me

 

My name is Jessica or Jess or JB or UPS depending on when you knew me and who you are.  I live in Atlanta, Georgia and have been in this increasingly humid place since birth…and I am ready to move on.  I am married to my math-friendly and Duke basketball crazy husband, Tim.  He’s a Yankee from Upstate New York that somehow ended up in Georgia just long enough to meet me (or so he says).  He’s ready to leave, too.

We’ve adopted three cats – Alegre, Gracie and Chloe - better known as “the girls” and paid a hefty sum for Maddie, a purebred golden retriever who now believes she is a cat, thanks to her examples.  She’s learning, though, thanks to our newest addition: Lexi. A chocolate lab who believes the world is her chew toy.

Tim is currently keeping the testosterone flowing in the house.  It’s a losing battle.

In my past life I played a lot of basketball.  Varsity in high school, AAU in the summer and then college.  It was all I knew.

I went to LaGrange College.  I walked in and was handed jersey #23 – because #22 was taken – earned my spot as a starter, figured out I liked to learn about people and walked out three years later an All-American with 1000+ points, 500+ rebounds, the nickname of UPS because “I delivered” on the basketball court, a degree in Psychology and no idea what I wanted to do.

I met Tim seven months later.  I was jobless and living with my dad.  I landed a position with a test preparation company soon after Tim and I started dating, which temporarily got me into an apartment, and then I quit that job a few months before Tim and I got engaged – driving to and from work two hours each way was too much and I decided my sanity was more important.  Two weeks it was.

I moved in with Tim.  I ran a marathon.  I got a new job in education. We got married.  I’m still at the same job.  I decided to write a book.  Then decided I wasn’t ready. So I started this blog.  Still no book.

After we hit the “we’ve been married for one year!” mark, people started asking us when another human would grace my womb.  All we can say to that is:  not yet.

Basketball is now a distant memory.  We run now.  Not all the time and not like, fast or anything, but we run.  We do the Peachtree Road Race together every year.  It’s our tradition because it was Tim’s first-ever-in-his-life 10k race.  Can’t get much better than 55,000 people in Atlanta in July.

This blog is about me and Tim and our fur-kids.  Our life is really just beginning and things will only become more interesting and more complicated.

I love it when my muscles are sore because it makes me feel accomplished.  I love Tim-made chocolate chip cookies, pretty scenery and travelling anywhere except to places that are exceedingly hot and flat – like the desert.  I’ll do a drive by but no overnight for me.

I wrote a little story – a true story – about my introduction to computers.  It will probably help you understand that sometimes I miss the most obvious clues – even if someone is holding up a big sign with flashing lights and whistles and a huge, red STOP painted on.  Inevitably I’ll walk right past it and step in the poo on the other side.  One day I’ll learn.

This is my story:

In second or third grade, computers were just kicking in as the hot new thing.  And because of that we got a project.  On the computer.  The assignment for my class was to write a story (mine was “How the Leopard got it’s Spots”) and print it.  Seemed simple enough.  However nobody bothered to introduce me to the “Save” button.  So I ended up in the library every day for….well, forever… typing frantically, trying to finish my story in the time I was given.  I must have re-typed the same words, same story (except the end – I only made it there once) twenty times.  My teacher probably thought I was short a crayon, french fry, and whole bunch of other necessary, vital items when you’re seven.  I will never forget the title of that damn story.  I didn’t have a nice introduction to computers. 

I’ve since recovered from my computer illiteracy and now I can’t live without one.