waterfalls...check

on to the coast!

she's a maniac... maniac

holly is coming to visit this weekend and i'm so excited. this song comes to my head when i think of holly. if you haven't had the chance you need her to do the dance to this song... because she's dancin' likes she's never danced before... you know the words.

i have visions of F-U-N dancing in my head. i'm hoping to give her the gift of oregon: complete with p-town, the coast and trees. i'm crossing my fingers for a yurt near the beach, rain slickers and eclectic shops, the experience of some dense moss covered trees with a waterfall nearby and being beat miserably at scrabble and catch up time.

yellow jello! i'm waiting for you!

old stompin' grounds

on the way to the hot springs we dropped by some of my old stompin' grounds. this post is more for my parents than anyone else. this is where i first went to school, got kissed by the sandbox in kindergarten (which i thought was disguisting), kicked a lot of kids trash at teather ball, peed my pants religiously every year when my teachers wouldn't let me go (word to the wise, when i say i need to go, i'm not messing around), and where a tree was the best play toy. imagine ran wild and life was simple by reading horse books.


it's had a face lift (thank goodness) since i was there but even 8.5 years ago when i stopped by my old kindergarten teacher was still there. amazing!

this is the little church we went to. my father was the branch president here and i remember him having cinnamin bears in his office. when we drove up my friends were suprised of how small it was. one friend commented how neat it was that there even such a small church for the people.

cheers to memories!

hot water = happiness

what did i do saturday? found hot water coming from the earth and lie in it beneath the trees and the stars.

we look like a rough bunch, ignore joe's stitches, he's a kind guy. i was relaxed with my bathing suit on and without a beer or mj. other fellow hot springers needed a lil' more to their atmosphere but i was happy as i could be.

one hot spring down... others to come

gold beach and back

so this was a picture out my hotel room towards the ocean.... i know you can't see it but still. i love i'm still in the stage of my life that i'm afraid i might miss something so i have to keep my eyes open and seize opportunities. so i'm not a morning runner but if i'm on the beach, it's a must. this morning i ran on the black sands of gold beach and saw the pink being painted on the clouds this morning. ask me to run a morning in salem... not interested. unless it's saturday at 9-10 a.m. then maybe

the presentation went o.k. i think i need to continually work on engaging certain groups. ahh time will bring more experience.

then my coworker and i stopped in florence and ate on our way back tonight. one thing i love is eating real seafood on the coast. can't beat it.

although that was all nice the best part of tonight was being greeted by 3. yeah. name it 3 cards of kindness. i even shed a little tear. it added to my last weeks' nice lil' i'm thinking of you gifts from my mom and aunt. so thank you to those who care about me. you're simple acts make my day.

happy presidents' day to me

even though i'll be working/traveling on this day that should be my holiday. this breakfast makes it seem that all is alright. eggs w/red peppers, avocado and cheese with toast with my grandpa's homemade, home squeezed pomagrante jelly and oj with pulp. new folk music as a background from sarah. it's going to be a good day. i'm headed for the coast for work and the hotel has a kickin' hot tub that faces the beach that is outside and you can hear the waves. so i guess it could be worse.

valentine/birthday love midsingle style

for those of you that aren't aware, today is oregon's 150th birthday. in celebration, i went snow shoeing with the midsingles group out of portland area. nice peeps. good trail to upper lake near frog lake at mt. hood. after a late night watching wall e, which i loved...may it be a reminder to us all fat americans...i got up early and headed up. one of the impressive thing i saw was a super cool couple x-c skiing with their little baby. the dad had her probably in her baby bjorn and facing his chest as he and his wife x-c skiied. i'm sorry but that kicks you know what. it gave me hope of awesome parenthood dreams. when we reached our destination of upper twin lake we were greeted by igloos. i really wanted to go in the more intact igloo but the x-c skiiers were hogging it.

the experience was goodness to my soul. i ended today with a hot bath,

starting the monkey wrench gang,

and being grateful i didn't torture myself in thinking i had to go to a ysa valentine's dance.

gross.

also if your able to get some lovin' today... please get some extra for me.

in memory of me lacking the access to get any.

communal sunday thoughts

so it continued last night in my state of meditation right before bed. a smart person battling a cold would have went to bed earlier but i'm not smart or sensible like that.

my mother has been thinking of buying land with her old friends and living communally. i even brought the potential land/house site brochure to her last weekend when i was in st. george for my cousin's wedding. The ceremony and setting was simple and beautiful, the words and advice rang with truth in the ears of the listeners. details on the weekend forthcoming... back to communal living... so this thought has been buzzing around in my head since my mother's wandering thoughts on the subject and discussion and hopes of the bed and breakfast near the coast of oregon. myself, i'm thinking moab, or western colorado, or an unknown place i haven't experienced yet.

times seem to be getting more difficult. i'm wondering if my own job might get cut in the upcoming months when direct practice seems to be the necessity (and maybe it should) but prevention and leveraging of funds often gets put to the side during economic hardships. we'll see how all that goes.

as for communal living, it seems to be the answer. so i've been thinking i should buy some land and by special invite i bring some friends together, live off the land, work part-time in town, everyone brings skills that help the group or at least a personality wanting around. we could raise kids together, explore trails together and live life simply again. i'm wondering if those times are coming more quickly than we realize.

this notion first came to me of communal living when i was living in moab working 30 hrs a week with full benefits. (why did i leave that?) i worked with a neat woman through a rural adoption cooperative. she lived outside of junction communally with her friends. she and her husband met at a string cheese incident concert, fell in love, and were now living with friends on a plot of land. they each had their place but they grew together. they fixed up airstreams in their land, she had her lcsw and worked part-time and seemed to enjoy a simple yet easy life. i went to her land once and was just enchanted by the whole experience. i loved their small home with a floor of inlaid rocks and petrified wood they had collected through hikes and a wood burning stove that warmed it. i think they had the secret.

also i just recently bought for a friend, the new barbara kingsolver book talking about living off the land, b/c my favorite friend at work said it was enjoyable and thought provoking. see the simple life is calling. i think the happiest times i've had in my life have been in small rural communities really enjoying the land.

so my friends i'm thinking about it, and you do too. i know a good man by the name of johnny, that plays in stonefed, that i think would teaching us how to grow. i'll finally take those welding classes i've been meaning to and read my dsm iv-tr again if it means i can live back in a rural bliss. pray about it. meantime i may need to reread desert solitaire.

he's just not that into you

it all started in the summer of 2005. I was living my blissful life in Moab... my three cousins (lovingly got named Wino, Downstream Dream & Fart Pipe) and were Tag-Hags (dirty river guides), one which I adopted as a permanent cousin that summer. They lived above a mortuary, I lived by the city ballpark. In this time, I strangely inherited my friend's ex-girlfriend as a roommate for a few months. How this happens... I'm not sure, but it did, and it worked out fine. She was a fast friend and I later skinny dipped for my first time with her that summer.

The only objection I had to the situation was my summer crush. My friend, Rhys, thoroughly embarrassed me at church in introducing me to a boy who he said he thought we should hook up. I was embarrassed by my squirrely bluntness to a stranger but oddly enough, I was attracted to the boy with a beard that later became a soul patch.


The problem was... my new roommate thought my summer crush liked her.

The story goes as follows...
my cuzs are in city market shopping for groceries. new roommie comes up to them and brings up soul patch crush and how she knows that I'm interested in him but she states that she's pretty sure, "he's just not into jessie." she then goes onto explain that she thinks he's into him. the cuz crew, then continue shopping and new roommie finds them AGAIN in the grocery store to rehearse that soul patch guy is really into her and again states, "he's just not that into her."

being the true cuzs that they are, they report the whole situation to me later that night. point for me i ended up dating soul patch guy for the summer. BUT point for new roommie (at the time) and soul patch guy, they're both happily married now ,not to each other. loss of point for me.

so the rest of the summer and basically our lives as cousins, we've teased each other about the words, "He's just not that into you." since my cousins worked with soul patch guy every couple of days or weeks one of the 3 would sit me down with a serious face and say, "I'm sorry Jessie but I don't think soul patch boy is into you, but he's really into me." we would then all giggle and it's been an on-going joke.

Needless to say when the book came out. It was the best thing that ever hit the earth for the cousins. One because of the phrase, two because of the insights in the book. I don't believe any woman who doesn't say she'd never done or been the pathetic woman as described in detail in the book. It's been life changing. All of the cousins have the book. It also started a distribution of books including titles such as: Cuddle Sutra, I used to miss him...but my aim is improving, etc.

So even though I'm catching a cold, I'm going to go see this movie tonight. It's a "cuz unity project." wherever we're located to go see, if available, we need to see it. I invite the rest of female gender to go and see it as well and read the book. The sad part of the situation is I've had 2 close friends in the past 2 weeks or so tell me I need to re-read the book. I appreciate honest friends but sometimes the truth hurts.


the end.

jan part 4- cheer up bike ride 4 me

my friend, taylor, appeased me in going bike riding a few saturdays ago. the goal was to see 3 covered bridges on our bike ride. it was part of a longer bike ride called the covered bridge (road bike) tour that they do sometime during the year.

bridge one...starting point at a park in stayton

leaving marion county heading into linn county

where we turned around... one mile left to the next bridge but it was quite a hill down which means quite a hill back up. since we had time restraints we did not proceed.

happy to turn around. aka i'm out of shape.

the hills that wore us out just getting up and down (on mtn. bikes) and my gears freezing up. not cool. i should learn to oil up before i go. preparation, hmmm... imagine that.

orderly fields

way to go taylor...after making it up the last big hill.

return to the last bridge by sunset. successful trip, smile to my face. i love to bike.

jan part 3-central oregon sunsets

drive home from deschutes mid to late january

eager

Main Entry:
ea·ger
Pronunciation:
\ˈē-gər\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English egre, from Anglo-French egre, aigre, from Latin acer — more at edge
Date:
14th century
1 aarchaic : sharp bobsolete : sour2: marked by enthusiastic or impatient desire or interest
— ea·ger·ly adverb
— ea·ger·ness noun
synonyms eager , avid , keen , anxious , athirst mean moved by a strong and urgent desire or interest. eager implies ardor and enthusiasm and sometimes impatience at delay or restraint . avid adds to eager the implication of insatiability or greed . keen suggests intensity of interest and quick responsiveness in action . anxious emphasizes fear of frustration or failure or disappointment . athirst stresses yearning but not necessarily readiness for action .

i'm not into it currently...
word to the wise, don't show too much eagerness to the opposite sex. it's too much and i can't handle it. i'm a mess and you don't even know (and i hope you don't know about this blog). must i have a dtr after one date. honestly.