supposed to.

The worst thing about heartbreak is the loss of these ridiculous expectations we make for the future. I wanted to be with my forever-partner right now. I wanted to be buying a house. I wanted to be buying crap for the house, painting walls, planting gardens. There are things I wanted to be doing. There were expectations. I was supposed to be getting married sometime soon. It was an expectation.


Then you learn to live day by day. Because there's no other way to survive. The heart is a piece of lead in bad times; its weight anchors me to the floor, the bed, the sofa, wherever. I have trouble just going for a walk beneath its gruesome bearing. The bed becomes a small pool in which I choose to submerge; each morning, purging the water from my lungs, I struggle to move, to rise up, to exercise the dog. The brain does not have space for tomorrow; it has space only for right now, and what's next, and now what? The mind and the heart argue, like angry parents, father and mother, logic and love. 


Sometimes, it seems as though there will be no tomorrow. What's the point? Other times, tomorrow is the only thread holding you together. Because if you can just make it through today...

loose ends.

I've removed my blog from Facebook because things are about to get a little personal. I'm dealing with a lot of shit right now. I'm fine, but there's a lot of inner turmoil that is surfacing in the physical realm. 

My significant other of four years and I are potentially facing a split. I'm devastated and exhausted, but also out of options. If you're reading this and your friends with both of us, I ask that you do not speak to her about what you read here. I also want you to feel no discomfort about the situation, and certainly don't think you've got to choose sides.

My second chakra is completely out of whack. I threw out my back a couple weeks ago, and on Thursday, I spent 4 hours in urgent care to discover that I have an ovarian cyst almost as large as my ovary. Apparently cysts are common and they resolve themselves more often then not, but it's still a little scary. Mine is large and painful, and if it doesn't resolve, surgery may be in the future. There's also the potential that while I'm just going about my day, it's going to "burst" (gag), causing immense pain and panic. These two physical ailments are coming about because I haven't dealt with issues in the emotional realm yet, but I'm working on that.

The ultrasound I had to diagnose the burning pain in my belly cost $600. I'll be billed monthly with no interest, so that's great, the only frustrating part is that I'm already in a shitload of debt. Between credit cards, school and personal loans, and now this medical bill, it's going to be an uphill battle for a little while. I know I can do it, I just need to buckle down and not let it get me depressed. 

Also, for whatever reason, my boss has been really unpleasant with me at work lately. I have no idea why, so Thursday I dropped him a note to see what's going on and if it's me or not. We'll see what he's replied today. He's not the kind of person that talks about emotions, so the fact that I'm responding emotionally to his attitude doesn't set things up for a positive spin, but hopefully it will turn out. 

So, as you can see, I'm just fucking exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. On the bright side, my potatoes are coming along nicely, I have some Americorps money to use on my loans if I can get Americorps to get its shit together, and I have the greatest friend and mom in the entire world to see me through this. 

terry.

Terry Tempest-Williams is, hands down, one of the most amazing women I've ever had the pleasure to be in the same room with. Tonight I attended her lecture here in Central Oregon and she blew me away. Her sincerity, compassion, sensitivity, and ability to observe are so inspirational. I've read her books Red and Refuge, and picked up her latest one at the lecture tonight, Finding Beauty in a Broken World. I can't wait to dive in. If you haven't read Terry, be prepared for love, spirit, brokenness, and a connection to the earth that us granola-eating hippies can only dream of. Okay, well, I don't eat granola, but you get what I mean.

I'm staying with my friend Heather for a little while, and last night we went to Safeway at 10pm for ice cream. On our way out, Heather bumped into a friend of hers and they started chatting. As I usually do, I continued on my way out the door and entertained myself until she was finished. Heather and her friends are beyond cool - they're independent, involved in important things, are free, and have a serious amount of fun. They're who I aspire to be. So, intimidated, I shy away from contact with them for the most part. I feel like the chubby nerd in the class that dresses like crap and is too wrapped up inside her own brain. So Heather comes out and says, "You're never going to make any friends if you walk away."

 Shit. 

vintage style.

So, in a roundabout way, shopping vintage is one of my favorite ways to be sustainable. Yes, I love shopping at GoodWill and others, but sometimes the thrift stores are just kind of full of junk that, with a little creativity, we turn into something useful. Every now and then you luck out and come across something totally awesome and unique, but when I want to really shop vintage (read: I don't want to have to "fix it up"), I hit Etsy and eBay. There are lots of junk-hunters out there that know what they're doing, and they know that I'll pay an obscene amount of money for a rusty tin can.

Etsy is all about handmade, but it's just as much about vintage goods. A lot of the vintage on Etsy is crap (read: shoulder-padded dresses from the '80s for $40 - but maybe I'm just biased), but some of it is just fucking awesome. Shopping vintage not only keeps stuff from going into the landfill, but it gives your personal space a touch of nostaglia and uniqueness. It also keeps alive eras from the past and shows us how cyclical style really is. (Have you seen any teenagers recently? They all seem to be wearing the neon orange/square sunglasses/tapered pants/hideously shaped blouses from my terrifying youth in the late '80s and early '90s.) 

Here are a few of my favorites that I've discovered recently on Etsy.

These two awesome shortening tins are two of my newest, favoritist things. They used to hold Fluffo, a shortening that started its career in the 1950s. I don't have any idea what's going to go in them, but I have enough craft crap that they won't go empty.

The graphics are so modern that I was pleasantly surprised to discover that these tins were made mid-century. The style reminds me a little more of the '60s, but I don't know my decades well enough to settle on exactly when these were designed.

Next, here's a cool pair of silver earrings. I've been eyeballing them for months and it's been a good while since I splurged on a fun pair of earrings. (Well, okay, the last pair I bought was in May, but who's paying attention?) These flowers were were scavenged from an antique shop, their original purpose unknown. The seller cut off the flimsy stems and turned them into stunning jewelry. 

If you know me at all, you know that I love to sew, but don't make nearly enough time for it. I'm a vintage-sheet GEEK. The colors and designs from the '60s and '70s are a visual joygasm for me and I have a small collection started. I LOVE those vintage color combinations: blue and brown, or burnt orange mixed with gold, avocado green, and brown.

Here's a clutch I purchased, and an example of a sheet I want real bad for my sheet collection. Vintage sheets are so soft and the designs so fun, they're perfect for any project where you need a lot of fabric. I like to use mine for yoga mat bags, or just for fun new pillowcases, and they'd be awesome for skirt-making. Most of my sheets come from GoodWill, so they're priced at under $10 (which, for how much fabric you get, is a real steal.)

When I own a house, I want this lamp. Real bad. Right now. I love lamp.

Recently, I was reading in one of my geeky DIY design mags about decorating with vintage paint-by-number paintings. If you're not familiar, paint-by-number is exactly what it sounds like. It has a distinct look to it, with simple lines and shading, and has also appeared on Apartment Therapy, a famous design blog. Naturally, I like nature scenes and spotted this gem that immediately got added to my Favorites.

The last thing on my list of vintage 'wants' is this tea towel. I love the citrus colors and theme. Something so simple can make a big impact in your kitchen (or framed on your wall).

I've been so used to shopping at thrift stores that I came to think that thrifted goods had to be shabby, flawed, and essentially someone else's unwanted thing. I've started to shift my focus more towards interesting vintage goods because, when you find some awesome thing buried under a pile of antique dust and must, it's really like finding a hidden treasure. I know it's only a thing, but I've always believed that if you surround yourself with beautiful things that make you happy just by being near them, it's not nearly as materialistic. (Bullshit? Maybe. But it relieves some of my guilt.) It's more about surrounding yourself with beauty, I guess. Maybe it's the repressed artist in me. I don't know why, but it just feels better to have thrifted nostaglia than something-I-bought-because-I-needed-one-but-wasn't-really-stoked-about-it. Vintage gets me stoked. About kitchen towels. And rusty tin shortening cans.

At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed my completely random thought for today. What kind of vintage things do you covet?

straightforward.

Nothing in life is more complicated than love. Nothing gives us more pleasure, more security, more memories, than love. Nothing helps us to sleep soundly so much as love. In the same way, nothing is so difficult to lose, so troublesome from which to separate, or so hard to decide. Love is, at its greatest, the fuel on which the machinery of life runs. At its worst, love brings everything else in life to a screaming halt. Clothes don't get washed, mail doesn't get into the box, food doesn't get bought. Distraction rules the day. Sometimes it's completely impossible to simply carry on. Sometimes physical symptoms appear once the emotional and mental strain has gone on long enough. Sometimes it is pure despair.

Other times it's liberating. Every now and then, when the sun peeks through the clamor of clouds, there is the future, only a stone's throw away. Keeping the future in mind is, naturally, the most difficult part of having a broken heart. If we could simply keep the future in mind, I don't think hearts could be broken. As it is, we are a species completely obsessed with the future: what to make for dinner tomorrow, the list of to-dos for next week, planning for babies and home-buyings. Strangely enough, when it comes to love, all future plannings stop. We can only be absorbed in the present. Although love it the greatest thing a two-legged can know, it's also the one great device of torture in this reality. It is the ultimate paradox, the black and white, the goodness and the evil. 

nesting.

There's a nest on our porch. It belongs to a mated pair of house finches.

I got on the tallest chair in the house and tried to peek in, but I was still too short. I know mom's spending time on it because when I open the front door she bolts, but I'm not sure there are eggs. 

Here's a poor photo of mom and dad. It's been raining for days and the white clouds in the background made the birds fairly dark, but you can still see that the male has a showy red head. 

Here's the male regurgitating or mock-regurgitating food into the female's mouth. It may sound gross to us, but it's an integral part of the courtship between the two. Males will also perform elaborate dances, flexing their wings and even hopping back and forth over the females. 

I sure hope eggs appear, followed by some baby finches. We'll see what happens.

rain.

I'm sitting in the gravel parking lot. Rain is pounding the roof of my car. I turn off the iPod, turn off the engine, and lean back into my seat. No one's in the parking lot - everyone's already inside. I close my eyes, and the splattering of the water just above my head puts me in a tent, camping, in the rain. Warm, inside of a sleeping bag, listening to the great emptiness that is actually the complete opposite of emptiness. I open my eyes, and heave a great sigh. Things are weighing heavy on my mind these days. I let my vision blur. The pines and sagebrush whip in the wind, and I'm at the coast. The gray clouds move back and forth, dissipating but pushing forward. I'm just beyond the water. Just over the dunes, just beyond the sand, I can hear the beach just below the rain on the roof of the car. I'd rather be either of those places right now than where I am. My chest rises and falls with another heavy breath. I'm in Central Oregon, and it's early June, and it's been pouring for weeks. Everyone's complaining. 

But I don't mind the rain. I sit there longer, listening, feeling the rain coming down. It may be the last time I get to hear it on my roof for three or four months. I soak it in like the earth soaks it in.

stupid may.

Today was in the 40s with wind, and some type of precipitation that involved some snow, some rain, some sleet (or hail, whichever), and a whole lot of grumpiness from the two-leggeds in Central Oregon. I mean, it's freaking May. The END of May. I know, I know - it's Central Oregon and if I didn't want to deal with Central Oregon weather I should have moved somewhere tropical.


Horsefeathers.


Last night I was watching this PBS special on hummingbirds and if you don't know already, they are absolutely my favorite animal of all time. Which is tough for a naturalist to say because, well, we like pretty much everything. Did you know that a hummingbird's heart can beat 1200 times per minute? PER MINUTE? And that hummingbirds can flap their wings more than 50 times per second? PER SECOND? They move their wings in a figure-8 pattern, which gifts them lift from both sides, allowing them to hover, fly backwards, and turn in a circle. At night, hummingbirds go into torpor, which means their bodies slow down - metabolism, heartrate, breathing - so they use very little energy. Even the bird's body temperature can drop to nearly match that of the ambient air temperature. Then, the next morning, the air warms and they wake up. 

I know for South American tribes, hummingbirds are warriors. They will aggressively defend their territories and combat each other in the air. Here in North America, they were symbols of joy, rain, and emotional healing. They were perceived as miracles because of their incredibly tiny bodies and fast movement. The Rufous Hummingbird, the most aggressive on this side of the country, will even go after songbirds, squirrels, and buzz humans. They're so tough, they'll even kick females off their flowers! 


I like to see hummingbirds as knowing what's important in life - they live for nectar, the sweetest juice on earth, and track the blooming of flowers like a cougar tracks a deer. They are incredibly fearless, and they are high energy, zooming about their business without even thinking of resting. Hummingbird-type people are doers, go-getters, and prioritize the important things in life, but they can burn out. 

I don't know if this picture is real, but the sizing is right. This is the Bee Hummingbird, the world's smallest, found in Cuba.

One day last summer I went into the Nature Center to prepare for an Owl Prowl, where we lead groups of half-interested tourists around to look for nocturnal animals. Only minutes before people began to arrive, I was walking by an outlet with a cord coming out of it. Sitting on the cord was a tiny, motionless hummingbird. It had been trapped in the building for hours, which can mean certain death for these creatures as their metabolism necessitates constant feeding. I grabbed her up in my hands and she gave no fight - just toppled over and lay there. I was horrified and rushed her outside to the feeders full of sugar water. I dipped my finger repeatedly in the water and moved it across her mouth, prying the delicate beak apart. It took a while, but eventually she started flicking her tongue in and out - hummingbird tongues are CLEAR! She started to come around, slurping sugar water out of my hand, until she was able to sit up. She kept drinking, slowly, and then, all of a sudden - bzzzzz! Off she went, just like that. She sat in a nearby tree until I was forced to leave to run the program, but you can bet your ass I just wanted to sit there and watch her until it was too dark to see. It was such an incredible experience, and I'll never know if I saved her life, but having the chance to connect with a hummingbird like that was something I hope I never forget.


I've been designing a hummingbird tattoo for my right arm, kind of a mix of Egyptian, Art Nouveau, and tribal styles. I don't know if I'll ever get the guts to GET it, but a girl can dream I guess. Until then, I'll just goo over hummingbirds at every opportunity.


Gee, I guess I really like hummingbirds.

things I did today.

Thing #1.

Okay, so I've just lied to you right off the bat. I actually planted this little herb-garden-in-training yesterday, but it felt stupid to say, "things I did today and yesterday." Anyway. Our first herb garden! Now I feel really domestic. Soon I'll be baking meat pies and whole turkeys with stuff crammed in them.

A triangular herb garden built out of scrap wood by a friend. 

Three types of basil, chives, and nasturtiums (edible flowers).

Thing #2.

Duct-taped my credit card up and shoved into a little-used drawer. (This may appear ridiculous but the last time I did it, I didn't use it for two months. Until I needed food.)

Thing #3.

Scored a sweet set of vintage (or, vintage-looking) drinking glasses.

All in all, a good day.

pressure.

It's silly how when you start a blog for a specific purpose and then don't quite follow that purpose perfectly, there's suddenly pressure. "What can I write about sustainability today?" I think to myself, and when I come up with nothing because my boss has been a dick at work, or the dog just threw up on the floor, I get frustrated and don't write at all. Does this happen to you, bloggers who read my pitiful ramblings?


The very reason I love to read people's blogs (the same reason, I will ashamedly admit, that I also love to read people's private journals) is because they're just telling stories. They interpret their lives so that others may understand them. Blogs like An Apple a Day and She Has My Eyes aren't teaching me how to build greenhouses but I love them. I love to know people's stories and experiences. I guess that's what I hope for my own writings here - that people read them because they're interested in my stories. Hm. That sounds awfully vain now that I've said (typed) it out loud. When I share my journal-reading secret with people (only ones that I've never read the journals of), they're usually horrified. Justifiably so. But I can't help it. Most people can't talk about their innermost thoughts and feelings with many people, and so they write them down in little secret books. I want to know people, and I want to know the things they think are so scary and horrible and embarrassing that no one should know about them. If that makes me a terrible person, I understand, but I can't apologize for wanting to know people on a deeper level. Clearly, that's why I blog and read blogs. It's kind of like journaling for some people - they can be completely anonymous and say what they want, so the innermost parts of them can come through. 


And, for those of you I know, don't worry - I never read any of your journals. But I really freaking wanted to.