feeling blessed again….

so, i froze my ass off last night. as one of my fire family stated "wow, this is the most fun you can have getting frostbite". heh.

we had a show last night. it was an outdoor show in weather that was approximately 20 degrees, give or take a few icicles =) it was a smallish show, not too many people wanted to brave the weather to see this crazy group of freaks spin fire, but i suppose we were the only warm ones on the whole street =) we made our own bonfire. heh. there’s something entirely unique about spinning fire in the winter that i knew i missed, but didn’t realize how much until we did this show. last year, we performed at northstar, a local ski resort, on new years eve. all of the sensations and everything are different performing in cold weather. instead of figuring out how nekkid you can get and still not get any of your jiggly bits burned, like in the summer or on the playa, you are trying to think about how you can not feel your face but still smile…..how many layers CAN you get on and still look sexy? how many layers can you peel off and not cause permanent damage to the aforementioned jiggly bits? can i effectively spin fire with my gloves on? two sets of gloves on? (this really isn’t a concern for me because i HAVE to wear gloves with one of my fire tools or burn my hands, but i did appreciate anew the coverage they afforded my cold hands).

hot pizza, coffee, and cider tastes MUCH better when it’s freezing outside and the slice of pie you take from the box is steaming and fresh with gooey cheese goodness. people with backpacks carrying warm liquid goodness should be sainted, i am sure. trying to figure out if the smoke rising is coming from your breath or your fire tools is an entirely unique experience. so, you get the point. it’s also a great good to have one of our members (who is an attorney) have his office a block away from the festivities so we could defrost between sets.

the bottom line, however, is that it was FUN. this crazy, zany, dysfunctional fire family of mine, i adore them. i hope i always feel about them the way i do right now, because this feeling, this is good. not one of them is perfect (nor am i), but we all share the love of this crazy art form and i think we all genuinely care for each other. i sometimes think the last year would have been much, much more difficult for me if i didn’t have these people around me, just being who they are, but accepting me for who i am.

one of our members had a really close call on a car accident on his way home last night. i am glad he’s okay. today, i remain grateful for my life and the people in it.

happy friday, everyone.

*peace* 

returned, from adventure….

 last week i spent with my honey in austin, texas. a good friend also moved there recently. i hope things work out for her. she has a man who loves her, but it’s very different there from anything she’s used to. people are strange, as jim morrison would say….

i saw lots of cool stuff in austin, things i’d not seen before. i had never been to a presidential museum and was able to visit the lbj presidential museum. it was very interesting and i bought a book about lbj during his white house years. i admire what he accomplished and feel bad that his enduring legacy seems to be the vietnam war when he gave this country to so very many other wonderful programs.

i also visited a cave that was cut off from human existence or interference for millions of years. it was very cool. there were little tiny bats hibernating on the ceiling. individual bats only, that we saw. they are such fascinating little creatures. their appendages and features are so tiny, but so detailed. one bat even had little condensation droplets on his fur, and he was most definitely in a deep sleep.

i saw the stevie ray vaughn memorial down by the river. that was cool and it felt good to pay my respects to someone who died way too young.

i saw how my husband is when he’s at a conference. much like he is at home, he likes to hibernate and not go many places. heh. that was somewhat amusing. i was afraid he would be mad at me for wanting to scamper madly around this place i don’t know if i will visit again but he seemed okay with it and glad that i wasn’t mad that he didn’t want to do anything.

i was indoctrinated into the ethos of texas state history, which i have to admit is a little frightening for me. i also saw a mexi-arte museum that made me feel like i was honoring my roots, even if i took a phone call while in the gallery space. i was the only one there, and i thought how sad that more people don’t enjoy such things that are low cost or free.

we stayed at a swanky resort-type place compliments of the government who sends all sorts of army it types to these conferences for networking squared….networking and talking about it stuff. heh.

i also ate some awesome food. i had texas bar-b-que, and tex mex food that was yummy and tasted very different from stuff that we have here. i also had some really yummy greek chicken, hummus, and tofu fries. leave it to americans to find a way to make tofu unhealthy. fry it up, baby =) they were good though, served with a sweet and sour sauce for dipping. i couldn’t eat them all, though =)

the university in austin was amazing. relatively speaking, i work at a smallish university, but it seems that austin and the university have grown up together in a symbiotic, incestuous relationship, sharing space and all being the center of this community. i saw a student services building that looked like a sky scraper to me. parking there was REALLY outrageous, i should tell people here who complain about parking. more than three hours in a garage is a minimum of $8. there are lots of city buses that go all around there. and so many people, in that small area! all with longhorn clothing on, it seems almost cult-like. perhaps it’s just so striking because it’s ORANGE.

i think i last wrote about blood moon, and there’s more to write, but perhaps not today. today feels nice. it is bitterly cold here. it’s been almost a year since my mom passed away, and i am feeling grounded and generally happy. i don’t really believe in regret, but wonder if i did everything for her i could. i miss her still, but know she would be proud of how we are conducting our lives. i feel her sometimes, around me.

i decided to have christmas spirit this year. i bought a live tree and decorated it. i have been making cookies, and cooking a lot. it feels nice. my sister doesn’t live with me anymore, and this, too, i think is a good thing. she seems happy doing what she’s doing, and as much as we still depend on each other, i think it’s healthy for us to exist on our own, too.

that’s all for today.

peace.

new inspiration, fresh start?

why is it that new blogs always make one want to post more? it's like, you have to rebuild everything in this new and interesting place. i have a number of other blogs, i don't post often in any of them, and yet, here i start yet another one and make two posts in two days. i suppose i could be considered fickle. eh. not sure i care.

today was a good day. i don't have to go to work for the next nine days and i am really, really happy about that. i get to go to austin texas next week. i've never been there and i am pretty excited about it. i spent all day today printing out places i'd like to see, maps from the hotel to those places, and how i am going to get there. we will see how it all works out.

i was seriously bummed because bellydancing class got canceled tonight. it spat snow for a little while this morning and looked pretty menacing, but didn't do much else with the flakey white stuff the rest of the day. it's continued to look like it might though, so i guess they didn't want people driving out to the community college with the potential out there. heh. maybe i will dance to some dvd's tonight, or just chill and take it easy.

i'd really like to buy a digital camera this weekend. we will see.

i think that's all for now.

peace.

hmmm....

another blog. well, well, well. i've been blogging for about ten years, i think, and have never had one here. maybe it's time to integrate all those personalities =) or not. i am a GEMINI. many people know me as that. i am also a mother, a wife, a bellydancer, a fire freak, a black rock ranger, a burner, a cynic, a pagan, a unitarian, a liberal, and sometimes, a mess.

welcome to my nightmare...

peace.

time goes on….catching up…blood moon 10/20/07

 it’s been so long since i’ve written. i feel sort of guilty, but not really. i see some friends doing the NoJoMo and i sort of feel bad. there’s all sorts of stuff happening, having tons of fun and living life, the issue just becomes having enough time to get it all recorded =)

of course, i started all this, and now i have to go to a meeting. i will continue when i get back and post when it’s done. wooo hoooo =)

okay, meeting is over and my head just feels marginally like exploding =) it’s for a summer program and it’s horrible that we have to plan things so far in advance, but also pretty cool. hopefully i will be able to do some cool new stuff this year with all that. here’s hoping.

so, what the last month and a half has been like for me? it’s been awesome!

about ten days after my last entry, i went to sacramento to dance with an awesome set of ladies. we got invited to unmata’s blood moon regale and it was awesome! they do a fire show on friday nights, and i had contacted the leader of unmata to possibly set up some workshop and when she wrote me back, she invited us down to perform! i had posted this on the message board for the fire troupe and never really got a response, so i sent some personal emails and started organizing the gig. we rehearsed, we reworked pieces, i anguished that people who didn’t volunteer didn’t like me (only briefly), my wonderful dance sister got us great rates on a hotel, we made plans, i printed maps, we even went on a scouting trip down to the area. finally, by october 20, we were ready to go =) there were going to be a total of 12 or 13 of us, some staying most of the weekend, some heading back directly, and some heading back the next day.

we got there with relatively little incident. one of our members is having a rough time, so we were there for her and listened a lot on the way down. i am glad we could be there for her, she’s going through a rough time. we got checked into the hotel, and in pretty short order, all of us were there and in our rooms. i was rooming in the mini suite with the craziest and most wonderful lady ever. it took us no time to get settled in and we explored a little bit, chilled, and before you know it, it was time to get ready for the show…..

the show was AMAZING! everyone at this show was doing fire, but i think the thing we realized is that everyone else were dancers who used fire as a prop, we were fire spinners who used dancing as a prop. not sure if that makes sense, you might have had to have been there, but it made perfect sense of the time! i am so thankful that i received the training in safety that i did from our folks! some of those safety folks didn’t really seem to know or understand what they were doing and some of the performers were kind of scary. even though we might not have been the greatest dancers, i still think we brought something unique and interesting to their fire show. i have never been more proud or felt more accomplished in my life, because this one, *I* did. i arranged it, and it was a huge success. i was a little freaked out about having to eat right before the show which all the other little skinnies wanted to do, but i dealt well with it and only felt marginally like melting down =) we did find an awesomely cool little brew pub within walking distance of the hotel though, so that was good =) note to self: fringe and fire don’t mix well =)

after the show, we decided to go back to the room, and our room ended up being the gathering spot. that was cool, there was tons of booze, we even picked up a stray brand new army officer somewhere, and were all up way too late, to the tune of after 4am, and then crashed for some much needed rest. the next day was all about shopping and being pampered. we had scoped out this awesome little vintage store on our way down and wanted to hit that again. we spent hours there, everyone managed to find something they liked and then some of our party left while others stayed longer and we shopped some more. we found this cool little bistro on the street and stopped there for lunch. the food was amazing….so much so that we pretty much ate the next three meals there!

my stress for the night happened later when we were going to the next show, the dancing one. i had done my homework and printed a bunch of directions up for the places we needed to be. the issue became that i didn’t label any of my directions, so when the time came to go to the show, i took us to the wrong place! i felt really stupid after having had some catty thoughts about other people, the universe gave me back a big ‘ole raspberry =) we had already valet’d the car, so we decided to cab it to the venue. what followed was the most harrowing e-ticket cab ride i have ever experienced in my life, but it was fun and i felt so ALIVE!

their show was amazing. i can’t believe these folks work on this all year and just get an idea for a piece they have to do, and no one sees the finished product until days before the show. it looked so well put together, it was really impressive. i might post some video if/when it happens.

sunday was brunch, tired but satisfied, and the end to an amazing weekend. i love my fire family. there’s so much i am leaving out, the little details, but i am currently feeling like ADD girl and can’t seem to stay focused on this, so i think i better end it. i will leave myself with some images from the weekend, in words:

• cute army officers can be smart too…..hooray for napolean dynamite quotes
• hot grrls rule and knock my socks off….and hot takes many forms
• i have the greatest friends in the world….we are truly a family…we annoy each other but there is an underlying caring that cannot be replaced
• being a freak in a brew pub turns lots of heads when you jingle by
• hooray for lacy purple underwear
• boooo for crusty purple eyeliner that requires a layer of skin to be removed with it
• i love fire more now than i ever have

=)

that’s about it.

peace.

keeping on….

i am trying to get back into the habit of reading and writing almost daily if not every day.

when i got home from burning man this year, one of the things i decided to try to change in my life was caffeine consumption. i am going to try very hard to give it up. so far, i have been successful by not drinking any coffee or tea that isn’t decaf, and that only rarely. my big challenge right now is diet soda. i LOVE diet soda and i had bought a case about a month and a half ago that was not caffeine free that we need to finish up. after that, no more for me, or i will buy the caffeine free variety. i need to get d to help me finish the rest of that soda! i am marginally interested that in going to fast food places and such, VERY rarely are you able to get a drink that is both caffeine and sugar free, aside from water. i guess i need to drink more water, eh? heh.

i think i caught a wee bit of a cold from one of the midgets we encountered this weekend. for whatever reason, i was feeling super run-down last night and i think i might have been asleep by 9pm! i had a wee bit of a sore throat, which i believe was from nasal stuff, so i medicated myself with some night time stuff and conked out. i did make dinner for my family right after work, made it to fire class yesterday, although i didn’t feel like doing much (didn’t dance, that is), picked up my poi half-heartedly and spun one time when i got to cold to function without burning something. heh. then headed home early and sacked out. maybe it was still just recovery from the weekend. i feel okay today, but slept in AGAIN, made myself about half an hour later than normal from work and STILL feel a bit tired. hopefully, i can OD on echinachea and vitamin c for a little bit and knock this out, if it’s a virus, before things get ugly. i hate being sick!

my daughter has been seeking me out lately to say hi, connect with me and make sure that i hear about her day and happenings. she’s doing really well in school and i can’t tell you how happy this makes me. she’s first in her class in her math class, and doing well in the others too. it feels great to have that young woman in my life and in my house. her housekeeping skills still leave A LOT to be desired, but i am hoping that will come with time =)

have a great day, everyone.

peace. 

weekend of good times….

my weekend was fabulous! we had a great time with our friends in napa. i feel like my boundaries were respected and that we had a nice, relaxing weekend. the bed we slept on in our friends house was too hard for hubbies back, which made him pretty stiff all weekend, but he managed to have a good time still, which was awesome.

friday night, we were a little afraid because we didn’t leave until about 6pm, and almost as soon as we headed into the hills, it started snowing…lightly at first and then by the time we made the pass, it was coming down really hard and sticking. that is always a little nerve wracking for me because a car is several thousand pounds, and sometimes i wonder what keeps them on the road in icy conditions! lucky for us, we managed to make it through before things really started to stick or need plowing and also before they could erect any road controls. we really road the gauntlet on that one!

we got to their house by 9:30, and i think everyone was pretty tired. i didn’t realize they had a hottub, oh, but they did, so without too much more fanfare, pretty quickly nekkid hot tubbing commenced. it was just laid back and normal. what a concept! we were gifted the use of their daughter’s brand new big girl bed, in her room, and her parents were nice enough to let her sleep with them for the weekend. the evening passed sleepily…

we slept in a bit on saturday, and awoke to breakfast being made. our hostess was indeed gracious and we got biscuits and gravy for breakfast! yum! it was awesome. then some clean up time occurred, and we headed out to a couple of wineries. some errands needed to take place first, those were readily dispatched, and off we headed to the sterling winery. we had relayed to our hostess that we didn’t want any hugely expensive tastings and weren’t into snooty, pretentious wine stuff…we wanted smaller, free or low-cost, family or down-to-earth type wineries. it was pretty awesome, you have to ride a tram to get to the winery. the decor is reminiscent of a monastery white stucco buildings, very beautiful. there is a self-paced walking tour of the winery and it was fun to read about the process. we got to see an automatic grape crusher, got to see them dump a ton of grapes into it, and then see the giant oak barrels, smaller oak barrels, and surrounding area where the grapes were grown. also got to taste a few.

after that one, we went to another winery that was TOTALLY awesome! It’s called  castello di amarosa and is a full size castle. the tasting there was inexpensive and you have to walk through part of the castle to get to the tasting room. i would love, love, love to go back and do the whole castle tour, but it wasn’t the type of thing i was prepared to pay $30 for on the spot. we did buy some of their wine, though, and it was yummy. they told us how cold the castle gets in the winter time, but that just didn’t seem to dim my enthusiasm for being in a castle. i think anyone who’s ever been to a renn faire has to have at least a passing fascination with castles. it was way cool. i also bought a painting of the castle that was painted with their wine! i am sure this is a gimmick of the wineries, but i had never seen this sort of thing before, i thought it was way cool, so i bought one =)

then, we had heard from another friend i had invited, who had a little boy about the same age as the little girl belonging to our hosts. he had called while we were at sterling, and we were to meet him back down in napa at the cajun festival that was going on during the weekend. the cajun festival was fun enough, it was sort of the end of the day and absolutely everything was very expensive, but i suppose i should have expected that from napa =) we left the cajun festival and went to a gourmet hamburger joint for dinner. it was yummy.

then we returned to their house and had more nekkid hot tubbing. that was fun, we laughed and had a good time, everyone was happy.

sunday, it was our plan to get up reasonably early because we were going to head to the burning man decompression in san francisco. i was looking forward to this as many friends were supposed to be there. i was anxious because i don’t feel like i got to see hardly anything at burning man this year, so i was looking forward to some of the art showing up, and in fact, my favorite piece did actually go, it’s an optical illusion monkey thing that’s very neat. we got started later than we wanted to, and had a prelude to how the day was going to go. the other friend had driven up his smallish rv to their house, and in the morning, he dumped his kid in the kitchen and went back to sleep. then he made us about an hour later than we wanted to be leaving for the city.

once we got to san francisco, we headed in to china town to experience dim sum. some of the stuff i thought was yummy, some was odd, and some i don’t think i would eat again, although it was all interesting. the guys were decidedly less adventuresome, so they were sort of disappointed with the food offerings. i felt bad for our friend who’s idea it was, i think she felt sort of bad, but i reassured her that SOME of us are adventurous. we still had a good time though. driving in san francisco is a trip and something that sort of defies normal anything when you aren’t used to it. between the up and down streets and all the people and road construction, it’s pretty crazy =)

i would say it still wasn’t my ideal time, but pretty damn close =) i would have stayed for the whole thing, but d’s back started to hurt again. there were more fire spinners to see, that we didn’t get to. my group did really good, i did fire safety for them, so that felt good, got to see them all. got a free drink i never got to use for helping out with security for that smallish portion of the show, and got to see much stuff. i think i am the luckiest person alive with the quality of the people i have in my life. it was great to see everyone again, walk around and have a good time. and most important NOT WORK! i could have, oh yes, i could have, but i promised myself and others i was NOT going to do that and i stuck to it.

by the time we headed home, i think everyone was tired, some were cranky, and hopefully all were satisfied at having had a great time. i know i did! we got back to napa for more nekkid hot tubbing, snacking, joking around and just having good times with good people. monday was relaxing in the extreme, and we didn’t leave until after 7pm, which made getting home pretty late, after ten. the ride home was uneventful, weather was good, and life is grand. our napa friends loaded us up with tomatoes and other fruits and veggies still in their garden. YUM!

this is already a novella, but i wanted to get it recorded. may elaborate later, but wanted to get the basics down.

i heart my life, and i heart my friends.

life is good.

peace.   

07 burning man lessons and thoughts…

this is from an email i sent to a friend recently. i am keeping this here more for my own purposes, to see if i learn anything after next year:

my playa time this year was productive, and useful, but it wasn’t all that much fun…and THAT i have already taken steps to avoid next year =) more fun is definitely in order next year.

i had volunteered earlier in the year for a collateral ranger team, and never heard anything back, so i assumed they had selected someone else for the position or that my suggestion had not been followed that the position be split into a team. so i carried on and committed myself to various other volunteer activities, both within the rangers and within the fire spinning group that has become my family over the last year and a half or so. i am sure you can see where this is going, about a day before we left for the playa, i got an email saying "looking forward to working with you, you are on this other team!" so in an instant, i became over committed, which made me want to be committed =)

so, things i learned from the playa this year:

1) as with any other job in the world, if an employer knows you will kill yourself for a job, they will let you. it’s up to YOU to set good and healthy limits/boundaries and then stick to them to keep things harmonious in other areas of your life. you can’t be there for everyone, you can’t plug every hole, and what you want and need matters too….just as much as it does for others.

2) working constantly while camp mates get closer with your spouse feels really shitty. by the end of the week, they have private jokes, and all you feel is excluded and sad. refer again to point #1 both with regard to boundaries and working too much.

3) NEVER say to yourself at 3:44am on an early tuesday night intercept shift while gazing wistfully at the rapidly diminishing full lunar eclipse (as though that were not spectacular enough), "wow, things are really quiet, maybe we should knock off a few minutes early…" it will be followed by being one of the first on scene to some nut job making your life ever so much more exciting by torching the man early and will continue off-playa as you are called to testify against said cluetard. was in court today and it was quite interesting. i can honestly say before today, i had never stopped while driving through lovelock, nevada and while the courthouse is a neat historical place, not sure i would have, had it not been for said court appearance, which should be the first of many.

4) being a dangerous art liaison kicks ass, and will continue. being an intercept lead also kicks ass, but isn’t worth the relationship conflict it causes. with sadness, i will no longer do this.

5) dangerous art itself kicks ass and i am impressed with the amount of discussion and safety planning that takes place to make sure everything goes as it should.

6) being a performer in the inner circle at burning man is both exhilarating, chaotic, memorable, tedious, long, over too soon, waiting too long, and at the same time, anticlimactic.

7) the quality and tenacity of friendships made during the year will always be tested at burning man. some of those tests will be passed with flying colors when people understand what you want and need better than you do and endeavor to take care of you because they genuinely care. this is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

8) in spite of the fact that we would like it to be true, burning man does not cure all. grief continues to hurt, and while it is cathartic to bring ashes to the playa, create art, and ritualize things that need to be purged, it still hurts like a bitch. i still miss my mom. i always will. i understood this year in a way i never could have before, the importance of having something like the temple.

9) who rangers the rangers when they need it? no one as well as they should and one well-meaning ranger can barely make a dent in it. domestic violence and disrespect between people claiming to love each other are still trigger issues for me.

i think those are the important things. i worked too much and i won’t do that again. that’s the theme for the year. for sure.

peace.

burning the candle….written 9-28-07

does it add extra irony for someone who plays with fire to "burn the candle at both ends"? heh. nice thought.

it’s been awhile since i’ve written, and it occurs to me that everything i’ve written in the last year has been sad or depressed, or maudlin. that’s a curiosity to me because i am essentially still the same person, pretty positive and easy going, just grieving also, right now. i think that adds the other layer that maybe only gets exposed in writing.

anyway, life has continued to be kick-ass since burning man. i marvel at how fucking cool my life is and how lucky i feel to have amazing quality people in my life, surrounding me, and as those i count as friends. i will still never forget what my fire family did for me this year and even though i wasn’t around them the majority of the time on playa this year, i feel a closeness to them that wasn’t there before. we have been through a lot! can’t wait to see what’s coming next!

the last few nights have been high energy and i love it. i truly think i am the most happy when i am running around, trying to fit it all in. right after burning man, it seemed like there was some down time and that just won’t do at all! it was nice, but i was like "okay, what next?" dance class has started again, which is always fun, and as we turn more to a time of reflection and moving forward for my fire family, that collective introspection takes time, consideration, and lots of meetings =)

one of my fire family celebrated a birthday this week, which was the cause of much merriment and margaritas, laughter, love and fun, and then last night i went and laughed my ass off for a couple of hours. we went to see brian kenney fresno (http://www.bonghitrecords.com/bonghit/home.htm) and i haven’t laughed that hard for a loooong time. the dude is hysterical. there’s something seriously wrong with the guy, but i love it!

tonight is more dance, after which, i am quite sure i will go home and collapse after two nights of little sleep. tomorrow is volunteering to clean up the river in the morning, then in the afternoon its to the spa and salon for a wee bit of pampering and then home for hopefully a day and a half or so of relaxation. relaxation = laundry and housecleaning. yay, NOT. i also need to build my ginormous closet that i’ve had the parts for for over six months. then i might be able to put all my burning man costumes in one location, although i am not sure that’s possible, anymore =)

just wanted to write a frivolous, mundane entry, to let folks know that i am truly happy, for the most part, and not generally maudlin. life rules, man, and i feel so lucky to be where i am, with who i get to spend time with, in this place. now.

word.

have a great weekend, everyone!

burning man, 2007

here is a link to a digital version of a project i did for my mom for this years temple:

http://slideroll.com/?s=qb23cpat

if you are a sap, don’t read it unless you want to cry. i am almost to the point, after creation and multiple editing, where i can almost not cry when i watch it anymore =)

this year’s burn for me, was, interesting.

i knew that it would  be emotional because it would be the first without my mom at home, holding down the fort, anchoring me out in the desert, worrying about her while i was gone, and her and others making sure everything at home was copasetic while i was away playing in the desert. at times during this burn, i have never felt so cherished and loved and thought about, and at other times, i have never felt so alone. i think the surprise for me was whom i felt embraced by and who i felt alone with this year. telling, for sure. i will say that i have the most amazing friends in the entire world. my fire family is intense, dysfunctional, wonderful, loving, and some of the most awesome human beings i have the privilege to share this earth with. for them, i will be eternally grateful on many, many more levels than i can adequately express.

the rangers this year were interesting. i hesitate to write too candidly about that aspect of things here just because much of it is not something that should be aired in public, per se (not that this is public, but i wrote this in my tribe blog, i may yet vent some more about this aspect here, hehehe). what i will say is that that, too, was a very challenging aspect of my burn. within the rangers, there are at least three different subteams that i help out with, and between commitment to my fire projects, finding out i was taking on another team right before coming out to the playa, and some internal ranger stuff, this year was my most challenging yet, ranger-wise. it was also heartwarming, fun, chaotic, and a tremendous learning experience, for which i am thankful.  trying to determine how the ranger ranks can keep pace with the growth of the city is a challenge that faced us this year. i think that we rose to that challenge and did excellent work on many levels, but the sense of burn out and "i am not going to do that again" is also larger this year than in those past. many people chose not to work or work as much as they had in the past, and this left a hole in the number of rangers working, for which we all paid or had to compensate for. i think that i logged over a hundred hours this event, and came away feeling like i over-committed myself, like i need to make changes for next year with what i agree to do, and like i didn’t get to see enough of the event or it’s camps, spend quality time with my campmates and partner, or spend the time with my friends that i would have liked to.

that being said, the art was amazing.

part of me wants to call the guy that lit the man on fire early a cluetard, and part of me wants to call him a visionary. the cluetard part comes mostly from thinking of the logistics of how many people could have been harmed during his act of arson. *i* probably would not consider this person a visionary, but if one considers a definition of art to include "a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind; by transmitting emotions and/or ideas", the man could be considered an artist. ’nuff said about that.

in my personal rangering this year, i did most of my interacting with art car drivers, but also rangering my fellow rangers as well as family members, as newbies and as second-timers. i think i also helped someone see a different side of rangering that they didn’t know existed. an entire sub-culture around to help participants of burning man, in some of the many ways that can take shape. eh.

i did some dangerous art stuff this year that was way fun. i think that’s where my focus will be in the immediate future.

was my burning man "fun"? i wouldn’t term it that. it was educational, busy, exhausting, trying, emotional, up and down, sweet, laden with new and renewed experience, and full of turmoil.

i hope that i let go what i needed to let go and can now move forward with peace. i think that i did.

on to preparing for next year….

peace. 

a life time….

i am quite sure that i have lived an entire lifetime since my mom’s been gone. that’s how it feels. i can’t believe that she’s been gone for closer to a year than not. what a sad, amazing, wonderful, hard, tumultuous time this has been.

as i get ready to make my yearly pilgrimage to the playa, i can’t help but think that this time last year, my mom was still here. she was sick, and i was concerned about leaving her, but she insisted we not worry and go have fun.

this year, things will be much different. more of the family is going, as we welcome my sister to the folds of those journeying to the playa, and her son, my nephew will be minding things at home. to say that this makes me more than a little nervous is a gross understatement of the facts, but i will deal with it and we will see what happens. i am trusting in the universe.

this year, i have been buying costumes all year and have more fishnet stockings currently than i have ever had or worn in my life =) i have also bought things that i’ve always wanted and finally allowed myself to have. if these things are split up into smaller chunks, everything is possible.

i am anxious to ranger, and am in anxious anticipation of what this years experiment in temporary community is going to be. it never ceases to amaze me that something as impermanent as burning man, that’s in reality such a small part of our yearly lives, creates lasting friendships and relationships, cultivates such spirit and amazing artistic ability, and makes life seem so much more REAL. this year, i have many new friendships that last year at this time were just beginning. we have all changed throughout the year and now we head back home. the sum of those experiences has made many of those relationships stronger and better. i head to the playa feeling more surrounding by awesome vibes and energy than ever before.

i am beyond excited at the prospect of spinning fire in the inner circle this year. i feel honored that one of the pieces we worked hard on this year that i am involved with was asked for in the circle. i have always been on the participant or rangering side of the circle, so this, too, is new for me.

we leave a week from today.

my hair is braided, the motor home is mostly packed, the food bought, just need to buy the last of the booze and perishable food. this weekend will be cooking and freezing, likely the final shopping. this time next week, last minute preparations for the playa will be occurring.

and then it will happen.

again, my life will never be the same, and my perspective will change.

i will go home.

peace.

times….

this was another busy weekend for me. heh. like that’s anything new, i know.

last friday, there was a dress rehearsal for the festival i am helping to produce this year, and that went good. i am sort of getting to know a lady that i’ve always admired. it’s funny to see different people in different contexts. no one is perfect, but i think it’s still possible to be generally admiring and still know the person isn’t perfect. she has a new baby and when i look at her and her husband, there are such terrific parents. both mellow and very easy going, their kid is lucky. it was great to see her and talk to her on friday.

saturday i spent with my sis. we went shopping and going all around town. how said is this…..a ross opened near our house, and we were so happy, we were about in tears. heh. we are true geeks and shopaholics. seriously. then saturday night was the wine club, which was awesome, too. i have a friend who i think has had a hard time being around me since my mom passed away. she is very close to her mom, too. i don’t even think it’s been a conscious thing, just something that happened. anyway, it was good to see her and her mom on saturday and talk to them. although, i will say, my friends sister gets very loud when she’s drinking and it was very jarring for me this weekend. just sort of rattled my brain.

sunday, i began the process of building an evaporative pond for burning man that i committed to doing for my camp. i say "me", but there is a marginal amount of construction involved, so i don’t really expect my husband to allow me to do it. it’s man stuff, so he’s all about that because he gets to play with his power tools. heh. i am spoiled that way, i think. sometimes i get a bit annoyed because i’d rather be able to do things on my own, but i also know that it’s a privilege to be able to depend on him when he’s around. makes life much easier, in general.

i need to figure out something for my front yard. we haven’t really been watering the grass this year, so most of it has died. i don’t have a problem with this, at all, but the yard looks pretty crappy. i don’t want lawn, but i have to figure out something before the stupid city decides to fine me or something. something else to worry about. heh.

anyway, that’s where i am at today. i have gotten out of the habit of writing and i miss it, i think it helps me process a lot.

peace.

life keeps getting stranger and stranger….

many of you know that i have an ex-husband. i spent almost eight years of my life with him, and they were hard years, years that i allowed to partially sap my sense of identity, they were abusive and crazy years, with a rage-aholic who was also a child molester, i found out later.

he’s dead.

when we were married, after he got out of the navy, he worked in the shipyard for a few years, removing PCB’s from the hulls of old submarine’s so the metal could be recycled. i always assumed he’d get cancer or some other heinous disease from that, knowing how careless they were with the toxic stuff there, but a plain old regular heart attack killed him.

i told a friend who commented "far too easy a death for someone that would abuse a child".

maybe.

he’s been in my thoughts lately. i swear, i knew. there’s this tv commercial that plays here often that has a commentator dude saying "have you been diagnosed with mesothelioma as a result of work in a shipyard or other industrial situation?…" and just a bit ago i was thinking "i wonder if terry ever got cancer or anything?" the thing is that i hadn’t thought about him for a long time, and all of a sudden, he was there, in my mind. and now he’s dead.

something told me not to pick up the phone when the family called and not to return the calls until saturday. i am glad i didn’t because it meant that i couldn’t make the funeral. it was saturday too. i think it would have been exceedingly awkward given how stoic we would have been, compared to the rest of the family, who loved him by blood and they are really struggling with his death.

telling my kids was strange. my daughter doesn’t really remember him, she just knows how ucky she feels when she thinks about him. she said she felt like maybe she should feel sad because it’s her dad and all, but it’s not like they were close, she knew him or he knew her. i think she will ultimately be relieved that he’s gone and he can’t possibly ever hurt her again. when she went through her crazy time, that was one of her irrational fears and now she doesn’t have it anymore.

my son asked for the phone number in oregon, which i gave him. i expect that at some point he will go there to visit and see if it’s what he remembers.

this has been conflicting for me. on one hand, at some point, i thought i would spend the rest of my life with this person and the last dozen years or so thanking the goddess that i saw the light and wasn’t with him anymore. anyone who has a not-very-friendly ex i am sure knows how you get where there comes a time when you look at the person and think "ew. i can’t believe i ever slept with that person". the years had not been kind to him with no steady jobs, no health care. he had lost many teeth, was overweight, not very healthy, diabetic, i sort of felt sorry for him the last time i saw him because his energy was just off. and there was still that undeniable, barely under the surface rage that used to scare me so much.

although i truly believe that his ability to have a real impact on my life ended when i left a state that was anywhere near where he was, there was always a nagging fear in the back of my mind that he would find us some day and do something to hurt me or one of the kids. he can’t hurt my mom anymore because she preceeded him in death.

should i feel worse than i do? should i not feel as much relief as i did? i cried after i got off the phone, and in my heart of hearts, i am still not sure why i cried. for the past? the person i was when i was with him? the end of an era? relief? i don’t know….

peace. 

an update….

hey everyone!

life has been so very crazy, lately. oh my.

i am finally feeling like things are a weeeee bit settled down, but i am feeling very overwhelmed lately with all that’s going on.

first, we will get the kind of boring stuff out of the way….

this year, for the first time, but certainly a trend that may continue in years to come, there are two things that i really look forward to in the spring. one is the bellydancing performances that come in the spring. we do a show called "night of all nations" that’s a ton of fun, and we also do the community college spring dance recital, appropriately named "strange bedfellows" because it’s the dance showcase that combines all the different forms of dance into one show. one of the other things i enjoy a lot is the reno jazz festival, where i have been a site coordinator for the last seven years or so. great fun. where my stress came from this year, is that the jazz festival happened to be the same weekend as strange bedfellows. because the dance show coordinates all those people and different dance classes, the week before is packed with tech rehearsals the entire week, so i had those m-w-thurs then friday was our opening night (6pm call and 7:30 curtain..home about 11pm)after working at the jazz festival from 6:30am-5:30pm, and doing that AGAIN Saturday, then dancing a matinee on sunday…..

the way that i got involved with the jazz festival in the first place is because i work for the department on campus that administers it. as part of that, this year, we decided to finally enter the digital age and record all the judges feedback comments on small, handheld digital recorders. so, sunday, before and after my matinee and SERIOUSLY exhausted, i had to come into work and by tuesday noon, parse and upload the files to be ready for the different directors to download. of course, we had tested exhaustively, but there’s always that little shred of doubt when the unknown of other people trying it comes into play of "will it work?" well, after prearing for a year, endless hours of writing, and figuring and negotiating and facilitating and false-starting….after living through the week after, and some of the tech support calls saving users from themselves, i can say IT WORKS!!!! i don’t know of any other jazz festival’s that do this, so we have broken new ground, on the campus if not in the country. this makes me proud, despite the exhaustion. it was nice to see if all come to fruition.

now, on to more fun things =)

before the jazz festival by about a week, was the night of all nations performance. it was my unauguration doing double duty as a bellydancer AND as a fire performer.

for anyone who might be interested, here’s a link to the bellydance we did that night:

Night of All Nations Bellydance Performance

and here’s the one of my first public fire performance:

Night of All Nations Fire Performance

the quality isn’t great, but you can get the idea and it’s kind of fun!

in other news, i saw my brother yesterday, he has his official diagnosis of "cancer" now. his lymph node on the left side of his neck is noticibly larger and painful to the touch. he is in good spirits, but i fear for him. i think we are going to attempt a standing sunday dinner engagement with him and see how that goes. i don’t want to take care of him, but i can offer him what small amount of family i can, at this point. i fear what this will do to him, knowing how aggressive cancer is in the lymph system, but i will keep good thoughts for him.

me and the girl? meh. this last weekend was our one year anniversary and due to another misunderstanding, we ended up not celebrating. i need to reevaluate if i am getting what i need from this relationship. right now i guess i am thinking that it’s better than nothing, but not ideal. there’s a lot of drama.

she recently spent some time in the hospital, and that’s probably all i will say about that.

just wanted to let everyone know i am alive….and in my SPARE TIME i am learning new fire belly routines =)

will update again soon, as i can….

peace. 

death and destruction, oh my…

wow, sorry i haven’t posted for awhile. last week was absolutely insane for me. i am getting ready for two shows on the same night, one where i am dancing, the other fire spinning. the fire spinning has been exhilerating and frustrating at the same time. sometimes, i feel really old for how long it takes me to learn these moves, but i try to be gentle with myself. here are a couple of photos of me spinning fire:

and…

it’s kind of blurry, but i am kind of okay with that, too. it’s not technically the greatest picture, but it’s okay. it’s fun, anyway =)

in other news, i am generally a pretty positive person, but damn, it’s hard to be sunny today. about a week ago, i found out that one of my brothers is probably dying from cancer. in the ultimate act of irony, i was just flipping through my ipod on random, and "don’t worry, be happy" came on….back to the topic at hand…

my brother is mentally ill, doesn’t work and was awaiting disability, and is uninsured. one of the other brothers called to tell me, and was, like, telling me that i had to do something to get him on a special program or something through the university. i am not exactly sure what they expect from me. my brother has so much going against him, the one that’s sick. they found the cancer because he found a lump in his throat. when they called him back, they told him it had spread throughout his body. i feel kind of like a shitty person because my first thought was "i don’t think i can take care of someone just now who’s dying…" please know that my brother was not raised with everyone else in the family, and all my brothers are a minimum of 15 years older than me, so i’ve not been overly close with any of them, it’s like having another set of parents without the good stuff like uncoditional, nonjudgmental love =) i truly believe in my soul of soul’s that my brother is sick because he carries so much hatred in his heart. i wish him peace on this journey, but i just can’t do this again so soon….

yesterday, someone i ranger with out at burning man who had a heart condition, died. also last night, one of my husband’s coworkers and friends who’s wife had been in a coma but had just seemed to be recovering also passed away, she apparently couldn’t recover from losing her own mother and finally, when someone was posting about the ranger with the heart condition, someone else wrote in and told us that another friend who had been a ranger passed away last october. i knew all these people. this can’t even be a three thing, and if it is, we are now almost to multiples of three, as this makes six or more. one of my coworkers fathers is also dying, and she told me last week he had been referred to hospice.

i suppose this is one of the inevitable things about getting older, that people around you start dropping off, tragedy takes some, and others just seem to fade away, but it sure sucks. but demmit, 38 really isn’t that old! what’s going on here?

in spite of all this doom and gloom, things are reasonably okay. i think my girl has decided that she needs more from a relationship than i can give and while i am sad, i supppose it’s for the best. she hasn’t really spoken to me in about two weeks, and when i saw her last, she was telling me how her best friend and sister were telling her she couldn’t call me her girlfriend because we didn’t see each other enough to have a "real" relationship. i suppose if someone is going to listen to others like that, it’s probably not such a bad thing to not have this person anymore. i am sad, but not overly suprised.

i am sure this sounds like the most depressing post ever, but i really don’t feel depressed. i know that i am still grieving, and have good and bad days, but that’s to be expected. this friday, my sister is having surgery, a hysterectomy. i will be there with her, and then go to my performances, and then go back to stay with her in the hospital, so she won’t have to be alone.

so many good, beautiful people gone from the world, this week.

sad.

that’s about it for now, i needed to purge this. will write more later, when i can.

peace. 

good weekend…

boy, did i have a great weekend.

imagine this…i had the fate of at least two gorgeous and awesome ladies in my hands saturday night as i got to prepare them for JELLO WRESTLING!! it was all in good fun to raise money for a project i am assisting with for burning man this year, but it was interesting and titillating. heh. me and several others helped make the jello, not too warm, not too cool, but juuuust right, slicker than snot, and ewey gooey goodness. red jello…..it was all in good fun.

i miss my mom, and getting to tell her of my adventures or seek her advice when i struggle with things in life. this came to light for me last week or so when an unexpected professional opportunity presented itself. i have been asking for an upgrade to my job since i finished my degree and so far, nothing doing. my boss says she’s trying, but i think there’s more she could do, if she were more motivated, and i think the hr person who’s supposed to be helping her is still smarting from her own professional frustration from awhile ago. well, someone who supports me across the street at the main campus it transferred to another position, leaving hers open. after doing some soul-searching, i decided i needed to apply for this job in order to further myself professionally. but, the more i thought about it, the less right it seemed to be, so today, i spoke to my big boss again and told him there’s more for me to do here, still, but i do need for some things to change. i got his commitment that he would help me where he can, and he agrees with my assessment of things, and so now, i still wait. it’s okay, though…i feel better about the decision. what was so acute to me is that THIS is the sort of thing i generally would talk through with my mom, and she’s not here to talk it through with anymore. she probably would have told me "those folks have been so good to you…don’t burn your bridges, those are good people"…which i know, but i also need to take care of my family. if i had gone against her advice she still would have said "well, that’s okay, dear….if you think this will be the best for you, that’s what you have to do". mom’s and unconditional love are like that. i expect to blunder often without her sage personage to bounce things off, her balancing and wise psyche to advise me, but when i think about it, she’s still there, in my heart, and i think i knew her well enough that i can probably predict most of her responses, it’s just still so sad to me that i have to talk into space now rather than interact with my mom, so that i can kiss her on the cheek, tell her i love her, and thank her for listening to me.

there’s a lot more to say, but that will have to be it for now. it’s time to go home. going to see my girl tonight, that should be fun times. spent a lot of the weekend with d….overall, life is awesome.

will write more when i can….

peace….who would have thought that before 40, i could say i’d lived through two wars?

not me.

happy international women’s day…

here’s what i did:
Staging at 11:45 AM at Student Services Bldg.; parade at noon. Wear white in honor of the suffragists — or international attire. Join walkers, musicians, equestrians, veterans’ groups, students and more. Carry banners, flags, balloons, or signs. Start at Student Services Bldg, end up on the lawn behind the Student Union. Hear International Women’s Day proclamations, President Glick and special Women’s Day speakers; free lunch to follow….

we then went to the "food, not bombs" booth and got some lovely vegan (i am not vegan, btw, so totally NOT holier than thou….or anyone) salad and veggie soup, ate some popcorn, said hi to all my friends from the women’s studies program, saw the HAWT professor i have a little crush on (rawr…hehehe), enjoyed the sunshine, thanked the goddess for this day, this opportunity, and for making me a woman.

oppressed or not, i would never want to be a man.

life is good, today.

i hope you did something today….to celebrate yourself, to celebrate womankind, to celebrate life.

word.

there were many people today who had hillary clinton signs.

they were chanting revoluntionary slogans.

i thanked female veterans for serving our country.

today i am happy.

peace.

life, moving on…..

life is moving on here and as generally seems to be the case with me, it isn’t that there’s nothing to say, it’s that there’s so much to say, it’s overwhelming because life keeps going on and i am busy as hell, but loving life, too. i am in a pretty good place regarding my mom. i feel a lot of guilt. i do think she was ready and although i think it was in her nature to fight for her life, she was very tired and very done. but i will always carry the guilt that i didn’t take her to the hospital sooner. i just hope i am not judged too harshly for that. i have to live with it and in some ways, it continues to haunt me. today is a bad grief day, as we approach the weekend of my sisters birthday, the first without her. i don’t think i can fill her shoes, i can only be who i am. i hope that’s enough….somehow i think it will always be just shy of what someone thinks it should be, but all i can do is do my best.

i have been very busy doing web editing and stuff for the fire troupe i have become involved with. it’s a ton of fun and we are working on choreography for the upcoming season. right now i am in a fire fan piece that’s a tribal bellydance fusion number that’s shaping up nicely, but i have no more hair on my arms =) tonight is the first night for the new semester of my bellydance class, and i have fans practice tues-thurs and regular fire practive wednesdays, which leaves monday my only night i am not out of the house for something during the week! exhausting yes, but very worth it, my body feels great and it’s awesome! i wouldn’t trade it for the world, though. we are also doing fundraising both with the fire troupe and an art project we hope to take to burning man this next year. i built that website too….wanna see? here it is: http://www.shivavista.com let me know what you think. the creative bit on the front page i helped write and i built the entire site from scratch. there isn’t a huge amount there, but it still took a bit of time.

i am also going to be the stage manager this year for the drum, dance, and didgeridoo festival that takes place near the end of the month long arts festival that gets held in my town during july. it’s going to be so awesome! the webpage for the festival does not do it justice, i should ask her if i can do a different one, because the person who does hers i don’t think really wants to do it. something to think about =) so, we have a bunch of exciting new artists coming this year that i had a huge hand in getting here, and i am very excited! we are doing fundraising for this festival too, and earlier this week scouted out a great club that we think will be an awesome venue for us.

my daughter seems to have pretty much given up on school in the secondary sense and wants to get her ged and go to college. i am trying not to be too judgmental about this decision, but it’s very hard. i suppose she is now her own person, but i am disappointed. she seems to feel easily persecuted and i hope that soon she learns a personal sense of responsibility for her fate and the things that happen to her. i don’t want to write anymore about that.

work is moving right along too…..

all the time i have spent doing this other stuff means less time for relationships, but i think that’s okay. i am still on good terms and things continue to go well both with d and s, my girl. we haven’t been able to be together a whole lot since my mom passed, but have managed enough time to stay connected and we will just see how things go. yesterday, an old depeche mode song came on that struck home with me. "though it’s not love, it means something…."

i think i will leave things there for right now.

peace. 

still alive….

life is still carrying on for me. i am trying to learn how to live without my mom. some days are easier than others. as much as i loved her, i am also seeing that a lot of what she had become in my life was an obligation and i didn’t need her as much as i thought i did and i didn’t depend on her as much as i thought i did. i don’t know if i should feel good about that or bad. without a doubt i miss her in my life….i think i was just more independent than i thought. i know there is a sense of freedom that exists now that didn’t before. good goddess, am i a selfish fuck? i don’t know….

last week, i had to buy a car. love the car, hate the thought of making another payment. ew. the car is a nissan altima. i love it. it gets great gas mileage. i had been looking at getting a subaru and while all wheel drive would have been nice, in reality, i just don’t really drive in bad weather often enough to give up some comfort measures to have it.

in other news, d and i went to concord and santa cruz this weekend to help some friends that just got married to celebrate their recent nuptuals. they ran off to hawaii to get hitched and didn’t pack any of us in their suitcases, so we threw a party for them when they got home. it was a pretty good time. we took the new car and it was a ton of fun. i started drinking wine with my friends about noon on saturday and ended up drunk dialing just about everyone who’s ever talked about drunk dialing me or who has, in fact, done so. i was happy to tell everyone i knew how much i loved them =)

i had never been to santa cruz before….there are a bunch of little funky houses situated strangely along the sides of mountains but overall, the experience was charming. definately some place to return to when one can.

it’s been about four hours since i began this entry and my train of thought is wrecked. so i will end this now.

peace.

dear mom….

i can’t believe that it’s only been just over three weeks since you left this life. this death thing is such an incredible dichotomy. in some ways, it seems you’ve been gone an eternity and i can’t believe it’s been such a small amount of time, and in other ways, i keep looking around the house, expecting to see you there, or hear you yelling at me, or i sit at my desk at work and expect the phone to ring and i am going to pick it up and it’s going to be you on the other end saying "hoi".

i picked your ashes up from the mortuary last week….i can’t even remember what day it was. on friday, they delivered the mini-urns so that each of us could keep you with us. i got 12 of them in case any of the grand kids wanted them or something like that. your death certificates arrived in the mail on saturday…..unexpected and sobering, in some ways again i thought they’d never show up and in some ways i hate it because it’s another reminder to me that you aren’t here anymore.

i talked to a friend of mine who is a paralegal yesterday and she says because we have a deed on file that shows you and i as joint tenants, no one should be able to take the house away from us, which is a relief. i have to file a  paper with the county giving them a copy of the death certificate stating that you’ve passed, and we should be fine from there. of course, that means sis won’t necessarily be on the house, but i don’t know if there’s anything i can do about that. you know i will do right by her.

she hasn’t gone back to work yet. she’s talking today of both going back to the bar to bartend (oh god), or going and applying for a job on a cruise ship. i know you would be rolling your eyes the same i am. she says she has no ties here now, i suppose we and her son have been relegated to the status of chopped liver, eh? we will see what happens with that….

speaking of, dg got laid off last week. before he paid his rent for december and january. sis says she got up on friday to take him to get a copy of his birth certificate so he could go job hunting again, and then he told her he didn’t want to go. i swear, those two are going to be the death of me. it doesn’t seem much that either one of them are too keen on working and i am not too keen on continuing to support them with no help. will keep you posted on that one…..

there have been a million times i’ve thought of you, at least, in the last few weeks. talking things over with different siblings and smiling with rememberance of specific things we did or experienced. i miss you soooo much. in a lot of ways, you were the sounding board and the vent i used to gauge how things were going in my life because i could tell you and you would guide me, being so much more wise than me and having lived so much more and through tougher times, too. now there’s no one to temper me, no one to tell me to think about things before i make a rash decision, and no one to love me unconditionally. d even tried to pull a fast one on me last week, towards the end. i don’t know what’s going to happen with that, but i will do my best to stay the course, even if it should be alone.

the days go on….i have been lazy lately. sis actually mopped the kitchen floor last week…it took every ounce of self-control i had not to say to her "wow, i am impressed….i didn’t know you knew how to mop"….and i totally didn’t mean it mean, it’s just that she’s never done it, ya know? bellydance classes haven’t started again, but the one’s i am doing with the fire group are on-going and things are going good there.

well, i better go pretend to work now.

i love you and i hope that you are at peace.

in other news….

 i can’t believe it hasn’t even been a month since my mom’s been gone. that truly amazes me. i got her death certificates in the mail this weekend, which was jarring.

the weekend was insular and full of sloth. i did see my girl on sunday, first time since before my mom got sick. it was good to see her.

i didn’t do laundry, i didn’t do much of anything. i think sometimes you need that….i have done more than my share of that since mom died =) i know we need to start going through her stuff, and this will ultimately make my life more orderly, but i just haven’t been able to manufacture the energy for it yet. i think i will ask my sister if we can start doing one small thing at a time. even if it’s just one drawer of one dresser at a time, one shelf, one box in her closet….the sooner we have her stuff gone through, the sooner we can move my sis in there, the sooner i can move daughter up there and the sooner we can turn daughter’s current room into a massive closet for d and my stuff. i want all storage devices and stuff out of our room. the only thing that will be kept in our closet will be robes, tv’s stuff like that. the basement will become our lair =) i like that thought. it isn’t like anyone in the house gets up early enough to cause us much trouble getting to the laundry facilities =) these are the initial plans for the getting on with things.

there is more that we need to do. we need to pull up the floor and subfloor in my mom’s bathroom and redo the flooring. there’s a section of the drywall near her shower that needs to be patched and repaired, and her bathroom needs a serious and severe updating and cleaning. i am trying to decide how i want to do that. might get new carpet for sis, but maybe not. we will see with that….it’s going to be expensive and i think that bri’s room needs it more than my mom’s. but the flooring in the bathroom, definately. now it’s just finding the motivation to do all this…..

happy monday, everyone.

bleh.

peace.

my mom….

(1/27/2026 - The below post was written on a different platform, and over the years, I have no idea what picture was originally on this post, so I've added one of my favorites...)

this is a great picture of my mom.

it was taken a couple of years ago.

i miss her.

peace.

yesterday….

 it makes me sick to think of how many more lives will be seen as expendable if this draft goes through. thanks random, for letting me know that it was soundly defeated. only two people in the house voted for it, but it’s still scary when one has son’s or anyone else they care about in that age range. ack!

yesterday was a rough day. it was as hard as i thought it would be.

my mom used to call me several times a day and i used to wonder if my employers were getting upset with me because she called a lot. yesterday my phone was silent.

i had to go to the doctor yesterday, for a follow-up. need to get some lab work done, and will take care of that this week. i had to tell the doctor what happened, so i got to cry on him too =) he talked to me and asked me if i was going to be okay. it just takes time. he did give me the card of an attorney though, that he says is a decent human being if i think i need that. i am not sure what i want to do yet. i think first i am going to wait for the death certificate’s, so that i can talk intelligently with what data i have in my hand. i also think i’d like to see if i can be named her executor. i don’t think anyone will have a problem with that, but we will see. i had the fucking will, she just hadn’t signed it =)

i spent a lot of time crying yesterday.

the custodian for my building is a friend and she had the entire month of december off. she came in yesterday afternoon and asked how my mom was, so i got to tell her too.

then, i came back into my office at one point and elvis’ "blue christmas" was on the mp3 player. my mom ADORED elvis, so i cried some more.

all my coworkers asked about the holidays and if i was doing okay. it’s nice that they care, but i want to cry every time they ask. it’s okay, though, i made it through. the whole day. i am pretty proud of that.

when i got home, my sister was a mess and she remained a mess for the rest of the day and into the night. we are different people. she, being the narcisist thinks about how horrible this is for HER and can’t seem to see that anyone else is affected as much as she is. sometimes she has moments of clarity, but when she’s in her pit of sorrow as i’ve been calling it, there’s no consoling her. i asked her when i came in if she wanted me to put the urn with my mom’s ashes somewhere out of sight. she said she didn’t care, but if she is as upset about it today, i might move it to my room so it isn’t the constant reminder.

today is a new day. yes, i have cried already today, but i feel slightly more sane today.

this morning, i had a dream about this song by blind melon, called change. here are the lyrics:

I dont feel the suns comin out today
Its staying in, its gonna find another way.
As I sit here in this misery, I dont
Think Ill ever see, no Lord, the sun from here.
And oh as I fade away,
Theyll all look at me and say, and theyll say,
Hey look at him! Ill never live that way.
But thats okay
Theyre just afraid to change.
When you feel your life aint worth living
Youve got to stand up and
Take a look around you then a look way up to the sky.
And when your deepest thoughts are broken,
Keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreamin its time to die.
And as we all play parts of tomorrow,
Some ways will work and other ways we’ll play.
But I know we all cant stay here forever,
So I want to write my words on the face of today.
And then theyll paint it
And oh as I fade away,
Theyll all look at me and theyll say,
Hey look at him and where he is these days.
When life is hard, you have to change.

of course, i would change the "boys" to "grrls", but other than that, it seems to fit =)

today will be a better day.

peace.