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!