I've always hated the northern Idaho spring ritual of burning off their fields. But this morning, I had a thought: does the brief heat of the fire kill off parasites in the soil? Would burning off a field reduce cocci?

If it does....loath as I am to say this, it would be an effective weapon in combatting parasites on an organic farm with livestock, since my understanding is that worming medicines and coccidiostats are not approved for use if you are certified organic.

Despite not having any place to keep them, nor any idea of where to be able to keep them in the future, I am still intrigued by the idea of having sheep some time in the future, and of having them graze under the orchard of antique varieties of apples selected for superior taste. There are a lot of sheep breeds, so even though I am wanting to raise a rare or less common breed of sheep, there are still a lot of breeds to choose from. Hey, we all need pipe dreams....

Selection criteria:

• Wool: it needs to be a good handspinning wool, appealing to handspinners. Ideally it would be fine, lustrous, free of kemp, and it would be nice if the breed had the possibility of colored individuals. The combination of fine and lustrous may not be possible.
  
  
• Hardy: it needs to be a breed that can thrive in our climate with cold winters and rainy falls and springs. Since I'd be raising them organically, parasite and disease resistance is also pretty crucial.
  
  
• Temperament: It needs to be reasonably gentle. I do not want to be attacked by rams, which, for the record, are less predictable and more dangerous than buck goats. Intelligence and a calm temperament would be really nice traits to have.
  
  
• Horns: both for defense and because there is probably a small market for horned skulls whereas almost none for sheep skulls without horns.
  
  
• Naturally short tails: Because I think cutting tails off sheep is inhumane and barbaric.
  
  
• If I had my druthers, I'd like to have a Scandinavian breed. These are always tough, hardy animals that can take a hard winter and the wool will have been bred for good handspinning and knitting qualities rather than as meat only with wool as an incidental.
  
  
• It'd be nice if the sheep were small, for ease of handling and to graze under the trees.
  

Faroes: I am still looking for info on the wool qualities of this otherwise interesting breed.

Oooooooh, here is a neat link: north European sheep breeds

Another likely prospect, the Gotland breed

I got the job! Starts on Monday, I am so happy. :-D

I feel so disheartened and crummy today for no good reason. I really hope to be able to sleep tonight and to have a better day tomorrow.

Holidays...leave me melancholy. But the kids seem to have had a good time and that's what counts.

Reflection: I have to say that the things I have been dealing with in the past year have forced me to confront the abandonment/rejection issues with my mom.

And in the course of this, I realized: I remember her walking out the door the first time clearly. What I don't remember at all, not even slightly, is when, after kidnapping me for a few days, she left me on a street corner, alone. I was 3 years old. The street corner was in a city. I don't remember that, any of it, but I know she actually did it, because she denies all sorts of other things that happened, and she doesn't deny that. How long was it before my aunt or relative came to pick me up? I don't know and I can't even imagine leaving any young child alone on any corner for any length of time for any reason. When people came to get me, did they comfort me? If it was my grandma, I'm sure she did. Nearly all of the human warmth I got during childhood came from her.

God. Who would do such a thing???

Tired (still fighting off the cold!) but reasonably happy. The job interview went well, seemed auspicious enough. It would only be washing dishes, cleaning and other grunt work but at this point I would be pretty grateful for any job, particularly one which will enable me to sign up and pay for the second class before the deadline. I need to get my act together again and bring my GPA up.

Finished the re-do of the failed painting, and this one is considerably better. Unfortunately I haven't been able to scan either of them yet....will probably have another one or two by the time they do get scanned. And now that they're done, I'm intimidated by that new coffee shop and afraid to even think about that. What the heck was I thinking??!!! My work is not that good. I mean, it's nice, I like it, but it isn't exceptional or anything. It is fun to make, though and when I make it regularly, it gets better, sometimes better enough to surprise me. And I learn things about myself while I'm making things, whether it's clay or working on paper. I'm not always able to put those things into words, but I feel them, see them, understand them.

And....sometimes I simply don't want to talk about those things, not in words anyway.

I have a job interview tomorrow! Several hours after finding this out, I'm still doing the happy dance!

And...I just butchered a turkey for the first time. For the record, my friend's turkey, easier than I thought it would be and because she was attached to it, having raised it from a small poult. I didn't realize what huge, soulful eyes they have until I had the knife to it's throat. There's nothing like butchering to put meat into perspective. I hate killing birds and animals, but it's necessary as long as our culture eats eggs and dairy products. The alternative to meat eating is to allow infants to die if their mothers cannot breastfeed them... I do still think that meat should be primarily a by product of dairy and egg production rather than an end in itself.

Got rid of the sucky painting so I don't have to ever see it again and am now halfway through its replacement.

The second painting that went with the first didn't turn out well, so I'm going to do another one. No idea what I'll do with the first...the fish (yes, a fish, of course!) looks like it's either dead or dying, which if course it is, thus the red color.....but it shouldn't look so lifeless until it's a floater. :-/

Realization:

I love distinguished looking noses. Yes, seriously. They have character. :-P

Reading this book: by Carl Jung I like to read Jung and find him fascinating. Carl, was kind of a weird little kid..... ;-) But, I can relate to what he writes about algebra.

What I want to read next: Aspergirls

An old guy just walked in Monarch and took his hood off and he has the most beautiful intense purple-blue hair! Wow! When I get old and have white hair I want to do something cool like that. :-D

Low energy, fighting off a cold.

I think we need to start an Art from the Streets group/exhibit/whatever for Bonner County northern Idaho. I mean, a permanent thing, not just for homelessness awareness month. And we need to involve all the homeless people who are interested, not just the ones in the program I am in.

Speaking of art and such things....I finished a watercolor last night and will finish it's counterpart tonight, and then see if I can scan them both and post them here. There is a coffee shop opening up and I am hoping to pitch these to them.

Something happened with the dogs. I don't want to write about it tonight. Later.

I mean, the thing is, that guy has a cushy job. He has money and security. I, on the other hand, am homeless and financially destitute.

For me, one of the things that I can enjoy no matter how poor I may be, the thing that anyone can enjoy regardless of income, is nature. I can breathe as much of it in as I want to, hike as long as I want to, see and smell and enjoy it as much as anyone else.

For someone to talk about wanting to take that away from me and everyone else and from our children and grandchildren, permanently, for the sake of generating money now.....well, that's just not OK.

That guy I was mad at...it was because he was saying that he thought endangered animals and species should only be offered protection if the people in the area where it lives voted for protection, and that people should be able to decided if it is financially advantageous for us to work to save/preserve endangered of threatened species.

That sent me over the edge and I went off on him all irrational-like. :-/ I wish that I had expressed my viewpoint more intelligently.

Money just doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I think that there are things which have inherent value and cannot have a price tag put on them. This guy is always going on and on about money. He must be financially anxious I guess. I have reasons to be anxious about money. He works in a post office and will probably retire with a nice pension. Why is he so hell bent on giving wolves, bears, etc the ax for the sake of bringing more money to Bonner county?

Finally finished my application for Starbucks. Yes, I am applying there...

A useful and relevant link: IgA deficiency

I don't have much of any depth to talk about right now....

The snow is inconvenient but it's so clean...and fresh....and it smells nice....and if you stand outside at night when it's snowing and listen, it makes a very quiet, delicate sound.

I forgot to put the flaxseed in the scones this morning and was surprised by how much blander and less interesting they were. They taste more like the standard type of scones that can be bought anywhere. My next big culinary/health food goal is to cook some of the apples into applesauce, combine them with various healthy ingredients, and make my own (gluten free of course, and minimal sugar) energy bars. I've read the ingredients on the ones in the store, and have been am consistently disappointed in the high level of sugar/honey/agave syrup/etc used to hold the ingredients together. One of the bars has dates as a main ingredient, but dates are so sickeningly sweet..... Probably I will make one batch of applesauce and make 4 or 5 small trial recipes from that.

Tried to find a small diameter, high sheen natural yarn to make more hats with at Ben Franklin's this evening. Design details show up better that way and I don't like to use polyester/acrylic/etc (or to wear it, for that matter...I will confess to being a bit of a snob when it comes to this sort of thing). The closest thing I found was pearl cotton, but they only have it in tiny little skeins for about $1.50 each. It would probably take at least 7 skeins to make a hat, so if I wanted to sell the hats, the materials cost alone would be about $10, time would be about 2 hours......and with a commission of 20%, I can't really afford to make and sell them unless I can get a high quality yarn for less. People do not want to pay $25 for a hat. I can get standard, matte finish type cotton yarn for less than that.....and this is an option even though less aesthetically pleasing. Probably I will look online or check out a larger store such as Michael's in CDA first.

So instead, I ended up buying a waterbrush to use with masking fluid for a particular watercolor technique I've been playing with....sort of like batik on paper. Will see if the masking fluid, which has a strong latex component, gums up the water brush (which is plastic) like it did my paintbrush.

And.....I have a lot of fabric stockpiled from the years when I hoarded it for quilting and then couldn't bear to cut it up. Am seriously considering making a quilt again.

Ah. See, I am getting all domestic and stuff. Hmmm. That's kind of embarrassing, but I'm enjoying it so much! :-P

Can I just say that I hate running into officious assholes who claim to be experts on just about everything despite the blatant lack of credentials or experience in said subjects?

OK, thank you. That is all for now.

I still feel adrift in a sea of inertia.

What I have got to do is to make a list of goals and then start working towards them. In all honesty, there hasn't been much that I cared enough about to really make any goals....nothing mattered. But now the fog has broken in places, so that I can see patches of blue now and then. Last night, you were there in my dreams, not just a presence, but walking around and saying funny things again, making me laugh. :-) It was only a dream, but god, I have missed that, possibly more than anything else.

Anyway, where was I here: goals. Right. I have to make goals. Such as:

• Finishing my associates degree and possibly transferring to LCSC for the 4 year degree
  
• And or apprenticing to either a potter or an organic farmer who will let me grow my own stuff or pay me. I don't need to learn what weeds look like, been there, done that. I am OK with working, but would like to have something more to show for it than muscles (will be nice to be in better shape). However, if I found an organic orchardist to work with, I would gladly work quite a bit more (for free, I mean) than I would for say, a market gardener...mostly because I already know about growing annual vegetable crops.
  
• I want to pass that math class with at least a C and preferably a B.
  
• To have a place to fire pottery (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg!).....
  
• Pay off a couple of debts
  
• Ideally, I'd like to find a place to live where I can at least have a few chickens. If not this year, then in a couple years.
  
• I want to continue minimizing the stuff that I have, and to be more self sustaining than I currently am.
  
• It would be really great if I could get a job, even a part time job, that I could keep, that wouldn't stress me out past being able to function once I get home. I don't really care what the job pays (health insurance would be great though) or whether it utilizes my full capabilities.....but it does need to be fairly low stress and moderately interesting.
  
• And...I want to keep working on the trauma issues that have been giving me hell and become a more functional person. Because frankly, this is embarrassing, and my kids need me to be more functional.
  

It has been a busy, fairly productive day.

Both of my drop spindles are broken, both where the shaft meets the disc. Both seem to have been broken from being sat upon by children, both have been repaired by me already and have been broken again. I think they are going to need a metal pin or something to reinforce the breaks; simply gluing them with wood glue has not provided enough strength to hold up. Meanwhile, I have all this wonderful fiber that I would love to spin! So......my daughter has a drop spindle......hmmm.....and she probably would not mind my using it.

OK, this is going to be my third attempt on this topic.

Celibacy. It's where I'm at right now and have been for some time.

Not for the usual reasons. I don't buy into the whole shame, guilt, etc stuff about sex. I could find people that I both know and like to fool around with if I wanted to. And, not for the lack of drive or interest, either.

However.

I have come to feel that sex should be something deeper, something truer, than that. That it should be spiritual (and here we could go into a pleasant discussion of tantra), an intimacy beyond flesh and skin, a communing of souls.

Perhaps I am expecting too much, because in all honesty, I haven't actually experienced this before. But I can feel that it's possible....and people write about it (tantra again) so.....

Maybe it's strange for an agnostic Quaker who can only envision god in the laws of nature, etc to be talking about sex as a spiritual experience that should be kept.....well, holy is not the right word for what I want to express. Maybe sacred would work, if divorced from any sort of religious context.

It's strange and nice though: the longer I am alone, the more at peace I am with it, and the more committed I become to not settling for just screwing around.

Probably I should go to bed now...

Why do we do everything from left to right except for our clocks? Clockwise is from right to left.

When I think of a calendar year, it is counter clockwise. When I see circular calendar years that go clockwise, it just seems all kinds of wrong to me!!

I need to be more discriminate about what gets written here. Ugh.

I need to find a way to get enrolled in school again for at least two classes, and preferably with the ceramics class being one of them. Right now I've managed to sign up for abnormal psychology. If I can come up with enough money somehow to enroll for a second class, it should probably be the history of western art class. I failed both these when I shouldn't have and getting A's should boost my GPA enough to get financial aid again.

And I guess in the summer I can take the developmental psychology class.....and I should talk to people at LCSC about the possibility of getting a 4 year degree there.
Not sure what to do about the math class yet. I could either take that in the summer or in the fall.....

I talked to a shrink today and it appears (?!) that he diagnosed me with ADHD inattentive disorder. He says that there is no longer an ADD dx, which sort of came as a surprise to me...says there hasn't been one for years. So, where was I going with this....oh, right. He is putting me on one of the meds I've already tried, just a different dosage said it should help. I really need for it to help a LOT. Between the distractions during lectures and the test anxiety and the driving and everything else.....I know that I am intelligent enough to pass this stuff and it's demoralizing not to be able to.

Frankly, I am still trying to figure out how he could get my history, diagnose, confirm prior dx's and prescribe a med, all in the space of an hour. But at this point, I am not going to argue with it. I just want to be able to get my act together, to not be such a flake, to be able to pass these classes, to function.

Going to see about enrolling in college again.

I don't mean to sound petty, but it is kind of demoralizing to overhear people talking about having their master's degrees, etc, when I know full well that they're not any smarter than I am.

And then I have to reassess priorities, rein myself in, ask myself: is this some kind of a pissing match? No, it is not. I am not doing this to compete with other people. Wait: why, then? What am I after? I know what I want out of life. Is getting a degree going to help me get there?

and...I am already embarrassed for having written that. Why??

Discovered this online game: doodleordie.com It is silly, irresponsible, frequently puerile (a lot of the artists seem to be teens) cross between "Telephone" and "Pictionary". I used to love playing pictionary, but it sort of requires going to a party, an event which does not occur for me anymore and hasn't for years. In fact, there are a lot of fun games that have to be played with 4 or more people. Whatever...

I get so tired of being compelled to be serious and responsible all the time. I've had to be this way for years and it kind of sucks. I need to be able to play once in a while, dammit! I want to find myself in a place in life where I can be silly or goof around or just be myself on a regular basis without disapproval or punishment or censure.

And obviously, I am going to have to take care of all the responsible stuff first.....but someday, someday......and I am never going to put up with someone who won't let me be myself again.

I feel so sick. :-(

Maybe if I can resolve all that old stuff, this sort of thing will stop happening to me. Uh, OK, in all honesty, I have no idea why I would think such a thing, but maybe it is like a magnet, the thing that I fear most happens to me over and over and over again.

It looks like it is going to snow.

I am so stupid!! Who else misses a person for days and for weeks and would give anything just to see their face and then gets all scared and freaked out when they finally do see that person? Seriously, only I do this kind of stuff. :-/

But I can't take it. I can't bear to look at your back walking away from me week after week, month after month. When I see that, I see all the other backs that've walked away from me and the pain screams into me like a freight train. My mom, Daniel Haugen, people I thought were friends, who said they were friends and weren't, others. Backs, backs, backs....walking away. And I want to scream with all my might and I can't, I want to play screaming loud music, but suddenly nothing is loud enough, nothing screams hard enough. And people always tell me not to take it personally, but they're lying to me, and this is how I know it: how can so many silent backs turned to one person possibly be wrong?

And the thing is, that it is going to start sucking more soon.

Life sucks. There's just no other way to look at it. :-(

If I ever get a degree in psychology/social work, etc.....I want to research testing for intelligence without or with minimal use of language. I think that there are an awful lot of autistics and other non-verbal or verbally impaired people and species who are being sold short.

If we were to encounter on other planets, animals similar to the ones we have here, or a species which did not have a verbal language that we could relate to, would we assume that they were "dumb, stupid beasts?" Would we feel entitled to annihilate them as we have so many animal and plant species?

All the pottery is at Northwest Handmade now.

I feel so broken up tonight. These women who talk about "having a good cry" until they feel better are out of their fucking minds. All it does is make me feel like throwing up. I don't think things are ever going to be anywhere remotely close to right again and everyone tells me I just have to accept that.....and I just can't. I can't.

I know that people are supposed to take this sort of thing gracefully and I am so sorry that I have not been able to.

Retrieved the I-love-you-bumps-and-all fish from NIC in time for the show/display at Northwest Handmade (has to be in by Wednesday). The other fish was also slated for that show, but the Ceramics department is going to purchase it for the display case at NIC. It will have a permanent home there and will be on display every summer. When I think about it, I'm kind of honored and feel a little bashful about it. Also glazed the form that I still don't know how to describe. :-P

Anyway, it's been a busy day and I finally get to relax for an hour now...I have finally located my watercolor paints, pencils (I think!) and paper, so hopefully I will get to paint tomorrow.

Maybe the truth is that there are time when I hate me.

What I have to do is to try to stop getting all depressed about this stuff and redirect my attention to getting my life back on track. My mind is so ingrained in all the same old negative patterns that it's entirely too easy to go and transfer all of that shit to situations where they might not even apply. And then I go and say that you hate me. That's BS.

This is not an easy situation, but I know that you don't hate me, that you don't despise me, and that you're a reasonable person.

So for now, my job in life is to turn away from the pain and to try as hard as I can to get back to my feet and start living a functional life.

Even in my dreams, you elude me. It used to be that you were there, turning your back to me, not talking to me, walking away, or just there as a presence. And somehow, even that was comforting. But now....now there are all sorts of other people, and you're not there, not even a little bit. :-(

Art show next week.....all the art in this show will be from homeless artists, ala Art From the Streets. Apparently this is not, as I had thought, limited to Wyoming.

The problem is going to be collecting my pottery from various sites. The anglerfish still needs to be glaze fired and I lack the funds to pay for that, so it won't be there. I will still have a respectable amount of pottery, though, and I am devoting tomorrow to finishing up other things I can enter in there. The other AFTS movements offer the art on a year round basis....maybe in time, we will have something like that here.

Reading: You Can Farm by Joel Salatin. This is a truly worthwhile, down to earth book with none of the dewy eyed romanticism that one usually find in this sort of book. For example: harvested forages (i.e. hay or silage) cost three times as much as if the animals eat the forage on site!

Also still reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma as well. I didn't buy Horizon Organic's milk before, and now that I know what Cascadian Farm's about, I won't be buying their either....or Petaluma Poultry. We need to redefine sustainability and have something better than organic. These people have turned the word into a bad joke.

I hate it when the various components of my life don't interact in a functional way.

Example: NIC is charging me out of district tuition. I have no idea where the courthouse is, and when I find it, which office I should go to. I do know that if I can find it, I can sign some paper so that the county will compensate me for the out of district expenses. I have no idea what this paper is called or how to describe it verbally. I haven't done these things simply because I am embarrassed to ask. I was able to sign up for the abnormal psych class.

I want to have my head looked at to see if the problems I have with math involve attention span and short term memory, or if I am actually unable to do it. I already asked my doctor, and his solution was to put me on the med that just about killed me with depression and suicidal ideations. I have failed or withdrawn from this class five or six times already!!! What do I have to do to get someone to listen to me when I ask for help for trying to find out what is going on?

And then there's my phone. It is on the auto refill plan. It should have refilled today, and it hasn't. The phone is an essential tool that I have to have. Because it has not been refilled, I cannot call the company to find out WHY they haven't refilled it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr................

And now, Dido's White Flag is playing.

I should go find some food and talk to my service coordinator instead of wasting time bitching here.

Update on my son: he's decided to move in with a different ex, one that I get along well with. I only hope that he interacts positively with my children there.