I didn’t want to call him ‘Logan’

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Jenna

I had a dream last night.

I regularly have dreams, and tell them in great detail to whoever might be handy. And this morning . . . that’s you! (I hope. Hello? Hello? Are you out there?)

I was walking down a concrete sidewalk of sorts with my husband, and I had baby James in the crook of my arm. The sidewalk was set in a hilly area, and as I looked up at the grassy incline to my left, suddenly I realized there were cows everywhere. “Moo!” they said. My husband started to steer us away from the cows, but I reassured him “They’re not dangerous–don’t worry.”

But as we progressed further into the melee of cows, suddenly I realized there were also lions and tigers in the mix. We hadn’t noticed them at first because they were lying down, stretching and napping and generally chilling, but as we passed by they started yawning and waking up. I counted at least two tigers and one lion . . . plus a white tiger. I wasn’t sure whether to keep walking, go back, or just stand still. Though at the moment the cats were still pretty snoozy, at any moment they could turn into life-threatening fur-bags of muscle and terror.

My husband started running, and I almost shouted “No! That will just attract their attention!” But then I realized that he was doing it on purpose. He was trying to draw the animals away from James and me.

And then, as I watched my husband sprint away and the tigers and lions started running after him, there was a man with a gun. I thought, “I should duck in case he fires off some shots,” but before I could get a grip on the situation, my husband was tackling him.

It was a glorious running tackle, and as he took that guy down, my heart swelled with pride. People started clapping. I beamed. Two cops shows up and pointed their guns at the criminal and I thought, “we’re safe! My baby is a hero!”

BUT THEN. The cops were surrounded–the gunman wasn’t a loner. There was a whole crowd of criminals, and we were all taken prisoners. I was crying, but proud, but crying.

I was sitting in the back of a truck with a bunch of other hostages watching things unfold with the criminals and the cops and my husband. There was a small blond boy sitting next to me who was maybe 4 years old, and his mom was one of the criminals. He poked her in the back and somehow killed her (this part was fuzzy and she conveniently disappeared), and I realized it was now my job to take care of this boy. “Logan is now my son,” I thought. “My responsibility.” Then I realized I didn’t want to name a child ‘Logan’ and wondered if it would be feasible to change his name to something I liked a little better. My heart was full of love for James and Logan.

One of the criminals was telling me about this play that a bunch of kids were putting on, and I realized that Logan was involved and that I’d have to get him there. “Rehearsal starts at one o’ clock,” he told me, “but ends at 13:00.” I figured he meant 15:00 and rehearsal was two hours long, but as I spoke up to clarify with him, it dawned on me that this was his way of telling me that there was no rehearsal, since the start and end time were the same. I wished I’d caught on more quickly.

Then, in a completely unrelated part of the dream, I went to Plato’s Closet only to realize the store was shutting down and all they had in stock were some hideous green evening gowns.

Thank you for listening.

What does it all mean??

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On being behind the camera

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Jenna

I’ve been lagging soooo behind on my picture duties. I’ve just now finally wrapped up the picture processing of Kevin and Katina’s wedding from mid-December (see here for their engagement pictures from last summer and here for pictures of the bride getting dressed), and I can’t wait to share the rest of the shots with you guys! (Katina was glowing. Kevin was dashing. Etc, etc.)

Consequently (since I’m trying to deal with my pictures in chronological order so I don’t get confused all to heck with where I stand), I haven’t made it through any of the Christmas pictures (except for the small batch of James shots), or the complete batch of New Years photos.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember that every year we celebrate the New Year with the same group of friends, and a merry group it is!

I love those guys. Some of them we see throughout the year, and some we only see once, at this party. Due to some pressure from facebook and my own inherent guilt, I finally threw a couple dozen or so pictures up on facebook, with the promise to go through them all later and actually get the complete set made public (task completed as of Monday!). As I doing my quick intial scan of the oodles of pictures, selecting a few here and a few there for immediate sharing, I was thrilled that there were a couple good shots of me and my husband!

(by the way, isn’t my husband’s nose fabulously straight? I hereby wish that nose and that nose only upon any future children of ours)

Being the girl behind the camera at most events in my life, there aren’t that many pictures of me–probably less than 0.01% of the total pictures taken with my lovely Nikon. And having a slightly weird face when it comes to the camera (don’t worry, I’m at peace with my face–it’s just not at peace with a lens), there are even less good pictures of me.

I also feel bad asking anyone to take pictures of me, first because I’m still slightly self-conscious (“will they think I’m, like, super vain???”), and second because I have to explain how to use the camera in order to obtain a focused, non-blurry, generally A-OK shot (“you can rotate this part of the lens to zoom in; yes, you have to look through the eye-hole-thingy instead of just looking at the screen; press halfway down on this button to focus, then the rest of the way down to shoot, but don’t hold your finger there after shooting because it will keep shooting and could burn out the flash; it you want to take a vertical shot you need to rotate the head of the external flash like so so that it points towards the ceiling and bounces off at the right angle . . .”). And frankly, that’s got to be kind of annoying to the poor person designated to take my/our picture. And in the process, I end up feeling like a micro-managing, controlling female fiend.

So thank you to whoever took these!

I think it was Liz.

They make me happy, and my nose doesn’t look 5 miles long. Yay!

More pictures to come!

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2012 New Years resolutions

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Jenna

As a follow up to yesterday’s post reflecting on last year’s goals, what I got done and what I let slide, today I want to share some of my desires for this year. I guess ‘resolutions’ is a slight misnomer–these are things I hope to accomplish in the year to come. Some are ongoing and some are one-time tasks. I don’t want to make unreasonable goals for myself, so I’m keeping it minimal. Here goes!

-Record Thornfield’s first album. This is a huge goal for Eric, Carrie and me. We’ve been playing and songwriting together for over a year now, and now it’s time to lay down some tracks, baby! I really want a finished product we’re all pleased with and proud of, that reflects our unique sound and conveys that folksy, intimate feeling without teetering into something overproduced or overly rough-around-the-edges. The recording process is brand new to me, so it’s bound to be a learning experience! (Gulp.)

-Make Grandma Sue’s cream pie recipe. It’s just gotta happen.

-Continue songwriting! It’s been so wonderful finding this new venue of expression and creativity, and I can’t imagine stopping now. I wrote the first song of 2012 just the other weekend, so I feel like I’m starting the year off on the right foot.

-Continue blogging–it’s also been too great a journey to stop! Sometimes I toy with the idea of quitting when I’m in a creative funk (or feeling particularly tired), and though the time to stop may yet come, for now I will forge ahead through joy, silliness, inertia, enthusiasm and the occasional writer’s block. Honestly, my office job is such an ideal situation for blogging to happen–hours with nothing to do and a big ole computer right in front of me. I have trouble thinking of a better use of my time while I’m stuck here in the office than connecting to all of you through this blogging thang!

-Move! We have loved living in our apartment, but I would really like to have space for our own washer and dryer. I’m been laundro-matting since I was 18, and after more than a decade of toting clothes there and back and there again and back again, I’d enjoy a little respite. I’d also enjoy having windows that don’t rattle and let the snow in. Floors that don’t creak with every step, and allow us to hear our neighbor every time he coughs or turns on NPR Saturday morning (bless his NPR-loving heart!). If we stay where we are I will continue to be happy and satisfied, but finding an affordable apartment that’s a little nicer and has a bathtub I don’t feel the need to apologize for when guests arrive . . . well, there’s some appeal there that you can probably understand. I’ll keep you guys informed! For now, we’ll see, and I’ll keep dwelling in the contentedness of my joy in God no matter what.

-Have a morning quiet time. This resolution was something totally unexpected, and happened quite naturally the Tuesday after New Years. I hadn’t had almost any time alone with God during our Christmas holiday, so by the time Tuesday January 3rd hit and it was time to get back into the routine of our life, I was feeling parched and desperate for him–enough to get my butt out of bed almost half an hour earlier than usual to spend that time in prayer and reading the Bible before I headed out to work. It was such a sweet time that I’ve been doing it ever since, cup of coffee in hand.

To understand the ground-breaking nature of this, you have to know that I have never been able to get up early for a quiet time. I’ve tried, and failed, and tried, and failed. Oh–and tried and failed. The first example that comes to mind is those mornings as a teenager when my Mom and I decided to get up early to read the Bible before I went to school. We were going to be real spiritual go-getters, we were. And our intentions may have been noble, but our follow through and discipline were severely lacking–these well-meant early mornings ended with both of us sleeping in the living room instead. Yup. Snuggled into a corner of the couch, gently snoozing until it was time for me to stumble out the door with my backpack. I’ve simply never been wired for mornings, and apparently, it’s slightly genetic. So the fact that, without making a decision to change my habits, I just kind of slid into this early morning devotional time–it’s huge. I love those 20 minutes, and have plans to stretch it into 30 and maybe even 40 minutes. Now that I want to do it so badly and am enjoying it so much, it seems easy! Craziness.

-Go to the dentist. It’s been since . . . well, 2004. And I’ve been slacking on that flossing resolution I made ages ago. ‘Nuff said.

How about you guys? What do you anticipate and hope for in this (almost) freshly minted 2012?

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2011 New Years resolutions: a look back

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Jenna

I love the chance to think about the year from a big picture perspective when it comes to a close. Review the sorrows, joys, challenges, what I’ve learned, what surprises came our way–all that good stuff. I recently came across the list that I made 1 year ago. They were my goals for 2011–a big to-do list, essentially. So I decided to go through and track what happened with each of those items–what got accomplished and what got pushed aside.

So first up, here are some of the things I set out to do and DID!

-Finish writing one song. This is the one resolution I’ve blown out of the water–2011 has been a year of songwriting for me. Not only did I finish and perform my first song around April of the year (Under the Shadow), but our band Thornfield has also performed seven more of my songs. It’s been a process, but there’s nothing like sitting down with a guitar for 2-3 hours–or a number of days–and bringing a scrap of a melody that’s been echoing around in your head into full fruition.

-Overcome stage fright. It’s a work in progress, but I’ve come so far since my first gig with Carrie and Eric back in December of 2010. I’ve learned to hold my nerves at bay until the performance has actually begun (as opposed to wallowing in misery for days prior), and it’s been months since I’ve felt the whooshing, sickening “I want to die” feeling. There’s still a whooshing, and some degree of vocal instability when I first start a song, but at least there’s no longer a death wish!

-Continue blogging. Yes! And it’s all because of you lovely people who have, somehow, for whatever reason, signed up for the ride.

Some fun added things I didn’t plan on:

-The resurrection of the guitar! After studying classical guitar from age 12 all the way through my sophomore year at Indiana University, I decided I didn’t want to be a classical guitarrist. I changed my major from music to English and French, and the guitar went to the closet, where it remained for years. It came out a handful of times, but this past year–8 years after putting it away–it has come out with a vengeance. With the encouragement of my bandmates I’ve rediscovered this instrument and the joy of playing it. I’m loving it.

-My first paid photo shoots–four of them so far, to be exact, plus an almost equal amount of pro bono ones. I’ve recently changed cameras and am shooting with a Nikon D90, and I’m thrilled with the amount of progress I’ve made in the past 12 months. I can see the improvement both with my straight-outta-the-camera shots and my Photoshop processing (hopefully I’m learning about the light touch! A hard thing to master, to be sure).

And now the things I didn’t get around to:

-Making Grandma Sue’s cream pie recipe. A year ago, Aunt Laura gave me a handwritten recipe card from my husband’s favorite grandma, who died of cancer when he was a sophomore in high school. I really do need to make this, especially because the instructions read “cook until blurps.” Maybe 2012 will be the year of the blurping.

-Buy a dining room table. We decided to hold off on this and to make do with our small table–so I’m crossing this off the list with no regrets.

-Fix broken necklaces. I have two necklaces sitting around, broken and unwearable. One needs to be restrung. I even bought some wire to work on this . . . but I can’t seem to bring myself to do it. Moooooooom! Please send help in the form of your jewelry expertise and motivational abilities.

-Make biltong. That dang biltong. I think it may hang over my head forever–until my sister Heidi comes to whip my butt straight into South African culinary wonderland.

Tomorrow I’m going to set down my thoughts about this year, and what some of my hopes and plans are. How about you guys? What did you set out to do last year and get done? What got pushed aside?

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