Weekend camping :)

Lovely original vintage oil painting - I like it more the more I look at it :)

I spent last weekend up at the lake, a yearly tradition with my church wherein we all drive up on Friday evening, spend two days hanging out and doing whatever we want, and appreciate the time 'away from it all'. I was worried about all of the socializing I would inevitably be required to do, but then found myself loving 99% of it. I got to catch up with people I see all the time, but don't often have hour-long conversations with. I got to eat baked oatmeal and watch with interest at how much coffee all of the adults drank each morning. I got to kayak on a clear blue lake with a friend, and feel outdoorsy for the first time in ages. It was a lovely weekend.

Yesterday was spent recovering from all of the human contact by cleaning up my apartment, and listing stuff on eBay. I love my job, this whole reselling thing I do. I love the rhythm of it, the flexibility of it. I love that it is always changing, always shifting. It's been a good month.

Please take a moment to read the latest from the war in Syria and consider making a donation to Mennonite Central Committee, one of the few organizations providing direct aid to Syrian refugees.

Rummage Sale Planning - Part 3

Very unique vintage square dance skirt - just sold :)

When I was in college, I was really interested in event planning as a career. So I got into large-scale athletic events, events that get planned all year long, take a lot of human power and time, and are fun to participate in. I ended up on my knees one year in San Francisco, taking ankle monitors off of hundreds of open-water swimmers as they came out of the water, freezing and exhilarated. That was a good hair day, the last one I can remember clearly. I think it was the salty sea air.

Rummage sale planning is very different. There isn't a lot of "planning" that I'm able to do on my own. I have the idea. I execute the idea. People come alongside me to help, and somehow it happens. If I were more organized, I imagine the sale would be more organized. I don't know how to make that happen. I'm sure that other people do. For the time being, people will bring things to church this week, I will spend Thursday and Friday organizing the donations, and several hours on Saturday trying to sell it all. That may not be enough for some people, but it's enough for me.

Last night, while running an errand for a friend, I happened to pass by one of my favorite burrito places. The sign was down and the place was empty. I haven't eaten there in months. I guess unbeknownst to me, I'd been keeping them in business ;)

Green Smoothies :)

Casualware "Avocado" Green Knives - A first for me :)

I believe that there are receptors in our body that crave green nutrients, fresh raw green nutrients. I also believe that eating all raw is crazy. I had a moment a month or so ago where I found a website that told me that eating all raw would cure my Type I Diabetes, and I was consumed by guilt that I wasn't willing to do it. But I got over it when I remembered how short life is, and I think that we all have to make decisions about our health that allow us to survive and thrive. Being limited by a diet limits one's entire life. I learned this when I was initially diagnosed with diabetes, and I ended up living on lettuce and protein bars. I was miserable, and sick, and I couldn't fit in anywhere.

It took me a long time to try every diet for diabetes, and choose one that worked for me. Veganism works for me. I've figured out how to make it work, take care of myself, and not go crazy. The latter is probably the most important (see earlier comment on lettuce).

Anyhoo, the most recent way I've figured out how to flood those "raw green" receptors (maybe they're in my gut somewhere) is to make green "smoothies". You throw some green stuff in a blender with some fruit and some sort of liquid (I use water), blend it up and drink it. I know it sounds gross, but there is something about it that makes me feel really good, and that makes me want to keep doing it. It helps me eat a lot of spinach too, which I know is good for me, especially since I don't eat meat.

Anyhoo, there are a ton of rules about how to do it, which I don't follow very closely, because too many rules makes me less likely to do the thing I'm trying to do. And seriously, if you go from no spinach to a glass of green every once in a while, that can only be good, right?

Haiti relief: Parte Deux

Stoneware mugs made in Romania - Eastern Europe, hollah!

Sometimes I get a pain in my chest when I wish that I could do something that I cannot do, and it usually has to do with helping someone, or teaching someone something. When I have that special moment of realization that I cannot control other people, or change them, or teach them adequately what no one but Life has taught me, I sit in a pool of sorrow, with the chest pain.

The world can be a horrible, awful place. And in my life, I have seen a lot of that awfulness, and I've had to reconcile with it, look it in the face and acknowledge that it exists. This has made me the awesome person that I am today, but it also makes me like eighty-years-old. And I walk around with this knowledge every day, hoping that I could save people from it, save them from war, and murder, and rape, and incest, and the deep lasting wounds in families and people that last for generations. I wish I could save people from ever knowing, because it's an awful thing, this knowing.

But it is in the knowing (about all the bad awfulness) that true peace and understanding can be found, where that inability to control that we all have, can be accepted and owned, and truly felt deep down in our bones.

When we try to spare others from pain, sometimes it backfires, and our best intentions are like water in a bucket full of holes. Sometimes the best things we can do for one another, are to stand in solidarity, to acknowledge pain, and to comfort those who mourn.

Too abstract? Whatever. Peace out mofos :)

Haiti relief - Part 1

This has been lookin' pretty on my dress form lately :)

There's a This American Life episode about Haiti (written transcript here) I reference frequently. It's about relief agencies, mission organizations, and NGOs working in Haiti over the last several decades, and how it appears to have affected the nation. In sum, Haiti's economy has gotten worse, significantly worse, as the number of aid organizations in the country has increased exponentially.

The problem is that missionaries, for many years, have given to people what people should be able to provide for themselves. For whatever reason, the served became unable to serve themselves (war, famine, disease, etc.), and very well-meaning people come in to help. But the mere act of helping changes the very human dynamic of day-to-day life, and over time, changes the way people function overall, changing their beliefs about themselves and their own abilities and capacity.

After the 2010 earthquake, billions of dollars from around the world went to Haiti. But relief was slow. It was almost as if the nation itself could not rebuild, because they'd been trained not to. The following excerpt from the TAL episode describes the ideal solution:

...You teach the people of Haiti how to do all these things. You use this rebuilding process to give Haiti the ability to build itself...This option, capacity building, do I even need to say it? It takes a long time and it's really, really hard. You need foreign money and you need Haitians to believe in the projects and to participate fully...

It's a complicated problem with an equally complicated solution. Change is difficult. A doctor is interviewed in the episode. He does the very hard work of allowing Haitians to fail in hopes that they might learn from their mistakes (as many of us do), and that these failures would result in greater systemic strengthening. Worst case scenario for this doctor? People die.

Haitians are not the victims in this situation. We all play a part, and Haiti's situation is cloned around the world. People feel sorry for other people...and so it goes.

Delusional hope.

I can't decide whether to give these to my shoe-loving friend for Christmas.

I think I've decided (for a brief moment of time) to be hopeful, for the future, because why not? Hope might be silly, and embarrassing sometimes, but it's tangible. There is no ephemeral hope. There is only hope for change, hope for better, hope for something different already, geez.

I often hope for a day without war, without violence in name and deed. I hope for this because I believe that we, the people, have the power to change the world for the better.

There's nothing better for fostering hope than staring through the window of a moving car (or train, if you're so lucky). That's how I get recentered, I guess, seeing the same scenery I've been seeing all my life, the same highway, the same crazy religious signs, the same oleander bushes. And I think to myself, "Well maybe I could change, maybe things could change a little, and everything would be okay".

I have hope that emptiness will be filled, that loss would be redeemed, and that someday, everything will make sense already, geez.

Peace out :)

I say "oh dear lord" a lot.

Makes you wanna go outside and ride a bike, don' it?

Today was the one day a month that I wash my sheets, clean my bathroom, wash dishes, and go to estate sales. Yeah, I'm a boss like that. Anyhow, I bought nothing at the sales that I went to. High prices + houses full of grief = Ack! Get me outta here!

In one sale that I went to, they made sure I knew that they had had things appraised. They wanted me to know that as I looked through the jewelry, they knew how much it was worth, and they weren't going to let scary 'ol me cheat them out of any money they were owed. Yikes. There was a palpable feeling in the house, a feeling of anger. And I walked out the front door, I heard one woman mention her mother who had died, and whose belongings they were hawking selling.

Suddenly, it all made sense, the feeling in the house, and I was reminded of how important it is to not get yourself into situations where you're hanging on too tight to things, when what you really want to hang on to are people (or in some cases, dogs).

So yeah, life lesson of the day.

I can't think of a title.

Shimano shoes - simple style, but very useable :)

I went to the city this weekend with my bff, saw Lori McKenna (ah, bliss), and had a silly time being away from home and getting back on solid ground.

Last week was really hard. I was faced with my professional inadequacies, and that was painful and difficult to work through. Somehow I thought graduating would make me more of a pro, and less like swiss cheese, but ah, 'tis not to be.

Have you ever told yourself (or someone else), "Yeah, I've dealt with that" or "That's not an issue for me anymore"? Well that was what I thought about my own struggles. I probably never realized that I was believing that I was whole and healed (and perfect), but my actions spoke otherwise. I've been behaving like someone who looks the part, but doesn't have all the skills yet. Yeah, teenagers can have sex, but should they? It's like that. So now that my humility has been sufficiently restored, I can go back to the business of helping people with my ego somewhat wounded, but my general safety improved.

I saw Ghandi yesterday, and now I'm reminded how he beat his wife, and how being human means being imperfect, and learning and growing and changing, becoming better, stronger, and wiser (hopefully).

Peace out :)