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married

an artist

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a daughter

a daughter-in-law

shy

an introvert

dorky

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may 05

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current

o n e y e a r a l r e a d y ?

caught in the rain in hilo.

not the most flattering picture, and it's out of focus, but it captures just one of the millions of fun little moments jeff and i have had together in our one year of being married.

one year!

everyone is so surprised by how fast the time has gone by, but maybe this is a good thing. if it felt like a long time, then that would just mean that we weren't continuing on with the happy, crazy lives we were experiencing before we got married.

and looking back on the past year, it's been wonderful. getting married and moving into our first place together. melding our lives and our homes. sharing some of the best times and some of the worst.

i'm blessed to have found such a wonderful, supportive, and fun husband.

i love you, jeff!

cami (9:01pm, 10.20.05)

it all happened so fast.

i yelled "we should pull over!" and know that somehow, even in my half-asleep state, i smashed my feet into my shoes and before i knew it, was out of the car and running...

jeff is following behind me on his cellphone, and for some reason as i relive it in my mind, it's almost like my spirit was floating just behind my body as i ran...trying to keep up...or maybe trying to hold me back.

i can see myself running, fists pumping, looking around to see if anyone else has stopped.

there is a moment that is frozen in my mind where i must have looked down, because i see my feet in my untied shoes, pounding the pavement in 1:30am darkness.

(isn't it strange the weird things a mind retains when you aren't really thinking?)

i'm first to be there and i get within a few feet of the wreck, and i'm overwhelmed by the sounds. the sound of the radio blaring banda, so loud, but static-y, and dropping out every few seconds, before going silent. the hissing of the engine as it pretty much gives up the ghost. the sound of jeff yelling our location to a dispatcher.

for a second, i'm trying to figure out if it's about to blow up as the smoke and dust and steam is settling.

and then i see a motionless, bloodied arm sort of hanging out the driver's side window. and i start screaming, and crying, because i can't see anything else. and i'm yelling at jeff and i'm yelling at the people across the freeway, and i'm yelling at noone because i've never seen such a terrible thing in my entire life.

"there's somebody in there! i think he's dead!"

i didn't go closer, because i see that the windshield has been crushed all the way down to the headrests of both the driver's and passenger's seats, and i know i don't want to have the image of a crushed head burned into my memory for as long as i live.

by now, jeff has passed me, because i'm hanging back, and another guy has run to the window of the expedition, too.

"stay back!" jeff is yelling at me. other people are gathering around.

i'm wailing. i am freaked out.




this obviously drunk driver had almost hit jeff and me just a few miles from home as we drove back in the middle of the night. when jeff swerved out of the way to avoid being rear-ended, it woke me up. we saw this guy veering all over the place, driving up too fast on the next cars he encountered. we lost sight of him for not more than 10 seconds, when all of a sudden there was a huge cloud of dust from where he had flown up the side of a steep embankment and came rolling down. somehow, as the top and front of the car was crushed, this guy got lucky and wasn't crushed along with it.

as we stood around waiting for the cops and paramedics to show up, this guy ended up coming to, and started to try to climb out the crushed window of his expedition. he was way out of it, and was way stuck. we were amazed he even survived. we have no idea how injured he was, but jeff saw a gash right down to the bone on this guy's forehead. i was staying away, so i didn't see much. i saw blood and i saw him sort of flailing around as he regained consciousness.

it was amazing that this guy didn't say a word. didn't moan or yell or anything. the fire department showed up with the jaws of life, but we were shooed away to go talk with the police, and then shooed home.

when we had been standing there waiting for anybody to show up, we found an empty baby car seat that had been ejected out the side of the window. jeff and a few others scrambled around the crash site to see if they could find a baby that might have been thrown from the vehicle in the accident. for a good half hour after we got home, we could hear a helicopter flying around, searching.

we prayed that the baby was safe at home.

jeff is thinking about calling the police to see if we can at least find out what happened.

the whole thing was very traumatic.

cami (11:19pm, 10.10.05)