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.

and so it begins

I am at college. And today, even though it was my first day of classes, I am so very homesick. 475.19 miles is a lot of miles.


While I was cleaning my room to come out to Salt Lake City, I found a list of what a college must offer before I would even consider applying that I made my freshman year of high school. I am proud to say that freshman-Jessie's top priority on a campus was trees.

Overall, Westminster is a beautiful campus.


There are so many things to process right now.

Why do the apartments across the street house turkeys, chickens, peacocks, geese and rabbits all in the same small fenced area? Who do we ask to fix our bathroom door since the knob literally no longer turns? How do you assemble a six foot tall floor lamp that comes in a one square foot box? And, who doesn't want to know the hierarchal tendencies that manifest as a result of disciplinary measures taken during family dinners?

I am proud to say that writing this, I am sitting in our living room with four of my five roommates. Sure, we all have our laptops out, but we're also all in the same room. The room that has a new floor plan, a new six foot tall lamp, a cable cord for the tv and a blanket. Funny how much half an hour of organization can do for a place! Did I mention our clock? It's the only thing on the walls... and so far, it only knows how to say 10:10 because it's lacking a battery.
We also have a magazine on the table. We are professionals and we are planning an ice cream run soon.

The campus has been really great about putting on 'fun things' for us to go to, comedians and bands and inflatable bouncy houses. It's a good effort, but it's all so loud and it's all so busy and it makes me want to settle into my room and listen to the turkeys next door.

So, I'm thinking that while it might take me a while, I'm shooting for some sort of balance between social and hermit, academic and silly, homesick and happy.

And honestly, there are some things here - the bricks, the bikes, the books - that remind me some of home, and they are invaluable to me.

Because a little bit of balance is something everyone needs now and then, don't you think?

Leo Dog

Today, I went to visit my puppy dawg.

I went alone, and I drove in my Subaru event though it is brand spankin' new. I listened to my Leo song, From the Sky by Peter Bradley Adams. If you know someone who's died before you would have liked, this is the song for you.
I sat underneath the aspens and I told him all of the things that had been crumpled and folded into me since last May, when he died.

I told him that Hank is lonesome. That he actually comes to me looking for love and will let me pet him.
I told him that I'm leaving for college and that I'm relieved that I don't have to leave him behind anymore.
I told him that I sleep, every night, with the stuffed moose with plaid antlers that the vet brought me the day we called her to come put him down, because she knows how much he meant to me.

And I sat there for so long... curled over and hugging my knees, rocking myself back and forth and remembering. Crying and remembering and loving and hurting. I was so very glad that there was no one there to hear me say, over and over again Leo, please, begging for me sitting there to not be true.

I looked at the flowers and I listened to the bees and I watched the wind make a wave of the leaves. I killed heaven only knows how many ants and I took a walk and circled back. I played with my camera to take a break from talking to my missing friend.


Finally, though, I sat back down. I told him I was so sorry, that it's so hard to know when is the right time to call it quits for a dog. That he was so good for not letting anyone know he was sick, for just chugging right along through it there until the end, and for trying to play with me in his pond on his last morning.

Then I sat there, and I prayed some which was more angry than sad. Words that were meant to smart more than they would be if I were sitting and having a cup of coffee with Jesus. Distance is safety right? And angry-Jessie decided that if this feeling of maybe-I-did-the-wrong-thing hung around any longer she was going to wish ill upon God's dog.


So I sulked and I thought and I wished hellfire and brimstone upon God's poor innocent dog. I wished he would get a dog just so I could curse it.

When I made the decision, though, I didn't think twice. I knew, right then, that he needed a free pass. That it was my responsibility to dial the phone for him. I remember him sitting and looking at me in so much pain and he just looked so sorry that he didn't have it in him anymore.

Maybe God's dog isn't so bad after all, and surely God had been waiting for me to ask for some help in starting to chip away at that regret.

the other side

This weekend, we went to meet up with Josh's family.

I love watching the clouds stretch out like that. I live in the mountains, and at home, it's easy to believe that the world is as small as the crook in the arms of the Rocky Mountains. You can't convince yourself in a place like that farm, because there's all that blue and all that green asking you if you believe in open spaces.
After watching the cousins irrigate, I have a whole new wonder for the way that those fields grow. Standing and talking, waiting for the water to reach the bottom of the field and watching the bloodhound make his rounds.
Coming back to the house and being around all those babies and pregnant ladies. It's so odd to me to think that his generation of that family is having families, that we are old enough to get married and build our own lives. What happened to light saber wars and mud fights? When did our conversations turn from the night time habits of raccoons to where to rent over three hundred chairs, how to become a licensed teacher and which suv's get the best mileage and the most storage space.
And tell me, when on earth did I come to love picking up those babies? I do know, though, that I absolutely love that at the first balled up eyes or huff I can send them right on back to their mothers.
We found dragonflies and rode on the paddle boat (or is it pedal boat?) on the reservoir. We ate Chester's Chicken and took a very very long nap.

I heard several apologies about how I must be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there. Overwhelmed, I have to smile at the use of that word. If only they knew the ability of my family's numbers to overwhelm...


I love happy people, and I love big dogs.

I have less than one week left until I go to college, and lately, I've been trying to soak in as much of home as I possibly can.



You know when people say that things haven't hit them yet? I think it's hit me....I think it just hasn't rebounded yet and left me in the shock of having been hit. Because I am trying to put off wrapping my head around all of that jazz.

One of my peeves is when people tell me what the best time of my life is. I'm at the age when people think that they're seasoned enough to know, and I'm not. And they either think that it's college or that I already passed it by, it was high school.


With views like this, and moments filled with the things I love,


Who on the face of this great big earth has any reason to tell me that the time of my life isn't now? Who can try to convince me that the best moments of my life stay all stacked together, a deck of cards in a closed case? You only get four aces.... it all goes downhill from there.

That is something that I refuse to believe, thankyouverymuch.

I'm the one who gets to hold each moment of mine up to the light and watch the colors that fall through.

And I am bound and determined that each time I do, I will discover that - lo and behold - I have so very many moments that are the best moments of my life. I have Carnegie Hall's worth of moments. And those moments aren't stopping once I graduate high school, or college, or into retirement.

I will not wish that I could go back and burrow into a certain era of my life - not because I didn't enjoy them, but because I enjoyed them until they were completely spent, too exhausted to consider an encore and too anxious for what comes next. Too comfortable in now.

With everything in me, I am determined not to look at a younger person and presume when the best time of their life will be. You know what dad says about assumptions... and if I ever come to a point where I don't believe I'm having moments that should be filed away for the archives, that I don't set on my tongue and suck the sugar out of, something drastically needs to change.

Tuesday Things

I've always said that there is Jessie, and then there is Tuesday Jessie. Tuesday Jessie loves messy buns and coffee, cameras and blank paper. Tuesday Jessie doesn't have to be anyone for anyone because she is already someone, Tuesday Jessie. Because it's not Monday, it's not Friday, and it's not even in the middle of the week yet.

This is what it looks like to drive to Glenwood Springs. I like this kind of view because it means that I'm heading to an evening with my boy followed by a day with my camera, with my laptop, with my coffee. Here, in the Bluebird Cafe. I've always taken pride in being a regular at every single coffee shop at home. Here, though, I take pride in being obscure enough that people look at me and wonder if they recognize me. They look at me and wonder if I was the person who happened into the background of their photo last week, last month, last year. Nobody asks, here. Nobody wants to know. I love that.

Because lately, it has become too much. Working and getting ready for college, planning a wedding and answering questions as to how and who and when and where. Coming home and whistling for a dog only to realize that he took a walk with Cancer last May and that he's not yet home. He won't be coming home.

It is exhausting. And all of it, is noise.
That is why I believe that it is so very important for me to be here, now, with myself. And, as it happens, with you, whoever you may be. To walk into the shop and smell, taste and speak coffee. To sit and write. Because, quite frankly, I don't care what anyone thinks. I saw this day and what it could be for me and I'm going to cup my hands over it like a drop of dew on a flower, to save the sun from burning it off for a little, just a little, bit longer.
So, whatever you have to do today, screw that. The hardest thing for me to learn is that people can be your friends and still be in your way, suffocating you. I know now, that it's okay to let yourself walk away for a bit. To not feel guilty because they're oh so nice and you were supposed to do oh so much with or for them. I don't owe anyone these days more than I owe them to myself.