Happy weekend all

What on earth is that apostrophe taking the place of? It's part of the Campbell's m'm m'm good logo, and I can't figure out what the options are on that. Whatever it means, it is on our new casserole dish; the one made especially for green bean casserole.

Behold.

Josh and I tastily succeeded.

We stayed in Salt Lake City for Thanksgiving. Josh had to work Wednesday and we thought Friday, too. I planned on driving back to Colorado until the forecast came through.

Did I cry as I hung up the phone with my mom and dad Thanksgiving day? Yes. Did I start to feel the city close in on me so busy and full of people? Yes. Did we make way too many mashed potatoes? Yes, about enough for five people.

 

But, it was a special dinner and it was Josh and I together for our very first holiday cooking for ourselves. You know those moments when things are real and present and asking you if you see them? Thanksgiving dinner was one of those moments when the fact that we're starting a life together is sitting in the crook of my ear and whispering sweet nothings to me. Except that they weren't sweet nothings they were sweet everythings.

Not being able to get home to family is something that you take into consideration when you choose a college. And that consideration is exactly to this extent: 'I have a subaru. I'll be fine.'

 
So that was the struggle of the week. Knowing that in a big green house in Colorado there were grandparents to be held and dogs to be petted and a sister and brother to make fun of ;) Parents to be talked with and friends to have coffee with. And in that small town a river to be sat by and a brick wall in a coffee shop that knows when I walk in the door and invites me to sit next to it. And in another house there were more parents to see and another sister and brother to hug and a new dog to pet, and grandparents to whom I owe some conversation, being the girl that's about to join their family and all. A canyon to marvel at and cotton candy to eat on the drive.

But sometimes, even Pearl the subaru needs to change her plans and sit in the driveway next to her buddy Mazda for a weekend.

I pray everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that there are only safe travels back home. I, for one, will be curled up on the couch reading Cry the Beloved Country (probably not the wisest choice for a homesick girl in the city, but once you start reading that voice it's got you there 'til the end of the book). Stay warm, best beloveds.

The Crux

I read blogs; wedding blogs, blogs by mothers who remind me of my mother, Christian blogs, blogs for the sake of their pictures, cooking blogs, blogs on womanhood. Where are the blogs about the point that I'm at in life? I have no children, my deepest friends and my family are miles away, I don't need to decorate a home for Thanksgiving company. I think, that this age - the age of leaving home and being in a serious relationship, of going to classes and praying for a direction, of finding new and strengthening community, of yearning for the people who know you best - has become the target age for dumb social advice.

 We are who Cosmopolitan targets with their offers to teach us how to make a boy love us in bed, how to do our makeup, how to make friends, what to wear for our body type, and if we still don't feel good they'll throw in others' embarrassing stories so that we'll know we, at least, don't have it as bad as they do.

I, for one, don't need to know what those editors and stylists and whomever else is behind it all advertises that they want to tell me. I don't need to know how to make love to a boy because I don't have sex. I don't need to know how to do my makeup because getting ready in the morning feels like such a time suck. I don't need to be told how to make friends because we just need to go out there and love on people. I'd rather just read about other real people doing real, lifestyle things similar to the real, lifestyle things I am doing.

My grandma's advice on boys was to move away. As soon as you find one that you fall in love with and decide to marry, leave home with him. And I did.

 

We are learning, and there are so many things to learn.

Did you know that sometime between the spin and rinse cycles, the washing machine just stops and rests? This does not mean that you need to panic. It does not mean that you broke it and need to remove the clothes from the cold water, ring them out over the machine and pile them into a laundry basket. It doesn't mean that once you've done that you should put the basket in the shower and run water on it to try to somewhat rinse it off. Once you do all that and close the lid again, it will start its rinse cycle, so you can pile all that sopping laundry back into the machine and let it do its thing.

Did you know that those antique ring holders are actually very useful? If you're in a pinch, though, you can hang your ring on a towel rack while you do the dishes. Where, then does the towel go? you ask. It's being used by your fiance to dry the dishes you're washing.

We cook together and we clean together and I go to class and do my homework and wonder what on earth I'm supposed to be majoring in, and I wonder if I'll be able to apply the classes I'm taking now to the major God ends up putting me toward. I wonder if I'll even use my major once I'm out of school.

You see, right now, in the chaos of college and church and wedding plans and being engaged and making friends and keeping in touch with old friends and all of the rest, right now is when I'm learning to not just read the Psalms but to pray them and to take them and put those words into my own life and my own needs from God.

Why does nobody write about this time of their lives? This crux that I'm sitting in.  All I know how to do is shrug these days, to tell people that I'm waiting to hear back on that, to tell it that I'm just doin' what I'm doin' until I'm told to do something else.

Taking pictures and looking and pretty things and talking to interesting people. Reveling in the place that I'm in because it is oh so much fun and so wonderful.

So, I suppose the key to this part of the story is to be looking and listening. I'll try to be better about writing about these things - the things that come at this point of a girl's life - because these times are very important, too.

Rainy Day

 

It is a rainy fall day. When I logged on to write this post, I realized that it had been over a month since I've written on here. Wow... see what I meant when I said I work best under a deadline? 

But today, today I am craving books.

It is the Book Festival this week. They started passing out fliers for this sometime last month, and today is the day I had been waiting for.

The city library is enormous. Four stories of whispering books, and I know that a lot of people don't agree with me, but they are all just begging for my attention. Except for maybe the romance and history sections, those voices were made for another person's heart.

Josh and I went today, though, and learned how to bind a book. We each made our own little 72-page, cereal-cardboard enclosed notebook. They teach an entire course on bookbinding at the University of Utah.... I'm straining up the hill toward that big red school. After looping together one rather juvenile attempt at a book, my fingers want more. More thread, more paper, and finally, a pen.

Very soon, I will be making my own notebooks, and maybe even a notebook for you someday, too.

It is fall, like I mentioned, and I do love how Salt Lake has taken pride in its architecture.

It's architecture, and its plants, trees especially.

 

After making our books, we took a walk around in the hoodie weather and looked at what a damp city has to offer.

For the rest of the day, though, it's socks, blankets and Mario.

Oh, and more books of course.

things I love this Friday

I am not expected today, sitting here in the upstairs, watching the people who are - expected, that is - drive and walk and bike and hustle

I am not necessarily needed today by any one person to do any one thing and even more so by myself. My skills sets are put away on a spot so dusty from laying bare. Surely, if I were asked to be relevant today, I would say no.

Today, I am steeped in vices of chocolate and coffee and paper that is so smooth and thin as to be opaque. If paper were a bird, these pages are the downy feathers. The prized and the protected. The very things that weedle my ear and my heart, the ones that beg me to sit and visit.

I ordered 'oh, just a cup of coffee' and the man behind the counter told me they don't have that, that they do have incomparable coffee, though, if I'd like to try some. And, instinctively, I almost called him Clark. When I got my chocolate cake I could see the indent where the girl working started cutting, and then remeasured and opted for a bigger slice.

To some, coffee is a business partner. To me, she wears yoga pants and takes the expectations you tote around and coddle as a child, bounces the bundle on one cocked hip. You see her firmly planted bare feet and angled knees and are assured that you can take a seat.

And she listens while she does the dishes and straightens the house that is your heart until you say something particularly distressing and then she will settle, cross-legged on the floor and nod and take what you came to give her.

And once you have said or written or relayed this, it is real and tangible and you can handle it. Before it shook your hand it was flitting and shadowy and you cannot reason with a phantom of a thought.
I am at a meeting, to do this very thing today and to run the figures of who I am in the city.

To chart and graph and introduce myself to what is being added to this small town girl. Evaluating the relationships that I am building and how I am constructing them, which part of myself I am contracting out to do this.

This girl in Salt Lake City is more shy than in rumors I'd heard before moving. She is shockingly picky about her meat. Seeing her here, without expectation, I know her just as well as I knew her in Salida, in high school, and I realize that people talk to me like all of these things are from some past life. Like there is a difference between then and now and sure, there are differences, but I haven't jumped the tracks; I'm not running on a different timeline than I ever was; I am still living my life.

My favorite season is coming, you can see it creeping in around the edges.

It is almost the time of year  that hoodies wait for on their coat hooks and that is so thrilling to me. To know that soon the air will be cool on your cheeks and the trees will sing.

And knowing that fall is coming, I left the coffee shop and stumbled upon the city library. The four story city library.

And I do what I always do in libraries anywhere but Salida. I found Kent Haruf and said hello.

It makes me feel like the world is maybe a bit more smallish than I thought, or that Salida is a bit more far-reaching than I thought but whichever one it is doesn't matter; I am still that much closer to the Arkansas River.

I got a library card and I got dizzy from being on the fourth floor looking down to the first. I went back outside and trailed along with my camera and found out that even litter can be beautiful. Before you pick it up and throw it away.

And I also got very excited for fall in the city.

I hate it when...

.... people don't do the little things to make this world a better place.

I have grown up in a family who pays extra attention to what is going on around them. How many times from birth to today have I heard "be aware of your surroundings," probably millions, bordering on trillions.

That is my dad. I used to believe that only people in the loop of wildlife officers understood why the small things are important to the big picture, but nowadays I use him as a face value explanation.

Today, a girl didn't push her chair in on her way out of class. I admit that I was more angered by this than I probably needed to be, but it would have been courteous to do. Something that used to be known as 'common courtesy,' when did anyone decide to drop the common?

When I pushed the chair in on my way past, the professor chuckled ..... read it again, chuckled... at me and said something along the lines of 'well aren't you orderly?' Thank you, authority figure, for making a mockery of common courtesy.

It is at times like these when I look people straight in the face and say my father is a Colorado Division of Wildlife officer. You would be utterly amazed at the shift in attitude people get at that point - because, for whatever reason, it all makes sense to them then. To be honest with you, even I could not tell you why it works.

Here is my mom,

I have found that telling people my mother works in a greenhouse. has the same effect as telling people my dad's job. Weird, huh? Or not so weird. I think that if anyone looked at any person and rattled off any job in response to a situation like that, it would result in the exact same understanding.

You tell me why, because I don't get it. I just know it works, and I know that these are the people I got the habit from so they are who I'm citing by practicing them.

Today, got me thinking, though, about who all had a hand in teaching me the value of pushing in a chair, not spooking a herd of elk, rinsing out a dirty cup, not shoving napkins into cups at restaurants.

I grew up in Salida.

Where  a lot of people that you run into everyday tend toward this naturally.

And since being old enough to have some say in it, the people that I've been surrounded by have the exact same tendency.

People who understand that you have a choice to make.

You can leave things - people, places, situations - better than you find them, and make an improvement (however small) on this world.

or

You can leave things without having done anything to make them better for the next person who comes along, and you will have played a small part in its decay.

So that's one of my goals in this life, to make the first choice over and over and over yet again, because if we all do this, think about the good that could come of it.

More thoughts

I could have gone all my life without experiencing my-first-cold-away-from-home-and-mommy and been perfectly happy.
I had a sneezing fit in the cafeteria today that left me dizzy I had my eyes closed and my nose tingling for so long.

My mother, in her intuitive mother-ness, sent me some of Jamie's honey stix. Which I have been using in my tea

If you don't know Jamie, check her out. I was so blessed to be able to write the article about her when she moved to Salida a couple years ago. http://www.beeyondthehive.com/

Anyways. Tea and studying tends to end up like this, if you're as clumsy as me at least.

The book is still readable. My cold knows I would rather be sleeping than studying adjectival phrases, it supports me in that endeavor (the sleeping I mean).

On a happier note, though, I got to go home for Labor Day weekend! (I have a new appreciation for holiday weekends being in college)

Home. Home. Home.

Where the flowers bloom and the sprinklers are on.

Where you can see the clouds because there isn't any city smog.

Where even the power lines end up being pretty.

Colorado. yummy.

I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a senior at Salida High School this year about what it's like to think about leaving Salida. I always feel like I can relate to Jack Johnson when he says that 'it's gonna sting me to leave this town.'

Maybe, though, it's really a matter of being able to fall in love with two places simultaneously. Because I do love Westminster.

Where our floor meetings are scheduled at random times because our R.A. thinks we'll remember them better... ice cream social at 7:23, handbook meeting at 6:42... and where I get to read and read and read. When books go on sale in the bookstore, they are marked down to a dollar, for a hardback even! Tell me that's not magical.

So, I have decided that it's okay to love two places at once, or three or four or twenty million. Or, heck, even the world.

Weekend Lovin'

I had one of those weekends that won't fit in the suitcase. I am sitting on this blog, trying to zip the stupid thing closed because it won't hold all I want it to carry.
Let me begin by telling you that I love haircuts. To me, they fall under the same category as shoes - except that you don't get to change them as drastically or often.

Jamie, a mohawked girl who I met here at Westminster, got a haircut and I, lucky duck, got to watch. This is obviously the next best thing to actually getting a haircut and Reagan, the stylist, was so very nice about letting me get all up in her space with Sonya the Sony.


Just how cool is she?


She Expo-markered on a design and carved away. I hope that her day was better because she was asked to do that haircut, I know mine would have been if I were her.
And after haircuts, art supplies and very cute husky puppies, something super-cool happened.


Joshua got to town.
Not only did he get to town, but he spent the whole weekend. And we got to go to the zoo.
I stinkin' love the zoo.

The four or five year old girl watching this elephant beside us with her father insists that all elephants have cracked skin. Even if they are newborns and use baby wash. I agree with the girl, because I got to see Zurie.

There are banners all around the Sugarhouse district about Zurie, and the little dude totally deserves all those banners.

And Josh waited for me while I took pictures like the tourist I was that day at almost every single exhibit we saw. He even stood awkwardly beneath the wonderful elephant border that I wanted a picture of so that I wouldn't have to be seen taking a picture of a blank wall...


We were looking back over the pictures that I took this weekend and the look on his face set us down on the ground laughing. My stomach muscles hurt after laughing so hard and just seeing it up on the screen makes me grin.

In Salida, he and I spend most of our down time sitting with our feet in the river, watching the kayaks and kids and rafts and fishermen and walkers go on by. There is something to be said for old leisure.... the kind that doesn't expect his time to be filled with anything but nothing.


So, we found a shady spot on a hill in Sugarhouse park and watched the strollers and ice cream truck and picnic-ers go on by.


And we stacked twigs and I don't see how anyone can see anything but the perfect Sunday in that. Calvin was so very right when he told Hobbes that there is treasure everywhere.


Eventually, though, Josh had to start the drive home to be to work and I had to come back to the college and study. That's what you do when you start growing up I suppose. Just don't let's forget about there being treasure everywhere - in haircuts and zoos and parks and twigs and even in between all that.