Sad day

I had to get an Arkansas Drivers license. I'm very sad about it. That is all.

Arkansas story of the day:
This is how people in Arkansas talk. "ON tomorrow we won't have class"
haha. well ON two weeks I will be home, yay!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well 1 paper down, 5 to go and a final to study for. t minus 8 days and counting. "gulp"

Uncle Mike: The Sequel

I blame it all on the cute little puppies the neighbor had in her backyard for all of two or three days. Zada loved those little guys and wanted nothing more than to shower them with her love and affection. They were cute I don’t blame her. One little gray pitbull a little stocky guy and a black and white one that was a bit more timid. Even Wunbi started to like them. Zada was really protective and would push Wunbi away if she got too close to them, so Wunbi would sneak over there when Zada wasn’t around. Finally, Zada wanted over there so bad that she started trying to climb the fence. We laughed and thought there was no way. About five minutes later she was over the fence (if you could really call it a fence). Jamie hopped over and got her. All she wanted to do was play with her puppies. The next day the puppies were gone, I’m hoping not to a dog fighting ring (they are pretty big here). Unfortunately for us, Zada decided to keep hoping over the fence, she found a rawhide over there and just had to have it. It would be 5 minutes after she had gone outside and we would be wondering where she was and sure enough she would be over in the neighbor’s yard chewing a bone under their boat. We’d go get her throw her over the fence and repeat…

Well that is where it started. Where it ended was with Uncle Mike. A couple nights ago Zada was freaking out about her dog house and trying to dig under it. I moved it, that didn’t help. I turned it on its side, that didn’t help. Her anxiety ridden self just couldn’t let it go. I let her out and went to do some cleaning. All of a sudden Jamie was banging on the front door. Zada had jumped the fence and got Uncle Mike. His already barely functioning back legs were now not functioning at all. He crawled along the ground finally resting in our front yard and then at the corner of the road. We tried calling animal services to come get him but of course it was Sunday so people don’t work or provide services of any kind. We called an animal hospital, they said to bring him in and pay to have him euthanized. Not the ideal situation for grad students that have no way of transporting a dying feral cat. Our neighbor Katie came home who loves Uncle Mike, yes one of the many people who love him and yet want him to live at our house. She was really upset and said she’d take him to the hospital. I was inside the whole time so I am not sure on all the details. Jamie can fill in if she wants. From my understanding more people stopped, were heartbroken and all the neighbors who didn’t care enough to take him in wanted to help him go out. STRANGE! One person even said they had to call someone to come and say good-bye to him since he was really THEIR cat. Holy Arkansas is so bizarre. Jamie said um no, if they didn’t care enough to take him with them they don’t need to come say good-bye. I’m not sure what happened after that and don’t want to know but Uncle Mike is out of his very apparent pain and misery. I feel bad. Some of the neighbors were just sobbing about it. But we tried to warn them. A cat living on our porch, with our dogs, just wasn’t a good fit. Next time I move somewhere and there is a feral cat living there that somehow has precedence over us…I will go ahead and call animal control to prevent such bizarre events.

To top of the weekend Wunbi is really sick. She threw up again and again and again. It was awful. She stopped eating and would barely drink until last night. We took her to the vet today and they said she had LOTS of bacteria in her system and they wanted to keep her overnight. Sad day and hard decision to make. She snuggled up to us when we went to tell her goodbye and was so sad. I hope she just fell asleep and is feeling a million times better in the morning.

On a happier note we just bought a new garbage can and a rolling pin!!!! YAY!! It’s the little things.

Lost in a moment.

Sometimes I get lost in a moment, lost inside myself, lost in my head, lost but without clear thoughts or feelings. I remember the way it felt to be consumed by a sunset. I would watch the sun move smoothly behind the Wellsville Mountains, the colors would change instantly, and I could feel the beauty. Those radiant colors were more than just pink, orange, and yellow. They were peaceful, liberating, comforting, and calming. Even in the coldest of months, the sunset was warm and inviting. I was lost there in that moment each and every day because I allowed myself to be taken away by a moment.

Tonight, I sat on my front porch. The air was crisp but reassuring and life was still. I could hear the buzz of a busy highway somewhere in the distance, chirping insects, and a soft breeze. I looked into the night sky. Though cloudless, the stars seemed too dim to make out a constellation. I ached to see the stars.

I remember when Heidi and I were first dating, we walked up the hill behind her dad’s house because I wanted to see the sunset and still a moment with her alone. We sat there atop the mountain overlooking the valley and talked about everything and nothing. As we watched the sun set, the moon rose and the stars peeked through the deep midnight blue sky. It was gorgeous. We talked about the kind of moons that Heidi finds attractive. No to slivery, not too fat, it has to be a perfect crescent moon or completely full.

I miss it. I miss the mountains and the way the sunset seemed to sing just for me. It was tranquil. It was beautiful. It was home.

I realized tonight that even though our lives are filled with classes, readings, papers, presentations, lectures, speakers, cleaning the house, taking care of the dogs, and all the other responsibilities of life, I still need my precious moments that I can feel and just be. I want to just be. I want for a moment to not think and not care. I want to be washed over by the colors in a Utah sunset. I want to bathe in the moment. I'm aching to be lost in a moment!

Uncle Mike the Cat

I took some photos the other day to share with the fam.


I straightened my hair oh just a few hours before this photo. And I just ask myself why? I knew before I came here I would hate the humidity and that it would do unhappy things for my hair. I just wish there was something I could do to make it better. It’s too short to pull up. Too long to do nothing. On a happy note we met a girl at Starbucks that had a similar hairstyle and asked for her hair stylist’s number. I think I will make an appointment tomorrow and then try to grow it out a bit. Cause this just isn’t cute.



I talked to some of you but I must have had some serious stress going on cause a blood vessel in my eye burst. This is about day 4 of the healing process I believe. Jamie was pretty worried. After I had a migraine for about 4 days I was also a little worried. No worries now though, the headache and the spreading of the blood through the eye are both gone. Yay!

Things are getting easier and harder at the same time if that is possible. We miss everyone so much, and Utah and the mountains, even just not knowing other gay people has been a huge awakening. I miss Equality Utah even though we were never as involved as I would have liked. I have taken a personal vow to be more involved if we move back. I feel like we took a lot of that for granted and now it’s like we are all alone in the world with no no gay rights political group caring about our rights. Strange very strange. I never thought I would care about being around other gay people but wherever we end up will definitely have to have a strong gay community, for us and our kids.

And now onto the anticipated story of uncle mike the cat. I think one of the first things many of our new neighbors informed of us was that the house we moved into came with a cat. His name is uncle mike, his back legs don’t work right (they think he was in a car accident) he lives under the porch and oh he gets fed on your porch so make sure you feed him. What the??? We don’t want a cat, they stink, they cost money that as grad students we don’t have, and our dogs, especially Zada go crazy and want to eat cats. Definitely not something we want to take on. We talked about it and decided we didn’t want to take on. But the neighbors: even the girl who lived at our house for a couple of months and trashed and left it disgusting came over to say she’d feed it but would feel weird creeping on our porch every day to set out food so we should just do it, LOVE LOVE LOVE the cat. He is like the neighborhood mascot. But NO ONE has offered to put his bowls on THEIR porch. Very odd in my mind. They all expect us to take care of him and they give off the vibe that if we don’t something is wrong with us. The cat hates people and runs away when anyone is around; he looks like he is in pain and the porch and front of our house stink like well cat! Mary the 60 or 70 year old party animal but sweet lady across the street said she buy the food and feed him but I just don’t want the cat under my porch, it’s gross. Why oh why does everyone think we should take care of it? Only in Arkansas.

A heritage I hate

I’m learning, learning, and learning. I’m learning the ins and outs of myself, some things I like and other things I’m ready to get rid of. In my classes, my internship, and on the streets I’m learning about the realities of racism and the giant effect it has on this little city. It’s a whole new world in the South. I wouldn’t say I didn’t know that racism existed. Of course it does. I just didn’t deal with it on a day to day basis. I didn’t have to think about it because I lived in a city of mostly white people. I never thought of myself as a white girl, a white woman, or a white anything. I was just Jamie. I don’t mind really. It’s just different and somewhat odd for me to think about.

A couple days after we moved here I was cleaning out the Penski truck when I saw two boys walking down the street. One of the boys was on a skate board and the other was walking next to him. As they were getting closer to the truck I could hear them talking about riding the skate board down the truck’s ramp. They were talking back and forth and probably didn’t think I could hear. One boy said, “Oh there’s a lady in that truck, think she’ll let us ride that ramp?” The other responded, “No way, she a white lady. She not gonna let you.”

My first thought was, I’m white…I’ve never identified as a white woman before. My second thought was, What does being white have anything to do with whether or not I would let them ride down the ramp? Soon the boys were at the truck.

“What’s go’n on boys?”
“Who truck is this?”
“It’s a Penski truck.”
“Who Penski?”
“Penski is a company, I’m just renting the truck to move in.”
“Oh. That ramp…”
“You wanna ride down it?”
“Oh yes ma’am, I didn’t think you would let me!”

Later that day, the boys brought back some friend to the house and asked for water. I gave them all bottled water from the freezer. They thought that was pretty cool and now I’m the water lady. It’s cute.

The reason I tell this story is because now I think about myself as a white girl/woman all the time. I think about how my whiteness affects people around me. I wonder what they think of me, how they view me, how I portray myself. It’s all very exhausting really. More importantly, I think about how my clients (90% African American young men) may react to me. I don’t want to be just another white lady who can’t relate to them, or who judges them, or who “will not let them ride down a silly ramp.”

On a less cute note, Heidi and I were in K-mart when something strange happened. Heidi was in a different part of the store and I was looking at bags for school. Not far behind me I heard a girl’s voice call out something. Naturally, I looked behind for a brief second and then back to my shopping. Out of nowhere, the girl says, “I wasn’t talk’n to you white bitch, I was talk’n to my girl!” Wow, that’s a lot of anger right. That’s a lot of anger that most likely comes from years and years of hatred. I was sad, not for me but for all the people that have experienced such hatred, who have grown up with that kind of hatred, and subjected to discrimination and racism their whole lives.

In the past couple weeks I’ve learned more about racisms than I ever would have in Utah. In class we have just touched on the history of the enslavement, segregation, oppression, and discrimination. Our nation’s history is embarrassing and disgusting all at the same time.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous phrase, “All men are created equally…” But he enslaved 650 men and women. He was one of the great leaders in justifying slavery and the oppression of all the minorities in early America. How is he honored in history? I will never understand. American’s history honestly makes me sick.

With that in mind, I’m white. In the south, white people owned slaves. I’m white. In the south, white people fought for the “right” to own slaves in the civil war. I’m white. In the south, people still fly the confederate flag proudly. I’m white. In the south, white people are rich while the majority of the black population is poor. I’m white. In the south, I’m white. In the south, I represent the ugliest part of our nation’s history. It's a heritage I HATE! I hate hate. I hate that there is so much hate. I hate that hate is taught to young kids. I hate that hate is so pervasive. I hate that hate is even real. I'm angry with the white people who think they are so much better than every other race . I'm angry with racism! I'm angry that I'm a little white girl just barely learning the realities of the world I live in when I was tough my whole life to honor the founding fathers of America as if they were some type of hero. Tell the next black man or woman you see to honor the men who justified enslaving humans, who owned human, who treated humans like animals...

I'm white. It's a heritage I hate.

Jamie

Frog Legs and Catfish Nuggets

Right now my fireplace is filling up with water. I think this might constitute a call to the landlord. Oh wait he is in Korea. It could be a long rainy season. Maybe that is why the ceiling looks like a saggy old man above the fireplace. Oh got to love renting using all the new fabulous technologies of the world.

On a brighter note I just made our first weekly meal menu of our Arkansas lives. Unfortunately the Asian and Mexican food sections at the local Kroger are much smaller than in Utah and are full of a lot of “Old El Paso”. They had to make room for the frog legs and pigs feet. Jamie is dying to try them. Would masaman curry be the same with frog legs? Hmmm…

We are diving right into our school work which is fun, and for me, somewhat scary. Painting whatever I want and organizing community art projects is a far cry from sitting for 3 hours and listening to people talk and talking. Yes I do talk, and it is possible that I will get a first report card much like Kindergarten that says I don’t talk to my teacher but I promise to work on it. I have discovered my idea of learning is a bit different than what this first week was like. I might have to readjust my idea of academics or ask my professors for more independent work. We shall see. The second week might just rock my little brain and world. One thing I loved about art school was the constant challenge to the way I thought and my attempts to grapple with and form new ways of thinking and being. I hope that happens here.

Drumroll please….
And now the funny Arkansas story for the day. There are so many to choose from, I think my favorite is what I am going to call as opposed to the California Roll, the Southern Stop. If you have a better name please let me know. As it is commonly known the west coast folks are pretty laid back and the east coast folks are a bit higher strung. There is a lot of beach bumming and surfing, lollygagging and such the farther west you get. The farther east you get the more uptight, and workaholicish it gets. I guess the midsouth fits somewhere in the middle. Just in case people are getting offended I am very much stereotyping here and not in a mean way, more like a kidding/half serious way. So anywho, where I come from people are very quick about 4 way stops, 3 way stops, basically any stop in general. It has repeatedly been brought to my attention that Arkansans take stopping very seriously. Maybe I should start with the definition of a California roll= slowing to almost a stop but not quite and then quickly proceeding driving. In Arkansas they come to a sloooow complete stop and then after at least 15 seconds, continue to slowly drive. I am sure glad there aren’t round-a-bouts here. Can you imagine the chaos??? I have witnessed much more than a 15 second stop but I think 15 is about the average. Maybe we will become more Zen.

Jamie asked Zada if she wanted to go to Utah and she went straight to the front door. Sad puppy

In the next issue we will learn about uncle mike the cat.

Just ride on out the curves!

What are those? GOOSEBUMPS? In Arkansas? What is going on here? That’s right, while driving my scooter home last night from a lecture by Arne Duncan and then a delicious chocolate stout to celebrate Anatoliy’s birthday, I actually got cold. I must say I never thought the day would come. If you told me a month ago if I would be happy being cold I would have thought you were crazy. But for a moment I was utterly and completely happy to be cold. It didn’t last long. I vaguely recall Jamie asking or telling me something about me sweating while I was sleeping just a few hours later.

Another revelation upon moving to Little Rock and now starting school is that while a few years ago I was ecstatic about finally being able to receive Pell Grants since I was old enough to not be a reflection of my parents’ income and telling everyone to wait to go to college to be able to get more of their education paid for I now wish I would have gone to graduate school much earlier in life. I have never been so tired in my life and we haven’t even started real assignments yet. I fell asleep about 10 times last night trying to finish reading for communications class today. What time was it you ask? Don’t be thinking it was one of those 1 am reading binges. Nope, it was about 11pm, and after a cup of coffee. Maybe all the water in the air makes me sleepy, I don’t know. I have never been so ready for bed so early in my life. I have never been a morning person and now I wake up at 6am every day. It is almost the strangest thing I have seen since moving here. Oh wait just kidding not even close.

On that note I think I should start a “the weirdest/most different from Utah story of the day” So for today this is what happened. We drove EVERYWHERE to find a spark plug for my scooter. Finally we found an AutoZone but they didn’t have it but the one on Baseline did. And of course we are supposed to know where that is. After we explained that we aren’t from around here the lady at the counter gave us very detailed instructions (haha) We had to go to the light and turn left and go down past a lot of stuff to some other “city” that I couldn’t quite understand and "just ride on out the curves" and then turn left by Walgreens. I don’t know how much Utah has right but the numbered grid system is working!

Jamie's Freaky Dreams

Some people believe that dreams have meaning. I don’t really know how I feel about that but I had the freakiest set of dreams last night. Any dream readers out there?

I dreamt that Heidi and I among other people I didn’t know were just hanging out in a house by the ocean and I looked out a window to see a giant tornado. In a panic, I ran around screaming and grabbed Heidi to find safety in the basement bathroom. I thought this would be the safest place. We jumped in the bathtub and my dad is there crouched in the shower.

The tornado picked up the entire bathroom and dumped us into the Ocean. The room started to sink into the ocean so we quickly swam out the window and onto a Hawaiian looking beach with rocks and a shore covered in army men who where camouflaged like massive piles of sea weed.

With each crash of the ocean wave, we watch the soldiers creep further up the shore. As people ran down to the water, soldiers would strike up quickly and capture unsuspecting women and children as they quickly hid again.

Crouched behind rocks were Heidi, my dad, and myself. I was scared out of my mind, breathing heavily and trying to figure out how to get out of there when I saw my mom walking down to the beach ready for a swim. Just as the others had disappeared beneath the hidden soldiers my mom was snatched up. In horror, I immediately ran to the soldiers and began to smash my fist into his head. He gave my mom back to me, she crashed to her knees soaked with water, and barely alive she said she had been gone forever and had experienced terrible things. I tried to console her but she was too broken and lifeless.

The next thing I can remember is Heidi and I at her mom’s house. She had a huge house with panel windows overlooking the beach. After dinner, Heidi and I went outside to star gaze and had remembered her dad saying something about a meteor shower. So we lied down and watched the stars fall in awe. It was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen.

Then, giant meteors shot across the sky. I mean massive flaming meteors. In a panic we ran into the house and the entire family ran to the basement. All of Heidi’s immediate family was there and everyone decided to try and be as calm as possible for Heidi’s niece. So everyone was pretending that we weren’t going to die. They turned on a movie and read books to Heidi’s niece.

Me? I was freaking out, trying to think of every possible way to survive. I went over to Heidi’s dad and asked him what to do and he just said it would all be fine. The meteors weren’t going to be a problem. Eventually we all went to sleep and the next morning sat down to breakfast. I was sitting at a table facing the ocean. The ocean was still and beautiful when all the sudden an enormous wave came crashing against the glass walls of the house. I again jumped up in a panic while everyone seemed to be fine.

Then I woke up.

So if you are a dream reader, maybe you can tell me what all that chaos means. :)

Day Two of Class

Today has been a pretty awesome day. I woke up and tried to make my lovely wife breakfast before she had to go to school but she was running a little late so, I being the idiot that I am, gave her a mug of coffee and a bagel on the go. No bag, no way of really carrying anything. She rushed out the door with her computer on her back, keys and bagel in one hand, and an I-pod and coffee in the other all while trying to drive a scooter across town. The bagel landed on the ground about three times while she situated herself on the seat and I just felt like a big goof. What was I thinking? She appreciated the thought though. I hope she didn’t end up eating it.

After that, I read a little for class and took Princess Zada Jane and Wunbi on a walk around our neighborhood. Scared to get lost, I stayed within a one block radius of our house and went in a big circle until the puppies couldn’t handle the heat anymore. Eventually, I may feel comfortable venturing out a bit further but I cannot for the life of me figure out Arkansas addresses. They make no sense in my head. For one, most streets have names and if they don’t have names, the numbers don’t really make sense to me either. I might be dumb, I don’t know. All I know right now is Utah has got it figured out.

People ask me where I live and I tell them my exact address. I finally figured out that it’s weird for me to do that. I just don’t really know what else to say. Where is Booker St? They ask. I don’t know, it’s where my house is.
My class was chill. I had the same professor that I had yesterday so I heard a lot of the same information but it was fun. We like to get to know all our class mates so we played 2 truths and a lie. Mine were:
1- I’m a terrible dancer
2- I started the first female body building competition in my high school
3- I rock climb

Guess what…every single person thought that “I’m a terrible dancer” was the truth and couldn’t believe me when I said it was the lie. Why couldn’t they believe that I can get down? I don’t know but my feelings were a little hurt.

Move to The South

Hello everyone! Heidi and I are safely in Arkansas. I know, I know, you all are still wondering why we came all the way to Little Rock for graduate school. In fact, I haven’t met a person yet who has not said, “ARKANSAS! WHY ARKANSAS?” Well, to answer your questions, we came to Little Rock or “The Rock” as Arkansans call it for a couple of different reasons.

1- Heidi and I both want to change the world. I believe Gondi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We want to be part of that change by helping people who are disadvantaged and oppressed. Ultimately, we both hope to inspire at-risk youth to make healthy choices like staying in school and off the streets. Heidi is getting her master’s in Public Service at University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. I’m getting my Master’s in Social Work with an emphasis in Mental Health and will eventually be a LCSW.

2- After weighing our options, we had basically two choices to make. We could go to school in Boston or Little Rock. We chose Little Rock for many different reasons but mostly because it felt right. Sometimes you just got to fallow your gut.


So there you have it. Now that we are here there are days that we honestly think, “What the hell were we thinking?” It’s hotter than anywhere that I’ve been. The humidity is suffocating and makes our dish clothes stinky over night. We go through laundry like toilet paper. There are cock roaches…need I say more, people drive funny. We don’t have a drive way but that’s normal here. People often park on what they call grass but I’m not sure what the grass is. I wouldn’t lay on it or anything. No one really seems to care about what their lawn looks like. The neighbors had a drive by shooting before we got here and it’s a little more dangerous the SLC.

On a more positive note, our house is coming along, we have a huge back yard with a fire pit, and a porch! We are still living out of boxes but moving in takes time. My internship is going to be incredible! AND, we get to experience a new culture, new people, new place, new things, new “mountains,” with new trails, rivers, lakes, and well new everything. Stay tuned y’all cuz I got lots to tell!

Oh yeah, and we miss everyone mucho much!