Ray

Moving to Colorado from Los Angeles and making necessary life changes meant that concerts are now a privilege, not a right. The one I've been to was last night, and it was better than all the shows before it... combined. Yes. Little Jonny and I got each other the same birthday present: tickets to a Ray LaMontagne concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

You couldn't possibly change one thing about last night to make it better. Warm air, clear sky, seats high enough to see the city of Denver, towering red rocks on either side of us, and a shirtless gentleman two rows down with a centaur tattooed across his entire back {who's lucky he decided to stop dancing after the first song...}. Oh, and I was with little brother Jonny, one of my favorite people on the planet. 

Ray LaMontagne has been one of my favorite musicians for about two years, and I felt it was risky business to see him in concert. You know when someone sounds so much better on the album than in real life, and you consider deleting all their music and hanging your head in shame when you return home? On the contrary, I wanted to bottle up his voice and wear it on a string. 

Apparently a simple man, he worked in a shoe factory before making us weak in the knees with his voice and lyrics. His simple stage presence made him all the more appealing, and his music spoke for itself. He doesn't force emotions on his audience. Instead, he can summarize bits of life in a song and leave you speechless and dumbfounded without hardly trying. I think if you asked him why he sings, his answer would never be "to entertain the people." His music is soul music -- his songs mean something to you. 

When he opened his mouth to sing, I stopped everything. I realized I forgot the defibrillator only after my heart stopped beating -- or maybe it flipped inside out. Either way, I wanted to explode. He possessed a refreshing humility like I've never seen before on stage. The whole thing was, in a word, unforgettable.

I Dream of Grocery

I decided to write about something weird today, and that idea was confirmed as brilliant when I walked into the coffee shop just now. A musical group was seated inside the front door, playing instruments I have never seen. It was either Renaissance or Riverdance music. I'm not familiar with either to distinguish them, but all I know is I wanted to jig. I wanted to jig bad, and this is exactly the kind of place that I could start a jig and perhaps be joined by everyone else in line and it would be totally normal...but weird. Anyway, it got me in the perfect mood to write about my weird dream.

This dream was inspired by the name of a local grocery store. Some grocery stores have names that actually reveal what's inside: Food4Less, Whole Foods, and Farm Fresh. Others are just plain funny: HE Butt Grocery. Others leave you guessing: Jitney Jungle, Piggly-Wiggly, and the main character in my dream -- King Soopers.

King Soopers. What? It's a household name in Colorado. It's our local grocery store, founded by Lloyd King in 1947. I've shopped at King Soopers for years and think it's great. So great that I dreamed about it and will never forget it.

In my dream, I had just been hired by King Soopers and arrived for my first day of training, only to find all the employees dressed in Kung Fu fighting clothes. Startled, I stood off to the side until I realized why. Kung Fu was the newest effective method of cutting down on shoplifting and taking care of those unruly customers. I slipped into my fighting clothes and instead of learning the cash register, I learned Kung Fu. The result of all this? King Soopers was forever known as Kung Foopers.

Thrifting

Think of this post as With Love, Jen: Part II. I scanned pages of her letter and put them here with her permission, both so you could see why I was so delighted and so you can add some of the best advice around to your thrifting repertoire. When Jen and I were together in Washington, I asked her how to successfully shop thrift stores. I want to learn this skill. Extraordinary items can be found there when one has the eye for it. Jen has the eye, and I asked her to tell me all she knew. I apologize that some of it is hard to read because of the scan quality, but I hope you enjoy her response as much as I do.

Talk to the Hand

Remember when "talk to the hand, not to the face" was the ultimate insult? It appears that everyone took that to heart. I've found myself recently wanting to say "talk to the face, not to the hand!" It might be a few more years before we fully realize the effects of texting- and facebook-only relationships. We are more adept at expressing ourselves electronically than we are in person!

Does this alarm anyone else? I catch myself doing this. Awkward topics occasionally come up over video chat, and instead of responding verbally, I'll type it out! I never do this in person. I've never pulled out a piece of paper and written out what I was going to say because I couldn't explain it. That's absurd. Why is this normal as soon as a gadget is involved? I've met teenagers whose entire dating relationship was texted. They got together, they talked, and they broke up all via text.

Privacy, the 21st century's most endangered word, is thrown out the window with texting. It's no longer acceptable to respond when you want to. You are expected to respond to a text pronto, and there could be relational consequences if you don't. The next generation of phones will probably be waterproof so we can text in the shower, thus avoiding a friendship demise because of 15 minutes of silence.  

I don't mean to sound anti-text. I'm all for it. I'm reluctantly learning to be more conversational and not so mission-accomplished. Texting is especially handy when I have a couple minutes of downtime in public and want to look important and popular... er... um... you get the idea. And thus ends my "technology may not always be the only solution" rant. The End. 

Lone Ranger

I'm housesitting for the summer...er, shall I say plantsitting. Why I agreed to keep plants alive for 3 months, I have no idea. I'm a notorious plant-killer. Grandma loves her plants. Bad combination. There was no interview, or I wouldn't be here writing this. So far, only a few have been lost but are making a surprise comeback!

Flying solo in the Rocky Mountains is decidedly less exciting than I hoped. I used to think I was an introvert with extrovert tendencies, but I'm thinking it's the other way around. It's definitely not as great to have fun by yourself as it is to do it with someone. Dinner is a joke. I stocked up the first week with all these grand plans to cook for myself, only to make it to Friday with a tub of wilted lettuce, some bad tomatoes and one lonely piece of leftover quiche. Eating across the table from Empty just doesn't have the same allure.

Living alone is wonderful for doing things at your own pace and with your own style. I can read, clean, groove, make coffee, come and go, whenever and however I like. It's terrible for laughter, interesting conversation, and spur of the moment bike rides. It's terrible if I choke. It's terrible if I break my legs. It's awesome if I just need to get away. It's perfect for enjoying the simple things. 

In the end, living alone has its ups and downs, just like everything else. I am second-guessing my dream of getting my own apartment, and unless things improve, it will be awhile before I plant my own garden. And I continue to learn that the grass is green on the other side, but it's green here too.

With Love, Jen

Take a deep breath and put your virtual personality aside for a moment. We are about to venture into a foreign place -- the land of handwritten letters. Three weeks ago, a letter dropped into my mailbox for the first time in years. Not a greeting card; a letter. Six pages of bliss. I read it four times in a row and laughed out loud to myself, not because it was funny, but because I was so delighted.

We write letters differently than any other way we communicate. Putting pen to paper feels more permanent. For one thing, you can't ever look back at it to see what you wrote. In a world that has an electronic record of almost everything, not knowing what you've said can be unsettling. Once it's in the mail, it's gone. It's almost as though your thoughtful side intuitively knows it's time to shine. We usually write about more meaningful things in letters than we do in texts or emails. We usually treasure letters more than texts or emails.

This letter was so captivating not only because of what it said, but because it was written by someone's hand. No one else in the world has this handwriting. I see charm and personality, not font. It is special because I know how long it takes to write a letter -- and I know it was sent only to me, not 755 facebook friends. I am closer with her simply because we exchanged one letter, the first of many.

Here is my idea for you: sit down with a blank piece of paper, a pen, and a person in mind. Start writing what flows to your fingers, and you may not be able to stop. Receiving a letter in return might be the highlight of your year. Seriously. It will at least be more memorable than the annual mass "Merry Christmas! I'm so thankful for your friendship!" text. Happy writing!

The Land of Corn and Fireflies

Windblown and sticky, six of us pulled into the Eberspacher driveway after eight hours on the road. Eight hours without air conditioning, in the sultry heat of June, surrounded by cow farms and other unidentified odors. 

Why would people choose to live in Nebraska? We didn’t know. Yet. Tumbling out of the car, we faced an expansive cornfield that gave me a fraction of the feeling I have standing at the edge of the sea.  A train clunked on behind us and Lucy, the German Shepherd, sat by the front door as if this was her friendly queendom. 

The family inside the farmhouse greeted us like we were the long-lost relatives. We were taken straight to our VIP sleeping quarters, to an air-conditioned basement full of soft air mattresses and a bathroom big enough for the entire Nebraska population. 

Those of us not in the wedding explored around the farm while everyone went to rehearsal. There is a lot of open space between people in Nebraska, so our free spirits came out and we laughed long and loud, disturbing only Lucy.  We walked along the corn-lined gravel road and felt surprisingly relaxed. I saw my first fireflies that night and was completely enchanted, as if I’d been invited to a spontaneous garden party. 

It was Saturday afternoon when the radiant and relaxed Elisa slipped into her pretty white dress and hopped in the car. The only decorations in the chapel were candles and wildflowers. Nothing distracted from their vows to each other and it was the sweetest wedding I’ve ever been to. After a catered dinner, Krispy Kreme groom’s cake, and my first ever bouquet catch, they were off! 

Allie took this awesome snap.

When we thought about going to celebrate afterward, we remembered we were in Milford and did the only thing we could do: we went back to the farm. We rode in the bed of the old pickup out to the pasture to watch the stars and the distant lightning. We soon found ourselves driving through corn, then running through corn until we got scared of the dark. I think I can speak for everyone: we had the times of our lives. 

Thanks, Nebraska. I haven’t felt so free in a long, long time.