Details

It’s all in the details. Any event, any project, any arrangement. It is all in the details.

Details have not always been my strong suit. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love all the little details, but I have a tendency to get distracted before it gets completely done. It’s days like that I like to blame the fact that I was born on a cusp – half Sagittarius (a fire sign) and half Scorpio (a water sign). Sure, the combination makes steam, which can be incredibly powerful, but only if you can keep it harnessed long enough.

While we’ve made a decision that the wedding is going to be as low-stress as possible, there are lots of little details that we’re having fun putting together. Pete’s hair, the corset I’m going to be wearing, the color of the tablecloths, the multiple sorbets I’m making for the rehearsal dinner. Luckily, the details are all proving fun to figure out instead of stressful.

The other facet of the wedding — all of the details of Wedding Cans — are proving all kinds of fun. Honestly, mostly fun. All of the media interviews, the scheduling, the pictures that need to be sent to twelve different places. Emails to return, requests to respond to, and stories to tell. Honestly, I love it. It’s a lot of details, but every detail is slightly different. I can’t get bored with it nearly as easily because so much of it is unique.

The Wedding Cans project has gone so far above and beyond everything that we ever expected. We thought, when we started the project, it might receive some local or regional news attention. Instead, the story absolutely took off. We’ve been covered by the Associated Press and NPR’s Morning Edition twice. ABC and NBC channels have both run our stories. We’ve been covered in every U.S. state, every Canadian province, and several international news sources. Near as we can figure, we’ve also been covered in South Africa, Ireland, England, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Columbia, and several other countries. In other words, it’s been insane. And insanely fun. And insanely wonderful.

The details are also the wonderful glue that brings together family. I have always been blessed with a close-knit family, but I truly feel like the details are what makes my friend-family in Spokane as close and loved as any of my blood family.

In short, the details can be frustrating. But the details are also a part of what makes life wonderful and worth living. It’s all in the details. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Making a decision

When I was very young – I’m not sure how old, exactly, but young – I wrote a note to my parents. It’s a note that still sits, framed, on my mom’s desk. In a very large, very child-like scrawl, “Dear Mom and Dad, i have descided to be independant.”

I suppose that should have been a clue for how the next 20 years would be. As long as I can remember, I have been That Kid. The one that planned her Halloween costume in February. The one that ran every single year for class office (and lost every single year, too.) The one that failed math in middle school because they made me do they same problem over and over and over again – but still managed to make it to the honor roll. The one that The one that took every AP class she could in high school. The one that took 19 credits, did competitive speech and debate, and had two jobs throughout college.

I have always been striving, working, just in general worrying very much about what will happen, how I can plan for it, what the next move is going to be and the 6 steps I’ll take after that disaster might be. I make lists. I have excel spreadsheets that would make most accountants cry. I rarely let more than 5 or 6 items sit on my desktop at any one time. At one point, I nursed a caffiene habit that started with 8 shots of espresso in the first hour I was awake.

This isn’t to say I was this uptight about everything. I hate doing the dishes, and more often than not let them pile up. I can be terrible about returning emails and phone calls. I have avoidance skills that (as my exes can attest to) can be quite mighty. I always told myself that’s because I was Stressed Out.

I truly tried to nurture my creative side, and I can honestly say some of the moments I was happiest was when I was awake at three in the morning, madly typing out some poem that wouldn’t leave my brain alone; or contorting myself into some weird, probably dangerous position to get The Perfect Photograph. Far too often, though, I let my Stressed Side get the better of my Creative Side. I quit doing poetry slams because I was frustrated with myself for not having my poems memorized, for not getting better scores. I let photography fall by the wayside because it didn’t Serve a Purpose… and not having a functioning camera made that far too easy of an excuse to make.

A year or two ago, I got laid off from my job – and I wish I could say that’s when the realization hit me. It wasn’t, though. Instead, the nine months I was laid off I spent making sure I had lots of other things to stress me out. I started a business, I made job-hunting a full time job, I stressed out over not getting more housework done, not being the perfect housewife, not gardening more, not getting it Just Right. When I got another full-time job, it was a Big Marketing job that I told myself I would love. I had responsibilities, I had people to answer to, I even got to make spreadsheets. Things happened, and I moved on. To another, even more stressful job.

Then I realized, among other things, that I was in that pattern again. I was stressing out – and doing more of it to myself than I needed to. By this point, I’d been in that cycle so many times that the span between Point A of starting a project and Point C of being so stressed out I avoided the issue was getting shorter and shorter. Working between 50 and 70 hours a week at just one job didn’t help at all either. I gained weight – and a fairly significant amount (though, when you are my size, an extra 20 pounds is a relatively small percentage of body weight to add on.) I stopped sleeping well, when I did sleep. In general, I wasn’t healthy.

Not surprisingly, I ended up unemployed again. About at that point is when it really did hit me. I have spent the last 25 years trying to grow up too quickly. Trying to prove way too much to myself and others. Trying so badly to be A Better Person. Instead of succeeding at all of that, though, I was burning myself out. I saw where I was headed, and it wasn’t good. I hadn’t had a chance to sit back and realize exactly how lucky I was. I had a boyfriend / fiancee who loved me and supported me in most everything I did or wanted to do. I had a beautiful house to live in. I had a family, and a family of friends that were more wonderful than anyone could ask for. So why the heck was I stressing out so much?

A very long and fortunate set of circumstances later, I did end up with another job. It’s a job I don’t have to stress out about. I can ride the bus to work, mostly not worry about what’s going on at work, even if it’s a Big Deal, and enjoy myself after work. I am dipping my toes into waking up my creative side again. I am truly trying to be less stressed and more at peace.

It’s not always an easy truce with my brain. There are days I worry I am not doing enough. There are days I wish I could do more. There are days I think that I am “Not Making Use Of My Talents.” There are still days I drink four shots of espresso, though now it’s more to feel a buzz than to keep myself from falling asleep. I think, though, that I am finally growing up. And growing up doesn’t have to mean being Perfect. Growing up also does not mean getting the great job, the amazing benefits, the great car, and the great house. Growing up means finding a place inside of yourself that is at peace – and balancing with it.

At least, that is what I am hoping. I will always have hare-brained ideas, and will probably always stress more than a Zen master would recommend. Finally, though, I think I have succeeded in becoming independent; it’s just that nobody told me it would be an internal, not external, struggle.

40 acres (but no mule… yet)

About a year ago, Pete and I, though a very long and fortuitous set of circumstances, ended up purchasing a 40 acre plot in Moses Lake, Washington. The land is completely unimproved, with no power, no water, no shelter, and barely a fence to speak of. During the summer days it is blazingly hot, with barely any natural shade to speak of. During the nights it gets very cold, with a clear sky and constant wind.

It is also beautiful land. When we went out to look at it, I admit I almost cried. It wasn’t so much the look of the land – mostly empty except for sagebrush and a lonely, broken down fence. Rather, it was the smell. We arrived on the land just at sunset, and the sound of the small bugs just waking up for the evening made for a background to the gorgeous scene in front of us. Then there was the scent. Sagebrush, growing strong and hardy in the buffeting breeze.

I grew up outside of town, on a house that had mostly sagebrush behind and surrounding it. Almost every childhood memory I had of being outdoors was tinged with that scent. Standing on the land, smelling the sagebrush, watching the sunset, it felt like… home.

And so, we bought it. Last summer, we did some camping on the land, though not as much as we would like. The first thing we did was go out with our family (some blood related, some not) and ask the land for its blessings in return for its protection. Beyond that, we haven’t done much… yet.

Sure, we have plans. Lots of them. Some of them hare-brained, some of them not so much. Water will be an issue, as it always is in high deserts. We’ll have to drill down several hundred feet through solid basalt to have any hope of reaching the stuff. About 2/3 of the land is former farming and Conservation Resource Protection land, and the other 1/3 is grazing land, full of basalt rocks and thick underbrush. There is a tiny little canyon on the land, and while we own one wall and the basin, the other wall is just over the “border”.  It is a quiet place, a calm place… a place you can feel the grounding of the rocks while feeling the lightness of the air around you. I hope to spend many mornings watching the sun rise in that canyon. A few mornings, we have discovered hundreds of little desert flowers, surprisingly bright in the landscape of brown and sage green.

This year, we hope to possibly complete some kind of shelter on the land – for practical purposes as well as the experience. With no shade, and only bring-your-own shelter, hauling a tent out can get frustrating. Creating your own shade on this landscape takes at least a tarp and a few building materials – and we would love to be able to just go out to the land and enjoy ourselves each time. So, the current plan is to attempt a modern version of a Central Asian Yurt / Mongolian Ger. We’ve got the basics of the plans – now it’s just a matter of buying the materials (we’re planning about $500 for the wood and building materials, and we’ll be recycling the covering cloth). That, among the many, many other things we have planned for this summer (wedding, family reunion, etc), will hopefully be another project completed.

If we complete the yurt before winter, though, doesn’t really matter so much to me. I may very much enjoy living in the city, and perhaps be a little too attached to my coffee, but there is absolutely nothing that beats waking up in the morning, watching the sun rise, and smelling the sagebrush welcome another day.

TinyTall : Just A Taste

I find it rather appropriate that I’m writing this “first” entry while sitting on my kitchen floor. In the last 10 years or so, I’ve had a wide variety of blogs and homes on the web. Between 2001 and 2006, I even managed to keep a blog of sorts going pretty consistently. Then… well, let’s just say I took a very long unintentional break. By my count, this is the fifth “I’m back” post I’ve written for a blog. This time, though, I’ve realized that I have been trying far too much to specialize my blogging for far too long.

So here I end up. Sitting on my kitchen floor, laptop on my lap, cats purring on my feet, Pete pouring me a drink. It’s a reset of my day, and this is a reset of my blog.
So here it is – just a taste of TinyTall. You’re liable to see a little bit of everything here. Bits of poetry that strike me at three in the morning. Life updates. Photographs (lots of those, hopefully.) Recipes. Musings on natural living. Gardening. Maybe some yurt building. I plan on posting some of the old posts from years past that I’ve dug up, thanks to the WayBack machine. You might even see a bit about Wedding Cans every now and then. In short, this is going to be a lot of the various bits of who I am – which, more often than not, is a puzzle that only sort of fits together.

Welcome back to my virtual home. Hope you enjoy it here!