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.

Your Soul Cheers As Your Human Self Wonders WTF

Nothing about the last ten years has gone according to plan.

Maybe plans are just my brain's way of helping me feel safe. Maybe goals are just my ego's way of keeping itself satisfied.

Not that there's anything wrong with plans or goals, I just seem to rebel against any and all prescriptions, even if they're my own.

Don't tell me what to do, goal.

Something about dancing on the edge of the unknown appeals to me. Which is good, because a lot of unknowns are looming right now.

I'm moving at the end of the month. Leaving my Mill Valley cottage, my haven for the past five years, to move in with someone. I haven't lived with a man person in over a decade, and it didn't go well when I did. I honestly didn't realize the depth of that particular trauma until I started losing my ever-loving shit at the the thought of trying it again.

I've had the worst financial year of my life. In the past, I would have a bad month or a bad few months - the perils of working for yourself when money is one of your big life lessons - but I would always turn it around before missing being late on a bill or having to skimp on groceries.

I didn't pay the minimum on my credit card last month and my bank account is overdrawn. None of these things have ever happened to me before. Straight up, the only reason I ate a few weeks ago was because a friend sent me some money out of the clear blue sky.

While this isn’t precisely the situation I wanted or expected at this phase of my life, it's showing me that worrying about money serves no purpose. It's showing me that people are deeply kind. It's showing me how to have deep and tremendous faith in myself and my work, even as everything in my current reality is telling me to have zero faith in either of those things. It's showing me that I'm getting ready to expand big time.

I'm getting better at diving into the scary, here-be-monsters depths. I'm getting better at not judging myself. I'm getting better at plunging into joy whenever possible.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe my soul is cheering, even as my human self wonders what the fuck is going on.

Magic Hair

Sometimes the thing we judge the hardest is the thing we want the most.

(Obviously, not everything we judge is some deep desire. As hard as I've worked on my own judgey tendencies, I hardcore judge mean people. Hard. Core. If you are mean, I will judge you, end of story. Or at least end of story until I float away on some ascended cloud which I estimate will happen approximately never.)

Here's what I'm talking about:

When I was in my early 20s, I lived in the Presidio of San Francisco. It's a national park near the Golden Gate Bridge and people could live in it and I did and it's still one of the best choices I've ever made. One of the nearest neighborhoods was the Marina, a land of women who look like golden Thoroughbreds in pricey yoga pants.

One of my favorite past-times was to sit outside in the Marina and try to guess how much each woman spent on grooming per month - whatever I estimated it took to get skin that glowing, hair that shiny, and nails that perfect. I would cast my predictions in an admittedly judgmental tone of voice.

I hope none of them ever heard me because, wow, rude.

It took me something in the range of two decades (two actual decades) to realize that I wanted to feel safe looking that polished and pretty. That I wanted to be able to spend that kind of money on myself.

My highest standard of self-care was to spend twenty minutes getting ready for senior prom, wearing a dress I bought in a Venice Beach stall. Being Not High Maintenance was a point of pride. Spending the smallest amount of money possible on my appearance was an ingrained frugality, experienced by many of us who were raised by parents who were raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression.

But then, some nineteen years later, I learned the magic of the blowout. I learned that getting manicures elevated my mood - and, weirdly, my productivity - by a startling percentage. I learned that facials are awesome and massages are even better.

I want to be one of those people who does that kind of thing regularly. I want to be one of those shiny Thoroughbred women. I was kind of ashamed of that for awhile. I'm still a little uncomfortable writing about it. For all the reasons that may or may not be running through your head as you read this.

Taking good care of myself still feels downright revolutionary. It still feels like a splurge I'm still not quite worthy of. And that is straight nonsense.

If I want it, I want to have it.

If you want it, I want you to have it.

If we judge it, but secretly want it, I want us to have it - even if it takes decades to get there.

We are worth it. And we are goddamn allowed to have it.

So here's a picture of my first official blow-out. My afternoon post-blow-out was like a movie montage. I'm convinced my hair was magic that day, and has been every other day since that I've had it professionally wrangled or done my best with the mousse and curling iron.

Hooray for magic hair and significantly less judgment!

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.