Lessons Learned in A Quater of a Century...

My name is Morgan, not Megan... but I'll respond to either. I love the beach/ocean, but I'm scared of the things living in it. I gag at Romance, but love love stories. I am cluttered and messy, but super clean (if you can find the floor underneath that pile of clothes, it's vacuumed and the baseboards are dusted). I am a triplet and always surrounded by brothers, but I prefer to be by myself. I am a walking paradox.
At 25 I have been thinking a lot about my thoughts on "growing up". This is what I've come up with.

{1}
Childhood is magical, and adulthood is... well... not. I think of life like a new toy. At first, the paint is shiny, everything works, and all you want to do is play with that toy. But after a few years, you loose parts, the batteries run out, and eventually you break/loose it or your imagination of what it could be goes away.

{2}
RESPONSIBILITY is the worst word in the dictionary. I'd rather use my money for toys (camera stuff, boots. jeans, etc.) than air filters, car parts or bills.

{3}
Once you graduate High School you're expected to go to College. After College (at the age of 22) you're expected to know what you want to do with the rest of your life. I don't know what what I'm going to wear to dinner tonight, how am I supposed to choose a career I'll spend the majority of my adulthood doing?

{4}
Wearing your bathing suit to the grocery store with a tiara and mom's high heels is no longer socially acceptable.

{5}
Boys no longer have cooties, they have agendas.

{6}
Screwing up is harder to get away with.

{7}
Remembering how people of my current age seemed so old when I was a child.

{8}
We stop growing up and start growing out.

Ha ha. It's not that I'm depressed about being 25..... actually I am. The only thing I asked my parents for was a fake ID that says I'm only 21!

Happy Birthday to me!

Twilight

I just got the twilight soundtrack from iTunes

it's awesome!!!

click the picture above to listen

I'm seeing the movie again tomorrow

I have found a new reason to be obssessed

Updates, Twilight and more!

I have been on major hiatus from blogging! Not by any choice of my own, I'd blog 3 times a day if I could, but I just haven't had the time. Cliche excuse I know, but really it's true! I'm not complaining, by any means, I love that I'm busy, but blogging is my way of reflecting, and I miss it!

1. Not only have I been working about 30+ hours a week (I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but in a restaurant it's unheard of), but my Photography has taken off! This week I have had 2 New Client Meetings, and photographed and Engagement Session.

Between now and Dec. 31 I have 2 Weddings, and 2 Family Portrait Sessions, along with one Individual Portrait Session. That's a whole lot of photography hours, not to mention hours upon hours of editing, printing, and all that comes with. I couldn't be more excited!

2. Twilight the movie came out this week. I lived in torture as everyone went to see it at midnight, and I had to wait for my mom to get back in town before I could go. (I didn't want to see it twice in case I didn't like it.) Upon going to work I only heard BAD things about it! I was disappointed but determined to see it anyway.

I don't know what all the fuss was about. I LOVED IT!!! I admit, I was skeptical that it wouldn't be good, and after I heard the bad reviews, I was borderline brokenhearted... but man, I really liked it! It has been about 2 years since I read the first 3 books, but I thought the movie did a great job covering all the high points. Some of the explaining could have been done now, but I'm sure they'll get to it in the sequels, etc. Also I was originally disappointed in some of the casting, but overall it worked! I really want to go see it again. *Sigh* Now back to the never ending question: "Team Edward or Team Jacob?"

(October 2007)

3. Last but not least, the following is a fact I learned today from my Glamour Magazine. The amount of stress that most young women feel today is the same amount that most Mental Patients felt in the 1950's. So, do I belong in an institution?

I Needed This

"Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation. "
-D&C 58:3

Summer is Nigh

I saw this on someone elses blog and loved it.

The below was given in an address to BYU students by Elder Neal A. Maxwellin 1978.

"Make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters, in the months and years ahead, events are likely to require each member to decide whether or not he will follow the First Presidency. Members will find it more difficult to halt longer between two opinions. President Marion G. Romney said, many years ago, that he had 'never hesitated to follow the counsel of the Authorities of the Church even though it crossed my social, professional or political life.'

"This is hard doctrine, but it is particularly vital doctrine in a society which is becoming more wicked. In short, brothers and sisters, not being ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ includes not being ashamed of the prophets of Jesus Christ. . . . Your discipleship may see the time when such religious convictions are discounted. . . . This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions.

"Resistance to abortion will be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.... Before the ultimate victory of the forces of righteousness, some skirmishes will be lost. Even in these, however, let us leave a record so that the choices are clear, letting others do as they will in the face of prophetic counsel. There will also be times, happily, when a minor defeat seems probable, but others will step forward, having been rallied to rightness by what we do. We will know the joy, on occasion, of having awakened a slumbering majority of the decent people of all races and creeds which was, till then, unconscious of itself. Jesus said that when the fig trees put forth their leaves, 'summer is nigh.' Thus warned that summer is upon us, let us not then complain of the heat."

--- Elder Neal A. Maxwell

I've had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!

I think I'll move to Australia!
PS the majority of the Nora's Wine Bar staff is coming along. Good food, great company, no Obama!
See you there!
PPS I would NOT want to be secret service right now. Apparently the FBI has already stopped. An asasination attempt!

I Voted!

Vote!

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

(Lucy Burns)

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic'. They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels'. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party, remember to vote.

History is being made.