Goats and Blazing Infernos

I don’t know if you’ve had any reason to look at the California fire maps recently, but if you have, you might notice that a large portion of Sonoma county is currently on fire.

Since we live right on the edge of the evacuation zone, our household has expanded from two humans and two felines to nine humans, four felines, and two canines. Which is two canines more than our cats find appropriate or acceptable.

The three evacuated equines are being housed elsewhere, luckily. But we did go visit with an entire bag of carrots.

Much happier, post-carrot.

It was my brother’s job to fight forest fires, about ten years before the California wildfires went biblical. His job description sounded like my literal definition of hell: Hike ten miles into the wilderness with all your equipment on your back, and then face a blazing inferno, knowing that it’s in your job description to deal with said inferno.

We’re now in the third year in a row of epic, once-in-a-lifetime wildfires. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated, more are without power, and the fires are still raging. I’m glad it’s not my brother’s job to deal with this any more, but the people who’s job it still is are battling hard.

All the guidance I’ve been getting lately says celebrate. Which seems a bit tricky under the circumstances, both logistically and ethically. But maybe that’s the very best time to celebrate - when all circumstances appear to point you in the other direction.

So Here’s Some Celebration. And a Picture of a Goat.

This morning, we learned that one of the houses we feared had burned down is still standing - an actual miracle, given that it’s smack in the middle of multiple fires. So all the people staying with us will probably have homes to return to. We still have power, when much of the region doesn’t. Other people made dinner last night, and when I woke up this morning, the dishes were already done. And I got to meet goats!

Who quickly lost interest in me when it was determined that I had given all the carrots to the horses.

Unimpressed.

Bread is the Answer

Last night I baked bread for the first time.

It was garlic rosemary pull-apart bread, and I’m quite smug about the way it turned out.

I kneaded the dough like I’ve watched every single episode of The Great British Bake-Off (which I have) and knew exactly what I was doing (which I don’t).

Bread baking is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time but since I haven’t had an oven in five years, opportunities have been thin on the ground. After moving into a house equipped with more than a dorm fridge and a hot plate (garden cottages are magical but not if you want to engage in cooking anything more complex than soup), it took me precisely 25 days to get my first batch of bread in the oven.

Yes, I am terribly proud of myself. Doing things just because they’re fun, just because I want to, is something I’ve gotten noticeably bad at recently. Baking some bread turned out to be a solid way to shift that particular tide.

Bonus: kneading dough is quite satisfying.

Creative people are happiest when they’re making things, and I’m a big fan of having hobbies that you don’t have to be good at, that you can play with just because you want to, just because it’s fun. It alleviates the stress of being a wild perfectionist of doing a creative thing that you’re being paid for or building a business around. I really want to type “ugh” or “stupid bills” here, but I’m spending a reasonable portion of my time re-wiring myself around money and that seems like a step in the wrong direction.

If money is reading this, I love you! Let’s hang out! I have a very nice bank account for you to stay in.

My usual methods for cultivating the child-like wonder that soothes my soul are brightly colored converse, a weird obsession with giraffes, and a willingness to utilize empty swing sets to the best of my ability. But I have plenty of giraffes and hot pink shoes, and there aren’t any public playgrounds nearby.

(However, the new house could definitely support both a foster giraffe and a swing set. There are already plans for a goat train and a cat-copter so the kitties can better chase hummingbirds.) (Maybe lack of childlike shenanigans aren’t my problem.)

So, bread baking. Next on my list is singing lessons. Not because I’m good at singing, but because I want to sing. I want to take my Not Great Singing and make it Better Singing. I want to see what progress I can make, when I’m not already good at something. Like most people, I tend to gravitate toward the things I have some talent at, because the ego enjoys nothing better than being good at things.

But I know that creative endeavors fuel more creative endeavors (please note my first blog post in six weeks!) and so I am stating this here and now so I don’t forget again:

Making things is fun. You are happiest when you are making things. Make more things. If you can’t make the thing you were planning to make, make another thing, until the first thing shakes loose.

When all else fails, bake yourself garlic rosemary bread in a place where you can walk out into the garden and pluck rosemary straight from a bush in the ground, which is apparently where rosemary comes from.

Back to the World

I've been in a very galactic headspace for the past four years.

Talking to unicorns and dragons, archangels and ascended masters, playing in all sorts of dimensions - and then coming hope and napping a lot. I'd take people on dragon rides and ask Mother Mary for advice on their behalf. Chakras, crystals, sage, mystic otherworldly adventures - you name the California neo-hippie cliche and I was all over it.

Whether you want to call it channeling or divine guidance or just Amber Was All Up In Her Crazy Imagination and Holy Whoa Look What Came Out, it was a lot of fun.

But I'm finding myself returning to earth now. Wanting to ground all those divine downloads into my real ass life. Wanting to be a part of the world again, even as I observe what the world appears to be doing these days.

But it's like having inter-dimensional jet lag. I don't always know how to reconcile where I've been with where I am with where I'm going.

So I have to go back to all that stuff I downloaded from the ether and integrate it into practice - in a way I was always too exhausted to do when I was making a daily trip up the dimensions. I want to make the channeled wisdom more concrete, blend my human self in my divine self, and help others do the same.

I don't know what that looks like, but it seems I have to start with all the things I already know how to do and trust that to lead me where I want to go. Which means I guess I have to start a goddamn meditation practice? Which likely involves reframing discipline so it doesn't sound like a dirty word-slash-terrible idea and rather That Thing That Will Help Me Pull Possibilities Out Of The Ether And Into Reality.

Sweating Out the Inner Mean Girl

I joined a gym last week. For the first time in nine years.

It’s one of those gyms where you go to a class and sweat in tandem with a whole bunch of other people while hooked up to a monitor so you can obsessively watch your heart rate ascend and descend.

Watching my heart rate move into the orange zone and then not give up when I normally would in order to keep it there is one of my better addictions.

One of the unintended consequences of draining myself dry was that I had no energy to do the things that would’ve given me more energy - namely, working out, eating well, and not being mean to myself.

I’m nailing the working out portion of the equation. Yes, that was a bit smug but I have enough gross gym clothes in my laundry basket to merit a wee bit of smug and I take my wins where I can get them.

I ate two whole vegetables yesterday so that nutrition thing is creeping into reality.

But the Not Being Mean To Myself plan remains elusive.

Being mean to myself is a fall-back reaction, a trigger tactic so ingrained that it takes me hours to realize I’m even doing it. It’s the bastard step-child of shame, anger turned inward, and is absolutely no bueno.

Weirdly, I feel like I HAVE to do it. Like, if I’m kind to myself I’ll get lazy. Or if I’m loving to myself, the entire world will implode. Wounding? Trauma? The human condition? Who knows. All I know is that I’d like my inner mean girl to chill the F out.

If I could solve one thing in the world it would be Humans Being Mean to Themselves.

(I’m pretty sure that if we solved Humans Being Mean to Themselves that would also solve Humans Being Mean to Others, and that seems an efficient use of time.)

My current solution is, when I notice that I’m being mean to myself, to stop whatever I’m doing and try to focus on my breath, focus on dropping all my thoughts into my heart. If I feel better and that catches the spin cycle of internal mean girl, I am free to continue on with my day.

If it doesn’t work, then I stop whatever I’m doing and do something soothing. Take a nap or a shower or go for a drive. I’ll tap into my wiser self - the quiet bit below my own private Regina George - and ask for help. Then I do whatever that voice says.

This actually works fairly well, but will kill an afternoon, after I’ve done all that resting and driving and meditating. Which is why I work for myself, so that I can halt the Being Mean To Myself Spin Cycle without getting fired.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is catch that mean voice in the act, because we’re so used to it being mean inside our heads that we just accept it as normal or as fact.

One of the best ways to catch that voice in the act is to simply pay attention to how you feel in those thoughts. Am I feeling better? That’s probably my wise self voice. Am I feeling worse? That’s Cady Haron after she learned to use lip gloss.

I’m old enough to have gone through a number of I Exercise and then I Don’t and then I Start Exercising Again cycles. So I know that when I start clearing my body out, whether it’s with kale or lots o’ sweating, old feelings and thoughts will rise to the surface. Saying hello before they melt into the atmosphere.

So I like to think that I’m sweating out my inner mean girl, that she’s rising to the top of my consciousness as I watch my heart rate climb to frankly dangerous levels while my feet frantically try to keep up with the moving belt below me. Like, if I give my inner mean girl a hockey stick she can leave her aggression on the field instead of dressing it in pink.

Filling the Cup

I was shopping tipsy with a friend at Scarlet Sage on Thursday. There was a pitcher of post-birthday mimosas at lunch, which makes right after lunch the best time to go places where money can be spent.

We took the whole day to do whatever we wanted, whatever sounded fun, and called it our Fill The Cup Day - something I highly suggest to all people, especially the ones who are feeling drained or burned out. So there was yoga and tea and birthday lunch and poking through a witchy San Francisco apothecary.

As we pored over candles and oils and tarot cards, I picked up a tincture for grief and a broken heart. And I realized that, for the first time in eight years, I didn’t need something like that.

It was a big moment for me.

My 30s were basically one big grief cycle. Breakup, getting fired, dad dying, breakup, miscarriage, breakup, breakup, breakup. Most of those grief cycles took between six months and two years. That’s a decade, right there.

I got a reading last week and she said a few things that really resonated, aside from “You’re too sensitive to do energy healing, stop.” (Which I’ve finally done, after resisting for seven months.) She said, “People want to work with you because you understand pain on a very deep level.”

“Understanding pain on a deep level” is really not the thing I wanted to put on my resume. It was a long and expensive lesson and it does nothing for my ego. She also said, “You’re self-worth has taken a beating lately” and - after all the grief and sinking self-worth - my ego could really use a boost. Instead of being pan-fried and served on a bed of wilting spinach heart break.

I’m finally out of that extended grief cycle - and it feels like the next decade will be a lot more fun than the previous. But shift like that asks a lot. Big change, moving through fear, and a fair amount of uncertainty.

Which involves creativity and bravery and doing things differently and training my brain to approach life in a more positive way again - and I’m worried that my well of bravery is empty.

But it’s not. There’s plenty of energy and creativity in there - and it feels good to be directing it at me and my life, rather than pouring it into everyone else. But many more Fill The Cup Days will be required.

Visual representation of our Cup Filling Day, missing only mimosas, yoga studio, and new pink nails.