.::still blinking::.

I was living at jj’s grandparents house while I was trying to find a new apartment. The one that I was going to live in fell threw. I was living in the upstairs guest bedroom, jj was in the basement. We technically lived together before we were married.

I was on my way to work and jj could hear me upstairs getting ready to go. I was about to leave and he called me on my cellphone and told me that I needed to come and watch what was on tv. I told them that I had to go, or I would be late. He told me it was important.

I went down into the basement, where the tv is. jj grandparents were watching the news. They informed me of what was going on. I sat down for only a few minutes and watched and then I had to go to work. I worked in the computer labs at Utah State University. When I got to work, we turned one of the computers to one of the news stations that had live feed from the Trade Towers. People who came to school that day stood around that computer and just watched in amazement. We could not believe what we were watching. I worked and did what I was supposed to while this was all going on.

jj called me later, and told me that one of the towers was going to collapse. When the first one fell, he told me that lots of buildings where going to fall. They would all damage each other.

When I was finished with work, I went back to jj’s grandparents house and went into the basement and found his grandparents in the same places and positions that I had left them in four hours earlier. I stayed with them until my drawing class started. I was sure that the teacher would let us leave and not have to go to class today. I was wrong. She said, the best way we could fight against this sort of thing was to keep going. We needed to not shut down, we needed to persist in living. I knew she was right, but I yearned to fall asleep and wake up from this bad dream. I was sure that nothing would happen in Logan, Utah. But I was scared anyway.

In the days that followed. I was constantly hooked up to any news source that I could find. I would be doing my homework on a computer and have msnbc.com live news feed playing in the background. Weeks after the towers fell I was still hoping that they would find people alive. I knew that it was not possible, but I wanted it so badly.

I was amazed that we never saw the people that they pulled out of those crushed skeletons of buildings. At first I really wanted to know what had happened to them. Later I understood that out of respect they did not let people like me know what had happened.

On October 5th, 2001, jj proposed to me. We continued to live. But I still searched for any link to these people who had perished. I found a website that had phone messages from people who were trapped in the towers. They knew they were going to die and they had called their loved ones to tell them that they loved them. There was one from a woman to her husband. I don’t remember everything that she said, but she ended it saying, “I love you always.”

I had that inscribed on the inside of jj’s wedding band. I have thought of other things that I would have liked to have put in their since. But at the time, it seemed the most appropriate.

I did not know anyone who was killed that day. I was not personally affected. But I was awakened to the type of world that we live in. In that way I was changed forever.

My cousin Sarah is hilarious.

Cuke kids on the sand piles at my family reunion. Wouldn’t it be funny if they were all really a bunch of cucumbers in clothing.

Genty refused to keep his feet buried.

I got a little irritated with all the older kids throwing sand and eventually I turned into the safety patrol. I would take away toys and almost got to the point of making kids have timeouts.

There was one little girl who spit in my sister Kateka’s face. We went and told her dad and he was like, oh, she is just at that age. And laughed. What? No wonder she is part devil, her dad is completely devil. There is no appropriate age for spitting.

Next year when I go back and spend the entire time sitting on the sand, “diggin.” That is how Gentry says it. I am going to kick kids off the sand pile for being brats. I don’t care if their parents aren’t going to discipline them, I am going to let them know that there is someone in charge here and I am going to make kids be nice. There will be, “NO THROWING SAND ON THE SANDPILE!”

Now sit down and be nice you little terd.

Isn’t jj hilarious? He took this picture.

I went to a town called Tabiona this weekend for my mom’s family reunion. Her grandpa used to own the mountain, and slowly sold little bits of it off. My mom now has a little piece of land as do all my aunts, uncles, and their cousins.

There is a little communal piece of land that is owned by my mom’s family that we have a big pavilion on and it has room for lots of campers and tents and things. We go up yearly to play in the mountains and pay homage to our ancestors.

My mom grew up on this mountain, she knows all the little secrets places and lots of fun stories. I only know it as old and run down, not the kind of place that you would want to spend a lot of time unless you like to slow way down and take it easy. That is the atmosphere here.

Notice that most things are the color of rust.