It’s amazing how insidious that place can be, and how time-consuming. And I miss it. I find myself thinking of people I know, wondering about the minute details of their lives, and picking up my phone to call them. At times, I wonder if I’ve gotten any of my life back at all – or whether I’m just finding other places on the internet to waste time. WWW – Worldwide Waste of Time.

Soon, however, it will become even less important. Tomorrow I am leaving Greensboro, after an extended holiday visit with my mother. My life has been on a bit of hiatus here and now there is a sense of fear, excitement, and a bit of dread. I step on a plane tomorrow and when I get off of it, I’m wide open again, this time with my one year old daughter in tow. Fear is just courage as it first raises its head. Right? Yes, right. I’ve been here before, though not with the responsibility of another person. It’s not just about what will make ME happy anymore.

I’m wide open, and wondering what I’ll do with myself to take care of us. This is what appens when the world is your oyster, I guess. My extended adolescence has left me here. For some, this is a chance to gloat a little, to tell me, I told you so. You should have this, you should have that.

It’s possible, yes. Perhaps I should have, but it would have been entirely too predictable. It’s a fearsome position I’m in, but at the same time, it’s also the perfect time for that. There are plenty of us out there, floundering, re-creating, and redesigning.

So what, pray tell, *is* it that I’d like to do? It’s so very simple, really. I want a simple life. I want a home, a small patch of land (5-10 acres). A small patch of garden with food and herbs, sunlight and forested shade, some personal space – a tiny shelter to keep Paloma and I warm at night when necessary, and good, kind, beautiful people around with the same ideas, the same work ethic (garden work is play!), a willingness to get down on a dance floor together here and there, and sing songs around a campfire.

But the question still remains… Exactly what, pray tell, does a person do to GET to this point?

I’m afraid, but it just means I’m building up strength. And some ideas. There are only a couple of things I’ve ever been consistently good at my entire life – it’s time to bring those things back to life and put them to work again.

I had an incredible library of books. Now, so does suburban Philadelphia, and I no longer have to think about it. I did find a few gems, a couple of pieces of jewelry that I’m happy to have back in my life and such, but basically, we filled up the back of his F250 and I said hello to a new life.

Oh, and I signed off of facebook for a while.

Two days after signing off facebook, I spent a couple of hours playing with my strumstick. and then i journaled.

journaling is something i haven’t done in a while. back in the day I used to be a fairly popular blogger (and i mean BACK in the day – back before anyone could have a blog and everyone did). it was, for the most part, WHERE i journaled.

Thinking back to the day I first got a smart phone, I saw my quality of life simultaneously shoot up and take a dive. It removed a lot of my ability to be present in life. Suddenly, I knew what else I was missing out on and FOMO got the best of me.  If that doesn’t shoot a relationship down I don’t know what will.

I also lost the ability to apply myself to much. There was always, always a moment to stop and glance at the phone, check facebook, and get lost in the miles of interesting articles and music videos being posted.

So, there are some things I’m applying myself to these days, besides taking care of my beautiful little daughter, I mean. I’ve become extremely interested in Emotional Freedom Techniques, and I’m learning all about those. I have to stay up late, generally, to study that, but so far, I must say, it’s highly effective. And I’m enjoying the joyful noise of my strumstick***. I’ve still found a way to spend too much time on the internet, but ya know…  It’s freezing cold outside and I’m still in Greensboro at my mom’s house, where there’s nowhere to go, not much to do, and I have very few friends. It’s okay tho. We’re out of here in less than week and on to the next part of our lives.

Paloma and I are on our way back to California. For a second I freaked out, because I didn’t have a way to announce that to everyone at once, but then I realized that I’ve got all the phone numbers I need, and anyone who really needs or wants to get in touch with me knows how else to do so. I’ll miss the rest of ‘em, but I’ve got a life to lead that needs to be more intimate at the moment.

*** I want to give a special shout out to the McNallys who pulled off a cute little Christmas stunt and sent me a case and extra set of strings along with the “special wood” strumstick my mom got me for Christmas. The thing is beautiful and so much freakin’ fun. It’s even less intimidating than a ukelele and sounds twice as awesome. I highly recommend these things for anyone looking for a way to make a joyful noise without a huge learning curve (and, also – they’re still made by hand in the USA!)

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I paid a tech editor good money to go over my Motorcycle Gloves (Ravelry pattern page link, but visible even if you’re not registered for the site) and work up the grading (sizing) yet I keep getting questions, or folks whose center cables show up on the side, etc. etc…

eta: so i’m knitting these, and i’m guessing that folks whose cables show up on the side of the glove are more than likely combining the wrong two needles’ worth of stitches. If this is you, doublecheck that.

I’m looking forward to reknitting these, so that I can revisit the pattern and see if it doesn’t require a little instructional editing. I understand frustration with a pattern, but I will also add here that it’s very often difficult for me to offer pattern support online without being able to SEE the knitter’s actual work in progress (especially for a pattern I wrote two years ago). Most folks’ attempts at describing their issue results in, well, a novel-long attempt that makes no sense to anyone else. I’m not knitting these things every day (and I should note here that I’ve always had a great deal more success asking other knitters in the Ravelry forums to help me work through things). Finally, I should note that I don’t offer any pattern support on my free patterns – they’re free for a variety of reasons, and that’s one of them.

I’ll let folks know if there are any changes and if so, how to obtain a free updated copy of the pattern.

Now, to figure out how to entertain an infant on a rainy, rainy day.

this also turned out to be easy. it rained all day but Santa (disguised as a moderately miserable UPS guy) brought me a new toy – so, in between knitting up said gift, we made a LOT of noise today. Paloma really, really loves this thing – she sings to it! And me? I love it too. The learning curve is, well, they’re not kidding when they say you can make it sound alright straight outta the box, and the sound is awesome – somewhere between a lap dulcimer and a banjo with a little mandolin mixed in. I’m enjoying it about a thousand times more than I did the ukelele.

Her father and I can hardly be in the same room without an argument brewing anymore – and instead of trying to adjust to that we have given up on each other. I can’t speak for him, but I know I feel immensely relieved. I feel like I can move on, like I can be myself again and open myself to the kind of love I deserve, that I can become, once again, a woman of power. He loves Paloma though, and has agreed to help me get a leg up in the world so I can be the best mother possible, by investing in a place for us to live (and, hopefully, in the next couple of years, a place for us to rent out while I teach my daughter how to travel).

We are heading to the Nevada City/Grass Valley area first. We’ll be staying there for a couple of months and feeling out the community of people we know, and looking around at properties, and listening to spirit and intuition. And we’ll go from there. Other areas of interest for us are Mt. Shasta and the southern Oregon region (Ashland/Williams). The prospect of owning property, however, doesn’t sit well with me. It seems like a joke, honestly, like it’s never truly yours even if you pay for it outright and don’t owe a thing to a bank (because honestly, if you’ve got a mortgage, you don’t really own your home). No matter what, someone else is always telling you what you can or cannot do with it, and unless you live in the middle of nowhere, you’re generally paying such a monumental pile of taxes on it…  Seriously, I’m having a hard time seeing the point on one hand. On the other, I’m seeing that there is actually affordable real estate everywhere, and that now might be the only time in the history of the United States that I’d ever have a chance at being a property steward. And then I ask myself, in all seriousness: is this really anywhere I feel like sticking around to raise my child? We might be better off hiding out in the mountains of Peru or something. Or something.

In the meantime, Paloma continues to grow, as babies do. She’s nearly a year old (what?), and going to bed on her own these days, at least sometimes. We’ve never been a fan of crying it out or “sleep training” methods. I’ve always nursed her to sleep – but certain things have changed for me recently and I’m no longer exhausted by 8pm and going to bed WITH her. Thankfully, her ability to sleep on her own, and to self-soothe when she wakes up means  I’ve taken to staying up after she goes to bed to do grown-up things like knit, or work, or surf foreclosures in Gold Country. She’s up at 7am, regardless though, so midnight’s about where it ends for me. One day soon, we hope, we’ll be back to farm time – sleepin’ early early, risin’ early early in the mornin’, uh huh…

yeah, physically and emotionally I just went through the ringer, but things are on the up and up. It will be a relief to get back out to the west coast, though I must say that going to a new area  is going to be kind of scary and yes, I am a bit afraid – though as they say, fear is just courage when it first raises its head. I get the funk when life gets stagnant. I look forward to a massive change of scenery though – to a huge shift in my reality, to the reintroduction of medicine and music and dance in my life, to more deciduous forest. And to less time on the internet, praise god.

To that end, the internet, for me, these days, involves mostly the two timesucks of Facebook and Ravelry. I have shrunk my facebook newsfeed down a few select people that are currently and closely involved in my life, and I’ve turned off every forum button on Ravelry except for (love) and (agree) to keep myself from getting too negative or too involved in any debates (my favorite forum group these days is full of piss and vinegar – it can get hot in there, though on the other hand…  as I was saying I just went through something pretty emotionally intense and devastating, and those ladies also had my back like you’d not believe – for a forum where I got my head bitten off about as much as I could open it, I was surprised and touched and very, very comforted).

But anyway…

Here’s to shift.

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I must say, the process makes me want to throw up my hands in frustration. In order to get the heck away from the American “system” I’ve got to make sure all your systemic numbers, etc., are intact. And your father and I are both supposed to take you in to apply in person.

That’s fine. We’re in this together with you – except that he’s currently in a rural town on the west coast, and i’m here in the Piedmont megalopolis of North Carolina. Or, with the assistance of a friend, I can sort of “walk” him through the process of filling out a bureaucratic form and having it notarized, then mailed back to me so I can just take you myself.

Honestly, i’m really not sure which of the two options would be more difficult to orchestrate.

Still, it will be so cute to take passport photographs of you. You’re just getting cuter and cuter these days, laughing your little butt off, sitting on your little potty with your little pants around your ankles, clapping your hands, and cruising around tables and such driving me nuts as you yank everything down onto the floor. The baby weight started coming off once you started to crawl; soon, you’ll be walking and i’ll drop another jeans size.

Also, right now you are going through a lengthy growth spurt – though you are only 10 months old i have recently been swapping out all your clothes at the consignment stores for 18 monthers, especially your pants. You appear to be taking after your long, skinny dad right now.

So yeah, you’ll have your first passport by your first birthday. I was 26 when I got mine. Your life is going to be so different.

I understand why it’s necessary to come back to family, however. There are things you turn into eventually, and mirrors you need to look into, and encouragement to change things within yourself when you’re around blood family. And of course, there’s need for grandma to spend time with granddaughter.

But good lord I am ready to go already. It appears four days or so here is my threshold. While I was raised on the east coast, it is not a place I hope to ever have to choose as home again. There are a few parts of “pretty” over here, but mostly…  mostly they’re just too crowded.

Still – it has been nice to have someone else to play with Paloma for a second, enabling me to work a little (i have one of those ‘rater’ jobs with Lionbridge – and despite what some people think about it being a fraud, I’ve been paid every month that I’ve worked, which is all I care about – I have to say, however, that it is terribly mind-numbing work – but it does pay, and can be done from anywhere in the US that I can find the time and the internet access in which to do so). I’ve also (finally) discovered the joys of OpenOffice - which, along with some free hands and a little time, has allowed me to go through a ton of unnamed Office and RTF that came off my dead mac’s hard drive. Joy of joys, a lot of my writing is still in tact, as are my knitting patterns (which will require some redesign, but so be it – at least I won’t have to copy and paste the text from PDF files).

My music collection, well…  A lot of it made it through unharmed, but there are about 800 files that have no names and no identifying factors, and iTunes refuses to help. It means I’m missing a lot of Erykah Badu, which is a bummer – and the platform switch means plugging my iPod into this machine isn’t an option.

So here it is on Black Friday, and I’m desperately trying to avoid a desire for more crap, but I must say I’m kind of wanting an e-reader and one of these. More than anything I’d love to get a strumstick. Easy, small and portable, and the sound is *awesome* – the kind of sound I want out of an little instrument – I don’t need to be a maestro on it – what i’m looking for is something to accompany me).

And the e-reader thing, well, they definitely seem useful to someone who’s on the road a lot, like me – except that I would have to buy them all in digital format, and of course, there’s no such thing as a used “ebook” – yeah you can catch a deal here and there but the odds that it’s the specific book you want are slim. That means repurchasing a lot of things I’ve already collected. Better, I guess, that I just carry that paperbook around until I’ve finished it and then pass it along.

Yeah, considering the fact that the strumstick I want is the same price as the ereader I’d like, I think I’ll go for the strumstick. It’s not going to be obsolete any time soon. And honestly? I think my daughter would benefit far more from me making music and singing with her.

I’ll just have to avoid looking at them, then, until I’ve got a strumstick in my hands.

In the meantime, I’m working on a cute new baby knit. Pattern will appear shortly. It’s a simple knit on small needles with fingering/sport weight yarn so not for everyone, but it goes pretty quick on mini-circulars and has an interesting technique for making ruffles.

My last car blew a leak on my way from New Mexico to California – the gear fluid in the rear differential came flying out and a $1200 repair later, and I was no longer stranded in Los Banos, California, with the worst rideshare ever. I mention this because about a month ago I noticed gear fluid on the inside of the back right tire of my newest car…

This time, I just kept having the fluid level checked until I could afford to fix it. I just got it fixed yesterday.

In the meantime we’ve been staying at the house of a friend in a quiet, boring little town at the base of Mt. Shasta – the people are incredibly friendly but it’s getting cold, and I wake up every day wondering how I’m going to spend my time. We’ve done a LOT of walking around, and the mama community IN Mt. Shasta is really wonderful, but I don’t know if it’s home. I still feel more like an Oregonian than a Californian, that’s for sure, though there is less rain here. The weather has changed recently tho, and it’s now below freezing at night. We have a wood stove and I make raging fires, and I watch movies and, lo and behold, I KNIT.

What am I knitting, you ask?

Well, I probably should have picked up a work-in-progress from the uh, 9 months since I’ve been able to knit, but I haven’t. I started a new project, an easy one – making a pair of leg warmers for Miss P, who is crawling everywhere. She’ll be standing unassisted soon, but in the meantime, she’s wreckin’ the clothes…

Anyway, there really isn’t much else to say. Life has been quiet and boring, but I’m writing that little legwarmer pattern out and eventually it will show up here on this blog. So fun, I’m using a size US3 mini-circ. I have to say, I think mini-circs hurt my hands, and as I’ve been wearing a RSI wrist brace lately, I can DEFINITELY see how knitting can harm a wrist – it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame doing it with that brace on. Since there is a lot of straight knitting involved on these legwarmers, I’m going to use the project to teach myself, finally, how to knit Continental.

We’ll be going back east to North Carolina for a bit during the holidays and then Paloma, her daddy and I are going to do a little world-traveling. I’m really looking forward to that. Almost as much, I’m looking forward to camping out somewhere this coming spring that is all mine – well, mine and Paloma’s anyway… This couchsurfing thing is getting a bit tiring, as is using my car as a closet.

You’ve seen a lot of things many people won’t ever see in a lifetime; right now we’re staying in a little hamlet of a place called McCloud, California. It sits at the base of Mt. Shasta. This house is probably over 100 years old. The apple tree next to it is probably close in age. Its branches bow nearly to the ground. The yard is littered with little green apples I haven’t yet braved a bite of. The experience, once, of biting into an unripe persimmon has stayed with me far longer than any other foul fruit experience (the durian was really, mostly, a letdown – the flavor too subtle and the smell, too permeating; I remember my introduction to it not my the taste but by the scent).

Anyway, I digress. Your mother, as you will eventually come to learn, does that quite frequently. As I was saying, we are here at the base of Mt. Shasta – a giant currently-inactive volcano that rises over fourteen thousand feet in the air, and has pretty much always been considered a sacred place by everyone. It has given rise to a culture that is, suffice it to say, different from much of the rest of the country, though it is still very “northern Californian”.

I love this region of the country – it is my favorite, this southern Oregon/northern California bit that’s known in many circles as “the state of Jefferson”, and part of the bioregion called “Cascadia” (and I must admit, the word “Cascadia” and all it brings to mind appeal to me greatly).

Two cats are our company here in this sleepy town in this historic old mill house. You are asleep in the carrier on my back; it seems to be the only way you’ll nap these days, which is painful and hard to maneuver sometimes, but if it gives me this moment to sit down and spill, I’ll take it. Those moments are rare these days. I’m still adjusting.

Meanwhile you’re growing, and requiring more and more stimulation every day. You’re also starting to communicate in different ways – you’ve got a few new sounds for specific things, and some babble and coo and you are every bit the little dove, mi Palomita.

You can crawl. You can pull yourself up to standing and you enjoy acrobalancing, piggyback rides on dad’s neck and holding on by his hair. When you see animals, especially, or any time something excites you, you pant a little like a puppy and then let out a happy sound – a squeal, sometimes, or a giggle. Your giggle has also developed into a full-blown laugh and your body has become ticklish. Pinching your knees, one that to this day still sends me into a laughter fit, works on you too, as does kissing your pudgy little thighs and belly, or tickling your ribs.
You’re also growing out of  a lot of your clothes, especially pants. This growth spurt has apparently begun in a lengthwise way. All of a sudden you are saggy-assed or shin-showing, but apparently the growth is moving width-ward now instead, as these same short-pants are now a little more difficult to pull up. This growing thing is as amazing to me as you; your clothes are often the only thing I have to go by, however, because I am with you so much. I look at pictures and realize how much longer your hair is, how much more human and personal your face has become. And yet, every other day I have to cut your fingernails.

Your father and I are still trying to figure out the best way to be together with you. Really, he and I are still trying to figure out the best way to be together, period. You have made it, especially, so that we will never really be apart, ever. He and I, however, aren’t meant to be together consistently; neither one of us can stand being told what to do – I especially bristle when a man makes the attempt, and apparently it’s a little insulting for a woman to do so to him.

As I write this, you are having a dream on my back; you’ve moaned a little and twitched, and awoken, but you’re desperately trying to find a place to bury your face back there and i can feel you already sinking back into that beloved sleep.

It’s only quarter to nine, but I’m thinking now might be a nice time to settle in for the evening. I’ve been on the porch a bit already tonight. The mountain is shrouded in fog and the sky is that deep, dusty dark blue of a cloud cover during a moon rise and we appear to be the only people awake here anyway. Even the houses themselves seem asleep.

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this morning as I came out to pack up the car I noticed the front looked a little cleaner, and then i noticed my glove compartment hanging wide open and empty.

inventory-taking revealed that my AC inverter and iPod charger were gone, as well as a car charger for my phone that hardly worked (neither does my phone, for that matter, and so i’d resorted to charging it with the wall charger in the AC inverter while on the road – now? i’m screwed, as I do not have the money to replace these things). As well, gone was the audio cable i used to plug my four-year-old iPod into the car stereo (i drive a car made in 1995 and i have an incredibly cheap car stereo – and my car looks like a poor person who lives out of it owns it – it does not scream of wealth, at least to most people, although apparently it did to this thief). and also, my GPS unit, the remote to my car stereo (always found that stupid anyway), and a minor stack of old, scratched cds i was planning to attempt ripping before trashing.

that is all an inconvenience, sure, and i felt pretty violated, but the worst was to come. i looked in the back seat and the small cedar box i’d packed in the night before that contained my sacred objects – my crystals, some little prayer books, my favorite Mimbreno pottery shard, a tiny Ganesh figurine – and some beautiful little talismans that were given to Paloma when she was born – this box was gone.

the sadness i felt as i imagined some crackhead realizing these items were worth nothing to anyone but me and thus tossing them into a gutter or a trash can was beyond measure. i went through some anger, then i tried to be all buddhist about it, but the fact of the matter is that yes, i was attached to these objects and yes, i have suffered because of that attachment, and that, my friends, is what being human is sometimes about. there are times when the buddhist philosophy may, in fact, help – when trying to get over something like this, for example. but first, my friends, the grief. this person rifled through a pile of clothes, etc., and found this box beneath – not hidden, just buried under mess i’d intended to organize that morning. my guess is that they didn’t even look.

those items are no longer a part of my life. i can only hope that the power, prayer, intent, and magick contained within will somehow affect the person that stole them – or that perhaps they will find their way into the lives of others who need them. please, god, universe, whatever, please…  just let them go to *someone*. it was “garbage” AND “recycling” day here and the thought still consumes me.

on a side note, there is some humor – while i’m disappointed as i was about to resume the practice, my jade egg is now gone as well. i might be the only one who sees the humor in this, but there it is.

We’re back now and those Etsy purchases *have* been shipped (sorry about that – I should have just kept everything in my car for easy access), and I’ve decided that it’s time to raise my pattern prices on IDP.

For ages now, I’ve been selling my hard work for pennies there – it’s been sweet, but, for example, it has taken me since the launch of the Motorcycle Gloves pattern on IDP to actually make back the money I put into it – the hours and hours of working out the pattern and the hefty sum paid to my tech editor. Same goes for my Floral Bath set – while the patterns, as flat squares, didn’t take nearly as long to suss out, once again, a hefty sum was paid to a tech editor for chart generation and overall technical proofing.

Finally, I sell my individual washcloth patterns for two bucks a pop – and so it just doesn’t make any sense to me any longer to sell three of them for the same price. In four days, I will be raising the price of both patterns to $3.99 via KnitPicks IDP. That means you still have time to buy either of these from KnitPicks IDP or from my Ravelry store for the discounted price of $1.99.

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