time marches on....

i can't believe that this whole year i've only taken the time to post a couple times. amazing what being busy will do for you. i think it's really true that you don't know what you have until it's gone. i have so very many blessings to be thankful for, and in this season of thanks-giving, i am thankful for all that i have. truly....

i am thankful for my family, more than i can say. life has been pretty stressful the last year and a half, and without my partner in crime, my partner in everything, i would surely have gone crazy by now. i am so thankful for dan and our life. i am thankful that i am in the process of owning the home where i grew up and in a very real sense, it is home. it's not a perfect house and i am far from perfect, but home is the place that when you go there, they have to let you in =)

i am thankful for my adult children. i am so proud of my son, seeing the world, stationed in germany and living the dream with his lovely wife. i am thankful for my beautiful daughter who is probably my best friend, i adore that she lives with me and i hope she is here for a very long time. i am thankful that she is in college and doing something she will hopefully love. i am so very proud of my daughter this year. she got a scholarship at her school. she had to attend an awards dinner and she could have taken anyone in the entire world to help her celebrate this achievement. she invited me and it about made me cry and burst with pride. here's my beautiful baby girl:

 i am thankful for beautiful friends and family of choice that help me get through my tough times. i know everyone says this but i have the best friends a girl could ask for. one of my best friends, pinktini, seems to have a sense of when i am at my lowest, and she always has a plan to pick me up or get me out of my head. earlier in the fall, we went to adult night at the children's museum. i always said the worst thing about our town's new children's museum was that it was made for kids! they must have heard me, as once a month they offer an adult night and serve booze and good food and grown-ups get to go find their inner child. there has been far too little of that for me lately. that has to change. here we are, in the reflection of a cool mirrored art piece. kind of blurry, but this was a fun time!

i am thankful for my relative good health and continued well-being. some things, i need to change. working a football game this season, i tore the meniscus in my knee. i did it at work, so i was injured on september 21st and had surgery to repair the tear on october 5th. it's been a whirlwind, for sure. when i first saw the doctor, she had the nerve to tell me i wasn't 20 any more. now, about seven weeks after surgery, i must concede she may have been right. i surely don't heal like i used to, the going is slow, and the residual stiffness and pain i have in physical therapy make me none too keen to have another injury any time soon. here is the knee in all it's awful glory, complete with ice pack
again and puncture wounds:

 

this is a picture of grizzly helping me heal. this had to have been 1-3 days after surgery:

 

i am thankful for goofy animals and the joy that is having silly little birdies in my life. dan had said a lot while he was unemployed and down that he credited the birds with keeping him sane. he says it's impossible to be sad or upset when you have little birdies around. case in point:

this is the binny bird. i guess, formally, his name is cinnamon, but we call him binny bird. we thought he was a girl for a long time because he's very pretty, but we think now he's a boy. if that changes, we will let you know. hahaha...sometimes you think you have them sexed appropriately, right up until they lay an egg =) this is binny's neat little trick of turning his head upside down and pretty much demanding that you rub his head. that a little bird could be so trusting and just lean it's head down when it must know that you could crush it so easily and yet they are trusting and loving. pretty amazing, really. and they have so much love to give. i adore having little birdies in my life. except for the poo. i could do without the poo.

life is always interesting, but i am feeling worn down lately. they say, if there's something we don't like about our lives, we are masters of our own destiny and only we can make a change for the better or do something to make ourselves happy. it's time i heeded that, and am working to make those changes. i will post more when i can. i don't do super well at the holidays, but so far, it's been okay. looking forward to the future and seeing what it holds.

for now, i am thankful, but also experience a certain amount of "meh". life's to short for "meh"...time to move along...

peace out, and stay tuned.....

...and the flame lingers on....

right now. this moment is momentous for me because normally at this time, i'd be in black rock city. this is the first time in 13 years that i am not attending burning man. the reasons are myriad. i had a really, really rough year last year. after taking the new job, in a very real sense, i now ranger full-time. every day there are aspects of my job that i have to ranger. and i work hard, and sometimes long hours. when i had a desk job, working harder on my vacation than i did all year seemed an okay thing to do. having a more stressful job kind of makes me want to have vacations that are relaxing. rangering isn't necessarily relaxing...

there are a lot of other things i tell myself right now, to keep sadness at bay. there's so much more of the world that i want to see, perhaps returning to black rock city every year is not the smartest choice considering there's so much ELSE i want to see. there is a lot of beauty in the world, and while there is A LOT of it concentrated in the miasma of black rock city, it's nice to see it in other places too.

also for the first time in several years this year, i went camping NOT in the desert. i went to a smallish event in the state of nevada over the 4th of july weekend and had an amazing time with good friends. i should maybe post pics of that, but i am not feeling it today.

for the last few weeks, we here in the truckee meadows have been inundated with smoke from a fire raging in the yosemite national forest. my dear friend and i decided to head to tahoe to see if we could get above the smoke. we thought at first we had been thwarted, but close to when we needed to leave, it seemed to clear for us, and we got amazing views. i am sometimes overwhelmed at all the beauty there is around me. i perpetually feel blessed.

there has been a lot more happening in my world that's new for me. for the first time in the last five years or so, the fire festival that I began had it's sixth iteration without me this year. with the new job, it seemed important to set a boundary of not being overly involved and stick to it. no fire performance for me, at all this year. during artown, our month-long arts festival here in reno, i did bellydance, but there's been too little of that in my life too.

life is different, but different isn't necessarily bad. i think sometimes it's hard to know you are in a rut until something happens to force you out of it. for me, this year, it was not being able to go to burning man...and being okay with that.

there have been more cockatiel babies. our baby fred had babies this year with a pearl female and we were blessed with an albino birdie. dan says he learned on the cockatiel facebook page that all albino cockatiels are female. she sure is sweet! world, meet pinky:

the first football game is about ten days away, which will make me a very busy woman again. i will update as i can. i think i need to be more random in my postings and not quite so linear. might record more that way =)

so, while not burning in a traditional sense this year, the fire still burns in my soul, and will find new and interesting ways to manifest! so mote it be.

peace!

World, meet Kilo!

when we thought we had lost fred, i got my phone and started to look on craiglist. there was something in my brain that said, "there's a cockatiel on craigslist that needs you, find it." i know this sounds crazy, but i swear i had that sense.

after we got fred back and lost olie, my heart hurt for awhile. it still hurts, but we needed to think of fred, who'd never been without another bird. he called for olie the entire way home and i told d that although i understood a need to mourn olie, for fred's sake, we needed to get another bird right away.

looking on craigslist on monday, i found the ad. it was listed saturday and advertised a male cockatiel needing a new home in carson. the person wanted a $100 rehoming fee, which is high. i contacted the person and asked if the price was negotiable at all, and they said to make an offer. i countered, asking if the bird came with cage and all trappings and the person said yes. i told them i didn't want the cage because we have those, and would they take $50 just for the bird. she said yes.

we drove to this strange trailer park in carson and stopped at this trailer that had several rabbit-warren-like outbuildings including chickens and we could hear a dog barking from a shed. she walked around the back of the house, saying she needed to get the bird. she brought kilo to us, with his/her favorite toy, and that was that.

i am writing this on june 7, and kilo has made his/her way into our hearts. we aren't sure yet whether or not the bird is a boy or a girl. some girl markings and behavior, but very beefy looking for a girl. time and a little violation to the bird will tell =)

this in no way replaces olie or what he was to us, but for fred's sanity we needed to make sure we had another bird. fred isn't 100% sure about kilo yet, but they are learning each other =)

peace, is back =)

poor, poor olie bird....RIP bud...

and then the universe decided we needed to lose something we loved...

my birthday weekend, a friend decided to hold what was dubbed a private pyro party. as part of my administration duties with compression, we try to recruit local artists that sculpt and create art in metal to see if we can give them a venue at which to display their art. i LOVE metal art, there's something so hard and beautiful about it, but that's probably another discussion for another time...

this weekend was destined for bird drama from the first. it was the first time fred 2.0 was going to be heading out into the great wilds on a camping trip. d had previously let his wings grow out, and he'd been flying around the house for awhile. the day we left, we clipped his wings, but left some flight feathers on either end, after watching a video on how to do this. when we tested it, he seemed to sink like a rock. BUT, the next day, i had him on my shoulder and a stiff gust came along at the same time a dog spooked him and he got caught on the current of air and took off. he was gone. he did a couple of laps around the yard where the party was and landed in a tree. we went over to the tree and tried to get him. we used a long piece of pvc pipe to see if he would use it as a perch, but that spooked him again and he took off again. across the highway and a large field to the next immediate stand of trees, we think. man, were there tears. i kept thinking about him being a scared little birdie all on his lonesome. he doesn't know about predators or dogs or things that eat little birdies.

d refused to give up and at some point went for another drive to try to find fred. he calls me about half an hour later and says he's found fred. i also drive over to him and sure enough, fred is treed in a weeping willow about two blocks from where we were. by this time, i think he was pretty scared because he'd been gone for a long time and i am sure he was hungry and tired. he didn't understand how the willow tree works, but he tried to reach us. he'd scoot out to the end of a branch and fall a few feet, but that would get him a few feet lower, towards us. d was in the tree, trying to get him to come to him, and i was standing at the base of the tree, calling fred. he finally got to where he was about four feet above my head on the lowest branch and he flew onto my head! i STILL can't believe we got the little bugger back! for him, i think it was a slightly scary, but wildly fun lark, time of his life. for us, it was sheer terror and a small amount of time thinking we were horrible bird parents...much celebration and birthday shenanigans ensued. we were thinking, "BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!" we got our birdie back.

so the next day, it's almost the end of the event. we'd just had some lunch and were lounging, trying to delay the inevitable return to our normal lives where you don't get to hang out with just whom you chose to for as long as you want and make cool stuff. the place the party was at was awesome, and they have birds too! theirs are bigger, though....a cockatoo and a yellow naped macaw, i think. i had our sweet little olie bird on my shoulder and the lady of the house says "you should watch your bird around the little dog, he's okay with the big birds, but he will chase little ones". i had to go to the bathroom, so i asked d to take him and somehow he got spooked. that little weenie dog ran right over and grabbed our birdie and snapped his neck. truly one of the saddest things i've ever dealt with. he died in d's hand, and then holding his limp little body while we tried to process what had happened. to say it put a damper on things would be an understatement. what a horrible accident.

the picture above was literally taken within half an hour of when olie passed away. he was the sweetest little bird. that a bird could be mistreated and still have the capacity to love us, to allow us to handle him, pet him, he sang for us and to us. he made me fall in love with cockatiels and their gentle and forgiving natures.

i will never forget my sweet little olie bird. i have framed this that he was sent to us for his last year, to understand and know how awesome and spoiled and wonderful life can be. so he could die knowing that. and knowing what it was like to be loved unbelievably by his people.

damn, i'm going to miss his little yellow head. there will be others, but none will be exactly like him.

i love you, olie.

no peace today.

new technology...

so....my honey bought me a kindle.

 

that's what it looks like. i can't believe how tiny and thin it is. the fact that this little device can hold all my geek joy amazes me. truly. like, i can't believe how much it amazes me. you can debate the pros and cons of these sorts of reader devices, but in the end, they are all pretty much the same. kindle is somewhat proprietary, but there are ways around that. they require a small investment of time to convert files and figure out, but for an enterprising geek family like me and mine, it doesn't seem too bad.

there's some stuff i need to play with and learn about this kindle thingie, but i am excited, in general.

i've been saying for at least ten years that print books are a thing of the past. the joy and knowledge that comes from people WRITING books is something tangible that will arguably always exist, but the resources used in printing them, printing a specific run with no thought of how many will sell, and then reading the book once and then having to do something with it seems like an awful waste. this seems so much more efficient. now i wish textbook technology would catch up! purchase your kindle-education! and get all your books through that. huh....interesting thought =)

in other news, we have a new baby. dan can't conceive of having a bird not named fred, so this bird has been dubbed fred 2.0. here he is:



he is an amazingly sweet little baby. he's about four months old, and it's obviously a he. fred 1.0, we discovered posthumously, we believe might have been female. this guy has a really deep voice, and he's super smart. he seems to have picked up the sounds of many of the other birds he was with at the pet store. he doesn't make a lot of sounds yet, i think he's still figuring things out, but he makes me very happy. he's a total cuddler.

thanksgiving was last week, and the holidays still suck. i approach them now with a tinge of sadness, but no lingering ire. i cannot believe my mom's been gone almost four years. we fondly remembered her last thanksgiving while eating this year. "leg? what leg, i want some pie!"....sad, and yet, good memories.

i am going to post thanksgiving pics in their own entry.

peace out, yo.