275 Pictures

The hotel, on the way to Colorado

The view and the drive and the roadside stops

Trailer for sale or rent…

Hermit Basin

Chris and Grace, walking to dinner

cAPSLOCK and Plunky

cAPSLOCK and Plunky’s cute baby, Liese

My cute babies, Callie….

Sadie….

…and Grace

And with Shelby, waiting for dinner

One morning, we had a pancake breakfast where we had to actually catch our breakfast if we wanted to eat it. Some of us remained calm, cool and collected while catching (my dad)

For others (like my husband) it took just a little more effort (notice the open mouth)…

For others (like my sweet mama), it was a pretty scary event…

And for the truly delicate (ERIN INMAN), it was downright terrifying

Pretty Lights

Me and my hubby, outside of Redneck Chocolates (MMmmmmmm)

Me, in downtown Westcliffe, Colorado

Random talent show pictures:

Fun place, fun people, fun time in communion with God and eachother

If you made it through all of these pictures, you must be one of the nicest people I know. Thanks for indulging my out-of-controlity.

If you’re interested in seeing every last one of the pictures (except the rafting ones because our waterproof camera accidentally went home with Shelby), here’s the link: All of Leslie’s Colorado pictures on Flickr.

Jiggity Jig

Home again, home again! Drama and all. I took three hundred and four pictures. I’ll try to whittle it down to two hundred and seventy-five and post them here in the next couple of days. Let’s see…some highlights for the meantime…I played a lot of Scrabble and Poker and Ticket to Ride and Settlers. I didn’t win one game I played, but it was fun. I went white water rafting with my family and Callie popped off of her seat once. She went down in the boat rather than out of the boat though. I sat around and talked a lot. I read a little. I cried when my husband sang at the talent show. Cried like I thought I’d never breathe again. I cried when my mom sang too. I wore a lot of Chris’ sweatshirts because I was cold (gloriously cold!). I ate a lot and drank a lot of coffee with a lot of cream in it. I need to go on a diet now. At the end of the week I had a half and half lawn-christening ceremony on the grass in front of the hotel. And last but not least, I showed my geographic tongue to some people at Red Robin in Amarillo.

The End of the Road as We Know It

This is it, my friends. I’d like to give a long and hearty “THANK YOU” to all of my loyal readers. Some of you have been great friends. Some of you have been great enemies. Most of you are just a figment of my imagination anyway. I’m afraid that my time here at Fierce Peace has come to an end. There is so much left to say, but no time to say it in. Do some people say that you’re not supposed to end sentences with the word “in?” I don’t know. I also don’t know if you’re supposed to put little doo-hickeys like question marks inside or outside of the quotation marks. That’s been the beauty of Fierce Peace for me. I do what feels right. I eat what tastes good. And I sleep if I’m tired. But, alas. No more. The time has come to say goodbye. For in just a few short days, I shall be off. Off to the land of no computers, no cell phones, no television and no Fierce Peace. I shall sing as I drive along the highway. I shall eat good food. I shall raft the river wild. And I shall sit in the woods and read a book. A good book.

All that to say, goodbye dear friends and enemies. I’ll never have another thing to say from this moment forward. Ever. Maybe after I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name, I’ll come up with something. But I think if it rains, I won’t try to get out of it. I think I’ll let it soak me through and through. Who knows?

Oh yeah, and that part about sleeping when I’m tired? Utter nonsense. I’m tired all the time and I never sleep. Like right now.

1987ish

In keeping with my theme of posts that don’t matter, I thought I would post some pictures of some of my imaginary friends here. And in case you think I don’t matter anymore, just let me tell you that I have got some serious matter floating around in my brain. I just need to dwell a little more on it before I can get it out of my brain. By the time I’m finished dwelling, I may decide that none of it really matters as much as I thought it did anyway. I might need a vacation to Colorado too. In the meantime, it has been really fun reconnecting with old friends through this blog over the last couple of months. I have found some pictures of all of us in high school and thanks to my wonderful, talented and good-looking husband (who possesses amazing scanner abilities) I am finally able to put them up here for the whole world to see. And in case anybody in the whole world thinks I was being serious about this post not mattering…well…let me just say that these dear friends of mine matter more to me than I could ever say. Friendships that carry through the years like this are priceless. I love that we can stay in touch through things like this very un-mattering blog even though we’re scattered all over the country and even the world.

Oh, and as I was sitting here uploading the pictures, Grace stood looking over my shoulder saying (in an incredulous voice), “Where did you get all these olden-time pictures anyway?” When I told her that they were my pictures from when I was in high school, she patted my shoulder quite condescendingly and assured me that she thinks I look way prettier now than back in the olden days.

Kirsty and me, waiting to be picked up at church after spending a week at camp

Carrie and me, doing some modeling at the Shasta Plaza (or was it the Jefferson Square Mall?)

Kirsty and Carlee, at a retreat at Willow Creek

Melissa (knauerflower) and my mom at Salt Creek Falls. A weird thing that struck me about this picture is that my mom was about the same age there as I am now and Melissa is about the same age as my daughter, Callie. The cuteness goes on and on.

Kirsty and Tonia at Willow Creek

Carrie and Me, in my front yard, waiting to be picked up for the prom

Tonia’s friend (was it Becky?), Knauerflower, Tonia and Kirsty, having a good old time. If you squint real hard, you can even sort of make out the picture on the wall over my bed in the background. With big “Leslie Mezger” letters on either side of it. Yes, that’s right. The one and only Michael J. Fox, legs crossed and holding a peach. That’s the power of love, my friends.

Bird on a Fence

I am finding myself in a blog rut. I know it happens to all bloggers, but I am going to call mine more serious than anybody else’s. I don’t like to believe that I’m normal. Instead of a rut, I am going to call it an identity crisis. I guess I just prefer high drama. I prefer to watch it and I prefer to take it in, but I don’t prefer it to be me. And yet, here I am, right smack dab in the middle of high drama (in MY mind, anyway). I guess the high drama that takes place in my mind looks like those films I used to watch in Social Studies class to anybody else. BORING. I guess anybody else includes anyone who is reading this blog. Which brings me back to my identity crisis. Every once in a while I go through stages of feeling quite insecure. About everything. My brain goes into overdrive and I think about all people everywhere and all the lives they’re living and the thoughts they’re thinking and the emotions they’re feeling and the way they feel about me and the way I feel about them and the way that everything I do and say affects somebody somewhere. And then I get scared of those imaginary people. I really want them to like me, whoever they are. And it doesn’t help to tell myself that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. Because to me, it matters.

A lot.

So here I am.

Can’t write another thing.

Maybe the constant gray skies are contributing to my frame of mind.

I’ll get over it. In the meantime, I’ll just put stuff up here that doesn’t matter. Like this amazing bird that I saw on my fence this morning. It was huge! I’ve never seen a bird that big around here before. It was just standing there and all these other regular sized birds kept coming up and squawking at it and it just stood there, on it’s long legs, looking so very secure with it’s great, big birdness. It even let me walk right up to it and take pictures. I was actually a little scared of it. But it didn’t attack me. It just sat there. That bird didn’t care about me one little bit, mutant that it was.

And that’s the end of my bird story.