Balms for the Soul

This past weekend Nathan and I (and Isis, of course) took a long-overdue trip up to Poulsbo to see our dear dear friends, Lara and Chris (and Moose, of course).

(Isis and Moose not pictured, because they are even shorter than I am.)

The last time we'd scheduled it... well, something came up.  They understood, of course, but that is past and I was super ready  to see them again.

March is a very special month for our foursome, because March is The Birthday Month.  All Caps, because All Four of us are affected.  We like to get together sometime in the middle and celebrate- preferably as Epically as possible.  Our Epic plans for this (self-made) long weekend included doing some National Park hikes... except someone (::coughcoughmeI'mthegimpyone::) managed to aggravate her knee* to the point where anything harder than a stroll seemed like a very bad idea, indeed.

So.  We kept it low-key and instead took a two-mile "nature walk" (as Lara put it) in Twanoh State Park.  The dogs loved it, although the leisurely pace was not, perhaps, their favorite (in addition to my limitations, the guys were having Camera Bonding Time, which meant lots of stopping and fiddling).  The humans loved it, too- it was really pretty, and not at all difficult.  Sometimes it's nice not to push too hard.

These dogs are lying about how tired they are.

Moose very sweetly helps Isis out with her Heavy Chin syndrome (common amongst the block-headed pit bulls of the world).

That night we went out for some wine to celebrate the birthdays- we each had two glasses, because we are crazy-indulgent that way.

CRAZY INDULGENT.

"What's that, Jenny O?  Wine?!  What happened to 'no alcohol in 2013'?"  Yes, well, we'd already agreed waaaaay back in January that our birthdays would be Special Days on which we would indulge in sugar and alcohol if we wanted to, thus relegating those substances to "special occasion" rather than "every day".

However, I have to say that after two glasses of wine (one a Riesling, one a port), I felt like such crapola the next day that maybe I am done with wine forever.  Grape wine, anyway.  Experiments must be done re:apple wine and mead, because those are my favorites and I'm not going to make any assumptions about them.  But.  Experiments must wait until next year, I suppose.

Speaking of the next day, after a delicious paleo breakfast, Lara and I decided to get our Domestic on and make organic lip balm and bath salts (not the zombifying kind).  We made a half batch of the lip balm because we were sort of getting a feel for it in anticipation of Greater Experiments later in the year (Crafts for Christmas!  Yay!)  One thing we figured out is that although we were pleased with the results (which we put into four tiny jars and one tube) we want to use less oil and more peppermint extract next time.  Also, I'm thinking perhaps coconut oil instead of almond oil.  We shall see.

The other ingredients were honey and beeswax.

You're technically supposed to wait two hours for the balm to set before you use it, but do you think that stopped me?

No it did not.

Check us out, lovely ladies with lovely, soft, and smoochable lips!

Sorry boys and girls, we're super-taken!

I don't have any pictures of the bath salts (I know, I know- you were hoping for demonstration shots.  Sorry again.) but rest assured they smelled of lavender and lemongrass and worked quite well.

Our next adventure was to plant some seeds.  This was a Big Deal for me, because as we all know, gardening is Not Exactly My Forte.  In fact it intimidates the hell out of me, so having a friend almost literally take me by the hand to guide me through some steps was sorely needed.  Lara is currently rocking some gorgeous kale...

Also Swiss Chard

...so I felt particularly safe in her work-gloved hands.  She'd already bought everything we needed, because she is the sort of thoughtful friend who says to herself, "Jenny O is not comfortable with this 'gardening' business, so I will make it as painless as possible for her!"  She'd even saved up a bunch of egg cartons so that we could just stick the little suckers straight in the ground once they've sprouted.  She is a Rock Star Urban Homesteader for sure.

I hand-labeled cartons, because I AM comfortable wielding a sharpie.

Lara fills the cartons with bat poop**.  (And some other stuff, but mostly we were giggling about the bat poop content.)

Ready for action!

This may have been my favorite part, bat poop or no.

Those teensy little things are mint seeds.  I kept mongo-ing them, so who knows whether or not they'll actually grow.

Into the bat poop, little seeds!

 So that was well and good and I came away feeling like there's hope for me yet.  That evening we all went for a nice long walk, and then came home and played Cards Against Humanity, which is one of my all-time favorite (grownup) games because I am a horrible, horrible person, and so are many of my friends.  Here is just one example of a winning combination:

"I'm sorry; I'm still laughing about child abuse!" said someone about half an hour later.  It may be a new catch-phrase.

We stayed up way too late.  So late that Lara fell asleep and I desperately wanted to, but the boys were adamant that we finish the deck and I am a sucker for proving I can keep up with the boys.  (AKA "dumb".)

The next morning we went with them to their box so we could cheer them on as they (re)did Open Workout 13.2  They both improved their scores, which was definitely something to cheer about.  As for me, I was warmly welcomed and chatted up by multiple people, even tho' I was just strolling around with a sketch book, which was awfully nice.  I met and cheered on one of Lara's friends who absolutely blew my mind with her performance, and was ridiculously sweet to me when I told her how inspiring she was.  The whole experience reminded me how fun/awful/fun CrossFit can be, so maybe I'll return in the near future...  Plus I miss making CrossFit comics...

And then, sadly, it was time to head home, so we packed up our exhausted puppy and hit the road.

Three days of wresting with Moose wears even the bounciest of Pigs out.

So that was my super-fun weekend.  How about you guys?  Do anything that repaired your soul?





*(Apparently if one has taken four months off from commuting by bike, one should not assume that one can ride as hard as one could at the end of the season.  Not without properly warming up first.  Nor should one further aggravate the knee by hyper-extending it.)

**(bat poop)

The Importance of Marriage (or Not)

I was hanging out with some dude friends the other day when another dude friend came in.  We’ll call him friend A, and the other two can be B and C.  Anyway, friend A is in the midst of prepping to propose to his girlfriend, and I happened to know that he’d been trying to have The Talk with her dad, but that the two of them kept getting interrupted before he could bring it up.  So as he walked up to us I got all squeaky about the whole process (as is my right as the Token Female), and asked how it had gone, and he caught us up on his progress, and we all gave him a hard time and teased him about Lady A dodging his proposal like her father had been dodging The Talk.  And then friends B and C, who are unmarried, gave friend A a little further grief about getting engaged at all, making reference to their own “perpetual bachelorhood”.

“Oh please,” I said to friend C, rolling my eyes. “You have a life partner.” Because it’s true- he does.  A lovely young woman with whom he plans to spend the rest of his life.

“Yeah but I’m still a bachelor,” he countered, and I had to admit that yes, technically he was- although not by my personal connotation of the word.  Friend A wandered off and I thought about it a little longer while B and C made “marriage isn’t important to commitment” noises.  Finally, during a lull in that conversation, I turned to C and said,

“You know, marriage wasn’t really important to me, either- until it was important to Nathan.”  C sort of raised an eyebrow, and I continued; “I was like, ‘meh, marriage’, but it meant something to him- and that meant something to me.”

“I guess I’m very lucky with Lady C,” he remarked, referring to the fact that marriage is not important to her, either.

“Well yes,” I said.  “But that’s part of the whole point of a life mate: finding someone whose values align with your own.  I was never anti-marriage, tho', so for me getting married to make him happy made me happy.”

This statement caused both C and B to backpedal a little bit and discuss marriage vs weddings, and how sick it is that our society beats into little girls’ heads the whole “happiest day of your life” thing.

“That’s the problem,” I said.  “Too many people confuse the words ‘wedding’ with ‘marriage’.  Don’t get me wrong- I loved my wedding, and I had a lot of fun.  But if your wedding day is really, truly the happiest day of your life- then you are doing it wrong.”

I had to go at that point- because my own life mate turned up- but if I could have continued the conversation I think I would have asked those guys what exactly the word "marriage" means to them.  It’s an important question, I think, and one that not enough people actually give any thought to.  But here’s the secret- marriage is something different to every individual person, and it’s damn important to make sure that your definition bears at least some resemblance to that of the person you’re marrying (/spending the rest of your life with).  Better yet, compromise on a new definition, one that suits the two (or more) of you.  Because according to my definition of marriage, C and Lady C are married.  They’ve made a commitment to being together for the rest of their lives, and they treat one another with love and respect, and so as far as I’m concerned they’re married.  Period.  C can make “bachelor” noises all he wants to, but it looks like a duck, and swims like a duck... etc, etc.  And that is because to me (the only one who actually was legally “married” in that little conversation) marriage really has jack-all to do with a piece of paper.  There are other people who have that piece of paper who are just awful to one another- it seems like they don’t even like one another- and I have a hard time believing they are actually married: but by their definition of the word they must be.  And I can see being actually anti-marriage, if your definition of marriage includes treating one another like crap.  But why would you let anyone else define marriage for you*?  Especially your marriage?

These are probably ducks.  Probably.

I’m definitely anti-plenty-of-other-people’s-marriages, but mine?  Mine is awesome, and I’d recommend this level of happiness to anyone- even if I did have to sign a piece of paper to make it happen.

*After all, there are people who would refuse to recognize my marriage, since Nathan and I don't share a faith.

Ice Ice Baby

I've been thinking that my Winterhaven story might be quite nice as a comic... which means I've been doing a lot of character sketches and the like.  But what it also means is that I need to get the heck over my aversion towards backgrounds.  Nathan suggested I look into speed painting to give myself lots of practice- here's my very first attempt at it:

(That's Wolf Killer, Avalyn, and Violet up on the ridge there)

It took about half an hour, and to be honest I'm a little shocked by how much I don't utterly hate it (especially if you could have heard the words that were coming out of my mouth during the first five minutes).  It has problems, obviously, but they are the problems of a newbie flailing around, trying to get her Photoshop bearings, and so I cut myself some slack.  It will be nice to look back in a year and see how far I've come.

Fledglings

Gentle Readers, two weeks back I found myself in something of quandary.  You may recall that a few months ago I made the announcement that my nephew SeaMonkey was on his way.  There's just one problem with that- he was a whopping 10lbs, 2oz when he was born, and did not resemble a sea monkey in the slightest.  I got to spend an entire week breathing in his perfection, and I'm telling you- the boy is just too awesomely chubby to be a "SeaMonkey".  So I needed to come up with a new name for him... and I chose Eaglet.

"But Jenny O," you may protest, "Eaglets are not exactly known for their chubbiness, either."  Perhaps not.  But trust me, this boy is more Eaglet than SeaMonkey.  It may be that, going forward, I use the SeaMonkey moniker for those kiddos still in utero, until I get to know them a little more on the Other Side.  Hear that, various siblings?  Get to crankin' out the SeaMonkeys!

Speaking of new things being born (and named), a conversation with one of the Climbing Bros planted a new Story Seed for something that I am currently calling "The Phoenix of Winterhaven" (with the intention of it becoming an intermediate reader book).  Have a synopsis!

***

Avalyn is a Phoenix: a reincarnation of one of five spiritual leaders of her people.  A thousand years ago, a deadly ice age sank its claws into the world, and has never let go.  The most powerful wizards of that age, led by the original Phoenixes, banded together to form the safehold of Winterhaven, a magical keep in which the seasons still turn, so that mankind might survive until the thaw- a thaw which seems less and less likely to come.

Avalyn is the latest incarnation of Laxda, least among the Phoenixes, but still heir to formidable power.  She is young yet, far from taking up the mantle of leadership both in years and experience- but after tragedy strikes she is thrust into that role long before her training is complete.  To make matters worse, signs indicate that the greatest Phoenix of all, Faravid the Wanderer, Herald of the Sun, has at last been reborn- but he is not to be found within the confines of Winterhaven.

The people have long believed themselves to be the only surviving colony of mankind, but the signs cannot be ignored: somewhere in the frozen Outside, a young Phoenix waits.  Avalyn, the only one who might recognize a fellow Phoenix, must brave the merciless weather and enchanted beasts of the Outside and bring the lost one home- for prophecy says only an incarnation of Faravid can release the world from winter.

***

One thought- I am toying with changing the spelling of "phoenix" to the Old English "fenix".  The motivation for such a change is that "phoenix" is a distinctly Grecian word and concept, whereas the majority of the story is taking its cultural inspiration from Nordic cultures.  What do you think?  Good or dumb?

Sami-inspired outfit.

The Business of February

Oh me oh my, I really am behind on my blog, aren't I?  Of course, that's a ridiculous thing to say when I'm not setting any blogging goals this year, but still- old habits die hard, I guess.  Or rather, guilt over old habits die hard...

But I have such excellent excuses!  I finally finished up the most recent draft of my Sleeping Beauty retelling, and sent it off to my betas for feedback.  That feedback has started coming in, and although I was well-nigh sick of the story when I sent it out, I'm once again excited about it, and about making it even better.  Nathan has been especially helpful- this is the first time I've let him read anything longer than a scene, and he's risen to the challenge of telling me all the things I don't want to hear, even when I flail around on the ground whining, "I don't want to write that scene..." because I know he is right and I need to.

My other excuse is that my nephew went and got himself born- but more on that in a later entry.  For now I shall make up for my long silence with a nice long excerpt from some of the most recent rewrites (the narrator has been describing his great-grandmother):


I often wonder if she herself would have shown such interest in me, had I not been such a blatant throwback to her bloodlines, a single spear of golden wheat amongst the six dark blades of grass that were my older brothers.  Whether it was my coloration that drew her to me, or merely the fact that I, like she, seemed somewhat redundant in the royal household, I was never certain.  Whatever the reason, I became her favorite, and as such she would spend many long hours entertaining me with stories of her homeland- that dark, wild kingdom called Valtor, in which great and terrible magics still held sway.

One story always remained particularly clear in my head- and although she told it to me many times, I like best to recall the first time.

We were in her chambers, her sitting in the rocking chair with the same air my father sat in his throne, me sprawled at her feet.  She was knitting something- in my memories she was always knitting something, although I don’t recall ever seeing the outcome of these endeavors- and I was making a game of sorting her yarns into armies to do battle against one another.  All the blues, greens, and purples were my father’s soldiers and his allies- all the reds, yellows, and oranges were our enemies.  Whites, blacks, and browns were sitting out until I could figure out how to align them.

“Once upon time,” Uri began, but I looked up from my armies to interrupt her with something that had been bothering me, lately.

“What does that even mean?”

“It is something you are saying at the beginning of story, my little Kriegerprinz.  It is meaning these things happened long time ago.”

“How long ago?”  I eyed a brown hank.  I’d seen red-browns and yellow-browns in the woods- therefore it seemed more likely this pile would belong with the enemy forces, and so I nudged it towards that area.

“In this story, almost two hundred years.”

“That’s super old.”

“Indeed.  Shall we be having story or not?”

“Sorry Uri.  I’ll be good.”

The old woman (for she was old even then) snorted.  “You’ll be what you’ll be, I am supposing, and I will be indulging you, regardless.  But now, once upon time-“

“Two hundred years ago!” I said helpfully.

“Yes.  Two hundred years ago, king and his queen wished and wished for child, for little Kriegerprinz of their own, and in time their wish was being granted.”

“Babies are boring.”  I considered the piles of blacks and whites.  They just didn’t seem to fit with either army.

“You are not boring.”

I looked up sharply at this.  “I’m not a baby!”

“Perhaps not- but you were.  All of us were once babies, even your Uri.”

My eyes widened as I considered this tidbit- my great-grandmother, a baby?  “Are you the baby they got?”

“No,” she said dryly… “I am not being quite so old as that.  But it was girl-child, this new Rosamund.  And for her naming day the king and queen invited all the land, including the six good… you say Hill Folk, I am thinking.”

“Fairies?  Fairies don’t exist!”

“Just because they are being gone from Pomagar does not mean they were never here.  And in my home Valtor they are still very much present.”

“Fairies have magic…” I whispered.  Suddenly I knew exactly what those hanks of black and white were to be.  I divided them amongst the forces, whites to be allied to my father, blacks to be against him.

She shook her head and sighed.  “Fairies, you say.  Sometimes, even now, I am not knowing all your words, I think.”

I patted her leg absently.  “That’s okay, Uri.  I don’t know them all, either.”

“Of course you do not.  But you will.  The… fairies… they each gifted the baby girl.  She received blessings of beauty, grace, great musical talent-“

“Those are boring gifts.”  I considered my rainbow armies; the enemy outnumbered us, but I knew my father’s armies, led by my brothers, would be more than a match for such odds.

“You will not perhaps be thinking so in few more years.  Now try to quiet, for we are getting to the part you will find more exciting.  Before the sixth good fairy could give her gift, there was being great thunderclap, and the dark fairy appeared, full of rage.”

“Was she angry because she didn’t get invited to the party?”  I had recently been lectured by my mother on the political importance of inviting all the noble sons and daughters to my birthday party, regardless of my personal feelings towards them.  Frankly I didn’t think they wanted to come any more than I wanted to invite them, but grownups will have their way.

“Perhaps.  No matter the reason, she did not have blessing for the princess- she had curse.  And that curse was that in the princess’s sixteenth year she would prick her finger on spindle and fall down dead.”

I mulled this over, thinking of the spindles I’d seen my mother’s women working with.  They were certainly sharp enough to prick your finger on.  I resolved to avoid them in the future, just in case.  “Then what happened?”

“The dark fairy disappeared as she had come, and the court was so upset.  But then the sixth fairy came forward-“

“She hadn’t given her gift yet!”

“Correct.  And she said, ‘I cannot undo curse, but I can gentle to sleep, not death.  And from this sleep she will wake when true love’s kiss is pressed to her lips.’”

“Kissing?” my five-year-old self was outraged at this unexpected turn of events.  Babies might be boring, but kissing was just gross.

“You will see.  Now, the king was not being satisfied with the gentling of curse, and to further protect his daughter he sent her away from the palace, to be reared by good faries far from spindle.  But he and queen were missing girl child so much that they would bring her home for secret visits.”  Uri shook her head at such sentimental folly.  “And when she had sixteen years, she wandered into a forbidden part of the palace, where she met the dark fairy in disguise, and indeed  was pricking herself on spindle and falling down in enchanted sleep.

“The king and queen, they were being so sad, but they knew there was hope because of the sixth fairy, so they dressed daughter in finest gown and put her in tallest tower of palace, to await coming of true love’s kiss.”

“Gross.”

Uri ignored my muttering.  “To make certain no unworthy soul could be taking advantage, fairies caused a great wall of… what is word?  Verbrenindorn, thorns that burn?”

I thought of the painful encounter I’d had while running through the woods with my brother Oliver.  “Nettles?”

“Nettles?  These burn?” she looked doubtful.

“Like fire,” I added, and rubbed my calf where I’d brushed against them.

“Hmph.  Nettles.  Does not seem...” she shook her head.  “The Verbrenindorn grew up and covered the palace, and no one could be getting through.  Many years passed, one hundred years, and on that day, thorns turned to flowers.”

“Why?”

“This I am not knowing.  Perhaps fairies must rest their powers every hundred years?  But whatever reason, thorns became flowers.  And that is when our family enters the story.”
“We do?”  I sat up straighter, momentarily abandoning my battle.  Stories, I felt, were always more interesting when they involved one’s self.

“Yes.  My youngest uncle decided he would like to make bride of sleeping Rosamund, so he approached palace to break her curse.”

“To kiss her,” I said glumly.

“That was idea,” she admitted, “but when he found her in tower, he discovered that dark fairy had not forgotten, either.  She was laying in wait at top of tower, to keep any from breaking her curse.  She changed into terrible dragon to fight my uncle, and he could not stand against her might.  He escaped with his life, but was being so badly wounded he spent the rest of his days cripple.  This I saw for myself, burns upon his body, twisting of his leg.  And when he left, flowers became Verbrenidorn again.”

“So he didn’t kiss her?”

“No, little Kriegerprinz, he did not kiss her.  She slumbers still.”

“But this happened when you were a baby?”

“Not quite baby.  I was your age, and you have said- five years is baby no more.”

“No, I am a young man,” I answered with as much dignity as possible.  I eyed her wrinkled face speculatively.  “How old are you now, Uri?”

She cackled.  “This is not question to be asking your elders, child, especially not lady elders.”  She reached a hand over to ruffle my still white-blonde hair.  “But I will be telling you, since we are being such good friends.  I have nine and eighty years.”

My brow furrowed as I ran the numbers through my head.  “That’s… almost one hundred?”
“There is more than twice your age before I am having one hundred years,” she said dryly.  “And I am planning to enjoy my years getting to that great age, thank you.”

“Oh.  But… will the nettles to turn flowers again?”

“Perhaps we will go and see for ourselves, eh?  I would like to see my home again.”

But we never did visit Valtor together, and that is something that I find it in myself to regret.

***

...and also with a quick sketch of the Sleeping Beauty herself:

No kisses for you!

Giving it Up

As 2012 was winding down, Nathan made the following unprompted statement:

"I'm not going to eat refined sugar or drink alcohol in 2013."

"That's great, babe," I said, because it is.  Those things are in no way good for you.  And then, because I have experience with Giving Shit Up, I added,  "But... for a whole year?  Are you sure you don't want to just start with a month?"  See, I was afraid he'd get overwhelmed and frustrated at the prospect of a whole year without these things he was accustomed to having on a daily basis, and end up not even cutting back, in the long run.

"Nope."  (Nathan does not over-think things.  It is a definite strength.)

"Okay then."  And I said I'd do it too, to support him, because I know how hard it is not to be able to indulge in what everyone else is doing.  Far, far easier to show a United Front in social situations.

So that's been going on for the past thirty-six days.  And as February drew closer I knew that I wanted to clean up my act in other ways, as well.  I'd been spending way too much time on Facebook, and was fully cognizant of the fact that I needed to cut back.

"Maybe I'll have a FB-free February," I mused, but then realized that with the impending birth of Seamonkey it's just an unreasonable expectation to imagine I won't be on there posting a zillion pictures.  No point in setting myself up to fail.  "Alright then, I'll give it up for a week.  And then after that maybe I'll just check it once or twice a week."

Satisfied with this plan, I faced Friday, February First just full of good intentions.  In fact, I woke up that morning and the very first thing to pop into my head was, Don't check Facebook!

And I didn't.  I had several urges throughout the day, but I resisted.  Same thing on Saturday, maybe a little worse.  And then it was Sunday, and Nathan and I took Isis out for a hike.  And I took an excellent shot of Nathan and all I wanted was to post it on Facebook.  And also to check things.  All the things.  People had been tagging me in things!  As I waited for Nathan in the car I said to myself,

"Self, I am a grown-ass woman.  I can check Facebook if I bloody well want to," and just as my thumb moved towards the icon, Self said,

"Seriously?  Seriously?  You can't even go three full days without checking Facebook?"

And Paranoia reared up and I put my phone away.  Because damn.

(Nathan says this looks "exactly like me".  Soooo... perhaps my Best Self Portrait Ever?)

There is addiction in my family.  I've known this since I was a little girl, and thus I've always kept a keen eye on my own addictive tendencies.  Any time I feel I'm getting too reliant on something, I quit cold turkey.  Alcohol, video games, recreational drugs- all things I've walked away from just to prove to myself that I could, just to prove that nothing rules me but myself.  I know I'm lucky that I can do this- not everyone can- and my paranoia that someday I won't be able to is probably unfounded.  But maybe it's not- maybe it's only because of my long practice of giving things up, dating back to my teenage years (soda) that I'm still able to do so.  Who knows?

Nathan got into the car and I related my little conversation with Self.

"So what you're telling me is that giving up Facebook is harder than giving up sugar?"

Apparently so.

(Although looking back at when I initially had to give up all forms of sugar, perhaps not...)