What would it look like if the wire did melt on the piece? Would the wire melt after or before the clay and glaze set up? (probably depends on what kind of wire). Can I stabilize it with soft clay, or would that adhere to the piece? Maybe if I make fewer sections, it wouldn't be such a pain to deal with. Or --> I can make them interlock and fit together like puzzle pieces.

My truck tires are more bald and unprepared for winter than I ever would have guessed. I thought that the truck was weaving all over the road this morning because of the snow...but no, it appears that the alignment is off and the front tire on my side is so bald that there is a strip where it it down to the metal threads! Eeeek! So I am going to get right down to work on resolving that ASAP. Gosh, if it isn't one thing with that truck, it's another.....

I'm not going to worry anymore about hope and whether it's there for me. Hope isn't something that is elusive and lands on you; it's like everything else, you have to make it or bring it into being through what you do, think, etc. At least, that's what I think today..... Not going to sit around waiting for it, either. I'm just going to go live my life and do the things I need to do, because if I sit around longing for life to work out the way I'd like it to, the only thing that could possibly occur is that I'll sit around waiting and occasionally random lucky things will happen, along with plenty of less random, less happy things.

The Ceramics teacher gave me my last display piece back and took three more for the display case. One of them is kind of crummy in my opinion, but he said it was nice....

Maybe I already mentioned this, but I made a goat shaped teapot last week; she's coming along nicely and is all cleaned up and ready to bisque fire. Made several other pieces today, including another fish (this one is anatomically correct this time) and....hmmm, I don't know what else. I just didn't really have the touch today, felt enthusiastic but not creative enough, and I could hardly throw a good pot to save my life. Oh yeah, I made a small colander, because I don't always need the great big ones.

Our next assignment is to make a sculptural, non-representational piece that incorporates another material after it is fired. I had this idea to make a nice vase type thing and then break it or slice it up while it was in the leather hard stage, and make holes in each piece, and wire it back together, and glaze it, and then......and here is the problem. Then what? Because see, any glaze will make a piece stick to the bottom of the kiln in the glaze touches the kiln floor. Wire will melt, so it would have to be taken apart again before it could be fired, but then the glaze is an issue because of the glaze melting the pieces to one another and to.......oh......wait...... They could melt back together? hmmmm.

I have been working through a lot of the trauma, abuse, etc issues and wanted to make pots that expressed that kind of thing, that's why I was going to break it. If it would melt back together enough to stay in one piece, even barely......oh my, that sounds risky. Thinking......

And I was going to make a lot of small, cute, defenseless looking little round extruded pots and violate and ruin and distort them in various ways, but the extruder and I didn't get along today.

And.....maybe I just wasn't mentally gathered enough to do a good job today. Who knows.

I read Innocence Destroyed a study of childhood sexual abuse, as well as The Unsayable, The Hidden Language of Trauma, which apparently is about Lacanian psychotherapy, and then I looked at The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook and honestly, aside from making me aware of how much worse it could have been, these things didn't help much. The Last book does have an interesting section on nutrition and how the foods we eat can affect anxiety, and that actually was worthwhile. Sigh......I need to give up the coffee..... :-( and eat more B vitamins.

I guess that the reason these books are unsatisfying is that they are not giving me the answers to the questions I have, which is primarily whether or not there is any hope for me.

No phone. No internet at home. And now, because I was able to sell my old snow tires, i am at least able to drive (but limited still). Hmmm. I can't even blog.

But, I can blog on my computer and then publish it when I get home. And I can journal the stuff I really shouldn't publish anyway. And I can clean the house so that at least *something* feels like it is under control.

I still don't know what to do about the stuff I mentioned in the last post though.

An aside: every time I start researching issues like PTSD of anxiety or Asperger's or abuse survivors, I start to feel really....no polite way to put it: all fucked up and beyond fixing. Like damaged goods. And then I feel sad. Like, who would want to deal with all this shit? sigh......

And this is why I push it away and don't deal with it, and then things don't get better. And I have had a lot of counselors and counseling and stuff, but they tend to say crap like:

"Look into the mirror and say 'I'm good enough!' 'I am special and lovable!'"
(well, this just doesn't cut it for me)

"So, what are you going to do with that?"
(WTF???? This does NOT help me! If I knew, why would i have come to you for advice in the first place?)

"Why do you want to feel as if something's wrong with you?"
(Um, because I don't think denial is a good thing?????)

"I'm sorry those things happened to you."
(Well, gee, so am I. We both are. Now what?)

These things aren't helpful. They just leave me feeling like a fool for opening up enough to talk to someone about it, incredibly self concious, like I wish I could just rewind the tape and start over. Oh, and angry...if you couldn't tell that already.

It isn't that I don't want to do the work it takes to heal, it's that A: I have to live and function in the meantime and B: still not sure what that work is and C: people get sick of hearing this shit, especially since others have apparently had it worse and are purportedly healthy and functioning people (????), and D: Geez, where to find the time??

And now I am in the library feeling unproductively shitty and wanting to not cry in public because that is weak and lame and wishing that I could believe that there is hope, that there's a path out and....um....I need to go think of something else now........

Pottery: the Mamo glaze has actually been turning out more oatmealy transparent than opaque with brown spots, so I might try glazing with it for a change, particularly combined with other glazes.

Going to make more fish and animals. Also, slip sgraffito. More ash glazing too, need a good source of ashes. I need to find a way to elevate the fish above the floor of the kiln so as to be able to glaze both sides of them. I have no idea how ashes will interact with the glazes I've used, or with combinations of those glazes, so that will be an entirely new direction I can go with.

More than anything though, I need to work on the *quality* and finish of the pieces: making better feet on thrown pots, a smoother, cleaner junction of base and sides on slab built things, smoother seams, etc. Part of the problem is that the pots dry to leather hard while I am gone over the weekend. For example, I should have gone in today even though I had no class, just to trim and finish my leather hard pots before they cannot be worked on. I have a bad feeling that by Monday they will be too hard to trim well. :-( Mostly though, I just need to throw, throw, throw, until I can reliably get what I want from the wheel. I've been circumventing and avoiding this by focusing on hand-building, and turning out some pretty nice hand built things, too, but...... need to focus on throwing skills, too. Guess that I have such a loathing of failure that I simply don't try as much as I should, not only there but in a lot of areas of life. You can't fail if you don't take the risk to begin with.

Anyway....so I am waiting around for the managers of the coffee shop I frequent to show up so I can ask them about possibly exhibiting some stuff there. It is not up to the standard that I want, but that will be all the more incentive to produce better things.

Feeling terribly creative and upbeat. :-)

Happy. Made a lot of cool stuff in the pottery studio: a goat shaped teapot, a small paddled lidded box with feet, three bowls (one of which will be a small colander), a small pitcher sort of thing, a UFO shaped....umm....is it a vase or???? heck, I don't know. It just is... The teapot took the most time, about two hours, and that is only for the plastic stage; all of these pieces will need cleaning up as they harden into the leather-hard stage.

I made a big, freaky, morel mushroom shaped piece that is supposed to be a lamp or candle holder. The netted cap is cut through with the same diamond shaped netted pattern as on the real thing (well, sort of...) so that a source of light can shine out of it, and it just went into the bisque firing, along with my first two wood ash glaze experiments. :-)

I am ashamed to say that I am getting bored with the current range of available glazes....ashamed because really, it is such a wide array of choices compared to those available to most of humanity's potters over the centuries. The Greeks did most of their work in red, black, and white, and it was slip, not even real glaze!

We have:

• Emerald Green: fairly reliable, transparent green, like a clear forest green color, which crackles under the right conditions. Nice.
  
• Celadon: which is a baby-diarrhea yellow green with brownish black spots- yuck! But when over glazed with Seacrest Purple, it turns to a deep clear coffee brown.
  
• Seacrest Purple: Really more of a brown which can go to a deep denim blue-purple when reduced, and various shades of attractive browns. If you use this one glaze, the piece can look as if you applied several colors. This is a good default because it hardly ever looks bad, and it is always a surprise!
  
• Rose's Red: Has a split personality. It can be a pale, delicate celadon type green, or when reduced, a vibrant, streaking red, sometimes with hints of pink. The last batch hardly reduced at all, so a lot of piece which were supposed to be voluptuously red turned out pale green.
  
• Iron Red: more reliable than Rose's Red if you want Red, but also a lot more opaque, and can run the risk of looking dead. When it looks good, which is often enough, it is great, and frequently has exciting metallic effects.
  
• Kansas Black: doesn't always turn black. Sometimes it is red, or a brownish red. It also has the capability for metallic effects, and I haven't had an ugly piece with this color yet that I can think of.
  
• Lapis Blue: Ranges from a pale, washed out matte opaque blue to a beautiful but thin transparent blue that approaches cobalt in color. The thing is, you can't be certain which you will get, and I am a sucker for true blue.
  
• Mamo White: A milky opaque white with big brown dots and brown speckling. In my opinion, sort of ugly, but very nice when combined with certain other colors.
  
• White Night- very white, no brown dots; I haven't tried it.
  
• Shino: From oatmealy textured off whites to pleasant apricot, occasionally a little darker. Another fairly reliable glaze that usually turns out nicely.
  
• Transparent: what it sounds like, a clear transparent glaze which can be used over slips and uderglazes.
  
• Green with Envy: I haven't tried this one either, because it is this very intense, very opaque, flat turquoise-teal green color that I am not too fond of. However, after seeing how well it went under Mamo, I might give it a try. The white toned it down quite a bit.

And I think that's all of them.....so I really shouldn't complain. It is just that I really want the deep cobalt blue that comes from cobalt carbonate....

Also am trying to remember if I have done any test glazes combining Shino and black, or Shino and red.....hmmmm.

But yeah, now that I'm over the stomach flu, it's been a great week. :-)

A low mood appears to be the first sign of an oncoming cold....bleah!

Anyway, I thought of something good for the goblets last night, and now I have forgotten it already.....:-P

Really depressed. Don't have a good reason, just am. Even the clay isn't helping, because the studio is full of people.

We are supposed to make two goblets to celebrate some event that is coming up. This in itself depresses me all by itself, but also, we have to choose a particular event to celebrate, and be able to tell the teacher what it is, and the design of the cup has to be about that event. I cannot think of one single upcoming event to celebrate. I'm sorry, I know I am an ingrate and should be able to think of *something*......but frankly, just attempting to come up with an event to celebrate makes me feel all grey and black...... Bleah.......

No wonder my sister is prettier and wildly popular while I languish in the shadows: she is all sunshine and flowers while I'm like some place that rains all the time.......

Thought carefully about it and realized that there is not one single positive thing that could come out of my smacking the snotty teen. Any immediate release of frustration would be offset by the ensuing fight, both of us would get more upset, and communication would go farther down the tubes, and eventually I would feel terribly, horribly guilty. Also he would get more snotty and difficult rather than less so.

He is inconsiderate, rude, uncouth, disrespectful and worst of all, has an uncanny talent for finding the sorest spot in your psyche and rubbing a lot of salt into it. Even more infuriating: he sometimes laughs in my face while he does it.....snarl.....

----------------------------------------------------
And another startling realization: I am not able to admit it when a person is scaring and intimidating me...well, not to them anyway. One would think that since I am classed as a "victim of domestic violence" and have a long and traumatic history in this area, I would be a cowering, groveling thing at the first threat. I do have a heightened flinch and startle response, and if there is a safe male (or a strong, dominant female) nearby when a threat presents itself, my first inclination will be to rely on that person for a sense of safety.

But....if my back is against the wall and the male is in my face, I do not stand down, even though this would seem to be the appropriate response. Strangely enough, I am afraid to admit to that person that they are frightening me. Maybe it is because people like this are on a power trip and get off on scaring people, feed on fear, and the last thing I want in a scenario like that is to be obviously vulnerable..... It's weird, and given my size (not very big), it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. In fact, truth be told, it sort of reminds me of my very small dog who chases moose and bears.

And then, after it's all over, I fall apart. That is the sucky part. Give me a crisis, and I will handle it: blood, guts, burns, seizing child, etc.....but after everything is ok.......I will be an absolute mess. Delayed response.

Yeah I don't know. I'm just sort of thinking out loud here......

Realizing that I should be more careful what I write on my blog!

Please, pleeeeease, can I smack my snotty teenager? Please?????? Just once?

Or, how about this: I will not talk to him at all until he moves out.

Sigh. Does anyone have a mother in law they need to piss off and annoy? I can lend you some house help for a day or two....

Wow, that was some batch of coffee! Note to self: gradually discontinue caffeine consumption.

Finally got some sleep for my poor, tired brain...and I am still sleepy......

Decided that it wasn't smart to hitchhike in the morning, in the dark. I'll find some other way to get to class. If I have to hitchhike, it makes more sense to do so in the daytime, in a fairly public place, not out in the middle of nowhere in the dark....

And, am thinking about pottery. Maybe instead of focusing so hard on my fine arts degree, I should take classes that will fulfill the general degree requirements and will be useful to me. Like, marketing for example. Sculpture. Things I can use if I want to go into business as a studio potter, because I can no longer move to Moscow and get a BFA without abandoning 4 of my kids....and after being abandoned by my own mother, I am not going to do that to my own. At some point, the BFA will be available in CDA, but between now and then, I should take classes that will A: fuflfill general requirements for the A.S. degree and hopefully go towards the BFA and B: help me to learn the skills I need to make a living somehow in the meantime. One thing I realized very quickly when I was in the dairy goat business (and landscaping, and selling my art, and selling vegetables) is that I am not savvy when it comes to doing business without getting ripped off. A business class might be a really, really good idea.

I am so frustrated...with my truck, with college, with life, with the way things go, and most especially with myself.

I finally got my truck (which broke down again) off of the highway just in time to get it towed. Two really cute, helpful, *nice* guys (brothers) helped me. I should be happy. I should be thinking about baking them a nice batch of homemade cookies to thank them, because one of them also helped me get home last night. I should be thankful I didn't lose my truck to the police towing it. And mentally, I am thankful, but emotionally, I am not. I am just frustrated by the continual obstacles and hassles of daily living. Why, WHY, WHY can't life be a little more routine and predictable? You know, so I could make it to class or to be where I planned to be *when* I planned to be there.

And, I am irritated with my son, who is a mess after breaking up with his girlfriend. I liked the girl, but I think he will be better off without her. But it isn't that, it's that the several days long process of breaking up with her entailed him filching my cell phone and texting her all night long for several nights and using up almost all of my cell phone minutes.So now, I have no running vehicle and no cell phone, and many of the numbers I call are not local. I am trying to remind myself that I need to think about his well being, not the huge added layer of complication that being phoneless is causing me.

I stayed up all night long doing my homework, and of the 2 (of 4 that were due) paintings, I hate the first one (it's overworked) and like the second, but apparently nobody else in class does. And it looks like I will be missing class on Thursday, or at least curtailing it and missing the drawing class, because otherwise I'd be stranded in Coeur d'Alene on Thursday night.

Did I mention that I also have no way to get to the bus in the morning, and it's about 20 minutes from where I lives, and leaves really early in the morning????? I do not want to hitchhike in the early morning dark. But, I will have to. This scares me, and I always swallow down the fear and force my hand to stick that thumb out, and I act like it isn't a big deal.....but truthfully, it scares the living crap out of me.....and that much more in the dark. I can't skip class. I will be kicked out of the Ceramics class if I miss another day.

And it irritates the hell out of me that I have to make the choice between failing a class and paying back buku student loan money right away and staying safe, because I am too proud to ask everyone I know if they will take me, and the person whose job it is doesn't care to get up early enough to take me. Let's see here, inconvenience vs the danger of being raped.....hmmm......

Aw, maybe that isn't fair of me. Maybe I'm just feeling bitchy. Goddammit, I need *something* in my life to look forward to once in a while, something to make the struggle fade into the background. Sigh.....I could argue back and forth all night about this......and I need to do the other two paintings so I can get some sleep tonight, because they are due on Thursday, but there is a high likelihood that I will not be there on Thrusday due to transportation issues.
-----------------------------------------------------------

A bright spot: I have lost a lot of weight in the past month due to a combination of stress ( I don't eat much when stressed) and cutting out the few junk foods I still ate, and the last time I was weighed, I was down to the 117 range. Have no idea what I weigh now, but there was a stack of jeans that I loved and couldn't fit into, in my closet. I decided to see if any of them will fit me now, and each and every pair fits me!!!! Even the size 3 Calvin Kleins! Yeah!

Made summer rolls for the first time. They were surprisingly easy to make, very filling, and are at least 80% fresh vegetables, and probably fat free. I am converted!

And, the anxiety is still trying to grab me by the neck. I feel so......friendless sometimes.

I think the deal is that I don't know how to measure myself out like other people seem to. I either trust people or I don't. Or, OK, maybe there is some intermediate position, but still. It leaves me feeling either far more vulnerable than I would like to be, or totally estranged from humanity and longing to be able to be vulnerable. Arrgh........

Truck is running again! Yeah! And I didn't have to hitchhike this time!

OK, back to your regularly scheduled program of weird thoughts, overprocessed introspection, and pottery ideas......lol....

Truck broke down and I haven't been able to fix it. Exhausted and burned out. :-/

Sex, Trauma, and Violence
Why is there such an obvious parallel between the vagina and a wound both in terms of shape and in the fact that they both bleed and both can be associated with pain? Why is there also an association between the penis and objects of violence such as knives, spears, etc? There are certain artists who have recognized and exploited the disturbing aspects of these associations.....but what I want to know is why these parallels exist in the first place.

Love and other Gooey, Icky Things
It's like trying to fly. And even birds with broken, poorly healed wings still try to fly, because that's what birds do and that's what wings are for. I get really tired of crash landing and ending up as a mangled mess on the pavement though......

Answers to Questions Not Asked

• 
  Why I was willing to marry Tim even though I clearly wasn't passionately in love with him: Aside from the obvious (we were good friends, did everything together anyway, and had a child to consider), he was safe. I didn't have to worry about getting all broken up and hurt. At least, that's what I thought, which is also why I was so thoroughly pissed off when he dumped me for another woman. I was tired of loving people who couldn't love me back, tired of looking, tired of hoping and being disillusioned, tired of thinking I could meet a magical someone, tired of the risks. Tim was an easy out of the emotional challenges of life, an easy way to settle down and opt out of the risks and the unlikely rewards.
  
• Why I like you: Because there's no veneer. Most people have a veneer, and a lot of men have full blown iron walls of machismo. It's off putting and down right scary to me, because first of all, it's false, and secondly, who knows what sort of person is hiding behind all that armor? When I look at you, there's no wall, just you, and there is something extremely endearing and irresistible about that.

Drove all the way to Coeur d'Alene this morning, in such a hurry that I did not even get my coffee......only to discover that it was Advising Day. In other words, no class at all! :-P See what happens when I don't drink my coffee?! Lol

Actually, my instructor would have reminded me if I had been there on Thursday, but I was home at the mercy of my stomach, which was tying and untying itself. I couldn't even think to the end of the day, so next week just did not occur to me.

So since I was there anyway, I spent more lovely therapeutic time in the pottery studio. :-) I made several weird looking things, and only one or two "normal" looking things. I guess I just don't have a lot of use for "normal". I can almost feel myself healing when I am with the clay. Mental hot tub....lmao.....

My ceramics class just got our second glaze firing out of the kiln. The last time, my favorite piece went into the college display case. This time, I got it back again, and two new pieces were ensconced in the case in its place. :-)

Now, here is what's funny about this. These two pieces (deformed bowls???) were mistakes. They were miserable failures at throwing bowls on a wheel. The clay was soft, I was inept, and the rims collapsed and deformed. Usually I squash them and use the clay for scrap, but I got disgusted at having nothing to show for several hours of attempting to throw a single bowl on the wheel. So for these two bowls (and one other), I just let the rims sag and flop. I bent and curled and twisted the rest of the rim as well, to make them look, uh, interesting (lol). When these things came out of the bisque firing (no glaze, think of it as a pre-bake), I was tempted once more to toss them into the trash. But, it is free to glaze and fire them, and testing new glaze combinations is fun, and I already had them bisqued, so why the hell not? So I slapped some glaze onto them and put them on the glazed wares shelf and promptly forgot they even existed, until today.

They aren't fantastic. I haven't held them yet to see if I even like them. But they do look a lot better than I ever thought they would. Good enough that if a pot deforms on me again, I might let it live through the bisque stage at least.

The ceramics class is extremely fulfilling and satisfying. Besides, where else do your worst mistakes end up on display?? (Will have to post pictures)....

Huh. Went back several years and reread some of my blog. It's pretty embarrassing. I spent a lot of time bitching about "normal" people and categorizing all of humanity into "normal" and "spectrum". Also, had a lot more coping difficulties back then. The degree to which I idealized spectrumites is....uh....well.....unreal. I guess we all change with time.

Now I spend a lot of time wondering and rethinking the whole diagnostic process. One of the things that really turned me off about psychology as a major was how subjective it can be, in relation to hard sciences. Who gets to say what is normal and what isn't? If 95% of the people engage in a particular behavior, is it normal? If the species has been altered, either naturally or not, so that a behavior becomes very common, does that behavior then become normal?

For another example, one psychologist says that I have PTSD, anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Now, tell me please: is it not possible that I have just one of these? How on earth do they determine whether a person has all three of these things? How far do these three overlap, in terms of symptoms? I mean, I certainly have anxiety issues, but it does seem that if I had all three, I'd be kind of a mess. Uh....well, ok. So maybe I am a mess??

Well, I think the deal is that anxiety, panic, trauma issues, can't be neatly categorized like that. And that people who are already prediposed towards being anxious are probably a lot more likely to experience problems in the aftermath of traumatic events than a person who is not anxiety prone. And try as I might, I still have never figured out the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack. As far as I'm concerned, they're pretty much the same thing, and whatever it's called sucks!

And frankly, I am beginning to feel the same way about the autism spectrum stuff. The thing is, you cannot get help for people unless they have a label. Labels are useful in that way....even if they are limiting and unrealistically neat and tidy.

Nothing deep or angst ridden to say (yet), so.....how about some lists....because lists are mentally organizing and all that.

Things I'd like to do

• Get that free mountain bike my firends are offering me and find local bike paths or trails, etc to ride it on. I don't particularly want to ride it along the highway. There appears to be a neat trail that parallels HWY 95. OK, so it is all groomed and well trodden and all that.....but it couldn't hurt to ride it once or twice anyway.
  
  
• Hit the Finch arboretum before winter and collect leaves, samaras, seeds, and overall good vibes from the trees there. :)
  
  
• While in Spokane, go to the Oriental food stores and get weird produce and soem umeboshi plums. None of the health food stores here have them, only the vinegar.
  
  
• Go to that Sandpoint Alliance for the Arts place. Yeah, even though everyone else's art is probably a whole lot better than mine.
  
  
• Hike. At this point, I am honestly not even caring where anymore, although large boulders to scamper about on are always a nice touch. Hmmmm....take dogs or not? Maybe...not.
  
  
• Go somewhere wild with a sketchbook and just sketch stuff. Sketches that are free, like they'll never be looked at by anyone, so they don't have to be perfect.
  
  
• Pick wild strawberry leaves for winter tea, and possibly rose hips. These have more vitamin C than oranges or other various well publicized Vitamin C sources. Also need mullein.
  
  
• Find a hot tub. Ok, that is so shallow and silly!! :-P
  
  
• Get a truckload of manure for the garden. Oh, and plant the garlic.
  
  
• How about something outlandish and unlikely, since this list is just for fun anyway.....go to the coast and play in the fog and beachcomb and look for whales and sketch and then go to a nice warm room (as opposed to a damp, clammy tent) and sink into a hot tub. lmao.......I just had to stick another hot tub in there somewhere.

Those were totally selfish things to want to do, because I did not include my kids in any of those fantasies...sooooo......

Things I'd like to do with my kids,

• Make hand felted wool balls.
  
• Take them to a zoo. They have never been to a zoo. Ever. Unless you count the Cat Tales place on the way to Spokane, and frankly, having seen real zoos, I don't count that as one.
  
• Take the whole lot of them camping. Well, maybe not all at the same time.....
  
• Have each kid who is old enough come up with a dinner plan that is healthy, make a shopping list, shop for the stuff and make it. Sounds boring maybe.....believe it or not, my kids like that kind of thing.
  
• Go tubing or canoeing or something when the weather is nice again.
  
• See if they'd like to have pen pals. Do people still do the pen pal thing, or is snail mail completely outdated now?
  
• Take them back east to meet their family. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this would mean much to my family, since it is such a large clan.
  
• Celebrate Thanksgiving or some other holiday with my sister and her family (Moscow, ID).
  
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Maybe for Thanksgiving? My kids think we are poor. I don't think they realize how much worse it could really be. Besides, the idea of stuffing oneself on Turkey Day is kind of disgusting.
  
• Organize the several boxes of loose photos into a single album.
  
• Play more board games, do more puzzles, read more books together, watch a few more movies and discuss them.....just family stuff.

The lives of my kids are so different from what I had that it's hard to wrap my head around the realization that most of them don't know their grandparents or cousins, haven't been to a good museum, haven't sampled numerous cuisines at nice restaurants, haven't heard my dad play the piano or pipe organ, let alone gone to a concert. On the other hand, there are a lot of crappy experiences they've skipped, too, and they've gotten to experience things that would have meant the world to me. I guess the reality is that you simply cannot give your kids everything. Life doesn't allow enough time for that.

The other thing is that I have erred on the side of caution in certain areas. I haven't forced my kids to take up musical instruments. Somehow they've all wound up tone deaf, because I didn't teach them to sing, either. I'm not strict enough in some areas, because....well, because. I have this idea that kids are *people*, not talking objects that I own. I remember being a kid, and I try to keep that in mind when I relate to them. Maybe too much.

Bleah.......babbling on (embarrassed).......

Am feeling better now. Fragile, but better.

And I am thoroughly enjoying the ceramics class. By ceramics, I mean pottery, not those tacky slip cast things that get painted in gaudy colors and fired. I've been making a lot of neat things, getting spattered with clay and slip and never having enough time to implemment all the ideas I want to try. Creative happiness. :) I am loving it so well that I think I could spend every day of my life with my hands in clay and not get tired of it. The question is whether one could actually make a living that way? When I am with the clay I feel deeply content, calm, and mentally engaged. It is so right.

I am beginning to realize that I would much rather be alone than to go through more pain....



And yet....should the fear of failure rule my life?




What do I do with that crippling feeling, the one that makes me freeze up with terror the instant feelings start stirring around in me?



Why do I tell myself that it's OK for other people to be expressive, to cry, to laugh, but I have to be stone-faced? When did I start believing this? That if I didn't cry I wouldn't hurt as much, that I'd be stronger than other women?





I'm so scared sometimes.

Sometimes it seems that life is nothing but one continuous saga of humiliation. And really, what can one do but to hold your head up high, act like you don't notice that everyone is laughing at you inside themselves, act like you don't know and don't care, and keep a stiff upper lip?

We adopted a cat from the animal shelter a month or so ago. She is eleven years ago and has the dry form of the corona virus, which has caused her to go blind. Uno is the sweetest, most unobnoxious cat you could ever want. She spent at least half of her life at the shelter, being passed by while hundred and hundreds of others were chosen. Her mother died there.

I tell myself that we adopted Uno because I fell in love with her and couldn't forget her or get her out of my mind, but occasionally I realize that maybe it was because I know what she felt like. She must have become resigned to dying at that place before we found her. I don't want to reach that point....

Haven't posted in a while. Life has been kind of traumatic the past few weeks. That's what happens when you take people at face value, even people you thought you knew. At some point, I'll learn... At any rate, I don't want to get into the details right now.

I do find it amazing though, that I can cease to believe in the concept of a personal god, and somehow still manage to cherish this flickering flame of a hope that someday, if I wait long enough, if I do the right things, I might find the right person. That it could be someone I've known and somehow overlooked all along, or who knows, someone I'll meet next week or next year.

I have no actual basis for thinking that this could really occur. I mean, I've believed it ever since I could remember, sheltering that idea in my small child's chest and throughout the years of subsequent pain and disillusionment. What on earth gives me the idea that this could really happen? Everything I've experienced seems to point to the contrary, and yet this belief persists.

I suppose it could be that the alternative is too awful to consider?

It isn't about codependency like so many people seem to think, either. Solitude is not all that bad; in fact, I sort of crave it at times. I think it is just that I would like for there to be one, just one, person that I can really count on and share my soul with and trust, one person that I can relate to deeply instead of this shallow, superficial crap everyone else seems to spew.

Out of the billions of people out there, there has got to be one person like this that I can find. There has to be.

On the other hand, it might take a really long time to find them, so in the meantime, it behooves me to do whatever else makes life worthwhile and meaningful. Just in case....

I have been reading wednesday is indigo blue (Cytowic, Eagleman 2009.), a book about synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological condition (a rather harsh word for such a rich experience) in which people perceive sensory input that most would perceive in a singular (one sense only) way, in a multisensory fashion. For example, a synesthete might read a book and experience flashes of color in their mind as they read the words, or feel/see colors when they hear music, and so on. Synesthesia fascinates me, but I am having a hard time reading this book.

For one thing, I don't think that I am synesthetic, and yet, I sometimes do have a multisensory experience from what should be a single-sense experience. Cotton balls squeak horribly...and pulling wads of spun cotton out of a tight pill bottle is my idea of torment. There is a particular shade of orange that I hate because I feel orange when I have migraines, or a nasty mixture of orange and dirty yellow-green if I have a migraine + nausea. I cannot conceive of time without visualizing it as a circle graph in 3 dimensions, and as a child I could only think of numbers as transparent black figures ascending infinitely into space sort of like stairs. They like to go up, so subtracting them is a lot harder than adding them. To do any mind of math, I have to visualize it, and this is why fractions are easy and borrowing is not. People think I am crazy or attention seeking when I talk about these things, so I generally don't.

The book mentions eidetic memory, commonly (and inaccurately, IMHO) known as photographic memory. A better way to express it: visual memory. They tell about a detailed test to differentiate people with a true eidetic memory from those who are simply experiencing an afterimage. Criteria are as follows: an image must be reported, it must be positively colored (as opposed to the negative image an afterimage would have), must be projected onto an easel rather than contained within one's head, described in present tense, and accompanied by eye movements to demonstrate that the person is "seeing" the image. Until about 5 years ago, when I read Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures, I was under the impression that all people thought and remembered things visually. I still cannot conceive of any other way to think/remember. The above test is to remember squares or shapes on a plain background, which seems kind of stupid to me in its limitations, but, whatever.... My questions regarding this are: is a visual memory different from an eidetic memory, and if so, how? Is a true photographic memory different from an eidetic memory or a visual memory?

Next, I read the part of the book which talks about the differences between recollection of color in synesthetes and "normal" people, and this is what disturbed me the most. In a study by Julia Simner where people described shades of color, normal people named 5 shades of green, whereas synesthetes listed 52. Now, I cannot imagine anyone short of a red-green colorblind person being mentally limited to 5 shades of green! This appalls me! Can this possibly be true of the population at large? Is this why people seem so....so....(how to put it)....so dulled to the beauty around them, so unvalueing of it? (yeah, i do know that wasn't a word, but I couldn't think of anything better- sorry). If they were looking at a lot of plants, would they then list more shades of green? The idea that they might not sort of freaks me out. Is this why people don't appreciate art very much?

So I had to stop reading the book for now. I am still sort of upset.

This is my paper from the Women's Conference. The theme was "Walk with me, mentors, elders, and friends". I still think it is sloppy, but apparently a lot of people liked it, which was sort of a surprise to me!
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When I think of a mentor, an elder, my mind immediately turns to a wise old goat I once had. Now, lest you take offense at this analogy, I would like to point out that the scriptures are thickly woven with lessons we can learn from animals, from Baalam’s donkey to the lost lamb. Although we humans with our nimble fingers have our technology, animals have the distinct advantage of not having these advances, of being able to see and tend to what truly matters in life. There is much we can learn
from the natural world, which is probably why it is utilized as a source so often in parables, fables, folklore, etc.

Goats are matriarchal; bucks may have some degree of status within the herd, but there is always a queen doe who keeps order. If she dies, the nest most dominant doe will be queen. Sometimes the new queen will be the next oldest doe, or it may be the old queen’s young daughter, but chaos will reign unless and until the herd has a leader.

Delilah was such a queen. If only the world’s nations could have such wise and thoughtful leaders! When there was danger, the herd huddled in the barn while she stood outside the doorway to assess the threat. She decided when it was time to eat, and even whether certain items were safe to eat. If she turned down a new food, making it-tastes-bad gestures and sounds, the other does would refuse it. If she went somewhere, the rest went too. Sometimes there would be status-related fighting as other does tried to move up the herd’s hierarchy. Delilah would walk over calmly, interject her head between those of the battling does, give them both a stern, motherly eye…and that would be the end of it. She somehow kept peace in the herd with very little effort, because she wasn’t domineering. She was intelligent, quiet, dignified, and kind, and everyone else usually followed her example.

I sometimes think that in our drive for progress, profit and yearning for what we don’t have, we lose this sort of kindly direction as extended families are left behind. Our educational system is such that teachers are hardly known before a new one takes their place. Our society has grown disjointed and then we wonder why there is stress and chaos…like a goat herd whose queen is gone. The yearning for mentors can be seen on the TV talk shows, as people desperately seek advice and guidance, even at the risk of national humiliation. Our meetings can and should fill this void. As for me, if only I could be more like my own goat!!
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Goats are so cool. I really miss them. :-/

This house (I have just moved to it) has bad energy. Usually, when people talk about bad energy and good energy, I roll my eyes and think sarcastic things because it is generally very feely, emotional crap in my opinion. So, when I walked in here and felt overwhelmed with anxiety and "bad energy", I wrote it off as stress and imagination. But I still had trouble relaxing in the place.

And then I found out that the people who lived here before had 5 kids that were being abused, neglected, and deprived of food. We found a dresser on whose side was scrawled "help me" in a childish hand. The fridge has the remains of a child proof lock on it. The kids went to foster care because conditions were so bad.

So, despite my disbelief in good/bad energy, "vibes", etc, I am now thinking about how to make this place feel calmer and happier...

Impressions and random observations about the PNW Quaker Women's conference (both the conference itself and the surroundings):

• Ugly, morose, sad dark little fish on the dock. It looked like it was shocked and horrified to see the light of day before it died. It looked ancient, as though from another time period. I was charmed by that homely, gaping face...
  
• The air was good. Fresh sea air, moist and full and soul-nourishing. Yeah, I know...that makes no sense. Still, every breath was like a tonic.
  
• The people, generally speaking, were extremely nice. Unfortunately, by the time the shyness and social anxiety wore off, I was sort of peopled out and had to take a lot of solitude in order to function well, just when I was starting to really, really like the other women.
  
• Rules re: no food in rooms (pest control). Discovered that I still have a food deprivation anxiety issue. Embarrassing, inconvenient, something that will have to be dealt with eventually.
  
• Not ony do Quakers allow women to be pastors, there are a LOT of female Quaker pastors/ministers. Amazing, pleasing! Finally, a group that isn't entrenched in the dark ages!
  
• Even better: at least some of the meetings/churches are welcoming to GLBT people as well as married same sex couples. It's sad that this should be shocking in today's so-called modern age, but frankly, I would not join a group unless it were inclusive (as opposed to "tolerant").
  
• Lots of vegetation I didn't recognize, including a massive tree that I climbed. Had Abies-like needles, cedar-like bark. Scent of needles: fresh, citrusy, pleasant. Climbing that baby was a blast!
  
• Forgot socks, underwear, *and* pajamas! Ugh!!! I somehow forgot the interesting little detail that two other roommates would be inhabiting the room, making these niceties fairly necessary. Sleeping dressed is a drag... Next time: bring boxer shorts (double duty)...
  
• Quaker women are really intelligent, talented, and interesting, unlike mainstream women. Also, virtually no makeup, so they all looked real.
  
• Found and orchid in the woods. Species? Genus? Heck, I don't know... Definitely not a Goodyera or Cymbidium, other than that, who knows?
  
• Note to self: pack Hitchcock's Flora of the Pacific Northwest next time, along with those boxer shorts....
  
• I have got to come to this conference every single year from now on.

I am still processing, and will have a tighter, more structured post on the subject later.

Well, here I am, on the WA coast. I wish I could say that I'm right off the open ocean, but it appears that the water is a part of the Puget Sound. Still, it is fantastic to be here. I am deeply in love with the sea, the fog, the overcast skies and diffuse light....

The reason I have the opportunity of being in this lovely place is that I am attending a Quaker Women's Theology Conference. This is a bit of a surprise even to myself. I don't particularly consider myself a Christian, which is what's great about the PNW quakers. Traditional doctrine does not apply here, and we are all allowed to (even encouraged!) to perceive the divine however we want to. In my case, I guess I would have to say that to me, the divine, or what people call "G-d" is nature/science/the processes and balancing of nature and science and evolution. I have yet to see anything in nature that I could call truly ugly or evil...if I look at it long enough, deep enough.
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Otherwise.....I took a hiatus from blogging due to the custody battle, which I lost, based partly on the fact that I have Asperger's, and that I blogged so openly and pretty much said whatever I wanted to. I thought that shutting the blog down would be a protective measure, but in fact, people called as witnesses can lie under oath with impunity as long as there is no solid way to prove they're lying...which is harder than one might think. Silly me!

Also, I have changed my major. I still and always will love plants and sustainable agriculture, but I just do not have the endurance for the higher math and 3 solid years of hard chemistry. Art has always been my first love, and I'm sick of listening to people who say that you can't make a living at art. They're wrong. Besides, boatny jobs are even harder to find than jobs in the fine arts.....and I am actually *good* at art, whereas the Chem classes were horrible.....

Life is certainly fraught with change and surprises!

About this business of having a body.....

I have a hard time integrating my self awareness with a physical body at times. On an intellectual level, I know that I have a body, but I don't always feel especially...ummm.....as though I identify with it, if you know what I mean. I try to make it mine, but it and my brain are not always in sync.

Tai Chi, for example. I am taking this class in an effort to increase bodily awareness, and also because I am horribly awkward and graceless. It isn't that I'm clumsy really..I can be very coordinated at certain physical activities...but my body often moves like an android or robot, jerkily, or not smoothly enough. I know because I have seen videos of myself (aughhh, the pain, the pain!!!). If I were male, this would be OK, but females are supposed to be graceful, and this body is female, so I feel beholden to try to move gracefully, so as not to attract undue negative attention.

Even when I simply stand, my muscles are held very tensely, contained. I don't just stand, I actively withdraw and contract while standing. I know this because we have to stand in front of a mirror while we do Tai Chi. I try really hard not to watch myself, but I occasionally see a glimpse of a very stiff, tension filled body.

Also, it's trying to get fat now that I got a hysterectomy. I have tried to analyze why this bothers me, because there are lots of lovely people I know who do not have socially ideal bodies, and I love them exactly as they are. Their shape doesn't matter an iota to me. The reasons I have come up with are:

• Gaining weight means change. I would have to wear different clothes and discard the ones I like. I might not be able to afford or find clothes that I like.
  
  
• Health: my family has an alarming rate of high blood pressure and heart disease. It behooves me to remain lean if I want to live.
  
  
• I am a hider. I like to fit in small places, to press myself into corners and nooks and such. Also, I like to fold my body up. The idea of being too big for that....ugh.
  
  
• My dad would be even more disgusted with me if I gained weight. Other people would treat me worse, too.
  
  
• It would be a lot harder to maintain a sense of bodily privacy when in the company of others. For example, I could not slide easily though a group of people without touching anyone, or walk down an aisle of chairs without contacting each and every person in that aisle.

Maybe these are silly reasons, but along with simple vanity, they are the sort of things I worry about.

My name is Jennifer Leaf, and I am an addict. Try as I might, I just cannot control my penchant for....for plants...especially plants that bear fruit...especially weird, uncommon, or hard to find fruit. Day after day, I am confronted on a daily basis with temptations I cannot ignore. Like those acorns under the oak tree in the park. Or the winged seeds of Japanese maples. Today, I succumbed again. This time, I really went over the top. I bought 4 kinds of apples I didn't have seeds for, and a bunch of persimmons. I even justified by latter because they were on sale. And of course, I couldn't stop with eating the apples....I saved each and every viable seed from the Pippins (the viability rate on these was alarmingly low, only 3-4 seeds per apple!) and planted them. The only reason I haven't planted the others is that I feel nauseous and so haven't eaten them yet. Also, I have two Hachiya persimmon seeds that I am hoarding under my laptop, and two different kinds of stone pine (monophylla and edulis) in the bottom drawer of the fridge. And the worst part is, I'm never done looking. I can't stop looking for new kinds of apples, different fruits that might have seeds. Because then, I can plant them.

LOL....

Currently listening to: "Hey there Delilah" (Plain White T's) and "Breathe" (Anna Nalick).

And my mood is: slightly melancholy without really being able to put a finger on why. Well, maybe that's silly of me; there's enough going on to be able to have a mildly low mood for no single reason.

Only, in addition to all that, I have this vague but persistent sensation of a gap, a space, where something ought to be. The only thing I can compare it to is having an empty glass in your hand and realizing you've been holding this glass for awhile and that at some point, you meant to fill it with some beverage, but forgot what. Or going through half of your morning and sort of remembering something, then realizing that you had an interesting dream that morning, but the details are fuzzy.

I am trying to do my homework, and there is so much ruckus going on (not constantly, just sporadically and enough to be disruptive) that I can't focus enough to compose the thoughts into well crafted sentences that flow nicely. Oh sure, I could scrawl something down, but if it were only quiet, it would all come easily and more or less right the first time with a fraction of the agony and effort....
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OK, it's quiet now. And, my eldest son gave me a bag of Jelly Belly beans as a belated B-day present, and I've eaten almost all of them (not so keen on the buttered popcorn flavor). I was 114# this morning, want to bet I've gained two back by morning?? Aw, I'm not complaining. In fact, I can't believe he gave these to me. Yeah, the health-foodie treehugger succumbs to junk food on occasion....

What a loser:

Rammel jokes about presidential death threats.

"Rex Rammell, the East Idaho veterinarian who would like to be a Senator or governor or something, has criticized Gov. Otter for not buying the first wolf tag and, according to the Times-News, indicated he'd buy an "Obama tag" if offered....(snipped for brevity, see the link for full text)...After an audience member shouted a question about "Obama tags" during a discussion on wolves, Rammell responded, "The Obama tags? We'd buy some of those.".........(more trimming)

"Rammell also said Otter should have been first in line or ordered Fish and Game to save him the first tag and told Times-News reporter Jared Hopkins that the governor should have prioritized buying the tag over attending a former lawmaker's funeral.

He said "there's nothing wrong with going to a funeral" but promises as both a governor and a candidate should be followed through on. He questioned whether environmental groups pressured Otter to back off.


"He could've had someone go get it for him," he said. "Hell, he's the governor. He could've ordered the Fish and Game to give him the first tag."
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First of all, the FBI should be knocking on this guy's door, yesterday. Secondly, his fellow Republitards should be shunning him as though he has the plague, or the bird flu. Thirdly, I really, really hope this jerk doesn't get elected, but I have no real reason to suspect that he won't. After all, this is Idaho. Fourth, he is zealous to the point of fanaticism on the topic of hunting wolves, an animal the vast majority of Idahoans have never gotten to see or hear because there are so few of them, even though our tax dollars paid dearly to restablish them here in their natural habitat. And now we are hunting them? There aren't enough to ensure the genetic diversity of the population if half of them are killed, which is exactly what the Idaho Fish and Game intends to do, issue tags until half of them have been killed off. Lastly, this man is wholly unfit for any government office. He seriously believes that holding an office is all about procuring perks and enforcing one's whims on others. Any person with that mentality is not a public servant, and lest we forget, our office holders are placed in their positions to serve us, not to gratify their own egos and whims. The man is a disgrace to this beautiful state and emblematic of what needs to change, right now, about Idaho.

Maybe it's just finals week, but I'm getting really burned out on people. People are disgusting. Oh, that's too harsh. Rather, they do disgusting things, such as:

• 
  Picking nose or teeth in public and then scrutinizing the results.
  
• Adopting that phoney nicey-nice tone of voice. It is SO false! Who the hell do they think they're fooling? By the way, this is generally confined to female persons. Men pretend to be kindly.
  
• Wearing clothes which are way, way too tight. I don't care how hot you are, there is a limit on how tight clothes can be without looking well, bad.
  
• Driving aggressively only because they have a big truck. Hey, have a little regard for other people. Drving like you have every intention of running everyone else off the road isn't macho, it's small dick syndrome.
  
• Wearing lots of perfume. The goal with perfume is to enhance your natural scent, not deluge everyone around you in an olfactory flood. The most attractive smelling people around wear little to no scent. I notice these things.
  
• Mouthy/oral behavior. I don't want to see your tongue piercing, watch you lick or suck on your pencil or pen, or run your lips all over your water or pop bottle. We aren't toddlers anymore. Adults are expected to confine their oral fixations to private or socially acceptable settings.
  
• Groping oneself, itching their hind end, massaging inner thighs...again, ick!! I do NOT want to see or think about this. ick, ick, ick.
  
• The "I like this for personal reasons, therefore it is right, safe, ethical, etc", mentality. Fine, you like it. Like it for your own reasons and leave it at that. There is no reason on earth why we have to agree with you, or why we should be harrassed for having different preferences.
  
• Tanned, oiled cellulite bulging out of clothes. Look, I understand cellulite. Most of us have it. But it's dimpled and ripply, and tanning and oiling it doesn't help at all.
  
• Macho bragging. Shut UP already.
  
• Collaborative bitching (females, usually). Been there, done that. Commiserating on the source of one's misery and then bitching some more does nothing to actually solve the problem. Oh, wait, you don't care, because bitching is *fun*. What are you going to do when the object of your gripes happens to hear you?
  
• Hating others for being successful. Frankly, makes a person look even more like a loser.
  
• Bitching about others when you have a lot of your own issues to work on. Oh wait. That resembles someone. Ummm. Yeah. OK, I'll stop now.

Bleh. Summer. It drags on endlessly, wilting my spirit.

WHY in the hell do people spit on stuff and then hand it to people, or spit on someone else's books, papers, magazines, etc? The most irritating aspect of this digusting habit is the total nonchalance with which it is done:

"I'm feeling lazy today, so I'l just lick my fingers and get my slobber all over this money before I hand it to you. And since it's money, I know you'll take it."

Gag! Or, how about this little gem:

"Nice to look at your book (magazine, whatever). I don't feel like seperating the pages carefully, so I'll just spread my saliva onto each and every page I touch, ensuring that you'll catch any cold or bug I have the next time you touch it. And besides, the human bodily fluids adhered to the page are a nice touch, don't you think?".

This is incredibly, insufferably rude, and it gets even worse when the person writes in your book, magazine, whatever! If I wanted it defiled, I'd defile it myself, thank you. Handling someone's elses dried spit is not my idea of a good time.

(Yeah, I do feel crabby, atcually. And grossed out).

We went to the John A. Finch Aboretum. Manito Park (both places are in Spokane) is also nice, but they are two entirely different places, but I prefer the former....because it has the Stewartia (and many other really cool trees). I collected all sorts of seeds but now it seems that I have lost most of them. A Concolor Fir, Bird's Nest Spruce, and I think a Picea orientalis. The apple trees (crab apples) were in full bloom, but to be honest, I wasn't half as taken with them as I was with the conifers and of course, the Stewartia.

Next, the Lomatium Dilemna. Now that a month or two has gone by, I returned to the site where I collected the plant that I thought was Lomatium gormanii. It took some careful searching, but I found the same clump I'd picked from. I was in luck- there was a seedhead. After careful consideration, I have decided that it is not Lomatium gormanii, it is Lomatium geyeri, but it is still a close call. My reasons for changing my mind on this are that: geyeri is a taller plant, up to twice the height of gormanii. When I first saw this plant, it was in flower, and the height was consistent with gormanii. Now that the seedhead has matured, the scape has grown to 20 cm although it was about ten in flower. Similarly, the shape of the umbel altered considerably between flowering and fruiting...I would not have expected this, but now that I think about it, dill does that too, IIRC. Lastly, the seeds are not exactly like gormanii, but they are very much like geyeri. By the way....another thing I found that couldn't be detected for certain earlier: it has a carpophore! Therefore, it definitely is not Orogenia linearifolia. So, I was wrong, but I was right.

I have been really busy taking care of business, cleaning house and getting the garden in before the summer semester starts. There has been absolutely no time for art or even to read a new book...well, that isn't quite true. I read The Nanny Diaries, but this was light, easy reading. I had intended to read a classic like Lolita, Anna Karenina, or The Last of the Mohicans. Perhaps I should borrow audio books...but I like the physical act of reading sooo....

What I've been listening to: "Hey there Delilah", a song that resonates with me strongly.

There's too much pain in this world. Way too much. I don't know how people can function as though it doesn't exist. Worse than this, we all, every one of us, are perpetrators to some degree, creating pain in one way or another. It's possible to create less pain, but (until convinced otherwise at least) it is not possible to create no pain at all.

I'd like to console myself with the thought that pain is endemic in the natural world as well: rodents eat one another's babies, death is an integral part of life, pain is just part of the cycle, you know.... But when I look at the human world, our behavior can be so aberrant and so utterly pointless that it's horrifying.

And worse, what I am coming to understand is that almost every person who causes pain is in denial. Every blow, every theft, every murder, every broken heart and spirit is justified in one way or another. How else could former Nazis move to Argentina or wherever and settle down and raise a family, dandling children on their knees after shoving innocent people, children included, into crematoriums?

I'm trying to find a meaning here and coming up empty. If you think of anything, let me know.

I get to go the Fitch Arboretum and see my favorite Stewartia tree today! Woo hoo! I am so jazzed! :)

A Floral Dilemna:

For my systematic botany class, I've been collecting and pressing plants for a herbarium. Of course, they also have to be correctly identified via keying them out with a dichotomous key. Many of the specimens are easy to nail down right away...and the flora is used primarily to confirm the identity of the plant. For others, it can be exceptionally difficult unless you have as much information about the plant as possible, such as roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, habitat and visual access (dissecting scope) to minute structures such as the filaments of the stamens, or the placentation of ovaries that you can hardly see to begin with (let alone how the ovules within them are attached). You don't really notice it much until you try to do this, but it isn't terribly common to be able to see flowers and seeds development on a single species in a single day, especially wildflowers. Their whole program is one of blooming, setting and ripening the seed all as quickly as it can for optimum survival of the next generation of plants. That's the introduction to my problem. Here's the problem:

This plant is Lomatium gormanii


© Gerald D. Carr

And here is a picture of another plant, also in the apiaceae family, Orogenia linearifolia:

They look a lot alike, don't they? I have a plant that I'm pretty certain is Lomatium gormanii, but someone who knows more about plants than I do says it's Orogenia. He only glanced at my specimen, and it was pressed and dried, and he didn't see where it was growing, *and* these two are almost identical to the casual observer as far as I can tell, so I don't know how he can say that, unless he is seeing soemthing that I have overlooked in the flora and plant guides I've consulted, such as a dramatic size difference between the two. The roots are almost the same, the flowers are the same color, leaves very similar, even the minute detail of the flowers are very much alike.

Part of why I think it's Lomatium gormanii is that the Orogenia grows in damp soil, whereas L.gormanii grows on dry rocky slopes and rocks, which is exactly where I found it. That site will be dry as a bone within a month or so. Also, Orogenia apparently was collected for food and makes sizable roots, but this plant has only a small sub-globose tuber, about the size of a little pearl onion. And Orogenia linearifolia typically grows in large groups which flower all at once, and the umbels are only 1/4" across, whereas this plant has umbels which are slightly larger and there were only a few plants on the site, hardly the blanket of blooms described of the other species.

Lastly, I should mention that neither of the plants are present in most field guides for the area, either online or in text. Orogenia linearifolia is apparently a species of concern in Montana, and sightings of the Lomatium gormanii aren't terribly common either in this area, from the information I've found so far. So either way, It would seem I've found an interesting plant. I just wish I knew what it was. Of course, it doesn't help matters at all that the lomatiums exhibit quite a bit of morphological variation.

All my posts should be prefaced with:

"The following is my subjective opinion. Accuracy or truth relative to other's subjective opinions may vary. In fact, you might think I'm full of it."

On that note, then...I am unusually sensitive to scent, for a human. I find, upon reflection, that I have allowed scent, a sense which more or less bypasses the frontal lobes and goes straight to the limbic system, to be the decisive factor in many of the life changing decisions I've made in my time. Uh-oh, that isn't very rational, and it's oh-so important for me to entertain the notion that I, an aspie, am a logical, rational person who can put emotions aside and looks at a situation objectively. Sigh...it is what it is, and I am what I am.

As with many ideas which are known to be erroneous, it's easy to find examples and justifications to support the idea that scent=truth.
I'm not yet prepared to throw the validity of scent out the window, though...not yet. Scent means too much to me.

There was the time I took an immediate and strong aversion to a young man because he smelled aggressive and dangerous to me. Others said he was a nice young man...I knew better. I gave him a wide berth and avoided him as much as possible. Within a month or two, he was dead, apparently due to overdosing on drugs. Did I smell the drugs, on some subconcious level? I'll never know. I'm sort of glad I never had to find out more about him.

There was another guy I avoided due to scent. His scent made me feel almost ill. I don't know why he smelled that way, but he really smelled bad to me. It was an extremely unusual odor..not like B.O. or anything, just..odd, very strong, and very unnatural. A chemical smell.

Young men tend to have a distinctive musky odor, particularly teenagers. It raises all my panic buttons. I don't know why. I avoided them. They smelled too...potent.

People who just aren't taking care of themselves at all usually have that sort of an odor about them. It's a combination of cat spray, decay, not washing often enough, stale urine and dirty house. At first, it seems cruel to avoid someone for smelling like that, but serious neglect of personal needs and cleanliness is a sign of mental instability, so....again, makes sense.

Cheap cigarettes: good tobacco smells bad enough. Cheap ones? Ew.

Boozy + unwashed: dangerous. Potential violence, rape, or worse. Avoid if possible, placate and escape ASAP if avoidance is not an option.

Female perfumes really, really bug me. I encountered a person like this a day or two ago. Her scent got all over me. I couldn't avoid that. As soon as I could, I tried to wash it off. I scrubbed all the way up to my elbows, four times, and the smell was still there. Then it was time for lunch, and every time I brought the food to my mouth, I felt like gagging. I was finally, thank goodness, able to get it off completely by the next day.

Candy sweet female perfumes are just sticky and icky. But they're not as bad as the ones that smell like bedroom. You know, the ones that nearly shout "Screw ME!"? Uh, girls? I don't want to smell that. Not really. Save it for your partner. In your bedroom. Keep it in your bedroom. Please, please, please.

Thankfully, most people don't provoke such marked reactions from me. I don't know if I could endure social interaction if they did. It brings to mind some interesting questions about whether some autistics have an even better sense of smell, and whether that is why they don't want to be touched or approached by most people. For me though, 80% of people are merely interesting and intriguing to smell. I'm glad for that.

Spring is finally here! About bleepin' time!
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I've come to the conclusion that I don't express myself well enough to other people. I always feel as though my feelings or thoughts are being worn right on the surface of my skin, so to speak. It's one of the reasons I don't make much eye contact, I'm afraid for people to read everything my eyes hold. And I don't think it's really working out for me to relate to other people in the way I would like to be related to. Now, I don't exactly know what to do about this...because....I have no idea what they want, in terms of being related to, and whether it woudl be offensive to make a display in that direction. It woudl feel extremely artificial and phony for me to do so, and to me, offensive, but I'm not sure if it would offensive to them...if I could figure it out in the first place.

Why can't I just tell people what I'm really thinking or feeling? Well, because. They never seem to want to know, which is a lot of why I write here. And as you can see from my huge, huge following and overabundance of comments (sarcasm), people are SO interested in what I write here, haha. Occasionally I meet people who bring me out and I start talking, and I invariably say a lot more than I mean to, and wonder later on if saying that was wise. Or I blurt out what I'm thinking without meaning to, and the reactions can be varied.

I'm often very critical, maybe because I think a lot and mentally evaluate and comapare and analyze stuff all the time. People frequently assume that if I'm this critical, I must think I'm so great, fantastic, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. I excoriate myself more than anyone else...I just do it in silence, for the most part...so nobody hears it. Or, they think that because I speak from my point of view all the time, that all I think about is myself. That isn't true either. I actually forget i have a body sometimes because I'm lost in thoughts, or in my surroundings, or taking in what's in front of me. As I get older and have aches and pains, it's less of a problem than it used to be (humor). No, what it is, is that I don't know what other people are thinking, and then, when they tell me, I often feel that inquiring further into their thought process might be intrusive. I know what I think about other people, how I feel or think of them, but I can't see things from their point of view, and I really think anyone who claims they can is fooling themselves.

Sorry for the bad grammar and inevitable typos...I'm sort of thinking out loud here.

I care about people a lot, a LOT. I just don't express it well enough. Also, it embarrasses me to care about other people. And I'm afraid they'll hurt my feelings. Maybe they don't run every hurtful thing said to them over and over a hundred or more times in their mind, but I do, and it hurts me every, single time it gets replayed, and it just keeps playing, over and over, and over. It isn't that I have a grudge, it's that it continues to hurt. When I ask "normal" people about this, they say they don't experience it. I don't know. Ugh.

Writing about stuff like this makes me feel really lonely. :-/
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But it was actually a good day, a really nice day. I got a lot done. And other than being tired and feeling abnormally cold on such a sunny day, I have no complaints about today. The tomato seedlings are up. Yeah, yeah, I know....I didn't start them early enough. But frankly, with the spring being so late, I'm willing to take the gamble that this timing was appropriate for the year. I saw a lot of birds today and had no idea what most of them were. I think one might have been a mountain chickadee.

I had a dream the other night that I was keeping a goat in my backyard...in town. I realized that if I hid her well and she was quiet, I could get away with it. Ah, dreams..... I think it's extremely irrational and unfair that certain animal species are allowed in town while others are not. Why is it acceptable for people to have animals that are fairly large, carnivorous, and are known to chase cars or bite people or to bark all night long, and which (on average) serve no practical use, but it's not Ok to have a few laying hens or a single, well contained doe goat, which would not smell (only bucks smell), bark at night, chase cars, or bite people?

I know of a couple people in town who have rabbits, and I'm not sure if that's legal or not, but it should be. Rabbits are absolutely silent. If one happened to get loose, it would be snatched up by a predator in short order. I would keep rabbits myself, just for the manure (we're vegetarian, so the meat is not an incentive) but I'm allergic to them. If you have an acre of land in town, you may keep a horse; however, you may not have a sheep. Or 6 quiet, rooster-less laying hens. Where is the logic in this?

The next thing we know, they'll pull up in front of our house and tell us we can't convert our useless, wasteful lawn into vegetable and perennial beds.

And please don't write me telling me I can go out and buy organic eggs. I can tell that those hens aren't living as they should be. The organic store eggs don't taste much different from any other store egg. Besides, I don't get the manure. You know, for the garden.

Living in town isn't what it's cracked up to be. Unfortunately the land here seems to have more value as "investment!" and "view!" (frankly, the place is so darned pretty that almost every area has a nice view in some direction) and "development potential!" (groan) and "nice second home!" or "build your dream house here, a short half hour to town" (they forget to mention that the short half hour is on winding country roads or that town is Priest River, population of 1500 or less. The bottom line is that the land is good only as a status symbol, with the result that it doesn't get used for anything but landing pads for McMansions and lawns.

I really want to move.

Food: We tried tamarind for the first time today. Initially, I bought the tamarind pods to draw, but since tomatillos are perishable, I have to finish drawing them first, and my gaze kept sliding over to those weird, lumpy brown pods. The more I looked at them, the more curious I became, so I selected the plainest of the bunch (I meant to draw the others) and broke it in half. When I pulled the two halves apart, the interior, which was slimy, lumpy, brown and very reminiscent of waste rather than food. I was a little hesitant to put that in my mouth, but am so glad I did! It has a wonderfully sour, sweet, flavor, bettter than the sour candy. I talked the kids into trying it (they were also quite reluctant) and before long, only a couple of the pods were left...oops! I guess I'll have to buy more. There are large seeds embedded in the brown pulp, so we planted several pots of those, to see if we can get it to grow as a houseplant. The next food we'll be trying: mochi.

Movie Review: Twilight

I generally don't watch wildly popular movies, but my son and I have been devouring the book series by Stephanie Meyers (more on that later, after we finish the fourth book). I liked the first book well enough that watching the movie seemed worthwhile.
Predictably enough, I didn't like the movie half as well as the book.

The girl, Bella, is portrayed as intelligent and hardworking in the book series. In the movie, she seems pretty dippy. Her vocabulary is limited, and where she could have been bright and shy, she comes across as shy and dumb. Even though she's madly in love with Edward in the book, she comes across as merely needy in the movie; there was no fire, no passion. Edward was definitely creepy, but his hair, UGH!! I mean, does it have to stand up on end like that? His eyebrows were drawn in too heavily, making him look artificial. If his hair had been styled in a less alarming, attention grabbing (hardly what a closet vampire would want) style and his eyebrows had a more nearly natural thickness, he would have looked so much more convincing.

I'm not sure that these are faults of the actors, either. Many aspects of the movie were quite convincing- Bella's convulsions, for instance, and Edward's overly formal manner. James, Alice, and Jacob were all much as I had imagined, as were Carlisle, Esme, and Billy.

For all the hype and attention this movie got, I think a little more TLC on the presentation of the main characters would have made such a difference. As it was, it came across as less interesting and more sappy than the book was. Oh, one last comment- the music was absolutely perfect. I just think they needed to fire the makeup artist and whoever told Bella to act so dumb.

Synesthaesia

As promised: I certainly don't experience synesthaesia the way Daniel Tammet does, but I think I have traces of it. Examples:

When I was a child, I saw numbers as though they were arranged like a deck of cards extending infinitely into space. The positive numbers ascended slightly while the negative numbers descended. In other words, try to picture a number line where instead of a line with dots, you have numbers written on cards, the cards overlap, and they are on a continuous, infinite incline. The cards were transparent, I couldn't really see the card, just the numbers, which, by the way, were all transparent black. To add, I had to mentally move up the line, and the number that was the answer would be larger, bigger, sort of like a card pulled up out of a deck or from a hand of cards. The multiples of ten were bigger. When I counted aloud, my voice would build in expectation every time I neared a multiple of ten, like kids do when they're playing hide and seek and are nearing the count of twenty, only for me, it was every multiple of ten, not just twenty.

Time to me is a circle graph. Each year is a circle, and it is joined to the year before it on January first, so that all the years together are like a continuous spiral extending back to the time when I was born, at which point the spiral tapers down and becomes tiny before it vanishes. The end of it, where I will die, will be torn off roughly rather than tapering smoothly as the beginning did. Each circle or year progresses in a counter clockwise fashion. The seasons are deliniated by an X. The top quarter is winter, composed of December, January, and February. The left quarter is spring: March, April, and May. The bottom quarter is summer; June, July, August, while the right hand quarter is fall; September, October, November. Holidays and birthdays flash like little lights in the months as I visualize them. The spiral is compressed most of the time, except when I am thinking of a time or trying to remember when some event happened. Then the spiral stretches out and I work back progressively until I find the circle I need.

Time as in daily time is also a circle graph, but not what you might expect. I will have to draw it and post an image of it here for it to make sense. All 24 hours are in one circle, and they aren't evenly divided. This may be why I allocate time differently than other people. Some parts of the day feel much longer and more expansive to me than others even though I know that they are really all the same length.

I sometimes visualize scent.

And textures often have sounds to me, especially squeaky, disagreeable sounds. For example, cotton balls, frosted glass, and certain fabrics all feel horrible and sound excruciating to me.

In order to do math, I more or less have to visualize the numbers moving around, and I think this is why I have so much trouble with algebra, especially if I don't understand *why* the numbers are moving or when they can or can't move.

Drifting off the topic of synesthaesia now, certain sensory experiences are simply heavenly to me. Smelling a certain scent, seeing a certain shade of a color, feeling the wind blow against my face, hair, or body, the sound of the wind. I love wind. And I can't explain it at all, but the people who smell the best to me, smell like wind feels or looks.

I'm over it now. After explaining that I had PTSD to my teacher, he was more careful with me and I am coping much better with the class. It really wasn't his fault that being pinned to the ground by a large, strong man caused me to freak out and have flashbacks.

I just finished reading Born on a BLue Day by Daniel Tammet and found it pretty interesting. It was impossible for me not to compare my own experiences with his. I think that some of his traits/quirks/abilities/differences may have been caused by the epilepsy rather than the Asperger's....not that I am in any way qualified to say so one way or the other, but he more or less says so too.

In the context of synesthaesia, I have more to say, but not tonight.

I am still upset over that. Honestly, my entire week has been stained and distorted by it. I do want to clarify that I'm not upset over the physical pain, which was very temporary. I think it had more to do with the fact that a rather large, muscular man was physically restraining me.

And see, this is why I don't like big muscular guys. They're scary to me.

I don't know what to do about this yet. I can't simply drop the class. I don't know.

When people say that rape, molestation, physical abuse, neglect, etc, don't really have any long term effect, they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Or they're in denial. Or they're a perpetrator. Or all of the above. It seems really unfair sometimes that I have to spend so much time and exert so much effort to repair the damage done by truly rotten people while they just keep living like they always have, finding someone else to wreck. They get away with it. I have to clean up the mess they left behind. And then tolerate attitudes from clueless types who tell me to magically get over it in a single day (or minute).

I suppose the main consolation is knowing that I appreciate life more deeply because I know how lousy it could be.

Current mood: seriously pissed off. I just got out of self defense class. The instructor was teaching us moves to take down and subdue an attacker. He demonstrated these moves on each of us. Instinct took over and naturally, I struggled, tried to escape, resisted, etc. We were supposed to indicate submission by tapping the mat. Well, admitting pain to a person attacking me isn't my strong point. I tend to either try to get away, to conceal any demonstration of pain (bullies and abusers feed on the high of causing pain) or to zone out of my body and go numb to the pain entirely. In other words, I kept trying to get away, and when I couldn't, went to refuse pain-go numb mode, which usually mollifies an attacker, only the point here was to keep trying to subdue me until I begged for mercy. By the time it felt like my wrist would be injured, I followed orders and tapped, but by this time, serious amounts of adrenaline were coursing through me and I felt seriously pissed off. Need I say that this occurred several times? It took most of my remaining self control not to flip out.

I am shaking and I don't feel very good.

These little houses are incredibly cool! They look like something out of Tolkein's books.

I realized tonight that I have a greater affinity for scents than I do tastes. In a way, this is great, because you can smell all sorts of things that you can't taste, and can enjoy the scent of tastable things without having to buy, procure, or otherwise arrange to be able to taste them. On the other hand, smell is very ephermal, scent memories are haunting, and food is more convenient because you can carry it with you and *store* it.

The greyness is creeping like tendrils into my consciousness. But stealthily, steadily. And at the edge of my soul, I feel a nagging, a discomfort somehow.

I'm not happy with the pears. In fact, I hate them. Another student (who is an artist) gave me some tips on how to fix them, but I'm not optimistic.

I think that's the hardest thing about life. You go on your way, making mistakes, and you never get to erase them or to tear up the paper or shatter the badly formed pottery and make a new one. People talk about second chances, but this is an illusion, because it isn't a new canvas, it's the same one smeared with layers of old, despicable mistakes, and you can't paint something new and fresh, you can only add to what's already there. It's supremely frustrating.

People who know me well always say that I don't talk enough. I think I talk entirely too much. I think out loud. I don't censor my thoughts before I say them. They're disjointed. Or sometimes, I substitute entire words, unintentionally. Spoken language is a very difficult media.

Hope. People talk a lot about hope, as though it's some panacea for mankind. Frankly, I'm skeptical. I think hope is like the promise of a new beginning, more or less the same thing. Which is to say, it doesn't really exist. Hopeful promising things don't fall out of the sky and save our ass or bring new meaning to life and help evrything to make sense. What happens is that occasionally we get a slightly different color for our palette and we're so godawful excited about it that we feel liberated, until reality sets in again.

I think I need to cut my hair.

I did another colored pencil drawing...two pears. Will post it in a few days. I have a tremendously intimidating chemistry test coming up so don't expect it until after then.

I've been thinking about the coming spring and garden, and cold frames. I might post a rough sketch of the idea I have for that, too. Basically, I want to find a way to make a temporary cold frame that will enrich the soil where it's been, so that after the frame is moved, there is more or less a raised bed where it was, requirign no tilling. I've come to the conclusion, over the years, that double digging isn't all it's been cracked up to be. I think it disrupts the soil, the layers of organisms in the soil, and kills earthworms, which to me is a major issue. I hate killing earthworms. There isn't room in the house to start all the brassica and other cool crops indoors, so if I can put them outside and have only the nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc) and basil (can't forget the basil!) inside, that will really help.

Other than that, I don't have a lot to say. I've been dieting and have lost 7-9 # in the past two weeks, despite eating regularly, merely by counting calories, eschewing fat and excess carbs, and eating lots of fresh foods or low calorie soups, which are very filling. Exercise would be good, but my bicycle broke...badly. Will probably have to get another.

Wild ideas

An assortment and sampling of the ideas that run through my head:

• Cashmere goats. They are so much less work than dairy goats. I can't drink the milk anyway. Also, Cashmeres have no breed registry in the U.S., as they are not technically a breed, so the field is A. wide open and B. probably freer of the petty snobbery which is so rife in the dairy goat world and C. a good opportunity for developing my own breed standards and priorities , as opposed to doggedly following those which are laid out in the ADGA handbook.  I think the thing to do would be to buy a few does from imported (NZ) bloodlines and then use (also imported) semen to A.I. them. Why imported? Because, I've done some homework into this subject and am so far unimpressed by the quality of American stock. Most American stock is strongly influenced by Spanish, Boer, or Pygmy strains, because people want dual purpose (meat and fiber) animals as opposed to just high qaulity fiber, which is what I want. 
• Or, how about this: Cashmere dairy goats. In other words, fiber goats that also produce milk. Why not have one fiber and one dairy goat? Well, for one thing, non dairy breeds typically have much higher butterfat and protein percentages than dairy goats. Also, most people don't need gallons and gallons of milk per day, unless they're raising calves or pigs or are making cheese. They just want a little high quality milk, thus the popularity of the Nigerian Dwarf, a breed that makes my back ache when I think of working with them (they are tiny...and though I am short, I don't want animals I have to bend over to work with).  So...with this plan, get  a few nice very high quality dairy goats and A.I. them with imported Cashmere semen, and cross the lines, breed the F1s to more Cashmere semen, evaluate and cull, until a goat with nice fiber and decent milk production (1-2 quarts a day would be fine) is obtained. 
• Spotted knapweed. Why in the hell doesn't Monsanto genetically engineer a strain of spotted knapweed which has the Terminator technology? Areas with knapweed problems could then sow (yes, plant) this improved knapweed and it would cross with the existing (non-native invasive noxious weed) strains and when the two pollinated, the seed would all be sterile. Thus, over a series of years, no viable seed would be left, voila, no more knapweed. I think it must be because Monsanta would rather posion the country with 2,4D, round-up, and other poisons. Temporary and not-entirely effective solutions are a better money maker. 
• Pinus edulis and Pinus monophylla are two extremely slow growing trees which both produce delicious and edible seeds. I ordered some from this site and they are delicious. I decided I'd like to grow some of these wonderful trees. Well, guess what. It can take 60 years for them to reach 6 feet in height! In other words, mature productive trees are ancient and venerable. Now get this: aside from pine nuts, the other major uses for these two species are Christmas tree, timber (including rialroad ties) and pulp! Yeah, like paper pulp, something which could easily be produced with hemp (not the THC kind), or even better, recycled paper. But noooo....they have to cut down a beautiful pinon pine that took 300 years to grow so that people can have soft cushy toilet paper, even though that tree can make *food* year after year. Idiotic. Worse, the Xmas trees! The trees take a hundred years to attain the right height for Xmas trees, so yeah, whack'em down so that some spoiled family can have a nice tree for what, all of a month? Grrrrr...... I probably sound draconian, but this ought to be illegal. 
• Therefore, I have yet another idea. There are many species of trees, including a pine, which can be coppiced. Coppicing means that when you ct down a tree, it regrows from the sump, usually several shoots, and they grow a lot faster than the first growth, because they've got a mature and extensive root system feeding them. You can then cut down one of the second growths, and the other tops will be bigger, and you can continue to harvest them this way for centuries without ever killing the tree. I think this should be the only (or at least the primary) source of timber and cellulose. 

At school everyone calls me by my actual name. At first this felt really weird. Now it seems strange to be called Rebekah. Actually, the long form of my name feels excessively formal. Not sure I like that but don't quite know what to do about it. 

The sysbot test was today. I studied all three days of the weekend, even went on a field trip to see the trees in more detail and in different situations, etc, to get a solid feel for the big picture...studied notes, rewrote them and was quizzed, and read and reread the flora (Hitchcock's Flora of the Pacific Northwest). It seemed a little like overkill, but I had a feeling that the test would be challenging. Ah. It was. I am soooo glad I studied. I know I got several questions wrong, but it would have been quite the nightmare had I not gone all out. And next time, I will study even harder. The class is *fun*, but it is not  a cake walk. I can't gripe, though. Fact of the matter is that since I love the subject, studying for it is no pain at all. 

Next week: Math test. I think I am finally catching up on the math. 

Socially, am making more acquaintances. I am still not very good at small talk, despite a conscious effort in this direction. I don't have a lot of small things to talk about. For me, nearly any subject can lead into more depth or perspective or tangents, and people don't seem to like that. A lot of them want the small talk comments to be short little sound bites, but then what do you say? Another little sound bite? How do you know when to switch from one trivial topic to another? People get bored so easily. They have no attention span.