update on my life

So it has been over a month since I've blogged and so much has gone on. I don't have email access outside of work, so my emailing and blogging have become incredibly irregular.

My divorce papers were filed with the Boulder County courts last Friday. The divorce will be finalized in mid-January, 2008. Michael and I had a really sweet evening together last Friday and then said good bye. He left on Saturday for parts unknown, with his truck and a few possessions that he has chosen to keep. Saying goodbye on Friday night was hard. It was sad. I've been crying a lot lately. I'm sad to say goodbye to someone who has been my friend and my partner for over a decade. And as sad as I am, I know it is the right thing for me. I know it is time for me to continue on my journey without him.

Mixed up in all this, I've started exploring a new relationship. Yes, I know, "what?!" Starting something new as my marriage ends wasn't what I had in mind when I left. And yet, my heart is called.

Things at work have been totally crazy. One of my staff is leaving next week, and we haven't even posted the ad for her job yet due to some complex bureaucratic stuff. So as she's been phasing out, I've been picking up duties that normally wouldn't be part of my daily work.

The house got rented last week, and we've sold several alpacas in the last month. Trying to sell the herd has been another source of work and emotion There has been a lot of phone calls, emails, and paperwork along with lots of crying as my babies are getting sold. Pocahontes was sold to some people in Kansas, but is still here because she was so close to her due date. Pokie delivered a healthy baby girl 2 weeks ago which was great, but she's not my girl and never will be. I've been up to the place where she's boarded twice to see the baby. Amcharo will be going to Kansas, too. Maya is going to be moving to south Denver. We've still got some left, but my kids are now spread out at 5 different ranches.

I've been sick twice in the last month, once out for a week with stomach flu and now I've got some yucky sniffles. I never get sick, so to get hit like this twice in a month is a clear signal that I need to slow down. Last weekend I slept most of the day Saturday and has a pretty mellow Sunday reading and watching the snow (yes, the first snow was Oct. 21!) It was really my first down time in over a month (see last blog). I just bought some yarn to start a new project this weekend, and I hope to have time to hang out with friends.

I seem to be at the edge of a lot lately...on the edge of physical exhaustion, on the edge of emotional exhaustion, and on the edge of severe hermitude. I'm sorry to my friends who keep reaching out and getting silence. I hope this will change in the next few days. I plan to catch up on email and phone calls, as long as my nose and throat let me.

So that is the update on my life, the exciting, painful, interesting stuff that has been going on for the last month. I hope to write more frequently than once a month, but right now, I can't make any promises.

exhausted foodie

So, I'm still in pseudo hermity space, but I'm also living in exhausted land. I've been waking up before the sun and driving to Longmont to care for my critters while Michael is out of town. There's been stuff going on at work that has been an emotional drain, and lots of feelings of guilt and sadness. I've been so tired all the time lately.

Maybe it is my usual early fall mode. This seems familiar, the feeling of needing to nourish myself, recharge. The weather is changing, and it is making my eating out of whack...there is still lots of summery veggies coming every week: peppers, tomatoes, summer squash. And I want to make soups and cassaroles and roast things in the oven. I want bread--heavy crusty garlicy bread. And pasta. And beans. Bean soup with crusy bread and a nice salad. That is what I want.

I made the most fabulous food on monday. I made a "tomato tart": Puff pastry covered in grated parmesan cheese then baked until golden. While the crust is baking, the tomatoes are salted so they can extrude liquid. Once the crust is cooked and cooled, it is covered in shredded mozzarella cheese, then the tomatoes are "shingled" on top, then the tomatoes are brushed with garlic infused olive oil. Then the whole thing is baked. My goodness...this was amazing. It wasn't much work...the hardest part was slicing the roma tomatoes, and not eating the crust once it came out of the oven...flaky pastry covered in nutty, golden parmesan?! Heavenly.

I also made mac & cheese...2 kinds of mac & cheese. and this isn't from-a-box stuff, but the real deal. Make the sauce yourself mac & cheese. Which really, isn't hard. 1.5 Tablespoons butter and 1.5 Tablespoons flour in a pan heated up together on med-low heat until the butter is melted and done foaming. Mix well with a wisk or fork. Then add 1 cup milk while mixing. Let the milk start to get bubbly, but not boiling (you don't want the sauce to break). Once it is bubbly and thickened add in 1 cup (or more) shredded cheese. I love to use Tilamook cheddar or Tilamook pepper jack. The pepper jack mac & cheese is so amazing.

And salad is so lovely this time of year...the weather is cool so lettuce is back. And kale! And chard! and soon the beets will be out too. And the butternut squash. I can't wait to make butternut squash risotto again...yum!

Yesterday I had a snack at a lovely restaurant downtown. I had TOASTED RAVIOLI! For those of you not from the midwest, toasted ravioli is the best. Sadly, it is almost always meat-filled. So since I've gone meatless and have traveled back to the motherland, I've been unable to eat this age-old favorite. But I found wonderful ricotta toasted ravioli in downtown Boulder. Now, this is a pretty fancy, expensive version of toasted ravioli, but it was vegetarian. And for a once-in-a-while satisfaction of a food craving, well worth the price ($3 for two large pieces at happy hour).

Ooh, and last weekend, I made grape jelly. Yes I did. I made jelly! From concord grapes that came from the longmont garden. JELLY! me, I did it. I just need to make some biscuits now to eat my jelly with. mmm, biscuits and jelly. If I wasn't meatless, I'd be throwing some fried bologna on those jelly biscuits. Sigh.

Wow, I've been wiped out, and apparantly starving. I had no idea. See, I knew I needed to write. I think so much better when I'm writing. I'm back in touch with my foodie domestic diva inner goddess. And time to start knitting. Winter's a comin'!

hermitude

I find myself going into that dark, musty place of hermitude. The place that is cozy and warm and alone. Not lonely, but alone. I need some recharge time, some loving myself time, some making soap and baking and cooking and cleaning up and organizing my stuff time.

I've been doing a lot with and for others the last two weeks, but I haven't had much alone time. So I've been hiding in longmont for a bunch of hours today. Hiding in a house that is still sort of mine, peeking at my animals from the window. Wanting to love on them, but not wanting to be around anyone.

I'm full of shoulds today. I should be doing all sorts of things. I have lists and lists of things that I should do. Lists and lists of things that I should be. Lists and list of things that I should feel. I'm tired of the shoulds. Tired of the guilt that goes along with the shoulds.

So I'm not going to be a good friend today. I'm not going to be a good companion or sibling or roommate. I'm not going to be a good (insert any of the other labels that I have here). I'm going to be a hermit and hide and bake and maybe make soap and pet a cat and pay some bills and maybe make a face mask or maybe none of those things. If I don't answer you today, it's just because I'm being hermity.

busy busy two weeks

The last 2 weeks have been busy busy busy. We had orientation week Aug 20-24, then I was at Shambhala Mountain Center for our orientation weekend Aug 24-26, then I came back on the 26th and helped out on the farm because Michael was irrigating. Then the First week of School happened.

This first week was SO busy! I think part of it was not having any workstudy help, part of it was having one of my staff out on the east coast for a family emergency, and part of it was just the crazy busy wonderfulness of the first week.

I am so happy to have everyone back! I love the crazy start of the school year, the running around, the reliability of the breakdown of the photocopier, the energy of everyone coming back refreshed and re-inspired. I'm hoping to sleep a lot this weekend...it hasn't happened yet, but I'm hoping it will :)

I was able to only work a half-day on friday and then spend part of the afternoon cleaning my friend Kash's apartment. For those of you who know and love him, and those of you who don't, please keep him and his family in your thoughts. John and I have Kash's companion, Mystic Magic Ninja Kitty Princess at our place for a while. She's so wonderful and cuddly!

I haven't written in 2 weeks, and I'm feeling like I'm just dumping, but there will be more, better stories soon.

Other news...I had a little accident with my phone, and now my phone is dead, dead, dead. I'm using a temporary phone while waiting for a new one to arrive in the mail in the next week.

Along with my phone being dead, all the numbers that were stored in my phone are gone. really really gone.

So I need your number! call me, email me, text me...I have a few numbers in my head, but for many of my friends...I don't know how to reach you!

almost there...

My friend Bryan came in from Alabama to visit and I took off part of Weds-Fri this week to be with him. It was wonderful to see him and spend time with him. I was sad to see him leave today.

However, Monday is the start of Orientation Week, so I have/had lots to do, and today was the day to do it. I am so So SO excited to meet the new students! I'm such a junkie.

Since I missed out on a bunch of work this week, I came in today. so I'm getting ready to leave work, and since my wireless has been spotty I'm writing from my office. Yes, it is 8:20 on a Sunday night. I've been here since 2pm.

The last thing I did before ending my "work" for the day was to clean up my office. I found a folder marked "to be filed" and looked through it. In there I found a sign up sheet "1st Year Student Check In with Jennie and John" with the names of the group that graduated in May. I started crying. I'm getting misty all over again. I can't believe 3 years has gone by so fast. I can't believe this is my 4th fall in my job. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same. It is time to go home and eat dinner and make a candle from the pieces of wax filled with the intentions of the Class of 2007. It is time to let them go and let myself open to a new year.

what if the world ends, how will I tell the time?

I'm in a strange mood. A giddy, giggly mood. An anticipatory mood, waiting for the sky to get darker and the meteor shower to begin mood. A pester my roommate while he's trying to read mood. A bouncy abundance too many containers of fizzy liquid in my trunk mood.

This evening I went to a friend's birthday potluck picnic at a local park. I brought drinks and macaroni salad. When I say that I brought drinks, I should say that I brought a lot of drinks. When I was at the grocery store, they were having a Buy 2 get 2 free sale. So I got 8 2-liter bottles of various drinks (3 kinds of flavored fizzy water, 1 plain fizzy water, 2 root beers, 1 dr. pepper, and a ginger ale) and two bottles of berry lemonade. Is anyone thirsty? So at the picnic, we only opened one bottle of plain fizzy and one raspberry lemonade and made little fruity fizzy water drinks. I now have 7 unopened 2-liter bottles of fizzy liquid, one half-used fizzy bottle, an unopened strawberry lemonade, and a half-used raspberry lemonade. Um...what was I thinking?! I suppose I wasn't. I was thinking that I was thirsty, and it was really hot outside, and that there would be other hot, thirsty people wanting something nice and cool to drink, too.

Luckily, I have people coming over tomorrow night for our weekly dinner and movie night (K & J, don't bring drinks!)

ah, neurosis, what fun.

A friend's blog got me thinking about aspects of 'growing up' and how it is expected that magic and fantasy must disappear from our lives in order to be 'grown up'. Stupid cultural norms. Nobody wants to really give up magic. I had some good thoughts on this earlier, so I'm going to quote a piece of my comment on that blog

"Growing up doesn't mean realizing the magic isn't there...growing up can mean recognizing that a lot of magic is inside YOU, that you can create magic, that you can believe it, that you can choose to see it, that you can create it for others. ??Your own magic doesn't cease to exist because suddenly you're a grown up. Even in Peter Pan, grown ups could fly if they could get past their own mental blocks. AHA! I've stumbled on something here...I think a lot of 'grown ups' set up mental blocks around magic, they buy into some image of what a grown up should be...power suit and fancy title are the things to aspire to have, right? Crap, I went through a whole phase like, myself. I'm too big and grown up for (insert anything you like here)." ?

So here's to magic and silly giggly fizzy liquids. and by the way, we have no functioning clocks in the apartment now other than cell phone clocks. I hate being so dependent on that technology. What happens if there is a cell tower blackout? If the world ends, how will I tell the time?

sleepy sleepy peep

i realized today that i am not taking super great care of me. i'm not taking bad care of me, just not great care. i'm wiped out and need to sleep more. i haven't been to the gym in ages. i have friends I want to call and talk to and blogs to read and comments to post and blogs to post and comments to read and i don't have the time. the next few days are about conscious reset, connecting with friends, connecting with me, and doing a little self-care and pampering.