Me and Linus, Always thinking about blankets.

So recently some friends had the idea of starting up a joint blog where we 3 would contribute and basically write for each other, song lyrics, shout outs, thoughts, musings, messy, articulate whatevers. While fellow blogger talked about the le blog and le Toad Hill le last weekend, I didn’t realize I was actually implicated in this scheme, as in I didn't know I was blogging. I was, point of fact, an occasional blogger, or bloggess, if you will (and you will) but this gave me a degree of blog anxiety; I was intimidated by this. The 64,000 blog question: What in the world will I blog about? I will have to search my life for relevant material, try to think of clever witty stories to weave in and funny words to use, be profound but not too serious, funny but Hell its not like I'm ANNIE. The task is this, as the great and wonderful Anne Lamott wrote, String words together like beads to tell a story. (Anne Lamott, personal hero/literary badass). So I read a someone elses wonderful blog Monday morning, sitting here on the couch in front of the these nice big windows that in this birds nest that has become my home. I was all wrapped up in my purple blanket and drinking the coffee that Mollie made out the coffee cup with the butterfly on the inside that someone bought from the great and wonderful Target, wondering about this blog bis-nas. Jess and I were g-chatting about the blog and I said, mostly jokingly, Listen, all I have to talk about at this moment is this purple blanket and this target coffee cup with the butterfly on the inside. and I started considering my material, which is to say, not unlike Linus, I started thinking a lot about my blanket. I remember the first week the Fellows had moved in, back when we were all brand new, back when we were still forgetting to take our keys before the door locked behind us, back before we had gone on trips and crawled through caves and told each other our stories and created Biz-nases together. Back before I knew that Jess was a BAMF/Computer work enthusiast-back before I knew any of that jazz, that week, that first week, on a morning a lot like this morning, I sat on the ledge in front of the window with my purple blanket and over looked 4 Market Square and did a quiet time: 4 Market Square, 4 Stories up. That morning I had whispered up my quiet prayers, just like I’d sat in my chaise lounge in my apartment a million other mornings with that trusty blanket and the coffee made the way I drink it, my journal and some daily psalm. And before that, me and that blanket lived at MTSU and, even before that, it went back and forth from my moms house to my dads house in high school. I remember sitting on dock at church camp my senior year singing hymns to the starry night sky with that blanket. If this blanket could talk it would probably tell you about all that, about being toted on the church van, and pulling all-nighters freshman year to finish papers, and moving back home, moving back out again to the apartment that I loved with my brother that I miss and, still, moving again to 4 MS. And that first week when I didn’t know anything about anything and neither did any of the rest of the 12 fellows. We were waiting to be comfortable with each other and to have inside jokes to laugh about and to know and be known. I didn’t know anything yet for sure and so did the only thing I knew to do, which was to sit in my pj's with my trusty blanket and ask God to stay close to me until I felt like I did know something affirmative about my life again. And now, with that same old wonderful blanket, this morning, here are some things I know: I know that Austin went to Clemson and made a great Aladdin and loves baseball more than anything. Know that Jess got her first parking ticket EVER yesterday, that her dad brews beer and her family has chocolate labs and she loves Soccer Taco. Rebecca has Reba sweatshirt, that Mollie has love affair with ice cream, that Carolyn likes Virgina Woolf too, that Annie is legitmately hilarious, that a heck of a lot of people drive Volvos or VW’s. I know downtown has a nice view of the sun setting over Knoxville and there is a lovely variety of lazy downtown coffee shops, one of which I will be slinging lattes soon, and I know you all better come see me. I know that there are faces I recognize on these downtown streets and places I have memories all this place. I know 12 other people, I know that I am one of them, I know that God must listen to quiet morning prayers. I know that somebody in room 402 bought a lovely little Target coffee cup with a vine of flowers on the outside and a little butterfly on the inside and it’s my favorite coffee cup in the cabinet. And I just might try to steal it when I leave, so it can too can live with me a long time and tell stories, just like that trusty purple blanket.
Lovelovelove,
Jen