile away from the store and it was in the middle of summer in the Las Vegas desert so you can imagine the temperature hindered my dad’s progress to his place of employment. Usually by the time he got into the store he was winded so he would sit and rest for a minute or two, just to catch his breath. He would then progress to the back of the store and begin working. Right on time, of course, because my father was never one for tardiness.
On this particular day he barely made it through the parking lot. He sat and waited to catch his breath but noticed a slight "fluttering" feeling in the space between his throat and his clavicle. Five minutes passed and he still was not feeling well enough to start working, or to even get up and start walking again. So he got on his cell phone and called his house. My brother, Thayne, in town from Provo for my dad’s birthday party the previous day, answered the phone. Per my dad’s request he picked him up and drove him to the hospital, calling my mother on their way. She met him there not even two minutes later and within another five minutes he was checked in and sitting on an exam table. He began describing his experience to the attending doctor and asked, "Did I have a heart attack?"
"No," the doctor replied, "It would have been a much stronger sensation than that."
They got my dad a nitrogen patch and applied it to his chest with the prediction that it would calm his heart and subdue his symptoms. But within seconds my dad felt more ill than before. He started vomiting and while he was bent over the bucket the heart attack hit.
The doctor had been leaning against the door frame while the nurses attended to my fathers needs and my mother swears she heard him mutter, "NOW, you’re having a heart attack."
They were able to control my fathers pain while the heart attack lasted. And when it finished they immediately took him to examining rooms and ran tests to know how severe the heart valves were blocked. More detailed information than that I cannot tell you because my mom was the only one to receive the full report and she did not understand most of it. After my dad had been rolled away and she was left to worry, she called everyone she could think of to spread the news. That is how I ended up frozen in silent debate with myself and on the phone with Trayci. I was still in shock so when she asked if I was ok and told me she needed to make some more calls I nodded to myself and hung up. I stood in the middle of my front room staring through the window at my broken down red Buick and let my mind churn.
The phone rang again. It was my sister, Trudi, my roommate and yin to my yang. She asked me if I had talked to Trayci already. I remembered to speak this time, instead of just nodding. She told me she had talked it over with a co-worker of hers and knew how we were going to get to Las Vegas but that I was going to have to wait until she got off work at 3:30pm. I glanced at the VCR clock, hopefully. It read 9:47am in thin green digital numbers. My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach and I hung up the phone yet again. I called my boss and told him what was happening. He gave me the week off.
Great, I thought, now there’s nothing to keep my mind off the drama and death.
I would have hated working with customers while in shock for fear of exploding over something as small as a complaint but sitting at home, creating ways to distract myself from everything that was so out of my control was not going to help me either. I experimented with different distractions. Cleaning, I hypothesized out keep my hands and my mind busy enough. Failed. My hands did the scrubbing and I caught myself more than once not even looking at the soap stains on the tub, gazing off into the dismal future; the future where my kids grew up without a grammpa.
Distraction theory number two: shower. I don’t even know what I was thinking on this one but it failed miserably. The shock wore off and the noise of the shower was enough to cover the sounds of my crying. In short I ended up curled in the fetal position while scalding water rained over me and mixed with the tears. After about thirty minutes of that I got out and the phone rang. My sister, Taneil this time. She told me, with tears in her voice that dad was going into surgery and that everything was going to be okay.
I countered with, "You don’t know everything’s going to be okay. Are you a doctor Taneil, because they sounded pretty worried, according to Trayci."
"Whether dad comes out of surgery or not, Tristen, everything IS going to be okay."
At that point in the conversation the sorrow disappeared and the rage took over. I swore at my sister, for the first time in my life. And I angrily hung up the phone, wishing I could slam it on the receiver like the good old days before wireless took over. The rage subsided and the sorrow began again. I had been angry because I knew she was right.
In my religion we believe that mortal life is not the end. Death is not the end. Life on earth is a testing period, where one proves his worth by following the commandments placed before all men by Heavenly Father. And it is by one’s faith, obedience and works that one is saved, not by grace alone. Death, according to my belief, is the graduation from the testing period to the judgement period. Following which one is placed into the kingdom of heaven one deserves.
My father would be okay. I would be okay if he died. I knew that. It would be hard living without him. It would be hard raising children in a world where he did not exist anymore. But I believed, I knew I would see him again. That he would be happier wherever he was headed for.
But that was not what I wanted. So I refused to accept even the possibility of him dying because of this pathetic heart attack. What was a heart attack, a three minute convulsing of the heart, a mere muscle, to my powerhouse of a father? There was no way he was leaving me because of a muscle.
With this new found determination I made a few phone calls of my own. Some friends helped me get through the longest part of the day by watching movies and letting me talk or not talk, as the mood struck me. I will be forever in their debt.
Trudi got home at 3:30pm, as promised and we made our way to her co-workers son’s place of employment. We borrowed his car and made it to Las Vegas in record time. An hour or so of waiting with some of my siblings on the remarkably comfortable couches and attempting to distract ourselves, either with conversation or watching t.v. and we were fetched by the nurses. They calmly explained that the surgery went well and that he was still in recovery. A collective sigh of relief swept through the group huddled around the informants and we all hugged each other and wept softly on shoulders.
Another hour came and went and we were able to see him. They warned us that he would not remember anything said to him tonight. And that he would look terrible. But they did not warn us enough. My mother was the first to go in. She returned to us in record time and she sought me out and hugged me long and hard. A few tears later she said quietly, "I’m not a widow. He hasn’t left me yet."
I grasped her hands and squeezed them, trying to give her some of my newly found strength. It was then that I noticed the extra jewelry on her fingers. My dad’s wedding band and CTR ring. I realized I had not been the only one in denial. While calming every one of her children, one by one, my mother had been in constant grief. Expecting to be robbed of the one and only man she had ever loved. I alone saw those true feelings in her eyes. In every tear that ran down her face I glimpsed a different emotion. Fear, worry, impatience, relief, happiness. Gratitude.
We were ushered into his room, in small groups of two or three. I went with Taneil, the sister I had cursed for telling me the truth. She and I are the closest in age, even if we are very different personalities. All throughout my life we have been warned not to tough dad’s feet. He is deadly ticklish. Deadly because if you tickled him, you were dead. And he was always a jumpy sleeper. Not a light or heavy sleeper but if he heard you whisper his name he jumped as if you had yelled. My sister and I, clutching hands and holding our breath, watched him sleep. His skin was yellowish and the tubes and cords strapped to his pasty skin were disconcerting.
We were both so scared of frightening him we stood still and quiet for a few minutes, whispering to each other, "I’m not going to wake him up. You wake him up."
"No way. He’ll have another one. I’m not going to kill him. You wake him up."
Finally we got the guts to whisper his name with increasing degrees of volume and strength until he woke up. He just moaned and whimpered, squirming and breathing heavily. I could feel my heart breaking at the sight of my father in such pain. I quickly chocked out the words, "I love you, Dad," before exiting the room and crouching between shelves in the nearest hallway, crying and attempting to pull myself together. Taneil found me and we went back to the waiting room to give the next group the opportunity to see my father’s pain.
True to the doctors words, my dad did not remember anything said that night after the surgery. The following two or three days were hard on all of us. He was improving but was still in incredible pain. The most memorable part of this whole experience was when he asked my mother to call everybody into his room. He professed to eternal love for each and every one of us and prayed that we took better care of our bodies so as not to have to go through what he had just been through. My grandfather, his dad, had had a heart attack a few years before his death and my dad went on about how he finally understood his father’s final years. Then he bore his testimony of Jesus Christ and how much he loves all of us. I later wrote a poem based on this conversation which I have included.
He stayed in the Intensive Care unit for a week and was out of the hospital within the following week. And since then my father has gone through the normal recovery process, feeling depressed one day and invigorated the next. If he feels good enough to do some work around the house he keeps going and going like he used to. But then cannot leave his bed the next day except to shower and eat a few meals. It has been a year and half since he was in the hospital and I wonder if he will ever fully recover his old energy.
I am so glad he felt the need to go to the hospital that day. I am so grateful for the technology that has been invented to help heart attack sufferers and that my dad was able to benefit from those advances. I am happy my father still lives, even if he is a little more grumpy and demanding than he used to be. I hear that’s normal, anyway.

good news

my financial aid cleared last week! yay, i know. but even with that burden taken off my back im still suffering because of poor finance choices. i admit it. i WAS a terrible spender. not happening anymore--no money to spend at the wrong places or on the wrong things. so i was considering taking out a loan. it would only be for $1750 and wouldnt need to be paid back till i graduated. but then...i got a letter in the mail saying i had been accepted for the nevada WUE scholarship. basically nevada and utah have a bargain with each other that if a student that went to a high school in one state goes to college in the other state, the state they graduated high school from covers the students college fees in hopes that they come back and use their degree in nevada some how.
its $6000+ per year. thats $3000+ per semester and because im a resident i only require $2000+ per semester. as long as i keep a 3.0 gpa and dont major in elementary education.
i read something in the fine print about students that wanted to gain residency for tuition purposes had to decline the scholarship.
hello, brick wall number one.
i called the financial aid office and asked if i counted as a student that had obtained residency for the purposes of tuition if i had lived here for three years prior to starting at suu and they said no! yay! the scholarship doesnt cover until fall semester '09 but by then i'll be covered for everything else too. and if i can get that small loan this semester to cover living expenses, i might be able to pay it all back with the extra money i receive from the WUE scholarship.

AND i can major in english and minor in education if i wanted to become a teacher later on. it doesnt stop me from teaching period, just from majoring in it. no problem

i find the longer im in school and have to deal with all these technicalities and guidelines, the more im learning to find loopholes and other ways to trick the system. haHA! college is good for something! haah jk its good for a lot of things. hehe

<3 tristy-la

oh, im a happy camper, alright!

so im a college student now. which i feel is painfully obvious as ive been neither seen nor heard from for about 2 weeks now. sorry everyone, im gonna try and manage my time better....but there're no guarantees. im taking 14 credits this semester. and here's my class schedule:

intermediate writing: science and values {mwf} 8-8:50am
introduction to diversity {mwf} 9-9:50am
introduction to music {mwf} 10-10:50am
introduction to creative writing {m} 4-6:50pm
university 1000 {tr*} 9-9:50am

*r means thursday.

i also have an online class called information literacy where they teach students how to research different information hubs. and every day monday through friday i also have work at the high school from 11am-2:40pm. so my days are full. with school throughout the mornings, work in the early afternoons and the rest of the day is homework. its a dream, folks. even though its hard right now. its mostly bc i keep psyching myself out and im worried bc my financial aid hasnt come through yet. if it doesnt clear by the beginning of march they kick me out of school and i owe suu $2000+. and that would SERIOUSLY suck.

any questions? call or text me WHENEVER! i always reply to texts. love you guys! <3tristy-la