Forest Living

Three nights ago, I was doing something kitcheney in the kitchen (washing dishes, or making tea, or some other putter-type activity) while listening to my ipod. Terrence sat in the dining room, reading a book. I stepped backward and thankfully, my parasympathetic reflexes were on point because I was able to raise my foot back off the floor before I put my full weight on something wet and squishy.

It was a slug. Again.

This has been a thing lately. I guess it's slug season or something, because this must be the third or fourth slug, at least, that's randomly been found crawling across our floor in the past week or two. Sometimes when I go outside and take a tour of the yard I find tiny sluggy stowaways on my shoes.

It isn't that slugs bother me - I consider them sweet, harmless creatures (especially since I don't have a garden,) but snuggling with them is not something I'm particularly keen on.

And as the one I halfway stepped on in the kitchen was pretty big (a couple of inches long,) I had significant heebie jeebies and asked Terry to get it. So he did. Blech.

A day or two later (after Terry was gone on the High School yearly camping trip with his students,) I came foot-to-face with a gigantic spider in the shower, just as I was about to step in.

I'd checked the shower before getting in, but I suspect that he was hiding down the drain. Once a very warm rain starting falling from the faucet, he retreated to the edge of the downpour. I cursed a little, ran to the kitchen to get a container, and gathered him up.

As weird as spiders can make you feel (especially when they're gigantic,) I find that if you mentally tell them (especially those massive ones) that you're going to peacefully move them, they just hang out and let you do it. If you're all vibratey with anxiety though, they freak out too. I think that I was pretty calm, because he peacefully went into the leftover hummus-or-whatever container.

He was pretty big. And actually striped quite beautifully. (It was much easier to check him out with the white plastic between us...)

I planned on setting him free in my little driveway and across a creek separating the driveway from my house, but as I walked that way I heard and saw some big animals frolicking in the woods nearby. Deer? Maybe. Bear? Maybe. I reassured my new little friend that he'd go outside later and ran back into the house.
I think I may be cut out for city life after all...

The next day, as I sat down in my bedroom to put on makeup, I heard a buzzing above my head.

Yep, this time the visitor was of the winged variety.

Spring has come. It brings flowers. And bugs. And I'm glad I'm going to a gnat-free, giant-spiders-free city next month to visit my sister in California for the summer. Southern Cali may have smog, but at least I don't have to check for ticks every day.

Why I LOVE My Vibrams!

Finally, 1.5 years in the making, my Vibram 5 Finger shoe review is up :)

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The day after tomorrow will be my twenty ninth birthday.
(Whoa. No matter what the number happens to be, I'll bet every birthday feels like a milestone...that is, until years have passed and you have to shuffle through memories of cities and goings-on to discover which year was which. That is already happening for me, by the way, but for the moment I'll pretend it isn't.)

What does it mean to be twenty nine, I wonder?

Twenty eight meant travel, new opportunities, books and interviews and emergence from a closet I'd put myself in, full of fear, just to find out that it was never any big deal in the first place that I happen to be what was once termed "mystic" and now is termed lots of other things...

It also meant a move to paradise, fairy country, and soon a temporary (at least) move out of this land will come, just as I'm getting used to it here. Figures.

No matter. As a good friend told me yesterday, when I mentioned that I've had a curious ulcer-like feeling in my stomach for the past few days, since my imminent future was turned abruptly on its ear, something is bound to happen.

And even when we think we know what will come next, we're often surprised anyway. Thinking you know is just something that makes you more comfortable, in my experience. Or, I guess, less comfortable if those plans change. So there's a blessing.

"Don't think about it," he told me.
"If you trust whatever you believe in," (this object of belief was of a Divine sort, I'm sure - and trust it I do, although I sometimes forget, obviously,) "then you can just stop thinking about it and know that you'll be there when you're there."

Or something like that. It made sense at the time.

So this new blog is going to help me keep my thoughts in order as I go wherever I'll go. I named it after something I was told in my undergraduate Interpersonal Effectiveness class. We were a class of twelve, who basically sat around and psychoanalyzed each other. It was awesome. And my teacher, Dr. Stacy Dunn, was the first woman I'd ever directly experienced who could be lovely and feminine, and at the same time kick corporate (or, in this case, academic) ass - a true role model for me.
What I was told in the class was that listening to me tell a story was either highly entertaining or maddening, depending on the listener. I wove and wound around, following "butterfly trails," but eventually coming back to my point and reaching my destination sooner or later, with a lot of random stuff thrown in for flavor.

Or, if you were the type of person who liked to know the Five W's and nothing else, then I took forever to say anything.

(Don't say I didn't warn you.)

So, the point of this introductory entry is to say that this blog will likely twist and turn all over the place, as my literal, mental, physical, and spiritual paths do the same over the course of this summer, and maybe longer.

We'll see what happens...

(Yesterday's buttercups. I love how spring's yellow flowers seem to actually glow.)