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.