an ounce of action and a bundle of spring

Running is becoming less painful as more and more shades of pink and green appear and spring begins. Despite the cold rain and rainy cold and slush and snow and rain and clouds and wee bits of sun and clouds. Fractious weather, fractious season. But I surpassed my running goal this week, reaching 11 miles. So this week's goal is 12, if the weather is kind and willing.

Other goals for this wonderful week:
Finish my grandmother's embroidered portrait.
Complete my lame-ass PSU class! Hooray!
Build planter boxes for kitchen windows.
Choose a theme and create invites for baby shower for J.

I found this lovely blog by a Portland writer and artist. Her name is Alicia Paulson, and she said this about starting and maintaining her blog in an interview over at Feeling Stitchy. It really resonated with me:

I had been a writer all my life and had worked as a book editor -- but before I started blogging I hadn't written a word just for myself in over eight years. So blogging was, in a lot of ways, a return to a version of myself that I had lost along the way. In the moment, it was sort of a direct reaction to these feelings of barely controlled professional chaos I was experiencing: staying organized on the blog helped me re-organize my real life and work in real time, somehow. But in a much larger way it also allowed me to reconnect to an essential part of myself that I had kind of put behind me. I think my reasons for blogging are still exactly the same as they were in 2005. I'm still very selfish about it. I still maintain that it's just a place for me to do and say and show what I want. I still see it as a personal blog and a way of telling my own story to myself.

In many ways, I feel this way about my own blog, "telling my own story to myself" and helping me organize my life around the aspects that are meaningful: nurturing health, staying goal oriented, and being creative. And I used to write. I filled journals and comp books with stories, poems, character sketches, and diary entries, and blogging is a way to keep writing--personal, creative, expressive writing--in my life. This is why I value this space and am becoming more confident and more insistent that it is my true voice.

Can't wait to finish my class! I ordered a few books using my free month trial of Amazon prime, so they should be all on my porch by Thursday! They include a book on urban farming by Novella Carpenter and a guide on over 400 embroidery stitches.

A Night with Jane Eyre

For her honors project, one of my freshmen read and submitted an essay to Multnomah County Library sponsored contest for the Focus Features 2011 adaptation of Jane Eyre. She read the novel, wrote a draft, revised, submitted, and was selected as one of the winners. As a result, she and four guests were invited to attend "An Evening with Jane Eyre," and she chose a 9th grade friend, her mother, her brother, and me to accompany her.

First, we went to the Heathman Hotel, where we supped on Stilton cheese, cucumber sandwiches, and other delicacies that Jane and Mr. Rochester might have enjoyed back in that era of wind-swept moors and gothic romances. Then the author Chelsea Cain read to us the opening of Charlotte Bronte's novel, and I was reminded of how much I've coveted having a window seat to hide away in and read ever since reading that particular passage of the book. The two freshmen girls and I all took home a brand new, free copy of the book, which was perfect, because I was sitting there thinking, "I am definitely going to want to re-read this (for the 3rd time!) after tonight." I had such a good time with these young minds, so excited and passionate, lovers of books and learning! Both girls agreed that the fact that they'd won a free copy of a book had made their entire night! Their entire week! I concurred!

And I do want to re-read it! Especially after the film. I've rarely seen such chemistry between two people on screen. There was so much tension in their unquenched desire; there were whole scenes during which I didn't move or breathe. Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska were so well casted in these roles and the cinematography was so stunning; I want to wander on the dusky, wind-swept moors in a cape and return home to my brooding lover. Or, maybe just revisit my two favorite Bronte novels, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights while curled up in a window seat.

New Year's Resolutions

I haven't created any new year's resolutions in a while, but 2009 was a year of amazing growth and productivity, and I'd like to continue my momentum as much as possible. In the past, new year's resolutions seemed like a set up to failure: I'll lose 10 pounds; I'll finally have the body I've always dreamed of; I'll become someone else; blah blah blah.

Instead, I do want to push myself, but I don't want to become a new person. I do want to set goals for myself that may end in failure, but I want to state them and try to achieve them nonetheless, in the hope that I learn a lot along the way and have a blast doing so, just like I had a blast learning how to sew, knit, make tea, and garden in 2009.

So, here they be (warning, some of them may sound enigmatic to all but me or some who closely know me/share these goals):

Garden: This year's garden's primary focus (our first year at this house, with this garden) will be to grow as much fruit, vegetables, and herbs as possible, starting with seeds in February and not ending in fall but continuing on with winter crops. I hope to have enough produce to can, dehydrate, freeze, and give away with the goal of someday having a yard that sustains my need for produce as much as possible. I will make as much of my own compost as I can, including starting my own little worm farm and helping feed my neighbor's chickens greens in exchange for chicken poop. If I find free/cheap bee kits, I will start bee-keeping. Otherwise, I will wait until next year as bee keeping is an expensive trade initially.

Arts/crafts: I want to keep the door open here, but primarily, I want to become a confident seamstress, able to confidently follow a pattern, do applique, and make functional, simple items such as curtains, bags, blankets, and clothes. I would like to continue knitting/crocheting, and I would like to continue the communal aspect of arts/crafts with bi-weekly gatherings with interesting, fun, creative women. Finally, I want to finish my embroidery plan and if I enjoy it, continue with others, because these projects are creative and worthwhile.

Writing: To continue writing for the Examiner, with a minimum of 2 articles per month. Also, to start researching for and testing my own ideas out, taking notes, and writing drafts for my book. In a year from now, I should be ready to start compiling notes for a first draft.

Reading: 50 books.

BRC: City Stories. Collaborative art project, mixed media.

Career: to get a full-time teaching job or figure out something else...my own business? go back to school?

2010, I've got a big grin on my face. The joy of beautiful work, wonderful friends, beloved family. Here we go!

Ideas for articles

I am starting my freelance writing career. More to follow on that. For now, a list of possible articles for my gig as a Portland Gardening Examiner.

Share Cropping in SE Portland, see OR Public Radio for week of 9/28
Gardening for/with people with disabilities
Urban Guerrilla Gardening in Portland
Urban Homesteading
Permaculture for lower-middle income
Permaculture vs. Homesteading: What's the Difference?
Urban Homesteaders Potluck???
Home Orchard Society
Steve Solomon: guru of organic gardening from Oregon
Portland Permaculture Institute
Growing Gardens


Plus:
How to make your own incense
Rating local nurseries
Gardening events in Portland
Bee Keeping
Benefits of Chickens and City Ordinances
A butterfly garden
planning for winter
winter projects: creative containers, window boxes, planning for spring, indoor gardening
the indoor garden
local gardens: Japanese, rose garden, peninsula park, classical chinese garden, berry botanic garden
community gardens
volunteer opportunities
where to go for cheap merchandise (bulbs, etc.)
butterfly houses
hummingbirds
benefits of bees
think eco-native plants
starting tomatoes
growing tomatoes upside down
fall planting
comfrey
composting
how to build raised beds
cat garden
companion planting
sundial
using color
OR garden in Silverton
homesteading on low income without a car

living...and writing

Unlike my initial launch of this blog, I no longer want it to be about anything. If I feel like writing about my parents, books, learning how to knit, my students, my vices, my fears, my hopes, I'm going to write about them. I've always been terrified by the idea of an audience, to the point where it's ruined my writing. It's prevented me from being really honest, and it's stopped me from taking real risks, both killers in writing. The idea of having an audience even led me to demand that all of my writing was something worthwhile, which totally negates the purpose of most expressive writing: to express one's feelings, thoughts, ideas, frustrations, dreams, fears. Not to be a Woolf or a Cisneros or a Marquez. At least, not on the first draft. Not in the journal.

So I'm trying to redirect my thinking. I want both my journals and my blogs to be places where I can express myself in words rather than through lesson plans or dance or bicycling or gardening. And right now, I don't want or need an audience. So if you're out there reading, know that I'm no longer focusing this blog on the economy or on teaching, but rather, simply on "living in interesting times."