In Full Spring!

Today is a wonderous day. I am sitting under the blooming lilac and apple trees in our small side yard, enjoying the coolness of the shade on this warm day, as well as the scent of lilac all around me. It is the Saturday of my work week, a much needed weekend.

Lucas and I awoke relatively early today and had our first meeting with our wedding caterer. We then hiked through the snow in our t-shirts up a steep mountain that edges the snow covered Castle Lake. I almost took a polar plunge as we tentatively crossed the lake - my foot fell through the snow into the icy water!



And now, I have color on my skin, my legs feel like jelly, and I am soooo happy that spring is here - it sure is amazing! The temperatures are quickly rising, the flowers are blooming all around, and the trees are starting to fill out with leaves. Finally, we can start to plant some hardy items in the garden and get some other starts going indoors. The weather is allowing us to explore the lay of the land more, in our style. And as the beauty of the area tip-toes to it's summer fullness, we begin to understand more deeply why we are here - this land inspires creativity, activity, meditation, and awe. It brings us closer to ourselves and deepens our connection to the sacred sides of life.



This past week was the final class in the free Infant Massage Series that I taught. It was a wonderful class, and wonderful to see how the babies and parents in the class continually opened and relaxed during the course of the series. Even I found the class to be one of the most relaxing points during my week, just being in the same room as 5 little ones blissed from massage. I learned a lot from the process of teaching the series, and look forward to creating another series in the future.


My job at the Crystal Room is working out great. I am finally starting to feel comfortable with most of my tasks and feel that I am doing well at them. Although it can be stressful at times, the days go by fast and I am grateful to have work. AND, I am lucky enough to have this amazing spot, Sisson Meadow, to eat lunch at every day, just a few blocks away from the Crystal Room:



Between working at the Crystal Room and in the studio, planning our wedding, and taking care of daily chores, life has taken on a new level of fullness. I highly delight in my days off, and the little sprinklings of nature and music and friends that I am able to enjoy during them.

The End, or Just the Beginning: Day 40!!!! of 40 Days

The time has come to conclude this lil' daily project of mine. I sure hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I have. And despite my ramblings of looking forward to the 40 days being over, I have enjoyed the project greatly as well.

Thank you thank you thank you for reading all that I have been writing! Really, thank you. It has been a pleasure to share more of my life with you, more of my inner thoughts and experiences. It means a lot to me to have the support of family and friends in this sharing. So, again, I thank you for visiting my "home," for warming me up inside.

My intentions with the days and months to come regarding this blog are simple. I am going to keep writing. Most likely I will be writing on more of a weekly basis than a daily basis. But I will keep writing. I will keep my door open, keep my self open to you.

And for tonight....I am blogging earlier than normal while Lucas cooks a delicious smelling African vegetable nut soup, sipping on a Pipeline Porter (out of Kona Brewing - yum!), enjoying the lingering evening light outside and the scent of spring on the air, celebrating my first payday today and the gratification of doing well at my new job, and preparing to spend the rest of my evening with my love! Life is damn good!

New Balance: Day 39 of 40 Days

It feels like balance is finally returning to my life, somewhat anyway. A newer version of balance. It feels good to be busy again, living a full life, and to be finding all the little spaces to fill with good things. Balance is the key, balance is always the key.

I approach my job, which is not the type of job I would typically try to get, with a sense of curiosity and interest. What I am learning to do is quite complicated, with a steep learning curve. But I am learning it, and my brain feels good under the new stimulation. I can even say that, surprisingly, I am enjoying the work thus far, because of the challenge and because it is using my brain in a way it hasn't been used in a long time. Thus, it feels like a healthy activity.

When I leave work, I let it go. Literally. When I walk out the front door at the end of the day, I make a conscious effort to exhale deeply and and with my breath I leave the events of the day at work. I intentionally try to not bring home any stress or lingering tasks. Home is for other things, for other parts of my self.

With limited free time, I have to fit in my other interests and necessary responsibilities here and there, where ever they may possibly be sneaked in. This is where the balance comes in. I cannot expect myself to clean the whole house in one day. I do a little one day, a little another. If I try to do ceramics every single day, other parts of my self get neglected. I have to moderate myself. Just like I need to moderate how many cookies I eat or how often I drink wine, I need to moderate how much time I spend watching movies, reading novels, doing artwork, cooking and cleaning. To make time for it all, I need to live my life in bits and pieces.

Lucky I am to have a partner in crime, a partner in living. We help each other out. We have started to take turns cooking dinner. This has been awesome. Every other night, while Lucas cooks, I stretch or go for a walk or take care of things that need to be taken care of, and then am fed a warm delicious meal. The alternate nights, I enjoy cooking a healthy meal for us both to delight in, while Lucas does what he needs or wants to do. We support each other in maintaining balance, help and encourage each other to have time to do all the things we love. This is good good stuff.

As I said a few days ago, one of the things I have learned during these past 39 days is that blogging every day is not in balance for me. Blogging this often is not moderation for me. I have done it every day as I committed to, and I am glad that I have. I have learned from the process. I have learned that it is too much, and if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have learned that. AND, as always, I have no regrets about it either. It was a worthwhile experience, it helped me learn and grow, and I am happy for that. It is part of the continual process of learning how to establish balance.

And now it is about time to readjust and realign and reestablish a new sense of balance.

Kraut Time: Day 38 of 40 Days

Tonight I started a new batch of Sauerkraut and thought that maybe you would like to join me in the adventure of fermenting vegetables. Not only are fermented vegetables super tasty and easy to make, they are also packed full of enough amazing health benefits to be considered one of the Superfoods.

The process of making sauerkraut was developed as a means to help preserve vegetables during the winter months in both China and Germany. Immigrants and military found it a helpful way to carry vegetables along during their endless journies, and discovered that they stayed healthier because of it. Rich in vitamin C, Calcium, other vitamins and minerals, and fiber, Sauerkraut is a cancer fighter useful in treating and preventing many forms of cancer. It boosts the immune system, decreasing rates of colds and flus, skin problems, and weight gain. Because it is packed full of benefical bacteria such as lactobacilli, sauerkraut is a powerful digestive aid, and can even help cure an upset tummy, candida, and other chronic digestive issues.

In our home, we like to have a couple of bites before we start dinner, when we feel like we've eaten too much, or when we feel like we are coming down with a cold. Sauerkraut is a great addition to sandwiches, tacos, salads, and more.

The process is quite easy. While cabbage is the traditional veggie to make sauerkraut with, any vegetable can be used, as well as spices, herbs, and seaweeds. The ingredients may be chopped finely or coarsely. The finer they are chopped, the faster the fermentation process will be complete enough to eat the kraut. It is also traditional to use salt to aid in the process. Salt will draw water out of the veggies, providing an appropriate bath for them to ferment in. Salt will also help prevent bad bacteria from entering the process, acting as a preservative. Some people choose to not use salt, and some use quite a bit. The more salt you use, the longer will be your fermentation process. If you need to watch your salt intake, you may choose to not use salt, or very little, in your kraut mixture. Be assured that there are other ways to prevent the rare bad bacteria, ie mold.

This is what I made my kraut with tonight:

1 green cabbage, finely sliced
1 carrot, shredded
3 Tbls shredded red beet
1 tsp caraway seeds
2 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 Tbls + 1 tsp salt (you really don't need more than this, though you might play with using less. A general rule of thumb is to use 3 Tbls per 5 pounds of veggies.)

* Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Use your fist to punch the mixture. This helps break down the fibers enough so that the vegetables will start to release it's water and the salt and bacteria can start it's action.

* Put a couple of handfulls of the mixture into a glass container. I use a tall crystal vase. Use a wooden spoon to beat/tamp down the mixture into the bottom of the container, compacting it. Add a couple more handfuls. Tamp down. Repeat till all of the mixture is in the vase.

* Next, you will need to put something heavy on top of your mixture to keep it weighed down. My grandmother apparently put her kraut in a crockpot and weighed it down with a brick. In my vase, I nest another smaller glass vase filled with water on top of my kraut.

* Cover with a towel or cheesecloth.

* In the morning, check out what is happening in your container. You should see that a lot of water has been drawn out of the vegetables, depending on what veggies you used. If your veggies are not submerged in water, add enough water so that the veggies are submerged an inch below the surface of the water. No veggies should be sticking out of the water, in order to prevent mold growth. Recover with your cloth, which will help keep fruit flies out.

* Now the magic starts to happen. Somehow, bacteria from the air seeps into the water and then into the veggies and starts the fermentation process. In three days, give the kraut a taste. If you see a film on the surface of the water, skim it off before dipping in to scoop out some kraut. If the kraut still tastes quite salty, it isn't done.

* Check the kraut every 2-3 days to see what it's progress is. You will know it is done when it isn't super salty, when it tastes good, and when it has that familiar fermented flavor. I usually find that my kraut is to my liking about a week to 10 days after I started it. It is fine to let it go longer than this, it will just develop a stronger flavor, and odor. With a little experimentation, you will find what length of fermentation is to your liking.

* When it tastes done, place the kraut in a glass jar, and store in the fridge.

* Enjoy!!

Small Town: Day 37 of 40 Days

Riding the bus is always an interesting experience, different depending on where you are, but always interesting. Today, Lucas took the car down to Redding to run some errands, and I took the bus up to Mt. Shasta to spend the day in the studio.

We are lucky that there is a bus in these parts. It runs from our little town of Dunsmuir all the way up to Yreka, the county seat, connecting all of the little towns along the way. The bus runs from around 7 in the morning until 6 at night, roughly every hour, from Monday through Friday. My experiences riding this bus are more similar to those of the country buses in Mexico around Tepoztlan than any bus I have ridden in the States, yet far different too.

The closest bus stop to our house is a 15 minute walk away. There is only 1 scheduled pick-up at this stop: 7 in the morning. If you want to be picked up at a later time, you can call the county transportation office and request a pick-up an hour in advance. When I pick the bus up again to return home from Mt. Shasta, I can stand anywhere along the route and flag down the bus to get aboard, much like in Mexico.

The bus is notoriously late, though sometimes early. Because the bus only runs through town every hour, it become necessary to get out to the bus stop early, even though it will most likely be late. The driving time door to door from my house to the studio in Mt. Shasta is about 15 minutes. This morning, by bus, it took me an hour to get to the studio and 50 minutes to get home.

While I am standing there for 20 minutes waiting for the bus to arrive, I question how much my scarce free-time is worth in money. Is it really worth it to spend this amount of time during my free day to take the bus to Mt. Shasta?? There ARE pluses and minuses to it, of course. Like today, with Lucas taking the car south to Redding, if I am going to make it to Mt. Shasta this is my only choice. It is better for the environment to take the bus. It is much more interesting to take the bus. And, with gas prices what they are, it is actually cheaper to take the bus than to drive!

Gas prices in these parts are shooting up steadily. Right now, we pay $4.37 at the pump. I heard a program on NPR today regarding national gas prices. The lowest in the country right now are apparently $3.50 or so. They quoted the highest current rates as being $4.27 in Santa Barbara and the Bay area. Well, it looks like Mt. Shasta has the rest of the nation beat! Not something to be excited about. But, definitly motivation to take the bus more often.

I can't say that I feel completely comfortable on the bus here. I feel similar to how I did when riding in Mexico. Conspicuous. I feel like I stand out. And so, I know it is a healthy kind of uncomfortable, the kind that pushes me beyond my comfort zone, that challenges me to widen my scope of compassion, and that helps me to be more accepting of others.

I shared the bus this afternoon with a man who was talking to himself behind me, a couple of teens across the aisle who were talking about huffing, and the town drunk at the back of the bus who forgot his bag when he stumbled off, among other riders. The driver was friendly with everyone, talking to and joking with them all on a first name basis. There was a general sense of ease. Everyone knew each other, chatting amongst themselves, sharing town gossip. It wasn't the quiet and solitary bus ride of the city, nor the bumpy ride filled with loud Mexican music, that I have been previously used to.

This is small town living. You tell the bus driver when you get on the bus where you need to be let out, you say "hey" to your neighbor and introduce yourself, you understand that despite our differences we all share similar struggles, and you learn the value of public transportation.