SO what's new?

It seems that there is always something new going on. I'm almost a little bit tired of that, but not really, or I wouldn't keep doing things to make change in my life. It's the weekend, and instead of hanging around and relaxing, I am off to a geology tour put on by the Geoscience Teachers Association. Still don't know what the N in front of NAGT stands for, but it should be a good day of traveling around the foothills and listening to a bunch of geologists talk about s2 and s2 foliations and such gobbledy gook. I am sure when I start talking soil science it's just as strange to people outsied the field, but I laughed last night thinking about how we all get so caught up in our jargon and like to use the words to prove that we know what we are talking about.

So I can say accretionary tectonics of the metamorphic belt and talk about the comparisons throughout the cordillera now. And finally I have heard someone say "cordillara" instead of just reading it. Ah well. Maybe John and I can talk about something equally as esoteric while we travel about today.

In the mean time, I don't have time for photos yet, but hope to have some goodies up for myself as the weekend comes to a completion. Yippee.

And, one more change. I started NutriSystem two days ago. Trying to not talk about this very much, just between me and Mo, but I do want to chart my progress and document the path. I think it will work, I am motivated and have just enough help to make it work. Mo paid for the first month to get me going, so that's like some motivation. I don't want to let her down. In a good way. She doesn't pressure me to lose weight any more than I pressure myself when I look in the scale.

So, my computer is screaming away. sigh. I keep hoping it will hold out just a little bit longer, like at least until spring. If I get any kind of award from Dave, however, it will go for a computer I am sure. In the mean time, I keep backing everything up to my flash and external drives and am glad that all my writing lately is going to blogs so I won't lose them on the hard drive when it finally gives up the ghost.

Ah well. Another Saturday morning

So this morning I feel like writing and reflecting just a bit. New for me, since for the last few weeks I haven't really been looking very deeply. It's darker in the mornings as the season progresses into fall. Today is the Fall Equinox, this evening sometime after 9pm pacific time.

Mo is sleeping still. Molly wakes at 4:30 and needs to go out, so of course everyone else, including the cats, simply go back to sleep, but me? No, of course not. So here I am.

I just had my 61st birthday. Somehow 61 seems a lot older than 60. I'm really IN my 60's now, not just getting there. Sixty was closer to 59 and 61 is closer to 65. Go figure.

Usually I write about my year sometime around my birthday, try to reflect and remember and think of all that the previous birth year has brought to me. This birthday is momentous in that it actually represents the very last vestiges of my Death year, and the last of my 10 year cycle in the Emperor. All the male stuff, the integration of my own personal power, my inner male, outer males in my life. Done. Finished with my first experience of a Death year. I always say that Death isn't about real physical death, but is about transformation. Ha. Interesting to me how we dance around the death thing with fancy words about transforming. It may be transformation, but it is still death. My Death year was marked by the death of my soul friend, and my birthday is marked by the arrival of her ashes in my mail box. Funny timing. She told Jerri that I was to have her ashes because I would know where to take them. Shera died last February, and only now was Jerri ready to let go that much. So they are in a box, a white cardboard box filled with a plastic bag. Geez. Today I will make some kind of a funnel and put them in a container that at least seems a little more respectable. I do have a lovely gourd, painted black with images of goddesses around it and feathers and beads at the entrance. A very small entrance, hence the funnel. Such a passage.

Weather has finally cooled. Now it's in the mid 80's during the day and while that feels warm to me, I just have to remember those 115 degree temperatures to realize that it really has cooled. Mo and I have been working on house projects in the midst of me going to work every day, but today I am off, and will be home for the next three days while we finish up all that we can together on the house. Last weekend was for play time and this weekend is for working.

Last weekend I actually went to Yosemite and over the Tioga Road. A nice return to a place I grew up loving. Incredibly, the air was a crystal clear and fresh as I remembered from my childhood. There's a quality of light in Yosemite that seems unparalleled anywhere else. I thought it might have something to do with the granite, the whiteness of the granite and the way it looks almost blue in the shadows. And there is so much of it, and so much sky. Maybe it had to do with the nearly 10,000 foot elevation over the pass. It was a blessing, a dream, hiking to a high mountain lake, as pure and pristine as anything I have ever seen. A lovely way to spend a birthday.

The year really did bring some rather incredible changes to me. Most significantly, the loss of my friend, the move to Sonora, the first trip overseas, my grandson in Iraq. Other small milestones were everywhere, but these were the big ones. Again, in the midst of it, there doesn't seem much to write about. It's just a life progressing, going through shifts and changes, and as I look back, full of surprises and unexpected turns and twists. Maybe it's the end of the cycle and the next few years will not be so full of surprises, and then again maybe it's just the nature of life and the unexpected things are what make it interesting.

I know I am not bored. Not even close. I am challenged every day with the demands of my work, my new job here in Sonora, with the differences of living here, challenged every day in ways that keep me from ever thinking I am bored. That's a good thing. I think I could find lots of people in their 60's who might be tired and bored and not doing much that is very different from their old patterns. I'm trying to stay away from that place. I want to create stability in my life but I also want to keep it fresh and interesting, full of enough challenge that I am stimulated, but not so much that I crash and burn. A fine line.

Enough for today

Back to Klamath

I guess I miss the water and the lake more than anything else. I'm home again in Sonora and remembering the clear air, the cool temperatures, the water, the light, the lack of smog. It's all pretty amazing and I am glad to say that I never really took it for granted when I lived there. It is still hot in Sonora, and still crowded, and still expensive. I'm just glad that I can go home now and then and see moments like this one. I was on my way to work, driving in to town from Rocky Point, and thought, oh my gosh, I have to stop, I don't care what time it is, I have to stop and get a photo of this moment. I took several actually, and they are all wonderful and it's hard to decide which ones to put up here. But I suppose it's irrelevant. I shared them with shutterful and sent them off to friends and family. This blog is basically irrelevant as well, but I just thought maybe I should put something up here. Maybe I can get into writing about the diatomaceous tour in Klamath, or soil survey in Tuolumne County, anything, something other than whining about missing my home. Maybe I can remember winter in Klamath and be glad that this year I will be here. Mabye then it will feel better than it does right now. Mabye then I will appreciate it all. Who knows. I hope so.
This is a shot of Medicine Lake in the Highlands, actually in the lovely state of California, about 6000 feet high and as clear and clean as you could ask for. 5 days of quiet, still water, ospreys, ducks, all sorts of little birds, chipmunks stealing food from the dog dish. Rejuvenation. Healing. Respite. A gift






And then of course there are the mornings on the lake and the polygonum in bloom. Silly pink flowers growing on 6 foot long underwater stems looking for all the world like a field of flamingos. Life should be so simple. Someday it will be. I wonder what I will think of it then?

I am reading my daughter's blog, so full of life and questions and amazing things that she writes about. Thoughtful, intellectual, interesting. I think I had that in me once, but maybe never really like she does. She amazes me. If you haven't found her blog yet, go there. She is Penitence69 on LiveJournal.com. I guess I should know how to link this but of course I don't! LOL Guess I really am into a different stage of life.