Family by Marriage Goes to Portland

I realize that Friday was not Wednesday and that my car ride to Portland with my mommy, sister, her sister in law, mother in law and the mom of the groom, is "tomorrow" and not in two days. Fun, fun.
This is another thing that having this sort of life does to a person.
Who needs to look at the calender when all you do is by no means dependent on careful scheduling or indeed, even the day of the week.

Malls make me want to act out like a Will Ferrell character- hysterically flailing around, screaming nonsense and just plain making a major distraction. Malls use to be a fascinating outing for me, now they are a bold and underlined statement of consumerism and the speakers hidden in potted plant arrangements seem to scream "you aren't okay without my $200 dollar shoes and $400 cardigan". Packs of UN-domesticated humans standing around, warily eyeballing each other reminds me of a scene form Nat Geo. The Serengeti with Jamba Juice stands, the predator stalking the mobs is the emblem on their credit card.

It was interesting how the two bridal shops that we visited varied, and how the packs of brides-to-be and their entourages swarmed in the warehouse/free for all instead of the small, privately owned business which offered you a more personal experience and prices mostly under the $500 mark.
Why do people love being surrounded by other people, as they try very very hard to ignore them all? Riding around and just being around my mom and sister was a blast of oxygen after coming up from a long deep swim. They make me feel so wonderful about me and life- that's what it's all about!

As I find myself wanting to re-connect with the world, wanting to be accountable for my life, wanting to grow and change the stubborn hermit inside, my family is everything I need.
My family are interesting, sincere, beautiful people and I suppose I just generally all around think that they are better than everyone else. Even the ones I'm only related to by marriage.
Yikes, I know. I said it. Everyone else is just fine, I'm sure. I just like MY pack the best.

Even their recipes are the best. I recently threw a tantrum on the floor like a toddler when it was dinner making time. A trip to my Aunt's blog gave me the recipe and inspiration I needed to make it through with a smidge of dignity left.

Mom is the source of closeness and real love; to the family, to the whole. She's the reminder that nothing stays the same forever, but that you are loved unconditionally in between.
Sherece is my PIC. We've cut our teeth together. We are the same. We are so so very different. She is my sister and every beautiful thing that that means.
Randy and her moms were a wonderful example of another family with different issues, but the same fundamentals. Walking around with these women, looking at wedding dresses, made me take a moment and appreciate what Woman means. How important our support and influence really are to one another.

Then I came home and snuggled my inter-species family, grateful that Fred forgave me for my evil attutide at six am, and for the wagging tails and coy purrs. If togetherness is the vehicle for love and joy.
I sure have a lot of it.
<3

Living Well in the Space Between

Isn't it funny the way jobs in small communities are scarce as it is without a recession?
I have worked full time whether full time or multiple part time gigs, for the most part, since I was 15, and now that I am suppose to be a sustaining adult I find myself jobless and feeling quite disconnected in this world.

A profession does little to define who we are as human beings, or the meaning that we contribute to and take from this world, but they sure do us justice as automobiles through life. To break it down to minuscule terms, like the beneficial pairing or grouping of plants: the fact that we are living beings, effects the other philodendrons, roses, potatoes and people we are living beings around. From what I gather from the population born before the T.V. Nanny, people interacted to survive, in more romantic terms. A job is the venue for interaction. Without jobs, or positions, or projects, or friends, or family, where do you go? Who do you regulate and be regulated by? I am not saying that I am Famliless or friendless. I have disconnected though, maybe to seek independence by backasswards means. I live in a small community, I know lots of people, I have lots of loving family members with lots of interests- So why, Aliesha so you feel so uninterested, so funky?
I think I could do the Barista thing again. A job that is mechanics, cooking, dance and performance stirred into steamed milk sounds pretty on par. The people you meet with this job are better than movie rental store people, small town sandwich joint people, AND credit union people. And it will be book store people! could mean pretentious a-holes mixed with consciousness seekers.
Who cares? It's a job.
I like to wonder.

Without that "job (role)"  institution, be it odd jobs for folks who know folks I know, a position with a company or a specialist with a career and constant on going education, I  find that I am too content living life like a hermit! A day rolls by and I clean the house, I chop fire wood, I sew or knit, I listen to music and stare at the wall, I wander to the post office or the library, I visit the beach. Play door man to the pets. But that's all that happens lately.

Living jobless brings the things I struggle with into light in such a way that I can no longer ignore them.
Socialization. Even people with crap for social stamina and or interest get lonely for and curious about other people, and where they stand with them.When I get an opportunity, I leave feeling unpracticed and ineffective.
Spontaneity. Too often do I assume the worst and run with it into my cave! With out a position that I have  previously obliged myself to fulfill, any opportunity I seem to face outside of my regular routine is met with "I don't know, leave me alone!"
My moody swings of pent up energy and claustrophobic boredom- feeding the depression/anxiety monster.

Jungian archetypes consider one part of the psyche as the shadow self being illustrated as the "bad" or confusing and hurtful or just plain unknown and creepy hidden parts of the personality. I feel like in this time of my life the shadow me is coming well out of the shadows and walking around in my ego's shoes!What is this person I am? Eww.
I took a good long walk on the beach with the dog buddies this evening and, of course, I feel less pile-o-poo and more human. There's a tension breaker in the jokes that the surf tells!

My "papa bear"/friend/"step-dad"/father has always told me that people like us just need to not sit around and stew in our brains. Some days that means going for a walk on the beach to see the way the clouds, sun and water all kind of melt together. Or it's a hike in the forest in the late summertime and maybe feel like you aren't sure at all where the heck you are, only to know the yum giggle of discovering a patch of dew kissed golden chanterelle mushrooms on the way to finding your way back! Sometimes it's a hard day's work, sometimes it's getting a good laugh in.
Sometimes a higher quality of life comes from wandering outside of it just a little, I guess.

Looking Forward

I am so ready for April, when my Barista gig starts.
I will be working the noon to closing shift, just like I like. The bookshop is within walking distance of my house and the owner is one of those folks whom fascinate me to no end. She's mature, warm, independent and very successful. I am looking forward to learning from her, and being an accountable part of the Adelaide's group.

This morning I woke up to four am kisses and graces from my fisher man on his way to work. Once he was gone I wandered around the house, washed four of the four thousand dishes in and around the sink, played door man to a cat, peeked at the garden and then snuggled back into bed for four and a half more hours of snoozing. Right? isn't that the shit? That routine was my dream life the entire time I had a job, and/or just a life, with things to do and reasons to keep moving.
But I can tell you, there is no wonder to it.The sun is out and three cats are content to mobbing my lap for the best nap spot, as they do not have guilt about wasting a beautiful morning, also as they were out all night raising hell and murdering small fuzzy creatures and are now exhausted. So I am sitting on my fanny with victorious little Gretchen, whom if it matters, was not outside all night and not only not busy killing smaller things than her, but tucked into the warmest guinea pig sized spots under the covers, as tiny rodent sized cats should. A not exhausted, yet still somehow entitled, snot covered and wheezing mini loaf sized fluff on my lap and two dogs to play doorman for, and no- thank you, I am not feeling like I am living the dream life at all! I thought there would be some sense of audacity involved when living the dream life, to distract me, kind of how having a real life distracts you from the monotonous. Something that keeps repeating in the Buddhist and psycho babble self help reading I've been doing, and that is: Get over it! Life is monotonous sometimes. Sometimes it is fucking crazy fast paced whether you initiate the activity or not, and either way you have to accept that it is what's happening now, but also remember that nothing stays the same for ever.
 Then thing here is, generally in the past I throw a fit like a cranky child when I get bored, or confused about life and frustrated about employment opportunities. This probably triggers a pattern of shitty feelings and lashings-out, and I am probably best not going that route.
If I am patient, and making a true effort to keep my mind busy, and body tired, I can keep from feeling that I am a piece of nothing, a drain on society, a dark cloud in the day of the unsuspecting people I spontaneously interact with when I am out running errands and trying to not be in the house. Stuff is bound to happen. I have a lot to be thankful for!

And oh, I better go.
Bow hunter da just sent a text. I smell an outing!

The Crab Man in the Long Black Coat

A new thing in my life is this crab fisher man who welcomes me to haunt his house. He comes and goes in his long wool coat, with the tide and conditions of the mama pacific. He brings the delicious wholesome bounty of the ocean for us to share.
At around six pm on the third or fourth string of days when Fred works 14 hours at a time, I get word from the pirate ship Joyce Marie that she's headed back to land with delicious ling cod and dungies for the taking!

Mind buzzing like wasp crossed with a canary I lather, rinse and repeat every dish on the counter and every surface of the kitchen. I rip an unsuspecting head of romaine into a gory heap of destruction, add carrot, cue comber and broccoli, and place that to the stack of tasks finished.
I add cornstarch and baking powder to flour, an egg to a good long splash of Blue Boar by henry weinhardt- man, I wish I had a darker flavor- mix the wet in with the dry and complete the second task. Oil into the cast iron pot of doom, heat to low. The third task before instant gratification and YUM! 
I fiddle with the television, groom the carpet of it's excess pet fur and dander. Before I am through washing up, the fish is here- and so is the Crab Man!! I handle the fresh fish fillets as the volatile, federal offense they represent as recognizably Ling, separating the metallic colored skin from the clear/white flesh in a short process of messy cuts and curses. Before you know it the cod mysteriously finds it's self in two-bites sized lumps, covered in thick puffy batter, undergoing the miracle of hot oil meets food.

Can I just say, I LOVE FISH FRY NIGHTS! Thanks, Crab Man. 

The quad ride in the hills with Wayne was as always composed of good ol' fun, and a string of comments and one liners which always mean more to me than any outsider could think.We rode the four wheelers around logging roads and shot holes into plastic things, tin things and glass things. The clay pigeon he found reminded me of the ranch- that field in front of 'Papa Dave's" house where the guys had one of those clay pigeon flingers. And the gun club on chinook valley road that Wayne joined before I knew what Chinook Valley Road was. The good ol days. It's amazing how much time a young person spends staring at the ground, kind of not sure about what else they ought to do, emotionalizing the various debris.
That little pink gun is, on the one hand a silly thing. On the other hand, or in Wayne's hands for example, that pistol is not something I would wish on anyone.
With a few to-the-point quick pointers, wayne had me shooting pretty darn accurately, I shot that clay pigeon straight through the center. Then in a frenzy of rapid fire from Mom's .22 pistol, the circle became chaos! Why is it fun to shoot things? The breath of total focus before you slowly squeeze the trigger? Every so often I shoot a gun for no good reason. It's like a game, its a trip down memory lane, it's what I came from!
I love it.

If I look at the person I was during some of the rough parts of  my trip to where I now find myself, I am grateful for and in awe of the trans-formative nature of  the years of life, and the way that children aren't born clean slates. I wasn't anyway. I was born a stubborn infection, a resilient mold. Over time I have evolved- slightly. I think now I am something less horrible, a little more useful. Maybe a sourdough start. Or perhaps homemade yogurt. Yeah.  

Today is a sunny. cold January treat. What will I accomplish? Who will I see? Maybe nothing and no one other than the Crab Man. But that's okay. Four dungies hear the death toll. My hugest pot has been preparing to boil all morning. My sourdough is out of the fridge, and almost done wrapping its head around the idea of becoming a loaf of bread to be dipped into a crab packed chowder, chunk by gloriously ripped off chunk!!! What? Since when did it become so weird to let your whole world revolve around your kitchen? I love it.