I went to the main branch of our public library today, for the first time in a few years. It was under construction AND there was a global pandemic, so…

I’m taking advantage of the digital options, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of the offerings. But it was fun to actually spend time in the building, and to check out some actual books.

But wait, there’s more!

Seeing the theme?

I’m taking a children’s book illustration class this semester called “Thinking in Pictures.” This week we’re looking at how authors and illustrators reimagine classic stories. Some of these books are not really picture books (lots of text), but they all feature beautiful illustrations.

Bonus! I found some books to check out next time that I just… liked, and am looking forward to “reading.”

Now for the practical part of the assignment:

P.S. There’s going to be some overlap with this and my SJSU classes. It could get a little bit messy, but that’s OK. I’m looking forward to the juggling, because I have been looking forward to this.

I finished my first “course” for grad school over the weekend…

It wasn’t really a course. It was a Welcome to Grad School orientation. Lots of good information, though not all of it applied to me, which is fine. I’m not the sun everything revolves around… sadly (kidding).

One of the good things about having been so intensely online over the last several years: familiarity with Canvas, Zoom, WordPress, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. (Also, the ability to make coffee I like, find ways to do yoga without a studio…)

Today the first course starts, and very soon, it will be time to become a time management ninja. Sometimes I’m pretty good at it; sometimes I’m not. Now would be a good time to stay on top of things. I don’t like rushing, or panicking, so it’s time to lean into deliberation.

Moving on…

Last year I had a resolution to cook a bunch of new-to-me recipes. I didn’t make it to 52, but I did a lot more cooking than I would have otherwise, so I’m calling it a success. (Resolution lesson: swing for the fences; even if you don’t complete it perfectly, starting and going partway can be just as valuable.)

This year I think I’ll be spending some time on a treadmill, in addition to my outdoor walks. I’m on the hook for 400 miles this year, which shouldn’t be too difficult, given my morning walks and summer hikes. This time of year, though, it can be a little bit dicey to spend time outside, even with extra traction (traction –> objectively awesome). We’re having a bit of a melt at the moment, which means we’re thawing and re-freezing, which is… not ideal.

The treadmill is… how can I say this gently… boring AF. But it’s easier to walk at a consistent pace for a goal distance or set time, and that is better for my back and hips than trying to navigate patches of ice and melting snow. (It’s also a better option during fire season — easier on the lungs than being outside.) The treadmill = consistent movement, and even if it’s boring, consistent movement is a good thing.

Part Two

Gently disentangling myself from a project I love that isn’t mine is a good first step, I think. I can enjoy working with the birds at the Outdoor Learning Center, and not be so up in my feelings about other stuff.

Figuring out things to pursue that *are* mine is going to take a little bit more work.

I loved graphic design, but I did not enjoy working with clients. I loved editing newsletters for the Audubon Society, but I burned out on it after five years. I love drawing and illustration, but I have no desire to try to earn a living from it (see client work, above). I love working with birds, but I don’t want to do it 24/7 (which means that I won’t be building a mew on my property anytime soon).

I love nature journaling, and the work of master naturalists. I will continue on that path with more journaling, more education, and more volunteering.

And I’m going back to school — that will definitely be my project for the next couple of years, at least.

I’m hoping that, out of this work and out of these things, something will rise to the top.

We’ll see.

Part One

In my last post, I talked about my relationship with my local Outdoor Learning Center, and I how I consciously need to realign that relationship in order to continue with it.

I have an — unhealthy — impulse to want to claim some ownership of things I love, even if those things aren’t my things. I’m not talking about creating external power struggles. It’s more that I tend to develop an odd sense of attachment, with a martyr complex thrown into the mix.

The brand of dysfunction that I grew up with declared, in no uncertain terms, that I was not allowed to have desires or goals for myself (because that would be selfish), but I could enthusiastically support others in their endeavors.

Seeing it in black and white makes it seem… unhealthy and weird, kind of like institutionalized neediness. (Because it *is* weird. If you don’t have your own stuff, you’re going to get caught up in other people’s stuff. It’s not appropriate.)

I love the OLC. I have loved the OLC from the time I first set foot on the grounds. It is a magical place, and the staff does magical work. And sometimes, I get to help out with some of that work. Mostly, I get to hang out with the most awesome birds in the world, and sometimes with a very cute chinchilla.

But here’s the thing, and it is a thing: no matter how much time I spend as a volunteer, I am not a person with any decision-making capacity. I am not responsible for any part of the OLC except my work on Thursdays (or whatever day I’m working). My name is not on the door.

Further, I don’t want those things. I love the kids, but the thought of teaching full-time makes me a little bit woozy — effective classroom management is a skill and a gift I do not possess. It’s overstimulating. Fundraising is not my jam. I am not equipped, temperamentally or by skillset, for the main work of this place.

I *am* well equipped to work with the birds. I love them. I don’t mind the work of caring for them. Being a part of keeping the sanctuary running is a really neat thing. But that’s where it begins and ends for me.

I am deeply privileged to get to be a part of this organization. I want to continue to be a part of this amazing work, even while recognizing that, aside from a small part of it, it is not my work.

Now I am on a quest to find my work… to create my project.

I do not know what it will be. That’s OK. It took some time to get here; it will take some time to move on from here.

2023 Edition

I am not a fan of new year’s resolutions. I’m a person prone to waiting, for the right time, for permission, for inspiration… it’s not workable for me to hold onto a specific date that way. There’s all the anticipation, and then, all of the sudden, it’s an obligation and, for whatever reason, procrastination kicks in, and then… failure. Right at the beginning.

This year I’m striving for continuity:

• Continuing my education and experience as a master naturalist;
• Continuing the habit of doing yoga 5-6x/week for 30 – 45 minutes at a time;
• Continuing — and expanding — a nascent sketchbook habit (that has been nascent for years — I’ve been playing at it for a long time);
• Finding new recipes, and continuing to tweak the ones I found last year;
• Settling into working with the OLC’s birds on my time and on my terms, rather than trying to be the “best volunteer of all time, ever in the history of the world.” (Don’t get me wrong, I want to be a good volunteer, in the sense that I try to make things easier for the people I work with… or at least not make things harder. But I need to — consciously — take a step back from the impulse to try to claim ownership of any of it, because it’s really — and I cannot stress this enough — not. my. project.)

There are some new things on the horizon, of course:

• I start graduate school in January. That will be fun, and hugely challenging… not just the content, but the structure. I’m looking forward to placing my existing skills into a new context, and learning new skills.
• I want to buckle down and spend some time learning animal anatomy, animal drawing and rendering, and creature design. This is another thing I’ve been playing at, and I want to stop playing at it and take it seriously. Because it’s fun. (And it can be somewhat related to master naturalist stuff, so there’s that…)

I guess I have one, sort of, resolution, and that is to limit my time on social media. There’s *a lot* of great stuff on social media — don’t get me wrong — but there’s also some really not great stuff, and I find myself spending more of my time and attention on the not great stuff, and it’s bumming me out. So there’s that.

The first order of business?

Get rid of this godawful cold, that I’ve now had for *checks notes* TEN DAYS. It’s in my lungs AND my sinuses, and it’s miserable. (It’s also not Covid — five negative tests over nine days — and while I have no doubt that it’s a virulent respiratory illness, it’s not THAT PARTICULAR virulent respiratory illness… I’m wearing a mask when I leave the house.)

Our coffee grinder jammed before Thanksgiving. We figured out how to clear it.

It jammed again.

After cleaning it out one more time — and having it jam one more time — I decided to try to replace the conical burr…

… it turned into a project, with new tool acquisition, and a few more parts.

I took it apart. There was so much coffee… everywhere.

I downloaded PDFs from Baratza. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos.

There was gnashing of teeth. There was swearing. It took a bunch of restraint to not just give up and order a new one.

But this machine had become my white whale. Fabulous and talented husband called it my quest.

I did it.

Time to test it.

It works! Coffee ground to specification. No blockages.

We’ll see if it lasts.

A fair amount of snow in this neck of the woods. We’re lucky to live in a neighborhood where almost everyone shovels, or we all have awesome neighbors who like to use their big snow blowers. It means that, with a good set of traction (looking at you, Kahtoola), walking is pleasant.

I’m amazed that there are so many treasures to be found on a walk. Little things that are just fun to see. And I’m glad that phone cameras are so readily available!

Today I learned the difference between rime and hoar frost. Rime ice is formed when water droplets in freezing fog adhere to objects as ice — that’s the “fuzzy” (not snow) stuff you see in these photos (we’ve had freezing fog and drizzle for the last few days). Hoar frost happens when water vapor in cold, clear air forms crystals on objects. (We get plenty of that, too.)

In other news, the Christmas decorations are up. I’m not feeling super festive this year, but it’s good to have a few more lights in the house on dark nights.

I am done with my Christmas shopping. Gifts for family were wrapped and left with them in Portland after Thanksgiving.

This is not like me. I’m not, in this or any other universe, that organized… in a normal year. I don’t wait until the last minute, but I generally don’t get everything sent away until around mid-December.

This bout of organization has nothing to do with planning or goal setting, though. I simply do not have the bandwidth to manage chaos at the moment, and so I shopped early because my goal for the end of this year is not to create avoidable chaos. (I’ll have to leave space for the unavoidable… nothing I can do about that.)

2022 has been hard… after a couple of hard years. I had a six week long non-Covid respiratory situation that required a ton of meds to mitigate (some of which made things worse), lots of volunteering at the OLC (then less, then more, and now less), some drawing classes and the master naturalist course, applying to grad school. The hardest bit — that lasted almost the whole year: our sweet elderly dog Lilo got really sick in mid-January, and early February, and early April, then struggled with progressive disease — with attending vet and vet tech appointments — until she passed in early October.

I am not generally a high energy person. Over several years, I’ve learned that I’ve never really had the capacity to manage being busy all the time — even in the best of times. But I have always been able to push through, far beyond my limits, until I get sick or burn out. Whether my chronic health conditions (thankfully manageable with medication) are a result of a lifetime of cycling like that or not, that way of living is no longer on the table for me.

Something has to give.

This month, I’m doing what my brother calls “turtling.” I’m curling up in my house, taking it easy (shoveling snow as necessary), volunteering a little bit, drawing and painting and cooking… and taking care.

One year, after we had been in Spokane for a couple of years, we had a storm dump 18 inches of snow in 24 hours.

We don’t get lake effect snow. This is not Buffalo. It’s not uncommon for us to have storms drop 6″ – 8″ in a go, but 18 inches was a bit much.

The next day, we had a much less unusual 6″ snowfall. But, let’s see (counts on fingers), that’s 24″ of snow in 48 hours.

I was not prepared. Not logistically. Not emotionally.

I used to be one of those “wait until the snow stops before you shovel.”

NO MORE. Now I go out and shovel every few hours in daylight during a snow event. Active snow events make me nervous. Plus, it’s easier for me to shovel 2-3″ at a time, than 6-8″ (or 18″), because let’s face it; my back and shoulders are not what they were when I was in my 20s (and I haven’t been in my 20s for a very long time). Anything more than 6″ takes forever and I’m sore for the rest of the day.

We have a walk, front sidewalk (with no hell strip), the cars, side alley, back patio, back stairs… and the sun room roof. (We have a sun room with a roof that isn’t pitched properly, so ice dams form at the gutter if you don’t rake the roof after big storms.)

[Fortunately for us, we have a couple of amazing neighbors with big snow blowers, and it’s not uncommon to come outside to find a path blown down the sidewalk. (So thankful.)]

Thanks to said amazing neighbors, the job isn’t as huge as it might be otherwise… but it’s still a big job that isn’t much fun. It’s one of those things that I hate to have to do, but I allow myself to hate it and carry on with it, because the longer you leave snow sitting around, the harder it becomes to move. It can get heavy because there’s a lot of it, because it’s wet, or because it has compacted from sitting around too long.

We got ~6.5″ of snow last night, between midnight and 7:30a. Our amazing neighbor plowed a path, so all I had to do was shovel around it in front. I cleared the front porch, the walk, the alley and half of the patio, the back stairs, and raked the roof. Fabulous and talented husband, finished the patio with our little snow blower and cleared the cars.

As I type this is 9:45a, and it’s still snowing — projected to continue for the next several hours (although it looks like we’ve had the bulk of the snow already, so my next few forays shouldn’t be as intense).

I’ll be out at lunchtime, and again after dinner. And we’ll do it all over again tomorrow, if necessary.

On Saturday I decided that I wanted to create some gift tags for Christmas… and I decided I would print them…

… but not on a printer… intaglio (dry point), on a press.

Specifically, a tiny press.

This little gadget is wonderful — it’s 3D printed, and so much fun to use. It’s great to have a press that can exert enough pressure to make intaglio prints at home.

Lovely, professional etching presses weigh a lot and take up a bunch of space. Tabletop presses are usually heavy. This is a nice way to be able to participate in an activity I’m new to (and not great at… yet) without overcommitting.

My first prints weren’t great though.

As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not an expert printmaker. And I don’t practice that often. I tried to do too much on my 4 cm x 6 cm plate, a sheet of heavy Dura-Lar. (I’m sure a competent printmaker could have pulled it off; I needed more space to to what I wanted to do.)

Next attempt is closer. I upsized my plate a little bit and ran it through the “big” press, which, in my house, is a pasta machine.

Getting there. I’m going to give this sheet time to dry completely and see if I can add some watercolor to it. We’ll see how it works out.

Maybe someday I’ll upgrade to a Sizzix machine, or join the print center to get access to the beautiful big press. But for now, the pasta machine and my tiny press will do.