the jubilation that is…the last day of my summer!

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I don’t map my days out very well. I actually don’t really think about what I’ll be doing until my alarm goes off and I think, “I have nothing on my agenda today. Splendid.”

Today was one of those days, I decided (contrary to yesterday’s suggestion that today would be hectic). I did little to nothing of importance and it was beautiful.


 

Goodbye, free time. Goodbye, summer. Goodbye.
xo
j

worth mentioning: my parents

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I completely failed to address a momentous occasion that occurred this past week. My parents celebrated 30 years of marriage on 14 August. That’s 30 years of hanging out with each other all the time, raising kids, dogs, (and at one point, a duck), kids that acted like dogs, and picking up after kids and dogs.

All joking aside, I am extremely privileged to have such wonderful parents. I recall days when Dad had more hair and Mom had three toddlers in tow at any given time, two of them crying (on behalf of all the times it was me crying, I’m sorry Mom). Oh, the things they’ve been through…

• Orchestrating a family of seven for church every Sunday, and getting there on time (or seven minutes late)

• Single-handedly raising five children through:
      * Diapers
      * Surly childhood days
      * Sugar highs
      * Cooking lessons (24/7 supervision of the stove)
      * Surly Pre-teen years
      * Surly Post-teen years
      * Etc.

• About 23948719234 birthday parties

• Talking their girls out of wearing boys’ clothes, talking their boys out of wearing girls’ clothes

• Driving lessons

• Plenty of car accidents (I will take the blunt of the blame on this one)

• Buying a lake cabin, knocking said lake cabin down, building a new lake cabin

• Moving kids around (or in some cases, kids moving back in 🙂 )

• Florida, New York, and Oregon family vacations (In Dad’s words, “We were there!”)

• One child’s wedding

• Two minivans 

• Three dogs, 90 billion turtles

• Four other childrens’ breakups (not mentioning any names here)

• Proms x 1001349

• Five high school graduations

• Zero children joining the circus

• Coordinating 2349587 dentist, doctor, chiropractor, and orthodontist appointments as well as emergency room visits

• There isn’t even a number that exists to explain how many times the toilet overflowed

• Etc.

I haven’t been around all 30 years to witness the extent of their marriage, but from what I have seen I am completely enamored. I could only hope to be as lucky to someday experience their kind of love and happiness.

Without them…there would be no me!

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xo
j

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TODAY COULD POSSIBLY BE THE LAST TRUE FREE DAY OF MY LIFE. I mean it…kind of…okay, it’s an exaggeration. But right now all I can consider is life is about shift gears from Fun in the Summer.

See, today is the second to last day of summer before I begin my BFA year on Monday. That means:

01) Tomorrow I’ll be sweating like a mad woman trying to gather my things for the first day of class, so it can look like I was very productive (design-wise) over the summer (which in some ways, I truly was)

II) Monday – Thursday I will have class, and am expected to work 8-hour days on my project until November

C) Fridays I am expected to work 8 hour days on my project

4) Saturdays and Sundays will be catchup days (except for every other Saturday and Sunday, when I’ll be working a 24 hr shift at my job)

V) Come November when my project is said and done, I will hopefully have/be knees deep in finding an internship ANYWHERE for the spring semester (I would really love to go anywhere but this area…to be somewhere new and fun!) Which means getting my portfolio to the gym for a workout to GET IN SHAPE.

F) Come said internship time (January-ish) I will be, well, interning! Until approximately whenever. Forever?

Seven) In May, I get a shiny diploma/walk across a stage in my younger sister’s college graduation garb (yes, I said younger sister).

VIII) Then it’s Look-for-Big-Person-Job Time!

So you can see exactly why I’m sitting at Starbucks right now drinking tea and waving off flies that are attacking me, because they probably know that I’m hanging by an emotional thread and want to crawl in bed and wake up next June!

• • • • •

Enjoy today — I know I am especially. I’ve been making trips back and forth to the thrift store, dropping off donations from apartment cleaning/moving prep.

xo
j

the path is not straight

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Mom sent me a card yesterday with these words:

“ 1. the path is not straight
 2. mistakes need not be fatal

3. people are more important than achievements or possessions

4. be gentle with your parents.

5. never stop doing what you care most about
6. learn to use a semi-colon
7. you will find love

—marion winik

Numbers one, three, and seven resonate the most at the moment. Which do you think makes the greatest advice?
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Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, 
It will set you free 
Be more like the man you were made to be. 
There is a design, 
An alignment to cry, 
Of my heart to see, 
The beauty of love as it was made to be


—Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons

of lying in grass

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Lying on my back in the grass. It was something I hadn’t done for so many years that hadn’t occurred to me, my second thought being, I usually only do this with boys. Lying on my back in the grass, stretching my torso as far as it would go without exposing the stomach from beneath my shirt, I made a grass angel. The thick blades of grass wandered over my arms as soft bristles, comforting like a mother.

“Take me to Walmart. Just take me to Walmart and trade me in for a T-shirt. I want to be a T-shirt. I don’t want to be a person.”

I responded to the remark with something of, “T-shirts don’t have freedom, family or friends. You don’t want to be a T-shirt.”  We continued reasoning until I decided not to fuel the quandary, and  instead continued to look at the sky.

They persisted. “I’d be an eagle. If I were an animal, I’d be an eagle. Yes…an eagle. Then no one could shoot me…”

Grass angels. Sky. My mind transfered to a hill in San Francisco, where I once lay on my back in the grass. The same clouds skidded around the big blue. A bird flew by, a woozy monarch butterfly, and several neighbors came and went.

Do you remember the last time you had lain on your back in the grass? I felt as though I should have been holding a hand, and busied my fingers with plucking blades and watching them bend in my grip.

And on a day like today, I’m trying to understand why someone could desire to be a T-shirt at Walmart, not to be bought or sold, or an eagle overhead. Why would anyone in this place want to be doing anything other than lying on their back in the grass?

That’s what I did today. Swinging, too.