Almost a Year

This post is a bit more sentimental than most of our posts. Usually, we have a fairly clumsy, optimistic, and normal life, but today will make two days until one of our closest friends has been dead for a year after a tragic accident at work.

If you haven't already checked out the blog his wife began in memory of him and to document a journey she took to Alaska, leaving little "pieces" of him along the way, it's a great blog. You'll need tissue, but it's a beautiful memoir: www.PiecesOfPlumey.blogspot.com.

The reason this is so important to me and has affected me so deeply is because his wife happens to be my sister, Amber, the other writer on this blog. And her husband happened to be one of my closest and most dear friends.

I am honestly unsure how it's been a year already. One of the worst years of my life. The worst year of Amber's life. But we're both here almost a year later.



Death is so difficult when it's someone you love. Sometimes I feel like he never existed. As though he's a great story you tell at dinner or sitting around a fire with your friends. The best kind of story. Who would have thought that a real person could have been loved and liked and cherished and trusted the way Justin was? Who would have ever thought that anyone besides a celebrity could have boasted 800 people at their funeral. What sort of person causes an entire crew to honor him by demanding to carry his body out once he was found? How does a chemical plant general manager become so attached to one of his workers that he stays away from his family on Christmas weekend for 36 hours and continually breaks down in tears with the family? What kind of man has that affect on those around him?

Justin did. He was that man.

I hate how much I took him for granted, but now I realize how much I appreciated and loved and trusted and relied on him. He was one of my best friends, like a brother. It was only natural when Amber and Justin announced they'd be getting married.

Almost year. How did that even happen? This year has been the worst and best of my life. And I can't even begin to imagine how Amber's actually dealt. I've learned so much that I'd have never learned if he wasn't gone. But then again, I'd not have wanted to learn.

I still love and miss my friend. And I love you, Sister.

Please Don't Ask That!!!

I think we all learned in school that there is no such thing as a stupid question. While I understand that teaching this philosophy to our children encourages them to open up and express themselves, it can become confusing in later years when they, as I have, find out that it is a complete lie. There are ALOT of stupid questions. An overabundance, I would go so far as to say.

Yes, from Harry Dunn's classicly idiotic question, "Are those your skis? Both of them?" to the ever-annoying person who asks "What you are doing?" whilst staring right at you, these kinds of questions just keep on coming. Here are a few of my personal favorites I've heard lately:

"How are you going to DRIVE to Alaska?" (Apparently alot of people in the lower 48 think there is a giant body of water seperating Alaska from the mainland. FYI, it's not water, it's an extension of the land we currently reside in. It's called Canada.)

"Is it ok to put hot liquid in that?" (Asked of me while I was pouring coffee into a styrofoam cup. I'm not going to mention a name on this one because Sara asked me not to.)

"You were driving 11 miles an hour over the speed limit...and did I see you talking on your cell phone?" (Seriously? "Why yes officer, I WAS talking on my cell. Please give me an extra ticket for that. Oh and while your at it, I ran a red light about five miles back. Why don't you throw that in as well?")

Really though, the worst is when you catch a ridiculously stupid question coming out of your OWN mouth and you don't stop it in time. Like the other day when I asked my formerly blonde friend who is currently sporting jet black locks, "Did you dye your hair?" Or how about the time I was frantically searching for my cell, while talking on my cell, and asking my friend if she could find it anywhere? That feeling of being completely embarrassed and wishing you could suck those words right back into your mouth is probably the reason we are taught this no-stupid-questions lesson in the first place.

I realize that pointing out that there ARE, in fact, stupid questions is the equivelent of telling a child that there is no Santa, or that sticks and stones may break their bones for a little while, but words will damage them FOREVER.

What can I say? I'm a bubble-burster.