"...nor tattoo any marks on you" Leviticus 19:28

Leviticus...SO strict!  NO fun!  What EV.

After getting my nose pierced in 2012, I realized how many years I'd wasted, sans body mod, due to fear of the unknown.  I'd wanted to pierce my nose and get at tattoo since my early 20's, but the years slipped on by with just an occasional question asked about the ins and outs pain, healing, cost, etc. Putting it off and putting it off....

Finally, thanks to the Google Gods and the YouTube, I got me edumacated on all things nose piercing, gathered up my balls and made an appointment.  MANY years of wussiness extinguished with the one quick pinch to my nostril.  I loved my nose piercing!  Eventually I got my tragus pierced and love that, too! (Long healing time, though).  Then it was time for a tat.  I've designed many tats for myself over the years ....this being the first (circa '93):

Thank GAWD time - and fear- faded my attraction to this pretentious tribal....thingy...I came up with.  At some point I added an earth there in the middle with a Susan Seddon Boulet wolf head floating around the top.  Shit.   My visual amalgam of wolf-love and saving the earth, punctuated with a trendy something-that-meant-nothing to me graphic.  I still really dig wolves and our planet....  Just not permanently displayed on the back of my calf.

Over the years I've thought that if I where to get a tattoo, it should have to be a symbol of something that defines "me" and/or is FOREVER dear to my heart and soul.  And something that would never loose it's visual appeal.  Now, we can't really predict what designs might loose their appeal over time- I just imagine all the "awesome" designs I can up with in the past....but something permanent on THIS body had to rise above hearts and unicorns and serpents.... I needed symbols and archetypes that have remained a part of me over the years....AND it needed to be created by ME. 
When I think of FOREVER, I think of love, and my children, and my husband...
So, for my first tat I incorporated my kids names into an infinity symbol.

Got this one inked out in the valley (Palmer, Alaska)by an artist who had done some gorgeous intricate lettering on a client of mine.  She copied my design to the T.  A little too perfect because she included all the little imperfections that I was hoping she'd "clean up".  Like that thin line in the middle.  I plan on going back for touch ups soon.

For my second tat, I went out and bought a calligraphy pen and drew my very simple "Miles" tattoo.  This one for my husband...with the bonus double meaning-I love running after all.  I've run many miles and there will be many more to come.  And none enjoyed more than the ones I run with my sweet man.  

Still a bit scabby here

I'd held on to that peace of paper for almost a year!  Since it would be going on my foot, I had the hardest time figuring out WHEN would be a good time to get it done.  Since I would have to go barefoot as much as possible for a week or 2, let alone not run, ski or work out.  It never seemed the right time!  I finally said NOW last week and headed in to Eagle River Tattoo.  A shop run by the Yarians,  parents of one of Dylan's former grade school classmates.  What a cool place!  Very welcoming and open, which I really appreciate.  Friendly folks all.  The place is clean with a very classy arty décor.  Retro tat compilations framed on the walls along with a collection of cool masks   Matt, the eldest Yarian, did a GREAT job on my tat.  Quick, precise, and with interesting conversation revolving around the possible seceding of Venice and the Veneto from Italy.  This tat hurt like a nagging bitch in a couple spots.  At one point I had to stop talking so I could grit my teeth and say "Oowwwwwww.......".  But it was over so fast.  No biggie.  Shit, I gave birth to a 10 pounder, what am I complaining about?

Miles has never been into tats but he was very touched when I surprised him with it.  I'm so happy that it brings him happiness and pride whenever he looks at it!  Forever......

What's next?  I want to create something special for the back of my neck.  Dylan and I got these henna sun tattoos on our necks at the Jersey Shore a couple years ago and I LOVED mine!  

Symbols I feel represent me are:

The sun- healing and a source of life

The spiral-evolving, birthing, female energy, spiritual and physical journey

Various Celtic knots-my heritage, many of the a fore mentioned attributes

 The lotus-creation, enlightenment, health.  

I'd like to design a tat with a combination of 2 or 3 of these.....but it needs to be smallish and fairly simple.  We'll see what I come up with !

Attempting to write every day in May. HAAAAAAAAAhahahahaaaaa!

Pre-script:  So.....I'm a day late. 

I miss writing on a regular basis.  I really miss taking that block of uninterrupted time to just immerse myself in the laying down of words. ...LOVE to write.  When I'm feeling creatively stagnant, when my painting muse is MIA, writing always gets the juices going.   ....if only I had more time.  I've barely made time for getting down the basics of what goes on in my life,  let alone anything creative.  I'd like to make more of an effort.  Lately I've been looking at writing prompt blogs and have found some pretty good ones that I would like to run with.  Here's one and here's another.  I also have kind of half-assed started a "Beautiful Words" type of meme where I write something based on some of the words I find, you guessed it, beautiful.  I was chatting about all this with my RunnerGirl friend and she pointed me to a reader's blog who is doing a blog-a-day thing for May.  I'm going to jump on her blogwagon  and hang tenuously to the feed trough, if you will.  I need to temper leniency on this one with dedication.  I'm not joining the gang and posting widgets to the challenge and responding to peoples posts... I have no one to prove anything to but myself and we have WAY too much going on this month...Chaotic remodeling, my mom visiting, holiday, birthday, Parties, Dylan's graduation and leaving of the nest........   I want to dedicate a little solace time to quiet mediation and writing  this month.  I'm just glomming some decent prompts from this challenge and doing it my own effin' way.  No promises of anything daily....but here goes:

My life story in 250 X 2.5-ish words:

Earliest memory:  The smell of Certs…a triad of lights overhead…birth…a person of gold light who has comforted me in my dreams ever since. 
 
Uncomfortable pretty shoes push a plastic horsey around a limpid Texas pool. 

I wait for my Daddy to get home from work on the prickly grass of our New Jersey front lawn.  Eyes fixed on the blue above me because I was told he was riding a motorcycle today and was going to jump so high into the sky.  “Whatcha got there?” “Bread and butter”. 

Montessori and whistling, finally, I have what it takes to conquer this fear of that deafening… paralyzing… alarm bell in our Minnesota home.  I love my Irish setter, and my friend Nick, and rides in the car, my kite, Zoom, and was I on Romper Room?!?!?  

New Jersey again. Ridgewood…learning to find my way to kindergarten all by myself-such a big girl- and Miss Ola is the nicest lady in the world .  Imaginations SOAR, my neighbor friends and I visit many worlds as I dodge the first of many bullies to come.  She pulled me down the wooden stairs by my arm.  I dance with Neil Diamond on the landing…

Another new home.  The last one of my childhood.  A pool, my hair is long, my father unpredictable.  My love for running is born as Dinosaurs chase me in the back yard.  Late nights of loud music and arguments chase my dreams. He smashed my tape recorder on the kitchen floor and promised to ALWAYS be there.  A broken cactus, someone sleeping it off in the guestroom, “we’re getting a divorce”.  My cousin cries, I sigh.  My imaginary play reveals truths.  The scale tips back and forth…friends/my step-dad and his grandkids/outside/beloved pets/my tiny glass animals/grandmothers/ sunlight dappling my bedroom window screen/the green leaves shimmer along with cicadas/dreaming of mountains.  Back and forth… the bullies/the Spirit Breakers/the prison of my own brain/…my friend dies.  My family is not of my blood.

My New Hampshire dorm filled with excited and excepting students.  On their own for the first time. It gives me freedom and safety to emerge…… only to cocoon again when my friend is extinguished by a drunk driver and again when my step-father dies(I knew it before anyone answered my call.)

Things are no longer the same.  Off to another New Hampshire college.  Too much excess, too many stagnant “friends”.  I take control.  Body, mind and soul,

And Montana becomes my love.   “All my changes where there”.  I learn to go it solo.  My dog in tow.  The quiet on the hills and high peaks connecting my core to the earth where I dig  my toes into its softness in the spring.  I am growing up with my garden that I share with my soul mate although this reality remains locked unacknowledged deep in my heart.  For years.  I feel a love for his baby girl like I have never felt before.  And then they are gone.  I’m ready for more…

…So one quick yearlong stay in Seattle… and I miss my mountains.  I miss close friends.  I miss my evolution.  I was wrong.  This isn’t “more”.

Alaska.  Reunited with mountains, ocean, my best friend and his growing girl.  Endings and new beginnings and my heart is unlocked forever.  Free to love.  To help complete a broken family.  This child that bestowed the honor of mothering upon me…  This man who said “yes” when I proposed amongst glaciers.  Experiencing the quickening and growth in my own womb.  Together we have joined life, rescued life, created life, and learned to live life as fully as we can.  True friendships, meaningful fulfilling work, raising our young, hard play, continued personal evolution…. 

Us four.  Held in the heart of this mountain valley.

Photo by Mathew Crockett Photography

 

Weekend warriors!

That's some kick-ass terrain to run on!

We've had some busy productive weekends lately!  Running, beer brewing and bottling, chopping down trees, construction, and school functions...to the point that I'm craving a few hours to just  snuggle on the couch with the cats and a good book on my Nook.  But I'm NOT complaining!!!!  A couple weeks ago, I challenged myself to running 8.5 miles on our hilly road (see photo above).  I'm training to run a 5k, a 1/2 marathon, and possibly a full marathon this summer.  The most I've run on these hills is 6 miles and i wanted to see if I could take it up a notch.  Miles joined me on the run and had planned to head back home after a few miles while I finished the run.  He ran the 8.5 with me and  at that point I was still feeling pretty strong so I decided to tack on an extra route.  We kissed goodbye and I started down a hill...it wasn't more than 10 ten seconds before Miles yelled out, "wait up!  I'm gonna do it, too!"  Being the stronger runner, I was SO happy and proud that he pushed himself with me on that last leg of the run!  By the end of it I was definitely ready to be done!  When we got home I hopped in the car to track to mileage of our run.  It turned out that we ran 11.5 miles that day!  My longest run yet!  I'm feeling pretty happy with my endurance and will... and confident in my ability to run a half marathon right now!
Now might be a good time to update folks on how things have been going for me over the last year running in minimalist shoes.  I am still LOVING my Vibram 5 Finger toe shoes...but it's been a rocky transition.  I'm going to just cut and paste a message I sent to a knowledgeable runner that I admire, detailing my experience these last months with the VFFs- as well as what I felt on this 11.5 mile run.  But I will use this in a second post today so that this one isn't so long.

Miles going up...

Dana going down....

Ewwwwwwwww!!!!

Previous night's
healthy fuel

Previous night's
healthy fuel
 made not so healthy! 

After months at a standstill, we finally started up work on the new addition again and got our main interior wall finished! I was MANICALLY happy to be out there pounding nails! Next weekend we'll be erecting the last 2 small walls and then it's on to powering up the room with electrical.  Slow progress is better then NO progress and I am filled with glee when I get to don my manly tool belt!

Workin on that wall...

How NOT to raise a wall.

Measuring the windows

Waiting.....

Here we are on the verge of September....and our new addition is still barely off the ground. We're starting to feel the panic. The goal has been to get this thing up and ready to heat by the time snow flies. And as I've stated before, the framing was supposed to be FINISHED by July.... But such is the quagmire one sets themselves up in when counting on a retired contractor that is not really asking for much monetary compensation. In return, we're kind of at the mercy of his whims...not sure when he'll be showing up. Huz and I, with help from Dea and Lo have done 90% of the work ourselves so far. And I'm still lovin it! I've always been one who's happiest when making something....art, a baby, a new meal, landscaping, construction....and I really enjoy the labor put into it. I relish a productive day of hard busy work, and the peace that comes at the end of it when you can stand back and look at what you've produced.

Sister power

....But, alas, the completion of this project is at the mercy of our contractor who has not made it a priority. And it seems every other week one of us is not available to work on it. We were in Jersey, then he was of on vacations with family, now Huz is in Washington DC for conferences for the next week...oi. As long as WE are here and the contractor actually shows up for 30 minutes to instruct us on what to do, we're good to go! We slammed out the first wall in 3 hours and the second wall took a Sunday....But actually getting him here at the house in the first place has been a problem. A lot of wasted weekends.

So imagine my surprise-chagrin, actually- when our MIA contractor calls last night and says, "Let's raise those walls!" We didn't take him too seriously. Since the biggest wall is like 2 tons, we had been planning to have friends and neighbors come up for an official Wall Raising a la the Amish if only we had a day and time to give them. But the contractor is not so good at such commitments. We knew he had his son and grandson in town and they were willing to help. And I assumed that he had a few other guys...so we figured we'd wait and see IF , WHEN and WHO showed up. I was feeling crappy, a chest cold coming on, and just wanted to go to BED. Lo and behold, he shows up after 9PM with Jr. and Jr. Jr. That's it. Huz and I felt bad about calling folks to come help since it was so last minute and late! But Dea knew that our next door neighbors were up so we asked if they wanted to help. Apparently we needed all the help we could get.

Enjoy our Fellini-esque wall raising video! I'm the one with the afro puff in the black hoodie wielding the hammer. (It's been a long recovery process for my low back so such heavy lifting is OUT for me.)
The vid is fekkin' ridiculous to watch-I almost cried like a girl at the end-but at the same time I'm SO upset that people could have gotten hurt. This was not a paid construction team...just friends helping out. I am NOT happy with the contractor's lack of judgement. And I feel HORRIBLE that I dismissed my own concerns about the situation. We figured we don't know SHIT about how all this works, so we put our trust in the guy who does. But as I look back at the last couple months, we-especially Huz-have found mistakes on the contractor's part, we've second guessed some of his ideas, really only need minimal instruction from him, need to go with our OWN instincts, and as long as I have Huz's math skills-I can DO THIS!!!!

We WILL be having a serious pow-wow on how we are going to proceed with this construction. Renting jacks to raise these walls for one thing...And we will NOT be second guessing our own instincts and logic AGAIN.

FUTURE DREAMING

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't look out our big front windows and think of how blessed we are to live in such a place. We're situated on a mountainside above a river with amazing views of the mountains all around.

That's us under the arrow!

These 2 pics were taken on a hike across the valley-this is the view of the end of the valley.

Our little house is warm, cozy, eclectic, inviting -a real "lived in" place full of the treasures that symbolize each of us and our lives together. But this house aint practical!!!! There's NO storage space -we got stuff stuffed in places you wouldn't imagine! I'm the type that hates to see stuff like food and other sundries lying around sticking out on shelves, cds and dvds stacked all over....I just want to see furniture, plants, and art. Our treasures! And we have no dinning room. We gave that to Lo. It's a cute tiny room..for NOW, but when she gets older? How are we gonna cram a twin sized bed in there? There's no closet or shelves! We have a big island in our kitchen where we eat, but as far as entertaining? That's a real pain in the ass. We LOVE havin friends over and can't wait to finally have a big dinning room and table to seat a bunch of folks in for feasts!

Believe me, I stand here knowing how fortunate we are to have this place...and I lOVE it! But it also drives me nuts!

We are planning to build an addition next summer. Two new floors above the garage. A dinning room/sitting room/pantry on the first and the second floor will be the new master bedroom (Walk-in closet here I come!!!!!!!!)-Dea will get our old one and Lo will move on up to Dea's old room. A little more space, less clutter, more of an opportunity to live eco friendly. We plan to design with passive solar heating and cooling in mind and add a wind turbine for power. Room to breathe....

I had always envisioned designing my own home one day and was looking forward to putting together some sketches of my ideas for this future addition. Here's a very basic idea I came up with for the addition:

(HA! I'm so embarrassed!)

Hello! NOT to scale!

However, I have no clue about the technicalities of architecture, engineering, and the like. All I can do is put down on paper what flows out of my right brain. So unfortunately, my sketches are completely specious. There are so many variables to take into consideration when building. Mainly, where is all the snow on the roof going to go? While I enjoyed expressing myself with the sketches, the guys looked at them and were like,"uhhhhhhh. No." Red faced and nose out of joint I took my damn base sketch and tucked it away. "The guys" meaning Huz and our neighbors, Darren and his son Levi. Levi had known about our plans for the addition and in March asked if he could help develop some blueprints for a CAD/mentorship class he was taking. We said "sure"! So he and Huz did some exploring and measurement taking and a few weeks later Levi presents his plans. Right after I sketched mine. They weren't like mine. At all. My sketches sucked but, oh, what was floating there in my head! But as Levis plans were explained I realized mine just weren't practical or logical. Those pesky variables and all.

Levi's plans have grown on me since then. Here is our humble abode(2 pics stuck together. DAMN I can't wait to get a wide angle lens. I could have backed up more but I'd have been in the brush and, well, you know, the bear and all...) and Levis plans underneath. Compare and contrast:

And I was kidding about the bear. Really, I didn't want to get my jammie bottoms wet.

front and back of new addition

side views

To clarify, there will be a breezeway connecting the house to the addition.

Now that I understand his plans more and have come to terms with the fact the our existing house is already wacky enough, there just aren't that many ways we can build this addition! Levi's plans look..weird. But then again, this is ALASKA! The place of houses covered in ty-vec that go unfinished for decades. The land of the zainiest and most esthetically incorrect homes. The bastion of houses that had no place to go but UP so... the existing home is literally jacked up and the new first floor -and sometimes a second as well- is built underneath it. We call that architecture the "milk carton" look. So.. we'll have a madcap home- Levi's plans being the base of it all. Mind you , Levi is 17 and a junior in high school. As much as I always wanted to be the Ultimate Creator of my home, I also think it would be seriously cool and just..special... to use the plans developed by our 17 year old neighbor who we think is just such an awesome young man. And we're proud of his work.

The inside of the addition? I'M claiming that territory, man! I've already begun peeing on the deck, from which those two new floors will be erected!