BJ's Blog

Missing Bubba!

**11-year old Basset Hound**

Lives at 3025 Tyler Ave, Ogden

Last seen on Thursday 9/5/13

Please call 801-334-9518 or 801-920-1655.

Good thing Bubba’s so cute…the stress that dog gives me!

So the mystery has *not* been solved. I got home from work at 1 pm and he was gone. At first, I thought someone had stolen him but nothing else was missing and anyway, who would steal an old basset and not take the adorable 9-year old springer/lab mix or the lovely green-eyed kitty? I retraced my steps before I left the house this morning, and he must have escaped when I returned to fetch my sunglasses. But the door was open for just an instant. I guess it was enough time for him to slip out and over to the bushes next door. At least that’s what I think happened.

Four hours later–after calling Weber County Animal Shelter and the neighbors; posting on Facebook; revising, printing, and posting the “Missing” poster (last updated April, 2011); driving and walking the neighborhood–Maggie and I heard footsteps upstairs. We were down in the laundry home and must not have heard the front door open and close. We ran upstairs and there was Bubba! No sign of anybody.

Now he’s curled up on the couch, clearly exhausted. Wonder if we’ll ever know? Another chapter in the forthcoming “Bubba’s Excellent Adventures.”

“The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all” from “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

more on this later…

I keep seeing herons: walking on Tyler Avenue last Sunday, golfing on El Monte, strolling through the Homestead Resort. Much like the owls I saw repeatedly two years ago, I decided I must be seeing these birds for a particular reason as well. Here’s what I found online

According to North American Native tradition, the Blue Heron brings messages of self-determination and self-reliance. They represent an ability to progress and evolve. The long thin legs of the heron reflect that an individual doesn’t need great massive pillars to remain stable, but must be able to stand on one’s own.

Blue Herons have the innate wisdom of being able to manoeuvre through life and co-create their own circumstances. Blue Herons reflect a need for those with this totem to follow their own unique wisdom and path of self-determination. These individuals know what is best for themselves and need to follow their hearts rather than the promptings of others. Those with the Medicine of the Great Blue Heron may sit until the rest of us lose patience. And, when they follow the promptings of the heart, they are one of the most magnificent when they choose to soar.

This is the message that Blue Heron brings.

So perhaps I’m entering the one-year anniversary of being single with more fortitude than I thought. Maybe I am learning to be okay with everything that’s happened. And as I listen to my heart I will soar!

I have so much writing and reading I could be doing, but I thought I’d try to capture some of this experience while it’s still fresh. Here’s the schedule of events. And the conference blog.

This is my typical day thus far:

5:45 a.m.
Wake up to the sound of birds outside my nest of a room (I’m staying in the Georgia O’Keefe room–used to be her studio–at the Sagebrush Inn), which is the only room on the third floor. Make coffee and read until breakfast.

6:30 a.m.
Eat my oatmeal in the dining room, where the hotel offers a full complimentary breakfast.

7:00 a.m.
Practice yoga on the courtyard grass with Laura and a few other yogis brave enough to get their feet wet and mats dirty.

8:15 a.m.
Shower and dress.

9:00 a.m.
Attend the “Beginning Memoir” workshop in Chamisa I of the Sagebrush Conference Center with BK Loren (instructor) and 11 other groovy folks from all over the US and Canada.

12:30 p.m.
Eat lunch on the patio with fellow conference participants.

1:00 p.m.
Attend the daily roundtable (today it was Wally Lamb).

2:00 p.m.
Chill.

3:00 p.m.
Walk or drive for coffee. Monday: Taos Java; Tuesday: Koko Coffee; Wednesday: Wired? Cyber Cafe; Thursday: Purple Sage; Friday: The Coffee Spot (formerly The Bean).

4:00 p.m.
Write whatever I need to write for tomorrow’s workshop. (I’ll post more on this later.)

5:30 p.m.
Attend faculty readings.

7:00 p.m.
Adjourn to my room for a light supper of yogurt, muesli, and almonds. Drink tea, watch TV, and check email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

9:00 p.m.
Take a hot bath.

10:00 p.m.
Read until sleep.

I was walking the dogs this morning–following our usual route up the hill past the old St Ben’s, around the tennis and pickle-ball courts, along the Mount Ogden putting green, beside the soccer fields, then back over the hill on Circle Way–when I realized how many cultures I encounter on my Sunday perambulation. At St Benedict’s Manor, a resident enjoys a smoke, expectorating loudly as I pass by; at the park, SUVs assemble in the parking lot, which serves the courts and golf course: the white men in khakis head for the course, the white couples head for the courts; at the fields, four all-Mexican teams play spirited matches while their families sell concessions; at Circle Way, Mormon families dressed in their Sunday best drive or walk to and from church. Overall a fairly representative slice of Ogden’s people inhabit my little world on Sunday morning. The rich, the poor; the white, the brown; the Mormon, the Catholic, the non-religious; the team sports, the individual sports, the non-athletic. What strikes me is how close we come to each other without actually touching. I’d say we rub shoulders, but we don’t. Two girls, whose mother is watching a soccer match, giggle as Bubba walks by then come forward to pet him. I introduce him, say hello. Then I’m gone. And they run back to their mother. My dogs reach out beyond my circle of comfort to approach strangers, to say hello. We humans bump up against each other. Most of the people I encounter on my walk barely acknowledge my passing; I merely notice their existence.

I watched Sylvia last night–it’s been in my Netflix queue for a long time, it finally surfaced and arrived, and then I set it aside for a week or so before I carved out the time to watch it. Not the most uplifting movie for a Saturday night; however, it seemed a kind of fitting movie for the evening as I watched my plans shift through several options: a 3-hour yoga workshop, dinner/gathering at a friend’s house, the Crystal Crest Awards, the combined speakers’ meeting, dinner with family in SLC. I declined all of these for various compelling reasons–the reconstruction of which would be like following a trail in the sand. So I landed here, at home, with Sylvia.

A sleepy Sunday morning. It’s LDS Conference, so that means rain. I don’t know why that is, but ever since I moved to Utah, in 1978, it always seems to rain on conference weekend. I remember working on the Hotel Utah, watching all of the people flock to Temple Square–this was well before the Assembly building–clutching umbrellas, holding programs above their heads, but still getting drenched. It was as if God wasn’t ready to let them have it too easy. He wanted them to endure one more challenge, reminding them that life on earth will never be perfect.

Last night Mom and I attended Plan B Theatre’s production of Suffrage, a two-woman play about sister wives negotiating the shifting terrain of marriage and politics in Utah Territory in the late-19th century. Powerful stuff. I never appreciated the effect that President Woodruff’s declaration had on the families who practiced polygamy. In the play, Francis and Ruth’s husband, Benjamin, must choose which wife to claim as his “real” wife. He chooses May. The resulting disruptions are heart-breaking. Why have I never considered the perspective of these women/former wives who suddenly found themselves without family, without husband, without economic support? I read Annie Clark Tanner’s A Mormon Mother and marveled at the actualities of life in a plural marriage. But I never thought about what happened to all of the families torn apart by the dissolution of this institution.

I need to re-read Tanner’s autobiography. Perhaps I need to pursue a new research project: exploring the journals and diaries of women who negotiated this rupture.

Rereading my blog posts for 2012–and saving them into a Word document, I’m paranoid about losing stuff–I discovered that I haven’t talked much about work, writing, research, and the stuff I originally started my blog to do. Obviously I needed to write about the changes in my personal life…it is so front and center now. Every morning when I wake up, my divorce is the first thing I think of. I have to force myself to think of other things, to pick up a book and start reading instead. I wonder when/if that will change?

Anyway, I’m encouraging myself to focus on the memoir stuff for a while. So I’ll write an email to B.K. Loren, the woman who is leading the beginning memoir workshop I’m taking at the Taos Summer Writers Conference. She titled the workshop “Songs of Innocence and Experience: Finding the Core of Your Memoir and wants an email about our writing goals. Once I’ve written that, I’ll post it here. Meanwhile, I’m working on another publication outlet for the firefighting piece–ISLE rejected it but gave me good feedback.

More to come…

I feel pulled in so many directions, that I decided I needed to make time for writing this morning. It’s cold, crazy cold for the 3rd day of spring. But there’s a little bit of sun, and if you sit in just the right spot on the couch you can pretend it’s spring.

So now I carved out this little slice of time, and what do I say? First of all, as soon as I say I’ve carved out time, stuff begins to happen and the quiet moment slips away. Maggie wakes up, the doorbell rings, Bubba wants to come inside, Jake wakes up and wants me to make him pancakes, Bubba whines at me to give him space on the sunny couch, and so my hour of bliss becomes a five-minute break from the household routine. I can see why people rise at ridiculously early hours to do their writing. There’s just no time, no peace during the regular span of a day.

What I wanted to write about was how bizarre everything has been since I began this divorce process last fall. For instance, I changed my name in HR about a week ago and overnight my name changed on many campus-wide systems. So I needed to update my students and colleagues. The primary response is, “How do you say that?” I put “Gesteland” into Google Translate, and I got “just the land.” A student said, “You’re free.” Another told me about his mother’s recent divorce. A colleague–someone I don’t usually interact with much–expressed his sympathy and told me he knows what I’m going through. Still another–who’s going through a contentious divorce of her own–expressed envy that I’m already back to my maiden name. But most say nothing. As much as I’ve built up the monumental nature of this transition, to most people divorce just happens. All the time.

This afternoon Maggie and I saw Warm Bodies, described as a “paranormal romantic zombie comedy.” I’ve never been much of a zombie fan–in fact, no fan at all–so now I’m wondering what’s up with zombies? Guess I’m way out of this loop.