Klutzy Jennifer

I am a klutz. I think if there were some contest of Mrs. Klutz of America ... I would hold the title. As I'm sure you realize by now, whenever I have a revelation like this that there is a story to tell. I can't begin to tell you all of my klutzy stories, but here are a few prime examples.

When I was in high school, I was in the color guard. One time at band camp (yeah yeah) I tossed my rifle. It was such a beautiful toss until it cracked me upside my glasses and broke the frame. I was often tripping and falling or twisting my ankle. Once we had these huge backdrops on the field. It was a double header show day. We were performing in one city and then getting on the bus to go to a second show. Well during the first show, I had walked back behind the backdrop to switch out from flag to rifle (or flag to sabre or flag to something) and I slipped. The ground was wet from the rain we had earlier in the day. As soon as I slipped, I knew I had twisted my ankle. I wound up standing behind the backdrop the remainder of the show. I wound up not being able to perform the 2nd show.

My first day of college classes, I sat up in my bed. For other people, this is a common thing that wouldn't cause injury. Not for me. For you see, I failed to remember that I was not in my bed at home. I was on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed. Therefore, I sat up in my bed and hit my head. After I thought "Ow that really hurt," I got dressed and went to class. I hadn't been sitting in class long when a fellow that turned out to be a really good friend for the remaining 4.5 years of college informed me that my head was bleeding. Not only was I a klutz in private, someone had seen the evidence of such klutziness 30 minutes after said klutz moment occurred.

It was about a year and a half later I was walking from class to my work place. I worked in the college campus bookstore and often went straight from class to work. This particular day was quite memorable as it was my birthday. I also had a major project due this day in the class I would go to after I finished working at the bookstore. Instead of leaving my project in my room, I decided to bring it with me to work so that I could go straight from work to class. So I was on my way to work when all the sudden I fell. Now there was a good reason I fell.

That particular day it snowed. There was a patch of ice on the sidewalk which caused me to slip. Considering I had a back pack on and I was carrying my project, I simply wasn't prepared to balance myself well when I slipped. This caused me to fall flat on my knees. This fall caused my pants to rip, my knee to bleed, my project to get soaked and me to be horribly embarrassed since there were several others around me at the time. As opposed to being late to work and since I was only a few feet from the doorway, I went ahead into work. I still have a scar on my knee from that fall. I don't remember what grade I made on that project, but I do remember being embarrassed turning in such a disaster of a project.

A few months (maybe even further than that) back, I was working out on the Wii. While I was in the cool down mode for one of the runs, I walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I managed to trip over a bag of garbage and almost hurt myself, but I managed to not spill the water.

Now that brings us to last night. Picture this: Laundry is in the washing machine ready to be pulled out. I go and open up the top and start pulling out the wet clothes. Hmmmm something is stuck. I can't get it out. So I pull and pull. I reposition myself and yank. Then it happens. Klutzy Jennifer strikes again. While I was pulling my wet clothes (or not pulling as the case was), I jerked my hand/arm out of the washer and hit myself in the face. Yes, my lip started swelling. Yes, I used ice. Good news is by the morning, the swelling had gone down.

Ugh. The Klutz Strikes again.

Lil Piece of Me

Thomas Wolfe wrote a book called You Can't Go Home Again. There are places in my past that I love. On Monday November 16th, I took a road trip to a place that I have longed to be since I was last there. While my memories of this place decrease with each year that I live, what I do remember is how much I love the friends I made and moments I had.

One of my favorite places was right here ...



in this nook, I read many books. I probably would have read every book in that library had stayed there long enough. As I walked into the library, the familiar smell of books hit me. The kind Librarian greeted me just as she (well not that exactly Librarian that would be kind of scary eh?) had done well over 22 years ago.

From this spot, I drove on to another place I spent a lot of time. I spent a lot of time on slides, Merry Go Rounds and seesaws, but I spent a lot of time sitting right here watching people come into the building.




This building: Our Church.


Then after spending some time around the swings, merry go round and seesaws, I drove down past where I used to live. I must say it looks exactly how it does in my memory. I snapped a quick picture while driving past and went onto my former elementary school. I only took one photo because the building made me sad. This part was condemned a few years ago and they have recently built a new elementary school combining the students from another school with "ours." What memories I have from this building.



Then I realized that I can go back and see some old friends that I haven't seen in 21 years. That would be nice. We've all aged, but we're all essentially the same people. And guess what ... we can go home again.

Pride of the Mountains

Now for a rather large rememory about me choosing a college.

When it was time for me to choose a college, I knew that I wanted a university in North Carolina. I knew what I wanted and I knew what I didn't want. I knew that I did not want to spend a plethora of money on application fees to different universities when I could only attend one. I had a preference to stay close to home.

Fate had other plans. During the time in which it becomes more important to choose different universities, I was introduced to a couple of people that went to Western Carolina. These people were band people geeks just like me. They were former students of my band director and they helped us out quite often with our music & drill.

Our band was on it's way to one of the biggest competitions of our high school career and it was going to be our first time marching on turf instead of grass. Mr. Bob Buckner and the Western Carolina Marching Band invited us to come and practice on their field. As soon as our buses arrived onto campus, I fell in love. It was the time of year that mountains are covered with colorful leaves. I marched on that field and knew in a moment that I had to go there.

photo taken Nov. 1, 2008 taken from home side looking at visitor's side. The purple & gold seats were not there when I attended WCU. The band took up about 1/7 of the stands in the front section you see. Now I want to say they take up about 3/7 of the stands in the front section you see.


Shortly thereafter, I was recruited to the band program by Mr. Buckner and his wife. She wanted me in her guard program. I knew I wanted to be in this blossoming band. I knew that if I didn't participate I would regret it the rest of my life. I knew that this band program was going to balloon into something quite spectacular.

Photo of Bob Buckner, the man responsible for getting me to Western Carolina. :) I even spent the night at his house one cold snowy evening.




Between the gorgeousness of the university, friendliness of the students and the up and coming band program, I knew that Western Carolina University was the place I had to be. Now the Pride of the Mountains Marching Band is the only collegiate marching band to give me down right chill bumps. In fact, it has become extremely difficult to impress me after seeing this program grow into the Sudler Trophy Program.

The Sudler Trophy is an award bestowed on one university marching band each year. The award does not represent the winner of any championship, but rather a band surrounded by great tradition that has become respected nationally. No school may be honored with the award twice.

Western Carolina Pride of the Mountains Marching Band is the most recent recipient of this award. The past few years I have gone to WCU to see them and this year I went to a local band competition to watch them perform their 2009 show. It is spectacular. If you're interested in seeing anything by them, check out youtube. Put in the search button Pride Of the Mountains and many videos will come up. This year, WCU has 350 to 400 marching members and in the last 10 years alone the band has grown by 120 members. I marched in the Fall semester of 1995. Here is part of what I saw at our local band day on October 31, 2009.






While, I didn't choose a college "close" to home ... Western Carolina is home in many ways. I love to go "home" once a year to see the growth of the university. Even at my sickest, I went for the healing properties of the mountain air.

Go CATS. :o)

My Rememories

With my recent trip to UNC and also a spontaneous trip I took on the 16th, I have been thinking about my rememories. What you say? Rememories isn't a word? I'm going to post a few of my rememories starting with this post.

The first rememory is how I came up with the word. I was full of Lyme, but I didn't know it. I was mixing up all my words. Sometimes I couldn't think of the word phone, but instead I would say, "I need to use the ya know the thing you talk on." Or if I needed to find a pencil, I'd say, "Where's that thing with the lead and pink thing on the end?" It was frustrating, but did prove humorous (but I would have said humory) at times. There was the time where I swore the word was rememory. I said in perfect intonation, I was rememory today about the time .....

I was trying to say remembering or having a memory, but instead the word rememory came out. What's worse is that I couldn't understand why my friend was laughing at me. When I was told, I swore that I was using the right word. Bless my poor word finding heart.

A more recent rememory only happened a week or two ago at work.

I rarely post about work because I prefer to keep that part of my life separate from the blog. However, I have to share the funniest thing that happened about a week ago.

Part of my job has me teaching children letters, sounds and words that begin with those letters. Well this little boy was going through about 5 letters telling me the letter, a sound and a word for the letter. When we got to the letter B, he said, "B says 'buh' for 'bum'."

Because I wasn't sure I heard him correctly, I asked, "What is that?"

That's when he told me, "Well I don't know, but it rhymes with Drum and it starts with a B."