Toxic

It's become enough.
Each fleeting moment of connectedness I feel.
Like skipping rocks on my breath.
Revive.

The honesty that comes out in partial sentences.
Another form of me.
Is it so strange to be attracted to something like that?

today...

my 13 seconds of fame...

you appeared in my dream last night...

 I love kale. I am currently attempting to grow some in my backyard, but I gotta say it isn't going very well. I made some kale for lunch yesterday, drizzled some tahini style dressing on it, ate it up. Yum.

On my to do list (leftover from last weekend) is the chore of clearing out the compost bin. I have intentionally stopped adding stuff to it to give what is in there a chance to break down. It was pretty much ready to go in the raised beds. Here is what it looked like:

black and white makes everything look awesome

Looks good in color as well. 

So, after emptying out the finished compost, I had to dump all the kitchen scraps I have been saving in my freezer. It was getting a little out of control, and I was running out of space.

I have been working on my goals list for next year.  I can't say that having a list does any good. For instance, here is my list from last year:

- Start a blog

- Try something new every week
- Send in one job application a week
- learn Spanish (with the aid of an, ahem, gifted copy of Rosetta Stone)
- Volunteer as a conversation partner at the library downtown (will help with the Spanish as well)
- Rejoin the Columbia art center so I can make pottery again
- Paint bedroom #2 and hallway

Other than starting the blog and the job application bit, I haven't done anything on the list. I tried Rosetta Stone for a few months but became quite bored with it. So, the conversation partner thing kinda fell away at the same time. I still haven't painted the bedroom, and now I want to add painting the living room to the list. I haven't joined the art center for financial reasons. Between the money I spent to remove fallen trees and getting my timing belt replaced on my car, I am tapped out for cash and have actually been carrying a balance on my credit card for a few months. My first goal is to get that gone.

A girl can dream though....Things I want to learn next year:

Fiddle. Starting in January/February I want to take a few fiddle/violin lessons so I can learn the basics, and then see what happens from there. I found a local fella who gives lessons pretty cheaply. 

Knitting. I can try this on my own, and it seems pretty inexpensive. 

Spanish. Eh....

That's it boys and girls. What are your goals?

Steady

Press at the press conference.

Occupy Update: 1. 19 people were arrested for staying on the state house grounds after our brilliant governor said that protesting after 6PM was against the law. 2. A few weeks later the charges were dropped by the solicitor for, uh, being bullshit. 3. There is also a civil lawsuit pending against Nikki Haley for her poorly thought out decision to illegally evict the peaceful protestors. 4. A state judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the governor disallowing her from evicting the protesters, and also allowed them tents. 5. The governor asked that the case be removed to federal court.

Lawyers and protesters after the charges were dismissed.

Peanut!

Not sure the water should look like this.

 Word was announced that Walmart has plans to build three new Walmart or Walmart Express stores within the city limits. It's a horrible idea. The largest site is located in my neighborhood. They want to basically build over an already troubled creek, the Rocky Branch Creek. The one that contributes to the 5 Points flooding every time there is a rainstorm. Because it is already over-worked. So they want to just fuck it up a little bit more. Some of us are going to head over to the creek today to clean it up. There is a ton of trash in it. The hope is that a greenway could be put there, instead of a Walmart. Sounds like a good idea to me!

Brains!!!

before I forget....

Some days these weeks seem like years. I play them slow.

Yesterday my steady gaze was one game I played. Those tempered words, the adjectives I've thrown around when you aren't around are revealing. I respond to your voice in front of me but I don't make noise.

I used to be alive. When years ago words flowed in my veins like fire. I remember that warmth.

Only now...I feel like I've been exhaling for years. I've tried gasping but it does no good. I've been submerged for decades, inside for a lifetime. Slam fists against my ribs. It will barely leave a bruise. That's what happens when your blood starts to cool.

Renewal

I spotted some Spotted Dick

These past few weeks have been pretty nuts. I don't really even feel like going into it all, but all sorts of strange things have been happening. Family stuff. Work stuff. The stuff I do when I should be working. The stuff I don't do when I should and the stuff I shouldn't ever try. It's all there in the last few weeks. 

Chaos usually motivates me. Give me calm seas and I settle into complacency. Shake my world up a little bit and I will try to keep the ball rolling, at least for a little while. It's a good thing for the most part. Especially since the last few months have not been worthy of my Tackle 2011 project. I blame the knee in part, but I think I also used that as an excuse longer than I should have and for more than I should have. That said, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go on my first jog since my little MCL issue. Jog went well, though I am totally out of shape and I didn't push it past a mile. I was sore as could be, and so the next day I went on a bike ride with a friend in Charleston, and did some yoga. So, in addition to a sore knee, my thighs, ass, calves, arms, neck, and wrists all hurt as well. I am going to try to run again tomorrow, so I can totally overdo it. 

I am also working on some austerity measures in my day to day life. I am working on refinancing my house at a significantly lower interest rate (cutting the rate more than half, actually) and for 15 years instead of 30. All that and my payment will still be less than it is now, though just barely. Today I worked on my first batch of homemade laundry detergent!!! I found a recipe online for vegan detergent and I modified it just a tad.

1 C Borax, 1 C Washing Soda, 1 bar Dr. Bronner's castile soap, and ta-da! Less than 5 cents per load.

I took the detergent for a spin today and my thoughts so far are pretty positive. Most of my sheets and towels are white and I am always struggling to keep them bright. I hate the idea of using bleach, but I do use it just to get the whites brightened from time to time. However, one wash with this detergent got my sheets whiter and brighter than I can ever remember! It was pretty amazing. The only downside is that the laundry doesn't really have that laundry smell. Not that I like the overly perfumed detergent smell, but even the Seventh Generation detergent leaves a pleasant and light smell. Oh well. Maybe some essential oils will jazz things up?

It's not total austerity over here though...I splurged and bought an iPhone. I almost want to say that additional money spent on the monthly iPhone plan is less than the value added, so it's almost like I got a deal or something.

I ended the day making a brand new recipe! Never before! And it was fucking amazing, if I do say so myself. Roasted butternut squash with sage (from the garden!) and pine nuts over pasta. So freaking amazing. It wasn't too complicated, though it did require planning since I roasted the squash. Definitely one to save for D&C.

Sappy post that makes me sound like a hippie

Inspiration.

I’ve always held out hope for this small city. I have struggled with it and grown tired of it, tried to get away from it only to find myself back in it. It’s a weird and seductive place, and I have lived here longer than I have lived anywhere. It is the city of my home and my hometown.

I have recently fallen in love with it all over again. With Columbia, and with about 19 people.  And it all happened last night. Well, it's been brewing for awhile, but these Occupy Columbia kids have really been tugging the heart strings. Last night was an intense night. Around 4 PM the governor held a press conference and told the Occupiers, who have been protesting at the state house for 24 hours a day for 33 days, that they were being evicted. In an hour and a half. Things moved quickly. Eviction was at 6 PM. I got off work and headed over to the state house to meet with the Occupiers. Certain people wanted to stand their ground and stay there after 6 PM. They knew it was going to end in arrest. As 6 approached, this amazing group of men and women sat around the base of the Confederate Flag (ironic?), linked arms, and waited. 6 PM came and went. The surrounding law enforcement officers didn't move. 6:15 came, and around the side of the state house emerged about 20 more officers. Not in riot gear. No weapons that I could see. They formed a line and announced that it was time to go. No one moved. Not the 19 with arms linked, not the people standing around. Rain started coming down, and then it started pouring down. Wind blowing like mad. Leaves hitting us in the face. The police started to move forward, keeping their line, moving everyone towards the road. After all others were removed from the lawn, the officers went up to the protesters remaining, arms still linked. Asked them one by one to stand to be arrested. They did. One by one the protesters were led away. One by one.

It was one of the most intense things I have witnessed. 

Then things got nuts, and I ended up at the jail at 11 PM for bond hearings with an attorney who drove in from Charleston, another who drove from Anderson, and one who just called and offered to help. Everyone was released on a PR bond. When we came out of the bond hearing around 1AM, the lobby was filled with friends and family who came in support. 

The upshot is that these people, all of them, have humbled me and inspired me and reminded me of something I haven't seen in a while. Hope. Idealism. Showing up when it's time to show up. It's so important.

waiting for something to happen.

this doesn't do it justice

after the bond hearings, those who came to the jail in support of those arrested.

Good, honest, genuine people joining together for a common cause for the common good. It's a beautiful thing.

Picture Blog

No explanation needed.

White Echinacea

She is a nut

Emma killing stuffed ducks

My desk at work

South Carolina State House

If you look closely, you can see the 99%

Commerce

So, I've been trying to help out the Occupy Columbia crowd from time to time. Today I am going to give a Know Your Rights "Teach In" and then do a Legal Observer Training. All this makes me sort of miss being involved with NLG. SC doesn't have a chapter....which gives me ideas of taking on more than I can chew.

But! I really just wanted to blog so I could show everyone this:

Outside the lines

Whew. So, I took a break there not because I was particularly busy (which I was), but more because my brain seems to have been in overdrive over the last month or so, and writing about it all, or even thinking about writing, made everything spin a little bit faster. So, in an effort to spare my reader and myself, I took on hibernation as a renewed hobby. The hibernation isn't over (let's face it, it is here to stay), but the time has come to start posting blogs again somewhat on the regular.

Back when I re-started this blog in December of last year, one of my goals was to use it to force me to be accountable when it comes to actively seeking self-improvement. So, based on an unfortunate series of events over the last month, and because my current job will require it on a regular basis, I have decided my next move it to try to conquer my fear of public speaking. This is what I know right now:

If I find myself addressing City Council unexpectedly, my voice shakes like I am about to cry, my hands shake, and I generally look like an idiot.

If I find myself addressing a group of strangers in my peer group, my voice is better but my legs shake uncontrollably.

If I know I will have to speak in public, I will lose sleep the night before, and in the moments before I am to start speaking, my heart will POUND in my chest and I will want to die.

I realize that public speaking is the #1 fear of most people. My only wish is that the symptoms of my fear/nervousness could be tamed a bit, so they weren't so obvious. The funny thing is, if I can take a break between speaking, I am fine the second time around. For instance, if I am in a panel discussion, the first time I speak it's horrible, but then I am fine assuming there is a break in time between me speaking (when they ask someone else a question, for instance). So, I have hope.

In completely unrelated news: I have an appointment this afternoon with Shannon to add a little color to my arm. Jeremiah is looking lonely flying on my arm all alone. So, I am going to go with color.  It's a first for me. Something I didn't think I would ever do. Here is to growth, and doing things you didn't think you would ever do.

Ugh. So cute.

We taught ourselves denial.

We have emigrated. We are covered in a  skinned frame of bone and muscle. Covered in a landscape of the native born.

Refuges not amongst, but without. So far down the inside we have lost touch with the we of before. The we that is now you but not us.


Inside of the inside, there is more of a parallel then you might imagine, though you never would.

We are the imperfect actors, attempting the part of the native born, in this stream of traffic and noise. We mimic. We cover ourselves with evidence of our surroundings.

We drop hints. We leave a trail. We blend the best we can. We hide behind a shell of walls and windows. Protected by our eye contact. Dependent on the myopic.
 We are self-taught in the art of denial so we can survive in a foreign land. 

Me? It doesn't take much. Every fraud has a tell.

I flinched when you touched me. 

Sunday phone call with Mom...

Warning. This is going to be personal.

In my Sunday evening conversation with my mother we were talking about, uh, weight loss, of all things. Somehow it started us talking about a rarely discussed topic, the one that had inspired my mother's most significant weight loss to date- the death of my father. Now, the topic of my father has come up once a year or so for the last 10 years....Before that it was a rarely discussed thing. My father died over 20 years ago. I was 10, my brothers were 5 and 12. While all sorts of chaos ensued in the years after he died, enough to fill many a blog post, tonight's conversation was about food. Food and death. My mother lost a lot of weight in the year after my father died. In fact, she turned into a machine. She didn't eat, didn't really talk...in fact, I don't even remember her being around for the year after he died. Maybe I was dealing with my grief in my own 10 year old way, but I remember almost nothing from after his funeral in DC to moving from Minnesota to Texas.  Seriously, over a year of my life is almost entirely gone from my memory.

My mom wanted to know if there was something else she could have done for us. But what do you say to your mother about something that happened over 20 years ago? There is no point in offering alternatives for what happened in the past. No point at all. No point in mentioning that you wished someone had talked about him, confirm my belief that my brothers and I had had a father. Somehow us kids learned some unspoken rule that required us to pretend he never existed.

All this came from a conversation about portion control. Because apparently my mother not only stopped eating, but sort of stopped feeding us as well. I don't remember that, but I've already established I don't remember much.

I know so little about this man. Tonight I found out that he liked the mountains more than the beach. It may seem like an insignificant nugget of information, but to me it was pretty significant. My basket of information is pretty empty, after all.

This probably seems way too personal for a blog, but it seems more like talking about a book I once read. Anyway, the upshot of the conversation with my mother was my brilliant suggestion that since it worked so well the first time, perhaps she should implement the "someone just died" diet. She laughed. And you people wonder why I am so twisted!

Proof.

Modifications

I have gotten to this point somehow. Is it possible to feel like you have come so far and at the same time haven't moved an inch? I have memories of participation, because one part of me knew well enough to know what would happen if I stopped moving. I force noise when the quiet seems too settled. I will act even if I feel like stone. I will stand and speak. I will move forward. I will cause disruption.

I will continue to do these things because I know enough now to know I will thank myself for it later.

So much has happened it will take too long to explain.

Sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day.

Sometimes.....

Sometimes I feel like the unluckiest lucky person around. And yes, I am coming back to my blog so I can bitch a little. It's been a great month. It's been a crappy summer. But it's also been a pretty spectacular summer, and a very crappy month. I guess this is life. The ebb and flow, the up and down. The good with the bad. But the bad is very bad, and the good is very good. And it all exists up there to form some sort of blah blah blah.

Trust me. I know how awesome I have it compared to many. I mean, in the last month I spent a weekend in LA, a weekend in Pittsburgh, soon a trip to Asheville. All with some of my favorite people. It's been great, and I've loved it, and I feel so privileged to have such great friends and get to do such great things.

But it's so easy to talk about the good stuff. So easy, and that is usually what people want to hear anyway. But the bad stuff won't stop coming towards me. When I pay attention, I feel like I am drowning. So I try to not pay attention, so I can breath and open my eyes. If only that worked, because it doesn't.

I used to choose to keep myself at arms length, but now it seems like I don't have the choice. I have secrets I can't tell. I have questions and debates going on in my head but the only person up there is me. Because I feel like a broken record, and I can't seem to get ahead of myself. I just play catch up and wait for the next setback, the next disaster. They are usually hard to foresee because even my worst case scenarios aren't this gruesome.

But hey, I probably don't have thyroid cancer. 

I am so lucky. I am totally fucked.

It's LA

hiatus for now

But I will be back.....

Saturday...

Hurricane Sky

Living on the perimeter of a hurricane has some benefits. We had a beautiful sunset last night. Today the wind is blowing a nice breeze and the humidity has gone somewhere else for the moment. I am going to head into work in a little bit, and I think I might get there by bike. My knee has improved in the last few weeks and I have been able to take Emma on walks and I think I might be able to manage the fixed gear. I am a little nervous about clipping in, but I think I can manage without too much pain. Let's hope at least.

Work has kicked my ass this week. I am the project manager for a grant research project, and the project involves a selection of folks from the community. I have about 37 people who are my research, uh, subjects. Sort of. But some of them live out of town, so that means plenty of evening and weekend involvement on my part. It's okay. Maybe my the end of this project (next year) I will have accrued a significant amount of comp time and I can take a month off or something. And then move to the mountains. hehe.

September is going to be an interesting month, with deadlines for this project and some travel to other towns and cities. Friends and mountains and road trips and good times. I am looking forward to it. I just have to be patient. Very patient. For a lot of things. The coming fall is going to stir up my urge to burrow, my urge to make great change, my urge to not suppress my urge to be stirred up. Whatever that means.

For now, I am going to suit up for my trek on the bike downtown. Wish me luck.

this atmosphere is made of sound

i missed the earthquake today. i was completely unaware, even while having a conversation about the rumbling of the earth. i was told the earth moved, that the ground was shaking beneath me. but i didn't notice a thing.


everything around seems so surreal sometimes. the ties that bind are getting thin. i am playing the game here. day in and day out. i let this place make me.

cooler nights and a summer breeze, my dog acts out her dreams. i keep time by the rise and fall of her ribs.

the whole season is nothing but a reflective surface...

somebody from my past said something to me recently that i keep rolling over in my brain. we were catching up after a few years of requisite silence after, well, the main thing that sometimes necessitates a few years of requisite silence. i was asking him how things were, what he was up to. he said he was doing more of that and less of this. when i asked him if it was by choice or by circumstance, he said that they are the same thing, that we choose our circumstances. for whatever reason, i found the statement to be fairly profound and i have been thinking about it quite a lot.

so this is what i have been thinking. if he is correct, if our particular circumstances are all a consequence of choice, choices that we make all the time, never knowing the ultimate results but always hoping for the best...then i really am my own worst enemy. i don't mean to be dramatic, but i am not shy in admitting that i am not content with where i am in life. but my comfortable silence and solitude are a result of choices i have made, even if somewhere deep down in my heart of hearts i know that is not ultimately what i want for myself.

but what do i do? if my default is designed to maintain this status quo, and i want to make my life better, do i make choices that are not in line with what i have done in the past? do i take uncomfortable risks? do i commit to overt acts that are unnatural to me? do i trust in my instinctual fight or flight, do i continue to hide under these rocks? do i walk away? do i maintain this path? and if i do, what am i walking towards?

i tend to lose the battle between the theory and the reality. historically. i used to be prone to taking risks, not always the best kind, but the results have never been catastrophic either. the biggest thing that has changed in my life since then is this double barrel of debt and a law license. having those pointing at me with every major (and minor) decision makes it very difficult to actually make a decision.

since my circumstance is a result of my choice, and since i want to change my circumstances, i guess i have to start making different choices. that seems pretty scary....

One less thing.

An amazing thing happened today. I woke up this morning and got out of bed. I was walking down the stairs and I realized that my knee was barely hurting at all. It was amazing! After limping and being in pain with the slightest move, finally it seems to be improving. This makes me very happy. So happy that I decided to celebrate by taking Emma on a walk after work. I made it nearly 1/2 mile before the limp set in. I will take it. My mood has been nothing but rainbows and puppy dogs all day, and I think the foul mood that had settled over me is going to dissolve. For a little while at least. whew. Such a relief.

All thanks to my (no longer) bum knee.