Moving

No photos this time. (Changed my mind, obviously) I think the camera is in the bottom of a bag somewhere. In the dining room is a pile of stuff with bright flourescent green stickers on each item, warning the movers not to move them. Hope it works. Red tape for the stuff to go to storage, and the rest, off to Jamestown. I have to get used to saying Jamestown instead of Sonora. I live in Jamestown.

I am downstairs in the office where I have the computer, listening to the sound of heavy boots on the hardwood floors upstairs. The guys are great. One of them is young and strong and smokes cigarettes and drinks 24 ounce cans of something filled with guarana and inositol. He has a really cool tatoo on his neck and he's really incredibly sweet. Last time I moved with the government the people were pretty trashy and were really rude. I'm grateful this is so easy.

I'm feeling it this morning. Boxes filling up everywhere. Space clearning out. It's amazing to have someone do this for me. I still remember all those years moving from apartment to house to apartment and again. Always renting and hoping that the next place would be a real home. I haven't had to rent anything since I moved into my grandmother's home more than 11 years ago. Whew! What a blessing. Amazing how many little blessings have come to me as I get older. Young strong guys packing and moving my stuff. Cars that actually run, that don't overheat, and don't have weird carburetors and have good tires. You have no idea how it feels to be in a beat up old volkswagon with little babies in the car, traveling, moving. I remember.

OK, so maybe I will take a picture and put it in here. Just for fun. It's cloudy this morning, weak sun, but the snow that fell overnight has already melted. It's happening.

I may even have a renter. That's pretty exciting. Not sure who she is yet, but the rental management company said she's a middle aged woman coming to see the house on Saturday after I am out of here. Moana coming today to help me with putting up the gutters that we never got up last summer, and scraping the windows that we never managed to get scraped after we painted right up to the snow time.

My computer is running slick. David came yesterday and worked on it. Everyone needs a computer Dave.

And David, my sweetie from work came by last night and we laughed ourselves silly over stupid soils stuff while we drank a beer together. He will come to Sonora and visit. Jamestown. (grin)

OK. time to go take some photos

Enneagram

Ok, Melody, So you did it to me again. My daughter has these tests on her blog and I keep falling for them. This one was especially interesting because it came to the same result I came to after a year of study on the Enneagram with a teacher. I hated that I was a 9 back then and still don't quite believe it. Ah well.


the PeacemakerTest finished!

you chose BX - your Enneagram type is NINE.

"I am at peace"

Peacemakers are receptive, good-natured, and supportive. They seek union with others and the world around them.

How to Get Along with Me
If you want me to do something, how you ask is important. I especially don't like expectations or pressure.
I like to listen and to be of service, but don't take advantage of this.
Listen until I finish speaking, even though I meander a bit.
Give me time to finish things and make decisions. It's OK to nudge me gently and nonjudgmentally.
Ask me questions to help me get clear.
Tell me when you like how I look. I'm not averse to flattery.
Hug me, show physical affection. It opens me up to my feelings.
I like a good discussion but not a confrontation.
Let me know you like what I've done or said.
Laugh with me and share in my enjoyment of life.

What I Like About Being a Nine
being nonjudgmental and accepting
caring for and being concerned about others
being able to relax and have a good time
knowing that most people enjoy my company; I'm easy to be around
my ability to see many different sides of an issue and to be a good mediator and facilitator
my heightened awareness of sensations, aesthetics, and the here and now
being able to go with the flow and feel one with the universe

What's Hard About Being a Nine
being judged and misunderstood for being placid and/or indecisive
being critical of myself for lacking initiative and discipline
being too sensitive to criticism; taking every raised eyebrow and twitch of the mouth personally
being confused about what I really want
caring too much about what others will think of me
not being listened to or taken seriously

Nines as Children Often
feel ignored and that their wants, opinions, and feelings are unimportant
tune out a lot, especially when others argue
are "good" children: deny anger or keep it to themselves

Nines as Parents
are supportive, kind, and warm
are sometimes overly permissive or nondirective

Migration

I read the other day that the Ross geese are destroying the alfalfa fields in Klamath. The geese are on their way north via the Pacific flyway and it seems that Klamath Basin alfalfa is a sweet delight to them. They eat the plants right to the ground, and since alfalfa is a perennial crop, the fields are destroyed permantly.

I suppose it's a bad thing for the farmers here, already fight for survival and dealing with power costs increasing 10 fold and the question of water always in the background. Yet, I can't help but love these geese. When I walk up to them, they lift off like someone shaking a sheet before folding it, waving and fluttering together as a single being. Symbol of spring. Something so incredible about the sound of rushing wings overhead as they lift and turn.

I drove with Mo down to Miller Island and Tingley Lake to find pelicans. There were no pelicans, but we found the geese. Ross and Snow and Canada, and a lot of great egrets, and hawks and eagles. Birds in the Klamath. It was a way of saying goodbye to this home of mine, at least for a time. The skies were much as I remember them 3 years ago when I found the geese at Miller Island for the first time, and posted similar photos to weatherunderground, so amazed at the spectacle of migration, so thrilled to see and hear it up close.

I leave this weekend, but not for good. I'll be back to move and pack, but then it WILL be for good, at least for a bit of time. I have no idea at all what life will bring to me in the next short few years, but as always, I do know it will be full of new experiences and adventure, and yes, maybe some sadness and hard times as I deal with living in a new world. I can always go back to these photos of the geese, though, and know that they will always be here in March. I can return just like they do to this magic wonderland of desert and water and birds. It's the refuges that draw me to this place, that and water in the desert, open spaces and sky. Winter is long and cold but when the birds return, I remember why I love it here.

Personal DNA Map

Moving to California

Moving to California after living away from there for more than 30 year creates all sorts of mind messes. My daughter told me it somehow made her all excited and happy to think of me living there. They have heard the stories, of the years that I worked so hard to get them out of the "evil state". Moved them to Northern Idaho to protect them from crime and drugs and smog, to give them farms and small towns, horses, chickens, good schools. Funny. Those things are completely irrelevant now.

I have become the prodigal daughter. Suddenly things like oak/savannah landscapes, the high sierras, Yosemite, access to culture, and of all things, really great restauarants have more meaning than how good the schools are. Just being in Sonora for a day or two, I felt such a huge difference in the way people act and interact. That california instant intimacy that I remember so well was everywhere. Friendly people, talking and sharing way too much according to those folks who live in colder climates. What IS it about warm weather than makes people different?

I am excited about it. I am so ready to not worry about shoveling snow, to escape that feeling of being old and crotchety on icy driveways. For pete's sake, I actually knocked myself out on my driveway this winter on the ice. Yeah, I know it rains in California, a lot actually where I am going. And it gets hot. Really hot. I guess I'll have to see how I hold up on that one. I guess the other difference for me is that I know that I no longer am trapped no matter where I go. The world is smaller for me, and I have the freedom to move around in ways I never used to when I had small children and no money.

If I get too hot, I'll drive to the Sierra Crest and hike in summer snows. If I get too bored with one landscape, I'll drive to another. If I want to see the ocean, I'll drive two hours and hang at the beach. If I miss Oregon, I'll get in my truck and take a long weekend back to Oregon. Easy. But in the mean time, I'll live in my little mobile home in a "holler" along Wood's Creek and fantasize finding another one of those magical miracle gold nuggets that float around there.

Work will be challenging, and that's a good thing as well. New landscapes, new project to develop, new opportunity to apply all the things I learned in Klamath and now I can do them even better. New people to meet. Even a knitting store in town that says "come on in and knit". I somehow know that I won't be anywhere near as lonely there as I was when I first moved to Klamath. Read that again, Sue, I know it.

Leaving Klamath is another story. For some reason I am ready. Not to leave my home, since I do love my little home a lot and know I want it waiting here for me to decide later on if I will come back here. I guess it also depends on how Klamath grows in the next few years and where we think it would be best to spend the rest of my retirement. As I always said, winter in Florida, spring somewhere green and fresh, summer in the mountains of Oregon, fall in Utah, or New England. Still sounds like a motorhome life that really awaits me and all I have to do is decide where I am going to keep my rocks and the family photos.

But for now, the adventure awaits, and I am excited about the growth that it represents for me, the career growth, actually it will be the culmination of that career, and the personal growth. No more looking for the right partner, the right person. I am content in my life, very much so, very content as it is right now. I have lots of love and carre, as well as personal freedom and the ability to be just who I am, all the time. Not sure how that happened actually. I got stronger, I got less frantic about the whole thing, I became more secure in the real me without having to be so "out there" with it all.

So, I plan to learn Spanish, my next project. and keep knitting. and ride by bike and swim every dayin the pool, and do lots of walking the hills. I plan to work on my photos, and make sure that I write and write and write. Most of all I plan to do a really great job as MMA project leader, and make that the best project that I possibly can make it. I care about it. The project will be my last career move, my swan song, so to speak. I want to go out with a bang and do it well.

In the mean time, I am here looking around me at the organizing things that need to be done, at the rooms waiting to be separated for storage vs moving, and waiting on the final word for the house in Sonora. Maybe I'll get some sleep this weekend.

Only Maybe

Home maybe sweet maybe home??

Home sweet home 

Eulogy to a Soul Friend

I haven't written here since Shera died. It's still too close. I think a bit, I start to type, and then it stops and the silence slips back in, the empty place where she was. In my heart. When you are 60, lifetime soul friend has a completely different meaning that it does when you are 20 or 30 or even 40. Different. Final. More empty, somehow.

Like the time I bought my new stove. A brand new Maytag, all the bells and whistles. It was just a few years ago and I looked at it and thought, "I will never have to buy another stove again. This one will last until I die". I won't live long enough now to worry about ever buying another stove.

I will never have the time to build another friendship the way I built this one. I will never be as hungry or as vulnerable or as idealistic or as ready to see someone new in my life in the same way I saw Shera back in 1994. Shera left this place and took with her something of me. Of course, she left something of her with me as well. Ahh, those old cliches. "Her memory lives on in me." The memory of our love and caring. But even more, the silly little funny memories of stupid moments among the red rocks in Utah. Those are the memories that she leaves with me. I can talk about them all day to others, but no one was there, they are meaningless words on paper that can't even come close to carrying the feeling, the sense of light and brilliance that surrounds the memories.

No one but Shera.

She is the only one who was there with me. I carry it alone now, with the deep luster of her memory as a shiny shadow in my heart, but just a shadow.

I carry the brilliance of Muley Twist rock and the frost on the dried seed heads of flowers at dawn, the empty space between the front of the motor home window and the depth of the canyon below the cliff outside that window. I can describe it all day and yet words can't even begin to convey what it was to anyone but me, what it felt like to be with this friend that I loved totally in such a sweet place of love and acceptance of each other. It was all the sweeter because we didn't mix it up with being lovers, or being romantic, even though I idealized her and loved her so very much, it was all from afar somehow. We knew we were friends. We knew that bond would last long beyond any of the temporary bonds she found with the women in her life.

Till Jeri, of course. She made it with Jeri, she learned how to appreciate Jerri, she stayed with her, and let Jerri be there for her in a way no one else had done. She fought it sometimes inside, she raved and ranted, she went into depressions and out, but still she stayed with Jerri till her end. Loyal. Loving. Appreciative of all that they had together and how muc Jerri had given her.

We lamented over the years, the wasted years spent looking for the perfect partner, the perfect passion, the perfect love. Of course it didn't exist, and because we somehow knew it didn't exist, we knew better than to look toward each other for that perfection. The friendship was ironically too perfect.

So this blog is about breast cancer, attended to far too late, double mastectomies, chemotherapy, brain tumors, lung tumors, losing her hair, her humor, but never her strength or determination to fight, to keep going, to keep trying. How many of us are taken by this beast. The young ones, the healthy ones. The lesbians who never had children and never nursed a child. Their breasts defeating them in the end. Breasts that are high and proud and firm because they never sagged under the weight of a child. In the end, their killers.

Hmmmm. Does everyone's picture always look like this? Notice the arm holding the camera.