Sloth, take 2

So, if you thought yesterday's sloth was cute (it was pretty cute, right?), check out this specimen! It's a bear, actually – a sloth bear! Who knew such a thing existed? I only found out by chance, while searching for a stock photo to accompany a story about a teddy bear tea party.

Yes. A teddy bear tea party. This is what it's come to. My so-called career is officially ... well, in need of some attention.

Lately my aching wrists (in addition to the aforementioned general angst and enui – plus, my ever-widening ass) are prompting me to give some thought to the question of what I might like to do for a living, besides working at a computer all day. I've done this kind of work –editing, writing and designing various kinds of visual materials – all my life. It's the only way I've ever really learned to make money. But I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that it's just not feasible for me to plan on doing it full time for the rest of my working life – by which I mean the rest of my life, period, since I don't expect to ever be able to afford to stop working completely, even if I wanted to.

In short, my wrists are killing me pretty much all day every day now. Ibuprofen helps, stretching helps, taking breaks helps – but I know what's really going on in there, and I know that the only thing that's really going to solve the problem is to stop spending so much time working on a computer.

But what else is there to do? More to the point, what else could I do? What would my days be like if I were no longer able to spend most of my eight hours cozily holed up behind a 24" flat screen monitor – if I had to actually do something physically active, maybe even interact with other people not just from time to time but all day long?

I have long thought that some kind of more people-oriented work would be good for me. I naturally tend to gravitate toward solitary, creative and introspective activities, but spending too much time working or playing alone makes me feel disconnected and unreal. And the longer I go without seeing people, the more stressful it is when I do see them. Working in a situation where I'm forced to interact more helps me keep my social-skill muscles from atrophying, and I've always loved the little interim jobs I've had where being with people is the main thing you do all day. Unfortunately, those jobs don't pay enough to live on.

There's gotta be something, though. Some kind of teaching? Or counseling? I'm drawn to the idea of doing these things, but when it comes right down to it I always sort of balk at the idea of People Bugging Me All Day. Then again, this is just the rut I want to consider busting out of.

More money would be nice, too. Actually, if I were making more money (by working from home instead of selling my labor for peanuts – nay, peanut shells! – at my current "job"), I could keep doing this same kind of work and just work less. That might be the best solution of all. But until the *&^ cable company deigns to offer service on our road, that isn't really an option, either. Moving graphics files across a dialup connection (or even wireless, I've been told by local friends who use it) is just too slow.

Such abundant naysaying! I'm not taking it too seriously, though – it just means I haven't thought of a good way to say Yes to something new. Yet. But it's gotta be out there somewhere.

In the meantime, I am percolating away ... thinking, doodling, daydreaming ... When the time is right to make a decision, I always seem to know it. I try not to get impatient with myself. But this – this hurts. My wrists, right now, are throbbing. A friend of mine who's also a commercial artist has been crippled by pain for almost a year and just took six weeks off for carpal tunnel surgery. I don't want to go through that.

Sloth and torpor

If only my own sloth were as cute as this one! But no. My sloth is of the existential variety, not the furry adorable kind. It's doing its job all the same, though, I suppose. My personal energy crisis reached the point today where I finally clued in that it's not just about holiday blues, giving myself a day off, seasonal affective disorder or late-night reading under the Christmas lights ... It's a sign of resistance, which means there's something I need to look at, and probably something I need to change. Not that this is news to me. I'm just glad I'm finally learning to recognize the signs before my denial and passivity push me down into another big depression.

Anyway! "Sloth and torpor" is my specialty amongst the Five Hindrances*, and it's also the title of a very useful podcast I happened across in my downloads folder today. The speaker is Ines Freedman, and she has a lot of great ideas for identifying and overcoming sloth and torpor in meditation practice, and in everyday life as well.

Hallelujah and just in time, is all I have to say.

Abruptly changing the topic, I wanted to report that while walking back to work after lunch today I saw a large black bird (crow, probably) looking back over its shoulder while flying. Its head was turned almost all the way around – a startling image!

I also saw a blue-eyed little boy with a big blue pacifier in his mouth staring out the window of a parked minivan while his mother talked to a friend on the street. It was weird to see someone sucking on a thing like that. I was never a thumb sucker or an object fetishizer – no security blanket, no special toy I couldn't sleep without, nothing like that. I had a roommate in college who used to suck her thumb in her sleep, and I've tried it myself thinking possibly it would provide some relief from stress or anxiety ... but I never could get the hang of it.

I do twirl my hair, though. There's this one big curl right at the base of my neck that fits right around my thumb.

I am now officially in the category of NaBloPoMo participants with exactly Nothing To Say. Thank dog there's only one more day.

* The Five Hindrances are as follows:

1. Sensual desire (kamacchanda): Craving for pleasure to the senses.
2. Anger or ill-will (vyapada): Feelings of malice directed toward others.
3. Sloth, torpor and boredom (thina-middha): Half-hearted action with little or no concentration.
4. Restlessness and worry (uddhacca-kukkacca): The inability to calm the mind.
5. Doubt (vicikiccha): Lack of conviction or trust.

Come to think of it, I guess I've specialized in all five over the years. Bully for me!

Dark day

Last night it froze hard. I spent half an hour out in the yard in my pajamas in the middle of the night trying to cover every branch, leaf and fruit on my citrus trees and salvias and frost-tender succulents, pricking my fingers on lemon thorns and narrowly escaping landing on my ass after slipping on some dog shit that wasn't supposed to be there (their official "bathroom area" is at the back of the yard, not the front!).

Luckily I had just enough extra blankets and towels to cover all of the "at risk" plants, and as of this morning everything looks fine. At some point I will need to move them all in under the porch, up next to the house.

So yeah. Covering my plants against frost is about the most exciting thing I've done in the last 24 hours. I will be very glad when this post-a-day thing is over. Not that I think my life isn't post-worthy! But I guess I am feeling a little sheepish ... that isn't exactly the right word ... but basically just kind of uncomfortable with the implied presumption I'm making, by posting all this stuff on the world wide web – meaning anyone in the WORLD with web access can, well, access it – that the mundane details of my everyday life are of interest to anyone but me and a small handful of kindhearted readers who for whatever reasons seem to care what I am doing with my life. It does seem embarrassingly self-indulgent and kind of infantile to keep spewing out all this information about myself, when nobody really asked to know it. I mean, why not just write it all down in a private journal?

But then, I suppose that's why I don't usually write every single day. Usually, I only write when I feel like I have something worthwhile to say, and when I feel more or less positive and happy. It's not exactly fake, because a lot of the time, I do feel that way. Today, though, not so much. Some stuff is going on right now that I can't write about, which is making me feel anxious and defeated and depressed. Part of it is just me, feeling stagnant and impotent and uninspired. I don't like it, but I know how to deal with it. The other part of it is not me, and that's the part that I worry about. Because it's not my job to tell other people what to do or how to live. I just have to make my preferences known, let them make their own decisions, and then decide for myself what I am going to do.

I know it's probably bad form to even bring it up if I'm not willing to talk about the details, but ... well ... oh well! I'm mentioning it anyway because sometimes I feel like all I ever write about here is how happy and beautiful and satisfying my life is – which much of it really is, don't get me wrong – without giving equal time to the sad, struggly, lonely and disappointed parts, of which there are also a few. Sometimes more than a few.

Basically, I guess I'm just having a mini-pre-midlife crisis. Or possibly I already am in midlife. In any case, right now I feel like my entire life is mired in some ... I don't know what ... I just feel restless and stuck. I need to shake things up somehow, but I don't have the energy. Looking at the calendar it occurs to me as well that I'm at the height (depth?) of my monthly hormonal mood-swing session. Which means, if 27 years of experience are anything to go by, that I oughtta be feeling a lot better in just a few short days.

In any case. Here I am. Only two more days of this daily posting and then I can go back to my usual routine. Although – maybe at a time like this it would be better to break with tradition and NOT go back to my rut! I will consider it.

In the meantime, the photo at the top is of the creek behind my house. Rozanne wanted to see it. So here it is. I did finally find the battery charger for the camera (it was plugged in behind the toaster, of course!) so I'll be posting more pictures of various things around town just as soon as I have a full battery to shoot them with.

Japanese skirt

One of the cool things about sewing your own clothes is that you can make them any way you want. Shorter, longer, wider, simpler, fancier, with or without sleeves or furry trim or extra buttons ... I've always been short (5'4" ish) and currently I'm also just fat enough that it's sometimes hard to find cool things that fit properly – but not fat enough to find anything in the Big Ladies store (if I ever get that fat, I can assure you I will not stay that way long enough to buy new clothes!). I don't consider myself a freak, but I do seem to have a kind of "custom" body type, so I've been enjoying sewing for myself as much out of necessity as for the satisfaction of dressing myself in one-of-a-kind handmade clothing that nobody else will have.

Last summer, for instance, I made myself a skirt out of this great flowered cotton fabric from Japan. I love this stuff! Poppy Fabric in Oakland always has a good selection, or you can take your chances and buy online at Fabric Tales, crossing fingers that you won't get a weird piece with a snarl or slub in it.

This particular skirt almost didn't get made, though, because I didn't buy enough fabric. It was my first purchase of this type of design, and I wasn't sure how much I was really going to like it, so I only bought a yard. Then I used part of that to make a little pillow, and another little piece to patch something ... Upon which I decided I did in fact like it, very much ... only to then realize that I no longer had enough of it to make the skirt I'd had in mind.

Harrumph! Finally I decided that since I never tuck anything into a skirt anyway, it would be permissable to patch the thing together out of several pieces, which worked just fine – the skirt part is two big pieces (front and back), and the top is sort of like a yoke sewn out of three pieces that were left over along the edge. I even had a small rectangular piece left, which I used to make a secret pocket you access via the seam between the skirt and the yoke.

That pocket is the best thing about this skirt – I like it so much I'm going to start incorporating it into everything I made from now on. I don't know how many skirts I've had that lack pockets altogether, or have pockets that are too deep or too small or on the wrong side or look bulky because they've been installed in the side seams, right where a person like me does not want any extra padding.

This pocket is perfect. It's exactly as wide as my right hand, and exactly as deep as my fingers can reach, and it's in the exact spot on my right hip that I instinctively reach for when I need a dollar bill, or a key, or a hair clip or a chapstick or whatever.

It's surprisingly satisfying to reach for a pocket where you've never had one before, and find one right where you want it. Every time it happens I burst out smiling.

Another slow Sunday

Heavy rain all day, and heavy clouds. For the second Sunday in a row I stayed in bed until early afternoon, listening to the rain in the trees and drinking hot mint tea and reading by the light of the little white Christmas lights I have wrapped around the headboard. Mr. A once again brought me breakfast in bed - a turkey omelet and toast, with a side of butternut squash (one of my favorite things in all the world).

Around 1 p.m. I moved onto the couch and we spent the afternoon watching movies and snuggling with dogs. Then it was time for dinner, and then back to the couch, and now I'm about to go back to bed.

Spending a whole day resting when I'm not sick always makes me feel kind of guilty. This is something I'm trying to get over. Life is not a race, and it's not against the law to take a real day off every once in awhile! Right now I feel relaxed and energized all at the same time, and am looking forward to getting some exercise tomorrow, all of which I'm taking as an indication that taking a day to take it easy sometimes really is a healthy and acceptable thing to do. Someday I hope I will no longer feel the need to make excuses for resting when I need to rest.

Tomorrow morning I'll get up early and walk the dogs back to the creek. The rain has filled it deep enough that I can hear water running all the way from the house, which means that rancid dead dear is probably either a half a mile downstream by now, or at least under water and out of reach of crazy carcass hunters (i.e., dogs). I'm looking forward to seeing what the flow pattern looks like now, too. Because the flooding last year moved the main channel, we had water running back there all summer this year for the first time in ten years or more. Maybe now it'll be back in both channels again. That would be exciting, eh?

Propane and cardamom

More pleasures of the flesh: food, nature, art, food ... Seems like this is all I ever write about, these days.

Last night we had Mr. A's brother and his wife over for dinner and a fire in the fire pit. We roasted two chickens with potatoes, winter squash and other fall vegetables; they brought two lobster tails and a big bottle of sake. It was a perfect clear night with lots of stars. The fire was the first one we've had this year; I celebrated by burning a big chunk of black Sumatran benzoin resin incense I picked up a few weeks ago and had been saving for just such an occasion.

This morning we got up early (well, early for a Saturday on a holiday weekend) and rode our bikes into town for breakfast. On the way home we rode through the big nature park on the west side of town, stopping at the edge of a little meadow in the middle of the park to sit on the ground and watch yellow leaves flying around high above the trees. Yellow leaves, white clouds, blue sky, tall trees swaying in the wind – it was mesmerizing, mind-clearing and soul satisfying.

I spent the afternoon out in the windy yard, bundled up in blankets and pillows like an invalid on the deck of a luxury liner, sipping water out of my favorite blue bowl and reading my book. There were millions of birds out there today, for some reason – flocks of little black ones and little brown ones descending on the apple trees, twittering there for a few minutes, and then departing en masse. Also hummingbirds – six of them at once, chasing each other around the salvias and stopping every once in awhile to sit on stems and branches and chirp at me with indignant expressions on their little hummingbird faces. They've been really aggressive for the last few weeks, swooping in so fast and so close to my face that I've actually thrown my hand up to protect my eyes, more than once.

I found my long-lost box of PMC stuff the other night and am in the process of rehydrating a couple of big chunks of it. There were a few little finished pieces in there, too, that I'm going to attempt to fire tonight with a propane torch. I've never done it that way before, but I don't have access to a kiln right now and I figure even if I end up ruining a piece or two it'll be worth it to learn how to do it this way. I used to really enjoy making little things out of this stuff and have several pages of good designs I never produced.

When I was in the hardware store buying the torch, I walked back into the lumber section to fondle the crown moldings (I'm kind of a freak for building supplies) and got swept away by the smell of some long cedar boards they were putting out. I stood in the aisle for several minutes, breathing in that smell. It reminds me of my mother.

Later I had unagi and seaweed salad at the sushi restaurant where I spent my extremely short-lived career (two days) as a waitress in about 1997. On the way home I bought vanilla ice cream, plus some rose water and a few spoonfuls of powdered cardamom to put in the rice pudding I'm making tomorrow. I love, love cardamom. It's in a little bag in the kitchen and I can smell it all through the house.

Mmmm ... laundry

Remember when I used to work in that froufy home accessories store? This was one of my favorite products from that store, and since we're in the home stretch of NaBloPoMo and I'm posting today only in order to preserve my record, I'm going to go ahead and resort to shameless promotion of a commercial product (on Buy Nothing Day, no less!). This lavender scented textile softener from France is so nice that I'm officially addicted to it, to the point where I can no longer sleep without the smell of lavender wafting up from my linens. When I travel, I have to bring my own pillows (I also bring a little linen pillow stuffed with lavender from my own garden. The smell makes me feel right at home).

My friend who owns the store no longer carries this product, and I just used up the last drop from my last bottle – so I was very happy today to find a store on eBay that has the lavender and also a bunch of other flavors, including the orange blossom, which I also like but which makes me sneeze a little.

So, hooray for the world wide web! Now that I've found it again, only one question remains: why are they using fake violets to accessorize a bottle of lavender-scented fabric softener? All purple flowers are not lavender!

P.S. While I'm recommending girlie-style products that smell good, here's another one I can't live without: this ayurvedic sandalwood moisturizer. It smells divine, goes on light, and has never irritated my ridiculously sensitive skin. Plus, did I mention it's pink? Gotta love that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I probably make this same announcement every year, but Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Today, for the fourth year in a row, I celebrated it with Mr. A and his family.

In Mr. A's family, holiday gatherings are sort of spread out amongst the brothers and sisters. For Thanksgiving everyone goes to his second oldest brother's house, Christmas is at his oldest sister's, St. Patrick's Day at his next older brother's and Easter at his parents' and oldest brother's. We had Fourth of July here this year, so I guess that one is ours now if we want it. His remaining sister doesn't host anything, but that's okay – they can always be counted on to show up for everyone else's parties, which is the main thing.

So today we had a nice meal at his brother's house, went for a walk after dinner, and are now back at home – Mr. A sleeping, and me watching Fitzcarraldo drag his ship over a mountain (in the fog, with that beautiful vaguely Indian-sounding music in the background) and wishing there were just one tiny little sliver of pumpkin pie in the house to eat before I go to bed. That's one of the perks of hosting the holiday celebration that I always miss when we go somewhere else – great leftovers.

Another option, for another time, might be to simply learn how to make pumpkin pie myself. It can't be that hard, can it?

I would also like to record that Mr. A woke me up with breakfast in bed this morning: eggs, toast and tea. I sat in bed and read Dostoyevsky with the sun streaming in through the window, and when I asked him what he would do in one of the situations I'd just read about in the book he said something totally charming and funny which I meant to remember so I could write about it tonight, but which I've now forgotten, of course.

Also, I had a really good hair day today. Highly satisfactory, and near the top of my list, at this moment, of things I am thankful for.

Eat up, little turkey gobblers

In lieu of a real post today I'm going to post a link someone sent me to an article about Caloric Restriction, or CR – the philosophy or science of eating just enough nutrient-dense food to keep you alive, with the minimum of calories, in order to extend your lifespan far, far beyond what is considered "normal."

It works for worms, mice, even some monkeys – maybe it will work for people, too! But as someone in another article said, people don't like feeling perpetually hungry, and living forever might not necessarily be all it's cracked up to be, either – "isn't that what makes vampires so cranky all the time?"

On the other hand, eating this way does seem to have some fairly reliable health benefits, including increased energy, disease resistance, lowered blood pressure, and of course longer life, at least in theory (there's always the possibility of alien abduction, falling anvils, etc.). Check out this nut case for a glorious extended list of the benefits.

There was a whole long section of this post that I've deleted for now, having to do with an episode of Frontline I saw last night about Living Old. I may post on that topic some other time, but for now, the upshot of it was that if I'm going to be old, I definitely want to be healthy, or at least mentally positive, alert and engaged in life (check out this awesome interview with a 94-year-old woman stock broker!). I'm not sure I'm interested in living to be 130, 140 or 150 years old, though, especially if it means spending my remaining 90, 100 or 110 years on the brink of starvation.

Happy hands

Look at these hand mudras. Aren't they pretty? This one is the Bhûtadâmara Mudrâ, or Gesture of Warding Off Evil.

Right now I'm drawing a lot of these – the Abhaya Mudrâ, or Gesture of Fearlessness, is another one I really love – and finding the practice strangely soothing. I like to draw them without looking at my pen, so that the finished drawings are loose and organic looking, slightly distorted. I like coloring them, too.

Coming from a religious tradition that lacked any kind of visual language – no collars, cassocks or crosses, no stained glass, no statues, icons, pictures or paintings except for photo portraits of the First Presidency and those little cardboard Bible posters you could check out of the church library to use in your Sunday school presentation – I'm fascinated with religious art that tells stories without using words. Like those pictures of Shiva where he's dancing on a prostrate dwarf, and he has all those arms and hands, each one holding some symbolic object, and he's kicking up his leg, and there's the moon, and that snake around his neck, and then there's all that stuff in the background – I love the way those images invite my mind to relax and engage in a totally new way. It's like the difference between reading a paragraph describing a certain kind of flower, and seeing a full color photograph of it. The paragraph might awaken my imagination with intriguing history and details, but I'm not going to sit there reading it over and over again. In fact, the main benefit of the paragraph is that it helps me create a picture in my mind, and it's the picture that I relate to and want to spend time with. And, falling in love with the picture, I'm much more inclined to get out there and seek out the real thing.

So yeah, I'm enjoying me some pictures of hands making symbolic gestures, these days.

In other news, a couple of people at my office have been bringing their dogs to work lately. One of them is the Big Boss, who has a new five-month-old yellow lab puppy and who obviously can do whatever he wants – but today someone brought in a sweet liver-and-white Springer spaniel (I'm all about the spaniels), and the other day someone else was here with her furry black shepherdy-type dog. Could it be – that I might someday be able to bring the Taterman to work again? Even just occasionally? That would be so great!

Then again, what would happen to the Jeeps? Every time we take Tater anywhere, Jeepers stands outside in the back barking continuously the entire time we're gone. For this reason, we almost never leave him alone – which means that Tater, who used to go almost everywhere with me, including to work at a dog-friendly office every day for two and a half years, almost never gets to go anywhere anymore. It's not fair that his world should shrink to the size of our back yard just because the Jeeps is too irascible to go out in public (he's bitten two people before, that we know of) and too barky and insecure to be left alone. But I don't want the Jeeps to suffer, either, and it's clear that a dog who stands out in the cold and the rain barking his head off for hours on end is not doing it because he's enjoying himself. A dog who does that is not a happy dog.

Anyway. It would still be fun to bring my dog to work again sometimes. Maybe we could get some doggie tranquilizers to help the Jeeps get through the day.

Anatomy of an obsession

I guess it had to come to an end – this brief period of total satisfaction with all of my belongings and the arrangement thereof, not to mention the accompanying feeling that it might be great to liberate them all and live, once again, in a clean, white, empty room with one perfect dress, one perfect bowl, one perfect spoon, one perfect pillow, one perfect candelabra, and one or two perfect little drawings floating around* ...

In short, I've begun questing again. This time, I was triggered by this photo on the cover of Edible San Francisco of four etched crystal tumblers. I know it's hard to see in this picture from their website, but they are so simple and fragile and pretty, and I'm utterly dismayed that these people would feature them on the cover of their publication and then provide NO information about who made them, what is their history, where did they come from, whether and where they are available to get one's hands on, etc. All they give is the photographer's name. Harrumph!

It's funny to pinpoint the origin of this obsession. Yesterday afternoon when I was lying in my room all strung out on Excedrin PM, Mr. A woke me up to give me a glass of water. I drank some of it, and then set the glass on the windowsill above the bed. When I woke up again an hour or so later the sun was going down. It was a damp, foggy afternoon and the light was filtering through the mist and all the colors of the back yard were sort of glowing, and the light through the glass on the windowsill looked all magical and liquidy and beautiful. I picked it up and the glass felt cold in my hand, and the water felt cold on my lips, and inside my mouth it tasted like melted snow.

Suddenly I remembered this beautiful crystal glass I used to like to drink cold water out of. It was the last remaining of a set of six, which I bought at a great old vintage shop in Salt Lake City in 1990. I brought them home, carefully wrapped in tissue and nestled in a two-handled paper shopping bag, set them on the the kitchen table, and went into the other room to do something or other. Within minutes I heard a horrible crash, and then some mad scrambling and breaking glass sounds – and then my cat Elvis came running into the living room. He had stuck his head into the bag through one of the handles (you know how cats like to investigate bags), and when he tried to pull his head out it got stuck in the handle. He panicked, leapt off the table, and went dashing around the house with the bag full of crystal bouncing along behind him.

The set instantly shrank from six to two, and then a few years ago my roommate broke one of those, and then the last one expired when I was moving. Right now my main cup is a chipped blue and white enamel mug from Chinatown, the kind with the blue koi fish stencilled on the side. I got this one in an interesting way, too – it was hanging on the "regulars wall" of a coffee place near my house in Provo (this is a wall where regular customers could leave their own personal mug to use when they came in). I went to a small amount of trouble to find out who it belonged to, and then tracked him down and begged him to let me trade him something for it. I don't remember what we traded for, but I've had it for at least 15 years now. The first year I lived here it was so hot I used to fill it about half full of water and put it in the freezer just until a thin film of ice formed on the top, and then drink the beautiful slushy coldness. One day I forgot and left it in too long, and the whole thing froze solid – which expanded the bottom of the cup outward and cracked the enamel. It's been slowly rusting out ever since, which is probably as good a way as any for such a cup to go.

Anyway! One cup, one bowl – I like this philosophy of "stuff." It's especially exciting when the stars align and events converge in such a way as to let me know the universe thinks it's time for me to rotate one thing out, and another one in.

So: the search is on for the perfect cut crystal rocks tumbler from which to drink ice cold water while looking out a window into the fog.

All kinds of vessels have been capturing my attention lately, however – not just glass but also wood, paper and porcelain. For instance, look at this beautiful stuff. The thing is though, when I look at these things and really think about holding them in my hands, what I find is that I don't really want to own them – I want to make them.

I've been all over the web lately, looking at people's art and craft blogs, and as of today I've realized I shouldn't be doing that right now. I'm too easily influenced in this way – my mind fills up with photo-perfect images of other people's work, my own ideas start to seem unbearably flawed and amateurish, and I end up so frustrated and overwhelmed that I stop doing anything at all. Inspiration is one thing, but my work has only ever suffered when I try to imitate or compare it to what other people are doing. The best stuff always comes when I'm working out of my own head and my own experience.

Enough said for today. You've probably realized by now that I can easily go on and on like this forever! This post a day thing is re-awakening the obsessive part of me that spent so many years dreaming and documenting my life instead of being, doing, living. At the end of the month, I will probably start to cut back again – it's not good for me to spend this much time endlessly involuting. Better to balance that tendency with action and interaction in the real world.

*This photo is from somebody's Flickr set that I screen captured when I was drawing up plans for my alleged studio (I have to call it that until it's actually built), and cannot now remember the name of to give photo credit. If it's yours, please forgive me! Or let me know and I'll take it down, or link it to you, or whatever.

Slow Sunday

Not much to report today. My back was killing me last night – I didn't think of it until after I'd done it, but it probably wasn't such a great idea to drag a 60-lb. rock into the creek yesterday so I could walk across – so I took a couple Excedrin PMs before bed. They knocked me out so bad I didn't wake up until almost one in the afternoon, and have felt groggy and out of it all day. I still kind of feel that way.

Right now I'm watching Jack Nicholson being given shock treatments in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's a great movie, but frustrating to watch on tv – so many stupid commercials, and so repetitive!

Actually, I think I'm going to turn it off and go back to bed. Maybe read awhile. It's been a strange day.

Once again the grass is green

Mr. Baby (aka Tater) found more of that deer today. The thing has to have had at least nine or ten legs. I don't know where he keeps coming up with all of these pieces.

Today was a sureally beautiful day, seventy degrees and sunny, with the last of the colored leaves still sparkling in the trees and a warm earthy smell permeating the garden. I spent the morning there dealing with bee stuff and visiting with a friend who was holding a workshop about dye plants. They had three spinning wheels set up and a big basket of wool to be spun and dyed. The red was my favorite, from cochineal (rare and beautiful – it's made from bugs!) – it came out a gorgeous clear, warm crimson.

About the bees – a couple of weeks ago I gave them a bunch of wet frames and cappings to clean. Wet frames are rectangular wooden frames of wax from which the honey has been spun out, and cappings are the thin layers of wax that "cap" each cell, which you cut off in a thin sheet with a long, sharp knife in order to get the honey out.

When I put the cappings into the hive, they consisted of a cantaloupe-sized ball of shredded beeswax, saturated with so much honey it would run down your arm if you held it up for more than a minute or two. I knew that the bees would lick up every droplet of honey they could find, but I didn't realize they would do such a good job of it. When I opened the hive all that was left of that big sticky mass was a thin scattering of bone dry, clean, white flakes – the wax. I brought it home in a big zip-loc bag and looking at it now, it looks like a big bag of bread crumbs, or really white oatmeal, and smells like honey. Nice.

This afternoon we watched My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski, the Herzog documentary about Klaus Kinski, who reminds me in a weird way of the college boyfriend who introduced me to his work – such an egomaniac! I want to see all those old movies again now. Not just Nosferatu, but Fitzcaraldo, Woyzeck, Aguirre the Wrath of God, and new ones like Grizzly Man, and a few others I haven't seen before. Like Herzog I am interested in fringe characters, people whose obsessions and intensity relegate them to the edges of society. They're not really crazy, or not completely – they're still sane enough to see that other people are freaked out by them. In fact, that's part of their pathos. They can't help the way they are. In a way, they're even kind of proud of it. But it also hurts.

In this movie Herzog recalls an incident in which Kinski responds to a theater critic who's having dinner with them, who's said he will commend one of Kinski's performances as outstanding and extraordinary, by throwing food in the guy's face and screaming, "I was not outstanding and extraordinary! I was monumental! I was epochal!" Many scenes of Kinski flipping out on location in the Amazon basin. He was a perfect person to play those parts.

I've always been fascinated by this type of intense character. Something about their feral, aggressive energy attracts and also repels me – their unquestioning self-confidence and their ability to express themselves in ways I never have.

In other news, early this evening I walked back to the creek and sat on a rock for 40 minutes or so as the sun went down. It was nice, throwing sticks for Tater and listening to the water and watching the colors fade.

Holiday bacchanalia of tears

I ran across this photo from one of my stock services at work today, while doing a keyword search on "thanksgiving." What the hell?! I guess they were thinking more loosely in terms of feasting, abundance, decadent overindulgence, etc. etc. Looks like some party, eh?

Anyway, I'm thinking about Thanksgiving lately. All this week I've been laying out recipes and features with all these yummy food ideas and photos – mostly food photos, but also some more generic holiday meal related images. It's making me very hungry. And very, very homesick.

[Warning: Woe-is-me fest to follow]

I love my life out here. I do. Still, I just miss my family so much sometimes. My nieces and nephews are growing up without me. My parents are getting older – every time we spend time with Mr. A's parents, who are now 81 and 91 years old, I wonder – what will it be like when my parents are that old? If they live 20 more years, and if I keep up my current schedule of visits, that would mean I'll see them only maybe 20 or 30 more times in my entire life. And even if I am able to implement my plan of starting a "flying fund" to buy four round trip tickets a year, flying in and out over a long holiday weekend is not the same as being part of a person's life on a daily basis. I'll never be able to just stop by and see them, the way we see Mr. A's parents. I'll never be able to just casually invite them over for dinner, or out for a hike, or just hang out and visit with them.

Usually I don't let myself think about it. I don't even call very often, because it just hurts too much. Keeping it all locked up and clamped down hurts, too, though. Especially during the holidays, when I know I'm going to see them. I remember when I was a kid, my mom would always get emotional around Christmas, and I never really got it. What's the big deal? I get it now.

I don't want to live in Utah, and neither does Mr. A. So does this really mean I'm never going to be part of my family's life again? Am I willing to accept that? Is there some other way to think about it that makes it acceptable and okay to have made the decision to live so far away from almost everyone in the world that I really love? I mean, I have friends here. But it isn't the same as family. My brothers and sisters are some of the coolest people I know. When I spend time with them, the world makes sense in a way it doesn't anywhere else. For instance, we know how to move around the kitchen together. We know where the bread drawer is, and how to fold the napkins right. Stuff like that, that makes a person feel at home. I miss having easy access to that feeling.

I used to think that growing up meant taking what you'd learned in your first family, and then going out into the world and finding or creating it with new people. Not breaking off those relationships, which I don't think I've done – at least not intentionally – but expanding them by bringing in new people. But how do I integrate it all when we're all so far apart? This is something I need to resolve as soon as possible, or at least start working on.

Hence the flight fund. I've set it up as a monthly transfer that will fund four trips a year, if I plan them far enough ahead to get the cheap tickets. Getting more time off work would also be great – possibly something to negotiate on in lieu of a raise, for example.

Ugh. Crying at work is so banal. So is all this drama – I hate it! Plus, I had this whole entry in mind all about Thai iced tea and this delicious spicy peanut dressing I'm trying to unlock the secrets of so I can make it for Thanksgiving dinner at Mr. A's brother's house.

Thank god for Mr. A's family, by the way. They all live within about 20 miles of us and their generosity and welcoming attitude has gone a long way toward alleviating my holiday homesickness over the last few years. It wouldn't hurt to keep in closer touch with some of them, either.

P.S. I was also going to write about how last night was my very last event as a member of that board of directors I've been on for the last six years – so I'm now officially free! Except that at that same meeting, someone approached me about becoming a director on the board of the local teen center, about which I know nothing except that they were plagued by some kind of scandal last year that a lot of people still seem to have pretty negative feelings about. In any case, I'm not committing to anything new until January at least.

P.S.II. You have got to go here now and check out the most amazingly beautiful picture of the most amazingly beautiful cabbage I have ever seen. Speaking of outstanding ideas for Thanksgiving! Mr. A's brother, who hosts the annual feast for this family, is something of a gourmand and a truly wonderful chef ... I would love to show up, just once, with something that could impress him.

More middle of the night stuff

After the mildly alarming frog-on-my-throat experience of Tuesday night, I arrived home from work last night looking forward to a long night of uniterrupted sleep. I put on jammies early, ate a cozy dinner of cheese toast and soup, and settled into bed at a more or less reasonable hour, intending to fall into dreamland immediately and remain there until the alarm woke me up at exactly 7:10 this morning.

The Jeeps had other plans. Around two in the morning he started coughing loud enough to wake me up. At first I tried to ignore it, because he does have these coughing fits occasionally and the vet said they are nothing to worry about unless they become prolonged or seem to cause mental or emotional stress to the dog, which so far they have not. Last night, though, I think we finally crossed that line. He coughed until he couldn't catch his breath, and then he started wheezing and choking, as if he were having an asthma attack.

I got out of bed to see if I could do anything for him – although I had no idea what to try – and he got up from his spot on the floor (he sleeps in the doorway to protect me now, since he can no longer jump up onto the bed) and gave his tail a few brave wags, even though he was still not able to breathe comfortably. All I could think of to do was to hold him and give him a massage, and so I did, and after a few strokes his breath calmed and he seemed to relax a bit, and finally he laid back down and wagged his tail again, but weakly. I sat with him for a few minutes and went back to bed.

But after that, I couldn't sleep. I kept waking up every hour or so, listening for dog sounds, getting up to pee, looking in on the Jeeps (Tater meanwhile snoring away on the bed as usual with his head on the pillow and his legs in the air – surely not oblivious, but apparently unconcerned) and wondering if I should take Jeepers back to the vet for another look. Every time I fell asleep I had unsettling dreams about being thrown out into the street alone ... just wanting to go back home, and being unable to. It was a long night.

This morning he'd moved into his bed in the living room and was lying so still I had a moment of alarm, and poked him (possibly a bit roughly) in the back. At this he lifted his head and looked at me with that long-suffering but irritated expression old dogs get when you wake them up from a sound sleep. "Sorry," I said. And left him a cookie on the rug for later.

I've known the Jeeps for more than three years now and have always known that he was an old dog. I've seen him lose his hearing, his eyesight and his ability to sit and stand easily. Now there's this new thing to contend with. Lately I've found myself casually informing friends that we're probably getting a new puppy next summer - trying to get used to (or distract myself from?) the idea that the Jeeps probably won't be with us much longer. But it's one thing to "know" that in my head, and another to start seeing him fade right in front of my eyes.

The other day I burst into tears when I noticed a few white eyebrows on Tater's sweet little black face.

Why is it so hard to talk about aging, and death? I don't have any words to describe what I feel when I think of our dogs – especially Tater, whom I've known since he was still wet from being born – growing old and dying. Partly it's sadness, because I love them and I don't ever want to be without them. It's more than that, though. The only word that comes to mind is "gratitude." There's an expression I used to hear a lot in Mormonism – "my heart is full." That's what it feels like – like my heart is so full it could break wide open. But then it doesn't. It just keeps filling up with more love.

I expect when my dogs die I will open up even more. And then be filled.

I feel like these experiences are helping me to have more faith in the basic okayness of things. It's a sense I'm actively trying to cultivate, but I've always thought of myself as kind of a worrier (not so much anymore, but in the past – definitely) and it doesn't always come naturally to me.

Like when we were planting those seeds last weekend. I've been gardening basically all my life and yet somehow it never fails that when I place a seed in the ground my mind whispers, "Nothing's going to happen." Because it really is hard to believe if you think about it. This speck of dust? Turns into a full-blown plant with stems and leaves and flowers and fruit? And yet every year it happens: the seeds really do sprout, and there's a new life.

In the meantime though I think I will give the vet a call about the Jeeps. If nothing else it will be good to have something official to tell Mr. A when I tell him about this latest episode.

A visitation

Last night I was dreaming of a Japanese calligraphy brush, the big bamboo kind that's as long as your forearm, with the soft fat wad of black hair bristles. Someone had dipped it into a big pot of ink, and then blopped a big round ink blot on the left side of my throat. I reached up to feel the spot and my fingers touched something ... cold and wet ... and moving ...

I instinctively flung the thing out into the room, then realized I was awake. It only took a second or two to know what had happened; then I rolled over and turned on the light, and met my middle-of-the-night visitor: a tiny brown Pacific tree frog, with glistening skin and gently pulsing throat, sitting with its adorable little fingers splayed out on either side of the head of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov (well, the portrait of him on the cover of an ancient paperback).

This is not the first time I've been visited by frogs in the night. One of the windows in my room doesn't have a screen, and I think that's where they come in – late in the evening, when my reading lamp brings them to the window to catch the little bugs that are also attracted to the light.

The frogs' attraction to light is also compelling and intense. I picked this little one up and took her to the kitchen, to send her out the dog door – and as soon as she was outside, she crawled up to the little tear in the corner of the plastic door and hopped right back in. To get her to leave, I had to turn off the lamp in my room and then turn on the one on the back porch. That got her attention right away, and she sailed out the open door and into the light without a moment's hesitation.

Possibly there is some kind of metaphor for faith in this little story. Maybe it really is just instinct that compels a frog to move toward light, without any thought or reason. Or maybe faith is itself an instinct.

Sometimes, I suppose, a frog is just a frog.

Goodbye, Squirrel Crossing

Alas, it is no more! The creek re-channeling project that's been happening at the end of my road has totally destroyed Squirrel Crossing, the place where squirrels used to congregate on big boulders and watch the river and the road. It's so sad. The other day I was passing by and saw a squirrel running like a bat out of hell across the new 100-ft. wide, smooth, flat expanse of uniformly baseball-sized stones. He had to run, because once you're out on that kind of a broad open surface there is no place to hide -- your only hope is to make it all the way across and into your hole before anybody sees you.

Hopefully within the new few months the water will bring more huge boulders down the creek and create a new place for them to hang out.

In other news, I forgot to mention that on Sunday Mr. A and I went to look at a 1958 Rambler American some kid is selling cheap. I am not into cars in general, and especially not into "project cars," but for a couple of years in the late 90s I had a 1960 Rambler American, a two-door V8 automatic – white, with a nice interior and so much rust on the outside that I could stick my entire finger inside some of the holes ... I really loved that car!

I learned from it, too, that restoring a beat up old car is so expensive and time-consuming that you had best either appreciate the car exactly as it is, funky and rusty and all, or else be so deeply in love with the vision of your ideal that you actually enjoy pouring all of your available time and money into it. Otherwise you just end up neglecting the project and feeling guilty every time you look at it.

I took the first approach. I loved the dilapidated old-skool-ness of it and the fact that it looked not like the precious baby of some balding middle-aged classic car enthusiast, but like a regular plain old car that people had been using and enjoying for longer than I have been alive. The only reason I got rid of it was because it finally needed some expensive repairs I couldn't easily find parts for, and because I realized it would never be reliable enough to use on the 200+ mile round trip commute I was getting ready to take on in a new contract job.

The kid who has this '58 was excited, when he first got it, to restore it completely. He started by dismantling the entire interior and bondoing some of the rust, and was working on the electrical system when he ran out of steam and money. For the price he's asking, if it had been in halfway decent condition I probably would've bought it just for fun. But it's completely bare inside (down to the springs in the upholstery), and extremely noisy and rattly, and not as spacious or comfortable as my '60 was. I could see right away that the car I had was much nicer (except for the rust) than this one ever was, even when it was new.

It was fun to drive it, though. And I couldn't stop smiling at it – the car has a very friendly, sweet-looking rounded face. Here's a blue one.

Smells like Sho-kaku

Rozanne got me thinking about candles today. I love them. Especially when they smell good.

About nine years ago I had a job writing promotional copy for a very small aromatherapy company here in town, and in the course of researching articles and working with the product development person (there was only one of them – she and one other guy and I constituted the entire staff) I learned more than I ever knew there was to know about the art and science of aromatherapy. Maybe it was the hours and hours of sitting in their garage/office/factory/warehouse, surrounded by not only the products themselves but also the delicious-smelling raw materials used to make them, or maybe it was the fact that I really did feel better when I started experimenting with treating my various emotional ailments with essential oils and flower essences, or maybe it's just that it pleases me to believe that plants really do have energy and possibly even some kind of souls or consciousness, and that it's possible to connect and communicate with them to some extent, and that some plants are friendly to people and are willing to help us heal and be happy – whatever the reason, I really love aromatherapy, and aromatherapy candles are one of my favorite ways to bring it into my everyday life.

I light candles every morning and every night and find it really helps anchor the ends of my day – if I'm in a place where I can't do it, I feel like something's missing. I especially like to fall asleep with a candle burning. I use a beeswax birthday candle in a little homemade holder, and it's just the perfect amount of light to settle into sleep with – a gentle transition between the bright light of an electric bulb and the total darkness that falls so abruptly when you flick the switch. A birthday candle will burn itself out in about ten minutes, which is usually long enough to clear out my head and get relaxed but not long enough to go unconscious and burn the house down. By the time the flame flickers out my mind is clear and calm and ready to rest. It's a nice way to end the day.

If you want to spend a little more time with this kind of light but don't want to deal with the charred wick on a half-burned votive, taper or pillar candle at the end of the evening, you can use Chanukkah candles or Sabbath candles, both of which are designed to burn themselves out in hour or two (depending on the size). I like the natural beeswax candles from Coyote Found, and the entire aromatherapy line from Aroma Naturals.

People who burn a lot of candles or incense or any other smoky thing inside the house should be aware that any kind of burning material will affect indoor air quality. I like to keep windows open so rooms can air out naturally. If it's too cold for that, or if you live where outdoor air is unsafe, consider getting an air purifier with a Hepa filter.

(An aside: Hah – sometimes when I'm posting here I catch myself slipping back into the style of those fluff articles I used to do for a certain other employer a few years back. One of these days I probably oughtta buckle down and start writing those (and selling them) again.)

Speaking of burning things in the house, for my birthday last summer Mr. A gave me a very generous gift certificate from the local hippie stuff boutique, and I spent the entire amount on gorgeous expensive incense from Japan. Money to burn! I get so much enjoyment out of it, though – and isn't that what money is for? To help us enjoy our lives while we have them? (And to share, of course, but that's another topic.)

Anyway, I was perusing the Shoyeido website this morning and came across this: Sho-kaku, or Translucent Path, which sells for $1399 a pack. I didn't drop a decimal there – it's almost fourteen hundred bucks for less than a fistful of sticks! I would love to know what Translucent Path smells like – or to meet a person who buys it.

Me, I have less expensive taste – White Cloud is my mainstay. It's the benzoin that does it – I can't get enough of that stuff.

Also – appropos of aromatherapy – are you aware that sandalwood is in danger of becoming an even more endangered species? The last time I bought sandalwood essential oil, the tiniest little bottle cost me about $26; this week I went to get another one and the same bottle is now $85! Supposedly the higher price is an attempt to protect a dwindling supply; I'm not sure I totally believe that. I do worry, though, that if I buy it I'll be supporting poachers and others who really don't care about the health or even the continued existence of these beautiful trees. Something to think about.

And finally: for lunch I ate a grilled panini consisting of thin-sliced sourdough, pork loin, triple-cream Brie and grilled onions. That was a very good sandwich.

A close call

I was almost asleep just now when I suddenly remembered that I hadn't posted today. Whew! To have made it almost halfway through the month only to blow it by falling asleep – that would have been a shame.

Almost forgetting to write a boring blog post is the most exciting thing that happened to me today. We got up early, changed the oil in both cars, made oatmeal for breakfast, did several loads of laundry and spent the rest of the day shopping for house stuff and various gear Mr. A needed for his next week away for work. He's leaving again in the morning returning Friday. After that, supposedly he won't have to travel again until sometime next spring, when there is a job that will purportedly keep him mostly away from home for upwards of three months. He doesn't know all the details of that yet, and so neither do I, and so I've decided not to stress out about it for the time being. I'm getting better at taking things as they come, especially things that are out of my control.

In other news, we walked back to the creek tonight so I could show Mr. A where the deer was, and Tater managed to find yet another piece of it – two long bones of the front leg, attached to each other at the knee. I guess I won't be taking him back there anymore for at least a few weeks. Give the vultures a chance to clean it up a little more.

A happy list, including dead animals, raw onions and cigarettes!

1. Mr. A is home! He finished up early and managed to catch a flight that got him home by 6 instead of midnight, so we had dinner out, followed by some quality time with the dogs, who were overjoyed at this visitation by the one and only living god of their universe. I was pretty happy to see him too.

2. Today we worked outside all day – clearing gutters, raking up pine needles, picking up rocks (lots and lots of rocks) and scattering five pounds of California poppy seeds and about a quart of mixed wildflower seeds all over the back field. It's going to be so pretty in the spring!

3. Tater disappeared for a half hour or so this afternoon, returning with a long bent stick in his mouth – which on closer inspection turned out to be not a stick but the dessicating fur-covered hind leg of a dead deer. We had a terrible time getting him to give it up (traded him for a tennis ball). When he disappeared again a few hours later I went back to the creek, figuring he'd gone back to investigate that carcass again. I hoped if I showed some interest he'd show me where it was – which he did, triumphantly charging up out of the back channel with a big wad of furry deer hide hanging from his jaws. Argh – blech! After I got that away from him – pitched it up into a tree where he couldn't pick it up up again – I headed down in the direction he'd come from and finally found "the body," though there wasn't much left of it. The long bones I threw over the fence into the neighbor's field, and the skull I picked up with a stick through the eye socket and carried it home for Mr. A to see. One of the horns is broken but it might still make a cool trophy, once the fur finishes drying up and falling off. Yeah – I love living in the country!

4. Driving down dark country roads tonight on my way to the burrito place, I had a most excellent Wayne's World kind of moment listening to Bohemian Rhapsody on an old CD Mr. A found while cleaning out the garage. I turned it way up and rocked out! It made me feel like I was in high school again.

5. Inside the burrito place, Janis Joplin came on the stereo and I heard the owner and two other people singing along in the kitchen, and saw a guy sitting at the counter tapping his foot while reading a newspaper feature I laid out last week and got great comments on. Another great rock & roll moment, accompanied by sweet and crunchy raw onions in green tomatillo salsa!

6. On the way home I stopped at a little bodega I just discovered – an actual grocery store, hidden away on a weird little residential street more or less in my neighborhood, which means I no longer have to drive all the way into town when I need some basic necessity like blackberry lemon sorbet – which is what I stopped for tonight. I love this little store! It has a small dog who lives in it named Enzo, and the man behind the register tonight was actually smoking a cigarette inside the store! I know it's illegal to do that and I'm generally supportive of the ban on smoking in offices and public buildings – I'm really glad I don't have to work next to someone who's smoking at their desk, for example – but so many places are taking it to such ridiculous extremes these days (like no smoking on the beach?!) that it made me really happy somehow to see this guy putting up a little nonviolent resistence. It's his store – he should smoke if he wants to!

7. Also, on the drive back I saw some really cool grafitti on a tall wooden wall, which I will go back and photograph if I can ever find the battery charger for the camera, and a fabulous heart-shaped cactus growing in the grass next to a neighbor's cow fence.

8. Now I'm home again and the Maltese Falcon is on television, to be followed by some Faye Dunaway flick in which she wears these HUGE black false eyelashes. Can't wait! Ooh – Humphrey Bogart just slugged some guy in the face, knocked him out, and is now looking at his passport and wallet. I need to shut this down now and get back to the movie. (Bogie just said, "When you're slapped you'll take it and like it!")

9. Plus, blackberry lemon sorbet!

It's cold

Having grown up in the far north, where winter temperatures stay low all day and it's mostly dark by the time we started walking home from school, I was shocked during my first year of college to observe the habits of people who had never lived with snow before. I remember in particular an L.A. girl in my second-year German class who would walk in out of a raging blizzard wearing a short skirt, t-shirt and down vest, stamp the snow off her sandaled feet and whine, "I'm FREEZING! Why is it so COLD all the time?!"

What a baby, I thought. And what an idiot! This is Utah, and it's the middle of winter! Didn't anyone ever teach her how to dress? Sheez!

Now that I've lived in California for more than a quarter of my life (!) I can kind of understand her predicament. For one thing, my idea of "cold weather" has changed – a 60-degree day calls for extra layers, and if I have to wear a scarf and hat, it seems like a very big deal. Gloves I almost never wear, and only on the coldest winter days do I resort to long johns or thermal camisoles.

When I'm bundled up like that, I feel like I can handle anything. But it's still only maybe 45 or 50 degrees outside. So I can see how that girl might have thought she had it covered by wearing a down vest – maybe that was her "extreme cold weather" gear!

All this by way of announcing that it's finally starting to get what I consider "cold" around here. Last night I arrived home late to an unheated house, and according to the little digital thermometer on my alarm clock, the temperature in my room was 53 degrees (luckily I like a cold room for sleeping in, with open windows and lots of fresh air). Right now, in my office, the temperature is 60 degrees – one degree colder than it is outside, if the weather widget on my desktop is to be believed. In fact, it's just been confirmed that the air conditioner is still on!

This might not be a big deal to people who are used to living in places where it really does get cold – for example, in the town I grew up in, it's supposed to snow tomorrow! – but to me, it's still too cold for comfort. Too cold to type or work comfortably, anyway. Last winter I came up with the solution of filling a Nalgene bottle with scalding hot tap water and holding it in my lap while I worked, reaching down from time to time to thaw my frozen fingers on the warm purple plastic – a nice use for my favorite old camping bottle, since we now know they're not really safe to drink from.

Today, people are making jokes about Bob Cratchit gloves – the kind where the fingertips are cut out so you can still use a quill pen, or a keyboard. I'm wearing three layers and have a wool hat on standby. We're not supposed to mess with the thermostat, but if somebody doesn't get the AC thing figured out by Monday I'm seriously considering taking matters into my own gnarled little frostbitten hands.

Please make it stop

Someone at the market was having a fit of nostalgia this morning – Toto, Supertramp, Styxx, Little River Band and Chris Cross all came across the speakers as I shopped for lunchies, and now I can't get that awful tune out of my head: "... So lady, I think it only fair I should say to you, 'Don't be thinking that I don't want you, 'cause maybe I do.'"

These old songs also seeped into my reptile brain and floated out a memory I hadn't thought about in years. A smell, really – the smell of a little rectangular tin of strawberry lip gloss I had in about seventh grade. I bought it at the co-op, one of the first "crunchy granola girl" kinds of purchases I can remember ever making, and in my memory at least it took decades or even centuries of careful rationing before I'd finally used it all up. But what came up with that Lady song was a memory of using the empty tin as a container for my own homemade lip gloss, consisting of vaseline, beeswax (gnawed off a little votive candle I had lying around for some reason) and peachy pink lipstick shaved off the edges of one of those little tiny pale green plastic Avon sample tubes. I put the ingredients into the tin, and melted them under the bulb of a little red metal goose-necked desk lamp, stirring gently with a toothpick or paperclip (I made several different batches, over the years).

I had that tin for a really, really, really long time, and it always smelled like strawberry lipgloss.

In other news, I read this very good advice in one of my favorite magazines today about dealing with the toxic people in our lives. I like what he has to say about dualistic thinking, too: "If you think in terms of black and white, good and evil, you are not working well with yourself; you are closing something off in yourself." This tradition offers such compassionate, insightful and practical ideas about how to live – as compared with so many threatening lists of rules and "thou shalt nots" – I come away feeling positive, hopeful, refreshed and excited to get out there and engage. Two other resources I get a lot out of are the Shambhala Sun and the Turning Wheel. I don't really think of myself as a Buddhist, but like I said – there's good stuff here for anybody.

Finally, I was going to try to post some links to ukelele music today, but don't have any in my iTunes that I'm allowed to share – so instead I offer this, which features the kazoo and banjo. Plus, it's kind of about dogs! And anything is better than that "Lady" song.

Bow Wow Blues

"San Francisco values"

I've just become aware of this phrase, used by fascists and right-wingers to describe everything I love about the political climate of the Bay Area. Aside from breathtaking natural beauty (which of course a lot of other places around the world also possess), the left-leaning-ness of Northern California is the primary reason I choose to live here.

I'm mostly okay with the results of the elections. My two favorite city council candidates won (the third seat was taken by the person I most did NOT want to see in there, but two out of three ain't bad), even though – as a person who lives about five inches outside city limits – I was not allowed to vote for them. I did study up on the other various local and state issues and candidates and voted as consciously as possible, although I'm not sure I always understand the full implications of some of the items I'm voting on, especially the financial ones. As for candidates, unless I know them personally I vote based on their positions on issues I care about – the environment, the war in Iraq, the death penalty, gay marriage, reproductive rights, immigration, stem cell research, etc. etc. etc. – as well as more local issues like agriculture, affordable housing and transportation.

As usual I'm going to leave the ranting to others more well-informed and enthusiastic than I am, and put my energy instead into something local where I can actually have an effect. A friend of mine from the garden has been working with the city to figure out how to spend $300,000 on improvements to bike lanes and paths (only inside the city limits, though), so I've been talking with him about how to get involved with that. To me, it would be more important to improve the COUNTY roads between my house and downtown – but this seems like a good place to start getting familar with how this kind of thing is done.

Unfortunately, I've been told that getting anything done in the county is a nightmare, because not only do you have to deal with politicians who are 30 miles away and have no idea what you're talking about half the time, but most of the roads also come under the provenance of CalTrans, which is a state agency that is even harder to reach. These projects are notorious for taking for-freaking-ever and ending up out of date before they're halfway complete. Also, budgets and timelines and political opportunism often create truly bizarre results.

Right now I'm aware of two examples of this within a mile of my house. One is a fancy new crosswalk with heavy-duty guard rails and flashing lights and buttons to push and a rubberized nubbly skid-proof ramp and landing pad on each corner for wheelchairs, which would be great in a pedestrian area but not so useful when there's not a sidewalk within three quarters of a mile in any direction, and nobody – I mean NOBODY – ever walks on that road. So here sits this new million-dollar crosswalk with no sidewalk leading up to it, and nowhere to go if you do decide to walk across, since it dead-ends up against the edge of an open field.

Why did that money get spent? Because the road was being resurfaced, and there's a rule that all projects of this kind must include crosswalks at major intersections. Personally, I would have preferred to have the money spent on a bike lane. About this I've been told, "ain't gonna happen." If you want to ride a bike across the valley safely, use the existing cross-valley bike lane. Yes, "lane." There's only one in the entire valley, and it takes me more than three miles out of my way.

The other one is the creek stabilizaton project at the end of my road. I guess some folks got nervous when the water went over the bridge last winter, and so they've taken bulldozers and "reshaped" the creekbed so that it now looks more like a big flat rock-strewn road than a creek. I suppose the idea is that this shape will cause the water to spread out rather than building up force as it runs down narrow channels, but everyone I've talked to who knows about this kind of thing has said it's a totally imbecilic design. Having seen boulders the size of a La-Z-Boy recliner tumbling down the creekbed last winter like Cheerios into a bowl, I have to say I agree. Once the water gets going, it does what it wants. There's also the matter of a large log jam just up the creek from us, made up of mature trees that got torn out of the ground in the last flood, which our neighbor has been forbidden (by the project engineers) to touch. We're far enough from the creek that any flooding probably won't touch us, but if the bridge goes out we're all going to be screwed.

Oh wait. I said I wasn't going to rant.

Ex-voto

I've become obsessed lately with the Mexican ex-voto – a little painting to acknowledge and commemorate a miracle, and left on a church altar as a kind of public testimonial and thank-you note to God.

The one above was painted in the 1800s by a man who was saved after having fallen down a well late at night (click here for more photos and information about the art form). I can hardly look at it without crying. Imagine falling into a well at 11 o'clock at night! First of all, you would no doubt be hurting from the fall, not to mention very wet. Possibly it would be tight and hard to breathe, and certainly it would be dark. The text doesn't say how long he was down there or how he came to be rescued, but I can imagine being in that dark, wet, possibly cold pit and being so afraid – Am I injured? How badly? Does anyone even know I'm down here? What if I never get out of here?! And then – you DO get out of there. Yeah, the thought of it brings me to tears.

I don't like to talk about this but I'll admit that the reason it's so emotional for me is because when I was in the worst parts of my depression, I felt like I'd fallen down a well. I'd fallen deep into the dark and I couldn't get out. I felt like I was going to die in there. And then, I didn't. A lot of people came together in big and small ways to help lift me up and out of that time in my life, and I am grateful. That time now seems like just a disturbing dream that's faded, but whenever I see other people suffering it all comes right back up again. Not in a bad way. In a grateful way. I got out. It makes me want to reach a hand out, maybe even descend a little into their darkness for awhile if that's what it takes to help.

Right now I know a couple of people who are in their own dark nights of the soul and I've been feeling kind of at a loss as to what to do, what to say. For me, the best help of all was just the presence of people who loved me – knowing that they knew what was going on with me, and that I didn't have to pretend with them that everything was okay when it really wasn't. But the people I know are not physically close to me right now. So I'm being challenged to learn some new ways to connect.

Today I'm thinking about gratitude and how to share the blessings I've received, especially the blessing of equanimity. It's the opposite of how I felt when I was in that well, and I feel really humble claiming it, because it's still so tenuous for me sometimes and I don't want to jinx myself with over-confidence. But it is something I've practiced and worked hard for, and so I guess it's okay to acknowledge that sometimes, I do seem to achieve a balanced, peaceful mind. Maybe the best way to share that is just to let people see what's going on with me now, so they can know it is possible to get better.

Anyway! I love these little paintings. In a way, I suppose some of the writing I do here is a kind of ex-voto. A public thanks for everyday miracles, or not so everyday miracles. It might be fun to do some actual paintings of my miracles, too. Like this morning, I arrived at work with more stuff than I thought I could carry into my office in one trip, and because I wasn't early I assumed all the good parking spots would be taken and I would have to drag all that stuff all the way around the building and to the end of the parking lot not once but twice – and then when I pulled into the lot, it just happened that the very best parking spot in the entire block was sitting there empty, and I pulled into it. And then as I was struggling with my load of stuff, someone showed up and unloaded a bit of it for me, and held the door.

P.S. I always feel so self-conscious when I cough up these sermonly posts ... Sometimes I just can't help it, though! The spirit moves me, or something. Anyway, one more thing: I found out this morning that my sweet but annoying co-worker is getting fired today. It's weird sitting next to her all day knowing that, and I'm finding I kind of resent my boss for involving me (all of us, really) in the decision. I don't want to be here when it happens.

Oy, my aching back

So after blasting everyone for complaining that their lives are nothing to write home about, today I'm finding myself kind of at a loss as to what to say. Probably this is because I didn't sleep much last night, and now I'm just hanging on for a couple more hours until I can go home and lie down for awhile before dinner.

Last fall I tweaked my back while foolishly attempting to ride my bike straight up a little path I knew was too steep, and it's been bothering me off and on ever since. Now, in addition to the pain in my back, I sometimes get this dull shooting pain in my leg, as well – that was what kept me awake last night. Looking up a definition of "sciatica" just now I came across this picture, which illustrates exactly what's been going on in my back and leg lately. The pain is in my lower left back, and shoots all the way down my left leg.

It's not like it's totally debilitating – sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse – but for the last couple of weeks I can feel it pretty much all the time if I think about it. Last night I took a long warm bath and did some stretching, which didn't help even though it usually does. I went to bed at ten and tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable, worrying that what was happening was not related to my old injury at all but to an enormous blood clot that must surely be muscling its way through my major arteries and heading toward my brain (I have a somewhat irrational fear of strokes, because my grandmother died of one when she was younger than I am now). Finally, at around 1:30 I got up and took some aspirin.

Probably moving all those bricks last weekend was not much help. It was funny – when we first arrived at the place (me and Mr. A and his brother, who is always up for helping us with heaving lifting and other down & dirty projects) and saw them all stacked up against the fence, I sort of scoffed and said, "No way is that 600 bricks. That's gotta be, like, maybe 200." They don't look like much when they're just sitting there. But after we moved and re-stacked them (in two loads, so as not to overtax the truck's suspension) I came back around to thinking that the guy's estimate of 500 to 600 was about right. And they really are beautiful bricks – nicely weathered but not chipped or broken, and no mortar.

Plus, I haven't mentioned this yet but we also moved about 80 to 100 heavy old oak fence posts that were languishing in two big piles out behind the barn of the vineyard at the end of our road. They were hand cut (I'm guessing) in the early 1900s and most of them are about six to eight feet long and between eight and twelve inches square, very rough, rotted down to points on one end, and very, very heavy. The vineyard manager said if we could haul them away we could have them, so we spent a few hours moving those, too. They'll be perfect for when we move the fence farther back from the house this winter – they're already old and weathered but still fairly solid, and will blend right into the landscape.

Sunday

I did go to the reading, though I didn't stay long. When I opened the door to leave the house both dogs dashed out and began prancing and leaping all over the driveway, inspiring me to invite them to join me for a brief trip downtown. When he realized we were not going for a walk but for a ride in the car, Jeepies slunk back to the house and stood stock still with his face about two inches from the door, pointedly ignoring my pleas of "C'mon, it'll be fun!" I don't blame him for being suspicious; usually the only time he rides in the car is when he's going to the vet's.

Tater has a long (though not recent) history of fun things happening when we go somewhere together, though, so he jumped into the back seat with great enthusiasm, which he maintained until we got to the venue, at which point he hunkered down with both front feet braced against the door frame and refused to get out of the car. I'd only brought him because I thought he would enjoy seeing our old friend, Beautiful Hands Man, who's known him since the day I brought him home as a puppy and has been missing the weekly visits we used to have, before I moved across town and out of his path homeward after his regular Sunday night gig. Next to Mr. A, this is the person Tater most idolizes in all the world.

(Tater is rolling around on his back on the carpet next to my desk right now, yelping and making wolverine noises and gnashing his teeth like a crazy goofball. He performs this spectacle for a few minutes every night around this time, possibly as a way to let me know he's ready for his dinner. Both dogs have been freaking out a bit since Mr. A left yesterday – wanting to be right next to me all the time, and running to the door every time a car drives by.

Also: Isn't it great how dogs communicate so well without using any words? When Tater doesn't want to do something, he has this psychic thing he does that feels like a mental wall of iron coming down between his mind and mine, so that I know no amount of begging and cajoling will induce him to change his mind. Interestingly, he doesn't use this tactic when we're at the vet or doing some other unpleasant task that is really non-negotiable. He seems to understand very well when something is optional, and only resists when he knows it's possible I might give in.)

So the Taterman stayed in the car and I went to the reading, which was nothing special, at least during the time I was there. Having a bored, impatient dog in the car gave me a good excuse to just say hi to everyone, have a bite to eat and get outta there. I spent the rest of the evening reading the last few chapters of Crime and Punishment and starting the introduction to the Brothers Karamazov, which will be my next big read. I also have a copy of War and Peace lying around somewhere that I may pick up at some point. Nothing like a little light reading when the weather outside turns frightful.

Today, though, it's still beautiful – warm and clear, with that low golden light that you get when the sun starts approaching its lowest point in the sky. I spent the day in Petaluma: breakfast at my favorite Armenian cafe, then some pre-holiday shopping along the main drag downtown, and groceries on the way home. Tonight for dinner I will be treating myself to toasted cracked-wheat sourdough bread with fresh-ground honey-roasted peanut butter and a big glass of milk – something Mr. A insists is "not dinner," but which I love to indulge myself in every once in awhile when he's not around. Lest anyone suspect him of being a food nazi I will also mention that he thoughtfully left me two boxes of Trader Joe's Classic Macaroni & White Cheddar, plus a can (yes!) of Kraft Easy Cheese, which he knows is a guilty pleasure of mine that is SO extremely guilty I don't even buy it for myself anymore, ever.

I also bought about ten thousand dollars worth of fresh vegetables, seaweed chips, flax seed oil, yoga magazines and other healthy stuff, so don't worry – all does not go directly to hell around here in the food department as soon as he turns his back (she said, through a mouth full of dark chocolate and hazelnuts).

Mini-mourning

Remember that story of how the young Ernest Hemingway, while traveling somewhere in Europe, had plans to meet up with his wife somewhere, and how she (in her youthful excitement) decided to bring along a suitcase containing basically everything he had ever written up to that point, as a surprise for him? And how somewhere between here and there, the suitcase was lost or stolen, and never recovered? I can only imagine the hot and cold rushes of nausea and panic that must have run through her body as she realized what had happened, and that she was going to have to tell him. To lose something so important, so much a part of oneself, would be a really crushing kind of experience.

I'm thinking about it today because I've lost two things lately, and I'm feeling kind of crushed over it, even though they're both small things of very little consequence to anyone. Even to me, really. And yet I feel so sad over their loss that it's making me think a lot about "stuff" again, and wanting to figure out ways to be less attached to it.

One of the lost things is the red coral necklace that I wore every day last summer from about mid-May up until the end of September. It was a meaningful gift and a reminder of some things I like remembering, and I loved it. I remember taking it off and putting it on the plaster Buddha (another meaningful gift) where I keep all my beads and magic amulets and important jewelry and juju charms. It isn't there now and I can't imagine what else I must've done with it ... maybe I put it in my pocket at some point and ended up dropping it without noticing when I pulled something else out. That doesn't seem like me, though. But what else could have happened to it?

Anyway, losing this particular thing was especially notable because when my house was robbed a few years ago the worst thing about the whole experience was that they took ALL the necklaces and beads and things off the Buddha – just scooped them up in one hand and made away with every one of them. I was left necklaceless and jujuless, and the coral necklace was one of the first things I got that started making me feel safe in the world again. Maybe now that it's gone I can consider the possibility that I no longer need a magic necklace to feel safe. But I still loved it.

The other thing is a tan tweedy Greek fisherman's cap that I got at a yard sale the first summer I lived out here. It has similar sentimental value and is the only warm hat I have (had) for winter that is not black or some other very dark color. I'm still hoping it might turn up somewhere, in a box of old winter things or under the seat of Mr. A's car or something ... but again, that doesn't seem likely either, because I always kept it in the same place – on the red wooden coat rack in my room – and I'm obsessive about putting things back where they belong. Or at least I used to be. Apparently, I'm losing the knack for keeping track of things.

Neither of these items is crucial to life. So why do I feel so empty and sad when I want to wear them, and remember they're not there? They're just things. I know this.

I feel sad, too, when I think of a certain pair of brown cotton drawstring pants I had when I was about 20. I'd forgotten all about them until a month or so ago, when I saw a picture of someone wearing some pants that looked very like them and suddenly remembered the fabric of the pants I'd had – this heavy cotton that was perfectly worn in and super soft, and a perfect dark brown, sort of greenish .... I don't remember when I got rid of them. Now I want to find some fabric like that and make another pair. Not to try to duplicate them exactly, but more just as an homage.

Mr. A left this afternoon for two weeks of training for his new job. It was a strange day; he doesn't get as upset anymore as he used to when he has to travel for work, but it still bothers him and today I spent most of the morning watching movies and trying to stay out of his way. After he left I took a nap, then woke up late and remembered I'd promised a friend I'd go to the Dia de los Muertos party. So I threw on some clothes and got down there about a half hour before the show closed. Usually I really love this exhibit, but this year I was left feeling strangely lonely. Maybe because Mr. A was gone, maybe because it's really fall now and getting dark so early, maybe because I'd gone looking for the necklace again today only to remember again that it's gone too ... Anyway, I felt and still feel kind of lonesome and sad.

I'm supposed to be going to another party tonight, a reading, which I don't really feel like going to. As soon as I finish writing this, though, I'm going to go anyway – in fact, I'm already dressed to go, with my green wool scarf scratching my chin a bit and the car keys weighing down my jacket pocket. No hat, though (harrumph).

There's this kind of loneliness that comes up when I'm alone, that is very easy to identify and that brings up all kinds of memories of feeling that way at different times of my life when I've been alone in the past ... but at the show this afternoon I was sitting alone at the edge of things, listening to mariachis and watching this beautiful old Mexican woman dance, and feeling like, "How come I'm so far away from my family? What am I really doing out here?" – when I suddenly remembered that I've just as often felt lonely surrounded by people who love me as I do at times when I'm by myself.

The loneliness, the feeling that something is missing ... it's just something that people feel, sometimes. Looking for a reason "why" my mind may settle on a missing necklace, or loved ones who are far away, but the return of all those things would not necessarily change the fact that sometimes, you just feel bereft. Adrift. A little afraid. At least I do. I can distract myself by going to a party, or I can stay at home and take a bath or read a book. Right now I would like to do anything to feel different.

Before I go I'm going to take just a few minutes to sit with this emotion. Try to make friends with it, a little.

It isn't my favorite feeling. But it's nothing that has to be "fixed," and it's nothing to be afraid of.

In brief

I've been kind of dismayed, while browsing through various blogs of people participating in NaBloPoMo, to see many, many of them who are bemoaning the dullness of their lives, and apologizing for posting every day when in their own opinions, their lives are not that often post-worthy.

Since I'm grumpy from a whole day of listening to my co-worker's continuous step-by-step narration of her every move (rendering me unable to concentrate on my own work and causing at least one mistake that cost me almost a half hour to fix), I will get right to the point.

Friends, knock it off.

These are our LIVES. Who cares if they're of interest to others? My own life is of great interest to me, and that alone is reason enough to pay attention to it, document it, cherish it. I love reading about your lives, too. To quote Whitman (is this cheating? quoting poetry instead of offering my own insights? again – who cares?), "I CELEBRATE myself / And what I assume you shall assume; / For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you."

These are our lives. Never apologize for loving your own life enough to want to remember it.

That is all.

Post-Halloween scare

On Halloween we went to a friend's party, which I will write about soon. Mr. A picked me up at work so we could drive over together, and after the party we were pulling into our own driveway before I remembered I'd left the other car at my office. No big deal, we decided. I'd ride the bike into town the next day, and at the end of the day just throw it in the back of the car before driving home.

It seemed like a great plan, until it got to be about quitting time and I realized I had forgotten to bring the car keys. I tried calling Mr. A, but there was no answer at home or on his cell. So I puttered around my office for another half hour and called again. Still no answer.

The problem was not that I didn't want to ride the bike home, but that I know he doesn't like leaving the car parked in public, especially overnight. Finally I decided just to go ahead and ride home, and if he was upset about leaving the car in the lot for a second night, we could drive back into town and get it.

But when I got home, he wasn't there. A little background will come in handy here: Mr. A is not the kind of man who will just casually decide to stop somewhere for a few hours after work. He either comes straight home (he's even more of a homebody than I am), or calls to let me know where he is and when he'll be back. He never fails to do this – it's one of the many things I appreciate about him, especially after having lived with someone who would regularly disappear for days without notice. As I waited for Mr. A last night I relived so many memories of sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, ears straining to hear the sound of my ex-husband's Volkswagon chugging up our perilous mountain road, wondering whether he might be dead or in the hospital, or possibly in jail somewhere, or who knew where, exactly ... Those were some awful years.

Which is why I so love Mr. A's thoughtfulness and reliability, and why, by about 8:30 last night, I was really starting to freak out about what could have happened to him. He just doesn't "not show up." And since he gets up so early now, he's usually asleep by 8:30. I had called his brother to see if he might've dropped by (no) and was just beginning to look for accident reports on the web, when the phone rang and it was him.

To finally come to the end of this story, he was in Bakersfield doing some kind of inspection. He'd told me he was going down there this week, but I was at work and distracted when he called and had not clued in that they were going to be staying overnight (usually on these trips they're down and back on the same day).

So I guess this isn't much of a story after all, since nothing really happened. Except, something did happen – I spent several hours thinking about what my life is like with Mr. A in it, and what it might be like if he were no longer in it, and I've decided I very much prefer my life WITH him in it. This was not news to me, but it did sink in last night in a way it never really has before, and left me even more grateful for the blessing of being loved.



Today is Día de los Muertos. Over the last few years it's become hands down my favorite holiday. I love the celebration of life and memory, the candles, the flowers, the music, the food and especially the Ofrendas – altars to honor loved ones who've died. Our museum hosts a show of personal and community altars every year, which opens today, and I usually set up a little one at home, too. It feels good to remember friends who are gone, and to remember that I'll be joining them someday myself. It feels good, because I never want to die; I can't believe I'm ever going to. Knowing that I will makes me pay closer attention to everything, and the more I pay attention, the more I see to be thankful for. Just being here, for any time at all, is kind of amazing.

At this time of year I always think of the lines from that Mary Oliver poem: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?"