Today marks one week of being off work. Or, rather, “working from home”. I have so much privilege in my life, I feel guilty a lot. I try to be aware of it, see it.
I honestly can’t see life going back to the way it was before all this hit. I now have a personal connection with COVID-19. A very dear friend I met via Burning Man is recovering. She was asthmatic before and got it. My grand daughter just got out of the hospital Saturday, they wouldn’t test her because she hadn’t travelled but we also believe she is asthmatic. She was supposed to go see a pulmonologist two weeks ago, when all this started and they called us the night before the appointment and told us not to come. Our goal is to get home oxygen prescribed so she doesn’t have to go to the hospital when she gets sick like that. There are sick people in hospitals, dammit.
She’s my daughters youngest, turned 3 last November and she has the most awesome hippy name ever. My daughter outdid herself on this one. Her name is Aurora Rainer. Their last name is Starry. She is the spitting image of my daughter when she was a baby and that often melts my heart. The sass is also strong with that one, so we are all in big trouble. Here’s an older picture of her. Think I am going to go back now and see if I can find the pics from when we moved the bus out to the property….
I’ve always been a happy person. I try really hard to be thankful for what I have, recognize my privilege, and understand how much worse life could be. I’ve been so lucky in my life, truly. I love my job. This last week has been hard for me because at times, I don’t know what to do with myself. I like going to work, contributing, feeling like I am making a difference on the college campus where I work and put in lots of volunteer time to make the world more beautiful.
In many ways, much of my life the last twenty years has prepared me for this moment. I participate in a perpetual experiment in temporary community known as Burning Man, for almost the last twenty years. We pack up everything we need to survive and head to the remote Nevada desert and build the states sixth largest city for seven days and then make it disappear, as though it never existed. I know how to be isolated. I say I am an extroverted introvert. I CAN public speak, perform, and be “on” all the time. But it takes a toll, then I need to isolate and recharge myself. I like being alone and generally am my own best friend. For me, the challenge hasn’t been “how am I going to do this?!” But rather, “ What if I like this new, slower life and world BETTER and what will I do to make my life stay that way?!” I am at a crossroads in my life too. I just passed 21 years at my job, was planning to work or buy out to 30 years and then retire to our off-grid property and maybe travel a couple times a year.
Here’s the thing. There are defining moments in time and history. Now, we all know it’s possible to work remotely. I have a part time gig with the folks who run that event and almost all their folks work remotely. Do I take a lesser retirement and try to find a gig or wait for one with this place? I’d be lying if I said the thought had not crossed my mind….
Do any of us believe, after this 30 days is over, or however long it takes, that things will just return to how they were before? There’s a very big part of me that sincerely hopes not. This is a huge wake up call for humanity. It’s easy to scoff and call something welfare or socialism when it’s still possible to deny the dire straits some people live in. Much less so when literally over 50% of our population is affected….service workers must go to work sick because of lack of leave, incomes disappearing because of closure. What will happen after?! I hope people who need to see these things do. Maybe we can use this as a jumping off point to do better….here’s hoping.
So, this is the first picture we took of what we thought, then, was the Kowpound. We were super scared and nervous. We had gone to scout it out. Hubs had a cool program for his phone that put those lines and stuff on there. But we were upset because THERE’S A CONTAINER ON THE PROPERTY!! That is not our container…..
We were getting ready to start doing the things! How could this happen? Did someone already squat on our land?!
It doesn’t really get more rural or barren than that. I mean, for reals….we had to get to the bottom of this!
Turns out, this sale had gone through a place called “Government Land Sales”, which sells off previously federally owned land. When I had first communicated about taking over the contract on what was my son’s property then, we had email exchanges between a guy who works at this place. He had sent us an internet link we had saved, and it went to this plot of land. On further investigation and after I’d sent the panicked email, the guy emails back and apologizes. I guess they recycle the links based on which pieces of land are still available. He actually had a few, so he had said which he thought was the best, and since this had all come up, they’d be willing to give us any of those available, for just like a hundred dollar transfer fee, or whatever.
Now, for folks who are saying “Wow, that’s great, but I’m sure that’s not affordable for me.” Government Land Sales, people. It is rural. There are no improved roads. Everything is dirty. BUT. buying ten acres of land out here was less than the cost of a car. It was literally about $10k. 10 acres. We aren’t sure yet, even still, if we will have water or how we will solve the water issue. It’s near a military installation, but as I’ve already said, it’s beautiful and we’ve fallen in love with it….
We are going to try to make it work….the story continues moving forward, but trying to get in the habit of writing again. Here’s another sunset, from the early days…
(this post was from Open Diary, my first online journaling home, and when they were awesome, they used to post a "theme of the week". This was my response to that weeks theme.)
Without a doubt, the most painful thing I have ever gone through is the process and act or losing this woman. This is me and my mom. She passed away in December of 2006. The year she left us, this was the picture we took on opening day of the Oakland A’s. She was a rabid Bay Area baseball fan, really a fan of all baseball.
She was ready to go, but that didn’t make it suck any less. She had a massive stroke that pretty much decimated 3/4’s of her brain. Had she had a milder stroke, she would have woken with us talking about amputation for one of her feet, that had become gangrenous due to complications from type 2 diabetes.
She was my best friend. I miss her every day. There are a million ways in which I wish she was still here, or that I could talk to her again. But not at the cost of her continuing to live or being more disabled than she became at the end. She told me, once, near the end, “If anything happens to me, you let me go. I HATE being disabled! I have been a strong independent woman my entire life and now I’m not. I am done with this life, when it’s my time, I am ready to go.”
After the stroke, we had no way to take care of her at home, so she had to go to a nursing home. I lived with her in the nursing home until she passed. The sad and terrible thing about that is that it was a relatively new facility at the time and I was the first person who ever stayed with their loved one so they would not have to die alone.
Yeah, that. You only get to help your parents and loved ones die with dignity once. Put the paperwork in place if and as soon as you can. We didn’t do that and it caused more pain in the end, I think. But I will always be glad I advocated for my mom and her wishes.
Peace.
What was the most painful thing you ever went through? What did you learn from it?
One thing I haven’t written about here. Just shy of six years ago, my son was active duty in the Army. He was on his third deployment to Afghanistan and I think he would agree the most difficult. He used to message me while I was at work, and we’d talk about things that didn’t have to do with war. He was starting to dream of life outside the military, and that turned to future plans. I think Americans have like, this innate sense of a need, in some respects to pioneer. I’m sure like our forefathers, the IDEA of pioneering or off-grid is often very different from reality.
My son bought some property site unseen in very rural county in which we live in Nevada. I drove out to scope it out for him. We would talk all sorts of plans for the future. I’d like to think it helped keep him sane during that last deployment…
As time and plans changed, he ended up getting out of the army and settling in Washington state. He bought a lovely house and was happy there. He now lives overseas, but just shy of four years ago, he told me he would need to sell the Nevada property. I told him not to, discussed with my husband, and we bought it from him.
There is something magical about this place. It’s so quiet. It’s in a valley with hardly any trees, but surrounded by mountains. We call it the Kowbus Kompound and Manifestation Station. As of now, it’s our off-grid retirement plan. I think this blog may turn in to my Kow Bus story land and documentation.
So much for the daily….or even weekly thing. But, here I am.
I have now been doing Keto for over a month. I believe my blood sugars have stabilized, which feels good. A couple of weeks ago, I started a “21-day fix” exercise program with my daughter. Health-wise, I am feeling good. I somewhat feel old….my body hurts. Cardio-wise, I feel like I am managing well, but man, working the muscles again makes them angry and sore =) And when it goes away, it starts to feel better =) We are going with that….
Earlier this morning, I was feeling super contemplative, I’ve been that way recently. As the wheel of the year turns, I have been ruminating lately on the passage of time. Seeing babies grow, people I know die, others getting cancer and facing uncertain futures….grand children, the passage of time goes ever onward. It’s all so fleeting.
I’m still feeling the contemplation, I felt kind of dumb on Saturday, came across Toy Story 3 and was balling my eyes out as Andy is getting ready to go to college, finds new homes for his toys. So much time, so many transitions…it all seems to go by so quickly sometimes. I want to remember it all, and I know I can’t. Precious things happening always.
My grand daughter recently spent a week in the hospital. Her older siblings each attend a different public school; the poor kid didn’t have a chance with a new bug coming home on an almost daily basis. She got RSV, but then it developed into pneumonia. Her little lungs, it was so hard for her to breathe, it was very sad. My daughter is such a trooper and handled things so well. I remember sitting in the hospital telling her about when her older brother had had pneumonia when he was a baby. Holy crap, that was 30 years ago!
I participated in the Women’s March in my area Saturday. I am so glad I did.
I’m in the middle…
I had an interesting interaction the other day, Friday. I was having lunch with a co-worker, we were seated in the middle of the restaurant, we were flanked by an elderly man on our left, who was sitting with a lady, and on the right, in the far back corner, another older white man. My co-worker was asking me some questions about the current state of the government, impeachment, and we were talking about the orange cheetoh shit gibbon. I was talking about the UK Parliamentary system, and how if a majority of both houses of parliament give a no-confidence vote, essentially, the Prime Minister loses their job. WHY DON’T WE HAVE SOMETHING LIKE THAT IN THE US?!? So, we went on to talk. I saw out of the corner of my eye, as I had been talking, that the man and woman on my left were occasionally shaking or nodding their heads. The man on the right was getting more rigid and angry as I spoke. When the couple went to leave, the man clapped me on the shoulder and said “Young lady, we agree with everything you just said, you are intelligent and well-spoken. We appreciate your words.” Not to be out done, the guy in the corner speaks up and says “Yeah? Well, I’m sitting here too, and I happen to have a different opinion. I happen to think our president is doing a great job and is the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. My opinion matters too.” I said “Absolutely. You are entitled to it.” Blink. Blink. There was nothing I was going to say that was going to change this man’s mind, and he wasn’t going to change my mind. My co-worker thanked me for my restraint, which allowed him his own, but it was a near thing. We were eating at a burrito place. At the Women’s March, I loved this sign….
Perhaps my favorite though, which perfectly exemplified what happened at lunch on Friday was “Uuuggh. Where do I even begin?!?” Or something similar. Where, indeed?!
Now, I am out of time to spend on this reflection.
I am thankful for all the things. Today and always. I recognize my privilege and strive to make the world a better place.
And I see that the last time I updated was almost a year ago. I just saw the automatic payment go through for the next year of writing. And I haven’t written. But I probably need to.
I’ve been on a mostly keto lifestyle now for the last year, and it’s gotten a lot easier. I would say that my downfall, always, is potatoes. I just love them so. hahaha….I am not someone who can do deprivation dieting, so I try to have them once a week. Sometimes I make that and sometimes I don’t, but I try to have small portions when I do, sometimes hahaha. I don’t really miss bread anymore. If I eat pizza, it’s largely gluten free. I really liked making the taco shells out of cheese but man, oh man, is that rich. I don’t take the time to do that all the time. BUT, if I’m craving bread or something like that, I’ll have a single slice, toast, or make keto bread, which tends to be very dense.
For about four years, I spent a lot of time working for a “friend” and helping him run his hostel. It really sucked a lot of my life. I allowed this and I think that’s an important lesson for me. I worked for almost free and willingly took on the responsibility of keeping this man’s business running. I don’t feel like he ever really appreciated my efforts or valued my contribution. A year ago, he tried to throw me away with the other trash, and he almost literally couldn’t because he didn’t even know all the things I did. Finally, things came to a breaking point not long ago. Another friend and I were running the thing, me being more behind the scenes, and I had said I would stay involved as long as he wasn’t. He came back full force, and some people got treated poorly, and I could no longer stay a part of that. I am really struck now about how miserable I was, how I put all this pressure on myself, and allowed my boundaries to constantly be violated and had no personal time, time with my family, but this was “important” to me. It feels so good not to be around there any more. It is and was a toxic environment, there’s so much to it, I can’t even. The most important thing is that I am seeing it now and moving on…I’ll always treasure the experience and the memories and friendships I formed, but am incredibly thankful to no longer be a part of that shit show. The relief is tangible.
In another sense, I may have jumped from the frying pan and into the fire. Not really, but I wanted to have a reason NOT to be able to backslip on my shiny new resolve…and, with hubby medically retired, I needed to see about making that money up. So I took another part time, hourly job with another place near and dear to my heart…Burning Man. For about 11 years, they did a thing called the “Global Leadership Conference”…where folks from around the world get together to talk about and see how the Burning Man ethos is being implemented and how people are interpreting it around the world. I’ve been involved with these folks since 2001, and have volunteered for them since 2002 in various capacities. Now, there is going to be an event in MY town that will be whatever the GLC is evolving in to. It’s fun, and I’m beyond excited….
Travel is a pretty constant in my life and I love that, I just wish I earned more leave. That statement is kind of ridiculous when I look at how much time I’ve had off this year, to do cool things, but it’s never enough =) Last month, I went on a Mexican Riviera cruise with my sis and her guy. Tomorrow, I leave for Germany, to spend the holiday with my son. I have a year old grand baby that I will be meeting for the first time. They live in Kuwait, my son works for Boeing, and they have to make Visa trips a couple times a year. I am beyond excited! And….I need to remember to update here more. I am going to go now, and do some other stuff….will try to write more. Here, have some Mexico…
Oh, and Happy Holidays, if you celebrate all or any of that rot. Soon, the Solstice, and the death of the Holly King and rebirth of the Sun King.
