Alpha-beta BS

I'm not the only one@

Ayup.

I'm just going to leave this right here for reasons.

So many this.

I can't even tell you how accurate this is.

Ask for blessings

Here's something I do when I go to beaches. It doesn't really matter which beach, and there's no difference between when I live near a beach and when I don't, I do it the same way:

Look out to the water with your feet in the waves
Open your arms and your heart
As the ocean to send you a blessing, or a message
Wait until something washes up--or washes out 

More often than not, something washes up onto my feet or against my leg. When it's a shell or a bit of wood or whatever, I pick it up, tank the sea, and keep it. I have a rock collection and a shell collection anyway, what's a few more meaningful bits of stuff? I'm like a bower-bird, I naturally sort of build shrines, just piles of stuff that catches my eye.

I decide what it means, based on where I am, what I'm doing, how I feel, what I need to hear, the whole context of my life.

Once in a while, the sea steals a toe ring or an earring, and that's a message, too.

And sometimes nothing happens except that I stand in the sea, breathing the air that hasn't come across cityscapes and thousands of other people, and that's a gift or a message, too.

It's strange, asking for blessings, but it's also sort of wild and free, so long as you don't have any preconceived notions about what counts as a message, a gift, a blessing. It makes me pause and notice the world and those old rhythms that don't care about when shops close and when people want to hit the road. It makes me feel special--and also puts me in my place. It reminds me that I actually can ask for things, if I can remember how, because usually, I'm so self-contained that it doesn't occur to me to ask for something outside myself or from something not-me.

I think any sort of ritual like this is a connecting with the higher organizations of the universe that we sometimes forget are there. Whether you see that as a spiritual detail or not--sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, you're allowed to be changeable--there are patterns we don't need to look at in the day-to-day, but that put things into perspective when you take a minute.

That's something I need to remember when I'm not at the beach, too.

I hate frustration, but sometimes...

Sometimes coming out the other end without having smashed your phone to bits against a hard rock is such a great feeling.

I went to my best friend's wedding, and somewhere on the first day I was there, I lost my phone. It wasn't insured because a) I couldn't afford any extra costs, and b) I've had phones for 11 years and never lost or broke one. I spent the rest of the trip feeling like I was missing some third arm I didn't really think about ever having until it was gone.

A few days after I got home, I got the announcement that someone had found my phone--Yay Find My Phone! I gave them my mom's number, and they were cagey about whether they'd get a reward, but they said they'd send it back, and we agreed to repay whatever it cost them to send it. I told said bestie that someone had found my phone, and he called my number and told them that he would be back in town in a few days and he could just pick it up for them, saving them any shipping costs at all.

And that's when that person, whoever he was, decided to be a jerk about it. He wanted $500 to turn over the phone.

I'm like, Dude, if I had $500 I could just get a new phone. For that, in fact, I could get the highest-capacity, newest version of the phone I lost. Do you think I'd have one three editions out-dated, with the lowest capacity HDD if I could just throw around half a thousand dollars like that?

And now my phone is dead, so I can't track it, and I don't know if he mailed it or not. But I also can't be without a phone while I wait to see, what with the caregiving of children who like to get into dangerous situations, and the modern world entirely lacking payphones and landlines, but not yet having any sort of Star Trek ubiquitous computing.

I went to the Sprint kiosk where my mom originally set up the plan we're all on, because they said she had an upgrade, and she wanted to talk to the person who called her. Nope, not an upgrade, one of those new things where they call it an upgrade, but really they're just not making you pay for the whole thing right now. Except, the downpayment was five times the tiny bit I had to spend, and we can't afford to add more to the cost of the already annoyingly expensive* plan. They sent me to the stand-alone store to see if they had temp phones I could get.

The stand-alone store did not sell temp, refurbished, or otherwise cheap phones. The guy there spent half and hour or forty-five minutes crunching numbers and trying every trick he knew, and could not find a way to get me a new phone without changing our whole four-person plan, and probably also making it more expensive.

So my brother says I can use his old phone, which he replaced because it doesn't hold a charge very well. I said, okay, because at least it's a phone, and it's not a flip-phone, so maybe I can use it for Etsy and Instagram and all the other non-phone stuff that is most of what I use my phone for.

So we called the number the guy at the second store gave us, and they said they don't do phone activation live anymore. A) dumb, what if we didn't have a computer? and B) maybe they should tell that to their dudes in the stores so they won't tell customers to call.

Can you feel the frustration mounting?

So I go online. I have to make an online account, because my mom has never had a computer and never set up an online account. I finally get in, and it won't load the list of lines to let me pick my own and get to the part where I actually activate the phone. Three times. Until I find a link somewhere else and go that way. Auto-activation doesn't work. Manual activation doesn't work, twice.

Finally, I get someone on the chat help-line. They give me new numbers to go through, and talked me out of throwing everything down a well and moving to the antarctic.

And it works.

And the frustration evaporates, leaving me feeling annoyed, but also a little silly, like I've been overreacting.

I'm still not pleased with how little the shop-guys could actually do, or now the system is set up, or how slow and useless the website is, but I'm so happy to just have a phone again, to not have to worry about it while I'm supposed to be a responsible adult, that, for now, I can let that go.

I can just be happy about the relief.

And that feels really good.



NOTES:
*I'm researching where I can get a much cheaper plan when my two years are up, because this family plan is stupid-expensive and goes against my ideals, my finances, and my willingness to hand over money for things I can get cheaper elsewhere.

The Baby says he doesn't need me...

"I don't need you! And you don't need me! I fine!"

Here's the weird place I am, emotionally right now. A while ago, The Baby said the above words to me, and I sort of got broadsided by this wave of Things:

• He really isn't a baby anymore, he's three and a half, his curls aren't so soft, he can put on his own shoes and brush his own teeth, he knows that I drink tea for breakfast and eat soup for lunch, and that the mac and cheese I eat is not the same as the mac and cheese he eats.
• He says "I not a teeny tiny baby, I a bigger little boy" when babies show up on commercials, but he says it while still wearing diapers and drinking from his ba-ba and holding onto my skirt while standing between my knees.
• He has the same need to roam all over the place that his mom and uncle and I all had, but he lives in a world that is not nearly so nice to little kids out wandering alone as the world we lived in at the time.
• He's not my kid, but he might be the closest I get to one if I don't find someone I feel like breeding with or adopting with in the next few years, and he's getting big.

And then, I thought:

• He probably really is fine. He knows he can't go in the road, and he isn't overly willing to do what strangers tell him to do, and maybe that bird really does need to be chased, and that hill really does need to be rolled down.

I've spent a lot of time lately trying to sort through the pile of emotions and wants and needs that I haven't really dealt with for the last three years because I've just been Going With The Flow in that totally passive way that means you eventually wash up somewhere where you didn't want to be and now you have to deal with it. It's less that I don't want to be here physically, though there are other cities that better fit my idea of a city and life therein, and more that I don't want to be here mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It's led to a lot of thoughts that end with me not watching the kids anymore, and that's not something I want to do--I like watching them, I like seeing how they're growing up, and, revelation here, if I don't get my own kids, they're the ones I get to do this for.

I worry a lot about being a good other-mother (and not a bad other-mother like Coraline had) for these beasties, and I worry about being selfish in a way that will harm them even if it helps me--because if I'm improving my life by ditching one of the few things I like about how it is currently, that's against some pretty core values I have, and it's not really an improvement. I worry also about being sucked into someone else's life and then being bereft YEARS from now, when I surface again and I haven't done anything to make what I have for myself better. And when they're messed up because of not being allowed to be themselves any more than I allowed myself to be myself.

So it hurt when he said he didn't need me. But he didn't stop there, and to me it sounded like the Universe telling me something I needed to hear-- he doesn't need me the way I think he does, but I don't need him the way I think I do, either, because it's all fine. We're adaptable. We know who we are. We know we can do things for ourselves and stand on our own two feet and keep moving forward. He knows he's not a baby, no matter that we all call him Baby, and I know I'm not his mom even if I worry like I am, and we're fine. Because that's the Truth. And there's freedom in the Truth, even when it hurts to hear it.

He has to keep growing up, and so do I.

Good ideas for a better world - Embrace - The documentary that will create global change by Taryn Brumfitt — Kickstarter

Embrace - The documentary that will create global change by Taryn Brumfitt — Kickstarter:





You guys? This is so amazing and it hasn't even been made yet. It's so amazing just talking about making it got me all choked up. Lets do this.



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Good ideas for a better world - Kickstarting the Way We Look at Women - The Daily Beast

Kickstarting the Way We Look at Women - The Daily Beast:



"It may be too soon to tell if the public would truly buy a more democratic, realistic representation of girls and women, but this certainly gives us ammunition to start raising the question.   "



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A Hipstamatic a day 4

This is something I'm doing because when I get bored, I mess with my photo apps! Every week until I don't want to do it anymore, I'm making a post where I post seven versions of the same picture, taken with seven different randomized combos of lens and film in Hipstamatic!

Loftus + Kodot XGrizzled

Akira + BkaclKeys SuperGrain

(I love the inky blacks in this one; makes my windowsill look way cooler than it probably actually is.)

Susie + Alfred Infrared

(I sort of love combos with Susie in them)

Libatique 73 + Ina's 1935

(My camera really likes Ina)

Hornbecker + Rock BW-11

James M + RTV

Jimmy + Kodama

(which I also love; it's so dreamy.)

What's your favorite Hipstamatic combo? If you use any of these, link to them in the comments so we can see what they look like with different light / flash / subjects / whatever!

A Hipstamatic a day #3

This is part of a series I'm doing because it's fun to play with Hipstamatic combos. I'm randomizing the films and lenses, and taking the same picture for each day of the week, with a different combo.

Wonder + Ina's 1935

Burke + Robusta

Burke + Robusta (but a little different around the corners!)

Hornbecker + RTV

YURI 61 + Sussex

G2 + Kodot XGrizzled

Roboto Glitter + Kodama

(My favorite for this week!)

A Hipstamatic a day #2

A Hipstamatic a day is a thing I'm doing where I randomize the films and lenses on the Hipstamatic app, and take the same picture, with a different combo for each day of the week. Here's number 2! I don't have every single combo they offer--I've missed some--but I have most of the ones offered for the last two or three years.

Susie + Kodot XGrizzled

Huckhorst H1 + Uchitel 20

G2 + Robusta

Diego + Rock BW-11

Foxy + Maximus LXIX

Burke + Float

Tinto 1884 + C-Type Plate

(I adore this one!)

What're your favorite combos? If you use these, link us in the comments so we can all see how different they look with different light / subjects / flashes, or whatever!

A Hipstamatic a day #1

These are the same picture taken with randomized frames and films in the iPhone Hipstamatic app. I'm probably going to do this periodically, because it's fun. I don't have every combo they've made available, but I have most of the ones from the last two or three years.

Salvador 84 + Ina's 1935 (no flash)

Helga Viking + RTV Shout!

Kaimal Mark II + Claunch 72 Monochrome

Melodie + Ina's 1935

(I really like this one; it's saved in my favorites!)

John S + Ina's 1969

(apparently the Random was on an Ina kick)

Roboto Glitter + Pistil

YURI 61 + Rasputin

If you use Hipstamatic, which is awesome despite everything being an in-app purchase, and you use these combos, link to the pics so we can see how they look different in different places / lights / flashes!

Moving toward a better sort of life

The more I learn about being gluten free, the more I stumble across all these other details about eating well and eating clean and living better. I mean, I knew the food system was messed up, and I've always sort of been a do-it-yourselfer, but I don't think I really knew just how messed up it was--or how easy, a lot of the times, it is to do stuff yourself. To just think about things beforehand.

Okay, I'm not going to be one of those creepy preachy sorts--I know what I want to do, and I'll be telling you guys as I go what's appropriate to whatever I'm doing, but I'm NOT going to harp on you. First of all, I have no business telling anyone else what to think when I'm trying so hard to just get my own thinking in line. Second, I really, really dislike being told what to do myself, so I'm not going to do that to you. And third, I really don't like that impulse of new converts to anything that goads you / tries to goad me into talking about it all the time while being super high-and-mighty about it, too. Nope. I'm avoiding that at all costs.

But I know that this life I have right now, though improving, is not the life I want.

So I'm working toward doing better--to building the life I want by:

• Eating better--I'm continuing with the gluten free living, and figuring out how to do that without spending a lot of money I don't have, or going completely seedy-paleo, which seems too extreme.* I'm also slowly replacing white starches with whole starches or with non-starch alternatives, battery-farmed stuff with sustainable stuff, and fake stuff (like margarine) with real stuff (like butter and coconut oil).
• Replacing weird chemicals--In my body-care products, my food, my household cleaning, my food-storage containers. This one is really hard and tends toward expensive or do-without-y, but there's only so much stinky-hippy-stereotype I can deal with, and I'm researching all the time.
• Figuring out where my personal spirituality is right now--I went through all sorts of phases as a kid, and I was a happy neopagan for a long time, but I think I'm just amorphously spiritual now, and I want to define it better for myself so I can work and life closer to my spiritual core and my core beliefs. That takes sifting and weighing--and the space to do that on my own.
• Getting back in shape--I'm still heavier than I want to be, and I'm still wildly out of shape, but I can almost always walk, I know enough yoga to get by, and I'm looking for movement classes I can take that won't break the bank or kill me or add too much extra stress.
• De-stressing--so I can refind balance and peace and listen to myself and the universe more without getting all jammed up in that narrow tunnel of freaking out and worrying about EVERY SINGLE THING.
• Figuring out my priorities--I'm damned sure of Travel, Peace, Balance, Self-Determination, Creative Expression...but the rest of the world and life is a little hazier. It's a start, though, and it's a thing.
• Fully embracing DIY as a lifestyle--Especially in the food arena, because why should I spend so freaking much on store bought versions of things I could make my damn self with very little effort? Especially if they taste better and are healthier?? I'm also going to look into making clothes, get back to making accessories, I've already got the garden squeaking back into existence, and I'm going to make jam this summer if it's the only thing I do!
• Looking for a better place--I'm going to start, little by little, visiting people and checking out their cities. Somewhere, there's got to be a city that clicks with me as well as the UK does without the requirement of selling my soul, leaving everything behind and giving up my cat, to get there. Somewhere that better fits what I think of as a city, as a climate, as a neighborhood I'd like to live in, as a scene with people more like me and less like idiots and jerks.

Most of this is just barely started, or barely gotten back to, but I'm looking. I'm trying to pay attention to myself, and to look where coincidence is showing me what I haven't really noticed yet**, and I've given myself deadlines for deciding and doing.

And that's a start.

How do you decide to change when change is needed? I'm really curious, if you're willing to share!

NOTES:

*Paleo itself is fine, and I've found all sorts of meals that are SO DELICIOUS LOOKING that are paleo; but when you're eating basically the same things that are literally in birdfood in basically the same forms, it's too far. And I don't like any diet that excludes whole chunks of available foodstuffs--I'm too poor to not buy the cheap options, and I'm too convinced that we're omnivores for a reason to not be omnivorous.

**I'm pretty sure that almost any form of divination, including Looking For A Sign, is just our conscious brains filtering what the unconscious mind is picking up because the unconscious already knows where it's going and it takes a while for the conscious to catch up. It looks like it's telling you a message because it's pointing out what you already know and getting you ready to admit it and face it.

Good ideas for a better world - Why We Need Better Celebrities

Why We Need Better Celebrities:

"The job of serious news outlets is to make the celebrity section no less exciting than it is now, and yet ensure that it features people who will spark our imaginations and help us lead our lives wisely and ambitiously, because they have something properly consoling and good to tell us. Celebrity stories should, in their mature form, make up one of the most serious, worthwhile sections of the most serious news organisations."

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Good ideas for a better world - Why We Need Better Celebrities

Why We Need Better Celebrities:

"We need serious news outlets to engage with the task of identifying and then promoting a raft of original celebrities. We need them to pick out for us the clever and kind actors, research scientists, molecular biologists, poets, venture capitalists, mothers, nurses, cleaners and parking attendants, the very many people who would be more appropriate targets of celebrity than those we know today - people whose physiques, attitudes and routines we should constantly have paraded before us through enticing photography and heart-warming anecdotes."

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Good ideas for a better world - Why We Need Better Celebrities

Why We Need Better Celebrities:

"Human beings need and will always look for role models. We therefore shouldn't complain about or eradicate 'celebrity culture.' We need to improve it, bringing a better kind of person to the fore of public consciousness: we need better celebrities rather than no celebrities. Rather than try to suppress our love of celebrity, we ought to channel it in optimally intelligent and fruitful directions. A properly organised society would be one where the best-known people (the ones whose parties and holiday photos and clothes and new hairstyles we looked at most often) were those who embodied and reinforced the highest, noblest and most socially beneficial values."

Can any of us be this sort of celebrity? I think so!



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Good ideas for a better world - The cult of celebrity « Keri Smith

The cult of celebrity « Keri Smith:

"The way to influence culture in a healthy way is to ask for the changes you wish to see."

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On Happiness - Mike Rowe for The San Francisco Globe

The San Francisco Globe:

"Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value, and behaving in a way that's consistent with those beliefs."

Read the whole article, it's good, and not long.



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State of the Garden - May 2014

May is apparently the time for gardens here in NC! This is all stuff that would have been going on in March in FL, if I was still there; strange how just a Zone and a half difference adds two months! It's still weird that I have to relearn everything I just knew instinctively after fifteen years of gardening in subtropical North Florida, but I feel more like I have a handle on things than I did last year. And I'm starting sooner, so it's already going better.

Yesterday, I picked up a little flat of four green peppers and four baby tomatoes; I figure I can't really have enough tomatoes, and if there's unwieldy amounts, it means I'm a) having a great garden year, and b) able to preserve salsa and sauce like I've always wanted to! I don't really think that five potted tomatoes will make that many, but ya never know.

This pic also shows the little bitty cups I'm attempting to start a bunch of exotics in. I have piles of seeds, and most of them have been laying around long enough that they're basically dead--but I don't know which are and which aren't just by looking at them, so I've decided that there's been enough saving and there needs to be more planting. If they grow, yay! If they don't, I know the rest are probably donefor. I've got a fresh avocado here among various citruses, two apple seeds, a geiger fruit Emmy gave me when I went to visit her a million years ago, Indian jujubes, dates, date plums, Japanses raisin trees, and a few more I can't remember off the top of my head just now. If any of them grow at all, I'll be super-pleased; if not, the dirt goes back into circulation and I get to buy a new round of exotics. There's a hell of a lot more sources now than there was when I got those!

Here's a better shot of the tomatoes and peppers. I'm so pleased that I finally have some peppers, even if they ARE totally ordinary bells because I couldn't afford the fancier ones. When I get back from my bestie's wedding in the middle of this month, I think I'm going to try to get fancier ones before it gets too late in the year.

Here's a good shot of the crabapple the Arborday Foundation sent me before the winter. Look how big it's gotten! I'd almost tossed all those poor baby twigs as compost and lost causes, and this one was the first to send out itty bitty leaf buds. Now it's got branches and is basically a real baby tree! I'm looking forward to crabapples at some distant time when I have a decent house to put it by.

And the first flowers are out on my first tomato plant! Look at them! So fuzzy and starting to open! There was already a big fat bumblebee--like, so big it sounded like an alien ship landing when it buzzed past my head--waiting for them to open. In the pic above, you can see how it's doubled in size, what with the wider pot I put it in and all the alternating rain and sun we've had so far this week.

Here's a look at the garden as a whole right now. Everything is still wee, but it's all green and growing (knock wood) and I'm loving it. Except the tulips. The tulips are about done, and they're slowly going the way of all things until next year, but we'll save them there anyway.

And look! Another one of the twig-babies has woken up! The guide they gave me says the dark blue ones are Washington hawthorn--which I find super-exciting. I've never had a hawthorn before, and if they're one of the ones that fruit, all the better! I much prefer gardening for plants that give me food in return for all those hours of effort and upkeep, you know?

Here you can see the lilies--almost as tall as when I got them for my birthday last year! They had huge flowers on them when I got them, and that's still three-ish weeks away this year, so I'm looking forward to the blooms! And I'll DEFINITELY have to thin them into separate pots for next year, they're filling that pot like woah.

My soda-bottle-carrots experiment seems to be doing alright. They look like carrot leaves now, and they aren't crowding each other too much, so I think it's okay. The onions in the yellow pot next to them are still spindly though.

This is the Immortal Lettuce. When the snow melted, there it was! And now it's putting out big fancy romaine leaves all over the place. If nothing else, it can be the greens in my smoothies in a few weeks! I might let it bolt at the end of the summer just to see if the seeds make snow-hardy lettuce, too.

Look how happy they are! I've gotten one strawberry off them, so far, and one that went squishy when we were out of town a while ago. but now there are so many flowers it's crazy. If I can, I totally plan to pick up a few more of these babies so I can really get some fruit, but really it was an experiment to see if they'd grow here. A successful one, apparently!

And last but not least, there's Hugs the Prickly Pear. Someone pulled him up and threw him out where people would walk on him, so I rescued him and brought him home. He's currently in my hanging planter (as you can see) over the garden, since he's less likely to care that the planter can't seem to maintain high levels of moisture. I hope he sticks around and makes it his home, because I love prickly pear syrup (it makes amazing lemonade, and is killer on vanilla icecream), and I still want to figure out how to gel it into jam!

The beets never came up, but there's a potato that seems to be doing well right in the corner of the windowbox planter that I forgot to take a picture of.

Next up (probably this afternoon, since I'm feeling gardening more than other things today), I'm planting the windowbox full of sunflowers, and the last two pots, where the peas never happened and the other lettuce melted away, I'm planting zucchini.

How's your garden doing? What're you growing this year? Where do you get your plants, and how do you grow them?