tough times, still sweet

spent the weekend out at the bus in the woods. even though it was kind of crappy in a way, it still rocked. camping is like that.

the dumpling is cracking out yet another tooth, which makes her very sad and prone to cold or crispy foods. the queen put up the solar panels to charge hank's extra battery, which when we live full-time in hank will power our computers, coffee grinder, etc. yay solar power.

i ate too much watermelon and got indigestion so harsh i vomited several times. eventually, the queen's parents donated some antacids, and fifty minutes later i felt sweet relief. but it parked me for the night, so the queen and chaos had to continue the fire-side party. who knew watermelon could be so perilous?

yeah, chaos came out both nights and slept on the old car seat/bench that is parked out by the fire. he claims the comforts of hank are too strong for his taste; he prefers frost and ash.

i'm hoping my anxiety levels drop somewhat, though i am impressed with my anxious accomplishments: depression is way less productive than anxiety. when i worked for someone else, i was indifferent, but now that i work for the three bees, being too anxious to sit down means i get more sewing done, in a cleaner house, with food cooking - that i don't eat because i feel too stressed out :(

in direct correlation to more stress, i spent the dumpling's nap on saturday reading two thirds of a terrifying book about cougars, which means i spent two hours saturday night being unable to sleep, re-thinking all the stories about dead children. i was hoping the book would be informative, and it was, but the information is terrifying. basically, there is very little preparation one can make. and they are probably in your urban area anyway, especially if you live near a river or some forest. they love your children, and the only thing you can do is be a bigger, meaner cat. good luck with that.

anyway. north country fair is coming up, and i intend to shake it all loose. 

abiding

i'm enjoying the first rush of dudeism.

my favourite quote so far is from an article called "dudeism for chicks":


this is the great lesson of the big lebowski;
all of us have parts that are broken
and some of us are sociopaths.


awesome. that kind of sums it up right there. 

merlot and the rain

we did our weekend at the farm: in the woods, with hank and the awesomes and chaos (who only broke his own banjo this time). chaos' sister was there too, and i finally have a name for her. she is the river. she calls me the rock, so it really works.

a few other people came through, and there were only minor burns and bruises. the dumpling evolved her techniques of eating and being cute. we saw tiny frogs and one deer. looking all pristine and unsuicidal (this is in relation to deer being large, suicidal rabbits when seen from the road, not about the suicide of my friend a couple of weeks ago). gaia was out in force.

we are planning to be out with hank most weekends this sumer. this coming weekend, we are going to bring the cat! adventure is everywhere! it's important to acclimatize the cat to bus-living for eventual extremist hippie plans. chaos was wishing for a tribal lifestyle; he would be good at it too. flamenco, hatchets and a large beard can take you places.

other than that, it seems there are tiny sprouts in the garden, and another plot is severely overdue to capture all the herbs n stuff i sprouted indoors. i have littered sunflower seeds all over the bare patches of the yard, and hopefully they take pity on us and glow the place up :)

fieldinbloom is working on an album and wants me to throw down some spoken word about liberation and rising from the ashes of tragic consumerism and earth-destruction. it's been a while since i opened that door, but for this friend, it's an opportunity, not a chore. i can embody this phoenix. 

anger, yours and mine

i need to figure out my stuff around holding onto other people's emotions.

specifically, anger and frustration. for some reason, these emotions were taboo in the household growing up. so when people raised their voices, it was a seriously bad deal.

now that i think of it, i wonder if actually, i made it a bad deal. maybe other people in my household just raised their voices, felt frustrated and angry, and then worked it out. maybe they didn't carry it around like i did. like i still do.

other people's moods are just that. but then, emotions can be so... easily absorbed? so... fluid. they can just wash right over me, and get in my ears and up my nose.

i think my problem is actually that i take their anger personally. when someone is sad i don't look for a cause in myself. why do i blame myself for other people's bitchiness? that is complete and utter crap (trying to swear less). taking other people's bad moods personally makes living with people who are easily frustrated rather traumatizing. i remember this from experiences in cloud nine, and at the speakeasy (that's what was going on in that post).

so, now that i have identified the problem, let us stare blankly at the wall for some time.

ugh. okay, first, try to notice when this is happening. what do i do? try and appease. okay, first step, don't appease. need to do something else instead. opposite of appease is incite, which i'm not sure is wise for anyone, but might provide comic relief in my head.

"yeah, you're feeling pissed off? well fuck you!"

so much for less swearing.

okay, so what is a neutral action? on a side note, since i think a neutral action is no action at all except some kind of non-violent communication like "i see that you are swearing and hitting this inanimate object," did you know that one of the synonyms for appease is to 'be enough'? there is some deep shit stuff in there, which i am going to just cruise on by for now.

you know, i should probably just cop to my own anger. then maybe other people's anger might not scare me so much.

i am not sure how to own my anger. i can feel it. is that it? sometimes it helps motivate me to accomplish things. in a bit of a fury, sure.

i think other people's anger bothers me because of the loss of control. i fear what they can and will do to me. i am not a very good judge of when someone is going to, say, strike out physically. so i live in fear when other people are angry. do i take it personally, or do i simply seek to appease out of fear?

perhaps the question is 'how do i deal with being afraid of other people's anger?'

take up martial arts? ha, i just misspelled that 'marital arts'. maybe it is a hint. 

garbled

i have two letters planned, and i find myself lurking on social websites instead. had a chat with a friend in another province who didn't make it in to the memorial. i seem to be connecting more with people who are further away.

sometimes down time lends itself to good. other times, just cute things and weird stuff, but not real process.

a new day now. trying to put my grief into action. i need to garden, but i'm resisting. like washing the dishes is therapy, when it isn't. i'm still hiding.

but i have to blog. because i want the pigeon mistress to see this comic. this whole blog may exist merely as a vehicle for secret messages to her. the entries before we met could be fiction, establishing me as a random, one-time co-worker so she would not suspect. creeped out yet? ha ha. sigh.

no, it's just another way to avoid writing about what i need to write about.

today i tried to do the daily stuff. i even mowed some lawn. i also wrote and mailed one of the two letters. it was a challenge to write, but it loosened the weight.

the dumpling is feeling better, so it's easier to say bright and cheerful things. sometimes that works for the inside too. not so much today.

tomorrow, i garden. i want to be exhausted at night. 

...

my friend committed suicide monday night.

i had known her for about ten years. she gave good hugs. we shared long ones. she danced. brighid and i stayed with her when we went up to the city last winter. before that, i hadn't seen her since the summer, at a festival. she sat in hank with her cute blonde friend, and we all chatted.

when i stayed with her at her hobbit cottage, we sat up late one night and drank a bit of scotch, and talked. we talked about a lot of things, including depression. she spoke of how she had been traveling in her youth and got really, really sick. after that, she lived with depression. that's just the way it was. she tried a lot of things, and they would work for a bit, but then.

she was doing pretty well at the time, had a book that was reminding her. i forget the title but i can see it. i remember looking at the book, and it seemed familiar, like i had seen it years ago when i lived in cloud nine. i remember wondering if it would help me with my own depression.

she seemed optimistic. she seemed tired.

we wanted to play cribbage, but she couldn't find the board. she looked really hard, too. she was pretty focused on it. eventually we played just keeping score on paper.

i wonder who will take her three cats. 

pretty much a waste of your time

i'm really blogging so that you will go look at this hilarious site. cream cheese as deodorant. thank you. i needed that moment in my day.

the dumpling enjoys her socks. when she sees me bring out the socks, she puts her feet out for me to put them on. she then pulls them off, dangles them over her feet, waits for them to reassemble... today she pulled purple socks off while on the potty, then stuffed them down in there. oh yes. those socks went into the diaper pail.

she spends most of her time sleeping, eating and making waste, and it takes me back, thousands of years, to when that's what most of us did with our days.

evolution.
evolution?
no, of course... it's just that we're so busy.

the queen is down south, picking up mr awesome's brother. he's in the province/prairies for a while, visiting family. the boys will likely be out late tonight, and i've got into a nice bottle of the queen's homemade merlot, aged an extra six weeks in an oak cask, then a while on our shelf. the dumpling snores on (not really, but murmurs occasionally. two new teeth coming in). she had a good day; watermelon, walking, wriggling'n'giggling. she has been practicing words, in a gently expressive way that of course warms my heart.

going to go finish re-alpahbetizing the vinyl. go look at that site at the top of the entry. spend too much time there. listen to air while you're doing it. 

things that make me happy

it's grey again, but i had my one cup of coffee, and now i'm drinking twig tea. i listened to some nice piano recital music today. some good chopin. patient, happy music. makes the weather its bitch, if you will.

the dumpling says "baby" now, and coos when she sees baby faces in books. she also cheerfully greets her own reflection in things like the dryer and the overflow drain in the bathtub. "hiiii!"

my mom has been spring cleaning out her attic and had a pile of things for me to look through this weekend, including a picture of my childhood cat, my old report cards and my grandma's travel bathroom suitcase (with her initials). what a score... i'm still debating what to do with it; original purpose, sewing case (i sewed last night! also made me very happy!), or one of the many ideas i saw while looking for a picture of a suitcase that most reminded me of my new treasure. it could be a dollhouse, a chair, a cat bed (that the cat would no doubt ignore, so too bad olive)... yay!

yeah, the sewing was good. i mended a shirt of the queen's (i'm going to pile up his mended items and give them to him for his birthday, ha), and made a skirt. i have another skirt pinned to do tonight!

our weekend was good. very full, but some chilling out time in various places with lovely company. we stayed at our friend fieldinbloom's, and i sat in his special chair. he has an extra surface that hangs over his front entry way. it sits just behind the kitchen counter. most people would put plants there, but not our fieldinbloom.