Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Frankenstorm: A Lesson We Can Learn From?


My mom since I was little has always said whenever we are at the beach, “Tengo mucho respeto al mar.” Which means, “I have [she] a lot of respect for the ocean.” I have always understood her position of respecting the ocean since I’ve always been a bit of a chicken shit when it comes to all of Mother Nature and her undeniable, unstoppable forces. Anything that much stronger than me, anything that can toss a 168-foot tanker aside in the same easy manner as it can a plastic bag in a wind storm has my respect. 
AP Photo/Sean Sweeney
Last Thursday, October 25, at early, early morning, I was awoken from the thunder and lightning that was thrashing around Santo Domingo. The wind was howling like a wolf and scratching at my window trying to get in to my dry bed. I called Olive and Jersey onto my bed and made sure we were all snuggled in tight. Even in the safety of our concrete, built for hurricane walls, and the comfort of my dogs, when a massive lightning bolt crashed hard and loud into what seemed like my bedroom window, I jumped and gasped in fear. The next day, Husband was let out of school early and by that evening, school for Friday had been cancelled. We had felt the effects of only the tail end of Superstorm Sandy and she had gifted us with the Caribbean’s version of a snow day. Yippee!

And then I heard that Miss Sandy was headed straight for New Jersey and New York and the whole East Coast. We had high winds, torrential rains, flooding, and two days off of school and we hadn’t even been hit by the "real" storm. I knew then that if that was what Santo Domingo experienced as a side effect of a storm that hadn’t even passed over us, what could my home, New Jersey, expect?

Well, we know now what they could expect: 

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

New Jersey’s shores: devastated and underwater. New York: on fire and flooded. Subways: closed and facing the worst damage of its 108-year history. People along the East Coast: powerless (figuratively and literally), phoneless, homeless, and clueless as to what the hell just happened. Photos of the storm are almost too much to believe. Governor Christie is quoted saying that the wreckage is "beyond anything I'd ever thought I'd see." For once, me and the Governor are in agreement. According to CNN, "the level of devastation at the Jersey Shore in unthinkable." For the past three summers my nephew has had his July 5th birthday celebrated at Point Pleasant's Boardwalk. Just this summer, we brought our Rafa to celebrate her cousin's birthday at the shore and ride on these boardwalk rides. Parts of that boarwalk are now destroyed, toppled over, drowned. In some pictures you can't tell where the ocean ends and land begins. Sandy came in hard and left nothing on the East Coast unturned.

AP Photo/The Press of Atlantic City Danny Drake

BEFORE
AFTER - Brian Thompson
 “The Storm of the Century” and “The Perfect Storm” were both names that I kept hearing from across the Atlantic as I frantically watched videos and news reports and updates on the storm that was headed for my family. But Frankenstorm, due to the monster of a storm that was extending its arms for the East Coast on the day before Halloween, was the most fitting name.

But this post isn't meant to be about the devastation that a Superstorm left behind. Its about the devastation that we are causing. The question isn't if we can survive this - we will. People show their strength in hours of weakness. And if I know anything about being from New Jersey and growing up next to New York, its that they don't make people any tougher than they do here. The real question is can we learn from it?

Can we learn from this Superstorm? 

Most people I speak to admit that global warming exists but most people don't make changes, even small ones, to help the problem. And some people, namely people in high power, still refuse to accept that global warming is even a problem because if they did, then they'd have to do something about it. And doing something about it would cost them dearly. Well, would cost their wallets dearly. 

But now, its going to cost dearly anyway. As per a report by the NY Daily News, the "superstorm cost could hit $50 billion... $20 billion in property damages and another $10 to $30 more in lost business."   
 
AFP Photo / Timothy A. Clary / Getty Images         AP Photo / Port Authority of New Jersey and New York
Facade of a building is ripped off due to winds and force    Water rushes into th PATH Train through elevator shaft

Mark Wilson / Getty Images                                          AP Photo John Minchillo 
The road on Avalon's ocean cost ripped out from Superstorm Sandy                 Water floods Ground Zero                        

AP / Charles Sykes
I'm not insensitive to the damage that Sandy has left behind and the ways that lives have been forever altered, but we really can't be that surprised by it. Can we? Can we really blame Mother Nature or Sandy for this destruction when we have been polluting the waters, the air, and the environment for decades? We are the cause of these storms getting bigger and badder than we've ever seen? And at some point, we are going to pay the price. A bigger price than we just paid. A much bigger price than $50 billion.

So instead of waiting for another $50 billion storm, why don't we spend that money into finding solutions. I'm sure there are plenty of global warming solution research projects that could use that kind of investment. The kind of investment that would help us be proactive instead of reactive. Why must cities be evacuated and towns get wiped out before we think? Does Queens really need to burn down and the Jersey Shore be drowned before the powers that be change the course in which we are all headed? In which we are all headed

If Sandy showed us anything its that no one is spared by Mother Nature. Affluent neighborhoods were not spared from floods and power outages and fires. Atlantic City's famous boardwalk, where the rich and famous gamble their money, drifted off to sea along with the trailer parks of the city. Million dollar mansions were washed away by the same ocean as the one that cleared rickety shacks of Cuba. We are no different. And while before we could watch Haiti and Cuba and Japan get hit by natural disasters and feel sorry and donate money while thinking we could never be toppled or devastated, there is no room for this train of thought anymore. We can be devastated, We can be toppled. In fact, we have been. 
(Is there much of a difference here?)
Aguacate, Cuba  Associated Press / Franklin Reyes
Breezy Point, Queens
(Reuters/Keith Bedford)
If we don't see that this is a problem for all of us, a problem that all of us must fix together, then we are doomed. We will all be "up shit's creek without a paddle" as the adage goes. But it will be literal.


Natural disasters are happening more and more often and are growing ever more intense. It seems that every year we, the human race, are hit by a Frankenstorm of some sort, a disaster to end all disasters: 2011's earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, 2010's earthquake in Haiti, 2008's Tropical Cyclone in Yangon, 2005's Hurricane Katrina. We can no longer look away and hope that this is another place's problem and hope that we can watch the devastation on our televisions from an ocean away and send care packages or money to FEMA and the Red Cross. 

Donating to the cause is not enough.  Money won't buy you out of destruction. Mother Nature can't be bought. She doesn't want your money. She wants you to wake up and stop living off the land without giving anything back. And if we don't listen soon, she's going to get tired of waiting. Don't be mistaken, Mother Nature will win every time. 

I'm not here to tell you what to do. I am not a tree hugging, vegan eating, green living person. I have made some small changes and still have many other ways that I could do better. And if ever there was a time to do better, America...









Thursday, October 18, 2012

Day 376: Rafa Turned One


When you're young, time moves so slow. If last month seems like so long ago, then a year ago feels like an eternity. The future doesn't seem any faster. Remember starting school in September and feeling like Christmas break and Santa would never arrive? Or that the last day of school might as well have been lightyears away? 

But as we get older, days move like the seconds on a clock - tick tock tick tock - weeks are here and past before you even realized it was Monday, and years change faster than Usain Bolt's olympic performance.

A year ago, I was a new mom. Just those words seem strange to me. New mom. I was learning how to change, bathe, feed, and completely love this new little person that had just arrived to this Earth. That was a whole year ago that our lives would change forever. FOR-EVER. 

Husband and I had to unlearn single lives and learn how to be patient beyond belief, loving beyond ourselves, and selfless beyond measure (I'm still working on this one.).

And while we believed that we were the ones learning, Rafaella was really the one learning it all.

She was learning to see new things in a whole new light, literally. She was learning to breathe air and wiggly worm and eat  on her own. She was learning to ask for things with sounds and how to be independent. She was learning to take baths and be held by strangers and have papi dunk her head with water during her baths because "she has to get used to it." (As if having water dumped on your head is a necessary life skill, Husband.)

 As time moved on, Daddy and I would continue to learn to be parents, but let's be real, the amount of learning that it takes to be parents is nothing in comparison to what it takes to learn to be a person. It's only until you're parents that you realize why people are so in awe of babies... and I don't just mean our own. Rafa is spectacular and brilliant but all babies are pretty spectacular. They come out knowing NOTHING. Well, so we think. They know somethings: they know in the first few moments of life how to take milk from a breast or a bottle - whichever will do. They know to tell us when they are hungry and when they are full. They know how to survive, I mean, come on.... that's pretty spectacular!

But then there are the moments of "Right! Of course they don't know how to do that!" And so the awe of raising a child really begins, I think.

When Rafa had to learn to eat from a spoon, it had dawned on me that until then she never ate from a spoon so how would she know how to do that. It dawned on me that until my mother taught me how to eat from a spoon, I never knew how to do that either. And then it dawned on me that all the same I learned and Rafa would learn and the world would keep spinning with babies learning how to eat from a spoon. Cause that's what babies do best - learn.

Rafa learned to feed herself little puffs by taking them in her itty bitty hand and putting that itty bitty hand to her itty bitty mouth. She would learn to lift herself up by using the couch - or Olive, poor Olive - to support her. She used her little feet to get from one place to another and then learned to trust those little feet and her not always reliable balance to walk. She would learn to smile and laugh. She would learn what a laugh meant. She would learn to move in a different way to music - to dance - or to clap for herself when she did something awesome. She learned to climb down from a couch by anchoring her feet first instead of her head. Thank god she learned that one!

These things don't seem like a lot when you are an adult and you have been walking or eating or getting up from the couch for years, years that move like Usain Bolt, so we take for granted that we know how to do them. But we didn't always know these things. 

At some point, we were Rafaella and we were learning, in our first year, how to do it all.

How fast this year has gone. A year ago, I was a new mom. And this idea of time had already crept into my conscious:

Sometimes it's hard to believe that she's ours. A month old baby is growing and becoming a person before our eyes, with our help. And just as it always does, TIME will keep marching into the next month, the next year. Before we know it, this month will be a memory. A time to look back on and remember how much really happened, how much really changed in just one month. (Nov. 7, 2011)

I knew then that time wouldn't slow down and that I would have to run like Mr. Bolt to keep up with it. And I was right because now I'm not a new mom but just a mom. I'm a bit more confident, a lot more tired, and a normal amount of sad that my Rafa's first year is gone. When did she get so big? When did she go from a 7 pound 2 ounces newborn to a 21 pound 13 ounces toddler? When did she go from five bottles a day to asiago cheese, croissants, and egg omelets? When did she go from a full smile of gums to three teeth with three more on the way?

In a year. In 52 quick moving weeks. In 376 days. Day-by second ticking tocking-day.

That's when...

And just wait. This year's only started...

* * * * *

Luckily, I have picture montages and amazing music by Cloud Cult to remind me of just how much happens in a year's time. And to make me cry like a sentimental, emotional, crazy mom person.


Cause You Were Born: Rafa Turns One from Jennifer Legra on Vimeo.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Being Us First

I read an article the other day, given to me by my good friend, Mary, a thoughtful woman, a talented teacher, and a grounded human in that groooovy kind of way who is perfectly fit without working out and always seems to give the best greeting cards for the right occasion. She also happens to be an extraordinary mother. I'm constantly in awe.

Anyway, she sent me an article the other day that I just haven't been able to stop thinking about. "I'm Not a 'Mother First'" is an article written by Jessica Valenti for The Nation's online magazine. To be upfront, part of what I liked so much about this article was that I agree with most of it and have voiced my own personal concern for this idea; the idea that now that I am a mother, I must somehow give in my Individual Identity Card and pick up my Only a Mom Card. Future images of people asking me who I was and responding, "Rafa's mom or Husband's wife," seemed to really scare me. As a "stay-at-home" parent, I had worked hard to get to know people at Husband's job. Mainly because I'm social but also so that people knew me as Jen Legra (since I kept my maiden name) and not as Mike's wife or Mrs. ________ and only that. I like Jen Legra. I've always liked Jen Legra. I always wanted to be someone's mom and wife. I just never wanted to be only that.

But what has kept me meditating on this article wasn't just that I liked reading someone else's view of what I already thought, but rather that what she was saying was realistically dangerous. "...there's a danger in returning to an ideal where women's most important identity is relational rather than individual." By most important identity being "relational" Valenti refers to our most important identity being wives, mothers, daughters, etc. and if our most important identity is relational than what does that mean? Does that mean that my identity must be attached to someone else in order to make sense... in order to matter?

By attaching our identity to that of another person, as noble as it may seem, makes us vulnerable: politically and personally.

Politically, as Valenti so beautifully puts it, "identifying as a mom first in a culture that pays lip service to parenthood without actually supporting it has consequence." We say that being a mom is the hardest and most important job, yet what do we really do to encourage that? In Germany, Parliament was debating a law that would pay mothers to stay home with their infants. In France, public child care truly supports working women. It doesn't cost a fortune equal to a monthly income and actually fulfills its promise of quality care. In Norway, voted the #1 best place to be a mother by the international organization Save the Children, parents are given a full year of paid leave to spend time with their infant. Those practices support mothers with action not lip service.

Hugs and smiles are great payment, but not one senator or governor or CEO that I know of is paid in them. I like a good "Thanks. Job well done" as much as the next person but it shouldn't be my only source of income. I can't provide for my children, doing the hardest job there is with kisses, can I? If so, my student loans are getting paid off tomorrow. I mean, saying that mothers hold our country together and that being a mother is the hardest job there is seems like a lot of empty talk when there are no incentive programs or retirement matches being offered for being a mom, for being the holder of this "incredibly important job."

Personally, as mothers we sometimes believe that self sacrifice is the only path to Good Momville. Unless we are giving something up (our job, our free time, our identity), we aren't as good of a mom as our more "unselfish" counterparts. " It's no wonder that as free thinking and confident as person as I am - with, of course, my own insecurities - when I became a mother I was swimming, drowning in doubt. When Valenti said:

"To be a truly committed parent, women are expected to be mothers above all else - we're "moms  first"... means that women are expected to be everything - and give up anything - for their children. Whatever women do that seems to separate them from "true"motherhood is misguided, or at worst, selfish. If we formula-feed we're not giving our babies the best start in life. If we work outside the home [and Heaven forbid we work outside the home without even financial reward, like let's say, hmmm.... I don't know, an aspiring writer?!], we must do it with tremendous guilt and anxiety. Time away from our children in the form of an occasional movie or hobby is seen as a treat rather than an expected part of living a full life."

the clouds of heaven parted and I heard angels sing because I had spent so much of my first few months of motherhood being taken over by thoughts of "you are not good enough" and feelings of "you are too selfish for this job." I realized luckily, quicker than most, that keeping my identity didn't mean that I loved my daughter any less. In fact, I'd argue that by being myself first and someone's attached identity second, I'm actually doing my daughter justice. I'm especially doing my daughter justice who might one day grow up and be someone's wife or someone's mother and uncertain if she could be herself first.

Inevitably, I can hear some women saying, "But I like being known as Mrs. Blank, wife of Mr. Blank or mother of Blankety Blank. That's fine but I just ask that you ask yourself why you need to be Mrs. Anything when you only have to be You. Better yet, ask your husband how he would feel being called Mr. You throughout his entire history of knowing someone. Even Husband, a very free thinker himself, would have to admit that being called Mr. Jen Legra for his whole existence, would not be cool.

Being Baby's mother or Husband's wife is a part of who I am but it isn't solely who I exist to be. Owning our own identity is a crucial part of making changes that benefit us, and let's face it, changes that would benefit more people than just mothers, like maybe the children who have an at home, present parent for starters. That could do a lot for our society.

We don't have to give up everything. I'm not saying that being a mother isn't as good a reason as any to lose my identity, I'm simply saying that I don't have to lose my identity to be a mother and I'm not saying that I wouldn't die for my daughter, but while I'm alive I don't have to roll over and play dead.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Buena Moments by Guest Bartenders: THE SIMPLE VIDA


Off the Menu: Buena Moments by Guest Bartenders is a series of guest submissions serving up their own good life moments through their own personal story, in hopes of showing how much beauty each of Our Buena Vidas holds. I know that I am not the only one living this buena vida. I know this because I talk to and see people everyday that are constantly in awe of how lucky they are to be living such a good life, even if they only catch a moment of it everyday. Once as we were sitting around the table on the shoreline of a local beach, our friend, Julia, paused from our freshly caught fish meal, looked around and said, "I love you guys." I didn't have to ask. I knew what she was thinking. I had been thinking it too. It was a simple moment but a buena moment.

If you would like to submit a story to this series, click here. Today’s post is by Guest Bartender, Mary. To email her, click here.



The Simple Vida

When I sit to meditate, my head can't sit still. Full of thoughts, words, and ideas. Trying to clear my mind is like trying to get my 4 year old to clear his dishes from the table - nearly impossible without so much effort it hardly seems worth it.

Then when I sit here trying to write - coaxing, inviting sweet talking thoughts, words, ideas... nothing. Blank.

Here you go... my buena vida is all about meditating when I should be writing and writing when I should be meditating. What?

It's like this: Health. Kids. Yoga. Jobs. Love. Sun. Friends. Travel. Terrace. Pool. Family. Quinoa. Bikes. Ice Cream. Xavier Rudd. Skype. Recycled Tshirts. Beach. Garden. Book Club. Wine. Mangoes. Gratitude. Soccer. Pumpkin Muffins. Kids Speaking Spanish. Ideas. Peace. Time. Time to write. Time to Meditate.

My buena vida is so full that I can't get it out of my head. My buena vida is so ordinary and every day that I have nothing to write about.

Monday, October 8, 2012

My Total Truths: #3 Change Doesn't Make Everyone Happy... and It Doesn't Have To


My Total Truths is a series based on MY truths; a list of things that I know to be true and have served as mini life lessons in my experience. 

# 3 Change Doesn't Make Everyone Happy... and It Doesn't Have To

picture from soshable.com

Years ago I was talking to a close friend about her unhappiness with certain relationships. It seemed that she had been looking inward and wanted to cut out her best self, as Oprah cleverly puts it, and was taking a good look at the things that brought her up and the things that didn't.  She understood that changes would have to be made and that many changes would be difficult to make but she was ready. She had been feeling the change coming for years and it was time. It was time.

The funny thing was that when she looked at the changes to be made none of her changes specifically involve people, they solely involved her own issues. She discovered that she didn't want to be a "yes" person, always agreeing and accepting, often making so much time for others that she had no time left for herself. She uncovered that she wanted to stand up for herself more. She realized that she was more special and beautiful and smarter than she often allowed herself to feel. She decided that she could me as funny, creative, healthy, and outgoing as she wanted to be and that certain relationships didn't make her feel like these things. The changes she discovered needed to be made were just a mindset away, a different way of thinking. 

But a funny thing happened... when she started to make these changes, it wasn't her alone that began evolving; it was the people around her that became different. Because people don't always like change - even when the change isn't about them - they became resistant to it, resistant to her. She was changing only for herself but was quickly discovering that change doesn't make everyone happy and that by altering herslef, her relationships were bound to change too. 

Instead of saying, "Yes, I'll be there for dinner," she said, "No I can't make it. I have yoga tonight." Instead of nodding her head in agreement while disagreement sat heavily in her heart, she would be kindly vocal about what she wanted. Instead of allowing herself to feel small she would focus on what was important to her. 


Inevitably, some people not only didn't support her decision to live her life differently but they became downright angry. They would tell her that she was "different" (as if this is always a bad thing), they would tell her that she was changing, that she wasn't the same person she used to be. Not realizing that that was the point. They would make her feel guilty about choices she made and the life she was choosing. They made this about themselves instead of accepting that this was not about them; in fact, it had nothing to do with them. This was about her; the life she wanted, the changes she needed.

And by making it about themselves they were causing themselves to be a change.

picture from vernacularcurate.blogspot.com 
She didn't belong to any of them, she belonged only to herself and the only person she would have to face and be accountable to at the end was herself. She reminded herself of this constantly.

She doubted herself and questioned herself. She suffered because instead of supporting her when she needed them, they tried to guilt her into playing her same role, into being the same person that she was obviously not capable of being anymore. She struggled for a long time with many relationships, many close relationships that wanted her to stay the same and refused to understand that what they were asking of her wasn't in her best self interest nor was it even possible because as people we change and grow and become different and evolve.  She had grown. She had changed. And the only choice for them to make was to support those changes or not and to realize that the changes she was making was not about pushing them out but about letting herself in. 

picture from ultrafeel.tv





Thursday, October 4, 2012

Make _ _IT Happen


"Did you watch the presidential debate last night?" My non-politico mom nonchalantly asked me. We are not what you would call a "political" family so her asking me really just is for small talk and not meaningful discourse .

"Debate?" I wondered for a moment. "Oh yeah. The debate. Was that on last night?" I vaguely remembered like that of a woman with a busy day and a baby.

My mom slightly giggled, "You probably don't really care anymore," she pointed out, eluding to the fact that Husband and I are currently living out of the country.

"No. We might have," I defended. "We don't even have our TV hooked up though," I non explainingly explained.

Picture taken from NPR.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The truth is not that I don't care anymore what is happening in our country, of course I do. My parents, like many immigrants, loves this country blindingly for what it has given them that their own country could not. They see themselves as through and through Americans - heart and soul - and believe in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the fundamental "truths" of what it means to be an American and that this is the land of opportunity.

I have lived and breathed that love for America my whole life. The daughter of two Cuban refugees, I learned that this country made possible a blueprint for my parents to create a life that they would have otherwise never been able to construct. I don't take my freedom or my country's state of fucked upness lightly. (I apologize - there was no way to say that politely.)

And so as I opened google today to read my email and instead I saw an article that I thought could quickly fill in the gap of what I missed on last night's debate. "Five Takeaways From the First Presidential Debate"was a quick guide, a "SparkNotes" if you will, on Alan Greenblatt's take of what he saw on the first debate for the 2012 election, none of which really caught my attention until I read "You're a Drinking Game Winner if you're the Middle Class." Here's what Greenblatt had to say about this point:

                    Both candidates were at pains to pay tribute to members of the middle class, again and        
                    again. Each referred to specific members of the middle class they had met along the     
                    campaign trail, who had gone back to school or were now out of work. Each insisted his 
                    plan would do more to help such people out and create middle-class jobs.

That's amazing, isn't it folks? That both the president and the guy running for president are paying so much tribute to the middle class? They were "at pains to pay tribute"? Isn't it something that they both could tell you story upon story of specific members of the middle class that they've met along the way? Aren't they so down to earth? They actually remember us regular folk, the average Joe - at least we're not talking about Joe the Plumber, right? Oh Riiiiiiiiiiiight... we've been here before. We;ve talked about the Average Joe (Plumber) - four years ago, in fact. Wasn't that around the same time as the last election?

But I guess my real question is at what point are we going to stop talking about the middle class, the working class, the folks that have gotten laid off, the elderly couple who have lost their home, the mothers who've gotten sick with no way to pay their medical bills, the students who have raked up student debt and then can't find a job, the couple who is working overseas because the only place they can afford their American dream is not in America. When are we going to stop talking about them and using them as a winning strategy in some razzle-dazzle, man behind the curtain debate and actually -

wait for it...
wait       for       it...

and actually help them. Really make some changes. Use some billion dollar buyout money to fix some medical bills, pay off some student loans, give some houses back - MAKE SOME SHIT HAPPEN. When are we going to do that presidential contenders of 2012?

I don't want to talk about Joe the Plumber's business or Grandma Edna's foreclosed house, or Uncle Louie's sliced off hand. I don't want to know these stories unless you are finishing these stories with how you are helping them. Actually helping. Not your "plan" to help but the actual part where you say, And then I walked into that bank and slammed down my Grandma Edna Buyout money and I bought back that bitch's house! (sorry for the cursing.) That's the part of the story I want to hear; not the part where you know her story but the part where you fix it. That's what I want.

Maybe at your next debate, instead of debating who has a better "I know the Middle Class" story, you all could debate who has a better "I saved the middle class story."

That would be my vote for president.


Remember this guy? Joe the Plumber.
Picture taken from mediabistro.com

For the full NPR.com story "Five Takeaways From the First Presidential Debate"by Alan Greenblatt click here. I do not frequently read NPR nor do I consider myself on any side, Republican or Democrat, other than the side of unfortunate souls who are seeing hard times.


Monday, October 1, 2012

Rescuing Waldo

My least favorite commercials are the ones that show abused animal images to sad songs by the likes of Sarah McLachlan. I know people need to know the reality and I know that in reality, this is real and maybe that's why these commercials make me so sad... because I know it is reality and I know that it is real.

I just can't totally comprehend, wrap my mind around, stomach how someone could be so cruel. So cruel. Have you seen some of these images or read some of these stories about people doing horrible, atrocious things to animals? I wonder what darkness must live in your heart to throw a dog off a roof or leave one stranded on a mountain or beat anything so defenseless, senseless?

Having always been, especially a dog lover, hearing these stories always makes a very hard impression and leaves me sad. I think it is probably the reason that Mike has given me the name of Jen, Animal Avenger, why I pick strays up off the street and try to find them homes - even if that sometimes means my house - to balance the cruel with the kind.

But a few years ago, I found two good reasons why, even more than before, I wanted to balance with kind:


These two lovelies are Olive and Jersey and before Rafa was born (and after Husband of course - although he would argue this), they were the ♥s of my life. 

Both of them have their own rescue story. Both were in desperate need of a loving home after being treated unkindly, and both found their way to me.

Olive, I found on the street, a year to the date (May 17) that we adopted Jersey (serendipitous if ou ask me). Hers is a story that I will tell later...

Jersey's story is the focus of today and it comes by way of a Vimeo Video. The video is short and quite sweet, tells his story briefly and shows his love sweetly to a family that only made the choice to love. 

In Disney, they play a secret game with their visitors where you have to find hidden Mickey ears on rides or in secret places, a "Where's Waldo" of sorts. Think of this video the same but instead you're finding hidden Jersey's. 

Have fun and love a dog today!



Where's Jersey from Jennifer Legra on Vimeo.