Valentines Day

Hello all. This....is a brag post.

Disclaimer: If you are one of those Valentines Day hating people who spends the entire week of February the 14th groaning and complaining that it's a made up Hallmark holiday-

1. You are a scrooge. 
2. You should stop reading this post. 
3. ...and maybe my blog. 

It is a Hallmark holiday, you're 100% right, but can you think of one single holiday in America that isn't? That's my rant on that. Get over it. Buy yourself some clearance flowers, discount day after chocolate, and wipe away your black nail polish.

I quite possibly had the best Valentines Day of my life. Mikey-if you're reading this....don't be mad. 

I woke up in the morning (late as usual) for school and got there just in time for class, flustered and rushed. After 50 minutes of the ever thrilling Haase class I walked into the hallway to find Mikey with a dozen roses. This right here is every girls dream but let me tell you I could not get out of that hallway fast enough, EVERY pair of eyes was on me. This is both one of those things we love and hate. When I finally got out of there and into the truck, he hands me the next gift....gee whiz I know. We have this ever going battle for who gets to take the very coveted chapstick with them for the day because it seems they disappear like socks in the dryer just as you wish you had them the most. So in this little red paper bag were a dozen chapsticks of all different kinds. You may not think this is adorable buuuutttt I cried. 

After that, we both had work and whatnot. The only plans I was aware of were that we were making steak together after he got of work. Being the Want, Want, Wanter that I am, I begged to go to swing dancing class and almost ruined everything. We get dinner started and it's this whole process of cheese melting, cooking, baking, stirring [I'm NOT good at this]. Mikey had brought his giant pile of laundry with him and kept running downstairs to sort it, use his stain remover, and move the laundry. I'm such a gullible little shmuck! There is no guy in the world who doesn't just throw it all in and forget about it. And stain remover? 

While he was downstairs each time, I was given some VERY important task and told something like, "Jes, please make sure you keep stirring that the whole time so it doesn't burn." I take these tasks very seriously because, well, usually I mess them up. the last piece was to clean off the dining room table which was more covered in more things than I'd ever seen before. 

When dinner was done, I went and sat down at the table, but he kept walking and told me to follow him. Oh my gosh! When he opened the door to the basement I thought I was really going to explode. Rose petals were spread all down the stairs with candles on each side. In the basement there were more petals and candles all around, he'd set up a blanket and wine, the whole thing! We had our own little indoor picnic, and it was so beyond perfect......melt!

This, mind you, was on top of going to Leftover Salmon as my early V-day gift....and just the everyday awesomeness. I'm a lucky girl with a bundle of roses, a big ol' load of Mikey's laundry, and one heck of a mess in my basement, my goodness do I love Valentines Day. 

What did you do? Let me know!

Hide and Seek

Therapy is a lot like a game of hide and seek. To get at what...or who...is really there, you've really gotta look. Sometimes a look inside someones closet just isn't enough to get at what you're looking for. Every door needs to be opened, every bed needs to be looked under. Sometimes things are hiding in places that you would least expect or in plain sight. If you go through the game quickly without paying attention to the nooks and crannies, it's easy to miss what you're really trying to get at. People are good  at this, we learned at early ages that if you don't look at someone through the crack of the door they can't feel you watching them and will probably pass you by. That any amount of attention drawn to yourself sets the alarm. People don't want to be found. Not in hide and seek, not in therapy, and sometimes not even in themselves.

Class after class about people and their lives and just humanity it amazes me how much we, as a species, are capable of keeping a secret. Some things we see as best pushed under the rug-left alone, forgotten or tucked deep away, suppressed so that we can just go on living.

When I was 6 and as usual in trouble with my mom I thought it would be fun to play a game of hide and seek with my mom when I was supposed to be in "restriction" in my room. I tiptoed down the hallway and into the living room where we at the time had the kind of couch that would eat a child. I pushed myself into the crevice behind the cushion and covered myself up. I sat quietly, waiting. They started looking, at first kind of mad and then frantically. "Jessie! Jessie?! Jessie?!" I didn't laugh, didn't giggle, in fact I'm sure I was holding my breath doing everything I could to be silent. When I came out they were at first relieved and then the relief turned again to anger.

Today, I had that same feeling. I held my breath, bit my lip to keep myself from making a sound. My teacher was looking behind the cushions, I looked through the crack in the door- I'd been caught. Even to me the hiding spot was a surprise. Medical Sociology-a class where no one expects to have to worry about this sort of thing. I think to me the biggest medical mishap I'd had was simply an accident, something that had happened and been fixed. But underneath the metal, the screws and the pins there was more pain than I'd ever known. The questions that had needed to be asked, by me, by someone, by ME, had never come up so that pain over time had just become something else to push under the rug. It amazed me that the questions I was asked put the kind of tears in my eyes that you can feel in your throat.

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1... Ready or not, here I come!

How do you feel about what happened?

How do you feel about how it will affect your future?

FOUND YOU!

Think about it, what are the most defining moments of your life? I don't want to put a number on this, some people will have 5 some people will have 20. Just be honest with yourself here, think about the way that even the little things have affected you, they won't all be positive and they won't all be negative.

Praying to Ullr

Ullr- The Pagan god of winter, skiing, snowshoeing, the chase, snow (of course), and other completely irrelevant things. In the fall- he is the god that people in ski towns around the world pray, dance, burn their own skis and toast PBR to. The fact that he is the god of the chase explains why broke idiots from around the globe watch the pow cams, drive through the most dangerous of road conditions, sleep on stranger's stinky couches, and spend money that they don't have. Basically he's the man. And after this weekend where we've got 34" in the last 7 days, 23" in the last 48 hours, and 18" in the last 24, I'm pretty damn sure he lives in some dirty apartment in Crested Butte with pictures of big, big dumps on his walls. Right now he is sitting on a chairlift with a ski bum chick next to him smiling to himself at those hoots and hollers comin' from the trees. I don't know what we did right, maybe somebody burned the right grump, but Teocalli hasn't been open until noon for days and it doesn't look like they are gonna be anytime soon. So tonight, you'd better be praying for more, because wether you do or not, Ullr is here to stay.